Chapter 4. The Vow Abstract The root of Gr. eúkhesthai, Latin voveo, recurs in Indo-Iranian. Latin voveo, votum means specifically “the vow,” while Iran. aog– and Skt. oh– means “to pronounce solemnly or with pride”; but Homeric eúkhesthai is usually translated either as “to pray” or “to boast.” This polysemy becomes less surprising if we assign to the root *weghw– the double meaning of “vow”: a thing solemnly vowed, an… Read more
Chapter 5. Prayer and Supplication Abstract Apart from *prek-, studied above, several terms meaning “to pray” have limited sets of correspondences within the Indo-European family. One dialect group consisting of Hittite, Slavic, Baltic, Armenian (and perhaps Germanic) present forms related to Hitt. maltāi– ‘to pray’; another group, Iranian-Celtic-Greek, all present terms made from the root *ghwedh– ‘to pray, desire’. Etymologists have been embarrassed by the divergence of sense between Greek… Read more
Chapter 6. The Latin Vocabulary of Signs and Omens Abstract Latin is remarkable for the abundance of terms which in literary usage are employed indifferently to denote the divine sign, the omen. But etymology enables us to restore the preliterary distinctions between omen ‘a veracious presage’. monstrum ‘a creature whose abnormality constitutes a warning’ (moneo ‘to warn’). ostentum ‘a phenomenon which extends (*ten-) opposite (obs-) the observer in his field… Read more
Chapter 17. Gratuitousness and Gratefulness Abstract Lat. gratia is a term, originally having religious value, which was applied to a mode of economic behavior: what designated “grace” and an “action of grace” came to express the notion of “gratuitousness” (gratis). Text The terms relating to the various aspects of payment lead on to consideration of the opposite notion, namely that of “gratuitousness.” This is an economic as well as a… Read more
Book II: The Vocabulary of Kinship Introduction Abstract If our knowledge of the Indo-European vocabulary of kinship has not been noticeably advanced since the study of Indo-European kinship by Delbrück (1890), ethnological research, for its part, has made great progress, and this is what today provokes the linguist to revise the traditional interpretation of certain lexical “anomalies.” Text The terms relating to kinship are among the most stable and securely… Read more
Chapter 1. The Importance of the Concept of Paternity Abstract Father and mother, brother and sister do not constitute symmetrical couples in Indo-European. Unlike *māter ‘mother’, *pəter does not denote the physical parent, as is evidenced, for instance, by the ancient juxtaposition preserved in Latin Iupiter. Nor is *bhrāter ‘brother’ a term of consanguinity: Greek, in phrá̄tēr, preserves better than any other language the sense of “a member of a… Read more
Chapter 2. Status of the Mother and Matrilineal Descent Abstract Among other pointers to the non-existence of any legal status for the mother in Indo-European society, the absence of a word *mātrius as a counterpart to patrius may be cited. Nevertheless, the vocabulary, especially in Greek, preserves the memory of quite different social structures which are probably not Indo-European: the existence of a Zeus Hēraîos and of a conjugal couple… Read more
Chapter 3. The Principle of Exogamy and its Applications Abstract Only the custom of marriage between cross-cousins, which in its application means that the same person is my father’s father and the brother of my mother’s mother, enables us to understand that Latin avunculus, derived from avus ‘paternal grandfather’ signifies ‘maternal uncle’. Correlatively, nepos ‘nephew’ (indulged by his maternal uncle, but subjected to the strict patria potestas), beside this original… Read more
Chapter 4. The Indo-European Expression for “Marriage” [1] Abstract “Marriage” has no Indo-European term. In speaking of the man it is simply said—and this in expressions which have often been remodeled in particular languages—that he “leads” (home) a woman whom another man has “given” him (Lat. uxorem ducere and nuptum dare; in speaking of the woman, that she enters into the “married state,” receiving a… Read more
Chapter 5. Kinship Resulting from Marriage Abstract Except for the husband and wife, for whom no specific terms seem to have existed in Indo-European, the words in this field have a constant form and precise sense—but they are not amenable to analysis. They always designate the tie of kinship through a man—the husband’s mother and father, the husband’s brother, the husband’s sister, the brother’s wife and the husband’s brother’s wife. Read more
