Semitic and Indo-European: The Principle Etymologies : With Observations on Afro-Asiatic

SEMITIC AND INDO-EUROPEAN

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E. F. KONRAD KOERNER (University of Ottawa)

Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board

Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles) Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (Hong Kong) Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)

Volume 129

Saul Levin Semitic and Indo-European: The Principal Etymologies

SEMITIC AND INDO-EUROPEAN THE PRINCIPAL ETYMOLOGIES WITH OBSERVATIONS ON AFRO-ASIATIC

SAUL LEVIN Distinguished Professor of Ancient Languages State University of New York at Binghamton

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAMIPHILADELPHIA

The paper used in this publication meets the mlnImUm requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levin, Saul. Semitic and Indo-European: the principal etymologies: with observations on Afro-Asiatic / Saul Levin. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 129) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Language and languages--Etymology . I. Title. II. Series. P321.L47 1995 95-19984 412--dc20 ISBN 90 272 3632 1 (Eur.) / 1-55619-583-4 (US) (alk. paper) eIP © Copyright 1995 - John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co .• P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam· The Netherlands John Benjamins North America· P.O. Box 27519· Philadelphia PA 19118-0519· USA

TO THE REVEREND DR. JOHN PAIRMAN BROWN a very dear friend for nearly fifty years and a fme scholar from whose original research came the impetus for me to undertake this book

PREFACE

In case my scattered remarks from the introduction on (pp. 3-4, etc.) le unclear the point of the dedication to my friend Jock Brown, let me expla here in the preface. After my Indo-European and Semitic Languages came nearly twenty-five years ago, he was the one reader that truly absorbed i the point of sensing where it most needed to be C O R R O B O R A T E D . Moreo in the course of his own studies he came upon the very corroboration would serve the purpose (see l.Ac), and he wrote it up concisely but dem stratively. If not for him, I might never have found this or any equival evidence myself. But through his discovery I began to realize how, and w what modifications, I should resume my research into the two langu groups. The whole experience, following the publication of InEuSeLa, makes also understand P E R S O N A L L Y something about the history of scholarship o the millennia: that the invention of printing, however valuable for the poten enlargement of every writer's circle, has not basically changed the intellec condition for the advancement of knowledge. Now, as always, a writer m communicate with the mind of some individual. Unless that occurs, it ma little difference how many (or how few) copies of the work make the round bookstores, libraries, or — for that matter — modern electronic networks. A while the all-important individual reader may sometimes be a stranger, I se as no accident that this time the one with whom I could F R U I T F U L L Y share research was an old friend. Jock's help to me stretches out through the years since I started working the present book. It is mentioned on many pages of the ensuing chapters, there is still more to it. Lately he has proofread the entire text, catching num ous misprints that had eluded me, and has also contributed many pages of indices, which he does much better than I could. I am grateful to quite a few other learned friends besides. Among th whose remarks have enabled me to improve many sections are Gary Ren burg, Carleton Hodge, Roy Kotansky, and — not least — Yoêl Arbeitman. ness stopped him from reading beyond l.Ef in his photocopy of the orig dot-matrix printout, but up to that point he annotated it copiously and wisel

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Without the loving support of my wife, it would have been very hard me to sustain the effort of research, or to resume it after health emergen The children too (with whom we remain in close touch since they grew up moved away from our area) have followed the progress of this book with i est and encouragement. Our son Daniel, being in the computer consulting b ness, often guides me in the use of the Macintosh word-processor; he say has found it unusual for anyone of my age to learn successfully the opera of a computer. Last summer my cousins in Seattle, Donald and Lois Celarier, were in mental in giving me access to Saggi di glottologia generate comparata by do Trombetti, the one major predecessor whose writings I had not been ab consult. Through an improvement in the international network of bibliogra which Martin Raish of the library staff here at SUNY-Binghamton broug my attention, I became aware that the University of Washington owns the ond volume of that huge work. When I visited my cousins, their friend Sundqvist, being a part-time student, kindly borrowed it from the librar that I could study it at leisure. I noticed incidentally that Trombetti's Saggi had an odd, complex his of publication, which kept it from being listed in the standard bibliograp such as the National Union Catalog. After that vacation trip, with much e tion James Mellone, who is in charge of the inter-library loan department tracked down for me all the scattered fascicles of which the other volume Saggi consist. He requested them from one library after another that repo incomplete holdings of the series Memorie delta R. Accademia delle Sc dell' Istituto di Bologna, Classe di Scienze Morali. Finally, thanks to Mellone, I was able to locate almost everything pertinent to my research Trombetti had noted before me, either in Saggi or in his briefer works. I came to appreciate the kinship between Trombetti and me. Both o though growing up in a monoglot home, were devoted linguists from c hood on; we began by teaching ourselves French out of a book. But bey that he surpassed me by far as an autodidact scholar; for he had come fro very poor, illiterate family and struggled long and hard to reach the ran professor at the University of Bologna, whereas I had a comfortable childh and a fairly smooth career afterwards. Much as I admire him, I must state he somehow missed the details which have been crucial to me. Perhap searches through the languages of the whole world were too broad and a tious. He never had time to learn any of the Semitic languages well enough his own purposes; in particular, his mistaken conception of Hebrew phono

Preface

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kept him from grasping the most significant links to Indo-European. Still wish I had come across his works much earlier. I owe the most special thanks to Konrad Koerner, not only for the promp acceptance of this book to join that renowned series, Current Issues in Lin guistic Theory, but since then for sharing with me his expertise in laser prin ing, in which I am altogether a novice. Yola de Lusenet too, of the John Benj mins Publishing Company in Amsterdam, has given me much practical advic together with encouragement, as I labored to produce the camera-ready page With their high standards they set a mark for me to improve my skill in ty ography. For without that my accomplishments in linguistic research cannot b brought to the eyes of readers; and no professional typographers, in Europe o elsewhere, are familiar with the gamut of characters — Greek, Sanskrit, H brew, Arabic, Cyrillic, phonetic — all necessary for the clear presentation o my comparative linguistic data. Time after time, when the software or the laser printer or something els had me utterly baffled, I was rescued by Tom Blake, the computer genius o our university. Besides the fonts bought for my use by the university admini tration, he found several other fonts that are in the public domain and hav served me better than any alternative. I could not have even begun this hug typographical job without having him on call; but eventually he got me to th point where I could sometimes find the solution to a typographical or electron difficulty by myself. I also thank Mrs. Geraldine MacDonald, who directs th computer center and has made sure that for my long, slow task I should hav full access to their equipment, even during vacations when the center w closed. Since 1966, when the State University of New York Press decided to pub lish my InEuSeLa, I have experienced the revolutionary change in the produ tion of books that require complex linguistic typography. A staff of five in A bany — later six — was kept busy for nearly a year, making the roughly eig hundred camera-ready pages of that book. Even so, with the Vari-Typer in m office I had to supply them with all the Hebrew and phonetics; item by item these were pasted onto measured blank spaces by the staff in Albany. My co league and friend, Prof. Khalil Semaan, generously copied out the Arabic f me on his typewriter; and an acquaintance was hired to do the same with th Sanskrit. These items too had to be pasted in. Now it has also taken me nearly a year, working A L O N E , to reformat for l ser the entire dot-matrix draft of this book and to produce some five hundre camera-ready pages, containing a lot more Arabic and a considerable amount Cyrillic. The electronic fonts serve far better than anything available to me

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Preface

the past. Notably, the Vari-Typer Hebrew — although on the whole clear handsome — lacked accents; I called on Stanley Kauffman, the young grap artist on our campus, to fill in thousands of accents by hand. But now I do that myself on the word-processor. I still need Mr. Kauffman, though only occasional odd characters, which occur on eight pages in all — a Syriac vow sign, an archaic Greek letter, an Ugaritic cuneiform character, etc. On many pages something is less elegant than I would like, but my rea should understand how hard the typographical work has been. The phon fonts are especially troublesome. Though better than any other phonetic fo within my experience, they are prone to uneven spacing. Moreover, they w designed only for 12-point lines; and while I have succeeded in enlarging t to 14 and reducing them to 10, or even to 8 when necessary, often the res are not very neat. So I have to make L E G I B I L I T Y my first rule; i f tha achieved, I ask everyone to excuse the letters that are too close together or far apart, and whatever else may be ungainly. S Binghamton, March 1995

CONTENTS Bibliographical Abbreviations Introduction Chapter I : Non-verbal Nouns and Their Inflections l.A. Sem. (Arabic) {j3awran} : IE (Gr.) ταϋρον 'bull' l.B. IE (Latin) cornu(m) : Sem. Akk. {qarnu(m)} 'horn' l.C. Sem. (Heb.) {?όζεη} : IE (OHG) [?]oren 'ear' {^áyin} : (OEngl.) [?]e(a)gan 'eye' {^écem} : (Sanskrit) {asẄn} 'bone' l.D. IE (Gr.) δίδυμοι : Sem. (Aram.) {ta?u me } 'twins' I.E. IE (Skt.) { v i t } : Sem. (Akk.) {bi-it} 'house' (Avestan) {vaēsam} : (Hebrew) { B á y t e ) ^ } 'home(ward)' (Greek) / οίκαΐδβ : {55y(3)b } l.F. Sem. (Arabic) {?ardan} : IE (OEngl.) [?]eordan 'earth' (Hebrew) {?3r(a)c 0 } : (Greek) "epa£e 'earthward' l.G. Sem. (Hebrew) {?âdbm|5F} : IE (Greek) χθων 'earth, ground' (Aramaic) { adaemt-} : (German) grund (Hebrew) {‫כל‬3‫צ‬1‫ } דו‬: (MiEngl.) g(r)om 'man' l.H. Sem. (Arabic) {( )isman) : IE (Ch. Slav.) {imè} 'name' (Aramaic) {sairohDn} : (Avestan) { n ā m â n } 'names' w

y

7

s

Έ

7

7

y

1.1. Sem. (Aram.) (Ha2qle } : IE (Latin) AGREI 'fields' y

: Sem. (Heb.) {Hac(3)ré } 'enclosures'

l.J. IE (Skt.) { g á r b ^ m } : Sem. (Akk.) {qerbam} 'womb' (Arabic) {qalban} 'heart' l.K. Sem. (Ge^ez) {g 3rn} 'threshing floor' : IE (OE) cweorn 'quern' l.L. Sem. (Ge^ez) { ‫' } ד ^ י‬young animal' : IE (Latin) agnum 'lamb' (Heb.) {kiš(3)60t} : (OHG) kilbur 'ewe-lambs' (Arabic) {jadyan} : (Latin) haedum 'kid' w

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Contents

l . M . Sem. (Heb.) {?áfoCWOt} : IE (Latin) asinos 'asses' IE (Gr.) χίμαρον 'winterling goat': Sem. (Arabic) {Himāran} 'ass' 1. N. Recapitulation of Morphology

Chapter I I : Verbal Roots 2. A. Bicons. IE (Gr.) (‫)־‬φ(-)ρ(‫ )־‬: Sem. (Heb.) {(-)P(-)r(-)} 'bear' Sem. {(-)^(-)1(-)} : IE (Latin) al- '(go or raise) up' 2.B. Biconsonantal Sem. (Heb.) {red} 'go down' : IE Latin) red- 'back' {ce } 'go out' : sē- 'apart' {(-)Š-5(-)} : (-)s-d(-) 'sit' 2.C. Biconsonantal Sem. {(-)q(-)n(-)} : IE (-)g-)n(-) '(be)get' (Akk.) { k i m i } : (Gr.) -γεμε 'seize' 2.D. Biconsonantal Sem. {(-)h(-)w(-)} : IE (Skt.) { ( - ) b / } 'be' (Heb.) {(‫)־‬h(-)y(-)} : (Latin) (-)//(-) 2.E. Bi- or tricons. IE (Gr.) ζτ\ : Sem. (Heb.) {-Hyé } 'live' {-Hyo t} '(to) live' βίο