Umlaut im sogdischen Verbalsystem [slides] (2017) (original) (raw)

The paper addresses meanings and etymologies of several problematic Sogdian lexemes. Sogd. ’ps’ynk- ‘motley’ is compared with Ved. piśánga- ‘red, red-brown’, Sogd. ’pt’r- ‘to pluck’ is analysed as a derivative of Ir. *dar ‘to tear’, ’rw’št(’)k ‘fixed, established’ is argued to represent an etymological participle of IE *(ə1)werĝ ‘to lock’, Sogd. ’rwynt- is assigned the meaning ‘to massage’ and linked to Av. varəduua- ‘soft’, Sogd. (’)sty(y)w ‘although, even (if)’ is traced back to the phrase *’sty yw, approximately ‘be it (that)’, Sogd. ’ynδ(’y) is assigned an general meaning ‘female attendant’ and reconstructed as Ir. *yaunī dāhī ‘young female slave’. Sogd. βrk’yr- ‘to neglect’ is compared with YAv. kāraiia- ‘to celebrate, praise’, on the assumption that the semantic pejorationin the Sogdian lexeme is due to the prefix *fra-. The proposed original meaning of Sogd. ptfr’w- ‘to float up in memory’ is argued to point to its connection with Ir. *fraw ‘to swim, float’. Sogd. θrβ- ‘to tremble’ is analysed as an irregular derivative of *θrap/tarp ‘to be unsteady, to move unsteadily’.

This book is a revised version of my Russian first Ph.D. thesis (кандидатская диссертация). It summarizes, and in some cases significantly updates the findings of my English papers devoted to the historical study of the Sogdian language and published in or before 2012. I attach for public use the original Ph.D. thesis, defended at the Russian State University for the Humanities in 2009.

Commentationes Iranicae: сборник статей к 90-летию В.А. Лившица (ed. P.B. Lurje and S.R.Tokhtasjev). Saint-Petersburg: Nestor-Historia, 2013, pp. 64-73.

Middle Iranian Intransitives in -ās-

The paper addresses a group of Middle Iranian intransitive verbs with the present stem ending in -ās-. This group is best represented in Khwarezmian: γn’s- / γn’s’d- ‘to slumber’, γr’s- / γr’d- ‘to wake up, δm’s- / δm’d- ‘to swell’ and -ẍ ’s- / xw’d- ‘to weaken, become tired’. The comparative and historical analysis of the verbs in -ās- is conducive to the claim that at least in some cases they contain the Indo-Iranian *-ā- suffix, which in turn goes back to the Indo-European , «ē-statives». As examples of the latter category one can mention, for example, the Latin stative verbs in -ēre or the Russian stative verbs in -еть.

All the evidence for Sogdian lambdacism adduced by Henning may be differently interpreted. The source of East Iranian loanwords with lambdacism in Early New Persian is not Sogdian but Bactrian, while the changing value of lamedh in the Sogdian National Script merely reflects the absence of the phoneme /l/ in the standard variety of Sogdian. In neither of the two cases is there any need to resort to reconstructing the “West Sogdian” dialect, which is not otherwise attested through either texts or toponymic evidence.