Forgotten Derivatives and Their Sexual Implications

What kind of noun is čët? What is its relationship to our hypothetical verb root? One cannot avoid asking such questions when proposing an etymology. A word is more than a root; it has a derivational history. If you add an affix to a word, you may alter its lexical category and its meaning of the base. We already know a good deal about morphological processes in the Indo-European languages, which means that we can tell plausible relationships between possibly related words from unlikely ones.

Let R be a root morpheme. In Proto-Indo-European (and in many of the languages descended from it), a root consists of a consonantal skeleton with a slot where a vowel can be inserted. For example, the verb root *{w_rǵ} ‘make, work’ is normally quoted in the form *werǵ-, called its e-grade, symbolised as R(e). Here, the slot is occupied by the vowel *e. The same root also forms an o-grade, R(o), realised as *worǵ-, and a zero grade, R(z), in which the vowel slot remains empty. In that case, the liquid *r, sandwiched between two other consonants, has to play the role of a syllable nucleus, and the root becomes phonetically *wr̥ǵ- (in the traditional Indo-Europeanist notation, a tiny subscipt ring marks a syllabic consonant).

One of the largest and most productive classes of PIE nominals (nouns/adjectives) were the so-called thematic nouns (also known as o-stems). Their stem ended in the vowel *-o-, to which inflectional endings were attached. In the simplest case, the vowel was added directly to the root; in more complex cases it was part of a suffix (such as *-to-, *-no-, *-tero-, *-tlo-, etc.). Somewhat surprisingly, “simple thematic”  nouns of the shape R(e)-o- were pretty rare in the protolanguage. The neuter action noun *wérǵ-o-m ‘work, activity’ is well supported by the agreement between Germanic *werka- (Old English weorc, German Werk) and Greek érgon; we also have Iranian (Avestan) varəza-, with the same stem (and meaning) but with masculine inflections. Very few such nouns, however, are truly old. More typically, the suffix *-o- was added to R(o), as in *wóiḱ-o- ‘house, dwelling’ (root *weiḱ- ‘enter, occupy’) and sometimes to R(z), as in *jug-ó- ‘yoke’ (root *jeug-, already mentioned in earlier posts).

Marc Greenber (2001) doesn’t define the morphological status of his reconstruction *kʷet- (‘two’ > ‘pair, partner’). In some places in the article he treats it as if it were a root noun (with no suffixes), but the simplest form we actually find in Slavic is represented by Russ. čët (cf. dialectal Polish cot), which appears to reflect a thematic masculine noun *kʷet-o-s ‘even number’. How could it have originated? If *kʷet- was once a verb root (with the approximate meaning of ‘arrange in pairs, pair up’), *kʷet-o- makes sense as a kind of action noun that has acquired a resultative interpretation: by pairing objects together, you end up with an even number of them. (By the way, the verb root is not entirely conjectural: we can see it in Russian četáť ‘form pairs’.) The problem  with *kʷet-o- is that it represents a rare type of stem, at least in terms of PIE morphology. Is it legitimate to posit it just like that?

On the other hand, *kʷet-o- needn’t go all the way back to PIE. The deverbal formation R(e)-o- has enjoyed increased productivity in Slavic. We even have doublets like R(o)-o- and R(e)-o-, where the o-grade variant is more conservative (and has more external cognates), while the e-grade seems to be a younger innovation (with a more restricted distribution).  Thus, the root *tekʷ- ‘run, flow’ has produced Slavic *tekъ (as if from *tekʷ-o-s) ‘waterflow, leak, source’, which coexists with *tokъ (< *tokʷ-o-s) ‘stream, current, flux; (figuratively) course, sequence of events’. The former is an innovation directly connected with the Slavic verb *tekti ‘leak, flow’ (3sg. *tečetь > *tékʷ-e-ti), whereas the latter is a relict form which has drifted away from its etymological base, also semantically. Therefore, if *četъ is a relatively recent derivative of a Proto-Slavic verb, it wouldn’t be surprising if it had an o-grade cousin (possibly with a more “evolved” meaning).

As a matter of fact, Greenberg mentions *kotъ ‘offspring (of animals), litter’ and *kotiti (sę) ‘have young’ as possible members of the same word-family. A connection with the homophonous noun *kotъ ‘domestic cat’ (a European Wanderwort which spread with the introduction of cats) is folk-etymological: the verb may be used of cats, but also of mice, sheep, goats, roe deer, and a variety of other animals. It is used even in those Slavic languages that have a different word for ‘cat’ (e.g. Serbo-Croatian mačka). The verb *kotiti could be an “iterative/causative” built to the root *kʷet-. The structure of such secondary verbs is R(o)-éje/o- (the final vowel of the stem alternates depending on which conjugational ending is added). For example, the Slavic verb *gъnati (3sg. *ženetь) ‘drive on, drive away, rush’ has a corresponding o-grade iterative, *goniti (3sg. *gonitь) ‘chase, run after’. These forms ultimately reflect PIE *gʷʰén-/*gʷʰn- ‘slay, kill with blows’ (a root verb, somewhat  restructured in Slavic) and its PIE iterative *gʷʰon-éje/o-. The verb *tekti (< *tékʷ-e/o-), mentioned above, forms a pair with the causative *točiti ‘cause to flow, (cause to) roll’  (< *tokʷ-éje/o-). Note also such English pairs as lie vs. lay, or sit vs. set, where the first member is a primary verb and the second is its causative (e.g. ‘lay’ = ‘cause to lie’).

The consequences of forming a pair.
[source; © gerald reiner]

The stem *kʷot-éje/o-, originally with middle-voice inflections (whose function was taken over by the reflexive/reciprocal pronoun *sę in Slavic), would mean ‘form a couple (together)’, hence ‘mate, have sex’, and eventually ‘reproduce, have young’. If so, *kotъ ‘litter’ is not a senior synonym of *četъ (with a hard-to-explain change of meaning), but more likely a separate verbal noun back-formed from *kotiti sę (the consequence of mating), on the analogy of formally similar denominal verbs: *agniti sę ‘yean’, *teliti sę ‘calve’, *žerbiti sę ‘foal’.

The feminine *četa can hardly be a collective (at any rate in the meaning ‘pair’). Not only because it refers to just two things, but also because collectives in *-ah₂ to o-stem masculines are an archaic formation in Indo-European (as opposed to neuter collectives, co-opted as ordinary plurals of neuter nouns and adjectives), and *četъ is unlikely to be sufficiently ancient. But Indo-European *-(a)h₂ was not only a collective suffix and a marker of femininity; it was also employed to coin (formally feminine) abstracts, including action nouns. Quite a few deverbal masculines in Slavic (and more generally in Balto-Slavic) have feminine synonyms like *čarъ ~ *čara ‘sorcery, enchantment’ or *-tokъ ~ *-toka ‘flow, course’, *-sěkъ ~  *-sěka ‘cutting’ (in compounds). Note the familiar morphological formations represented by Greek tómos ‘slice’ (result of cutting) versus tomḗ ‘cut’ (an instance of cutting) – a nice parallel to *četъ (resultative) vs. *četa (an individual instance of pairing).

In the first post of this series I suggested that the stem *kʷet-w(o)r- was originally a deverbal neuter of a familiar type. Before I develop this idea, let me briefly suggest one other possible trace of the root *kʷet-: the second member of the Latin compound triquetrus ‘triangular’. The next post will be about it.

[back to the table of contents]