Re: [tied] *kap-

tegnalos wrote:

> Indeed. What do you think of the following:
>
> Latin: cado, cadere 'to fall'
> Slavic: padQ, pasti (pad+ti) 'to fall'
>
> The two come from the same root, as it is also shown by words such
> occidens / zapadU, 'west'; coincidere (cum + in + cid-) / sUvUpadati
> (sU + vU + pad-) 'to fall together, coincide'. However, Latin root
> cad- and Sanskrit sad 'to sink down' don't agree with Slavic pad-
> from the point of view of fully regular development of initial
> consonants. This has lead many linguists to consider Latin cad- and
> Slavic pad- as unrelated, which is absurd. (It seems that the
> psychological effect of seeing as similar two words begining with the
> same letter is too strong even for linguists).
>
> Moreover, Slavic pad- does agree with Germanic fallanan 'to fall' in
> the regular development of initial consonants, but not in the rest of
> the stem.

I agree with what you wrote about pad- < *pa:d- < *k^ad- (Winter's law) but
I wonder if this Germanic connection is really needed here. The initial p-
may be due to adideation to podU 'under, beneath' (also irregular if from
*pod-/*ped- 'foot' because of no lengthening before a plain voiced - but it
may surely be due to frequency, cf. Polish <pod> instead of **pód expected,
cf. <spód> 'bottom')

Grzegorz J.



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