Re: *ap-/*up-/*ip- , rivers in -r

> Kuhn: the areas of the ur-/ar-/(ir-) names are relic ares.
>
> He identifies the -pe/-fe suffix (and Lituanian -up-?) as PIE *ap-
> "water" and thinks therefore these composites with the non-IE ar-

/ur-

> placename roots as late. But the suffix is ap-/up- and is

therefore

> itself an non-IE ar-/ur- word-
>
>
> I think *ap-/*up- is the origin of the preverbs/pre/postpositions

*ab

> and *up. Since it means also "river", *ab/*up was loaned as a noun
> and perhaps in a single or two cases (locative, allative?). So

what

> we see in Or-pe etc is perhaps "on" or "up the Or- river",

depending

> on whatever old case used to be discernible in the now eroded -pe.
>
> In a language with cases, the number of "semantic cases" can be
> extended by using a noun indicating position, in a positional or
> directional case, as a post/preposition of a noun which is then in
> the genitive or some other suitable case, eg. Finnish 'Porin ja

Turun

> välillä' "between Pori and Turku" (-n genitive, välilleä
> adessive "on the middleroad", thus "on the middleroad of Pori and
> Turku"; 'keskellä järveä' "in the middle of the lake", keski-
> "middle" in the adessive, järveä inessive of järve "lake).
> But one might also see keskellä as an adverb "centrally"
> and järveä as "on the lake".
>
>
> *ab/*up in suitable case also behaves like an adverb (one
> might want to compare it to a similar "international"
> system of directional adverbs, that of 'starboard'
> (Danish styrbord) and 'port' (German Backbord, Danish
> bagbord, French babord)).
>

Silvia Luraghi: Old Hittite Sentence Structure, p. 34
"As a consequence of their being nominal in origin, stative place-
words can take a nominal Attribute in the genitive ..."


Torsten