Re: [tied] First iron swords on mass scale

Piotr wrote:

>Miguel wrote:
>
>The exact form of the B-S etymon is indeed problematic. We have
>Slavic z^ele^so and Lith. gelezis, OPr. gelso (I suspect /gelzo/, in
>view of the German orthography of Old Prussian). The Slavic and
>Baltic terms are not quite compatible, apart from initial *g(w)el-.
>
> Actually, the Slavic word is z^ele^zo and the Lithuanian one gelez^is.

Oops, misprint in C.D. Buck's dictionary for OCS and bad reading on my
part for Lithuanian.

>Lithuanian has eliminated the neuter gender, so the different stem is
>scarcely surprising. Slavic z^ (before a front vowel) = Baltic g (PIE
>labiovelar or unsatemised velar), and Slavic z = Lithuanian z^ = Old
>Prussian z, orthographic <s> (satem treatment of *g(H)). The only trouble
>is the vowel-length difference in the second syllable. Before IE unaspirated
>voiced stops Balto-Slavic shows vowel lengthening, the precise conditions
>for which are not yet known ("Winter's Law"). The apparent mismatch may be
>due to the failure of Winter's Law to apply in this particular Baltic form
>for reasons we don't fully understand at present (there are also a few Slavic
>words in which it "should" but doesn't apply). With this single reservation,
>the match is pretty good.

Ok, that points to *gel-eg^-, with Winter lengthening blocked in
Baltic somehow (maybe originally by following -n- in the adjective
*gel-eg^-no-?).

> Well, this is a cogent argument. Sumerian bar does mean 'bright, shining',
>which is exactly the expected adjective where silver is concerned, and we have
>Sumerian barzil '(meteoritic) iron', which, as you convincingly argue, might be
>a reversed variant of zil-bar or sil-bar (with zil 'cut, peel?'). Still, there
>are some further questions. Why does a reflex of this putative *zilbar or *silbar
>(surprisingly unchanged, cf. Akkadian siparrum) appear ONLY in Northern Europe
>and in Celtiberian with the meaning 'silver'? Where was it hiding during the
>twenty centuries or so between its formation in Sumerian and its earliest
>attestation in Europe?

Good question. I have no idea. It may have helped that not much was
attested at all in Europe in that time...

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...