Re: Russian ovin

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 61625
Date: 2008-11-14

On 2008-11-14 20:09, Rick McCallister wrote:

> > How do we explain that Russian Ovin "cereal drying
> > shed" does not have
> > an initial j- yod as should be expected ?
> > It seems Baltic and other Slavic languages have the
> > expectec j-.
> > Is it from *yewo "cereal" ?
> >
> > A.
>
> Hmmm, if it's from *yewo-, then it may a taboo-induced change in that
> **yevin sounds too much like **yeben
> or, conversely, maybe it's derived from a Low German or Scandinavian
> "oven" word that on a specialized meaning

There are two related 'granary' words in Slavic, *jevIja and *ovinU (no
*j- anywhere in Slavic), both from PIE *jewo- (Lith. javai~ 'grain').
Andersen (1996, Reconstructing Prehistorical Dialects: Initial Vowels in
Slavic and Baltic) regards them both as early loans from SE Baltic
(*jawí:nas ~ *jáuja: < *jawi`ja:), representing two alternative
treatments of *ja- in a borrowed word. PSl. *j- was basically a
non-phonemic prothetic glide appearing before front vowels, so from the
point of view of the early Slavic phonotactic patterns the choice was
between recognising the back quality of the vowel (and dropping the
glide accordingly: *ja- --> *o-, actually realised as something close to
[a] at that stage) and recognising the glide and adjusting the vowel
(*ja- --> *je-). It's however also possible that *ovinU at least is
native in Slavic and simply shows the confusion and partial merger of
*o- and *(j)e- in Slavic dialects, as in *(j)ezero ~ *ozero 'lake' (cf.
a similar convergent tendency in Baltic). The complete non-attestation
of *jevinU in any dialect is a difficulty for this explanation, but
hardly a fatal one, as Derksen points out. Nor does the non-attestation
of *ob- for *jeb- 'fuck' prove beyond all doubt that etymological *j-
was invariable in Common Slavic; at any rate we have *jo- > late Common
Slavic *je- ~ *o- in grammatical words (pronouns, conjunctions), and
*jew- > PBSl. > *jaw- > PSl. jow- may have behaved similarly.

As for the structure of *ovinU, I'd reconstruct *jewi-h3n-o-, with the
Hoffmann element, which frequently appears in derivatives meaning 'the
place for keeping/storing X'.

Piotr