Re: Oedipus

From: tgpedersen
Message: 60347
Date: 2008-09-26

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> > ============
> > I read Ernout-Meillet
> > This still does not explain any of your references.
>
> Actually, I was commenting on the *kad- "fall/kill". I propose it's
> from *kWatl-, borrowed from Venetic, ultimately from Semitic.
>
> ===========
>
> Could you explain how you go from Semitic to Venetic to Latin ?

It's more like an MO, a modus operandi.
I assume that those words in Latin in which a root vowel /a/ can't be
explained by schwa secundum, those Ernout & Meillet are calling 'mots
populaires' are loans from one or several other languages. I make the
risky assumption for methodological reason they are from just one,
unless proven otherwise. If they occur with /a/ in other IE languages,
so much the better. If they have initial p- or are of the form *TVT-
where T is an unvoiced stop (Kuhn's criteria for Nordwestblock-ness)
and occur in Germanic, so much the better. If they occur unshifted
(relative to the Latin term) in Germanic, so much the better.

The ethnic background is what I read in Okulicz 'Einige Aspekte der
Ethnogenese der Balten und Slawen im Lichte archäologischer und
sprachwissenschaftlicher Forschungen' and Gol/a,b 'Origin of the
Slavs' about the Veneti on the Baltic' on the Baltic Veneti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_Veneti
and I've taken some facts from Joz^ef S^avli/Matej Bor: Unsere
Vorfahren die Veneter (Engl. transl.: "Veneti - First Builders of
European Community"), especially the many place names derivable from
*venet- all over Europe (by the way, apropos, what's up with the
Vendée? some Danish reporter noted among their political
representatives a special suspiciousness towards central government
initiatives and thought it was related to the way they were treated
during the French revolution, but is that attitude older?). I don't
buy their idea that the Baltic Veneti spoke Slavic, but the idea that
the Baltic Veneti, the Adriatic Veneti,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Veneti
and the Veneti of Gaul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneti_(Gaul)
were once one people seemed worth investigating. Lately, Scandinavian
archaeologists have pointed out that the Scandinavian bronze age seems
to be related to similar cultures of the Mediterranean, it would seem
reasonable that such a people would be the transmitters
of Wörter und Sachen along with the Semitic-speaking Phenicians, and
also that they, being sea-borne, should have contributed the
Old-European river names.

>
> What is this Venetic ?

See above.

> If you have already written this , could you paste it without
> drowning me under ten references.

It's difficult, which is why I took so long in answering, since it's a
work in progress.


> > Note that Meillet rejects the derivation from "to fall".
>
> If my French doesn't fail me, he doesn't, he's concerned about the
> ending. Note their
> 'papa:uer, -eris n. (et m. dans Caton et Pl.): pavot.
> Ancien, usuel. Panroman, M.L.6210; passé en germ.: v. angl. popoeg
> (pa- de *papa:ger?).
> Dérivés: papa:uereus,-ra:tus,-a,-um; papa:uerculum (Ps.Ap.).
> Forme à redoublement, d'origine incertaine; cf. peut-être pappa,
> pappo:, la graine de pavot étant comestible; la finale rappelle
> celle de cada:uer. On y a vu d'anciennes formes de participe
> parfait en -wes. En tout cas, mot de type populaire.'
> =======
>
> I guess the vocalism a is also a problem for Meillet.
> Arnaud
>
> ===========

The -er BTW is a suffix of the pre-Saami language

> The /w/ in -wes is related to the m/w in verbal 1pl and in the
> suffix *-ment-/*went-. That, in my world is from my favorite
> phoneme, the labio-velar nasal /n,W/. Thus, a ppp of *kad- would be
> *kadán,W-, from which one gets both *kadán,W-r- > cada:uer and
> *kadán,W-i- > calami-(tas) (BTW, note the /g/ of OE(?) popoeg,
> which can be explained as < /n,W/). That means I can give up the
> reconstructions with -ni- for calamitas/catamitas.

BTW, if *kat-án,W- (*katl-án,W-?) is a ppp it would mean "fallen,
defeated" which would explain 'catamite' as spoils of war.

> This supposes that the alternation w/m is two allophones not two
> phonemes.
> The same kind of reasoning leads MArtinet to think the alternation
> -r/-n goes back to *nt.
> I'm very much sceptical about that.
> More over if /ngW/ were a phoneme, it should be frequent. and this
> w/m should be widespread.
> We don't see anything like this.

I think it might be a foreign element in PIE. Note *akWa, if you posit
that as a variant of *an,Wa, you could get *(a)n,Wa-t- > *wat-, *mat-,
*nat- free of charge. Or it is an element of PPIE which already in PIE
has decomposed into /w/, /m/ and /n/ and if our only criterion for
finding it is the presence of alternating w/m/n we wouldn't find it in
many places.

T. Burrow: 'The Sanskrit Language'
'The behaviour of the suffix of the 1 pl. is in several ways
reminiscent of the corresponding nominal suffix. In the first place
the coexistence of two forms, one beginning with w and one with m,
which is seen in Hittite, is matched by a similar duality in the
infinitival forms containing the same elements : tiyawar, tiyawanzi ;
tarnummar, tarnummanzi. In Sanskrit the suffixes -vant and -mant are
found in the same way side by side with similar function. Another
similarity between the verbal and nominal forms is seen in the
variation of the latter part of the suffix : IE wen/wes, men/mes. '


Torsten