UDK 801.54:802.0-54 »over, upon«; »above«; »upper«
GOTHIC IUP, WELSH UCH\ OLD IRISH UABAR Eric P. Hamp
I wrote about Gothic iup avw in relation to uf, ufar, German auf, Old English up, upp, etc., Latin sub, super, Umbrian sub, Oscan sup, Greek uito and clearly related forms attested throughout Indo-European, in Modern Language Notes, January 1954, 39—41, without being able to reach a positive conclusion. All I could then establish was that the consonant was not the desired kind (apparently the nearly non-occurring IE *b), or else there was a strange unmotivated laryngeal suffix; that the initial required a laryngeal different from that which Albanian hyp ,mount, climb' leads us to assign to this base; and that iup could not be connected with uf.
It is only now, after my old and dear friend Janez Stanonik and I have lived through our active teaching careers, in times often difficult but fortified by warm unforgettable friendship and devotion to the high values and beauty that Slovenia represents, that I unexpectedly 'see the solution in a single process to each of the difficulties of this Gothic form. At the -same time this means that no residual doubts are left for the membership of a large number of early Germanic forms in relations of cognacy.
Without having this Gothic form in mind, I have been occupied in recent years with two problems of Celtic word form. On more than one occasion I have found it necessary to consider Celtic expressions for ,over, upon', ,above', ,higher (than)', ,upper', etc., and compounds employing such notions. These investigations have led me to solutions of detail that need not concern us here; however, such solutions have the value of clearing up adjacent aspects so that the total account of a form is clearer, our grasp of the relevant features is more complete and more responsible, and the exact character and setting of the features which now interest us emerge highlighted in greater clarity.
Without aiming at completeness let us recall some basic lexemes and elements that the Celtic languages attest in the semantic range ,above'. There is ample attestation of the particle widespread in Indo-European represented by English over: since this category of element participated widely in compounding, a useful illustration to cite is the Gaulish name Ver-cingetorix where the element uer- has the value of aya- in 'Aya-[jiy.vwv. Gaulish tier is to be derived from *uer < *uper; we see this again in Germ. Pferd < para + uer(-)edus (: Welsh gorwydd), cf, my analysis, Canadian Journal of Linguistics 17, 1972, 128—31. In Insular Celtic we find Irish for, British uar < *uor, seemingly < *upor, but thought to be contaminated by the vocalism of the
9
polar opposite Irish /oL, British uo- ,under' < *upo; cf. British uar and uor-, *ua and uo-, Studia Celtica 7, 1972, 155—6. Note in all of these the reflex of a simple *u; cf. the exact match in the reflexes in other IE languages: Greek unEp/uTTo, Sanskrit upar-i/upa, Gothic ufar/uf. As examples of the Celtic inflected prepositions, note Old Irish masc. neut. 3rd person dative for/fdu, accusative foir/ foi, 3rd plural accusative forru (see the grammars for details of these relics).
Now when we turn to the preposition/particle ,above' in Celtic we find a different vocalism: Olr. os, uas (+ dative), 3rd plural osib, later uas(s)aib = Welsh uchL (Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 29, 1982, 681—2), 3rd sg. masc. uchtaw, fem. uchti all reflect *euks- < *eups- or *eupsi in the face of Greek uvj/i. Similarly the adjective and derived noun Olr. uais ,high', the noun ¿chtar, later uachtar ,upper part' (which has given rise to the opposite ichtar ,lower part' by analogical formation), and the adverbs t-uas, s-uas and an-uas all show *eu (or *ou), although in these forms this could be credited to further derivational processes. I have discussed Welsh uch1- etc. in the last-mentioned reference.
Now in addition to the forms above mentioned Welsh shows among its archaic, and in our documentation irregular comparatives to adjectives the homophcnous uch ,higher'. In the above mentioned article I have pointed out that in comparative formations the originating IE forms regularly required full-grade vocalism. Therefore the comparative uch < *eup-s-o- is regular. From this form the vocalism spread to the equative kyv-uch, and to the suffixed positive uchel = Olr. uasal ,high' < *BASE + (e)lo-. The original state of this last formation is seen in *u- of Greek ui[m>.oc, British Vxela, Gaulish Uxello-dunum as well as Vx-ac-ona. The major source and the productivity of the *eu vocalism are therefore clear.
In summary at this stage, in Welsh terms we may write: comparative uch -> uch1-, uchel; and in parallel fashion for the Irish reflexes, all of these known to us from Insular Celtic.
This set of forms was not alone, and the observed behaviour is confirmed by the antonym set. For the preposition ,below' we have Olr. is (+ dative) = Welsh is, Olr. 3rd sg. masc. issa (: Welsh istaw, fem. isti), 3rd pi. issaib. Welsh again shows us the comparative is , lower', to the adjective is el — Olr. isel ,low'. This time we do not really have the development of an IE directional; rather, we have an old derivative of IE ,foot' used metaphorically and developed in formations parallel to *eup-s-. Thus I have derived (Zeitschrift fiir celtische Philologie 44, 1991, 74) *iss- : ouks- < *ess- : euks- -e- *ess- : uks-(as if *e were *ee and initial *e were added throughout) < *ped-s- : up-s-. I would now revise this series to 'ess- : euks- < *(p)ess- : eups- *(p)ess- : eups- < *ped-s- : eup-s-/up-s-. It will be seen that this is a necessary and important revision.
We may now return to our Gothic form iup. It is immediately clear that this is best derived as in the case of the Insular Celtic attestations from a pre-form *eup-s-, to which we would attribute a morphological background' identical to that described above for the Celtic outcome. This is an important gain in our understanding of early Germanic morphology, and the history of the comparative.
At the same time we now see more clearly the prehistory of Olr. obar, later uabar ,vainglory', giving the adjective huaibrech. These two words must
10
be reconstructed *oubero- and *ouberako-, or *eubero- and *euberako-. Just as in the Gothic instance, the newly formed base has been extracted from the sigmatic suffixed formation(s) with the labial in an etymologically unjustified state; the base was interpreted as *eub- in this position of neutralization.1
The conclusions to be drawn from this analysis are more far-reaching than might have been thought. We appear to have here a tenuous relic of an early Celtic-Germanic (or Northwest IE?) development in common, a common innovation. This innovation must be sufficiently early to find the pre-Celtic *p still in place: thus *eup-s-/up-er *eub-er-o-, cf. Latin superbus < *s-uper-bh(u)(H!i)-o-, originally *,being (s)uper-o-.
Moreover, we know from Albanian hyp ,mount, climb' that this base originally had the IE a-colouring laryngeal *h; see MLN, January 1954, 41, and Theo Vennemann ed., The New Sound of Indo-European (Mouton 1989) 209—14. At a sufficiently early time we should expect *heup-s- *haups- > *aups-. The fact that we find * eup-s-/up- *eub- in both Celtic and Germanic shows that *h- had already been lost in these IE branches, and chronologically before the loss of Celtic *p.
Gothic iup is not a riddle at all; it turns out to be extremely valuable.
1 Perhaps a similar extracted *b accounts by Winter's lengthening for the antecedent length seen in Slavic vysok-b and kindred forms.
11