From: dgkilday57
Message: 65453
Date: 2009-11-20
>At the time-depth in question, would we not expect the first element of such a compound to exhibit the stem-form, as in Alamanni, Alaric, Teutorix, etc.? Postulating a 'beeswax'-like formation with infixed genitive seems to me like a serious anachronism.
> > In his paper on 'thousand', "Akzentstudien" §1 (IF 6:344-9, 1896), Hirt argued forcefully against the Vigfusson-Bugge explanation as a compound 'Schwellhundert(schaft)' vel sim., seeing the attested forms with /h/ (which are restricted to Frankish and part of North Germanic) as resulting from folk-etymological contamination with 'hundred'. He analyzed Gothic <þu:sundi> (originally 'Fülle, Menge') as derived from an adjectival *þu:s- like <hulundi> from *hula-; this *þu:s- in our notation reflects an extended zero-grade IE *tuh1-s- from *teuh1- 'to swell', otherwise agreeing with the compound explanation. He then found that the resemblance among Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic forms of 'thousand' admitted neither a satisfactory IE protoform nor a satisfactory borrowing from Gmc. into Balto-Slavic, and concluded thus:
> >
> > "Ich kenne in der That keinen Punkt, der für eine nähere Verwandtschaft des Lit.-Slavischen und Germanischen spräche, ja mir scheint sogar eine recht bedeutende Kluft zwischen beiden zu bestehen, eine Kluft, die auf alte Trennung durch ein anderes Volk schliessen lässt."
> >
> > Whether the difficulty with 'thousand' can be resolved by assuming
> > NOB origin, I cannot say.
>
> *tout-/tu:t-s-k^ant-/-k^unt- (metathesis in Lith. tukst- ?) in which *tout-/tu:t-s is genitive of *tout-/tu:t- "all; totality" and ka^nt-/k^unt- is my usual "troop" word is good enough for me. "Troop of all".
> And I'm beginning to wonder whether the IE formant -ent-/-ont- is related.