--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
>
> > BTW one I just thought of: the presence of plu:G- "plough" in Germanic
> > and Slavic supposedly loaned from Rhaetic could support a story of
> > speakers of ancestors of both Germanic and Slavic eg. in Noricum,
> > somewhere near Negau.
>
> Torsten
>
> =============
> Langsam, bitte !
>
> Germanic *plog(w)az could be a NWB word as well.
> From *bhelg 'beam, piece of wood for houses, ships, vehicles, etc'
> *bhlog > NWB pHlog- > Germanic plog-
>
> Arnaud
> ========
Yes and no, it seems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough#Etymology
Zbigniew Gol/a,b: The Origin of the Slavs, pp 366-8
'12) plugU 'plow,' attested in all Slavic languages, e.g., S-C Church
Slav. plugU 'aratrum,' ORuss. plug, Russ. plug (in older Russ. with
fixed stress!), Pol. pl/ug, S-C pl`ùg, etc., everywhere with the same
meaning 'plow.' It is usually considered a loanword from OHG pfluog-
or OLG plo:g, but the old acute accent would rather indicate a PGermc.
*plo:ga- as its source (for details see Kiparsky, 1934:258-59,
1958:20, and Martynov, loc. cit., 175-78, where a Slav. etymology of
this noun is proposed and PGermc. *plo:ga- is interpreted as a Slav.
loanword in Germanic). Since the noun belongs to the field of
agricultural terminology so important in the development of human
civilization, it is worth discussing the origin of this term.
First of all it should be stated that Germc. *plo:ga-, the alleged
source of PSlav. plugU, has no convincing etymology in that linguistic
group, so it is unmotivated from the Germanic standpoint. Besides
that, it was primarily restricted to German. In view of this, its
foreign origin in Germanic seems to be highly probable. Of course, we
cannot discuss the etymology of such a technical term without taking
into consideration the realia of primitive or earlier agriculture.
According to K. Moszyn´ski (Kultura ludowa Sl/owian, I, 188, §182) the
plow is a relatively new acquisition of the Slavie folk culture which
came to the Slavs from the south, the region between the Alps and the
Pontus, where it was probably invented; but it never eliminated the
use and the names of two earlier, more primitive plowing tools, the
soxa and *ordlo (OCS ralo, etc.), which h;.ve IE correspondences. So
it is possible that plugU also stems from that region and represents
an IE dialect (Illyrian? Venetic?) of Pannonia belonging to a kentum
group of southern type which distinguished the vowels a : o. I propose
as the original form *plo:go-, and using the suggestion of the realia
(see the construction of radl/o pl/uz.ne or pl/uz.yca in K.
Moszyn´ski's Kultura..., I, 181, etc.), namely the fact that the
runner of a plow, a construction element unknown to the primitive
soxa, is called *polzU in Slavic (Pol. pl/óz, SSlav. plaz, ESlav.
póloz) and represents an obvious old derivative from the verb *pIlzo,,
*pIlzes^i, *pelsti (cf. OCS plIzati, ple^z^o,, ple^z^ei, Russ.
polztí, polzú, Pol. pel/zac^, pel/ze,, pel/ziesz, etc.) 'creep' I
derive that Illyrian or Venetic *plo:go- from the IE biform root
*pelg'- // *pleg'-,20 which according to Pokorny (807 and 850, s.v.
pelk'-, polk'- and pelg'-, polg'-) means 'wenden, drehen' (807),
'wenden, biegen' (850) and, we should add, also 'kriechen.' The
reconstructed noun *plo:go- would be a vr.ddhi formation from an
underlying nomen actionis *plogo- 'creeping,' thus *plo:go- adj.
'pertaining to the action of creeping' -> 'creeper,' etc.; thus
semantically and etymologically we would have identity between the
original Slav. *polzU and the posited Illyrian or Venetic *plo:go- (IE
*polg'o- ~ *plo:g'o- !). Incidentally, cf. the similar relationship
between PSlav. *gõrdU and *zórdU from IE kentum *ghordho- and sat&m
*g'ho:rdho-.
Now the problem is whether we need the Germc. intermediary in the
borrowing of this Danubian or Pannonian word *plo:go- by Slavic. The
crucial point is the treatment of /o:/: Proto-Germanic in its later
period had /o:/ (close!), so a Danubian-Illyrian (or Venetic) *plo:ga-
was borrowed after the first consonant shift as PGermc. *plo:ga-, ,
whence ultimately NHG Pflug, NE plough, etc. Of course, this PGermc.
form would regularly be rendered by the Slavs at the time of the
monophthongization of diphthongs (4th-6th centuries A.D.) as
*plo:.go-, then plugU. But the Germc. intermediary seems unnecessary:
we can start from a Pannonian-Venetic *plo:go- (see
Pellegrini-Prosdocimi, 1967:258), borrowed by the Slavs in Pannonia
sometime in the 5th-6th cent. A.D., since even the later Latin /o:./
was replaced by the historical Slav. /u/, e.g., ro:sa > S-C rusa
(Dubrovnik) // ruz^a, OCS rusalIja, ESlav. rusalUka, etc.
It is worth mentioning here that the variant *pelk'- of the verbal
root discussed above has produced some interesting derivatives in
Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic which seem to be connected with the
agricultural terminology, e.g., Germanic *felgan as attested by OHG
ungifolgan 'ungewendet,' and the OE preterit fealh, fulgon
'wendete(n),' from which PGermc. *felgo: 'Radfelge' was derived, as
attested by OHG felga 'Felge, Egge' (!), OE fielg, NE felly idem,
etc., and with an Ablaut, the PGermc. *falgo:, as attested by OE
fealg, NE fallow, Bavar. falg idem, NHG Felge 'gepflügtes Brachland,'
etc.; Celtic *polka, as attested by Gall. olca 'Pflugland'; Slavic
*polsa, as attested by Russ. polosá, S-C (C^ak.) plasà, Pol. pl/osa,
etc. 'strip of land.' Especially important is the North-West IE term
(including here Slavic) *polk'a: 'strip of (arable) land,' which
proves that the verbal root *pelk'- was used in primitive IE
agricultural terminology. Such facts make the above etymology of
*plo:go- highly plausible (for details see Pokorny, loc. cit., and
Kluge, 1960:191).21'
Torsten