Brian D. Joseph
The Ohio State University
[joseph.1@osu.edu]
1. Entry in Newmark (1998: 785) for stër-: ‘formative prefix 1 expresses
semantic enlargement or excess: ultra-, super-, over- 2 (with kinship terms)
great-’
e.g. for 1: stër-gjatë 'too long/tall', stër-bujar 'too generous'; for 2: stërgjysh
'great-grandfather', stër-gjyshe 'great-grandmother', stër-nip ‘greatgrandson;
great-nephew’, stër-mbes ‘great-granddaughter’
2. Some comments on (1):
a. for one Albanian consultant, stër-gjysh = 'great-great-grandfather'
b. iteration is possible, e.g. stër-stër-gjysh 'great-great-grandfather' ('greatgreat-
great-grandfather' for the consultant in (a))
c. the form of prefix now is stër- (as in (1)) but earlier (as reported, e.g., in
Meyer 1891), it is shtër(shënimi im:Meyr gabon)- (though I continue to write < stër- > throughout
here)
d. there is also a use with verbs, as in stër-holloj ‘go into excessive detail’ (cf.
holloj ‘make thin; clarify; explain in detail’), stër-nxeh ‘overheat; make
extremely hot’ (cf. nxeh ‘heat, make hot’)
3. According to Meyer, stër- derives etymologically Lat. extra, so that
(presumably), the ‘excessive’ meaning is original and the kin-term usage is
an extension of that usage.
4. The range of uses of stër- as given in (1) and (2) accords (more or less)
with Romanian [bstră-, which certainly is from extra; e.g.:
• stră-bun(ic) ‘ancestor; great-grandfather’ (cf. bun ‘grandfather’)
stră-stră-bunic ‘great-great-grandfather’
stră-moş ‘ancestor’
•stră-vechi ‘very old’
• stră-luci ‘shine very brightly’
5. Some differences of degree between Albanian stër- and Romanian stră-:
a. there appears to be greater productivity in Albanian for the kin-term use
(e.g., it is found with ‘grandfather’, ‘grandmother’, ‘nephew’,
‘granddaughter’) than in Romanian
b. there are some instances in both languages where the verbal use yields
forms that lack any trace of the ‘excessive’ meaning, e.g. Albanian stërformoj
‘transform’, Romanian stră-bate- ‘to go through’ (cf. a bate ‘to hit,
beat’), stră-muta ‘change places’ (cf. a muta ‘change’), but there appear to
be more such verbs in Romanian (stërformoj is the only one cited in
Newmark 1998)
6. Still, given the parallels, it may be that Albanian stër- and Romanian strărepresent
an early feature of Balkan Latin, but where did the multifunctionality
come from? Is it just a semantic extension of Latin extra
within Balkan Latin, or parallel developments within each of Albanian and
Romanian? Or is there something else going on?
7. My suggestion: perhaps we can look for another source for at least some
functions of Albanian stër-, and more specifically, my claim is that to
understand the etymology of this prefix, a look into expressions of “multigenerational”
kinship in Indo-European is needed.
8. IE languages show considerable variety in such expressions; a remarkable
Latin passage from Plautus’s Persa (57) yields a host of relevant forms:
pater auos proauos abauos atauos tritauos
'fa' 'grfa' 'grt-grfa' 'grt-grt-grfa' 'grt-grt- grt-grfa' 'grt-grt-grt-grt-grfa'(shënimi im:gabim)
(NB: all of these from proauos on down also mean 'remote ancestor,
forefather' (at unspecified generational removes))
9. The Latin forms in (8) reveal 3 types that are instantiated elsewhere in IE:
a. preposition + Noun type (pro-auos); cf.:
• Grk. ék-pappos ‘great-great-grandfather’
• epí-pappos ‘grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather’(shënimi im:Epi kupton te persembrapthi shkruajturën e njesise tjeter te gjuhes shqipe "hipe>ip>..)
• Lat. ab-avus ‘great-great-grandfather’
• ad-nepos ‘great-great-great-grandson’
• Skt. prati-naptṛ- 'great-grandson'
• para-prati-naptṛ- 'great-great-grandson' (para- = ‘distant, remote’
(for time, used of both future and past)(shënimi im:para eshtë tjeter perdorim i njesise se gjuhes shqipe pë te dhenë te njetin mendim)
b. (possibly) kin-on-kin type (at-auos, if (as Ernout-Meillet suggest) the first
part is from at- ‘father’ (cf. Hittite attas ‘father’, Slavic otbcb ‘father’,
Ancient Greek átta ‘daddy’, etc.); cf.
shënimi im:Nuk e di Brian qe ne shqip njesia father eshtë njesia.at)• Skt. pitā-maha- 'paternal grandfather' (note use of regular word for
'father', but form is unusual as a "reverse" tatpuruṣa compound and
with nominative, not stem, as first member)(Nuk e di Brian qe ne gjuhën shqipe eshte njesia tjetr :tat>tate,Tata per father dhe folja tjeter pruri,orure,prura,..Gje qe njesia tatpurusa vjen prej nje kombinacioni tjeter mendimore ye kesaj gjuhe:tat pruresi.Ai qe prurir tataen ne kete bote.)
• pitṛ-pitṛ- 'father's father' (apparent recursion, but could just be a
regular tatpuruṣa compound; cf. putra-putra- for 'grandson' (literally
"son of son")(shenimi im:I njeti mendim prej foljes prur,e cila kur kthehet ne mbiemer bën: i pruri,e prura.e cila duket sikur bashkim e dy njesive ipari dhe prur,ipariprur mund te kthete fonetikisht ne putraputra<parprur.???Per tu diskutuar?))
• pitṛ-p(a)itā-maha- (in plural) 'ancestors' (apparent recursion, with
some degree of noncompositionality in that it might be expected to
mean simply one generation further back from paitā-maha- if it
reflects the kin-on-kin type) or 'father's grandfather(ly ones)'; or could
be a dvandva compound at basis (‘father and grandfather’ =>
‘ancestors’, cf. meaning as adjective in Monier-Williams 1899
'inherited from father and grandfather')
• Grk. papp-epípappos ‘grandfather’s grandfather’ (i.e. ‘great-greatgrandfather’,
thus not really different in meaning from epípappos)
• Alb. baba-gjyshi, if (as according to one informant) 'great-grandfather'
(cf. baba 'father', gjysh 'grandfather' (< *sū-s)), as opposed to
(according to another informant) just a familiar way of referring to
grandfather (normally gjysh), i.e. rather like 'gramps'
• based on the fact that these have alternative analyses, one has to wonder if
there really is a kin-on-kin type; maybe the apparent ones in Greek and
Latin involve emphasis or redundant strengthening or even tatpuruṣa
compounding with meaning emerging out of vagueness of specific
generational reference and general noncompositionality (up to a point)
c. numerical type (tritauos, admittedly with some Hellenic influence, since
tri-t- is the Greek combining form (Latin is ter-t-)); cf.:
• Grk. trípappos 'ancestor in the 6th generation'
• Lat. triauos 'great-great-great-great-grandfather' (variant of tritauos)
• note some noncompositionality, depending on how a unit is counted
(Greek could be compositional, if “three-times-grandfather” = 6
generational removes (grandfather of grandfather of grandfather) but it
could in principle be counting one generation further back from ego’s
grandfather as once, two generations back as twice, etc.) and note that
tri- in Latin is not (generally) multiplicative (as it would have to be
here to get the meaning right)
10. Numerical type in Albanian:
• Newmark 1998: tregjysh 'great-grandfather' (Meyer 1891: treǵüš; note
this with tre- doesn’t get the right generation either multiplicatively or
additively)
• Newmark 1998: katragjysh ‘great-great-grandfather’ (Meyer 1891:
katrεǵüš 'Ururgr.')
• Meyer 1891: pesεǵüš 'Urururgr.' (going beyond Greek and Latin but with
more transparently compositional semantics)
11. My etymological suggestion for the generational function of stër-:
a. Latin shows a variant of tritavus, namely strittauus (with -itt- for -īt-,
presumably) attested in Paulus ex Festo:
Strittauum antiqui dicebant pro tritauo (Paul. Fest. p315M)
b. Based on that attestation, we might suppose that strittauum is an older
form, inasmuch as it is labelled as something said by “antiqui”; antiquarians
like Paulus were notoriously loose in their labelling of forms, so it is not
clear what “antiqui” means here
c. In fact, some scholars doubt the authenticity of strittauum: Ernout-Meillet
(s.v.) say it is perhaps merely a miscopying for tritavus from the Plautine
Persa passage (see above, and note atauos with final –s immediately
precedes tritauos)
d. My proposal: this stri- was a real form and it is the source of Albanian
stër- as a generational prefix in kin-terms. The source of the s- is open to
speculation, but it could be an accretion onto tri(t)- via a phonetic, not a
graphic, resegmentation (especially if the string of kin terms in the Persa
passage represents some sort of ditty or counting verse that children might
have learned, like “Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, rich man, poor man, beggar
man, thief”).
e. Conceivably, there could even have been a true Latin *s-ter-auos (as
opposed to Hellenized s-tri-) alongside s-tri(-tt)-
12. Some reasons to look to Latin stri- (ster-) as the source of the Albanian
prefix:
a. it would give the generational displacement sense rather directly (and note
that the semantics of many of these displacement prefixes is not very precise
as to which generation or how many generations so a general sense of
"priorness" would be extractable)
b. it would give the sht- form cited by Meyer directly, as this is regular
outcome of Latin loanwords in Albanian with st- (and from PIE *st- too),
cf. gusht from augustus
c. regarding initial s- in both the Latin form and Albanian, Meyer 1891
strikingly gives a variant of katrεǵüš with an extra initial s-: skatraǵüš
(from his source "Ro." (= Rossi da Montalto 's work on "Epirotico" (1866));
unclear what the s- is doing there and what its source is but it might also be
connected with the extra s- of strittavus (suggesting that strittavus should
not be ignored in a discussion of stër-)
d. the extra s- in numerical prefixes may have a wider distribution in the
Balkans, as Greek has stripodo beside the more usual (and etymologically
more accurate) tripodo ‘tripod’
13. Nonetheless, a derivation from Latin extra does most of what is given in
(12), i.e. it does most of the work that the stri- derivation does, and then
some, in that it offers a possible way of linking the ‘excessive’ meaning and
the ‘generational’ meaning (seeing the multi-generational reference as a
kind of “excessive” reference in kinship); still, it may be significant (and a
plus for the stri- derivation) that extra- does not seem to be attested in kinterms
in Latin.
14. Another take on the relation of the ‘over/excessive’ meaning to the multigenerational
meaning:
• beside epi- in multi-generational terms (cf. papp-epi-pappos), (Ancient)
Greek has forms with epi- in an 'excessive' meaning:
epíponos = ‘(very) painful'
epimathḗs = 'very learned'
epítritos = 'valued at an integer + 1/3' (i.e., “having 1/3 beyond”)
• thus, could the linkage of the two meanings of s(h)tër- in Albanian be
somehow due to influence from Greek epi- formations, influence either
onto Albanian (and Romanian?) separately or onto Balkan Latin extra
(note there are no kin-term uses of stra- in Italian)? Even if, as I
suggest, the etymology of the generational sense is in the numerical
type of Latin, the connection that Greek provides between the two
functions (generational and excessive) could have secondarily affected
items that had the same form but different etymologies (and seem to be
at least synchronically related (as Newmark’s collapsing them suggests,
and see below on shtër- > stër-)).
15. A further fact that tips the balance in favor of stri-:
• beside Albanian stër-, there is an apparent variant form without an sthat
has a function similar to the ‘excessive’ meaning: tër-, as in tërhedh-
‘throw all around’ and tër-hapet ‘spread broadly’ (tër- being
mildly ‘excessive’ in meaning in those forms, in that it adds the sense of
wide dispersal, i.e. over an area that exceeds a normal range)
• thus Albanian has stër- and an s-less variant, thus like the variation in
Latin stri- ~ tri
• assuming that tër- is from Latin tri- (or maybe ter ‘thrice’), we would
expect a numerical meaning and not the (mildly) excessive meaning
seen in tër-hedh- etc. An ‘excessive’ meaning for tër- makes sense only
via an association forged between it and stër- and a perceived
connection between a generational usage (from a numerical type in IE,
since tri- is clearly numerical in origin) and an excessive usage.
16. Tying up one loose end: to explain the present-day st- onset vs. earlier
sht- perhaps later influence from Italian stra- is responsible (though Hamp
(p.c., 2007) has suggested maybe a simple dissimilation from shtërgjysh). It
is interesting, by way of understanding the relation (whether secondary or
original) between the generational sense and the excessive sense of stër-,
that when the form was (re)Italianized to stër- it carried along both
functions.
REFERENCES
Ernout, A. & Antoine Meillet. 1939. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue
latine: histoire des mots. Paris: Klincksieck.
Meyer, Gustav. 1891. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der albanesischen Sprache.
Strassburg: Trubner.
Monier-Williams, Sir Monier. 1899. A Sanskrit-English dictionary :
etymologically and philologically arranged with special reference to
cognate Indo-European languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Newmark, Leonard. 1998. Albanian-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
