george knysh wrote:
> *****GK: Stryzhak, Trubachov, Lehr-Splawinski and many
> others, state that the "a" in the Iranic dan- (river)
> word was long in the area adjoining the Slavs at the
> beginning of the 1rst millennium AD (Stryzhak, op.
> cit., pp.12-31, passim). This does not mean that the
> Iranic "a" was long generally. I prefer their
> documented authority to your bare assertion. *****
In what way is their authority documented, if their assertions aren't
"bare" as well? We have no taped recordings of Scythian or Sarmatian.
The development of NE Iranian vowels can be reconstructed on the basis
of comparative analysis (involving Ossetic and its closest relatives),
which indicates that the original contrast of quantity became one of
"strong" vs. "weak" vowels at one point, well before the individual
history of Ossetic began. I can't see what "documentation" allows us to
date the loss of inherited length with any precision.
> *****GK: We're not dealing with Modern Ossetic but
> with Iranic *dan- at the start of the first millennium
> AD.****
Are we, though? Where's the proof that the Slavs borrowed those names at
the start of the first millennium rather than a few centuries later?
> *****GK: Whatever. This does not affect the main
> issue.****
It does affect the plausibility of the proposed etymology of
<borustHéne:s> as *voru-stán& < *wa(u)ru-sta:na-. The objection that *v
(or *w, or whatever the exact pronunciation was at the time of the
borrowing) would have been represented as Gk. <ou> (i.e., phonetic [u])
is not valid, because Gk. <b> was often used _as well_ to render similar
sounds occurring in other languages. If so, why reject a fairly sensible
Iranian etymology in favour of one based on a completely unknown
language? Even the sparse documentation of Thracian proper is extremely
difficult to interpret, and the hypothetical "Thracoid" language of
Ukraine, far from being documented in any way, may yet turn out to be a
figment of highly imaginative toponymic analysis (like the purportedly
"Illyrian" etymologies of river-names in Central Europe).
Piotr