From: george knysh
Message: 64464
Date: 2009-07-29
--- On Wed, 7/29/09, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
--- On Wed, 7/29/09, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@.... edu.pl> wrote:
On 2009-07-29 00:57, george knysh wrote:
> GK: What if the loan was the "plk" rather than "plg" word (both have
> similar semantics)? That would of course still leave the "no Slavic 'f'"
> problem.
Slavic *pUlkU definitely looks like Germanic *fulkaz borrowed through
the usual phonological filters (an inherited syllabic /l/ would have
been much more likely to vocalise as *Il). Lith. pu~lkas and Latv.
pu`lks are loans via old East Slavic rather than directly from Germanic.
> But as to this: is there a rule as to when Slavs incorporated
> the foreign "f" without automatically substituting a "p"? There are
> medieval examples (and of course many modern ones). Is there anything
> which precludes early Slavic from having done this? Or should I entitle
> an article I am presently working on "The failed empire of King Parzoi"
> (if I wish to eruditely (:=))) indicate how early Slavs might have
> pronounced this Aorsan monarch's [ruled ca. 45-70 CE] name? ****
The phoneme /f/ developed independently and at different times in
different Slavic languages. Before it was fully established, the
substitution /f/ -> /p/ was automatic. I suppose the introduction was
spearheaded by users of Old Church Slavic, who took /f/ from Mediaeval
Greek (commonly merging {theta} with {phi} in the process). But even in
OCS one finds occasional p-variants like <asfalUtU ~ aspalUtU> 'pitch'
(Gk. aspHaltos).
Piotr
One of the early tsars was a certain Sviatopolk -- I suppose sviato ="light, holy, vel sim" but -polk?
****GK: The -polk element also appears in the royal name Yaropolk (he was actually Svyatopolk's father), fairly popular among the later Rurikides. Note also that the Moravian prince of Methodius' time (later 9th c.) was called Svatopluk. -slav and -polk as interesting suffixes...****