Re: Bog

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> I wonder if a case could be made for *bogU being an _Indo-Aryan_
> loanword in Slavic (borrowed when there were still some Indo-Aryans
> north of the Black Sea).

You seem to be on the Trubachev's side at last? :)

> Inherited *bHagos should show Winterian
> lengthening (**bagU)

As I can conclude from this and some previous posts, you seem to be a
Winterian - a one who assumes Winter's law. But this law has never
been universally acknowledged, I would give him a status of tentative
guess. How do you account for, eg, *voda and a lot of other examples?

> *sUboz^Ije `corn,
> crop' looks like a collective (of what?) but might also be a
> deadjectival noun presupposing *sU-bogU < *su-bHaga- `prosperous,
> fortunate, blessed', perhaps the opposite of *ne-bogU (calquing

*dus-

> bHaga-?) `unfortunate'. However, under this analysis *sU- < *su-

can

> only be Indo-Aryan (or perhaps Proto-Indo-Iranian, but that might

be

> too early to avoid Winter's Law in Baltic/Slavic), since the

Iranian

> reflex is *hu-. Compounds with (PIE) *h1su- and *dus- are almost
> absent from Slavic. The only examples I can think of are *dUzdjI <
> *dus-dju- `rain' (literally `bad day') and *sUdorvU < *su-dorwo-
> `healthy', both of which appear to have some Indo-Iranian

parallels.

I can add *sUmIrtI 'death' < 'proper death' to your collection (< su-
* 'good' < 'proper' < 'suus, belonging to our tribe etc' + *mrt-i-
'death (in general)'), cf. Lith. sa`vo mirtimi` mir~ti 'to die a
natural death, lit. to die one's death' and Slavic *svojo,
sUmIrtIjo, -mIrti 'the same'.

As for *dus-dju-, with all my respect to Trubetskoi, unnaturalness of
this reconstruction has always made me laugh. A rain is bonum
agricolae, rather than malum. I would rather bet on *dUz^d^z^I <
*dUzgjI < *duzg-j-o- 'patterer', of expressive, if not slangish,
origin, cf. Lith. duzge.'ti 'to whirr; to patter'.

As for *sUdorvU, I don't see any reason to egage Indo-Iranian: I see
no problems in Slavic etymology < '(like a) healthy tree'.

Sergei