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 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> INDOLOGY mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology >>> >>
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