On 04-11-17 07:57, Bromios King wrote:
> I was trying to equate Gk. "theos" and Skt. "deva", thinking Gk. may
> have dropped F from "deFos" and changed IE'd' to 'th'.
Skt. devá- goes back to *deiwó- (Skt. <e> always reflects a diphthong;
cf. Av. dae:uua-, OPer. daiva-, Lith. dievas, etc.), which can't be the
source of <tHeós> even if you forget about the non-matching initial
stop. Actually, Greek has other words related to *deiwo-: the name
<zeús>, gen. <di(w)ós> < *dje:u-s, *diw-ós (cf. Skt. dyauh. and Lat.
iu:piter/iuppiter < voc. *djeu p&2ter), and the adjective <dîos>
'divine' < *diw-jo- (cf. Skt. divyá-). Their very existence rules out
<tHeós> as a member of the same word-family.
> If this has no
> grounding in substance, what is the best etymology of "theos"? I suppose
> it's from the Gk. root "the", IE "dhe"? I apologise for what must be
> elementary questions.
There is no universal consensus on <tHeos>, but the most widespread if
somewhat tentative etymology connects it with Lat. fe:stus, fe:riae (<
*fe:sia:-) and fa:num 'temple' (< *fasno-). Other cognates have been
proposed as well, including Arm. dikH 'gods' (< *dHe:s-es). The PIE root
is reconstructed as *dHeh1s-, so Gk. tHeós would be a reflex of
*dH&1s-ó-. The precise meaning of *dHeh1s- is hard to determine beyond
the observation that it underlies various religious concepts.
> Also, I've read T. Hudson-Williams' "A Short Introduction to Comparative
> Grammar (Indo-European); what else is good reading material for novices
> in this area?
You can try Oswald Szemerényi's _Introduction to IE Linguistics_ (highly
readable, though O.Sz.'s opinions are often rather old-fashioned and
idiosyncratic), Robert Beekes's _Comparative IE Linguistics_
(unfortunately, the translation from the Dutch original is disastrous!),
or, if you can read German, Michael Meier-Brügger's _Indogermanische
Sprachwissenschaft_. As regards general introduction to historical
linguistics and its methods, I always recommend Hans Heinrich Hock's
_Principles of Historical Linguistics_, Raimo Anttila's _Comparative and
Historical Linguistics_, and R. Larry Trask's _Historical Linguistics_,
all of them novice-friendly. If I find the time, I'll upload a list of
useful reading stuff to the Files section for easy reference and I'll
ask other people on the list to add their favourites to it.
Piotr