CDU 807. 5-541. 2
Vaclav Blažek
Pfibram
GR. n~-&nxoi;;
The-Greek word
(Archilochos, Aristophanes,
Plato, Aristoteles), Dor. nl:-&axoi;; "ape", nL-&wv, -wvoi;;
"little ape" (Pindaros) does not have any convincible Indo-European etymology. The old comparison with Lat. foedus "beastly,
foul" etc. 1 · is obviously improbable and the word is rather borrowed from an unknown source; 2
It is logical to us to seek the source of the word in the
territory where the ape is an usual animal; Africa is the nearest of such places. And really, I have found some very similar
words with the same meaning in Afroasiatic languages:
113 •
Berber: Tuaregh ~bidda~u (~bidd;J, pl. ibiddaouen "aue
·',
4
5
Chadic: *badi ''monkey" or *b-d/*.b-r id. or *b/\.r(A)jA id. 6
The root can be found in three of the four branches of Chadic languages:
Western: Hausa btr:Z., Ngizim buJi, veji, Bol.ewa bido; High
Western ~hadic *p[i)t: Ge~ka pet, pet, Sura pit 1 , Kofyar dapit;
Biw-Mandara: Ga' anda fiče, Tera vi6a, Bachama burame·y "(redplaced) monkey 118 ; Margi pču, Lamang vaji, Wandala vara, Gider
birya, Musgu afri(g), avriyaku; Kotoko: Affade fZi 9 ;
Masa: Masa {= Banana) fira, vira, Zime vir.
C.
Compare also
!!Jf_. bnw "baboon". lO
If this Chadic-Berber isogloss is connected .with Eg. bnw,
we must suppose an original glottalized dental stop in Chadic
(*5) and in Berber too (*4J. (In the Berber dialects the variance g --..,d/dd is possible.) The reconstruction of Pre-Chadic
*6 for the protoword seems to me very convincible; compare Tera viJ'd "ape" and Ngambag (a language of the Chari group of the
Nilo-Saharan family)
&E.cfo "baboon". 11 It seems that there we
443
have reflexes of two consonants in Chadic: *r (comp.
tyč'
s *rj) and * 0
<
Illič~svi­
*rH. The Afroasiatic protoform was proba-
bly *bArA/*bArHA.
The most probable source of the Greek root nL3- can be an
l~
old Lybico-Berber dialect where the form *-bi4- can be supposed. ~
Let us look at to the Greek words again. They have the guttural suffix; it occurs in some other names .of animals too:
13
uupunf; ,
Dor.
u6oua!;
"ant",
1Jnri:-axos
"parrot" •
The root nd1- is the oldest of Greek names far ape. A word
with this meaning was mentioned far the first tirne in 7th cen14
tury B. c.
, whereas
xnSos, xnnos, xESAos
have not been
known before Aristoteles (4th century B. C.). The other names
are compounds ( xEpxw\lJ, xspxonl.anxoc:
phores (
KaAALa(;;; xaAAO!;;
xEpxos
"tail".) or meta-
"beauty") .
The main problem is the phonological aspect of borrowing.
We can accept the substitution of Lybico-Berber *4 by Greek a
but then it is not clear why n
,
sta~.rs
as reflex of *b; Greek
15
borrowings from Semitic and Egyptian have the original b
.
I think that the following explanations are possible:
1) The Afroasiatic word came to the Greek language through
a Mediterranean language in which voiced stops give voiceless.
2) The prototype of
rna- was *phith- (e. g. *bid- "> *Pi<J.16 .
nl.3nxos
3) The source of nL3- is the other word: Eg. p~!_! "baboon 17
*bhidh-), what gave, by assimilation,
11
•
This hypothesis is phonologically more convincible than the
18
~bo-
ve-mentioned etymology.
It is not possible to be sure which of these hypotheses is
the true one.
Boisacq 1916:
korny II 186.
782-3,
with reference to F.
2
Schrader-Nehring I 16, Chantraine III 900.
3
Foucauld I
4
Newman 1977: 29, n.
5
Newman-Ma 1966: 237, n.
26; a-/i- is the article.
85.
65
6
Illi6-Svity6 1966: 15, n.1.6:
7
Stolbova i977: 156.
8
Carnochan 1975: 464.
444
Solmsen; Walde-Po-
9
10
Seetzen 1816: phlih; compare S6lken 1967: 235, 356.
Erman-Grapow I 458. Eg. n can he the reflex of a liquid;
compare pnw "mouse" II Chad. *J!ArA "mouse, rat" (Hausa6~r~,
Somrai d~ber~) II Sem. *pa'r- (Akkad. pirurutu "rat", Bebr.
p~ri "rat, mouse", Arab. far, fa'r "rat, mouse"); Cohen
1974: 167, n. 359, Gouffe 1970: 38-9, Illič-Svityč 1966: 29,
n. 5.6. -- An Afroasiatic cluster of a liquid and a laryngeal or a pharyngeal gives a glottalized dental in Chadic
and Berber: Chad. *baoi "night" (Newman 1977: 29, n. 92),
*b-6- id. (Newman-Ma 1966: 238, n. 72), *bA'dA id. (Illič­
Svityč 1966:_ 15, 18, n. 1.2): Bolewa beoi; Angas par, Sura
pir; Buduma agvee{)-an, Daba vuBu, Logone vadoe, Affade fidg,
Ngalo wddi, budi, _Sao fade, Gulfei f~de, fa'de, Kuseri mv~de;
Dera b~ri, Guduf vibe, Ngamo vioo, Wandalo vaQiya; Masa fiddigia, Sokoro bade(m) etc. (R6ssler 1979: 20, n. l; S6lken
1967: 188, n. 25) II Berb. *-bAd- "night": Tuaregh ehod, pl.
ihad~n, Kabyl Sous idan, adan, Shilh iid, Ghadames ibad(an),
Nef~si uat, Beni-Snou s ed, gd, pl. idda~ etc. (Prass; i969:
2i, ~5, n: 145; Destaing 1914: 249) l l Eastern cushitic
*bAr- "evening, night": Saho-Afar bar "night "; Si damo bero
"yesterday", Jadiya bieballa id. (Dolgopol'skij 1966: 55)
II Southern Sem. *ba•r- "voyager la nuit": Soqotri b6'or,
Mehri bar etc. (Leslau 1938: 92).
0
0
0
0
11
Proto-Chari *6a5i (Thayer 1967:
rowing from Chadic languages.
12
It is known that there have been old contacts between Greece
and Libya before 700 B. C.
13
Charitraine III 900.
14
In two fragments of Archilochos'
Schrader-Nehring I 16.
15
Compare f3p6.au "a kind of juniper, sabine" < Sem. 'l"burat"juniper" (Aram. berat, Syr. berot5, Hebr. beroš, Akkad.
burašu; Boisacq 1916: 131),
f3aA.crauov "balsam" <
Sem.
*basam- (Masson-1967: 77-8) etc.
16
Compare,
f.
e.,
nEu3ouaL
79) is probably an old bor-
fables
(7th century B. C.);
IE *bheudh-.
17
Erman-Grapow I
18
Compare, for Eg.5 > Gr.~,
f. e.(3l'.xo1; "grand vase de terre
servant a conserver le- vin _et les provisions" < b~If. t
"recipient pour garder l'huile, unite de mesure" (Masson
1967: 79). -- In the time of the Middle Kingdom t had often
been merged with ! and it usually chang~ff in~o a; allophon
of t (Kbrostovce~ 1963: 98-9). For th~ substitution of Eg.
J: by Gi.a compare: ~u801; "Egyptian, b:arley beer" (Herodotos), ~0301;
"barley wine" (Hesychios) etc. < jt "barley",
Copt. jut, jot id. (Ernštedt 1953 :- 27-32).
500.
Ref erences
BOISACQ E. Dictionnaire etymologique de la
Heid~lberg, Paris, 1916.
445
l~ngue
grecque.
CARNOCHAN J.
Bachama and Chadic. In: Hamito-Semitica1 ed. by
J. and T. Bynon. The Hague, Paris, 1975, p.
459-68.
CHANTRAINE P.
Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque.
Histoire des mots. Paris, 1968-76.
COHEN M. Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire e_t la phonetique
du chamito-semitique. Paris, 1947.
DESTAING E.
Dictionnaire fran9ais-berbere
Snous). Paris, 1914.
(dialecte des Beni-
DOLGOPOL'SKIJ A. B. Materialy po sravnitel'no-istoričeskoj fonetike kušitskih jazykov: gubnye i dental'nye
smučnye v načal'nom položenii. In Jazyki Afriki.
Moskva, 1966, p. 35-88.
ERMANA., GRAPOW H. Worterbuch der agyptischen Sprache,
Berlin 1971.
ERNŠTEDT P.
FAUCAULD Ch.
GOUFFE C.
v.
Egipetskie zaimstvovanija v
Moskva, Leningrad, 1953.
grečeskom
de Dictionnaire touareg-fran9ais,
1951-52.
t.
Bd. 1-6
jazyke.
1-4. Alger,
Complements et precisions concernant le haousa· dans
le cadre de l'Essai comparatif de M. Marcel Cohen. Comptes rendus du Groupe Linguistique
d'Etudes Chamito-Semitiques, t. XIV. Annees
1969-70, p. 27-43.
ILLIČ-SVITYČ
V.
M.
Iz istorii čadskogo konsonantizma: labial'nye
In: Jazyki Afriki. Moskva, 1966, p. 304-
smučnye.
55.
KOROSTOVCEV M.
LESLAU W.
A. Vvedenie v egipetskuju filoloqiju.
1963.
Lexique soqotri.
Moskva,
Paris, 1938.
MASSON E. Recherches sur les plus anciens emprunts semitiques en
grec. Paris, 1967.
NEWMAN P. Chadic classification and reconstructions. Afroasiatic
Linguistic 5/1, 1977, p. 1-42.
NEWMAN P., MAR.
Comparative Chadic: phonology and lexicon.
Journal of African Languages~ 5/1, 1966, p. 21851.
PRASSE K.G. A propose de l'origine de H touareg (tahaggart).
Det. Kongelige Danska Videnskabernes Selskab
Historisk;-filosofiske Meddelelser 43,3, K95b~;nhavn, 1969.
·
ROSSLER O. Berberisch -tschadisches Kernvokabular. Africana
Marburgensia 1979, 1/2, p. 20-32.
SCHRADER O.,
SOLKEN H.
NEHRING A. Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde I~II. Berlin, Leipzig, 1917-23.
Seetzen Affadeh. Ein Beitrag zur Kotoko-Sprachdokumentation. Berlin, 1967.
446
STOLBOVA O.
V.
Opyt rekonstrukcii verhnezapadno-čadskih kornej.
In: Jazyki zarubežnogo Vostoka. Moskva, 1977,
p.
152-60.
THAYER L. J. A comparative-historical phonology of the Chari
languages. Supplemento n. 9 agli Annali -- vol.
36 (1976), fasc. 4, Napoli 1976.
WALDE A.
vergleichendes Worterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen.
I-III. Hrsg. J. Pokorny. Berlin, Leipzig, 1928-32.
Sažetak
Za objašnjenje porijekla grčke riječi nL3nxo~ postaje tri
mogu6nosti:
1) jedna afroazijska riječ došla je u grčki jezik kroz neki
mediteranski jezik u kojem su zvučni praskavi suglasnici dali
bezvučne;
2) protoriječ za n~3- bila je *phith-;
3) nl.3- poteklo je od eg. p5tt "pavijan", što je uvjerljiVLJe nego prethodna etimologija.
No ne može se reci koja je od tih hipoteza točna.
447