Hittite walwa 'lion' WAS: Bears and why they are mostly...
Alexander S. Nikolaev
alex at AN3039.spb.edu
Thu Mar 9 19:36:43 UTC 2000
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>>>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:
>>>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>
>>-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
>>"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.
>I don't see how that word can be related. G&I give walwa-,
>walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian walwa-, but
>that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite. Still, I'm not
>aware of a development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes).
>The Anatolian word is much more likely to be related (as wa-lwa-
>< *lwa-l(e)wa- ?) to the general Eastern Mediterranean word for
>"lion", Egyptian <rw> (< *lw), Kartvelian *lom-, Semitic *labu?at
>("lioness"). As to Greek-Latin/Germanic-Slavic *lew-, G&I argue
>with some justification against the Germanic > Slavic word being
>< Latin, although I probably wouldn't go as far as establishing a
>PIE *lew- "lion" (well maybe, if Toch. <lu> "wild animal" is
>another reflex).
I agree; there is no reason to connect the
hittite word to PIE *wl.kwos (regrettably, one can't appeal to
any authorities: the hittite word discussed is missing in
both Puhvel and Tischler dictionaries, Neu mentions it in
his Anitta-edition, but without any IE etymology).
But there is to my mind little which can prevent us from
reconstructing a PIE lexeme for 'lion' -- we must reckon with the fact,
that in prehistorical times the species Panthera Leo was
spread vastly, the ancestors of today's lions were dwelling
even in Europe (Darlington P. Zoogeography: the geographical
distribution of animals. NY, 1957.)
As to the shape of this putative PIE lexeme, hittite walwa
posits a lot of difficulties. I know of a hypothesis,
which i find attractive, but the text can hardly be accessible
to any of the list members (it appeared in the
"Jazgulamskij sbornik", St-Petersburg, 1996 and belongs to A.
Ryko). I am taking the liberty to outline it briefly, as it
is of interest. A "broken reduplication", suggested by G&I,
is an extremely rare type, if exists at all.
That is why the author suggests to reconstruct the word as
a o-grade nominal formation from the root *welw/wlew, which
om its part can be an w-enlarged root *wel- 'to tear' (some
of the other PIE roots with the same shape *wel-, such as 'to
see', 'to deceive', 'hair' are compelling candidacies, too. -
- why not trace wl.-kw-os to the same root, whatever it might
be? And what is gr. alo:pe:ks then?)
The initial *w- in this Schwebeablauting root can be proved
with the help of the greek material, cf. e.g.
Tro:es de {F}leiousin eoikotes o:mophagoisi
"de", which stands in the beginning of the 2nd foot, should form a long
syllable, and the length is caused by the dygamma, which
closes the syllable.
Any comments?
Alexander Nikolaev
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