From: Tavi
Message: 66119
Date: 2010-05-05
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
>IMHO, *akW-a: (where *-a: is the feminine gender suffix) is a Paleo-European word cognate to (but not derivated from) PIE *H1e:gWh- 'to drink'. Apart from Latin and Germanic, it's also found on the Old European Hydronymy (OEH).
> Me (gLeN) questioned:
> >>Why does *akWa- keep popping up? Is that really an IE word for
> >>water? Isn't *wodr a safer bet?
>
> MCLSSAA2@...:
> >Compare Germanic: Anglo-Saxon (ea) (long vowel, fem.) = "river", from
> >Prim.Gmc. *{axwo:}; and German "Aue" = "water-meadow" or >similar. It could
> >be that *{akWa} was the old root-word for water and *{wodr} was a
> >derivative word "that which is wet" or "that which wets things" from root
> >*{wod}, and its root-word survives now as English "wet".
>
> ... Or perhaps it's more likely that since /watar/ is the word for
> "water" even in Hittite (an Anatolian language which appears to
> represent the most ancient stage of Common IE) and since *wodr
> demonstrates a most ancient heteroclitic declensional pattern
> (NOM-ACC *wodr, GEN *wednes), *wodr is _indeed_ specifically
> used to mean "water" in Common IE and **akWa, which isn't even a
> valid IE form, is something created much later in a few western
> IE languages derived from the verbal stem meaning "to drink",
> also attested in Anatolian languages. Thus your **akWa means
> "something drunk" and is probably a non-IE word in the end.
>