A pre-indo-European place-name: Dalmatia

Two years ago 1 ventured to suggest another etymon ofthe place name (hereafter PN) Ardeal, the Romanian form for Transylvania and, connected to this, 1 also explained the PN Dalmatia (Paliga 1986). 1 shall not rediscuss the whole topic, yet it is useful to briefly point the essentiais of my hypothe...

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Main Author: Sorin Paliga
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: University of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani) 1988-12-01
Series:Linguistica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.uni-lj.si/linguistica/article/view/4612
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author Sorin Paliga
author_facet Sorin Paliga
author_sort Sorin Paliga
collection DOAJ
description Two years ago 1 ventured to suggest another etymon ofthe place name (hereafter PN) Ardeal, the Romanian form for Transylvania and, connected to this, 1 also explained the PN Dalmatia (Paliga 1986). 1 shall not rediscuss the whole topic, yet it is useful to briefly point the essentiais of my hypothesis for a larger discussion. 1 started from the observation that the largely accepted hypothesis which sees Rom. PN Ardeal as a reflection of Hung. Erdély is not at all feasible, mainly from reasons of phonetic evolution, as long as the expected form should have been *Erdei or * A rdei. W e can better understand the situation of this PN if placing it in a reasonable linguistic-comparative context. As a matter of fact the situation is simple enough: Ardealis a compound of the type Ar-deal, ar- (a particle lost in vocabulary, probably akin to a arunca, a aruca "to cast away, throw") with the reconstructable meaning "over, far away", and deal "bili", also "forest", very frequent in Romanian place-names. The fact that Ar-deal is a compound is also supported by obviously similar forms like Subdeal (also spelled Sub Deal) "at the foothill", Pe deal "on the hill", La deal "uphill". All these forms are frequent in the so-called minor toponomy as well as in vocabulary. Reverting Ar-deal, it should be also observed that the Medieval Latin form Trans-silvania and German Überwald (now replaced by Siebenbürgen) are loan-translations (calques) after Ar-deal. Hung.Erdély is also a calque but following the rules of derivation in Hungarian: noun + particle, i.e. Erdő- "forest" and -elu/ -elv > -ely (cf. előre "straightforward", előtt "in front of"), as shown and accepted by all Hungarian linguists (cf. Kiss 1980 with further references). What is particularly interesting in this case is that the calque was doubled by a fortuitous similarity between Ar-deal and Erdély, which created a confusion of etymological analysis.
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spelling doaj.art-90cf7d202c3e4cdf9c019a85c30ceded2023-01-18T09:54:56ZdeuUniversity of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani)Linguistica0024-39222350-420X1988-12-0128110.4312/linguistica.28.1.105-108A pre-indo-European place-name: DalmatiaSorin Paliga Two years ago 1 ventured to suggest another etymon ofthe place name (hereafter PN) Ardeal, the Romanian form for Transylvania and, connected to this, 1 also explained the PN Dalmatia (Paliga 1986). 1 shall not rediscuss the whole topic, yet it is useful to briefly point the essentiais of my hypothesis for a larger discussion. 1 started from the observation that the largely accepted hypothesis which sees Rom. PN Ardeal as a reflection of Hung. Erdély is not at all feasible, mainly from reasons of phonetic evolution, as long as the expected form should have been *Erdei or * A rdei. W e can better understand the situation of this PN if placing it in a reasonable linguistic-comparative context. As a matter of fact the situation is simple enough: Ardealis a compound of the type Ar-deal, ar- (a particle lost in vocabulary, probably akin to a arunca, a aruca "to cast away, throw") with the reconstructable meaning "over, far away", and deal "bili", also "forest", very frequent in Romanian place-names. The fact that Ar-deal is a compound is also supported by obviously similar forms like Subdeal (also spelled Sub Deal) "at the foothill", Pe deal "on the hill", La deal "uphill". All these forms are frequent in the so-called minor toponomy as well as in vocabulary. Reverting Ar-deal, it should be also observed that the Medieval Latin form Trans-silvania and German Überwald (now replaced by Siebenbürgen) are loan-translations (calques) after Ar-deal. Hung.Erdély is also a calque but following the rules of derivation in Hungarian: noun + particle, i.e. Erdő- "forest" and -elu/ -elv > -ely (cf. előre "straightforward", előtt "in front of"), as shown and accepted by all Hungarian linguists (cf. Kiss 1980 with further references). What is particularly interesting in this case is that the calque was doubled by a fortuitous similarity between Ar-deal and Erdély, which created a confusion of etymological analysis. https://journals.uni-lj.si/linguistica/article/view/4612A pre-indo-European place-nameDalmatia
spellingShingle Sorin Paliga
A pre-indo-European place-name: Dalmatia
Linguistica
A pre-indo-European place-name
Dalmatia
title A pre-indo-European place-name: Dalmatia
title_full A pre-indo-European place-name: Dalmatia
title_fullStr A pre-indo-European place-name: Dalmatia
title_full_unstemmed A pre-indo-European place-name: Dalmatia
title_short A pre-indo-European place-name: Dalmatia
title_sort pre indo european place name dalmatia
topic A pre-indo-European place-name
Dalmatia
url https://journals.uni-lj.si/linguistica/article/view/4612
work_keys_str_mv AT sorinpaliga apreindoeuropeanplacenamedalmatia
AT sorinpaliga preindoeuropeanplacenamedalmatia