Re: Tocharian A wäs, B yasa

Ante Aikio anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi
Fri Apr 14 14:46:40 UTC 2000


[The original suggestion was that Tocharian *wesa 'gold' (A wäs, B yasa)
was borrowed from Proto-Samoyedic *wesä 'metal, iron'.]

[I wrote:]

>So, Samoyed *wesä ~ Tocharian *wesa seems like chance correspondence. But,
>assuming that the Toch. form requires an irregular (?) metathesis, the loan
>etymology perhaps remains as a(n unlikely) possibility? >>

[Joat Simeon]

> -- I suppose it could have been a Tocharian-Samoyed loan?

This would be very unlikely, since then it would have to be of another
origin than its widely attested cognates elsewhere in Uralic (Finnish
vaski etc.).

It was recently pointed out to me in private correspondence that the
development IE *H2eus- > Tocharian *wesa required by the suggested IE
etymology would be quite exceptional. And I was not aware that the same
loan etymology had already been suggested by Fredrik Kortlandt (in "Eight
Indo-Uralic verbs?", Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 50). He
takes the view that the IE etymology of Toch. *wesa is phonetically
impossible and the word must be a Samoyed loan. In this light, I am
inclined to think that this is indeed the case and *wesa is not
etymologically linked with Latin aurum etc.

Regards,
Ante Aikio



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