Re: AS gebúr; bauer; neighbour

On Mar 12, 1:35 am, Trond Engen <trond...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Brian M. Scott skreiv:





On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:51:07 -0700 (PDT),
<Craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:afe93d6f-5514-469e-a65b-f3c6d85668f7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On Mar 11, 7:03 pm, Dušan Vukotić <dusan.vuko...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Could anyone of the sci.lang big "mentors" explain the
relation between Serbian word naseobina (settlement) and
English inhabitancy? In addition, what the words
neighbour, Ger. Bauer and Serb. seljak (peasant) have in
common?

<Seljak> is obviously a derivative of <selo> 'soil, hamlet,
village', which is cognate with OIc <salr> 'room, hall'.  So
far as I know, the root is restricted to Gmc. and
(Balto-)Slavic.

[...]

You take no interest in the answer anyway. But let it be
known that the -o- in naseobina is related to l, so the
stem word there is -sel-, which occurs in Russian as
-sel- and in Polish as -siedl-.

Two different roots, I think: the one with /d/ probably does
go with PGmc. *setlaz, German <siedeln>, etc., as you
suggest:

So, the stem is probably a very old borrowing from
Germanic into Slavic, and related to German siedeln.

This is rather messy, apparently. Bjorvand and Lindeman mention ON/OIc
<salr> "hall" m. and <sel> n. "cottage", OE <sele> and <sæl> n., etc.,

That's OK These words are derived from Gon-Bel basis; similar as
Serbian koliba (hut) and kula (tower)

find a common meaning "room, single building", and tell that it's not
possible to sort out if it's an original i-, a- or s-stem. They cite
Balt. <sala> f. "village" and Lat. <solum> "soil" as cognates, leading
back to IE *sel- "settlement", but prefer to take Slav. <selo> <
*sed-lo-.

English soil is related to Serbo-Slavic zemlja (earth; Skt. samala /
soiled/; OFrs. sulenge soiling; Serb. zameljan /soiled/, meljati /
smear/; Gr. μελαινω blacken, to stain black). Of course, no one could
understand these processes without knowing that Slavic zemlja (Russ.
земля; Cz. země earth) is closely related to Latin globus and that
Slavic selo is closely related to the other Slavic words as zemlja
(earth) and nebo (sky). In order to grasp the secret of the
development of language one need to aplly the Xur-Bel-Gon Human Speech
Formula (HSF). The English word hamlet (home) is derived from the same
basis (Gon-Bel-Gon) as zemlja, selo; cf. Russ. семья (simya; family).

DV

They recount, but reject, the objection that the semantic
connection between the Germanic and Baltic words is thin. For some
reason they don't mention any semantic problem with Lat. <solum>.



Could this be an old neuter singular/femine collective pair? Bjorvand
(1994) doesn't touch this word, but trying to follow his example, I
think that a neuter *sal(j)a- "dwelling" could yield a
non-individualizing collective feminine plural *sal(j)az. This would
logically mean "village" in the same way as <engjar> fpl. "grassland" is
derived from  <engi> ns. "piece of land". (The feminine plural of <sel>,
<seljar>, is known from toponyms, as are many other feminine plurals of
neuters.) The dominant forms of this feminine plural are equal to the
masculine and might in turn have yielded an analogous mascculine <salr>.
This is not as far-fetched as it may sound, since it happened to several
words, e.g. <óss> "rivermouth", which has been a masculine in Ins.
Scsnd. and W. Norw. for a long time. (Bjorvand, BTW, takes Lat. <o:ra>
f. "rim, coast" as a creation from the collective feminine plural of
<o:s> "mouth".) Baltic has lost the neuter and would have replaced the
old neuter singulars with secondary feminines.

The neuter *sal(j)a- could possibly be derived from *sel- "take". I
think one would need a verbal noun *sVl- "taking" > "farmland", perhaps
surviving in Lat. <solum>, and take the a-stems as derivations meaning
something like "house on farmland". But now I'm far out.

It would be nice to have Slavic <selo> fit into all this, and I suppose
it can be done, but I don't know how. Also the often-but-never-well
explained ON <sæll> "good, happy, (by implication of its negations:)
well off" is a tempting target, but the long vowel is a problem.

--
Trond Engen
- doing seldom right- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

.

Relevant Pages
Loading