On 04-10-30 12:14, tgpedersen wrote:
>
>
> It seems that apart from Skt. 'ni:d.á', the IE (*ni "down" +
> *sd "sit" >) *nizdo "nest" word is exclusively Germanic, Italic and
> Celtic.
It also ocurs in Balto-Slavic, albeit with the first element distorted
in various (folk-etymological?) ways: Lith. lizdas, Slavic *gne^zdo
(instead of expected *nIzdo-). Plus an impeccable cognate in Armenian
(<nist> 'site, dwelling'), making it a widely distributed IE word.
> Makes one wonder if the frequent -st suffix of Nordwestblock
> names is also zero grade of *s-d- (for semantics, cf
> Russian 'sosed' "neighbour"). In that case, those names should be IE
> Nordwestblock, or?
*-st(h2)ó-/*st(h2)i- can be the compositional zero-grade of *stah2-
'stand' in some words. Cf. Skt. dvistHá- 'ambiguous' (= 'standing in two
places'), duHstHá- 'miserable' (= Gk. dustos), and many other similar
compounds.
> I seem to recall there was at least one other IE composite word with
> zero grade *s-d-, but I can't remember which?
You probably mean *(h)osd-os 'branch' (Germanic, Armenian, with a
probable cognate in Hittite). The zero grade is of course also found in
verb forms derived from *sed-, such as the reduplicated present
*si-sd-e/o-. *sed- with the preverb *ni- 'down' is well attested in
Iranian. I have once proposed on this list that the various '(song)
thrush' words, a difficult set usually reduced to the prototype
*trosdos, could actually derive from something like *dru-sd-o- with
early dissimilatory reshapings (understandable in a secondary root with
two mediae), i.e. 'tree-sitter', from the bird's habit of singing from a
prominent treetop perch.
Piotr