Slavic *tis7 - an evergreen problem of Slavic etymology?
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Etymological Research into Old Church Slavonic |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | Indo-European; Slavic; dendronym; yew; etymology |
| Description | In the oldest Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic texts tisa or tis7 substitute most frequently Greek kédros ‘cedar-tree’. Reviewing existing etymologies of Slavic *tis7 & *tisa, in the modern languages usually ‘yew’, none of them can be supported. A new solution is offered, which is based on comparison of the Slavic dendronym with Khotanese ttisä ‘stick of incense wood’, and ttäsá ‘boat made of this wood’, originally maybe ‘cedar’. If the primary meaning of Slavic *tis7 & *tisa was ‘cedar-tree’, the difference between Khotanese and Slavic dendronyms was only in the ablaut grades: Pre-Slavic *teik´o-/*teik´á- and Pre-Iranian *tik´o- (~ *tik´i- / *tik´u-). The semantic shift ‘cedar’ --> ‘yew tree’ may then be explained by the pressure of the similar Latin dendronym taxus or rather by the influence of one of its Romance continuants, perhaps by the hypothetical Dalmatian *tis, reconstructible as a continuation of Lat. taxeus, -a, -um ‘of yew tree’, analogously to Dalmatian kis < Lat. caseus ‘cheese’. For different root vocalism and centum-satem reflexes of velars Lat. taxus ‘yew tree’, ?Gaul. *toxos > OProv. tueis ‘yew tree’, Gr. tóxon ‘bow (and arrows)’ and Class. Pers. taxš ‘bow, crossbow; arrows’ cannot be related to Slavic *tis7 & *tisa, but they may be derivatives of the IE root *tok-, which is preserved without the sigmatic extension in Iran. *ta:ka(:)- ‘sallow, sallow branch, grapevine’, and this may be derived in agreement with Brugmann’s law from *toko- / *toka:-. |
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