Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/alaną

Is the meaning "to grow old, mature" reconstructed on the basis of some daughters, or it is simply to account for the meaning "old" of *aldaz ? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:44, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

It's probably the second. But the sense "nourish" in some descendants probably also derives from that meaning. There certainly is a sense of "flourishing" in the verb from what I can tell. —CodeCat 01:32, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Why I asked is because "old" could easily be a semantic shift from "tall", and *aldaz would then not be derived from this verb, but inherited from PIE *h₂eltós "tall", matching nicely with Latin altus. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:57, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

But that's the same word. altus is indeed a cognate, just look at alō and its past participle which is altus. Both derive from the same root *h₂el-, of which *h₂l̥tós (which may have been reformed as *h₂eltós later) was a derived adjective. I've provided a reference in the entry. —CodeCat 14:29, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Sure it' a cognate with respect to the form. But what I was saying is that we could already reconstruct for PIE proper the meaning "old" of the adjective *h₂eltos, which was already then semantically distinct from *h₂el-. Neither Latin alo nor Proto-Germanic *alaną really mean "to mature, grow old". Your reference speculates that Latin altus "tall" is derived from earlier meaning "grown", but given that that meaning is not retained neither in alo nor any other IE reflex of *h₂el- it seems a bit far-fetched to me. At any case, this could be researched a bit more (which I don't feel like doing right now..) --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:55, 22 July 2013 (UTC)