Nostratic Dictionary by Aharon Dolgopolsky
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Foreword 1 Nostratic Dictionary by Aharon Dolgopolsky Third Edition 2 Foreword To the blessed memory of the great scholars and my dear friends Vladislav Illich-Svitych (1934–1966) and Sergey Starostin (1953–2005) Foreword 3 Foreword Aharon Dolgopolsky This dictionary is a preliminary one. Critical to use them to the full extent. The same applies to remarks of scholars and further research will bring the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, edited about modifications and more exact etymologies. by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams (L./Chic., 1997), Therefore I appeal to my colleagues and experts in which is extremely valuable for its lexical and different fields of comparative linguistics to submit grammatical entries (which are not connected their critical remarks (both in their papers and in with Mallory’s incorrect conception about the personal messages) that will be helpful in checking homeland and early migrations of the Indo- and improving the etymologies. Europeans [Gimbutas’s theory of Ponto-Caspian Today the pace of development in our field steppes as the homeland, that is at variance with of science is rapid; therefore at the very moment of obvious linguisitic facts, cf. AD IEH, AD CCIE its publication this dictionary (like any other study and AD MAIEH; on the archaeological aspects of this kind) is already out of date. Thus is due to of the problem see Rnf. AL]). The second volume several reasons: of Indo-European and its Closest Relatives by J. 1. Some extremely important studies in etymology Greenberg reached me in July 2002, when the text are still in preparation or in print. The recently of my dictionary was ready. Nevertheless, in the published Altaic etymological dictionary by reference notes of my entries (after the signs S. Starostin, A. Dybo and O. Mudrak was not and ) I have mentioned those comparisons of available to me (I could only use its preliminary Greenberg that are (at least partially) acceptable. versions). This drawback has brought about I have paid no attention to those (too numerous!) another one: I could not pay due attention to the among Greenberg’s comparisons that are unten- very complicated and controversial proto-Altaic able or unjustified. vocalism of roots, so that my reconstruction of 3. Some important dictionaries remained inacces- Nostratic vowels still needs checking and revi- sible to me. Among them the manuscripts of the sion. Nor have I been able to use the Etymologi- two unedited Goemay dictionaries by E. Sirlinger cal Dictionary of Egyptian (vols. II and III) by G. (Jos, Nigeria, 1937 and 1946), the Russian- Takács. Türkmen dictionary by Alijev and Borijev (Ash- 2. Some important papers were published shortly khabad, 1929) and the new Chinese dictionaries before the submission of this dictionary (e.g. of the Mongolic languages Baoan, Dongxiang the second Georgian edition of the Kartvelian and Dagur (Beijing, 1981–2), the etymological etymological dictionary by H. Fähnrich and Z. dictionaries of Erzya, Moksha and Cheremis that Sarjveladze, the Laz-Turkish dictionary by İ.A. were published in Saransk and Yoshkar-Ola (see Bucaklişi and H. Uzunhasanoğlu, the latest fas- Sr. and Srl EG, AB, BuL, LiuZh, Zhong, CygM, cicles of the Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques by KMC and Gord. in the bibliography). I regret D. Cohen, the new Tuareg-French dictionary by not being able to use the Gothic etymological K.-G. Prasse, Ghoubeïd Alojaly and Ghabdouane dictionary by W. Lehmann and the Dictionary of Mohamed, the French-Berber dictionary by M. the Irish Language (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, Dray, the Rendille Dictionary by S. Pillinger and 1983). L. Galboran, The Dhaasanac Language by M. To- 4. Some earlier papers on Nostratic (among them sco, the Iraqw-English Dictionary by M. Mous a. those by A. Bomhard) have not been analysed al- o. (MQK), the Grammar of Miya by R. Schuh, The though they are likely to contain useful compari- Maale Language by Azeb Ahma, Essai sur la phonol- sons (in spite of methodological drawbacks [cf. ogie du proto-berbère by M. Kossmann, Comparative AD rTPN] and partially untenable hypotheses Dravidian Linguistics by Bh. Krishnamurti and of sound correspondences). Analysing them is a the volumes II and III of the above-mentioned lengthy and inefficient procedure which I could Takács’s Dictionary), so that I have not been able not undertake owing to time constraints. 4 Foreword 5. I have not included in my comparison Eskimo- with the symbols d ‘a kind of’ or ≈ ‘approximately’). Aleut, Chukchee-Kamchadal and (almost If the English word is polysemic, I have sometimes entirely) Gilyak and Elamite, although these prefered to use a more convenient Latin, French or languages do belong (in my opinion) to the German equivalent (Latin ‘dorsum’ or French ‘dos’ Nostratic macro-family. The reason is that the instead of English ‘back’). comparative-grammatical study of these lan- I hope very much to make use of critical guages is in its initial stage. At the time of writing remarks of scholars in order to improve the etymolo- I had no access to the only comparative diction- gies of this dictionary. New comparative material ary of Eskaleut (Comparative Eskimo Dictionary and modifications of Nostratic etymologies will with Aleut Cognates by M. Fortescue, S. Jacobson later be published as and L. Kaplan (Fairbanks, 1994). The only com- . Therefore critical remarks parative dictionary of Chuckchee-Kamchadal by experts in different fields of comparative linguis- (that by O. Mudrak) was only published shortly tics and related fields are most welcome. before the present dictionary was submitted, and hence could not be used. Therefore for the time Acknowledgements being I cannot evaluate Greenberg’s interesting comparisons concerning EA, CK, Gil and Ai. No words can express my gratitude to Professor For all these and other reasons this dictionary does Colin Renfrew who encouraged my research, to the not claim to be an exhaustive list of all Nostratic McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and words. I am already aware of some possibly recon- to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that made possible structible words that need further investigation. the publication of this opus vitae meae. Other Nostratic words may be found in recently I am greatly indebted to my dear friend, the published and forthcoming papers on descendant founder of modern Nostratic linguistics Vladislav languages. I hope to mention them in future papers. Illich-Svitych (1932–1964), from whom I learned the The greatest practical drawback of the present basic methodology of long-range comparative lin- dictionary is lack of indexes. Their preliminary ver- guistic research. He discovered the main sound cor- sion does exist, but could not be included in this dic- respondences between Nostratic languages and the tionary because it would have increased its volume phonetic laws that undelie these correspondences. In immensely. I am planning to publish them his Essay of Comparison of the Nostratic Languages (IS separately as soon as possible. I, II, III) and his earlier paper ‘Material for compari- One of the weakest points in the dictionary son of theNostratic languages’ (IS MS) he proposed is the supposed Chadic cognates. Unfortunately, more that 600 Nostratic etymologies. Almost all of they had to be adduced without previous detailed them (in a revised form) have been incorporated in analysis of the phonological prehistory and history the present dictionary (with reference notes ‘IS’ and of the Chadic languages (beyond the precious ‘IS MS’). results achieved by O. Stolbova, H. Jungraithmayr Among other linguists who contributed very and some other scholars in their recent papers). much to the crystallization of mature Nostratic stud- Actually Chadic historical phonology, morphology ies, I must gratefully mention Vladimir Dybo, Igor and etymology are in their infancy. I have adduced Diakonoff and my predecessors and friends Björn Chadic cognates hesitantly and tentatively. They Collinder and Karl-Heinrich Menges. may serve as raw material for establishing sound I am grateful to those colleagues who helped laws in the me to interpret material of the Altaic and Samoyedic prehistory and history of the Chadic languages. languages, Greek, Egyptian etc.: Serge Starostin, Probably an additional inconvenience for some Anna Dybo, Eugen Helimski, Juho Janhunen, Yulia readers will be my approach to semantic definitions Krivoruchko, Gábor Takács. of the lexical entries. In many cases I prefer to pre- My deep gratitude and homage to those many serve the German, French, Italian, Spanish and Latin scholars who dedicated their life, talent and energy definitions from the sources in order to avoid to record and register the lexical stock of ancient, inaccuracy in semantic interpretation of the data living and dying-out languages, to preserve their (due to polysemy of words in the sources and the precious Wortschatz, to establish etymologies and to inevitable arbitrariness in my English translation of discover laws of their historical phonology and mor- these). In some cases I had to achieve accuracy by phology. This dictionary is built on their shoulders. quoting the sources in Russian, Swedish or other No research in comparative linguistics is pos- ‘exotic’ languages (accompanied by an English sible without access to professional literature. There- translation). If the name of an endemic plant or fore the present study would have not been feasable animal, of an object or phenomenon of some ethnic without support of my colleagues and friends who culture has no exact English equivalent, I had to provided me with their own papers and books present an approximate interpretation (sometimes and with those of other authors, as well as with Foreword 5 copies of unpublished manuscript dictionaries and Peiros, Karel Petráček, Barukh Podolsky, Viktor research papers. I want to express my profound Porkhomovski, Valentina Postovalova, Chaim gratitude to all of them, especially to Aleksandra Rabin, Jens E.