Volga

[Alexander Sitzmann]

I received a question from Mr. Charles Mills which made me think about my
first explanation of the etymology of russ. Volga - and as it happens often,
I found a little (but nevertheless important) mistake in my version,
therefore I decided to post the whole once again:

Dear Mr. Mills,

you're right when comparing slavonic "v" with for example english "in" (or
greek "en" etc.) - but here we are dealing with another context (because
we're talking about il-, not in-, and btw. it is always difficult to deal
with prepositions, pronouns etc.).
Of course I have to admit that I didn't take into account Polish and Czech
(Wilga, Vlha), i.e. the liquidagroup must have been [soft jer + l], which is
no problem for Russian, but in fact I'll have to revise my construction,
because we're dealing with an svarabhakti-i and not as I thought a
vocalization of v. This sounds quite complex, but I'll try to explain it
with an example (btw. there is another mistake I made - valga is of course
not "Vollstufe" but "abgetönte Vollstufe"):

Take for example the roots welk-/walk-/wlk (§ is back jer, & is front jer,
nasal vowels are marked with capital N, long vowels with _, palatals with
*):
protoslav. welkanti > old church slav. vl_ekoNt§ 'they pull' = "Vollstufe"
(without trying to explain the back jer, it seems impossible to me)
protoslav. w_al*c_it_ej > old church slavonic vla*citi 'to pull' =
"abgetönte Vollstufe" or
protoslav. walku > ocs. vlak§ 'something that pulls, e.g. bulg. train' =
"abgetönte Vollstufe"
and now the interesting one:
before protoslav. wlku > protoslav. wilku (note the svarabhakti-vowel i) >
ocs. vl&k§ (including ocs. metathesis &l > l&) 'participle: one who has
pulled' = "Schwundstufe".

My mistake was, that I thought the bilabial w would develop to u before
syllabic l (*wlC > **ulC), but in fact we have wlC > wilC.
With theform wilg_a it is possible to explain all slavonic forms. Therefore:

russ. Volga < v§lga < v&lga < wilga < wlga, but still 'the wet one'.

Sincerely,
Alexander Sitzmann


----- Original Message -----
From: Charles Mills <cmills at knox.edu>
To: <a9606646 at UNET.UNIVIE.AC.AT>
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 11:49 PM
Subject: Re: Volga


> Dear Herr Sitzmann,
>
> I don't know much about etymology, but isn't Slavic {v} (as in the Russian
> preposition {v}) supposed to be related to English (etc.) {in}?  I thought
it
> was supposed to have arisen from {in} which in Slavic developed a
prothetic
> /v/ and later reanalysed (and dropped) /n/.  (e.g., {vun ego} --> {vu
nego}).
> I thought that was the standard view.  In which case prothetic /v/ WOULD
> sometimes develope before a front vowel and the Lithuanian etymology could
> still be plausible.  (Not that I support or favor it.)
>
> Sincerely,
> Charles Mills, Knox College
>
> Alexander Sitzmann wrote:
>
> > Compare e.g. bulg. vlaga with Volga - it seams clear to me that we have
two
> > different degrees of Ablaut, i.e. (§ is back jer)
> >
> > bulg. vlaga < protoslav. valga (first a short, i.e. "Vollstufe", second
a
> > long)
> > russ. volga < v§lga < vulga < ulga < protoslav. vlga (i.e.
"Schwundstufe")
> > This "Schwundstufe" (sorry for the German termins) causes the
vocalization
> > of v > u, thereafter you have the v-prothesis (like e.g. in _udra >
vydra)
> > before u and then u > § > o.
> >
> > That means, Volga ist "the wet one".
> >
> > The baltic etymology proposed by Jues Levin is not plausible, because
the
> > change in > v is another one than il > v, and there's no prothesis of v
> > before i.
> >
> > Best wishes,
> > Alexander Sitzmann
>
>

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