Sunki dalia

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Piotr Gasiorowski [mailto:piotr.gasiorowski@...]
> Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 3:55 PM
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: slavic "dalto"

> The semantic association between conjectural *'get one's
> share' and 'defeat' is shaky. Polish also has the verb stem
> *-dola-, now only with prefixes (<podol/ac'> 'succeed',
> <zdol/ac'> 'be able to', <zdolny> 'gifted, apt', <nieudolny>
> 'clumsy'). The central concept seems to be efficiency or
> aptness. I'm not convinced there's a real connection with
> *dolja. It could be argued that *dolja may also mean 'good
> luck' (and this is closer to 'success'), but the clearly
> fatalistic implications of *dolja as opposed to the active
> and purposeful effort implied by *dole^ti/*dolati make me
> remain sceptical.

And that implications have their exact parallels in Lithuanian, which
seems to lack the optimistic semantics of the Slavic verbs completely.
But those *dole^ti ~ *dolati ~ *doliti (Russ. dial. <zdólit'>,
Belarusian <zdólic'> 'be able to') eventually derive from PIE *del-
'divide', don't they? Are those unhappy implications -- too
conspiciously close to the Lithuanian ones -- are the only obstacle on
the otherwise easy derivational road from *del(H)- ~ *dol- to (?)*dolja,
whose semantics fits much better with that of *del- than that of the
verbs in question does (the nativeness of these verbs being clear of
suspicion)?

Sergei