Names of Cereals in the Turkic Languages - Wydział Filologiczny UJ

42 proso || Milletprosoforms: proso Yak.: RJakS, Dmitrieva 1972etymology: 1972: Dmitrieva: < Russ. proso ‘millet’commentary:It is difficult to criticise the etymology proposed by Dmitrieva 1972. A complete lackof assimilation (cf. ebies ‘oats’) indicates that the borrowing was made only very recently,or alternately that the orthography does not in fact render the actual Yak.pronunciation.sökforms:sök Čag.: SKE 240 TMEN, VEWT ‘husked millet’ || Kzk.: SKE 240, TMEN,VEWT ‘husked millet’, DFKzk, DKzkF || OTkc.: VEWT ‘husked millet’ ||Uyg.: SKE 240sük Tat.: ‘millet pap’ VEWTlanguages:Čag.: sök || Kzk.: sök || OTkc.: sök || Tat.: sük || Uyg.: söketymology:1935: KWb: 333: = Mo. sög, Klmk. sög ‘chassed millet’1949: SKE 240: < Chin.1963: TMEN: ? Tkc. < Pers. sōk ‘ear of corn, beard of corn’1969: VEWT: < Chin., KorS (after: SKE 240) sok= Mo. sög ‘millet; spelt’commentary:This word appears also in Kirg., Kzk., Trkm., Uyg. and Uzb. meaning ‘spelt’. The originproposed by SKE 240 seems very likely (see below).TMEN, reasoning from the fact that the word is only attested as late as Čag., suggeststhe possibility of a borrowing from Pers. sōk ‘ear of corn, beard of corn’ whichwould directly, or via Tkc. dialects, originate from Chin. This proposition can not becompletely discounted 30 , even though its seems to complicate the route of borrowingbeyond what is necessary. That a word was not attested earlier than Čag. does not meanit did not exist before.As has been proposed by TMEN, the Chin. etymon SKE 240 most probably meantis 粟31sù ‘foxtail millet (Setaria italica P.B.)’. We believe that its MChin. sounding, *sjowk(Baxter: 129, oral information from Prof. A. Vovin [Honolulu]), *siok 4 (Tōdō 2001)raises no doubts about the phonetics, and neither about the meaning.30 The change of harmony from back to front could be explained by the palatal pronunciation of-k in Pers. The semantic change could be explainable as easily.31 The same sign is used to write OJap. *apa ‘millet’ (Martin 1987: 388, Omodaka 2000), cf. arpa‘barley’.