Dear Geoffrey,
A typological approach seems valid to me, although it could require
the same semantic change to happen independently.
It is not an inevitable change, of course, cognates Greek allos, Latin
alius/alter, English else never became semantically specialized in the
way ari- eventually does. I don't think we can chalk it up to having a
backup like anya- as another "other" since English has another "other"
too: other < *antero-. I have always seen the shift of ari- as
occurring in a specific political context where the other clan is not
exactly an enemy but a rival for position within the coalition of the
clans (thus ari > ārya "the political ceremony you do with the ari"),
ārya of course is never pejorized like later ari-. Btw, I am happy to
send you pdfs of Mayrhofer's EWA.
Best,
Caley
On Sun, Aug 21, 2022 at 2:24 PM Geoffrey Caveney
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Caley,
Thank you very much for your critical feedback; I appreciate it
very much.
Regarding the semantic development of ari-, I appreciate and I am
grateful for Caley's observations about the etymology and
historical semantic development of this form in Indo-Aryan. I am
curious, does this mean that you claim that Monier-Williams was
mistaken in his definition of *2. a-rí-* as "'not liberal,'
envious, hostile, RV.; (/ís/), m. an enemy, RV." (M-W p. 87,
bottom of 3rd column, long final entry in the column)? My
interpretation of this entry would be that according to
Monier-Williams, this word appears in the Rigveda (RV) with the
meaning "an enemy". Does this mean that MW's interpretation of the
relevant passage of the Rigveda was incorrect? Changing the
meaning of a word from "enemy" to "guest" seems to be a
significantly major alteration that would drastically change the
meaning of the passage of RV in which it appears.
But if we accept that MW is indeed mistaken on this semantic
point, as Caley suggests that Mayrhofer indicates, then we may
still return to the presumably original meaning "other" or "other
person". It still seems plausible to me that there may well
possibly have been an independent semantic development in the
Mediterranean in the Bronze Age that could have been parallel to
the later post-Vedic in situ semantic development: "other
(person)" > "enemy" seems to be a natural enough semantic
development that could have occurred independently in different
times and places from the same Indo-Aryan root word.
As a typological comparison, we may consider the semantic
development of Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis, which developed to
mean /hostis/ 'enemy' in Latin, but which developed to mean
/gasts/ 'guest' in Gothic, /gestr/ 'guest' in Old Norse (from
which indeed English "guest" is derived), гость 'guest' in Old
Church Slavic, etc. Likewise we may consider the semantic
development of Polish /obcy/ 'foreign; stranger' and dialectal
Ukrainian /ві́бчий/ 'foreign', both from
Proto-Slavic *obьťь 'common', a meaning retained in Old Church
Slavic and other Slavic daughter languages. Another example is
Proto-Slavic *ťȗďь 'foreign, alien, strange' (e.g., OCS щоуждь,
Russian чужой, чуждый) from PIE *tewtéh₂ 'people, tribe'; Baltic
cognates largely retain the original PIE meaning or develop it to
mean 'land, country', but one extended meaning of Latvian
/tauta/ is 'people from another region'. (The PIE root is the
ancestor of German /Deutsch/, Proto-Italic *toutā, Irish /tuath/,
Welsh /tud/, etc.)
The point is that numerous typological examples demonstrate that
the meaning 'enemy', 'hostile', 'foreign', etc., can frequently
arise independently from a process of historical semantic
development from roots with more neutral original meanings. Thus
it seems plausible to me to suggest that the semantic development
'other (person)' > 'enemy' and/or 'other (person)' > 'guest' >
'enemy' could have occurred independently in Minoan Indo-Aryan at
an early stage and in post-Vedic Sanskrit at a later stage.
Best,
Geoffrey
On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 10:14 AM Caley Smith
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Michael,
A minor point, as I have not yet read the paper in
detail---but I am curious as to why Monier-Williams is used as
the semantic base instead of Mayrhofer's EWA. For instance,
based on MW the author renders ari- as "enemy," when it really
could not be so as that is a post-Vedic in situ semantic
development. At the hypothesized phase of the language, it
should mean something like "other" (following Thieme "other
(person)" > RV "guest") and any local semantic developments in
the Mediterranean would proceed from that sense.
Best,
Caley
On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 11:13 PM Witzel, Michael
<[email protected]> wrote:
We are happy to announce another installment of the
Electronical Journal of Vedic Studies, Vol. 26 (2022):
Geoffrey Caveney, Evidence of Indo-Aryan dialect in 10
Minoan Linear A inscriptions …
Please critically read this exploratory paper!
It will now be uploaded at Heidelberg
(https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/).
M.WItzel
============
Michael Witzel
[email protected]
<www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm
<http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewitzel/mwpage.htm>>
Wales Prof. of Sanskrit
Dept. of South Asian Studies, Harvard University
1 Bow Street,
Cambridge MA 02138, USA
phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295, fax 617 - 496 8571;
my direct line: 617- 496 2990
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