R: indoeuropean/hand

[Paolo Agostini]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

On 12 August 1999 10:04 Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com>
wrote:

>> The word is very likely a Semitic borrowing, from the base `WD
>> ('ayin-waw-daleth) the meaning of which is "to return (every year or
>> periodically); to repeat (cycle, period); to count, reckon

Pat comments:

>Yes, $-w-d is a little strange in producing so many derivatives with -i/y-;
>and probably $(a)id- would have been heard by Romans as id- but is it not a
>little complicated to assume that the medial -w-, which shows up in few of
>the Arabic derivatives, somehow gets metathesized to final position to
>produce I:du:s rather than *I:dus?

There's no metathesis, Pat. The verb is a so-called "verbum mediae infirmae",
(I think we could translate this expression in English as "verb having an
unstable second radical"). You might wish to learn abt the behaviour of this
and similar verbs as occurring in the oldest Semitic language we know by
checking Von Soden, W.: _Grundriss der Akkadischen Grammatik_. Rome, 1995 (3),
p. 179-180.

Cheers
       Paolo Agostini