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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> >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).

Why, then, don't we see Attic Greek *heîsperos?

> 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".

Where does the aspiration in the Greek form come from?

Also, IE was presumably SOV at the time of its breakup. So, such a
compound would have 'transition' at the end, not at the beginning
(since it seems to be the headword).

- Rob