*aN- varia

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
> >
> > From: Torsten <tgpedersen@>
> > Subject: [tied] Schaffner's list of Verner-alternating Gmc nouns
> >
> > > > There'a a whole thick book about such nouns (S. Schaffner,
> > > > 2001, _Das Vernersche Gesetz und der innerparadigmatische
> > > > grammatische Wechsel des urgermanischen im Nominalbereich_ ,
> > > > Innsbruck: Meid).
> > >
> > > I only got around to OCR'ing parts of it; here's the index:

> >
> > Inhaltsverzeichnis
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > 26 Urgerm. *ux(w)na- : *ufna- : *uG(w)na- "Ofen"
>
> Ouch, I get burnt whenever I touch this one ...

That was the principle behind the Native American way of raisng children, I hear. Us linguists never learn.

> > 27 Urgerm. *wexila- : *weGila- "Rohrweihe, Fischadler"73
> > see Latin aquila
>
> More likely this is the fem. (sc. <avis> 'bird') of the adj.
> <aquilus> 'dark, dusky'. Many birds are dark, but the eagle was
> being compared to other AUGURIAL birds.

The non-dark ones?

> Morphological comparison with <Aquilo:> 'North Wind' i.e.
> 'Darkener' suggests borrowing from Etruscan (pace Ernout-Meillet).

I think we should remember that magic was the nuclear physics of the day, thus a much more likely field to search for original senses, eg. of *aN-. I like "terrible, foreboding; premonition" better, thus the "fear" sense, from "constriction of the mind", from "narrow passage" ("dire straits"), including rivers (*axw-, ap-, up-).
Hippocrates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates
had a theory of the nature of winds from the four points of the compass
http://tinyurl.com/y8k96rs
I'd rather derive the "dark" sense from "tempest, storm".
And BTW, I'd throw in Lat. avis "bird" and os- of os-cen (thus "bird song").

> Root *acv- 'to cover' vel sim., with postfix *acv-il- 'to cover
> over, darken', pass. adj. *acvile 'darkened, dark' (whence Lat.
> <aquilus> as LW), nomen actoris *acvilu 'darkener' (Lat. <Aquilo:>).

I can't find Etr. acvil- "cover". Do you have a reference for it?


Torsten