--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Of course I haven't (I've had no time for even a cursory overview),
but I think we can exclude what is after all a kind of expressive
technical slang ("treading the waves"). Sailors are busy people and
they tend to spend their time on deck running up and down :). My
(falsifiable but hitherto unfalsified) impression is that *xod- is
definitely associated with _active_, not _passive_ movement (see
below).
>
> > Ship is a vehicle, and the situation when an old semantics is
conserved "on the perifery" with some specific meaning is quite
possible typologically.
>
> Just a contribution to comparative Slavic semantics: in Polish (and
I believe in Russian too) <chodzi> (as well as <idzie>) is used
primarily of human or animal walkers, then secondarily of clocks and
engines (now also of trains, trams and coaches, etc.), and frequently
of ships as well -- i.e. vehicles and machines that "move by
themselves" without being visibly drawn, and by virtue of that
resemble living beings. In Polish, however, only a ship may "walk",
not a sailor or a passanger aboard her. And certainly a wagon or a
cart never "walks" (we use <jedzie>, not <idzie/chodzi>).
My question about analyzing all the Slavic languages was just an
euphemism for 'Polish not equals Slavic' (I still remember your
Freudian slip). Plus, my unclear wording has lead to
misunderstanding: in Old Russian (as well as in today's Standard
Russian) it's mostly _sailor_, not ship, who xoditU, cf. (quoting
from memory) <moremI bo xodimU> '(we) sail on the sea (to march on
Constantinople)' [PVL], but the examples can be multiplied ad
infinitum on your demand. Again, you have ignored extremely important
George's quotation from one of PVL's versions. It's Cumans who
xode,tU, not their vez^I.
Plus, in Russian wagon or cart or car xodit <moja' tele'ga/mas^i'na
plo'xo xo'dit> (I have trouble with my wagon/car), moja' mas^i'na na
xodu' 'alive, runner'. Why is this so? Probably because Russian is
not Polish.
Sergei