Re: [tied] Thematic root aorist

On 2006-07-26 01:50, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen wrote:

> I am not opposed to your identification of *Hag^- with similar words
> outside IE, and I do not at all exclude that it is an old loanword.
> Only the borrowing must then be very old, i.e. belong to a time when
> the type with prefixing of the "o-fix" was still productive, and the
> events of metathesis and zero-grade had not yet occurred. It may be
> noted that we do not, to my knowledge, have any independent evidence
> as to the identity of the laryngeal of the root. LIV posits *H2eg^-,
> but that is of course just a deliberate choice made for the sake of
> simplicity. Rix was very explicit on that point. This is why I just
> posit *Hag^-, meaning, on a deeper level, any one of the four
> possibilities *H1ag^-, *H2ag^-, *H3ag^-, *H2eg^-. If the root has
> independent /a/, and the IE relatively monotonous vocalism reflects
> a collapse of a more variegated vowel system, then the borrowing is
> younger than that collapse. I see no evidence against this.

It might be possible to prove that the laryngeal was *h2 if there were a
compound with the right sort of segmental make-up in Greek. I'm thinking
about something like *(h1)su-h2g^- > pre-Gk. *swa:g- > *h(w)a:g- 'good
leader(ship)' vel sim. Perhaps the etymology of Gk. he^geomai should be
reconsidered.

Piotr