Talk:παῖς

This page has no reason to be written with the Ancient Greek orthography. Please refer to pais to see the original page content. Medellia 08:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Etymology

The relation to Latin puer etc. seems obscure because it is based on similarity to "pais" but the root in Ancient Greek is actually paid-. How can the interferring "d" be explained? --78.60.103.193 12:57, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

It looks like PIE had no second consonant in the stem. It was simply peh₂-u. The iota and delta seem to be a Greek innovation, and one which has plenty of precedent (another example where Greek added a dental to a third declension stem is ὄνομα (ónoma)). The Latin "er" is a little more difficult, but seems to follow a pattern based on gener, socer. Hope that helps. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:47, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

The intrusive tau found in neuters, especially those ending in -μα or in heteroclitics, seems to be a different phenomenon, however. (Its origin may be connected with the loss of word-final stops such as -t in Greek, and dentals before word-final -s, making stems ending in -n and in -nt look identical in the nominative, especially when the nasal is syllabic there, and leading to confusion.) Here we have an apparent suffix -ιδ-, and the most obvious way to explain it is to assume that παιδ- continues a PIE root compound (of the upapada-tatpurusha type) *peh₂w-wid- whose meaning should have been "appearing as little", and that fits the meaning "child, youngster, kid". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:03, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

So Beekes argues for the Proto-Hellenic *pā́w-i-d-s, though does not specify at which stage the -i-d- enlargement occurred. He does suggest that Attic παῦς (paûs) stems from the unenlarged *pā́w-s. The PIE compound *peh₂w-wid- does not seem likely to me as PIE phonology would produce *peh₂u-wid-, which would likely produce something more like *παύϊς (*paúïs). —JohnC5 03:16, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

genitive

The Attic plural genitive is παιδῶν, not παίδων. There is no point in remarking that the Doric genitive is perispomenon --Danielhythloday (talk) 09:13, 6 November 2021 (UTC)