# Greek prefix (σύν-, syn-), an Indo-European word?



## CitizenEmpty

"Syn-" is a very productive prefix of Greek origin. SYNtax, SYNonym, SYLlable, and even SYStem.... Syn- means "with", "in accompany of", and even "together". It's sort of like "cum-" in Latin. Is there a possibility that "σύν-" came from an Indo-European preposition or postposition? The Wiktionary says that it may be from *sem-.


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## apmoy70

CitizenEmpty said:


> "Syn-" is a very productive prefix of Greek origin. SYNtax, SYNonym, SYLlable, and even SYStem.... Syn- means "with", "in accompany of", and even "together". It's sort of like "cum-" in Latin. Is there a possibility that "σύν-" came from an Indo-European preposition or postposition? The Wiktionary says that it may be from *sem-.


Could be, but that does not explain the Attic form (and prevalent in Classical literature) «ξύν» ksún; unless it's regarded -as Dunkel suggests- a contamination of «σύν» with -k- added before -σ- (PIE *ḱóm > Lat. cum-/com-, Gr. κ-σύν/ξύν); «σύν» is generally assumed to be younger than «ξύν»


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## origumi

Etymonline suggests: _from PIE *ksun- "with"_, which also answers the Attic issue above.


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## ahvalj

_Beekes RSP · 2010 · Etymological dictionary of Greek:_ 1038 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJeWVWWWcydS0wVE0&authuser=0)

"No clear correspondences exist outside Greek. The appurtenance of BSl. forms (Lith. _sù_ 'with', OCS _sъ_, Ru. _s(o)_ 'together with, down from, etc.') is doubtful. Dunkel _Glotta_ 60 (1982): 55-61 assumes that ξυν arose from *_som_ with *_k_- (seen in *_kom_, Lat. _cum_) added before it (thus a contamination).
The word ξύν is probably also contained in μεταξύ…".

I can add that the vowel _u_ here is inexplicable from the standard Greek vowel changes, neither from _o_ (which should have preserved, e. g. *_tom_>_τόν_) nor as a fill vowel before a syllabic sonorant (which should have been _α, _e. g. *_sm̥_->_ἁ_- in _ἃπαξ_) and, if indeed this word is related to IE *_som_-/_sm̥_- it must have been borrowed from a non-Greek IE language (there seems to be evidence that at least one unattested Palaeobalkanic language had _u_ as a fill vowel). Plus, the contamination *_kon_ (<*_kom)_ × *_sun_ (<*_sm̥_) must have been quite ancient since *_s_->_h_- in Greek already in the middle 2nd millennium BC. As a humorous parallel to this contamination: in Russian, the word _Ukraina_ "Ukraine" is used with the preposition _na_ "on" (_na Ukraine_), whereas the names of the countries require _v(o)_ "in"; after gaining independence, Ukrainians began to demand the use of _v Ukraine_, which has given rise to the mocking _vna Ukraine_ "inon Ukraine".


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## fdb

Dunkel's article is here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40266571?seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents

As you see, he has a very good explanation for -u- on page 58.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> Dunkel's article is here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40266571?seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents
> 
> As you see, he has a very good explanation for -u- on page 58.


Sorry, my access rights permit only the first page to be displayed ,-(

Yet, I can't imagine what could be the satisfactory explanation. When Greek has an unexpected _u_ (e. g. in _νύξ_<*_nokʷts_), it is usually linked to the presence of a labiovelar or any other labial. Nothing of it is present here. I think the adstrate _S̥_>_uS_ is by far the most plausible explanation (which would also explain the strange preservation of _s_- and would make redundant the hypothesis of _συν_<_ξυν_: the former would be simply the coexisting original form). The _u_-vocalization is not rare in the palaeo-Balkanic toponyms (e. g. _e/o/0_>_e/a/u_ in _Μερμησσός/Μαρμησσός/Μυρμησσός — _http://www.chlt.org/sandbox/perseus/harper/page.6905.a.php?size=240x320), so it is quite probable that the language of some of the Greek neighbors (and co-colonizers of the Greek peninsula) displayed this reflexation.


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## fdb

I would send you a pdf if I knew if or how this is possible. But I think it is not a good idea to reject something just because you cannot get it to show up on your screen.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> I would send you a pdf if I knew if or how this is possible. But I think it is not a good idea to reject something just because you cannot get it to show up on your screen.


But did I reject? I just wondered if a satisfactory in-Greek explanation, not seen by etymologists in the past 200 years, was possible... Could you cite of write in your own words how does Dunkel explain _su_- ? Thank you in advance.


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## CitizenEmpty

Interesting insight.


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## Gavril

Aren't there other possible cases of _*k_ > _ks _(whether dialectal or substratal) in Greek?

For example, some time ago I saw a comparison made between Greek _xanthós _"yellow" and Latin _candidus_ "shining white".


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> Aren't there other possible cases of _*k_ > _ks _(whether dialectal or substratal) in Greek?
> 
> For example, some time ago I saw a comparison made between Greek _xanthós _"yellow" and Latin _candidus_ "shining white".


This change in any case can't be phonetic: _ks_ is regarded as a result of contamination of _k_- and _s_-, possible because IE had two similarly sounding adverbs, *_kom_ and *_som_ with more or less the same meaning (*_kom_ probably meant "towards">"with", *_som_ "into one">"with"). In English, it would correspond to something like _Celts_ [k-] × _Celts_ [s-] > **_Xelts_.

_ξανθόϛ_ — _Beekes RSP · 2010 · Etymological dictionary of Greek:_ 1033 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJeWVWWWcydS0wVE0&authuser=0):
ETYM Unexplained. A remote connection with Lat. _cānus_ 'grey' has been supposed, but this remains gratuitous. The comparison with Etr. _zamθic_, supposedly 'of gold', has little value (Heubeck _Würzb. Jb._ 4:2 (1949–1950): 202 compares _Σκάμανδροϛ_ as well). The word may be Pre-Greek; cf. ▸ξουθόϛ.

_candidus_: from _candeō_ "to shine" — _de Vaan M · 2008 · Etymological dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages:_ 87 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJS1ZxV2dpdnhzUEk&authuser=0):
Lat. _candeō_, if from PIE *_knd_-, has an unexpected vowel -_a_- instead of *-_e_-. Applying Schrijver's observation (1991: 495f.) that a cluster of four consonants can be resolved by inserting _a_ after the first consonant (as in _castrum, māla,_ etc.), *_kand_- may have arisen in PIE formations such as *_knd-ro_- (cf. Skt. _candrá_-) or *_knd-no_- (Alb. _hënë_).


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## ahvalj

By the way, if the reconstruction is right, we may find the development *_sm̥_>_sun_ to be regular for Thracian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian_language#Thracian — see the table; _Дуриданов И · 1976 · Езикът на траките:_ 108 — https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJamRuWF8xQnM5TjQ&authuser=0). The Thracian territory for the later period is reconstructed as something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/ThracianLanguageMap.jpg . For those who read Russian, there is a good overview of the ancient evidence of the Thracian presence in Greece in _Откупщиков ЮВ · 1988 · Догреческий субстрат:_ 44–47, 52–57, 65–66 and, less specifically, on other pages of that chapter (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJdFVCeVIxcXJPSVU&authuser=0).


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## Perseas

Babiniotis says that _ξυν_ is older than _συν_, as comes out in the Mycenaean _ku-su_ (_ξυν_); the final -ν was created later, cf. adverb _μετα-ξύ._ 
Also, we cannot exclude the connection with the stem of the verb _ξύω_ (= _scratch, scrape_)


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## CitizenEmpty

Giving the sea-faring traditions of Greek civilization, it looks like Hellenic speakers in the past adopted many words from other Hellenic words with different sound changes. But I'm not sure I'm making any sense here.


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> Giving the sea-faring traditions of Greek civilization, it looks like Hellenic speakers in the past adopted many words from other Hellenic words with different sound changes. But I'm not sure I'm making any sense here.


Beekes, the author of the etymological dictionary cited above, claims that a significant percent of unetymologizable Greek words share common phonetic and sometimes word-formational traits and should be attributed to the pre-IE language spoken in Greece before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans (he calls it "Pre-Greek"). 

As far as we imagine, the IE migration from the Pontic steppes to the south of the Danube occurred in several waves, starting approximately at around the boundary of the 3rd and 2nd millennia, and future Greeks were just one of the elements of these waves, so borrowings from and to were possible much earlier than the Greek speakers became acquainted with the sea-faring. On the other hand, if _sun_ is indeed of Thracian (or any other IE non-Greek) origin, this borrowing must have occurred after the Greek change _s_->_h_- (which cannot be dated but is already present in the Mycenaean tablets as well as in all Greek dialects).


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## sotos

ahvalj said:


> As far as we imagine, the IE migration from the Pontic steppes to the south of the Danube occurred in several waves, starting approximately at around the boundary of the 3rd and 2nd millennia, and future Greeks were just one of the elements of these waves, so borrowings from and to were possible much earlier than the Greek speakers became acquainted with the sea-faring. On the other hand, if _sun_ is indeed of Thracian ....



People inhabiting Greece were acquainted with sea-faring since palaeolithic. http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/pdf/uploads/StoneAgeSeafaringintheMedHesp79_2_145-190.pdf
and possibly "Waves of immigrants from the steppes" may soon be a surpassed theory (some immigration certainly did happen). "Thracian language" is another phantom language (like Illyrian) that exists more in Wikipedia and some nationalistic fora than in archaeological findings. Actually, the lengthy article of WP that you referred says that "Little is known for certain about the Thracian language, since no phrase beyond a few words in length has been satisfactorily deciphered" and "Only four Thracian inscriptions of any length have been found. One is a gold ring ...". 
The hand-made map of the "_reconstructed__ Thracian territory_" attributed (*1985*) to a certain Ivan Duridanov  (Bulgarian linguist) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/ThracianLanguageMap.jpg shows exactly the territorial ambitions of Bulgaria (and recently by F.Y.D. of Macedonia) expressed from the end of 19th century till the Cold War, briefly materialized with the Bulgarian occupation of Thrace in WW2.


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## ahvalj

The Indo-European Greek language definitely wasn't spoken in Greece during palaeolithic, so the sea-faring lexicon must have entered Greek from the language of the assimilated pre-IE population (including _thalassa_ etc.). Judging from the genetic studies, Greeks indeed have a low percentage of R1a (often regarded as IE marker — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans#Genetics), so the IE language must have been brought to northern and peninsular Greece by a rather limited amount of invaders (as it happened later e. g. with Latin in the western and northern Mediterranean and with Turkish in Anatolia). 

For the attestations of Thracian see my post with literature links in the parallel thread about Albanian: the toponymic and ethnonymic material attributed to Thracians (including direct mentioning in the ancient sources) is pretty extensive: it is of limited value for the reconstruction of the language, since most often we don't know the meaning of the roots and suffixes, but it creates nevertheless an image of a language with its own sound and word-formational system. I would say, of all the non-Greek Palaeobalkanic languages, Thracian is the most secure (Phrygian is better attested and understood, but in the historical times it was spoken not in the Balkans).


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## CitizenEmpty

I wonder if there's a Slavic word that means throwing, but also means something like "to talk, discuss".


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> Dunkel's article is here: σύν, ξύν on JSTOR
> 
> As you see, he has a very good explanation for -u- on page 58.


I still have no access to that paper. Could you write in brief what is Dunkel's explanation?

For _s-_ we also have _σῦς _(along with the expected _ὗς_) that can't be inherited in Greek.


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> I still have no access to that paper. Could you write in brief what is Dunkel's explanation?
> 
> For _s-_ we also have _σῦς _(along with the expected _ὗς_) that can't be inherited in Greek.



 Send me your email address by private message; I will forward a pdf.


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## ahvalj

Thanks. A forum member has sent me the file 10 minutes ago.

I still think the interpretation of _*som>sun_ as originally Greek based on those three problematic words that retain _s_ (+ _δασύς_) is dangerous as it allows to make exceptions in phonetic laws when we don't know how to explain a certain word. Of course, anything can happen in reality, but science shouldn't rely on miracles: if such a miracle is documented, it should be investigated, but otherwise it is safer to look elsewhere. I think the loan from a related language, where preservation of _s_ (and _*R̥>uR_) was regular, is more convincing — as it is explained in the history of Latin where words like _bōs_ and _rūfus_ are satisfactorily attributed to Sabellic.


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## ahvalj

Searching Beekes for the reflexes of PIE _*su-_ in Greek we find:

_υἱύς<*suhₓı̯us_
_ὕπαρ<*supr̥_
_ὕπνος<*supnos_
_ὗς<*suhₓs_
_ὕει<*suhₐı̯e-._


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