Who says that the borrowings were
exclusively (or indeed mainly) Scythian? Certainly I do not :). I have already
mentioned arguments in favour of dating several Iranian loans or calques (e.g.
*bogU with the meaning 'god', *boz^Inica <-- *bagina-) to the early Middle
Iranian ("Sarmatian") times. Also, *xUte^ti, *sUto and the rivernames with
*dUn- must belong to that period (in earlier loans we'd expect *o rather than
the reduction vowel *U). Interestingly, some of the Middle Iranian loans may
have come from dialects diferent from those ancestral to Ossetic, and more
similar to Middle Persian (of the late Seleucid to early Sassanid periods) in
terms of phonetic developments. They are perhaps culturally important
wanderworts migrating from the south. One characteristic example is *mirU, which
possibly derives from mi:r- < mihra- < miþra- 'contract, pact (and, of
course, Mithra)' with lenition and loss rather than the Alano-Ossetic metathesis
*-þr- > -rt- as in Iron fyrt, Digor furt 'son' < *puþra-.
Another, more speculative case is Szemerényi's derivation of *gospodI from
*gos-pad ~ *gus-pad < *vis-pati- 'community headman, leader of a clan'
(Middle Persian vi- > gu- ~ go-). This particular loan could be
dated approximately to the 3rd century AD on linguistic grounds.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2001 11:37 AM
Subject: [tied] Iranic in Slavic
Slavonic scholars seem to have a consensus concerning traces
of a mighty
influence of an East Iranian source on the Common Slavic
language. The
Common Slavic lexicon and a series of god names don't allow
denying it.
Theoretically there could be 3 main sources of such an
influence
(chronological borders can overlap, of course) -
1) Scythian
(7th - 4th cent. BC)
2) Sarmatian (4th c.BC - 1st c.AD)
3) Alano-Yazygian
(1st - 6th cent. AD - later it would be an influence on
single Slavic groups,
not on Common Slavic)
However always when I met mentioning of the Iranian
influence only the
Scythian variant was considered (usually 6th - 5th cent.
BC were suggested
as the contact period).
Is there a _linguistic_ basis
for such an approach?
Are we able to distinguish the Scythian loans from the
Sarmatian and Alanian
ones?
Alexander
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