It's a safe bet, given the semantics of the
compounds with *ala- (e.g. OHG in alahalbo:n 'all over', in alano:t
'necessarily', alamahti:g 'almighty', alawa:r 'completely true', alaniuwi
'completely new', alawalt 'all-powerful', etc.; Gothic alabrunsts 'whole-burnt
offering', alaþarba 'quite poor' [surely not 'as poor as a lord']). 'Complete,
entire, whole, quite' works much better than 'noble' (leaving aside the question
whether 'noble' is a legitimate translation of Indo-Iranian *arya-). *ala- and
*alla- (< *alna-) are ultimately related to *h2al- 'grow' (OHG & OE alan,
ON ala, Lat. alo), and the participial adjective *h2al-to- 'grown, great' (Lat.
altus, PGmc. *ald-/*alþ- 'old').
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 6:16 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Accepted cognates of Arya?
I'm sorry. You're right, I replaced "noble etc" with "true,
real", so it would look more symmetrical. So, did I understand you correctly
that you want to stake your
reputation as a linguist that Germanic *ala-
"true, real" is not borrowed from or a cognate of Alanic *ala- < PII *arya-
"noble etc"?