On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:59:46 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>On 2008-03-17 07:16, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
>> What makes this clear? If there actually are two roots
>> here, Gk. <pô:u> and <poimé:n> 'a shepherd' would seem to
>> point the other way. Given the close semantic connections
>> among 'protect', 'herd', and 'nourish', it seems much easier
>> to see a single root *peh2- with o-grade *poh2-. (And in
>> the other direction I believe that Hittite /pahs-/ 'to
>> protect' tends to suggest *peh2-, not *peh3-.)
>
>My personal hypothesis (still tentative and rather speculative, I hasten
>to admit) is that <poimé:n> and Lith. piemuo (plus Finn. paimen, which
>must be a loan from Baltic) are based on the iterative stem *poh2-éje/o-
>(*poh2i-mé:n), hence the pretonic o-grade and the *i, as in e.g.
>*moni-tó- from the causative *mon-éje/o-. The only problem is the rarity
>of such formations (but I believe I have a few good examples and may be
>able to find a few more). If my guess is correct, there's no need to
>posit *poh3-, *pah2i, etc. The good old *pah2- root will suffice.
Lithuanian piemuõ (Dauks^a píemuo) is quite a problematic
word. The modern form with mobile accent must be secondary,
as we only have Baltic *ai > ie under the stress. The
original accentuation must have been píemuo. Contrasting
this with Grk. poimé:n we see that two things must have
happened: (1) the stress was retracted to the root by Hirt's
law in Baltic; (2) the hysterodynamic ending *-me:n was
replaced by the more common proterodynamic ending *-mo:n.
This, in my opinion, presupposes a PIE form *poiH-mé:n. A
form *poh2i-mé:n would not have yielded an acute in
Balto-Slavic (but a circumflex, as in me:m-só > mêNso
"meat", o:u-jó- > jâje "egg", tra:u-Ha: > tra:vá "grass",
the acc.sg. ending -ah2m, etc.), and would not have
triggered Hirt's law (the laryngeal in *oRH remained
consonantal, unlike *erH > *er&, cf. Slav. pê"la "she sang"
< *poiH-láh2).
That leaves two questions: (1) what's the relationship with
the root *pah2(-s)-? (2) what is an o-grade doing in
pretonic position?
The forms listed by Pokorny under po:(i)- clearly obey the
rules for "long diphthong" roots laid out by Rasmussen:
(1) before single consonant: *poiH-
*poiH-me:n => Grk. poimé:n, poíme:n; Lith. piemuõ, píemuo
(2) before double/final consonant: *poH-
*poH-s => Skt. -pa:
*poH-t(i) => Skt. pa:-ti
*poH-tro- => Skt. pa:-tra, Gmc. fo:dr
*poH-mn => Grk. po:ma
(3) before vowel: *poHi-
*poHi-u => Skt. pa:yu-, Grk. pôu
However, the expected zero-grade forms (pHi- and p&-) are
rare (only in the Skt. compund words nr.'-pi:-ti and
nr.-p-a-), and we have apparent full-grade (o-grade) in
unstressed position in *poiH-mé:n, *poHi-ú-, etc.
Perhaps then the suggestion that these forms are derived
from the causative-iterative *poh2-ei(h1)-e/o-, with
non-ablauting /o/, producing a root *poh2-i- (alternating
with *poh2-, *poih2-) can be correct.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...