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Prasun historical linguistics: new etymologies and the fate of the Indo-Iranian morphemes *-am and *-ka-

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

Julian Kreidl
Julian Kreidl*
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article, I touch on some lexical and morphological aspects of Prasun historical linguistics. I propose six new etymologies for Prasun words that have not been etymologized at all (üžóg “resin”, ćəwā́ “rhubarb”, wulóg “footprint”, žíma “tent, camp”) or differently (wuzógrog, zógrog “knee”, wuẓnúg, wuẓéŋ “salt”), and add further remarks to three words (üzǖ́ etc. “ice; cold”, lümī́, lümǖ́ “tail”, wəs “day”) with whose traditional etymologizations I basically agree. Furthermore, it is argued that the common epenthetic wu- ~ ü- and the final (usually) -u ~ -ü have the same origin and largely go back to the acc.sg.m/n, nom.sg.n *-am of the Indo-Iranian a-stems. Additionally, while the *-ka-suffix is present in all Nuristani languages in various functions, there is a noticeable split between Prasun, where *-ka- is added to many nouns of the inherited basic vocabulary while it is absent in the cognates in the other Nuristani languages.

Keywords

PrasunNuristaniIndo-Iranianetymologyhistorical phonologyhistorical morphology*-am*-ka-
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 87 , Issue 3 , October 2024 , pp. 447 - 459
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

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