Re: [tied] The Middle Voice.

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 7167
Date: 2001-04-19

I agree with Glen here: *wodr(/-en-, etc.) is as widespread as anyone could wish, while *akWah2- is Germano-Italic -- most likely an areal term. The Tocharian and Anatolian verbs meaning "drink" need not be related to *akWah2-. Their vocalism is somewhat problematic; the root in question is often reconstructed as *e:gWH- and connected with Latin e:brius 'drunk' and Greek ne:pho: 'drink no wine'. If there is an "active" water term that could be PIE, it's *h2ap-, an old-looking consonantal stem well represented in hydronymy.
 
Peter surely means pairs like *pah2wr : *ngnis (or however the latter should be reconstructed) for "fire". It does seem as if such pairs had existed, though it also seems that some inanimate names of natural elements could be "animated" by morphological rather than lexical means (we have discussed such processes before).
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] The Middle Voice.


Peter:
>There are a number of words which seem to have two lexemes in PIE >(the
>debate about akwa and wodr is on this list at the moment).  >Could one be
>the active form, and the other the stative, as some >writers suggest?

But what is **akwa?? How is it attested as the IE word for "water" other
than in a couple of western IE branches? It is quite clear that *wodr is
well attested as such, however.

- gLeN