Re: -st

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

> On 04-11-05 14:55, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > As Rob quoted
> > "
> > [PIE] did not have preverbs or pre- or
> > postpositions, only adverbs (which became preverbs, etc., in the
> > individual languages)' (Beekes 1995: 167).
> > "
>
> PIE had compounds, including lots of compounds with "adpreps" (*kom-

,

> *h1(e)pi-, *h1en-, *per(i)-, *pro-, *h2anti-, etc.) and various

other

> particles (*swe-, *n.-, *sm.-) as first elements. It's mostly a

matter

> of taste whether you regard such morphemes as prefixes or not, so
> Beekes's categorical statement is unnecessarily dogmatic. At any

rate

> branch-specific prefixations did not develop ex nihilo.
>
> > which sets these three words ("branch", "nest" and a

(metaphorically)

> > four-letter word) apart from the rest of the vocabulary of PIE:

and

> > they obviously belong to a lower stratum.
>
> There are many similar compounds. It so happens that *ni- 'down

(wards)'

> is better attested in Indo-Iranian than elsewhere (including such
> archaic-looking formations as RV ni:ca: 'downwards' < *ni-h3kW-eh1

and

> ni:pa- 'low, deep' < *ni-h2p-o-), but examples involving other

adpreps

> are easy to find in practically any branch. *ni-sd-o- certainly

isn't

> isolated as a type of morphological structure.
>

"sit" is a common verb and occurs in hundreds of compounds in modern
IE languages. In original PIE as opposed to constructions in later
stages, you'd expect that root to ablaut, thus in compounds you'd get
zero grade *-sd-. To my knowledge there are three examples of that.
That's isolated.

> > They could therefore in
> > principle be taken from a previous language, say one in which
> > poaching eggs was a subject. Nothing forces a language to develop

a

> > special word for the homes of birds (why not 'the sparrow's

lair'?)

>
> Still, PIE seems to have had a native word for the thing.

By your reckoning.


Torsten