--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> --- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> the Old Ossetic speakers' term for
> > themselves was not Iron -- a more recent formation
> > from Ir 'Ossetia', which is foreign-influenced --
> > but apparently Alan- (*ælan- < *arya:n-; had it
> > survived, it would be *ælon today), the plural of
> > which was (I suppose) *ælantæ < *arya:ni-ta:.
> >
> > Piotr
>
> ****GK: A follow up. Using "Cuman" or "Kipchak" as a
> designation for the 12th c. Polovtsians, and wanting
> to distinguish the Ossetians of the Donetz from those
> of the Caucasus as "the Ossetians of the Polovtsians"
> would the proper grammatical form be something like
> "AELANTAE-I-CUMAN/or KIPCHAK"? I'm interested in the
> use of this linkage particle "I" (of) which is
> apparently identical in Iranic and Turkic. (1) Would
> the second "AE" in AELANTAE be imperative at this
> stage of the Ossetic language? I.e. could it be just
> "AELANT-I-KIPCHAK"? (2) Would a Turkic rendition use
> AELANTAEetc. AELANTetc. or something else altogether?***
It may be known what the Polovetsians of the 12th century
called themselves, though I personally don't know, but even
if it was "Cuman" or "Kipchak" I don't think that there's
any way of knowing whether they were called that in Alanic.
I also have personal doubts as to whether the Alans called
themselves "Alan" in their own language. This may just be
the usage of the classical authors possibly based on no more
than a one-time explanation by a native informant that most
of the tribes in the Alanic confederation were Iranian, "Alan"
< *arya:na-. Did the Germans call themselves "Germani"? Did
all of the N.E. Iranian tribes call themselves "Sauromatoi"
or just the first group to come in contact with the Greeks?
I also tend to think that the plural for *Ælon in *Ælontæ is
a later and more analogical form than *Ælættæ <
*Ælæntæ
and that simply "Ælon" would probably do anyway in the phrase
that you're trying to translate. But putting all that aside
and considering only grammar, the phrase would be "Kipchak-i
Ælontæ" or more likely "Kuman-i Ælontæ" since the Magyars
call the tribe of Kipchaks that accompanied and settled with
the Jász in Hungary "Kun" < Cuman. The '-i' in Ossetic is an
agglutinating case particle and follows the noun or string of
nouns in the genitive. When you write of an Iranian "linkage
particle" are you basing this on the similarity in form and
function of the Ossetic genit. marker and the Persian particle
'-e', called "ezafe"? I've always thought that this was just a
coincidental similarity, though I personally don't know enough
about it to say for sure. In any case the word order differs
in Ossetic and Persian. "Ahmed's horse, the horse of Ahmed" is
'Asb-e Ahmad' in Farsi, but 'Axmæt-i æfs' in Digor. The ezafe
also joins a noun to its adjective or appositive as in 'Asb-e
seya:h', "The black horse" and 'Ahmad-e najja:r', "Ahmed the
carpenter". Ossetic's '-i' particle doesn't share these last two
functions. I can't tell you anything about the Turkish. I hope
that this helps (and is accurate this time! ;-)
-David