# Forming agent nouns from verbs in Indo-European languages



## CyrusSH

I don't know why proto-Germanic _-ārijaz_ is said to be from Latin _-ārius_: Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/-ārijaz - Wiktionary

Isn't it a common Indo-European suffix? Like Persian _xarid_ "buy" and _xaridār_ "buyer".


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## ahvalj

Actually, nowhere in Germanic is this _ā_ directly attested: it is only reconstructed for Gothic since the outcome of _*ā_ is found in the Slavic loanwords from this language (e. g. Gothic _motareis_ → Old Church Slavonic _mytaŗь: _the Slavic _a_ comes from _*ā; á _in_ -ář _is still long in Czech). In Gothic, _ā_ is a new sound, found in a few lexemes where it had arisen from *_anx_ (e. g. in Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/fanhaną - Wiktionary), so this *_-āreis _can't be inherited in Germanic even for phonetic reasons (the etymological counterpart of _-ārius_ in Gothic would have looked like _**-oreis_).

Latin has occasional dialectal forms like _amāsius_ (amasius - Wiktionary) "lover", and the Oscan (Oscan language - Wikipedia) counterpart of this suffix is _-asi-, _used to produce denominal adjectives: _kersnu_ "banquet" → _kerssnasias_ "concerned with banquets" (Nom. Pl. fem.), cp. in Latin _aqua_ "water" → _aquārius_ "pertaining to water" (aquarius - Wiktionary). So, the Latin _-r- _here is the result of rhotacism  (Rhotacism (sound change) - Wikipedia).

Gothic didn't know rhotacism, so the inherited Gothic counterpart of_ -āsius_ should have looked like _**-ozeis._


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## CyrusSH

It was discussed in another that Latin words like vinum (wine) reached Scandinavia through trade, now you say some proto-Germanic suffixes were even loanwords from Latin, isn't it clear that proto-Germanic originated in the south, not the north?


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## ahvalj

In Latin, _-z->-r-_ occurred during the fourth century BC, but only a couple of centuries later Rome became influential enough for Latin to be source of loans to such remote languages, which weren't in direct contact with it. So, we're speaking of latest Common Germanic before its split.

The suffix _-ari-_ was not equally productive in all Germanic languages and in all layers of the vocabulary. For example, it is very scarcely attested in high poetry, like Edda or Beowulf. In Gothic, it is confined to the technical vocabulary, mostly to names of professionals (_sokareis_ "researcher", _bokareis_ "scribe", _laisareis_ "teacher", _wullareis_ "fuller", _*liuþareis_ "singer", _motareis_ "publican"): in that language one still couldn't attach it to any verbal root as in later Germanic languages ("I'm the decider" © Bush II). It is rare in earlier Old Norse (_dómari_ "judge", _skipari_ "capitan", _skapari_ "creator"). Overall, it looks like it should: a foreign suffix that was slowly gaining popularity (in Old Norse it wasn't still widespread a millennium after having been borrowed). Interestingly, the same picture is found in Slavic, where _-aŗь_ is pretty rare in older texts and in languages spoken outside Central Europe.


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## CyrusSH

There is a big difference between the Germanic and Latin suffixes, it says about the Latin suffix: -arius - Wiktionary

Used to form nouns denoting an agent of use, such as a dealer or artisan, from other *nouns*.

argentārius (“banker”), from argentum (“silver”)
aviculārius (“bird keeper”), from avicula (“little bird”)
rētiārius (“net fighter”), from rēte (“net”)

But the Germanic suffix, like the Persian one, forms agent nouns from *verbs*.


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## ahvalj

Gothic _mota_ "tax" → _motareis, boka_ "book" → _bokareis, wulla_ "wool" → _wullareis. _The deverbal use may have arisen from cases like _*liuþ _"song" → *_liuþon_ "to sing of" (attested in Praes. Sg. 1) and _*liuþ → *liuþareis_ "singer" (attested in Nom. Pl.), Old English _fisc_ "fish" → _fiscian_ "to fish" and_ fisc_ → _fiscere_ "fisher". Often we simply don't know whether it was formed from the noun or the verb, like in Norse _dómari_ "judge" — from _dómr_ (<_*đōmaz_) "court" or from _dǿma_ (<_*đōmijanan_) "to judge".

The Persian _-dår _is obviously from _*-tōr. _In cases like _xäridår _this _-d-_ casually coincides with _-d-_ of the verbal stem, so the suffix looks like _-år; _likewise in _goftår._


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## CyrusSH

If you look at a Persian dictionary: معنی آر | فرهنگ فارسی معین then you will see _ār_ and _dār/tār_ are different suffixes (of courses many people think they are the same), the first one forms agent noun but the second one forms gerund, the Persian word _goftār_ that you mentioned, means "speech", not "speaker".

In Persian _-ar_ means "creator, doer", it is also added to nouns, for example _din_ "religion" and _dinār_ "prophet, one who creates religion": معنی دین آر | لغت‌نامه دهخدا

مسیحای دین آر، اگر کشته شد
نه فر جهاندار ازو گشته شد.
Shahnameh


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## ahvalj

Yes, but that's the semantic distinction: morphologically this is the same type. See the Old Persian and Avestan _-tār. _The form _-ār_ arose long ago, in Middle Persian, exactly because of this reinterpretation of _-t->-d- _as part of the verbal stem, e. g. PIE _*dehₒ-tōr_ "giver" (Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/déh₃tōr - Wiktionary) + _*dʰehₑ-tōr_ "doer" > Iranic _*dātār _(Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/dáHtā - Wiktionary) > Middle Persian _dātār>dādār _"creator" which looks derived from the _t>d-_stem of دادن - Wiktionary whereas in reality _-t-_ in the noun and _-t-_ in the verb are of different origins and in Old Indic and residually in Greek the actor noun and the deverbal adjective (>participle) had different ablaut grades: _e_-grade in the noun (_*dehₒtōr _> Indic _dātā _— दातृ - Wiktionary, Greek _δώτωρ_ — δώτωρ - Wiktionary) vs. zero-grade in the adjective (_*dhₒtos_ > _δοτός_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dh₃tós - Wiktionary; in Indic we find the modified _-dātaḥ~dattaḥ_ to avoid confusion with _ditaḥ_ of the homonymous _dā-_ "to divide").


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## Treaty

CyrusSH said:


> In Persian _-ar_ means "creator, doer", it is also added to nouns, for example _din_ "religion" and _dinār_ "prophet, one who creates religion": معنی دین آر | لغت‌نامه دهخدا


It is _dīn_-_ār _not _dinār_ . Here, _ār _is short for _āvar _("to bring").


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## ahvalj

And I forgot that in the Persian verbs two _t-_stems have coincided: the Past stem comes from the _ta_-Participle whereas the Infinitive continues the originally unrelated abstract nouns in _-tanai<*-teneı̯, _e. g. _kärdän<<čartanai<*kʷerteneı̯ _vs. _kärd<karta<<*kʷr̥tos. _So we have three unrelated sources of _-t-. _Such things happen, too.


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## ahvalj

A parallel development can be found in English with the suffix _-or: _in the modern language _creator_ looks derived from _create, _and by analogy _survivor_ is produced from _survive._ But in reality, in Latin _creātus_ and _creātor_ are two independent formations of the verb _creō, creās _and the element _-t-_ in both words is simply coinciding.


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## CyrusSH

ahvalj said:


> Gothic _mota_ "tax" → _motareis, boka_ "book" → _bokareis, wulla_ "wool" → _wullareis. _



Compare Gothic _bokareis_ to Persian _dabir_, why we shouldn't consider this Germanic suffix as loanword from Iranian? 

<off topic>


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## ahvalj

Because there are several direct loans, e. g. Old High German _ȥolanâri<tolonārius, muniȥȥâri<monetārius._ Plus, I suspect nobody ever considered the Persian etymology of this suffix. By the way, I was wrong that the long vowel is not attested directly in Germanic — here Old High German, as usual, preserves unstressed long vowels better than its contemporaries.

<off topic>


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## fdb

Avestan dātar- “creator” is Vedic dhātar-; Middle and New Persian dādār is from the accusative singular dātāram, either from long-grade *-tōr-em, or else from full-grade *-tor-em > *-tār-am (Brugmann’s law). In either case dātar- is from *dhā-tor- (IE suffix *-tor), not from the participle dā-ta-.


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> The Persian _-dår _is obviously from _*-tōr. _In cases like _xäridår _this _-d-_ casually coincides with _-d-_ of the verbal stem, so the suffix looks like _-år; _likewise in _goftår._



xrīdār is from the present stem (MP xrīn-) + tār, not from the past stem xrīd. For d+t one expects -st- as in present band-, ppp. *bad-ta- > bast “to bind”.


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## CyrusSH

fdb said:


> xrīdār is from the present stem (MP xrīn-) + tār, not from the past stem xrīd. For d+t one expects -st- as in present band-, ppp. *bad-ta- > bast “to bind”.



It can be true as a gerund but according to the Persian dictionary that I mentioned in the post #7, for forming agent nouns the suffix _ār_ is added to مصدر مرخم (shortened infinitive verb), not the present or past stem, compare to _forushandeh_ and _foruxtār_ "seller".


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## fdb

CyrusSH said:


> It can be true as a gerund but according to the Persian dictionary that I mentioned in the post #7, for forming agent nouns the suffix _ār_ is added to مصدر مرخم (shortened infinitive verb), not the present or past stem, compare to _forushandeh_ and _foruxtār_ "seller".



I think Treaty (no. 9) has already answered this. The “suffix” ār is the shorter New Persian form of āwar, the compositional stem of āwurdan “to bring”.  We have been talking about the suffix -tār, which goes all the way back to IE *-tōr.


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## ahvalj

Is it possible to distinguish when _-år_ goes back to _-tār _and when to this compound?


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## CyrusSH

fdb said:


> I think Treaty (no. 9) has already answered this. The “suffix” ār is the shorter New Persian form of āwar, the compositional stem of āwurdan “to bring”.  We have been talking about the suffix -tār, which goes all the way back to IE *-tōr.



What do you mean by "New Persian"? This suffix exists in several Middle Persian words too, like _šigun_ "pass" and _šigunār_ "passer".


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## fdb

CyrusSH said:


> This suffix exists in several Middle Persian words too, like _šigun_ "pass" and _šigunār_ "passer".



I don't know these words. Do you have a reference?


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## Treaty

My post was only about _dīn_-_ār _which its _ār _comes from _āvar. _As for _ār _after مصدر مرخم, isn't  مصدر مرخم just a new term given to the old past participle that resembled the current past stem (whereas, new past participle is made by adding _a_(_g_) to the past stem)? If so, as Ahvalj noted in #8, adding _ār _after past stem (i.e. old pp.) seems to fit into the back-formation that _tār _had been -_t _+ _ār.
_
Considering _šigun- _and its derivatives, I'm not sure. Is it from this weird word-list compiled by an unnamed person and uploaded in Dehkhoda's website? If so, the resources are seriously questionable (e.g. Du Perron, and worse, using Herodotus for Pahlavi and, that the list of "Pahlavi" words includes the name of Elamite kings !!). He or she also shows traces of purism which makes the list more suspicious.


fdb said:


> Do you have a reference?


Please see above.

P.S. If that link doesn't work, here is an alternative copy of it: https://forum.hammihan.com/thread233209-3.html


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## sumelic

Piotr Gąsiorowski published an article recently about _-ārijaz_ in Germanic: Cherchez la femme: Two Germanic suffixes, one etymology : Folia Linguistica mentioned in the comments section of the following Language Hat blog post: languagehat.com :   Lameter.


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## ahvalj

I have no access to the contents of the paper and I wonder what kind of trick is used to explain the origin of this_ ā, _which, as I had written, was a new and very marginal vowel in Germanic in the first centuries CE. A little earlier, Germanics substituted the Latin _ā_ with their _ō_ (which was an open vowel), e. g. the Gothic variant _rūmoneis<rōmānī_ "Romans" (A Gothic Etymological Dictionary) and, conversely, Romans heard the Germanic _ō_ as a kind of _ā_ (_silva Bācēnsis_ "beech forest", cp. _bōk-_ in all the attested languages).


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## eamp

I found it, he suggests -_azr_- > -_ār_- in Late Proto-Germanic where it would have joined marginal _ā _arising from contraction processes like -_aja_- > -_ā_-.
Then he connects it to the suffix -_astrijō_- (or similar) which forms feminine occupation nouns in Old English and later Dutch and Low German.
He thinks they both are ultimately based on Verner variants of a suffix -_sriH_- connected to an old PIE word for woman.
So the male *-_ārijaz _would be derived secondarily from a female occupation forming suffix *-_ārῑ_/-_ārijō_-. After contact with the Romans the native suffix would then have been identified with the almost homophonous Latin -_ārius, _facilitating loans.

It's possible, I guess, though quite a coincidence that Germanic and Latin should end up with suffixes of almost identical meaning and form from entirely different starting points.
Also, the same suffix was readily loaned into Slavic (where it likewise attaches to native nouns), so I am not sure the argument, that it must be old in Germanic because it is found with native bases, holds that much water.


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## sumelic

eamp said:


> It's possible, I guess, though quite a coincidence that Germanic and Latin should end up with suffixes of almost identical meaning and form from entirely different starting points.



Well, it seems like something similar has occurred later on in English with "-(t/s)or" agent/instrument nouns from Latin, like "actor" and "supervisor", which pretty much act as variant spellings of "-er" words even though as far as I can see these suffixes are etymologically unrelated.


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## ahvalj

Thanks. Yet, I still have doubts:

I have never seen any example of compensatory lengthening _*Vsr>V̄r_ or _*Vzr>V̄r_ in ancient Germanic. The only instance is perhaps _*wasran~wazran_ "spring" (_Kroonen G · 2013 · Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic: _575), which produces the Norse _vár_ vs. Frisian _wars~wērs,_ but Norse is a rhotacizing language, unlike Gothic, which retains _z _(though we have no examples of _zr_ attested in that language). In case of _*sm~zm_ Gothic has _mm_ (the Dat. Sg. masc./neut. of pronouns is _-smai_ in Old Indic, _-smu_ in Prussian and -_mma_ in Gothic, e. g. _tasmai~stēsmu~þamma _"to this"); _*temhₑ-(e)s-ro-s>*þem(e)straz_ "dark, dusky" (_Kroonen G · 2013 · Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic: _537; _Orel VE · 2003 · A handbook of Germanic etymology: _420); _*su̯esr->swestr-_ "sister".
Old English also has _-istre<*-istrijōn- _(-estre - Wiktionary), so we could have expected a parallel _**-īrijaz _(> Old English -_ere _with umlaut of the root), which is lacking.
In Slavic, too, this suffix is found attached to native roots (e. g. Old Church Slavonic _vrataŗь_ "door-keeper", _rybaŗь_ "fisher"), despite being obviously borrowed. Interestingly, Slavic has a fully parallel form _*-ūr-_>_-yŗь,_ which can also be found in loanwords (_pāstor>pastyŗь_) and occasionally is encountered in pairs with _-aŗь_ (e. g. Russian _ёбарь/jobarʲ~ёбырь/jobyrʲ_ "fucker"; _поводарь/povodarʲ~поводырь/povodyrʲ_ "a kind of guide").
*P. S.* Slavic also has remnants of _*-aur-,_ cp. Russian _снегирь/snʲegʲirʲ _(< Earlier Common Slavic _*snaı̯gūr- _from _*snaı̯gas_ "snow") "bullfinch" vs. the Ukrainian _снігур/snʲihur, _Nom. Pl. _снігурі/snʲihurʲi_ (_<*snaı̯gaur-_). 

Both Slavic _u-_types may be connected with the Lithuanian _-urys_ (_švyturys_ "lighthouse", _žiburys_ "light").


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## sumelic

ahvalj said:


> Thanks. Yet, I still have doubts



To make myself clear, I'm certainly not qualified to dispell those doubts. I linked to the paper by Gąsiorowski because I thought it seemed relevant and interesting; I haven't even read it yet, and it may very well be wrong.



> I have never seen any example of compensatory lengthening _*Vsr>V̄r_ or _*Vzr>V̄r_ in ancient Germanic. The only instance is perhaps _*wasran~wazran_ "spring" (_Kroonen G · 2013 · Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic: _575), which produces the Norse _vár_ vs. Frisian _wars~wērs,_ but Norse is a rhotacizing language, unlike Gothic, which retains _z _(but we have no examples of _zr_ attested in that language). In case of _*sm~zm_ Gothic has _mm_ (the Dat. Sg. masc./neut. of pronouns is _-smai_ in Old Indic, _-smu_ in Prussian and -_mma_ in Gothic, e. g. _tasmai~stēsmu~þamma _"to this"); _*temhₑ-es-ro-s>*þem(e)straz_ "dark, dusky" (_Kroonen G · 2013 · Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic: _537; _Orel VE · 2003 · A handbook of Germanic etymology: _420); _*su̯esr->swestr-_ "sister".



I believe this is a sound change that Gąsiorowski himself proposed (at least, in this particular formulation) relatively recently, so it would not be part of the consensus list of sound changes. It's presented in _The Germanic Reflexes of PIE_ *-sr _in the context of Verner's Law_ in _The Sound of Indo-European _(2012), where in addition to the "spring" word that you already mentioned, he proposes analyzing the "hair" word as from *xezra- < PIE *kes-ró-m and mentions the possible cognacy of the "aurochs" word with Sanskrit usr- words referring to bulls and cows.


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## ahvalj

There are of course various interpretations of the same words.

Kroonen (p. 220) also suggests that _*xēran_ "hair" may have the long vowel inherited (cp. Old Irish _cír_ "comb" < _*kīsrā_ < _*kʲēs-rehₐ; _though _Matasović R · 2009 · Etymological dictionary of Proto-Celtic: _204 writes that the long vowel in Celtic is unexpected and suggests that "it is tempting to posit a reduplicated proto-form _*ke-ks-reh₂ > *kexsrā_"); though again we have no Gothic evidence, so it is hard to tell if this loss of _z_ was not consequence of rhotacism. Orel (p. 172) compares this word with the Lithuanian _šerys_ and Latvian _sars_ "bristle" (as does with question _Fraenkel E · 1962 · Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch: _973), in which case no _-sr-_ would be involved.

As to _*ūruz _"aurochs" (for which we have the Gothic _uruz,_ the name of a rune) Kroonen (p. 561) mentions that the Sanskrit _usraḥ_ "red bull" "is probably a late derivation from Skt. _uṣar-_ 'dawn'". Orel (p. 437) in his turn connects the Germanic word with _*ūran_ "drizzling rain" (related according to Orel to _*warōn~waraz_ "liquid, water, sea", which would be connected with Sanskrit _vāri_ "water, rain" etc.) with the same semantic development as Proto-Indo-European _*u̯r̥sēn _"male" from _*u̯ers-_ "to rain" (cp. Sanskrit _vr̥ṣ-_ — Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit and Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit), alluding to the sperm, as far as I can judge.


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## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> My post was only about _dīn_-_ār _which its _ār _comes from _āvar. _As for _ār _after مصدر مرخم, isn't  مصدر مرخم just a new term given to the old past participle that resembled the current past stem (whereas, new past participle is made by adding _a_(_g_) to the past stem)? If so, as Ahvalj noted in #8, adding _ār _after past stem (i.e. old pp.) seems to fit into the back-formation that _tār _had been -_t _+ _ār._



There is no need to change the Persian grammar, it is clear what مصدر مرخم is and there is certainly a reason that Iranian linguists believe the suffix _ār_ is attached to it, as I said there are numerous Middle Persian agent nouns with the suffix _ār_, for example another one is _pišār_ "leader".


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