Arm. targal 'spoon' (fwd)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
manaster at umich.edu wrote:
 
>I have as some of you may know proposed an Armenian
>sound law whereby inter alia PIE *w ends up ultimately as
>j^ after *r(H) or *l(H) in Armenian, e.g., olj^ is then simply
>*solwo-.  The only counterexample that I am aware of is targal
>if this is really, as many think, from *drwaHlaH or the like.
>So the obvious question is can anyone think of an alternative
>etymology.  One (maybe even the) possibility would be some
>proposal whereby targal is from *tarigal or *tarugal with the
>regular Armenian syncope of the relevant vowels.  Any takers?
 
We could postulate a form like *deru'wa(:)l- or doru'wa(:)l-, with *e
or *o > a and regular development of w- before the stressed syllable,
but in such a derivation (or compound) I would sooner expect
*druwa(:)l-, which would have given **artugal.
 
If the the etymology is, as I suspect, *derwa(:)l-, have you
considered the possibility that it's not a counterexample at all?
Armenian *w behaves very differently depending on whether it's
syllable initial or syllable final and on where the stress used to
be.  I gather it was lost after the stress in intervocalic position
(erkan "millstone" < 'gwra:wen-), it remains as -w in absolute final
position after a vowel (naw "ship"), and becomes g- syllable
initially, at least if the (PIE) syllable was stressed.  The case of
<oLj^>, at least, fits none of these patterns, as it occurs after the
stress, not intervocalically, and, if the sound law operated late
enough, maybe even in syllable-final position (*[h]olw).
 
And on seeing *[h]olw, I wonder if there might be a connection
between your proposed *(r/l)w > j^ (by way of -y-?) and what we see
in the o- and a:-stems in -i, where the oblique cases have -w- (hogi,
hogw-oy "spirit", maybe from *hogw, *hogwosio; and aygi, aygwoy
"vineyard" from *aygw, *aygwosio, and thus from plain PIE *oiwa:
instead of Pokorny's dreadful *oiwiia:)?  That would of course
require explaining why *gw < *w was not delabialized here, but seems
otherwise a neat solution: after a consonant, syllable final (?) -w >
-y, and further develops into -j^ after liquids, and -i after stops.
 
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam