r and s in Turkic

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
>Whatever happened in Turkic, and I have no opinion, what keeps the
>debate going (apart from the lack of hard evidence either way,
>despite Stefan's pir < baZZ)
 
first I'd like to  make a minor correction of "my" (of course, neither the
word, nor the etymology belong to me, though I'd not be against it ;-)
baZZ, which should have been given as /bazz/.
And there are some more quite likely LWs, which bespeak rhotacism and might
amount to something in the way of "hard evidence":
 
Chuv. /hIr/ 'pinus abies', most probably from some Volgaic or Permic source
close to Mordva /kuz/, Mari /koZ/, Komi /koz/, or Udmurt /köz/, which in
turn are deeply rooted in FU (fi. kuusi, chanty kool, man'si xavt etc.) and
possibly U (nenc. xaadI).
 
Chuv. tAvAr 'narrow' goes together with CTk. *tIqIz 'id.', *but*: the
non-change of /t/ > /ch/ in front of /I/ is understandable (only, I'd say),
if the Chuv. word is a Kipchak loan (i.e. it entered Bolghar after  t>ch/_I
and before z>r. The other changes are the expected ones.
 
Chuv. tir- 'to arrange in rows', Ctk. tiz- 'id.', same reason for
likelihood of borrowing from another Tk. language.
 
There is further the possibility that some Chuvash personal names contain
Persian /niya:z/ 'request, prayer othl.' in the form /-never/, but this is
admittedly not too strong.
 
These are not hundreds of examples, but I think rhotacism is alive and
kicking, and I do think that it will be possible to seperate Chuv. /pir/
from Ar. bazz and Gk. byssos (the b>p, a>i changes are all regular and
expected, the meanings are identical, and byssos is one of the most
successful Wanderwörter of Mediterranian origin in the whole of Asia (
matched only by diphthera and nomos, possibly); it would be bewildering
*not* to find it in Chuvash somehow (and hardly imaginable that it would
end up as anything but /pir/ there) !
 
On the putative palatalized l2 and r2 of proto-Turkic (and 'Altaic'), we
should not forget that these values are posited *in order to* allow for a
host of words being Tu.-Mo. etc. cognates rather than being borrowings, in
which case proto-Turkic simply would not need those phonemes. Id
multiplicatio entiorum praeter ullam necessitatem mihi esse videtur !
 
St.G.
 
 
 
 
Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32