Another one for the metanalysis list: OE nædre > MnE adder

Since long range relationships always seem to arouse the comment gods around here, I thought that I would pass this on, especially since I just got my copy of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov _Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans_ today (because of the high spending ways of the Japanese ministry of education, thank you very much.) and your citation of *sed- got me going.

At any rate, I'm looking up *sed- and the PIE form for sit they list is *set- rather than *sed- (they argue for a more "phonologically natural" interpretation of Bartholomae's law, see this PDF for an explanation here ) Trying to figure out why they change the final consonant, I see that they also list *es- as a root for sit, so more digging. They seem to extend (I think) Meillet's observation (which is that IE gender arises from an animate/impersonal division) and argue for doublet verb lexemes for active and inactive classes, so that there is a verb form for animate objects and one for inanimate objects with verbs like be, stand, lie/sleep, and sit given as examples. They present a lot more info about the distinction. and there are others who have explored/are exploring this, check out 2.2 here

So, having argued for a second root for sit that was *es- (which they relate to Sanskrit a:s-, Avestan a:s-/a:h-, Hittite eš-, and Greek he:stai 'sits'), they then suggest a connection to Hurrian ašš- and Urartean aš-, which then suggests a connection to Proto-Uralic *ase- (there should be an acute accent over the s)

Apologies in advance for using your post as an excuse to dip into G&I, but my 5 year old doesn't appreciate how cool this is.

I always welcome my posts being used as excuses to dip into the farther reaches of language history! I am, as you probably know, skeptical of attempts to connect IE to other language families, but am always willing to examine the evidence; I'll have to see if the NYPL has Gamkrelidze and Ivanov so I can take a look.

I should note that the work doesn't aim to link PIE with other Proto languages, but rather to do a reconstruction of IE that takes into account typology and the information from Hittite. They note the connection and cite Illi?-Svity? in this regard. It is translated from Russian by Johanna Nichols, and the preface should be quite interesting for you.

Better and better. I'll look for it.