--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Alx" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
>
> Yet, I was not aware of the slavic reflex of the word thus I am really
> interesed to know how is the slavic jazvrŭ to be explained since the
> word appears doubtless to be related to Romanian viezure and Albanian
> vjedhullë. Is this really a slavic compound of an IE-root or -how it
> seems - is this a loan into Slavic from a protoform like *we3uru: ?
> If this is not a loan, then how is explained the "ja" at the begin of the word in Slavic?
>
I couldn't find the Slavic word in Derksen's etymological dictionary, but I think this is an IE root corresponding to Dolgopolsky's PN
*z´aGVRV 'hedgehog' (ND 2755), with cognates in Kartvelian, Altaic, Basque and possibly also in Uralic, where it means 'badger' (I should remark that in my own model the genuine PIE is alike to the "Proto-Nostratic" of these researchers).
This root is also found in Germanic
*igila-/*i:gVla- 'hedgehog' and it's related to the one commonly reconstructed as
*h1eg´hi- 'hedgehog', found e.g. in Slavic
*jez^Ñ. As in the case I discussed before of Balto-Slavic
*weper- 'boar', I guess Dacian
*w- (implied from the Romanian and Albanian forms) is the reflex of an older /
u/ ablaut. So although there's no reconstructable IE root for 'badger', a semantic shift from 'hedgehog' to 'badger' is rather straightforward, as in the case of other small carnivores.
Interesingly, Romanian
viezure 'badger' has been replaced in the modern usage by
bursuc, a loanword from Turkic
borsuk. This is an Altaic root reconstructed in the EDAL as
*borso(kHV) 'badger' and cognate to NEC
*bX\erts'i 'wolf; jackal'. However, Mongolian
*borki 'old badger' doesn't seem to belong here but to a different root, which IMHO is the origin of Celtic
*brokko- 'badger':
Tungusic
*barka-na 'bear's cub'
Nakh
*b(h\)erg 'ounce, snow leopard'
Dargwa
*buk: 'some wild animal' (in the compound
dugeli-bug 'badger')
NWC
*blaga 'jackal, fox'
Dravidian
*verVg- 'wild cat'