In prior posts, I've been babbling about all these meanings applied to *mar-, *mer- or *smer- by Indo-Europeanists and how skeptical I am of one particular set of meanings in this clumsy word pile, that revolving around the notions of 'shimmer' and 'shine'. I recently found an instructive account of this whole messy group of words, published in French: Skoda, Le redoublement expressif: Un universal linguistique. Analyse du procédé en grec ancien et en d'autres langues (1982), pp.120-2.
I strongly suspect that there lies an Aegean root underneath this and it has nothing to do with Proto-Indo-European at all. However with what little we know of the Aegean group (ie. Etruscan, Lemnian, Minoan, etc.) and with some even denying that such a group exists, etymologists don't seem to be getting very far here. Half-solutions everywhere; nothing tied together very well.
Let's cut to the chase and propose something bold and new. Let's say for a moment that there's a Proto-Aegean verb *amára 'to reflect, to shine'. Let's say that it remained unchanged in later Minoan. Let's also say that this same root however was reduced to Proto-Cyprian *mar from which we should expect the same in Etruscan, Eteo-Cretan, etc. Let's then run with this and say that there's a derivative *amária meaning 'reflection, shine' which is again preserved in Minoan while reduced to *mera in Proto-Cyprian. From 'reflection' come the notions of 'appearance' and 'face' in a similar fashion to that of Japanese 色 (iro) 'colour; appearance'.
What's the point of all my crazy theorizin'? Have I cracked? Probably, but damned if this doesn't give an interesting alternative solution to a plethora of poorly etymologized or unetymologized words in Greek using a fresh non-IE perspective:
- ἀμαρυγή (amarugḗ) 'a sparkle'
- ἀμάρυγμα (amárugma) 'a sparkle'
- ἀμαρύσσω (amarússō) 'to sparkle, to glance'
- μαραυγέω (maraugéō) 'to contract the pupil in light'
- μαραυγία (maraugía) 'dazzling of the eyes'
- μαρμαίρω (marmáirō) 'to sparkle, flash, glitter'
- μαρμάρεος (marmáreos) 'flashing, glittering'
- μάρμαρος (mármaros) 'sparkling stone; marble'
NOTES
[1] Consult for example Beekes' Greek Etymological Dictionary under ἀμαρύσσω.
Always nice to see someone work on a dictionary which I've poured hours and hours of work into. (I did some minor editing and wrote half of the bibliography, because Beekes didn't think it was necessary to keep a database for that :P)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, to me it seems clear that this word family is indeed Pre-Greek. I did want to comment on the 'unusual' reduplication though.
It does happen in more cases, which are more clearly Indo-European that there's a reduplication of multiple letters. In all cases I can think of though, it's a reduplication of a Laryngeal plus a Resonant.
(ἀπ)όλλυμαι 'to die'
(ἀπ)όλωλα
Which Beekes etymologises to come from a root *h3elh1- 'to destroy'
Compare with Hitt. hallanna/i- `to trample, destroy'
TochB alāṣṣäṃ `is exhausted'
So this is pretty much a different problem really, but at least the resonant part is consistent ;-). I do wonder if all HR- initial roots have this type of reduplication. I've never ever seen someone be absolutely clear on that, and I've not been motivated to find out myself ;-)
I like the idea of prothetic a- being dialectal variation rather than a Prefix. because if it was a prefix we'd want to see it have a bit more functional load after all. Also the presence of several different prothetic vowels would seem to support this claim.
Phoenix: "I did want to comment on the 'unusual' reduplication though."
ReplyDeleteTaken individually, odd reduplication, the appearance of a prothetic a-, *or* a-vocalism of the root doesn't necessarily suggest non-IE origin, I realize. Taken *collectively* however, reduplication, prothetic a- *and* a-vocalism of the root makes the attempts to etymologize this as a genuine PIE root very painful to me. ;o)
Concerning typical PIE reduplication now, one would expect that *h₃elh₁- is properly reduplicated as *h₃e-h₃elh₁- whereas **h₃elh₁-h₃elh₁- would break the general rules, although full reduplication might seem to some more aesthetic than the characteristic partial kind.
However after the loss of laryngeals, *h₃e-h₃elh₁- /xʷe-xʷelh-/ would tend towards *ōl- and would no longer look like reduplication. At that point, it would be perfectly understandable that some dialects would adopt a new form like *ōl-ōl- or something similar simply because /l/ was the only consonant left to reduplicate.
I don't understand how full reduplication, if existent in PIE, would fit into the grammar of the language.