--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> Piotr, I agree with your arguments. Since it doesn't make any sense
to argue on two posts, please follow my answer to Mr Iacomi. Until
there it will be nice from you if you will tell us what meant initialy
*traupas in Balto-slavic, what means actualy the derivatives of
*traupas in Lithuanian and Letonian (if any).
First, let's note that quite a few meanings survive in Slavic. Beside
words meaning 'cadaver, dead body' and the Bulgarian second sense
'block of wood', we have e.g. Czech and Slovak <trup> 'trunk, corpus'
(also of something inanimate; note, BTW, the semantic evolution of
Lat. truncus 'pine-tree stripped of its branches' --> Eng. trunk 'body
[sans head and limbs]'). Kashubian, which has preserved many archaisms
lost in Polish, has <trup> 'dead body', but also <trëpa> (< *trupa)
'withered branch; old log (in a peat-bog)', as well as <trëp'ec> 'to
decay'. Outside Slavic, Old Prussian has <trupis> 'stump, block of
wood'. Lithuanian shows <trupu`s> 'crumbly, friable' and (according to
Pokorny) <traupus> 'brittle', plus <trupé.ti> 'crumble', <trupiny~s>
'crumb, piece' and other similar derivatives.
It seems possible to reconstruct, for Balto-Slavic, a root *treup-
with a meaning that had to do with 'decaying' or 'falling apart' and
the derived noun *traupas 'dead wood' > PSl. *trupU.
There are semantically close words containing *tru:- in Baltic, so
this *treup- is likely an extended form of *treu- 'rub, drill, grind'
(cf. Gk. tru:pe: 'hole'), itself an "extension" (amongst a huge number
of such) of the "proto-root" *ter- (which, whether a bona fide etymon
or a shorthand label for a phonaesthetic cluster, undoubtedly
qualifies as PIE).
Piotr