Re: Etymology of 'daughter' (was: Rg Veda Older than Sanskrit)

On 2008-04-21 15:02, batinquo wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Since the subject has come up, I'd like to plug a recent article by
> Pinault, where he suggests etymologies for all of the main kinship terms.
>
> Briefly, Pinault says that the –ter- of the kinship terms is not
> –h2ter-, nor the agent noun –ter-, but is the `contrastive –ter-' seen
> in Gk. -teros etc, ultimately coming from adverbs in -ter / -tr., and
> that all the –(h2)ter- words form natural pairs with other kinship
> terms, hence the contrastive suffix.
>
> Here's the final section of his article. I've omitted the diacritics,
> accents etc in case it came out as gobbledygook.
>
> "1) dhh1ugh2-ter- `belonging to the group of *dhh1-u-g- `(female)
> children', derivative based on the root *dheh1- `to suckle, feed'(LIV
> 138, cf. Lat. filius, Lyc. tideimi-, OCS deva), collective *dhh1ug-h2-;

I haven't seen the article yet. Does Pinault offer any explanation of
*-u- and *-g- in this word?

> 2) *bhreh2-tr- `belonging to the group of (male) children', from
> *bhr-eh2-, collective based on the root *bher- `to bear', hence `to
> give birth' (LIV 76), referring to the group of males borne by the
> same mother;

I see one problem with it. Collectives in *-a-h2 are formed from
thematic stems (the vowel is in fact thematic *-e-, coloured by the
laryngeal). A root noun like *bHer- would form its collective without a
vocalic extension (*bHer-h2-), while a thematic *bHr-o- doesn't strike
me as an expected formation. With these reservations, I find the
collective interpretation of this *-h2- very attractive. As for the
contrastive suffix, one possible objection is that it doesn't normally
occur without the thematic vowel in adjectives and nouns. How to explain
the fact that the *-(h2)ter- family terms are all consonantal stems?

> [...] I'd be interested to hear people's reactions. The footnotes discuss
> some potential objections (e.g. why *dhh1ugh2te:r didn't undergo
> laryngeal metathesis to give *dhuh1gh2te:r > dhu:gh2te:r), and add Gk.
> pe:os 'allied relative', supposedly from *ph1eh2-s-o-, as support for
> the 'father' etymology. Any takers? As far as kinship-term etymologies
> go, they've got to be better than Szemerenyi's `bring-fire' for bhra:ter!

I'll have to think about it.

Piotr