Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew

[Insouciant at aol.com]

> Latin <oli:va> evidently comes from Etruscan *eleiva by regular changes:
> Etr. short /el/ generally becomes Lat. short /ol/, and Old Lat. /ei/ becomes
> Class. Lat. /i:/. The Etruscan lexeme is attested in adjectival form (TLE
> 762, bucchero aryballos) <aska mi eleivana> 'a vessel (am) I pertaining to
> oil' = 'I am an oil-vessel'. This in turn looks like a borrowing from
> Western Greek <elaiwa:> (cf. Etr. Eivas from WGk Aiwa:s 'Ajax'). I'm not
> sure how to explain the shorter Lat. forms <olea>, <oleum> vs. <oli:va>,
> <oli:vum>.

Dear Indo-Europeanists:

I believe I have a way to explain the forms <olea>, <oleum> vs. <oli:va>.

First, let's derive <oli:va>:

*eleiwa: 'olive' > *oleiwa: (possibly due to the 'pinguis', i.e. velar,
nature of a final l) > *oli:wa: (cf. di:co : deiknumi) > ol:iva

And then <oleum>:

*eleiwom 'product of the olive tree' > *ole:wom (this e: is a long closed e,
comparable to the spurious diphthong found in the 7-vowel dialects of Greek) >
*ole:om (this is the critical step; at a certain point *wo- > -o- in Latin,
cf. deorsus (< *devorsus) and a similar development *coquo: (< *kwokwo: <
*pekwo:)) > *oleom (shortening of long vowels which immediately preceding
another vowel) > oleum.

<olea> must have been constructed by analogy, for its ancestor *eleiwa:
would've become *oli:va, the same form seen in 'olive'

Hope this helps,

Andrew Byrd