Griego πρέσβυς y variantes dialectales

Abstract

The dialect variants of Gr. πρέσβυς defy reduction to one single form. In the author’s view, both *présg^ṷus and *preī̭g^ṷus (*príg^ṷus) coexisted in Common Greek as the variants of an old compound, the second member of which is *g^ṷú ‘going’, related to Skt. -gú-, -gavá-, Lith. (žmo)-gu-, not to Skt. jū- ‘haste’ or to Skt. go- ‘bull’; the hypothesis of an old hysterodynamic type *g^ṷḗṷ- is to be ruled out. The semantic distinction between *présg^ṷus ‘who goes from the front line’ (scil. ‘ambassador’) and *preī̭g^ṷus (*príg^ṷus) ‘who goes first’ (scil. ‘honoured person, old man’) was expressed by *pres- and *prei̭- (*pri-) which were respectively genitive-ablative and dative-locative case forms; some diverging adverbial uses of πάρος (o-variant of *pres) and πρίν (*pre + n, *pri-n) support this interpretation. At a later stage, once the case distinction between both terms had been lost, only one form —with both original meanings— survived in each dialect (and in each Cretan town): *présg^ṷus shifts to πρέσβυς, πρέσγυς and *preī̭g^ṷus to πρεῖγυς, whereas *príg^ṷus seems to be the underlying form to the hapax Cret. πριγιστος (Vth cent.), which cannot be interpreted as an iotacistic spelling. The possibility of an inherited ΙE *prei̭s is to be excluded in spite of the Boeotian type πρίσγυς, which is due to a secondary contamination of the two inherited forms whatever the quantity of ι may be; the occurrence of four anomalous πρεισ-forms (3 × in Creta, 1 × in Paros) side by side with the regular ones in the same inscriptions fails of course to support the reconstruction of a prototype *preī̭sg^ṷus. Arm. erêc (from *prei̭sg^ṷus) ‘old man’, ‘priest’, can be explained as a contamination of the two inherited forms, the coexistence of which can be interpreted as a Greek-Armenian lexical isogloss, not shared by the Arian group, where only Ved. purogavá- is attested. Lat. prīscus must be excluded from the dossier discussed here since IE *-g^ṷus would have yielded Lat. **-guis, not *-kos.