Re: Ducks and Souls

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 18-09-03 14:12, tgpedersen wrote:
> >
> >> I just learned *anet- "duck" must have a sideform *anat- based

on

> >> Swedish dialects, so I add it to the "language of bird names".
> >>
> >
> > It would therefore strengthen the case of *akus-/*akis- "axe"

being

> > a 'bird name language' import if it had an a-less sideform with

more

> > vowel in the next syllable. Such as *kov-, Russian kovat',

English

> > hew. No, I don't know what happened to the /s/.

Latin co:t- "whetstone"

>
> The 'duck' word has no "a-less" forms either. If you were thinking

of

> Greek <ne:ssa/ne:tta>, its /ne:/ is the regular reflex of

unstressed

> */n.h2/ (or what was regarded as a long sylabic nasal in Brugmann's
> times). Lest you should suspect that the whole thing is an artifact

of

> laryngealist sleight-of-hand (you probably will anyway), */n.h2/ is
> independently confirmed by Skt. a:ti- < *h2n.h2t-i- 'water-bird'.
>

Erh? Who is this suspicious anti-laryngealist you are arguing
against? Not me. As for 'a-less', either you write the root as does
Schrijver with an a- that alternately disappears, or you write it
with alternating h2aC- and h2C- in which latter case h2 disappears
and you get a Greek duck. And in Schrijver's terms that Greek duck is
a-less. That card trick doesn't work on me.

> Your 'axe' forms are completely fantastic. Goth. aqizi- points to

Gmc.

> *akWis- < *h2agWes-, of which /akus-/ is a Germanic variant with

the

> unstressed vowel coloured by the adjacent labiovelar (Pokorny

suggests

> *agwes-/*agus- as ablaut variants -- not very plausibly). Such

colouring

> may easily happen even under stress, e.g. PGmc. *kweman- > Goth.

qiman

> but OE (etc.) cuman 'come'.

I think it's reshaped from the ppp. You can't live long with a verb
that goes -we-/-wa-/-u- cf. Swedish simma "swim". Analogy

>If you wanted to classify as Birdspeak any
> Germanic word with variable vowel quality in unstressed medial
> syllables, hundreds of items would qualify. The 'duck' word could

occur

> with just about any short vowel (*a, *i or *u), but that's because

of

> the fact that internal *&2 had no stable reflex in Germanic (OHG

alone

> has a number of variants including <anat>, <enit> and <anut>); we
> therefore have to reconstruct the PGmc. word as *anVd-jo: . As it's

an

> inner Germanic phenomenon, the Swedish dialectal evidence has no
> relevance beyond PGmc.
>
> I'll comment on Schrijver's examples separately.
>

Please add a comment on why my 'axe' forms are fantastic (I think so
too).

Torsten