Re: Etymology of Ossetic "Nart"? (the suffix?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Edlund Anderson" <cea@...>
wrote:

>
> Having read the English translation at least, it seems to me
> that Abaev raises an important point, namely that Iran. *nar- >
> Ossetic > nael-,

It was palatalized P.-Iran. *r which resulted in Ossetic 'l',
with 'næl' coming from *narya-. In other contexts P.-Iran.
*nar did result in Ossetic 'nær', as in 'nærun' from *nar-,
'to thunder', or 'naræg' from *na:raka-, 'thin'.

> making it unlikely that the same root also produced a form with
> a long vowel like Nartae < *пa:r-.

I don't know if the long vowel's a problem, since Ossetic has
'nærton' with a short vowel, meaning 'Nartic', and Sanskrit
has 'nAra-' with a long vowel, based on the same root, meaning
'human, mortal'.

> Abaev's suggestion that Nartæ derives from Mongolian nara "sun"
> (with -tae as a pluralizing suffix with a genitival sense -- the
> [in]famous Indo-Iranian -ta collective suffix?) is interesting,
> though it's not clear to me whether the vowel in nara is, or was
> originally, a long /a:/ of the sort Abaev says must stand behind
> the form Nartae.

I don't know how the 'a' of 'nara' is pronounced either, I'm
afraid.

David