Re: 'dyeus'

Thanks again,

So presumably this explains the subsequent 'deva' and 'devi' titles in modern Hindi, in that they derive from a 'diw' root meaning 'shiny' (adjective) or 'shines' (verb)?

Ric

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2010-06-24 18:45, megalith6 wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Can anyone please give me the *earliest* root for this word including
> > its meaning and the grammatical profile of the root.
>
> The _root_ is *djeu- 'shine' (itself probably an "extension" of *dei-,
> cf. *deih2-, with a similar meaning, reflected in Gk. and Ved., but such
> derivatives seem to belong to some pre-PIE stratum). The name of the Sky
> God (literally 'he who shines', an agent noun) is a typical root noun,
> with a lengthened-vowel nominative *die:u-s (variably mono- or
> disyllabic, i.e phonetically with initial [dj-] or [di(j)-]) and with
> zero-grade "weak cases" such as the genitive *diw-ós. The accusative was
> originally *dieu-m, but in this phonetic environment the diphthong was
> smoothed out already in the protolanguage, yielding *die:m, hence the
> somewhat irregular declension in the daughter languages. The term "root
> noun" means that the stem of the noun was simply the bare root without
> any stem-forming suffixes attached. The inflectional endings were added
> directly to it.
>
> Nobody can give you the *earliest* form of any prehistoric morpheme,
> unless you mean "the earliest *reconstructable* form".
>
> Best regards,
>
> Piotr
>