Re: [tied] Evening/Night (was Re: The "Mother" Problem)

On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:36:49 +0000, Rob
<magwich78@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "whetex_lewx" <whetex_lewx@...>
>wrote:
>
>> Lith. va~karas (evening), Lv. vakars, Slav. vec^er, wiec^or
>> (evening), Lat. vesper (evening), gk. vesperoj IE.: *wesper-o-,
>> *weker-o-, *we(s)kwer-o-?
>>
>> It's not nescesarry say that nokWt-i-s was evening
>
>The Attic Greek form is actually hésperos. Some other Ancient Greek
>dialects had wésperos.
>
>Could the Lithuanian word reflect earlier *vaskaras?
>
>The Greek forms with -p- don't seem to match the Balto-Slavic
>forms. One would think that a protoform like *weskWeros would lead
>to Greek *westeros, not *wesperos. But then I could be wrong.
>Could the Latin form actually be a borrowing from a Greek dialect?
>We could be lead to a protoform *weskWeros instead of *wesperos.

There's also Armenian gis^er "night" (o-stem ~ a:-stem)
which must come from something like *weik^wer-os/ah2 (the
Ablaut grade *i is also seen in Slavic vIc^erá).

Hamp has proposed an etymology *weik(s)-ksp-er-os/ah2,
consisting of *weik- "change" (also *weig- [> E. week] and
with the same meaning *wek-/*wenk-) and *k(W)sep-r/n-
"night" (Grk. pséphas "dark", Hitt. ispant-, Av. xs^apar,
Ved. ks.ap- "night"), which I would see as derived
("sleepy-time") from *swep- (or *sWep-) "sleep". That would
make it *we(i)k-sWp-er-os/-ah2 "transition into night,
bed-time".

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...