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Proceedings of the Etymological Symposium Brno 2014, 9–11 September 2014, Brno

Proceedings of the Etymological Symposium Brno 2014, 9–11 September 2014, Brno Etymological Research into Old Church Slavonic Nakladatelství Lidové noviny Praha 2015 Edited by Ilona Janyšková & Helena Karlíková Paliga, Sorin 2015. The Pre-Indo-European Issue Revisited. The Old Slavic Heritage and Its Survival. Etymological Research into Old Church Slavonic. Proceedings of the Etymological Symposium Brno 2014, 9–11 September 2014, Brno. Ed. by Ilona Janyšková & Helena Karlíková. Praha: Lidové noviny, pp. 299–307. sorin paliga: the pre-indo-european issue revisited. the old slavic heritage and its survival Abstract: The paper briefly analyzes the complex problems referring to the Pre-Indo- -European heritage of Europe v. the Indo-European heritage and, in a larger context, v. ‘Nostra tic’ or ‘Nostratic-like’ theories. Slavic ryba ‘fish’ has been chosen for analysis, at- tempting to enlarge the list of possibly related forms, among these the river-Name Raba, Romanian roabă ‘a wheelbarrow’ < ‘wheel’ and the verb a răbda ‘to endure, to suffer’ < ‘to have one’s back curved under a heavy burden’, not excluded to be related with Slavic rabъ, robъ ‘a serf’, in which case the etymology of this latter form should be re-considered. The re- constructed root is a Pre-Indo-European root *R-B- ‘rotund, curvilinear; to bend.’ Keywords: Pre-Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Nostratic, Proto-Boreal, linguistic reconstruction. Premises Over the last decades the attention of most linguists preoccupied with the heritage of prehistoric Europe and Asia – to just limit our brief review to this area – seems to have focused on the Indo-European issues and, after initial hes- itations, on the possible relations between the Indo-European proto-language, on the one hand, Uralic and Altaic, on the other. To date, there are several convergent theories. They may be labeled ‘Nostratic’ (preserving the first term used for this type of analysis) or ‘Nostratic-like’ theories. Out of the known attempts, three seem relevant to us, as they have their internal coherence of analysis, even if some details may be debatable: 1. Pedersen–Svityč, known as Nostratic proper; 2. Nikolaj Dmitrievič Andreev and his ‘Proto-Boreal’ theory; 3. Joseph Greenberg and his Euroasiatic theory. Less has been written on the Pre-Indo-European (Non-Indo-European) heritage of Europe and still less on the possible Pre-Indo-European (hereafter Pre-IE) heritage of Slavic. I attempted a first analysis of the issue in Paliga 1992, then in a larger context, e.g. Paliga 1998. Recently, I tried a new inter- pretation of the Slavic form tъrgъ/тръгъ (Balkanic conference in Toruń, May 2013, the volume will be reportedly printed in 2015). The form was considered of Sumerian origin by Machek 1971, a hypothesis difficult to accept as such. Nevertheless – if ‘read’, or reinterpreted, in a larger context – this may be la- beled ‘of Pre-Indo-European origin.’ This is what I suggested in the case of tъrgъ, тръгъ, with the important note that it seems to be a trade, ‘migratory’ term originating in the Adriatic-Illyrian area, rather than a strictly indigenous term preserved from the idioms spoken in the Neolithic. The hypothesis of a 300 Paliga ‘technical’ term, migrated from southern Europe towards the Slavic home- land, is consistent with the trade routes of the Classical and Post-Classical times. This is, ultimately, what Machek also thought, when he hypothesized a Sumerian origin. As a matter of basic principles, accepting Pre-Slavic, even Pre-IE terms in Slavic has nothing spectacular or should not have, as such elements are or may be identified in many European languages. There are important local differ- ences, though: The Pre-IE heritage represents over 50% of the Greek vocabu- lary; it is also important in other languages like Latin (where we may accept an Etruscan influence¹) or Hittite, where the Hatti stratum was important. This linguistic stratum is seemingly either very rare or inexistent in Germanic or Celtic, equally very rare in Slavic. These linguistic data correspond to the archaeological finds regarding the Neolithic cultures. Case study: Slavic ryba ‘fish.’ The principle of repeatability (Skok’s principles) An interesting example is Slavic ryba ‘fish.’ It seems an isolated word, having a loose similarity with Old High German rūppa, German Aalraupe, thus ana- lyzed in the context of a ‘pra-evropské slovo’ – Machek regularly uses the term ‘pra evropské’ with the connotation ‘Non-Indo-European’, i.e. Pre-IE. Rejzek 2001: 552 assumes that the word is ‘neprůhledná inovace’ (an unclear, i.e. non- -analyzable, innovation), in the context of comparing it with other innovations like Latin piscis and German Fisch, English fish. The Latin and Germanic forms are related, but this does not offer – in our interpretation – a hint for explain- ing Slavic ryba. In order to explain the origin of ryba we should accept, as a starting prin- ciple, that (1) Proto-Slavic did inherit Pre-Slavic forms (‘praevropská slova’ in Machek’s terminology), and that (2) these forms are not isolated, but may be interpreted in a larger European context of similar Pre-IE forms. Beside tъrgъ (see above), we may also note another ‘slovo praevropské’ like Czech beran ‘a ram’, Slovak and Polish baran etc., Proto-Slavic *baran, a seemingly accepted ‘slovo praevropské’ given its similarity with Albanian berr ‘a sheep.’ Less quot- ed in this context is Romanian bâr, bîr ‘a sheep’ (dialectal); undoubtedly related is the mountain name Bârsa, personal name Bârsan, Bârseanu, also used as an adjective in the syntagma oaie bârsană ‘a sheep of the Bârsa region.’ 1 Etruscan is, beyond any reasonable doubt, a non-Indo-European language in its essen- tials, even if some IE elements may be identiﬁ ed. The problem is complex, and cannot be developed in this brief analysis. 301 Paliga We may therefore have a minimal set of forms, allowing us to postulate that the hypothesis of Pre-Slavic (read: Pre-IE) forms in the basic vocabulary is acceptable and entirely corresponding to the archaeological evidence regard- ing prehistory. This is the basic principle of repeatability as mentioned by Skok 1950 in his reference study regarding the place-names of the Adriatic Croatian islands (opetovanja toponima). Many of the names are of Pre-Indo-European origin (a more detailed discussion of Skok’s analysis in Paliga 2013:118 ff.) in the context in which many other southeast European place and river names are of Pre-Indo-European origin. Some of these forms are similar or identi- cal in several locations (Skok’s principle of identity – princip identičnosti ili istovetnosti and, of course, the identity of the root – identičnost osnove). In our case, the crucial problem is to identify convincing forms related to Slavic ryba, others than the seemingly unique parallel suggested by Machek. This is not an easy task but, once achieved, may offer new perspectives. As reflected in various etymological dictionaries and studies (e.g. in BER 6: 243 ff., with a complete list of references; ESJS 13: 786, s.v. ryba), Slavic ryba has been analyzed from various perspectives and various origins have been sug- gested. Unfortunately, the etymon remains enigmatic. The various associations with other roots are mainly unconvincing. Is there possible to suggest a more convincing solution? Are there the ‘more convincing’ candidates for a possible relationship, allowing to reconstruct the initial meaning of the root *RaB-, *RoB-, *RuB-? We should equally remove from the list those forms which, even if sharing the same root, are obviously not related, they are simple homonyms as a result of hazard, not an initial etymological relationship. This is, for example, the series represented by Latin rubius ‘red’, which cannot be related to ryba, and vice-versa. Nor can river-name Rubicon be related to ryba, unless we admit that root rub- is not connected to the semantic sphere ‘red’, as currently accepted. But the origin of Rubicon is not of primary interest here; it may be considered some time later, though. Latin had another root rob- with the meaning ‘oak’ and ‘force’ – robur. This often happens in the etymological analysis, therefore it is safe to reject a possible initial relationship with these Latin forms. But what the initial meaning may have been? To what semantical sphere was a fish connected to? Definitely not to color, as fish may have various colors. To form? This seems most probable, especially if we have a look at how most fish look like: they have curvilinear forms. This is what I postulated several years ago, upon the first attempt to try possible related forms to Slavic ryba. Archaic languages did contain, in fact words related to simple data, nouns and adjectives, and probably little abstract meanings. Therefore, as a starting point, I assumed that archaic meaning of the Pre-IE root *RaB-, *RoB-, *Rub- 302 Paliga must have been related to an obvious depictive feature, frequently encoun- tered when attempting to reconstruct the archaic meanings of prehistoric roots. The association of various fish with the curvilinear forms is obvious, e.g. these examples of Czech heraldry (after Zenger 1978: 62 and 151). Starting from this observation, we may postulate that the initial meaning of the Pre-IE root *R-B- must have been ‘curved, rotund; curvilinear; round, roun- ded; wheel.’ If we admit this reconstruction, the next step would be to identify other possibly related forms. – One may be the obscure Latin adjective rūbidus, which seems uploads/Litterature/ the-pre-indo-european-issue-revisited-t.pdf