Re: Star (was "Azerbaijan")

From: wtsdv
Message: 12474
Date: 2002-02-25

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> I have no idea. I know Ossetic normally has ejectives only in
> loans and expressive words. However, there are regular reflexes
> of *star- elsewhere in Iranian. If the Ossetic word is a loan,
> where does it come from? I think Iron /..ly/ would be the expected
> regular reflex of Pre-Ossetic *..r-ja:.
>
> Piotr

I know nothing about Caucasian so I can't suggest a
source, but Glen's posts about 'star' in Nostratic made
me wonder if there might not be one. Actually though,
I've always assumed that st'aly wasn't a loan and that
there were conditions under which Ossetic acquired
ejectives, as happened in Indo-Aryan with retroflection.
Harold W. Bailey gives a few Ossetic words with ejectives
that he considers Iranian. He compares Oss. k'ala
'branch' to Av. gao-k&r&na- 'red-stemmed' and Gr.
kládos 'branch', Oss. p'ara 'lees' to Khot. purga, Oss.
k'æs 'inner chamber' to Khot. kasa:- and O.Ind. kas´as-.
He gives 'kin-' as the root of Khot. tcimña 'yeast' and
compares it to Bud.Sk. kin.va-, Oss. k'insæ 'dough'.
These four and st'aly are my total list of such words so
far and, other than st'aly, their Iranian etymologies don't
seem very convincing, nor can I see any pattern anyway.

David