Lecture | Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
The origin of Lithuanian DAUG ‘many’
- Date
- Thursday 31 October 2024
- Time
- Serie
- Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.20
Abstract
The origin of the Lithuanian quantifier daũg ‘many’ remains obscure. It has a correspondent in Latvian (daũdz ‘much’) and indirectly in Old Prussian (anthroponym Daugis), and there is a related form in Slavish, especially Polish (dużo ‘much’, duży ‘great, strong’). The Baltic form *daugi is usually derived from a PIE root *dheu̯gh- ‘to make, to produce’ (Greek τεύχω ‘to produce’, Gothic daug ‘to be useful’), but the difficulty is the formation of *daugi, which can be either a substantivized adjective or a noun; in both cases, the formation would be isolated.
The various etymological hypotheses concerning the Lithuanian quantifier daũg ‘much’ will be presented in the course of the talk. One point worth considering is the boundary between elative (‘very much’) and excessive (‘too much’). The excessive meaning (‘too much’) is expressed in Lithuanian by the adverb per̃, e.g. per̃ dìdelis ‘too big’ (: dìdelis ‘big’). It can be assumed that the form *daugi replaced in the elative meaning the adverb per̃, which passed to the excessive meaning. The talk will discuss their mutual relationship, evaluating two competing hypotheses: that per̃ is inherited from PIE, or that it is an imitation of German zu and Polish za.