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cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
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> This thread from 2008, in which evidence was presented for Kluge's assimilation in Celtic, got me thinking that the peculiar present stem of Latin <mitto:> 'I send', against <mi:si:> 'I sent' and <missus> 'sent', might be analyzed the same way. Old Latin <cosmittere> (Paul. Fest.) for <committere> 'to join, entrust to, commit' shows that the Proto-Indo-European root began with *sm-. It has been identified by some as *smeit- 'to throw', recognized in Avestan <mae:þ-> 'to throw', <hamista-> (*ham-[h]mista-) 'downcast, oppressed', etc. (Pokorny, IEW 968). The fricative in <mae:þ-> suggests that the Iranian words in fact reflect PIE *smeith2-, from which Lat. *mititus rather than <missus> would be expected, and the gemination in <mitto:> is not adequately explained.
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> De Vaan (Et. Dict. of Lat. and the Other Itc. Lgs. s.v., 2008) dismisses <cosmittere> as untrustworthy and argues instead for derivation from PIE *meith2- 'to exchange, remove'. This root is supported by Sanskrit <methete> 'he becomes hostile, quarrels' (i.e. 'exchanges blows'), Germanic *maidaz 'changed, abnormal' (Old English <gema:d> 'insane, mad'), Lat. <mu:to:> 'I (ex)change, remove', and other words. De Vaan places South Picene <meitims> nom. sg., <meitimúm> acc. sg. 'monument' here also. Again however the root-final laryngeal should give Lat. *mititus; there is no basis for dropping it to get *meit- going into Proto-Italic. De Vaan at least recognizes the difficulty of deriving <mittere> from *mi:tere by the so-called littera-rule (i.e. -V:C- replaced by -VCC-, dialectal as explained below) since there is no trace of *mi:tere.
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> Under my hypothesis, the pre-tonic PIE dental clusters *-tn-´, *-dn-´, and *-dHn-´ were all reflected as Proto-Italic *-tt-, and similar pre-tonic clusters with labial and velar articulations yielded *-pp- and *-kk-. From a PIE root *smeid-, a zero-grade /n/-suffixed present *smid-n-óh2 thus became Proto-Itc. *smitto:, Lat. <mitto:>. The sigmatic aorist stem *sme:id-s- continued into Proto-Itc., then underwent Osthoff's shortening (i.e. *-V:RC- > *-VRC-) and assimilation to yield the Proto-Latin 1sg. perf. *smeiss-ai, Lat. <mi:si:>, and the passive participle *smid-tó- became Proto-Itc. *smisso-, Lat. <missus>.
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> When the PIE accent preceded the type of cluster in question, Latin shows assimilation of the stop to the nasal. Thus, <annus> 'year' reflects *h2ét-no- or *h4ét-no- (Gothic <aþnam> dat. pl. 'years'; cf. Skt. <átati> 'goes, wanders'), <somnus> 'sleep' reflects *swép-no- (OE <swefn>), and <dignus> 'worthy' reflects *dék^-no- (cf. <decet> 'it befits'; -gn- is written for [-Nn-], and raising of *-eN- to -iN- is regular). Most Italicists agree with Brugmann (IF 17:492, 1904/5) that Proto-Italic *atno- 'year' became *akno- in P-Italic, reflected as the Umbrian acc. pl. <acnu> and the Oscan loc. sg. <akeneí>, gen. pl. <akunum> (with regular anaptyxis). The principal exception was Buck (Osc. and Umb. Gr. §159.a, 1928), who doubted P-Italic *-tn- > *-kn- on the grounds of his assignment of Osc. <Patanaí> to Proto-Italic *Patna:- (discussed below) rather than *Patena:- (von Planta, Gr. der o.-u. Dial. §261.6, 1897). At any rate, the Latin data suffice to show that the assimilation hypothesized above for <mitto:> did not occur when the PIE accent preceded the stop-nasal cluster.
Latin <concinnus> 'well-ordered, harmonious, elegant, neat' poses a difficulty for my theory, since it appears to contain the reflection of a zero-grade adjective in *-nó-. De Vaan in fact prefers the Proto-Italic reconstruction *kom-kid-no- 'set in motion', from PIE *kid-nó- 'which started to move' (cf. Gothic <haítan> 'to call, name, summon, command'), or alternatively *kh2id-nó- 'hit, struck, beaten' (cf. Lat. <caedo:> 'I cut down, strike, beat').
Regarding the first alternative, I have argued that Go. <haítan>, Old English <ha:tan>, etc. must reflect PIE *keh1id-, or there is no principled way of explaining the unreduplicated preterits, Old English/Norse <he:t>, Old Swedish <hæ:t>. Thus the PIE passive adjective would be *kh1id-nó-, which has no effect on the final Latin outcome. The real problem is semantic. It is very difficult to get from the meaning 'set in motion, summoned' to 'well-ordered', and even more difficult to get there from 'beaten'.
As noted by de Vaan, Leumann suggested that <concinnus> was not a primary adjective but extracted from <concinna:tus>, and Walde-Hofmann derived <concinna:re> 'to arrange carefully' from <cinnus> 'mixed drink of spelt-grain and wine' (Arnobius adv. Nat. 5:174). Ernout-Meillet objected on the grounds that this <cinnus> is rare and late. Another <cinnus> or <cinnum> occurs in an obscure passage of Maecenas cited by Seneca (ad Lucil. 114:5, "feminae cinno crispat et labris columbatur ..."), and is usually rendered 'grimace' on the basis of the medieval gloss 'tortio oris'. However, it appears identical to <cinnus> 'nod as a sign' (Fulgentius) surviving as Italian <cenno> 'sign, gesture, nod, wink, wave'. The passage may be roughly rendered 'he wrinkles (his face) at a woman with a wink and makes dove-sounds with his lips ...'. Though recorded sufficiently early, this word has no obvious connection with <concinna:re>. It can be explained like <damnum> and Old Norse <tafn> as a zero-grade paroxytone nominal formation, *kh1íd-no- 'act of summoning, gesture of summoning', from *keh1id- 'to summon' reflected in Go. <haítan> etc. It was probably neuter, <cinnum>, in Maecenas' time, but seldom used in the nom. sg. or pl., so that Late and Medieval Latin <cinnus> does not surprise.
The earliest attestation of <concinna:re> is in a fragment of Naevius cited by Nonius. The old reading was this:
transit Melitam Romanus insulam integram oram
urit populatur vastat rem hostium concinnat
Mommsen replaced <oram> with <omnem>. Most later editors have dropped it and supplied <exercitus> after <Romanus>. Having exhaustively studied early Latin metrics, Thulin concluded that <urit vastat populatur> of a minority of manuscripts had the correct ordering. The corrected passage is thus:
... ... ... transit Melitam
Romanus exercitus, insulam integram urit,
vastat, populatur, rem hostium concinnat.
In order to reconcile this passage with the classical sense of <concinna:re>, de Vaan and other scholars render the verb as 'to make ready, make into', implying that the Romans, having devastated Malta in the First Punic War, turned the enemy's infrastructure on the island to Roman use. This makes no sense, as "urit vastat populatur" indicates that any infrastructure was destroyed. Referring to this passage, Nonius himself noted that <concinna:re> means "hic dissipare, alibi componere". (Cf. "concinnare est apte componere", Paulus ex Festo.) Since we lack Livy's Books 11-20, we have no detailed account of the attack on Malta. It is mentioned by Orosius (adv. Pag. 4:8.5): "Atilius consul Liparam Melitamque insulas Siciliae nobiles pervagatus evertit." This again implies thorough destruction of the infrastructure. By citing this passage, Nonius has preserved a puzzle regarding the apparent double meaning of <concinna:re>.
An ornate tessellated floor is assembled on the ground. Its aesthetic value comes not from its individual tiles, but from the way those tiles are fitted together into a well-ordered whole. If Lat. <concinna:re> literally meant 'to place together on the ground', it would cover both the destruction of Punic affairs on Malta, and the assembly of a tessellated floor. Such floors constituted an important branch of Roman art. It would not be surprising if <concinna:tus> 'assembled on the ground' were metaphorically extended to other aesthetically pleasing objects, orations, and even persons, in the sense 'well put together'. Then a secondary sense of <concinna:re> 'to put together well' could easily be extracted from the participle, and a new adjective <concinnus> 'put together well' extracted from the verb by analogy with actual deadjectival verbs like <nova:re> 'to make new'.
Greek <plé:tho:> 'I become full' may be referred to PIE *pleh1dH-, an extended form of *pleh1- 'be full'. From PIE *k^ei- 'lie on the ground' we may posit a similar extension *k^eidH- 'become lying, go to the ground' and a zero-grade paroxytone noun *k^ídH-no- 'act of going to the ground, placement on the ground'. From this, a Proto-Italic factitive verb *kom-kidH-na:- 'to place together on the ground' could be formed, which would lead to Lat. <concinna:re> in the sense required above. If this derivation of <concinnus> is correct (and I consider it more plausible than de Vaan's proposals), it poses no danger to my assimilation theory, since the word never involved oxytone *-nó-.
DGK