--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Carl Hult <datalampa@...> wrote:
> I was looking at the word ´order´ and found the proposed italic root
> for that word, *ored(h)- and saw how well it corresponds to the
> germanic words for ready. The proposed root for ready is P.Gmc.
> *garaidijaz and if one strips away the prefix ga- and the ending you
> will have a word that at least looks like italic *ored(h)-. I am
> "ready" to accept a common root for these two words. What it would
look
> like I dare not say at this stage.
It is not very easy, but the two do not appear to be related. I am
pretty convinced by the old etymology for *ga-raidi- as meaning
originally 'accessible on horseback', i.e. containing the root *reidh-
'to ride'. The same verb exists in Celtic: OIr. riad- 'ride', note
esp. the adjectives so-raid 'easy', do-raid 'difficult'
(properly "gut/schlecht bereitbar"), Welsh rhwydd 'easy, even' (Celtic
*su-/du-reidi-). The special original semantics is supported by the
fact that the ON adjective greidr 'easy' forms the compounds greid-
foer, greid-gengr both meaning 'passable' said of the terrain. It may
seem that German bereiten 'make ready' properly meant 'ride
upon', 'subject to riding', probably in the sense of breaking forest
and making the terrain passable. There is also a Lith. adj.
raidùs 'easy' and a Latvian causative verb raidi:t 'send'; I suppose
these originally meant 'easy to ride on' and 'make ride'.
I do not know where you have your "Italic root *ored(h)-" for ordo:,
ordinis from, but I can easily see how it was arrived at. There is a
verb *re:dh-/*ro:dh- seen in Goth. ga-redan 'take care of', ON
ráda 'advise', Skt. ra:dhnóti 'bring in order', OIr. rádid 'speeks',
Slav. OCS raditi 'take care of'. Now, that points at first glance to a
root *reH1dh- alternating with *roH1dh-. That does not lend itself too
easily to a connection with Lat. ordo: because the sequence *-rdh-
yields -rb- in Latin (verbum). So, to connect them we need an
unaspirated *d.
It now so happens that a synchronic root *reH1dh- may simply
have "preaspiration", i.e. aspiration of a stop induced by a preceding
H1 or H2. This is a rule discovered by my wife Birgit Olsen and
presented a number of times already, apparently with little echo among
those in a position to shape general opinions. There is a short
presentation in the Zürich Fachtagung (1992, publ. 1994), and there is
also the first presentation in her study on The PIE Instrument-Noun
suffix *-tlom and its Variants" from the Danish Videnskabernes Selskab
in 1988, and now the utilization for the clarification of the Latin
suffix -idus in Historische Sprachforschung 116 from 2003. I may be
under suspicion of being biased, and I am certainly not so biased
against it as the belligerant phalanx that wants to monopolize
opinions, but let me just report the theory: In a prestage of the IE
protolanguage, the sequences *-H1-T- and *-H2-T- (T being a plosive)
were fused to aspirates *-Th-. Practically all examples involve H + t
yielding IE *th, a phoneme that constitutes a red rag on the
opposition. It is not quite clear to what extent the laryngeal was
lost in the process; there are clear examples both of the structure *-
eH1t- > *-eH1th- > -e:th- with a laryngeal-induced long vowel and of
the structure *-eH1t- > *-eth- with loss of the laryngeal and
therefore a short vowel in the result. Some of the long vowels are no
doubt due to secondary restoration of the laryngeal, but it is not yet
clear if that can be extended to all cases. But suffice it to say for
our present purpose that *re:dh- can indeed reflect original *reH1d-
with UNaspirated *d.
Now for the *o- and loss of the laryngeal. I have worked that out, and
by the phalanx mentioned this is now called Saussure's rule. Saussure
noticed that reflexes of laryngeals were missing in a few Greek words
which had the vocalism -o- and he said that was regular, but never
stated a rule. I subjected the matter to a closer inspection in my
Danish doctor's dissertation of 1989 (publ. in Innsbruck), finding
that it worked only with a special kind of o-vocalism which had some
very surprising qualities which were only understandable if the o had
once been a consonant. I therefore posited a pre-PIE "infixal O" which
explained all the funny observations. I later found that this element
was not infixed, but prefixed, if the root began with r-. Now, for
*reH1d-, that has the following effect: *O-reH1d-é/ó- > *O-rH1d-é/ó- >
*O-rd-e/o- with loss of the laryngeal and therefore no aspiration, and
finally PIE *ord-e/o-. The O-infix formations are thematic, so I would
believe the Latin n-stem ordin- has a background comparable to the
Germanic weak adjective: *-o-s => *-on-. This of course all depends on
the corectness of a number of observations and rules about them which
are not generally accepted (but never replaced by an alternative
either!), so this is a possibility only to the precious few who really
believe. On this list I have had the funny experience that my
observations have practically all been accepted, but a fight has been
going on to replace my account of their background by anything else
that could work more poorly. I should perhaps feel flattered that my
theories are currently subjected to attempts of hijacking, but I would
have preferred a more constructive climate of scholarly discussion.
Thus, under the rules observed in this house Latin ordo: and Goth. ga-
redan can indeed be related, but ON greidr cannot.
Jens