Re: [tied] Sarmatian eggs

You are right, and my judgment was premature. Thanks for pointing it out. It may be a curious case of accidental convergence. Both Slavic and Ossetic have prothetic j- before some vowels, so the Slavic diminutive *a:j-Ik-o- could have produced reflexes very similar to those of Proto-Iranian *a:ikka-. I know nothing concrete about the orthography of the Yas word-list. If <c> represented [ts] there, the word could only be Slavic (with the "second palatalisation" of *k); if it stood for [k], it could be either Slavic (Polish, for instance, has both phonologically regular <jajca> and morphologically regularised <jajka> for "eggs") or Iranian, but the latter origin should of course be preferred.

By the way, the PIE "egg" word has left surprisingly few traces in Indo-Iranian (none in Old Indic, as far as I know). How does Benveniste explain *a:ikka-?

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: WtsDv@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2001 9:23 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Sarmatians in Hungary

Please excuse me if I'm wrong, as I know very little about the Slavic languages. However if the 'c' in jayca represents a 'k' sound then couldn't it be Iranian after all and cognate with the Iron aik and Digor aikæ 'egg'? In "Études Sur La Langue Ossète" the author Émile Benveniste derives Iron aik from an Iranian *aikka- (first 'a' long) and some Sarmatian dialects seem to insert or drop an 'i' or 'y' (Lat. 'j') at the beginning of words, according to what rule I don't know. Compare these pairs in Digor and Iron: æfsæ yæfs 'mare' æ yæ 'his, her, it's' yæx ix 'ice' iuong, yong uong, ong 'limb, member' -David