Book
Эскимосский этимологикон
This book (1323 pp.) includes etymological dictionaries of the Proto-Eskimo language (about 1800 entries), separate Proto-Yupik stems (about 850 entries), separate Proto-Inupik stems (about 400 entries). It also includes Proto-Altaic etymologies (1200 entries) and correspondenes with archaic Paleo-Siberian laguages. The author presents the Proto-Eskimo reconstruction of phonemes, regular correspondences with Proto-Altaic phonetic system. Thie book completes a wide spectrum of indexes - the indexes of meanings, eskimo reconstructions, outer parralels from Altaic and Paleo-Siberian languages.
This volume contains the proceedings of WAFL8, the annual Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics. WAFL is one of the major conferences on the formal analysis of the languages of the Altaic macro-family. The contributions in the volume address different questions in syntax, semantics, and phonology of Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and various Turkic languages.
This paper proposes a new etymology for Proto-Slavic *grochotъ. Regarding it as an onomatopoeic formation, one can easily overlook implications of its earliest sense connected with grain processing. Thus *grochotъ has ultimately developed from pie. *gher- ‘to rub; to grind’. The paper provides an account for its morphological composition and meaning.
The etymology of the English boar is a controversial matter, which had long been discussed by linguists. This paper offers a comprehensive critical review of etymological hypotheses and, through the use of Swedish dialects, another possible look at the problem.
The name of the founder of the Polish royal dynasty first appears in a Latin source as Past. There is no earlier polish evidence of its pronunciation. Historically it was read as Piast and considered to be derived from the continuant of Proto-Slavic *pěstъ ‘pestle’. However, Polish did not preserve this word, having stępor for ‘pestle’ and piasta for ‘axis’. H. Popowska-Taborska suggested that Piast derives from piastun ‘mentor’ pointing out the semantic grounds for such reconstruction. But absence of *piast meaning ‘mentor’ in Polish and an unusual word-building model prevented the scholar from accepting this model. Surprisingly, Russian dialectal data provide evidence for it. Old-rus. пестъ ‘a little child’ and rus. dial. пе́ста ‘an affectionate child’ demonstrate the objects of the action named in proto-slavic *pěstovati. The nomen agentis is *pěstunъ along with other non-object nouns: пест ‘bear’ and ‘ram’. Пест as ‘bear’ derives from пестун ‘a one-year-old bear cub’, semantics being close to ‘mentor’, as the eldest cub looks after the little ones. Пест ‘bear’ is a product of semantic generalisation accompanied by truncation.This is crucial for etymologisation of пест ‘ram-leader in herd’, as it is said to lead the herd to pastures without a shepherd. Bearing in mind the possibility of back formation and the semantics of leadership, it is likely that пест derives from пестун.The polish name Piast is likely to have undergone similar processes, though evidence from polish dialects or scripts is still desirable to be found.
The collected papers contain articles by famous and young scientists on actual problems of philology (cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics, semiotics, pragmatics, text linguistics, stylistics; poetics, literary criticism; translation, intercultural communication). The issue also presents research on foreign language teaching methods. The edition is addressed to linguists, translators, teachers, postgraduates, students and a wide readership.
The names of seven Dnieper rapids in Constantine’s Porphyrogenitus De Administrando Imperio (‘On the Governance of the Empire’) are given both in ‘Slavonic’, i.e. Old (East?) Slavic, and in ‘Rhosic’, i.e. Old Scandinavian, and in addition Constantine explains the meanings of some of these names in Greek. The present paper focuses on the name for the sixth rapid, Βeρούτςη / Λεάντι, and the aim of the author is to show that ‘Rhosic’ Λεάντι corresponds well to Constantine’s Greek translation of this name as ‘the Boiling of the Water’. The etymology to be proposed in this article has its precursor in Bohdan Strumiński’s interpretation of Λεάντι as the present participle form of a hypothetical verb *hløja (‘to boil’), however, the proposal to be presented here refines on Strumiński’s hypothesis by staying with the attested Old Norse verb hlóa rather than resorting to a hypothetical word. One of the difficulties with the verb hlóa is that it is recorded in the dictionary as a hapax legomenon, i.e., as a lexeme attested only once in a single literary monument, but when this verb is situated in relation to the ‘Rhosic’ rapid’s name under discussion, Old Norse hlóa loses its singularity and acquires a derivative in actual 10th-century hydronymy.
The article is dedicated to the loanword tagash as attested in Russian historical lexicography and etymology, and its paronimical attraction with the Turkic word tugash. The open access to the text cannot be provided due to copyright restrictions.
This paper considers some cases of word families interference on the basis of form and semantics, as in Russian words ultimately related to Proto-Slavic verbs *mesti, *męsti and *męti. The interference is shown to have started as early as in the Proto-Slavic period. Also, several conclusions are drawn regarding the direction and conditions of these instances of interference in word families in the history of the Russian language, necessitating some amendments to the existing etymological versions of specific words.