Re: [tied] Re: One.

A coincidentally but curiously parallel case of irregular w-prothesis in the word for "one" has occurred -- guess where -- in English. The now standard pronunciation is a borrowing from a regional accent. The historically expected one (preserved in <only, alone, atone>) shoud make it a homphone of <own>. Several different pronunciations are known to have competed in early Modern English (and they survive in modern dialects).

As for the expected Slavic development of word-initial *oi-/*ai-, I'd expect at least partial confusion of *ei- and *oi- there, like that of *e- ~ *o-/*a-, *eu- ~ *ou-/*au- (> *ju- ~ *u-) or *e:- ~ *a:-/o:- (> *e^- ~ *a-). There are other possible examples, e.g. *iskati 'look for' (Lith. ies^k-, Germanic *ai(s)-sk- 'ask, seek'). I'm not sure if the accent is significant. _Final_ *-oi became *-i (via *-e.:) in the nom.pl. of thematic masculines.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Sergejus Tarasovas

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2001 8:57 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: One.

--- In cybalist@......, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@......> wrote: > The actual Slavic reflex of PIE "one" is *inU, recycled semantically as "another, diferent". The original meaning survives in a couple of old compounds -- *ino-rogU 'unicorn' and *ino-xodU 'amble, lateral gait'. Or triplet. Add *inokU 'monk', a carbon-copy of Greek monakho's. > I don't know where the initial *v- in the East Baltic reflex comes from. Such prothesis is unusual in that branch; perhaps Sergei knows more about it. AFAIK, there are two hypotheses (not very impressive, I must admit): 1. Still a prothesis. I'm not sure about Latvian, but v- before /u/, /uo/ < *o: (/ a: in Samog.) and /o/ < a: (but not /a/!) is often or even normal in many Lithuanian dialects, both Samogitian and auks^tai~c^iu, (anybody knows the English term?), cf. auks^t. vu`pe. 'river', vu'oga 'berry', vo'ras 'air', voz^ka` 'she-goat' (and vice versa, historical v- is sometimes dropped - probably as a result of re-analyzing it as a prothesis - like in o'ras 'spider', o'kietis 'a German'), Samog. vu'ors 'air.'. Examples with /o/ are ambiguous - it's not clear, if the prothesis was added before *a: > o or after (most likely, since it seemes the part of auks^tai~c^ai where a: survived doesn't have v- before /a:/). 2. Some proclitical particle (of unknown origin, probably < (Fraenkel, if I recall) *ve- < ?), typologically cf. Slavic *ed-inU. > Apart from this irregularity, OPrus. ains, Slavic *inU and East Baltic *[w]ienas can be reconstructed as Proto-BSl *ainas, with an acute accent on the diphthong evidenced throughout Balto-Slavic. The accent suggests that there is something amiss about the traditional IE reconstruction *oi-no-. My personal preference is for *oi-h1n-o-, with a variant of the suffix *-h1on Canonical East-Baltic form would be *[w]e.:nas (e with a dot above, a narrow long e). As for *oi- > *ei- (>*e.:), it's normal for East Baltic, but not for Slavic (where *(j)e^- would be expected). Any ideas (eg, < *eih1n- or *i(h1)n-, for the latter cf. Lith. dial. i`nas 'real,true')? > A by-form of *inorogU (*inUrogU > *inrog > *indrok?) is probably the prototype of Indrik. This is a plausible derivation, and you can strip off the * from Indrok(U) - it's attested. Sergei

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