--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <sean@...> wrote:
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> [...]
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> Only ridiculous acrobatics can attempt to move around the clearly irreg. nature of related changes such as:
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> [...]
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> m>n-f in:
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> [temafra:i] tenebrae (f p tan) = darkness L; támisra:s V S; trAms^á = twilight Kv; demar = twilight OHG;
The popular view that Latin <tenebrae> arose by labial dissimilation from expected *temebrae cannot be justified by other examples. If such dissimilation actually occurred, it should have affected <bimembris>, where the heavier cluster -mbr- would have an even greater dissimilative force than -br-. But no such *binembris is found.
Much more plausible is that <tenebrae> arose by tabuistic substitution. An example of substituting another nasal in order to avoid uttering the proscribed word is English <dang(ed)> for <damn(ed)>. An example of a phonetically different substitution with a cognate of <tenebrae> is Old High German <finstar> 'dark' for <dinstar>, with the /f/-form continuing in the modern standard language as <finster>. The motivation for tabuistic substitution with this root is easily understood, since it was used for the darkening of total solar eclipses in the Germanic languages. A cognate verb is regularly found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for this; e.g. the year 879 (Parker MS.): "... 7 þy ilcan geare aþiestrode sio sunne ane tid dæges."
Presumably the actual situations leading to proscription of the regular 'dark' word involved hunting parties or similar groups working outdoors, with one unlucky fellow happening to utter a form of the word 'dark' immediately before a total solar eclipse. Most in the group would infer that some god had been so angered by this word as to shut off the light, and such a warning could not be taken lightly. A new word for 'dark' had to be introduced for this group and its larger community, metrically equivalent to the old in order to avoid disrupting poetic lore. Whether this new word spread to the territory of an entire language would depend on the prestige of the original community, the conviction of its reporters, and the caprice of linguistic fashion. Obviously such a spread did not happen very often, less than once per millennium on average. And since eclipses can now be predicted like clockwork, it is not likely to happen again among the enlightened.
To this mechanism I believe we can assign not only <tenebrae> and <finstar> but the set of Greek nouns <knéphas>, <pséphas>, and <dnóphos> (cf. <iodnephé:s> 'violet-dark', suggesting a possible noun *dnéphas).
Sanskrit has not only <támisra:> 'dark night', corresponding to an unsubstituted Latin singular *temebra, and other words consistent with a set.-root, but also <tamrás> 'causing darkness', pointing to an anit.-root. Jim Morrison observed that night divides the day, and we can break on through to a derivation from *tem(h2)- 'to cut, divide'. Probably the laryngeal was originally a root-extension signifying completion, 'cut through' or 'cut apart' against simply 'cut', but the use of these root-extensions was no longer productive in Late PIE, and their force had weakened to the extent that *temh2- hardly signified more than *tem-.
DGK