programa "logosi"

nichaean texts and MPers. zindag ‘living, alive’ indicates that Parth. –wwas
preserved in the relevant phonetic environment. To this, one must add
that few unequivocal Middle Persian borrowings (as opposed to Parthian
borrowings) have been identified in the Armenian language so far, which
makes my hypothesis the simplest one possible. The only reason why Salemann
and Marr could not indicate the Parthian origin of Arm. hiwand, was
the lack of information about Parthian phonology in the early 20 th century.
Since Parthian *ē and *ī were reflected in Armenian as i in non-final
syllables, we are free to choose any of the two vowels for our Parthian reconstructions.
The reconstructed Parthian *hēwand can go back to Proto-
Iranian *haya-want- (vel sim.). This form ought to contain the suffix –wantderiving
adjectives from nouns, which is attested in several other Parthian
words (e.g. pwnwnd ‘commendable’, ‘sprhm’wynd ‘blooming’, cf. further
Skalmowski 1967, § 3.16). The most likely root underlying Ir. *haya- ‘illness’
(vel sim.), which morphologically can be an action noun, is √ hāi
‘bind’ < IE. sHēi- ‘bind’, which is well attested in Old and Middle Iranian,
mostly with negative connotations. For the semantic derivation of adjectives
meaning ‘ill’ from verbs of negative physical impact, cf. Avestan bazda-
‘ill’, a historical participle from Iranian √ band ‘bind’, or somewhat more
remotely Turk. hasta ‘ill’ < Pers. xasta ‘tired’ < Ir. √ xad ‘grind’.
Even though the sound change *s(H)-> h- is attested in the history of
both Iranian and Armenian, it is impossible to assume that Arm. hiwand
represents an Indo-European root cognate of Ir. hayawant- since the vocalism
of both forms cannot be reconciled under the assumption of their genetic
relationship. The foreign origin of such a basic word may appear surprising,
but cf. Turkish hasta ‘ill’ borrowed from Persian xasta ‘tired, ill’ cited
above, or even English ill whose origin is Old Norse illr ‘id’.
REFERENCES
Acharrean, Hrach’eay. Hayeren armatakan barraran. Yerevan: Erevan
hamalsarani haratarakch’iuthiun, 1971. 4 volumes.
Eichner, Heinrich. Die Vorgeschichte des Hethitischen Verbalsystems.
Flexion und Wortbildung. Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen
Gesellschaft (Regensburg, 9-14, 1973). Ed. by H.Rix.
Wiesbaden: Dr. L. Reichert, 1975.
Giorgieri, Mauro. Hurritisch TŌB/V-‘Beschwören. Studi Micenei e
Egeo-Anatolici 44/1, 2002.
Harouthiunian, Nikolai. Korpus urartskikh klinoobraznykh nadpisej. Jerevan:
Gituthiun, 2001.
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