29-12-03 12:31, tgpedersen wrote:
> Correction
>
>>If the sense was once "tree" or "yule log" there is ON <kraki> "tree
>> with branches cut off, which would then be borrowed after Grimm,
> but
>> before the last Slavic palatalisation (or all from some substrate
>> language?).
The final -i is the weak-noun suffix, which can simply be ignored, since
ON speakers could easily have added it to a borrowed word. As for the
/krak-/ part, it might have been taken from Slavic *korkU with
"Lekhitic"-type metathesis. Polish krok means 'step, stride', but also
'crotch' (= the point where both legs meet') and sometimes 'branching
point' (<stana,c' w kroku> = stand with legs astride; cf. <krak> 'leg'
in South Slavic); it's difficult to decide which meaning is primary. Cf.
also Polish karcz 'rooted-out stump of a tree' (perhaps from
unmetathesised Northwest Slavic *korc^-jI, if not from reduced-grade
*kUrc^-). Your question also made me think about West and East Slavic
*kroky (*krokUv-) 'rafter' (Pol. krokiew, Cz. krokev, Slk. krokva,
Russ./Ukr./Bel. krokva), a technical word unknown in South Slavic
(except in Slovene, where it's a recent loan from Czech). Is it a
borrowing from hypothetical Gmc. *krakõ: (as in <kraki>), or a Lekhitic
derivative of *kork- borrowed into the neighbouring Slavic dialects
_and_ into Old Norse? The fact that the word looks isolated in Germanic
but belongs to a largish word-family in Slavic, seems to favour its
Slavic origin.
Piotr