--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Edlund Anderson" <cea@...>
wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@>
wrote:
> >
> > 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'.
> > [...]
> > 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'.
>
> Huh, well, then I would be back to the proverbial Square One,
> since PIE *ner still seems then a good starting place, but
> the -t- suffix, whether or not Pokorny's -thra- suffix, still
> mystifies me. :/
I think Abaev was on the right track identifying it as the
plural suffix, with 'Nartæ' then taking the form of a clan
name and the Narts thus obstensibly descendants of a 'Naræ'
or 'Nar', whether we believe that name to have a Mongolian
origin or not.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans@> wrote:
> >
> > The /a/ in _nar_ "sun" is a short one (long vowels are written
> > with double letters in the Mongolian Cyrillic script).
>
> Mmm, that would be a further point against Abaev's analysis then.
> Perhaps I'm indeed back to square one on trying to figure out the
> suffix in Nartae! :/
That by itself might not be a problem, though. Please see
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/37209
where Piotr explains that vowel quantity played no part in
borrowing between Ossetic and Slavic, only vowel quality.
If the same is true of Mongolian and Ossetic, then Ossetic
might have preferred its own 'a' over 'æ' to represent the
Mongolian short 'a', on the basis of similarity in sound,
indifferent to the length of the vowels in either language.
I'm not convinced of a Mongolian origin for 'Nar(æ)' either,
however, but on a different basis. Nowhere else in Ossetic
is 'nar(æ)' found with the meaning 'sun'. Moreover the sun
had great significance in the pre-Christian Ossetic religion,
with religious terminology tending to be very conservative,
and where the sun was always referred to as 'xor' in Digoron
and 'xur' in Iron. It doesn't seem likely that the Ossetes,
who still remember the Mongols as former enemies, would have
adopted a Mongolian word for the 'sun' in such a context, and
solely, as it would appear to be, in such a context.
I wonder if 'Nartæ' couldn't have originated meaning simply
'descendants of (a) man', a sort of name attached elsewhere
to individuals of uncertain patrilineage. Note how Satana,
the mother of the Narts, figures prominently in the legends,
while their fathers are much more hazy. The problem is that
'nar(æ)' isn't attested in Ossetic as 'man' either, though
such a root patently did exist at some point in its history
and could have survived in this one form alone.
I also have to wonder if some kind of connection to 'Indra-'
is possible. :^)
David