On Greek thalassa 'sea'

Dear List,

A friend of mine (Prof. Victor Mair) has asked a large private mailing lis about the etymology of Gk. thalassa 'sea'. I attach below my reply to him with the hope someone here will be able to provide some fresh insights.

(N.B. I am aware this has been discussed on the cybalist over and aghain in former years, and I have even incorporated some suggestions taken from past cybalist discussions into my reply to Victor Mair.)

Regards,
Francesco



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Victor Mair wrote:

> I'm also going to be commenting on the origin of Greek
> thalassa ("sea"). Do you have any ideas about that (some
> lost Mediterranean word)? If thal(a)- is the root, what
> sort of ending would -(a)ssa be?

Dear Victor,

The root traditionally posited as the base for Greek thalassa (if it is IE, which is not very likely) is *dhal- 'to spring, sprout', not **thal(a)-.

M. Nyman (“A Pre-marine Vestige of θάλασσα,” Arctos 14 [1980]: 51-78) derives θάλασσα, with convoluted and devious arguments involving the “Erechtheid Sea” (θάλασσα Έρεχθηίς, a sacred Mycenaean spring-well located on the Athenian Acropolis), from the IE root *dhal- which, according to him, would be semantically associated with the feature “moisture” or “liquid”. From this IE root would derive both Greek θάλ-λω ‘to SPRING, gush forth’ > ‘to bloom, grow’ and θάλ-ασσα ‘SPRING’ > ‘sea’.

The attested forms of Greek thalassa ‘sea’ are:

Ionic θάλασσα (thalassa)

Attic θάλαττα (thalatta)

Doric σάλασσα (dalassa)

Hesychius (5th century CE) includes the following gloss, which has been classified as Macedonian (but which could even be a fake one!):

δαλάγχαν = θάλασσαν (dalankhan, with prenasalization), that is, dalankha = thalassa

The geminate -ss-/-tt- has many possible sources. Indeed, -tt- and -ss- are different dialectal reflexes of Proto-Greek *c^c^, a long affricate that developed from pre-Greek clusters such as *t(h)j,*k(h)j, wherein *-t- got palatalized before a historical *-j- (cf. American English gotcha < got ya). Beekes favors -ss- / -tt- < *kj:

http://iedo.brillonline.nl/dictionaries/content/greek/loanwords.html
“I think that the phoneme rendered by σσ, Attic ττ (called the foreign phoneme or Fremdphonem) was a palatalized velar, which I write as ky [= kj â€" Francesco], cf. Beekes JIES 37 (2009): 191-197... This interpretation is confirmed by θάλασσα, θάλαττα, where we have a variant δαλάγχαν = θάλασσαν (Hesychius). Here we see that after the nasal (prenasalization is well known in Pre-Greek), the palatal feature of the consonant was dropped. This resulted in a velar (here realized as an aspirate). The variant shows that we may be dealing with a velar in cases of σσ / ττ.”

Then, if thalassa is IE (which I, however, strongly doubt), may it derive from *dhala(n)k(h)ja?

Just my two cents...

Regards,
Francesco