--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:
>
> 2013/8/18, r_brunner <rbrunner@...>:
> > The Wiktionary entry at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/war#Tocharian_B for
> > the Tocharian B word for "water" gives a PIE form *udrom as the probable
> > origin for this and states that *udrom is a "regular (endocentric)
> > thematicization".
> >
> > I could not find out what this means. Does this say that already in PIE
> > there might have been a special form *udrom of the "water" word and say
> > something how that form might have developed?
>
> 'Thematicization' means that a thematic vowel *-o- is added to a
> consonantal stem, in this case *udr-. 'Endocentric' has two meanings:
> 1) in derivational morphology, it's a derivation without suffixes and,
> precisely, based on the weak stem (= stem of the Genitive case) of the
> basic word, in this case *udr- (Nominative *wed-ór, Genitive *ud-r-os,
> stem *ud-r- + ending *-os);
> 2) in thematicizations and compositional morphology, an endocentric
> derivation keeps the same referent of the basic word, while an
> exocentric one gets possessive meaning (e.g. *'udro-, with root
> accent, should mean 'water', while *udr-'o-, with suffixal accent,
> should mean 'having water').
>
> In this case both meanings of 'endocentric' seem to have been
> conflated together, since *udr-o- is both base on weak stem *ud-r- and
> provided with the same referent 'water'
>
> >
> > I traced the info back to the entry for "war" in "A Dictionary of Tocharian
> > B" by Douglas Q. Adams, so it's probably reasonably up-to-date, but that
> > entry does not include more explanation concerning this.
> >
> > And what is *udrom in the root-suffix-ending scheme? *ud-r-om? With what
> > roles for suffix "r" and ending "om"?
> >
> zero grade for both root (*ud-) and suffix (*-r-) implies a basic
> word with a hysterokinetic or amphikinetic paradigm (hysterokinetic =
> strong stems with zero-grade root, accented full or lengthened suffix
> and zero ending, weak stems with zero grado root and suffix and
> accented full-grade endings; amphikinetic = strong stems with
> full-grade accented root, zero-grade suffix, and lengthened ending,
> weak stems with zero grado root and suffix and accented full-grade
> endings, although in strong stems the lengthened grade can affect the
> suffix instead of the ending);
> the ending *-o-m exhibits thematic vowel, in the thought of our
> most regretted Jens a sort of postponed article, with the marker of
> non-animate gender in direct cases
>
The etymology cited seems problematic. No absorption of a dental stop before /r/ is observed in Toch. A _pratri_ 'two brothers', and heteroclites are represented by Toch. A _yta:r_, B _yta:rye_ 'way' = Hitt. _itar_, gen. _innas_ = Lat. _iter_, gen. _itineris_; Toch. A _ysa:r_ 'blood' = Hitt. _eshar_, gen. _eshanas_ = OL _as(s)er_.
J. Pokorny (IEW 80) filed Toch. A _wär_, B _war_ under a root *we:r-/*wer-, itself under *awer- (*we:r-/*u:r-). This is no less problematic. Toch. AB _pär-_ 'to bear, bring, fetch' from PIE *bHer- (IEW 132) leads us to expect AB _wär_ from *wer-, not B _war_. Pokorny has conflated at least four distinct roots in his classification. The observed ablaut *we:r-/*u:r- obviously represents *weh1r-/*uh1r-, and this root explains full-grade forms like Skt. _va:r_, _va:ri_ 'water', zero-grade forms like Lat. _u:ri:na_ 'urine', and Balto-Slavic forms requiring a laryngeal like Lith. _vérdu_, _vìrti_ 'to spout, seethe, boil'. Another root *h2/4aur- appears as the river-name element *Aur- and in appellatives like OE _e:ar_ 'lake'. Still another root *wers- occurs in Skt. _várs.ati_ 'it is raining', Grk. _oûron_ 'urine', etc.
Finally, Pokorny derived Arm. _gayr._ 'swamp, mud' from *w{e}rjo- using reduced grade, the duct tape of old-time Indo-Europeanists. After all these decades, the tape has cracked and disintegrated. I think we need another root *wh2/4ar-, not the reduced grade of *wer-. Appearing simply as *war-, this root plays an important role in H. Krahe's Old European Hydronymy, identified in the names of 25 streams (Die Struktur der alteuropäischen Hydronymie 54-5). Krahe (ib. 5-6) followed Pokorny in identifying the root as *wer-, attributing the vocalism to the reflection of /o/-grade in languages which shifted */o/ to */a/. He found 7 river-names requiring the /e/-grade (ib. 55-6) and 4 examples of *Vurma on Germanic-speaking land (ib. 57), presumably from zero-grade of *wer-.
This makeshift is in turn problematic. Krahe's own view was that his Old European was Common (Old) Western Indo-European, ancestral to the Western IE languages. I believe this is substantially correct, provided we exclude Balto-Slavic and Illyro-Lusitanian from Western IE, leaving us with Celtic, Italic, Venetic, Ligurian, and Germanic as the principal daughters of OWIE. (Obviously I have no use for W.P. Schmid's attempt to identify OWIE with Proto-Baltic and PIE itself, or D. Ringe's grouping of Germanic with Balto-Slavic.) But Krahe lists no protoforms of river-names in *Wor- against the 25 in *War-. It defies credulity that all these rivers must have been named by speakers of WIE dialects which had replaced */o/ by */a/, with historical speakers of /o/-retaining languages only arriving later (including Ligurians with their Vara, Varia, Varisia, and Varus, and Veneti with their Varamus). We find in Norway a Varma, a Verma, and an Orma (formerly *Vurma). Verma and *Vurma can represent /e/-grade and zero-grade of *wer- (probably not a water-word per se, but the unextended root 'to bend, turn, wind', which many rivers do). According to Krahe we should understand Varma as /o/-grade, but I am inclined to regard it as /e/-grade of *wh2/4er- (surfacing as *wh2/4ar-) and morphologically parallel to Verma.
Getting back to the original issue, I wonder whether Toch. A _wär_, B _war_ both belong with Arm. _gayr._ and the OEH river-names in *War- rather than with derivatives of *wed-r/n- like Eng. _water_.
DGK