From: dgkilday57
Message: 71759
Date: 2014-07-26
Beekes (EDG s.v.) rejects the connection of Greek _adé:n_ 'gland' with Latin _inguen_ 'groin' and (Old) Icelandic _økkr_ 'swelling', _økkvinn_ 'swollen' given by Pokorny (IEW 319). He argues that since no PIE word can start with a vowel, Pokorny's root *engW- must be corrected to *h1engW-. While this would work for the Latin and Germanic words, Rix's Law would require Greek *end-e-, not *ad-e-, from the PIE zero-grade *h1n.gW-e-. Beekes thus regards _adé:n_ as an isolate and its origin, Indo-European or Pre-Greek, as indeterminate.
De Vaan (EDL s.v.) argues that _inguen_ indeed belongs with _adé:n_, deriving both from PIE *n.gW-en- 'the nude one', from *negW- 'naked', and rejecting the Gmc. words as cognates. However, I cannot agree that 'gland' and 'groin' are plausible semantic derivatives from 'naked'. The groin is usually covered in IE-speaking societies, some of which use a word meaning 'shame(ful)' for it, and women's breasts, the most prominent glands, are usually covered as well.
Greek _adé:n_ is attested first and foremost by the Ionic medical writer Hippocrates. However, a form _hadé:n_ is cited by Herodian, and this may well be the pure Attic word, with Ionic psilosis in the Hippocratic one. This leads to the possibility that the PIE root is actually *sengW- (IEW 906), the source of Armenian _ankanim_ 'I fall, weaken, wane' and Gmc. *sinkWanaN 'to sink, subside' and *sinxti- 'low-lying, swampy, damp'. (Greek _heáphthe:_ is of uncertain meaning, as noted by Beekes s.v., and cannot securely be placed here.) If Gmc. *sinkWanaN originally meant 'to become damp' (typically by sinking into swampy ground), the sense of PIE *sn.gW-en- may have been 'damp one', and this provides a better semantic fit to _(h)adé:n_ than 'naked one' in my opinion. Glands secrete liquids. The declension is animate, of the 'ox' type, not corresponding to the Latin neuter _inguen_.
For Greek _parthénos_ 'virgin, maiden, unmarried woman', Beekes likes Klingenschmitt's derivation (GS Güntert 273-9, 1974) from PIE *pr.-steno- 'having protruding breasts', which makes no sense semantically. We all know that virgins can be flat-chested, indeed they all start out that way, and most women with prominent protruding breasts are no longer virgins. The only advantage to this is that _parthénos_ can be explained as an archaic substantivization of a thematic adjective of two terminations whose usage was practically restricted to women, so that the resulting noun was a feminine in -os.
Beekes makes no mention of Hamp's alternative derivation (Homenaje Tovar 177-80, 1972). Hamp operates with the PIE verbal root *bHerg^H-, in his view 'to increase, grow' (in Pokorny as *bHereg^H-, IEW 140-1), and the suffix *-wen- of Sanskrit adjectives such as _yúdhvan-_ 'fighting'. The resulting adjective *bHr.´g^Hwen- could have been oxytonized to *bHr.g^Hwén- under nominalization like Skt. _mus.i:ván-_ 'thieving one, thief', then thematized to *bHr.g^Hwéno-. Hamp assumes that word-internal *-g^Hw- would behave like *-gWH- in Greek, and there seems to be no objection to this. With the application of Grassmann's Law, this protoform would yield Grk. _parthénos_. An alternative explanation of the Greek accent is Wheeler's Law, which would require an oxytone thematic protoform *bHr.g^Hwenó- instead. (The protoform *bHr.´g^Hwen- printed in the paper in this connection makes no sense. Perhaps the error is due to Hamp copying the protoform of the original PIE adjective from an earlier draft of the paper into the wrong place, and the mixup escaped the notice of the editor. It also eluded Collinge, who missed the error when citing this passage of Hamp's paper in his chapter on Wheeler's Law (Laws of IE 221), along with wrongly citing the name of the paper (ib. 222).)
Hamp concludes that the original meaning of _parthénos_ was simply 'full-grown', specialized for the feminine. Three serious objections can be raised. First, the Sanskrit adjectives cited as parallels have the force of present, not perfect, active participles, so the expected meaning is 'growing, adolescent'. Second, there is no basis for such an adjective becoming specialized for the feminine. Third, there is no good reason why such an adjective should have come to mean 'virginal, chaste, pure' and the like, which is clearly its primary application in Greek.
In Hittite we find zero-grade derivatives of PIE *bHerg^H- such as _parku-_ 'high', _parknu-_ 'to make high', _parkess-_ 'to become high, tall', and of *pelh2- such as _palhi-_ 'wide' and _palhess-_ 'to become wide'. We also find _parkui-_ 'pure, clear', _parkue-_ 'to become clear', _parkunu-_ 'to purify' (Hoffner-Melchert, Grammar of the Hitt. Lg. 51). That _parkui-_ was associated with the ideal of feminine purity is indicated by the belief of some Hittitologists that it belonged to a class of adjectives originally marked as feminine (ib. 64). Pokorny placed it under his root *bHer@...^-, *bHre:k^- 'to shine' (IEW 141-2), hence 'bright', which does not well explain the cuneiform representations _pár-ku-is_ nom. sg. 'pure', _pár-ku-nu-uz-zi_ 3sg. pres. 'purifies'. The sign _ku_ goes better with a labiovelar in the root, which could thus reflect PIE *bHergWH-.
Now, if this root produced an 'ox'-type derivative *bHr.gWHen- 'pure one' like the presumed *sn.gWen- 'damp one' above, it would yield a Greek noun, nom. *parthé:n, gen. *parthénos. 'Elbow, forearm, mat', normally _o:léne:_, has an athematic masc./fem. by-form, nom. _o:lé:n_, gen. _o:lénos_. Beekes (EDG s.v. _o:léne:_) suggests that the Celtic, Italic, and Germanic cognates are derived from *olé:n-, *olén-, with pretonic shortening by Dybo's Law. It thus appears that _o:léne:_ is a thematic enlargement of _o:lé:n_. Presumably _parthénos_ is a similar, but more archaic, enlargement of *parthé:n, produced at a time when thematic adjectives had no distinct feminine (cf. _oloó:tatos odmé:_, Od. 4:442). I presume that *parthé:n was associated with the ideal of feminine purity and practically restricted to denoting females, with _parthénos_ following suit and joining the minority of feminines in -os like _géranos_ 'crane'.
Since PIE *gWH becomes Celtic *g, and Germanic labiovelars lose their labial component before *u, it is at least conceivable that the feminine name appearing as Old Irish _Brigit_ and Old High German _Purgunt_ is derived from *bHergWH- rather than *bHerg^H-. That would explain why there seems to be no corresponding masculine name. Of course, speakers of these languages would come to associate the name with reflexes of *bHerg^H- anyway. In my view *bHerg^H- originally signified 'to carry within', hence 'to protect'. Since protected places are usually high places, the sense 'high' developed out of passive deverbals. Such words as Arabic _burj_, Aramaic _burgin_ 'tower', Punic _bursa_ 'citadel of Carthage', and Urartean _burgana_ 'fortress' are in my opinion borrowed from IE languages reflecting zero-grade *bHr.g^H-.
Douglas G. Kilday