A Note on the Balto-Slavic and Indo-European Background of the Proto-Slavic Adjective *svętъ ‘Holy’

• Authors: Marek Majer
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The standard etymological explanation of the Proto-Slavic adjective *svętъ ‘holy, saint’ – a word of extreme literary, cultural and religious importance in the Slavic world – concentrates on the formal match with Lithuanian šventas ‘id.’ and Avestan spəṇta‑ ‘life-giving, holy’ (PIE *ḱwen‑to‑, from the root *ḱwen‑). This article highlights the verbal formation seen in Latvian svinêtsvin svinẽjo ‘celebrate, venerate’, generally recognized as another reflex of the root *ḱwen‑ in Balto-Slavic, but without due attention to the formal implications. It is argued that both in Av. and in BSl. the adjective spəṇta‑/*svętъ behaves as an item participating in the so-called ‘Caland System’ (a set of arbitrary morphological alternations reconstructible for Proto-Indo-European).  

Keywords

EN

saint; etymology; Proto-Slavic; Proto-Indo-European; Caland System

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Studia Ceranea
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 7
• Pages: 139-149

Dates

published

2018-05-09

Contributors

author

Marek Majer

Identifiers

DOI

10.18778/2084-140X.07.09