Re: [tied] Kerl, ceorl

On Thu, 20 Oct 2005 12:22:39 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>
>> So what is the reason the word was borrowed into Slavic as a
>> jo-stem (*korljI)?
>
>First of all, I don't think it was any of the Germanic appellatives that
>was borrowed into Slavic; the loan was more probably based on
>Charlemagne's name in its Frankish form, i.e. <Karl>, perhaps with some
>kind of suffix and/or effects of indirect borrowing.

Yes, I don't think *korljI can be from just Karl.

>Second, all the old derivatives of *korljI in Slavic have the extension
>*-ev- (*korljev-IskU 'royal', *korljev-itjI 'prince', etc.), which might
>be take as indicating an original stem in *-ju- rather than *-jo-. I'm
>not sure how to explain it.

That's an interesting observation. Are there any other
words which have a compulsory -ev- or -ov- in composition? I
can't think of any.

>Perhaps the model was some Franco-Latinate
>adjective such as *Car(o)l-eu- ~ *Car(o)l-iu- interpreted as a u-stem by
>the Slavic borrowers, but no parallel case occurs to me at the moment.

The usual Latinization of Karl is Carolus.

One does encounter "Carolius", but my impression is that
it's not very old.

>Another objection against *karl-ja- in Germanic is that after a heavy
>syllable we would expect (regularly in a *-ja- stem), Sieversian
>*karlija- > pre-OE *kærli: > OE (WSax.) *ci(e)rle, *cyrle, like *andija-
> > ende or *xerdija- > hi(e)rde, hyrde.

Perhaps OS <kerle>?

>Not that the absence of umlaut isn't decisive anyway.
>
>The "ablaut" of *e/*a in this word (rather clearly a uniquely Germanic
>formation, even if ultimately based on *g^erh2-) strikes me as unlikely
>to be inherited. Perhaps *karla-/*karlan- was analogically assimilated
>to *erla- in some dialects.

But if *karla- was influenced by *erla-, and the two words
were in the same semantic sphere, does that not imply that
we perhaps don't need Charlemagne after all?

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