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

On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 16:45:57 +0000, Rob
<magwich78@...> wrote:

>
>
>--- 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?

Some forms have */e/ [Gr. hésperos, Lat. vesper,
Balto-Slavic *wekeras], others have */(V)i/ [We. ucher <
*woiksero-, Arm. gis^er].

As I mentioned, the root "change" shows the same variation
*weik- vs. *wek- (~ *wenk-). For the nasal-infix variant,
the forms given in Pokorny Lith. úkanas "trübe", ùnkna
"shadow", Lat. umbra < *unksra: "shadow" may also be
relevant (*wnks-n/r-?).

>> 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?

From *w-. This is regular in the context *w...s- (hennu:mi
< *wes-nu-, hestía < *westia:).

>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).

Hamp, if I understand correctly, suggests a phrase *<weiks
ksperos> where *weiks is a (root) noun in the nom. and
*ksperos is genitive.

My source is Olsen TNIBA, p. 179, where Hamp is quoted in a
footnote as "an old compound ... *ueik-ksperos (perhaps
originally a syntactic phrase, and, if so, possibly with
*-ks- by haplology for *-ks-ks-)".


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