Re: [tied] Enclosed Places (was: The unexplained link between Greek

Richard Wordingham wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "alex" <alxmoeller@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 11:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Enclosed Places (was: The unexplained link between
> Greek/Latin and Tamil)
>
>
>> Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>>> 12-07-03 23:44, alex wrote:
>
>>>> If there is in Slavic the meaning "fence" then it can be a loan
>>>> from Slavic. If not, then it is not.
>
> Zero-grade forms seem to imply such a sense. Unfortunately, my German
> dictionary's not good enough for me to fuly understand Pokorny's
> statement, "tiefstuf. slav. z^ürdü in aksl. z^rüdü `Holz', russ.
> z^erdü `lange, du"nne Stange', poln. z`erdz/, sloven. z^r^d
> `Wiesbaum'". Baltic does have a fence word, "lit. [...] gardìs f.
> `Gatter, Gitter'", meaning open fencework as in railings or a trellis.

I guess Pokorny make here a reference vis avis Phyrigian forms where we
find the unpalatalised "g" but too the "z" there. This is why the Slavic
forms with "z" are analysed too. For the slavic parts with the meaning
"holz, wiesbaum, dünne Stange", I would complete here with "jordie" or
"joardã" (dünne Stange), but even if DEX compare it with Slavic z^rUdi,
DEX considere the Rom. word as a loan from Hungarian "zsorda".
Now, speaking about the zero grade of the PIE root means we cannot speak
about Slavic here for the form with "gradU" and the meaning for fence.

>
>>> Wrong (see above), also because there might have been a
>>> specialisation of meaning in _Slavic_ after the word had been
>>> borrowed into Albanian and Romanian. (The meaning of Germanic
>>> *gardaz was also fairly general, but has become narrowed down in
>>> Modern English <yard>).
>>
>> Hard. In both languages the word specialised itself in the same way.
>
> Well, for comparison there's always Old English _tu:n_ 'enclosure,
> garden, yard; building(s) on a piece of enclosed land, farmstead;
> cluster of buildings or houses', from which we get English 'town' and

> the common suffix '-ton' in English place names. Cognate with that,
> we have Dutch _tuin_ 'garden', German _Zaun_ 'fence, hedge', OIr
> du:n, Welsh din 'fort, castle, fortified place', seen in Celtic place
> names such as London, Lyons and the alternative name, Dunedin, of
> Edinburgh.

I fail to see your comparative point here. You get very well from the
low meaning fence) a semantic development town, but not other ways. For
comparation, in South Slavic you have "grad"= town . Do you expect an
backwards development in Alb. and Rom. to the sence of "fence"?. Piotr
try to see a specialised semantic in Slavic, hence there must have been
the meaning in Slavic of "fence" and this is why Rom. and Alb. has the
meaning "fence". Why _must_ have been in Slavic a such meaning even if _
there is no meaning_ in actual Slavic for fence? Because otherways you
cannot explain the senses in Alb. and Rom, and then this is not a loan
from Slavic then. In fat this is an old subject and the way too see the
things, is a point of view developed by Miclosicz in fact. ( There must
have been something in Slavic _now lost_ because it is to find in Alb.
or Rom. or in both of them.Thus these words are like germanic words in
finish "frozen" there, but they must have been coming to these people
trough Slavic.) This is why Abdullah made the remarque about the "drink
on the expense .. etc." The remarque of Abdullah was not directed
specialy for Piotr, but specialy for the easiness of explaing everything
trough Slavs. In fact one forget easy here that the Slavs have been
migrating people but they are supposed to have brought to the sedentary
population where they came, notions which are related to the sedentar
life. If the words in slavic presents a centum aspect, then this is to
explain trough loans in Slavic from the germanic languages ( other
migrating folks at that time.)

>> For Slavic we have to remember the Sout Slavic "grad"(city),
>> "gradina" but the Russian "o-grada" too and the Rom. "ograda" too.
>> Which is in fact the Slavic word? The one with metathesis or the
>> another one?
>
> That point was dealt with long ago, at great length.
>
> Richard.

And there was nothing cleared, otherway Piotr wont bring back that the
Rom. and Alb. words are a loan from Slavic:-)

Alex