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Ivane Javakhishvili Institute of Hist ory and Ethnology

Caucasian and Near Eastern Studies XIII
Giorgi Melikishvili memorial volume
edited by Irene Tatisvili, Manana Hvedelidze, Levan Gordeziani

Tbilisi 2009

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Ilya Yakubovich (Chicago) TWO ARMENIAN ETYMOLOGIES
The Armenian lexicon can be unsurprisingly divided into a stock of inherited lexemes, displaying regular correspondences wi th their IndoEuropean cognates, whose original shape must be reconstructed by the comparative method, and a stock of l oanwords that were borrowed at various periods following the separation of Armenian from the Common IndoEuropean. What distinguishes Armenian from most other Indo-European languages is the unusually high proportion of early lexical borrowings. This is perhaps the reason why no Armenian etymological dictionary has been compiled so far in a Western language. A linguist wishing to undertake such a project would inevitably face a daunting task of browsing through the lexical corpora of all the linguistic neighbors of the Armenians, both past and present, Indo-European and non-Indo-European, in search of likel y sources of loanwords. Only upon completing this task can one embark on the comparative analysis of the inherited Armenian lexicon. Historically speaking, the etymol ogical study of the Armenian lexicon developed in a somewhat different way. While Comparative Indo-European Linguistics represents a scholarly area with some two hundred years of unbroken research tradition and the standards of rigor that raise envy of comparative linguists dealing with other language families, several languages that have been spoken side by side with Armenian have been identified only in the twentieth century. Although the study of linguistic contacts between Armenian and its neighbors frequently prompts the rejection of old constructs advocated by the Indo-Europeanists, the paucity of scholars studying the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia as a linguistic area, sometimes multiplied by their dubious reputation, slows down the recognition of their discoveries. This is rather unfortunate since there are cases, where the analysis of lexical borrowings into Armenian does not only succeed in restricting the stock of inherited Indo-European lexemes, but can also extend our knowledge of the respective source languages. The first case is that of Urartean, a non-Indo-European language spoken during the first millennium BC in the mountains of Eastern Anatolia, roughly in the same area where Armenians lived up to 1915. After the kingdom of Urartu collapsed around 600 AD, the Urartean speakers were gradually assimilated by the Armenians who, in all probability, had migrated to this area from the west. Although the Urartean royal inscriptions, whose complete corpus is now a vailable in Russian (Arutiunian 2001), are quite nu266


merous, our understanding of them is limited to the most stereot ypical formulae related to the military and building activities of the Urartean kings. The identified Urartean substrate borrowings into Armenian are too few in number to improve our understanding of the Urartean texts, but they are quite significant for reconstructing Urartean phonology. The second one is the case of Parthian, an Indo-European Iranian language that was spoken in Northern Iran from around 300 BC to 300 AD. Since the Armenian Arshakuni dynasty ruling in the early centuries of the first millennium AD represented an offshoot of the Parthian Arsacid dynasty, one can hypothesize that Parthian was the main language of the Armenian court for quite a while. As a result of this situation, numerous Parthian borrowings pertaining to all kinds of semantic domains have penetrated the Armenian language. As a matter of fact, these loanwords reflect an earlier stage of the Parthian language than bulk of the attested Parthian texts, which were composed at the time after the Parthian Arsacid dynasty was forced to yi eld its power over Iran to the Persian Sasanian dynasty. The number of Parthian loanwords into Armenian is comparable with the number of lexemes that are attested in genuine Parthian texts. This presentation is called at extending the list of lexical borrowings into Armenian, respectivel y from Urartean and Parthian. I am going to discuss two Classical Armenian words that have been commonly regarded as a part of the inherited Indo-European lexicon, and will try to show that in both cases the hypothesis of a lexical borrowing appears to be more plausible. 1. Old Armenian darbin `(black)smith' is routinely compared with Latin faber `skillful ; craftsman, artisan' and Old Church Slavic dobr `good', which both go back to the Indo-European proto-form *dhabhro- (see e.g. H. Acharian, 1971: 1/ 636, B. Olsen 1999: 471). This etymology, however, runs into several difficulties. On the one hand, it is not clear wh y the Armenian form extended the reflex of *dhabhro- with the suffix ­in, which is productive only in adjectival derivation (Olsen, loc. cit., justly remarks that "the stem formation is somewhat obscure"). On the other hand, it is a priori unlikely that the Indo-Europeans, who did not excel in metal-working, nevertheless retained the inherited word for a blacksmith after coming to Eastern Anatolia, which is known to be one of the cradles of metal production. The traditional etymol ogy of darbin is further undermined by the fact that its putative Latin and Slavic cognates appear to possess a convincing root et ym ology that connects them with verbal forms attested in the Baltic/Slavic/Germanic dialectal area, such as Goth. ga-dab-an `to be suitable, appropriate', OCS. po-dob-ati `to be necessary, appropriate', Latv. dab-Át `to be pleasing; to favor' etc. The adjective *dhabhro- `appropriate, conve267


nient' appears to be a derivative of the stative verb *dhabh- `to be appropriate', formed according to a productive model. The base verb, however, is not attested in the Aryan/Greek/Armenian dialectal area of the IndoEuropean, which makes one wonder whether it might represent an innovation of the Central European dialects, or even a borrowing from the Central European substrate. In both cases, Arm. darbin `blacksmith' emerges as an isolated formation. An attempt has been made to show that a cognate of Arm. darbin is attested in Anatolian, a sister language family of the classical Indo-European. H. Eichner (1975: 81, fn. 5) compared the discussed form with the Hittite royal title tabarna- / labarna- that is also attested as a Hittite personal name. If one accepts this proposal, then the form *dhabhro- (vel sim.) is to be reconstructed for the common ancestor language of Indo-European and Anatolian, referred to as Indo-Hittite or Early Indo-European. Consequently, the absence of the base-form *dhabh- in the Aryan/Greek/Armenian dialectal area must be deemed accidental, and the Indo-European antiquity of Arm. darbin would appear to be vindicated. Yet, subsequent research has shown that Eichner's suggestion stumbles upon very serious morphological difficulties. The Hittite royal title tabarna/ labarna- can be unprobrematically derived from the well-attested Luwian stem tabar- `to rule', and therefore ­r- does not appear to represent an adjectival suffix in this case. There are no indications whatsoever that the stem tabar- meant anything like `to be good', or `to be appropriate' in Anatolian. As a matter of fact, some forms, like LABRANIOS, an epithet of Zeus attested in Cyprus, or , the name of the royal palace in Crete (the Labyrinth), which is so prominent in Greek mythology, indicate that the root *abar- (vel sim.) is likely to represent the Mediterranean (non-IndoEuropean) substrate term pertaining to the sphere of kingship. I have defended this thesis at length in Yakubovich 2002: 93-116. While many details of m y conclusions cannot be regarded as generally accepted at the present time, the formal incompatibility of Hitt. tabarna- / labarna- and Arm. darbin is now acknowledged by C. Melchert, the leading American authority in Anatolian studies (Melchert, 2003: 19, fn. 18). Since the genetic comparison does not provide a satisfactory solution, one can explore a theory that the Armenian word for `blacksmith' represents a lexical borrowing. I suggest that Arm. darbin must be connected with Hurrian tabrinni- `blacksmith', the meaning of which is now secured by its attestation in a passage from the Hurrian and Hittite bilingual literary text known as "The Song of Release". This curious passage contains a fable about a metallic vessel that rebelled against the craftsman who produced it, and who was subsequently punished (see Wegner 2000: 192 ff. for
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the text of the fable). The form tabrinni- in the Hurrian version of this text corresponds to the Sumerogram SIMUG `blacksmith' in its Hittite version. Sumerograms are words that were written in Sumerian in an ancient text, but pronounced in Hittite or another vernacular language, much like the abbreviation lb. is pronounced "pound" in an English text. According to an Assyriological convention, Sumerograms are capitalized in transliteration. Another occurrence of the Sumerogram SIMUG in the Hittite version of the same passage corresponds to Hurr. taballi-. Formally speaking, both Hurrian words can be derived from the verbal stem tav- `to cast (metal)', which corresponds to Hitt. lahu-, otherwise attested with the meaning `to pour (liquids)'. The stem alternation tav-/tab- in Hurrian can be compared with the similar stem alternation tb-/tv- `incantate' (Giorgieri 2002: 68: fn. 5). It is possible that this alternation is merely graphic rather than phonetic, cf. the Hurrian spelling ta-waa-ar[-na] for the royal title Tabarna discussed above (Bo 4790.9) , or the alternation between Hurr. ku-waa-hi and Hitt. ku-pa-hi `a type of head-gear'. Yet another derivative of the same root, attested as Hurr. tabiri- `one who casts' was independently borrowed into Sumerian, yielding Sum. tabira / tibira `copper-worker' (Wegner 2000: 15 with ref.). As for Hurr. taballi- `blacksmith', this noun may well have been preserved in the NeoAssyrian toponym Tabal, used with reference to a Luwian Kingdom in Central Anatolia that abounded in copper resources (thus Neu.1996: 150, fn. 410). The Armenian form darbin could not be borrowed from Hurrian since this language had secondarily devoiced its word-initial-stops, and therefore one would expect **tarbin in Classical Armenian. A natural assumption that can be made on historical grounds is that the Armenian form came from the Urartean language, which is closel y related to Hurrian. This hypothesis renders the borrowing phonetically possi ble: we know that the cuneiform signs for voiceless, voiced and "emphatic" stops were contrastivel y used in Urartean orthography in word-initial position. Thus one can hypothesize that Urartean contained the form *dabrinni (vel sim.) `blacksmith' that was borrowed into Pre-Classical Armenian, where it underwent the expected metathesis ­br- > *-rb- (on which see e.g. Schmitt 1981: 72-3). The list of Urartean borrowings into Armenian, presented in Jahukian 1987: 427 ff., can be now extended by an additional item. The comparison between the reconstructed IE. *dhabhro- (including Arm. darbin), and Sum. tabira- / tibira- has been made in Whittaker 1998: 135. The author, who did not mention the Hurrian forms as a tertium comparationis, used this comparison as one of many equations meant to demonstrate that a considerable part of the Sumerian lexicon was borrowed from
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the hereto unknown Indo-European language, the so-called "Euphratic" originally spoken in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. While the destiny of this obvi ousl y controversial claim remains uncertain for the time being, some of the suggested equations are amenable to the reinterpretation as borrowings from a third source. Among these, Arm. darbin vs. Sum. tabira / tibira represents the most obvious case. 2. The survey of possible Indo-European et ymologies of Ol d Armenian hiwand `ill' is given in Jahukian, 1987: 185. Out of the three suggested proto-forms, *pp...to-, piw...to-, and pim...to-, none is backed by good Indo-European lexical cognates. The root level comparison with Sanskrit ppman- `evil, suffering, sickness, sin, demon' is not precise enough, while Greek. '- `un-harmed, un-hurt' can be adduced only on the assumption of the irregular sound change *-m- > -w- in Armenian. The Iranian comparanda of this form include MPers. hy(w)ndkyh /xindagh/ `illness', an equivalent of Av. axti- `illness' preserved in the Middle Persian translation of the Avesta, as well as Manichean Middle Persian xyndg `sick, ill'. After the Middle Persian forms were identified by a Saint-Petersburg Iranologist Karl Salemann around 1908, his colleague Nikolaj Marr immediately suggested that they display the same contraction of the intervocalic ­w- as MPers. zindag `alive', presumably going back to the Iranian root jw `to be alive', while the Armenian borrowing hiwand preserves to us a more archaic formation (Salemann 1908: 92-3). Unfortunately, N. Marr is mainly known not through his important philological work, which he mostly conducted during the early period of his life, but rather due to his later "New Linguistic Doctrine", a bizarre theory that denied the comparative-historical method in linguistics and linked language history with social progress and class struggle. According to this theory, all the languages of the world ultimately the result of the interplay of four diffuse elements SAL, BER, YON and ROS. Marr's adherence to these peculiar views brought about the prejudice against his earlier work on the part of many Armenologists. For the most part of the 20th century, Arm. hiwand continued to be assigned to the IndoEuropean stock, and only the recent book by Olsen 1999 (p. 303, fn. 229) has re-established the Iranian connection of the Armenian word, without mentioning the original author of this suggestion. This comparison precludes Indo-European proto-forms beginning with p- since the sound change *p-> h- is not attested in Iranian. Olsen did not clarify, however, either the precise origin of the Armenian borrowing, or its etymol ogy within Iranian. I suggest that the Armenian word was borrowed from Parthian, rather than Middle Persian. The contrast between Parth. zwandag attested in Ma270


nichaean texts and MPers. zindag `living, alive' indicates that Parth. ­wwas preserved in the relevant phonetic environment. To this, one must add that few unequivocal Middle Persian borrowings (as opposed to Parthian borrowings) have been identified in the Armenian language so far, which makes my h ypothesis the simplest one possibl e. The only reason why Salemann and Marr could not indicate the Parthian origin of Arm. hiwand, was the lack of information about Parthian phonology in the early 20th century. Since Parthian * and * were reflected in Armenian as i in non-final syllables, we are free to choose any of the two vowels for our Parthian reconstructions. The reconstructed Parthian *hwand can go back to ProtoIranian *haya-want- (vel sim.). This form ought to contain the suffix ­wantderiving adjectives from nouns, which is attested in several other Parthian words (e.g. pwnwnd `commendable', `sprhm'wynd `bl ooming', cf. further Skalmowski 1967, § 3.16). The most likely root underlying Ir. *haya- `illness' (vel sim.), which morphologically can be an action noun, is hi `bind' < IE. sHi- `bind', which is well attested in Old and Middle Iranian, mostly with negative connotations. For the semantic derivation of adjectives meaning `ill' from verbs of negative physical impact, cf. Avestan bazda`ill', a historical participle from Iranian band `bind', or somewhat more remotely Turk. hasta `ill' < Pers. xasta `tired' < Ir. xad `grind'. Even though the sound change *s(H)-> h- is attested in the history of both Iranian and Armenian, it is impossible t o assume that Arm. hiwand represents an Indo-European root cognate of Ir. hayawant- since the vocalism of both forms cannot be reconciled under the assumption of their genetic relationship. The foreign origin of such a basic word may appear surprising, but cf. Turkish hasta `ill' borrowed from Persian xasta `tired, ill' cited above, or even English ill whose origin is Old Norse illr `id'. REFERENCES Acharrean, Hrach'eay. Hayeren armatakan barraran. Yerevan: Erevan hamalsarani haratarakch'iuthiun, 1971. 4 volumes. Eichner, Heinrich. Die Vorgeschichte des Hethitischen Verbalsystems. Flexion und Wortbildung. Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft (Regensburg, 9-14, 1973). Ed. by H.Rix. Wiesbaden: Dr. L. Reichert, 1975. Giorgieri, Mauro. Hurritisch TB/V-`BeschwÆren. Studi Micenei e Egeo-Anatolici 44/1, 2002. Harouthiunian, Nikolai. Korpus urartskikh klinoobraznykh nadpisej. Jerevan: Gituthiun, 2001.

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Jahukian, Gevorg B. Ha yoc' lezvi patmuthun. Jerevan: Haykakan SSH GA hratarakch'iuthiun. 1987. Melchert, H. Craig. Prehistory. The Luwians. Ed. by C. Melchert. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003. Neu, Erich. Das Hurritische Epos der Freilassung. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996. Olsen, Birgit Anette. The Noun in Biblical Armenian: Origin and WordFormation. Berlin ­ New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999. Salemann, Carl. Manichaeische studien I. Die mittelpersischen texte in revidierter transcription, mit glossar und grammatischen bemerkungen. Saint-Perersburg: Izdatetl'stvo Akademii Nauk, 1908. Skalmowski, Wojciech. Das Nomen in Parthischen. Bulletyn Polskiego Towarzyst wa Jzykoznawczego 35, 1967. Reprinted in Wojciech Skalmowski. Studies in Iranian Linguistics and Philology. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersitetu Jagielloskiego, 2004. Schmitt, RÝdiger. Grammatik des Klassisch-Armenischen. Innsbruck: Institut der Sprachwissenschaft der UniversitÄt Innsbruck, 1981. Wegner, Ilse. EinfÝhrung in die Hurritische Sprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000. Whittaker, Gordon. Traces of an Early Indo-European Language in Southern Mesopotamia. GÆttinger BeitrÄge zur Sprachwi ssenschaft, 1998/1. Yakubovich, Ilya. Labyrinth for tyrants. Studia Linguarum 3 (Memoriae A.A.KorolÊv dicata), ed. A.S. Kassian and A.V. Sidel'tsev. Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Culture, 2002.

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