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The Journal of Indo-European Studies The Germanic word for ‘sword’ and delocati

The Journal of Indo-European Studies The Germanic word for ‘sword’ and delocatival derivation in Proto-Indo-European∗ Alexander Nikolaev Harvard University There is no compelling etymology for the Germanic word for sword (OHG swert, OE sweord). This paper argues that this word is related to Cuneiform Luvian si(%)ual ‘dagger’: both words are derived from a stem *seh2/3u- ‘sharp’. Gmc. *suerda-n goes back to a substantivized adjective *sh2/3u-er-tó- ‘sharp’ (with a loss of the laryngeal already in the protolanguage), derived from a locative *sh2/3u-er (compare *gheim-en-to- ‘wintry’ from *gheim-en ‘in winter’). 1. The problem The reflexes of Gmc. *suerda-n ‘sword’ are found in West and North Germanic: OHG swert, OS swerd, OE sweord, ON sverd (in Gothic this word was replaced by hairus). This word has no established etymology and the sad dictum of etymological dictionaries is usually “Herkunft unklar” (cf. Holthausen 1934: 335; Vennemann 1984: 109; Kluge-Seebold 2002: 834). 2. Previous scholarship Previous attempts to explain this form have been few and unsatisfactory. In this section I will critically examine the more serious ones. 2.1 The handbooks usually contain a reference to Falk-Torp 1909 (=1979: 550), where a relationship between Gmc. ∗In this paper I am using a special notational system: → stands for “internally derived from”, ⇒ stands for “externally derived from”, > denotes phonological development and >> stands for all kinds of nicht lautgesetzlich development (such as the leveling of ablaut grades within a paradigm). I am grateful to Jay Jasanoff, Craig Melchert, Sergio Neri, Alan Nussbaum, Martin Peters and Jeremy Rau for many helpful comments. I am also grateful to Anatoly Liberman, who kindly sent me a printout from his forthcoming bibliography of English etymology with entries for the word sword. Finally, I would like to thank two anonymous referees for careful comments on earlier version of this paper. The responsibility for all errors of fact and judgment is of course entirely mine. The Germanic word for ‘sword’ and delocatival derivation in PIE 463 Volume 37, Number 3 & 4, Fall/Winter 2009 *suerda- and Gk. (“Achaean”1) êor‘sword’ was assumed with a further connection with the verbal root of Gk. ée¤rv ‘to lift’ and Lith. sveTti ‘to weigh’. This idea has had an unfortunate Nachleben and persists in the literature (recently cf. Huld 1993: 225). To begin with, there is a semantic problem, since this etymology presupposes a reference to a weapon hanging at one’s hip: a basic meaning ‘Wehrgehänge’ is not easy to parallel for a word of this meaning; in other words, hanging is simply not a pivotal function of a sword. The formal side of this etymology, too, rests on rather shaky ground: Myc. a-o-ri-me-ne shows that there never was an internal digamma in êor and so a proto-form *sh2uor- is out of the question.2 Lastly, there is an alternative etymology for êor: it appears very plausible to trace this word back to *h2÷s® or *h2÷s•r, formed from the root of Lat. énsis (< *h2÷si- or *h2énsi-), Pal. %asíran ‘dagger’3 and Ved. así- ‘sacrificial knife, sword’.4 By adopting this alternative analysis of êor we also get a better semantic solution: a word for ‘sword’ is connected to a well-established PIE lexical entry *h2÷si- of the same meaning. 2.2 While the connection to ée¤rv fails to account for the formal side of the etymology, other suggestions are equally uncertain, mostly for semantic reasons. 1bT scholion ad 385: ka‹ÉArkãdewka‹Aﬁtvlo‹pçn˜plonêorkaloËsin; the “Achaean” provenance is further confirmed by reliable gl«ssaikatåpole›w. 2It should also be noted that the short /a/ in êor speaks against *sM-suor (long /a/ in the oblique forms êori, êora in Homer is due to a metrical lengthening). The Corcyrean form ÉAWoro¤, mentioned by Minon (1999: 1379), is irrelevant: Corcyra is a Corinthian colony and hypercorrect use of digamma is well attested in Corinth, cf. the participles ﬁW≈n, §W≈n (SEG XV, 389, 390), Gen.Sg. -aWo (also in Corcyrean Tlas¤aWo IG IX I, 867, 1) or personal names Pote ¯ daWoni,DidaiWo ¯ n,OriWo ¯ n. 3The Palaic word is a hapax in an unclear passage of the Zaparwa ritual (KBo 19.152 Vs. 1 12') and its relationship to PIE *h2ensi-, *h2÷sei- (suggested in Eichner 1980: 127, Fn. 30) is unfortunately not assured, other options being available and the development of *÷ in Palaic being debatable. For an alternative solution (which is merely a possibility!) see Vine apud Melchert 2007: 257, Fn. 12. 4A relic of this i-stem is also possibly found in Myc. PN a-i-qe-u ‘killing with a sword’; on the details of Greek phonology (restriction of Rix’ Law before nasals) see Nikolaev 2005 (plus a note by Matasovic 2007: 32-33); Nikolaev 2007: 164-165. The alleged Avestan aNhu- ‘sword’ (Yt. 13, 46 yaxtaiiaˇ paró aNhuiiáˇ) is unreliable: the context suggests ‘bowstring’. 464 Alexander Nikolaev The Journal of Indo-European Studies 2.2.1Lidén (1891) suggested a comparison to Lat. sorbus, f. ‘service tree’ which was enthusiastically supported by Pipping (1925: 38-39)5; however, the semantic pattern which Lidén sought to establish (names of trees as basis for designations of various kinds of weapons) while possible in case of bows and spears (Gk. tÒjonand aﬁgan°h, Lat. ornus and fraxinus) remains unfounded in the case of metal weaponry.6 2.2.2Krogmann (1932) assumed a relationship with a root *suer- which he glossed as ‘stechen, schneiden’. His reasons for this reconstruction of the semantics are unclear, since the only meaning attested for the continuants of this root is ‘to ache, to suffer pain’: OHG swero m. ‘pain, ulcer’, sweran ‘to fester’, Slavic *xvorû / *xyrû ‘ailing’, YAv. xvara- n. ‘wound’ (Y 57.10, etc.).7 Moreover, the morphology of the alleged *suer-da- ‘Gegenstand zum Stechen, Schneiden’ is less than assured: if *suer-da- goes back to *suer-tó-, a full grade unaccented vowel in the root is not easy to account for.8 If *-da- is from PIE *-dhh1-o-, the pre-Germanic place of accent is irrelevant, but the desired meaning of an agent noun (*suer-dhh1-o- ‘pain-inflicter’?) is hardly compatible with what is otherwise known about PIE formations of this type.9 2.2.3Schrader (1917-1929: I,160) put forth a comparison to Slavic *svrûdlû ‘borer, drill’ (supported by Trubaçev 1966); but given the nature of the tool, the alternative etymology 5Note also that Lat. sorbus finds a perfect comparandum in the Lithuanian name for currant serbentà. 6Sperber (1915: 39-40) suggested that *suerda- originally referred to a weapon made of wood and advocated a relationship with Gmc. *suardu- ‘flitch’; however, in my opinion, Sperber’s ethnographic parallels are not convincing, especially since the evidence for a putative semantic change from ‘a side of meat’ to ‘a side section of a piece of wood’ in this group of words is limited precisely to *suerda- (none of the reflexes of Gmc. *suardu- in mediaeval Germanic languages refers to wood). 7Modern Iranian cognates: Ossetic (Iron) xæryn ‘to itch’, Kurdish (Kurmanji) xúrín ‘to scratch’, etc. Çop (1956: 111) has further compared Hittite sarra- (the stem of which should rather be set up as sárr-i / sarr-) ‘to divide up, to split, to separate’, but the development of initial *su- to s- is without support (compare suwáru- ‘strong, weighty’ related to Lith. svarùs ‘heavy’). OInd. svar- ‘to torment’ cited by Klein (1971: 736) is non-existent. 8If *suer-da- is analyzed as a substantivized *-to- participle, one would expect an initial accent, compare *uerpa- ‘price’ (Goth. waírp) < *uérto- derived from *u®tó-. 9For instance, *uer(h1)-dh(h1)o- means ‘word’ (Lat. uerbum), not ‘speaker’ (importantly, Gmc. *suerda- is a neuter noun). The Germanic word for ‘sword’ and delocatival derivation in PIE 465 Volume 37, Number 3 & 4, Fall/Winter 2009 proposed for the Slavic word by Hirt (1899: 253) and independently by Mladenov (1941: 573) is more likely (*svrûb-dlû- from PIE *kuerp- ‘to turn’, OHG werben ‘to turn’, ON hverfa ‘to turn round’).10 2.2.4Finally, Levickij (1998: 215) compared our word to the family of OE sweard, Modern High German Schwarte; despite his efforts to connect ‘skin’ and ‘sword’ it is hard to see any real connection between them and any similarity is certainly fortuitous. 2.3 Thus it appears that an alternative etymology for *suerda- is desirable. Strictly speaking, archaeological findings do not allow positing the existence of metallic swords in PIE times (see Mallory 1991; Mallory–Adams 1997: 561), but a meaning like ‘dagger’ or ‘(sacrificial) knife’, which for instance Ved. así- still has, can be securely assumed; therefore, a search for potential cognates with the same or similar meaning is methodologically warranted. I am going to employ the same simple method, the efficiency of which was demonstrated above on Gk. êor, and look for more ‘knives’ and ‘swords’ in other Indo-European branches; furthermore I will use one of the recent additions to the armory of Indo-European morphologists, namely the theory of delocatival derivation. In the following section an outline of this theory will be presented. 3. Delocatival derivation in Proto-Indo-European Briefly sketched in (Nussbaum 1986: 187, 235-238) and further elaborated in (Nussbaum 1998a), the model of delocatival derivation is a part of a larger theory of decasuative derivation, which predicts the existence of adnominal stems, based on case forms (Loc., Instr., Gen.) with a suffix. Let us outline the uploads/Geographie/ nikolaev-the-germanic-word-for-sword.pdf