On Mon, 31 May 2004 22:30:32 +0200, Petr Hrubiš
<
hrubisp@...> wrote:
>There are two discussed etymologies of the Czech expressions for "Mr." (pan) or "lord". (pán)
>
>Oldest attested form of both of them is OCz. hpán [hpa:n] which has following possibilities to reconstruct.
>
>1. Cz. pan, pán < OCz. hpán < OS *gUpan- where we might see the ablaut *gup > gUp- to *geup- (as in "z^upan")
>
>2. Cz. pan, pán was newly recreated after orig. femin. paní [pan^i:] "lady", later also "Mrs." < *pot-n-ija
The second option is dear to my heart because I thought of
that years ago. However, there are big problems with a
derivation from *potnih2: OCz. hpán is one of them, as the
h- (< *gU-) cannot be explained from an etymon *potn-.
Another problem is the /a/ vocalism: *potn- should have
given Slavic *pon-. Even if the /t/ had been voiced to /d/
before /n/ (cf. gospodI ~ *gosti-pot(n?)-), Winter's law is
seemingly not triggered before an immediately following
sonorant.
As to the first option, I don't know if we can depart from
an Ablaut pair *geupa:n ~ *gupa:n as if the word was
directly inherited from PIE. My understanding is that the
word was borrowed from Iranian, but I can't remember how the
Iranian prototype was exactly.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...