Re: [tied] Re: *Twah-

Torsten:

>>
>> >anyway, if it's a wanderword, we should assume it was something
>like
>> >*twah-, thus loaned into Germanic pre-Grimm. I wouldn't know of any
>> >Czech loans from (Proto-?)Germanic that had *þw- > *c^w-; you would
>> >know that better. A loan from pre-Germanic *tw- > *c^w- seems more
>> >reasonable.
>>
>> The initial c^v- cluster is extremely rare in Czech - in fact, the
>few words
>> above are the only expressions I am aware of that have c^v- in
>Czech.
>> Comparison to other assumed *þw- > *c^w- loans is thus impossible :-
>(. A
>> loan from pre-Germanic *tw- > *c^w- seems more reasonable, indeed.
>Initial
>> c^- < Germanic z-/t- is quite rare, too. The only examples I know:
>c^uba <
>> MHG zu:pe (today Zaupe "bitch") and c^inz^e < MHG zins (< Lat
>ce:nsus). c^v-
>> is really weird, we have cv- in Czech < OHG/MHG/HG zw- (e.g. Zweck
>> cvek),
>> which is also rare in Czech. I always wondered why all the Czech
>etym.
>> dictionaries claimed c^vaxat, c^vaxtat and c^van^hat were were of
>> onomat.origin, as they are the only words which have this strange
>> consonantal cluster, and now, knowing of þwahan etc., loans seem
>clear to
>> me.
>
>I just discovered South German 'zwagen'. This contrasts with
>OHG 'dwahan', 'twahan'. I checked with other roots in *þw-, and it
>seems to be a pattern, PGrm. *þw- > OHG dw-, German zw-, rather
>unexpected. Perhaps one should look at a German connection after all?
>
>Torsten

Hm, yes, perhaps, it isn't impossible, but German zw- always > Cz cv- and
never c^v-, and as for G -g- > Cz -x-, I must find some more cases of this
change (if it had been adopted before the g > h change in Cz-Sk, it would
have looked like cvah-, not cvax- and certainly not c^vax-, if followed by a
vowel. However, if this -h- is followed by a consonant or if it is
word-final, it gets devoiced and does change to -x-). We would thus have to
expect, that it was *zwag or *zwag-t- (does anything similar occur in
German?) that once might have been borrowed from German. Yet still, there is
c^v- in Czech, which is so confusing! :-)

Another possibility is a contamination of the two words: one being a
German(ic) loan, the other being a genuine Cz onomat. verb. That is *twah-
(> *xxxx- ) > cvax- plus Cz c^a:kat "to splash". I don't know, both zwagen
and c^va(:)x(t)at are puzzling and need much more further investigation.

Petusek