Indo-Iranian speakers used *aria-: Vedic arya-(beside & aacute;rya-), Avestan airya-, Old Persian ariya-, as a self-referential ethnic term. The word is to be derived from *ari-, well attested in Vedic as & aacute;ri-, and best understood to mean "stranger". However, it seems to have gone almost unnoticed in Old Iranian. I show that Avestan ari-has remained obscured in the Ga theta ic word attested in the Vulgate as drois, but to be restored as +arois gen. sg. In two passages, the word is used by ZaraOustra in reference to his plight as a weak stranger unable to pasture his cattle.
The total loss or mutation of /p/ is the quintessential feature that grants the status of Celtic language within the Indo-European family. Therefore, the evolution of this sound has been the subject of multiple studies over the last two centuries. However, there are still crucial issues to be addressed, which will be dealt with at length in the present paper. On the one hand, we will conduct a systematic and critical review of the proposed results of PIE *p in terms of the phonetic context and Celtic dialectology, thus providing a comprehensive overview of all evolutions. On the other hand, we will attempt to elucidate some obscure points of the historical phonetics of Celtic, namely the results of the sequences *#sp-and *-sp-, drawing equally on insular and continental material. Hence, not only will new light be shed on the history and relative chronology of linguistic change in Celtic, but we will also deepen our knowledge of the fragmentary Continental Celtic languages through epigraphic and literary evidence.
The Thracian word pitue f. 'treasury, treasure, treasure-trove' is to be explained as the collective noun *pituueh2 (with the original meaning '+/- a collection of food, food supplies, food products'). It derives from the Proto-Indo-European prototype *pitus m. 'food, nourishment' by means of the feminine collective suffix *-uueh(2). The exact equivalents of the Thracian term are attested in the Pahlavi pyhw 'victuals' etc.), as well as in Ancient Greek. The semantic development of the Thracian word in question can be reconstructed as follows: 'a collection of food, food stock, food 'store, deposit, accumulation' > 'repository of goods, treasury' > 'treasure'. The paper discusses not only possible cognates of the Thracian lexeme, but also a number of collective nouns in *-uueh(2) functioning in the Indo-European languages, especially in Balto-Slavic.
This paper is devoted to the areal distribution of the main color terms in the modern Indo-European languages of Europe, that is, in Germanic, Romance, Greek, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, and Albanian. Areal studies, as well as historical semantics, are often neglected in the Indo-European research tradition and in diachronic linguistics in general, and conversely areal linguistics and semantic analysis are usually conducted with a synchronic or achronic approach in the literature. Our topic is therefore quite original and interdisciplinary in spirit. Our results are based on an extensive database gathered by consulting lexica and by interviewing native speakers. On the one hand, we show how semantic isoglosses concerning color terms synchronically distribute in space, how they vary according to different branches and to different languages of the same branch, which branches are more compact or more dispersed in their lexicalization patterns, and which areal clusters can be identified across different branches. On the other hand, from a diachronic point of view, we also show how these areal patterns have changed with time, which languages or branches are more conservative or innovating in their color lexicon, and which color categories are better retained or lost, inherited or borrowed. We will see that the areal distribution of color terms develops in different ways according to different color categories and to different language branches, in ways that also reflect historical events and cultural and social factors of the speech communities at issue.
The Vedic word s & aacute;ktu- m. 'coarsely ground meal (of any type)' has so far resisted any etymological analysis. After a detailed philological discussion, I propose connecting Ved. s & aacute;ktu- with the Latin word seges, -etis f. 'sown field; field; crop, harvest' and analyzing the Vedic form as the u-substantivization of an adjective *seg-t-& oacute;- 'belonging to / being in / derived from grain(s)', which in turn represents a derivative of the t-stem abstract PIE *seg-& eacute;t- f. '(act of) sowing'. The paper also addresses the question whether the underlying root PIE *seg- 'sow, seed' should be regarded as identical with the homophonous root PIE *seg- 'pin, fasten, hang'. I conclude that both roots are best kept separated on semantic grounds.
