Talk:ամուսին

Iranian woman

Somebody was extremely ignorant here. Due to the dodgy semantics ‘to be accustomed’ → wife and the variation in forms given at آموسنی (āmūsnī, āmwisnī), I rather say that the native proto- or pre-Armenian formation is a traveller's tale and the words aren’t all borrowed from Armenian. The direct ancestor of the Orumi word and the supposed etymon of Ossetian ус (us), as opposed to زن (zan), is only at @Sokkjo’s paygrade, and even Latin uxor is, clearly containing only uninformed guesses. Fay Freak (talk) 14:55, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Fay Freak:, the Iranian connection has been suggested by Lagarde, Paul de (1868) Beitraege zur baktrischen Lexikographie (in German), Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, page 14 and rejected by Lagarde, Paul de (1877) Armenische Studien (in German), Göttingen: Dieterich, § 85, page 10 and HAB because of obscurity of the Persian form and the difference in meaning: the Armenian word means "spouse, wife or husband", not "cowife".

The Persian term is supposedly from Proto-Iranian *hapáθniH, which has no suitable Middle Iranian forms for us.

There are better explanations of semantics for the traditional PIE derivation which I have not added yet, e.g. in Olsen, Birgit Anette (1999) The noun in Biblical Armenian: origin and word-formation: with special emphasis on the Indo-European heritage (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs; 119), Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, page 466 and Parvulescu. Vahag (talk) 16:08, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: What Lagarde writes is of little weight since a) it was before it was demonstrated that Armenian is not an Iranian language (though sometimes interesting as I admitted on کبست (kabast)) b) the documentation of Iranian languages was droughty. He did not even strictly dismiss the connection, as I read it, it was only dark until more in Iranistics was published to lighten the darkness. Then everyone forgot about it the same way as was another Müller about ատեան (atean) in the same Viennese orientalist journal. That’s why I say maybe someone well-equipped and trained in Iranian can answer it.

There is no difficulty to reach the meaning ‘monogamous wife’ from ‘one of an unspecified amount of wives’, and also to gain or lose specification towards one sex (epicenity) in the same circumstances, as Pârvulescu himself admits, tellingly again without considering an Iranian borrowing. A citation cartel of low-effort scholarship dancing around the mines. Nothing good if “the root of the word -us- has resisted every attempt of elucidation so far.” It has to do something with Christianization, you might be cancelled and not invited to conferences again if you point out not only that կոյս (koys, “virgin”) is the same word as کوس (kos, “pussy”) but also ancient Armenians hoarded multiple wives like the modern Shiites and some women so kept men, I cannot suppress to grin. Fay Freak (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't go to conferences; I'm not even a linguist, so I don't care :D What I want is an Iranist to rigorously reconstruct the Middle Iranian form. The meaning we can stretch. Vahag (talk) 17:08, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, Vahagn Petrosyan: I have to say, I disagree -- this looks like a clear Iranian borrowing to me. I need to clean up *hapáθniH because some of those descendants are from *dmaHnapaθniH (< *dmáHnaH (“house”) +‎ *páθniH (“wife”)), whence Avestan 𐬛𐬆𐬨𐬄𐬥𐬋𐬞𐬀𐬚𐬥𐬍 (dəmąnōpaθnī, “mistress of the house”), Parthian 𐫁𐫀𐫖𐫁𐫏𐫢𐫗 (bʾmbyšn /⁠bāmbišn⁠/, “queen”), Middle Persian [Book Pahlavi needed] (bʾmbšn' /⁠bāmbušn⁠/, “queen”), Sogdian 𐼾𐼰𐼺𐼾𐼴𐽁𐽂 (pʾmpwšt /⁠pāmbušt⁠/, “consort, spouse, wife”).

Classical Persian آموسنی (āmusnī) and Old Armenian ամուսին (amusin) are likely from Middle Persian *(h)āmušn(ig) < *hammušn < *hambušn < *habušn < OP *hapašnī. --{{victar|talk}} 20:27, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

You guys are forgetting that ամուսին (amusin) is old, attested in the Bible. It cannot be from New Persian. Only Middle Persian and Parthian should be considered. Middle Persian *āmušn(ig) would give **ամշնիկ (**amšnik) or **ամուշն (**amušn). Compare բամբիշն (bambišn) where it is š, not s. Also, the sense development proposed by Fay Freak here and for կոյս (koys, “virgin”) too seem unparalled and unlikely, unless proto-Armenians were perverts. Vahag (talk) 21:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I didn’t: as it is always more likely for Armenian, I claimed it first to be from Northwestern Iranian. What Victar put together is a concept. No doubt even he has to recollate the puzzle pieces a few times. You reassess the matter with us. At 21:08 Armenian time you find that “the meaning we can stretch” and at 1:07 the same outlined stretch is already “unlikely and unparalled”; one doesn’t make final decisions of social magnitude after midnight well, some guy specifically built his portfolio by looking at people making maladaptive investment decisions in their overnight zombie window. Fay Freak (talk) 21:27, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I revised (simplified) my etymology, but yes, the lack of -š- is very puzzling. I'll have to ponder on it some more. Perhaps it passed though Median which retained *-θn-, but I don't think that fully explains it either. --{{victar|talk}} 01:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I was trolling about "stretching". We shouldn't stretch anything and we shouldn't cheat by assuming analogical influences. We are better than the citation cartel. Vahag (talk) 15:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I tried to find cases of s and š switch. Seemingly environmentally it does. سریش (seriš, “glue”) ~ اسراش (esrâš) ~ اشراس (ešrâs) and even more variation witnessed by its Arabic borrowings. باشه (bāša) vs. باسه (bāsa). سُهْرِيز (suhrīz) vs. شُهْرِيز (šuhrīz). دهمشت (dahmašt) ~ دهمست (dahmast) pends explanation. A general occasional dissimilation in the environment of alveolars I suspect.

In both Arabic and Persian when one finds unexplained variation of ش (š) and س (s) one is inclined to discard one, documenting later, only with corpus-linguistic methods, in the 21st century, we start to dig the likely real ones up.

In Grecisms passed through Aramaic into Arabic, a theory I have not further pursued: قَيْشُور (qayšūr) ~ قَيْسُور (qaysūr), إشْقِيل (ʔišqīl), إسْقِيل (ʔisqīl), دَبَش (dabaš) (?).

What is known to us from “later” ages, the end of antiquity, does not bring it far.

What is well known is that Assyrian and then Western Aramaic has s against original š earlier in Babylonian and Eastern Aramaic, אֲרִיסַיָּא (ʾărīsā) ~ אֲרִישָׁא (ʾărīšā), which caused Akkadian transcriptions in the earlier 20th century over time switch from s to š due to bias towards later tablets, well-known.

We have learned how the same dynasty that ruled Armenia also ruled Western-Aramaic-speaking Commagene and their language is basically never attested. Given the dialectal nature of the Persian itself, it is plausible that the attested Aramaic lects lacked the word while Proto-Armenian got it from the darker ones—before getting fond of Classical Syriac later, charged falsely too often for Aramaic borrowings, indeed here less likely a source, for basic vocabulary, than a hypothetical isolect, undeniably in contact with the Armenians when these were writingless Barbarians, to the Greeks and Romans surely just Iranian-speakers, Persians, Medes, or Parthians (→ Parthus), as Armenians were deemed till Heinrich Hübschmann proved otherwise in the later 19th century CE.

Had to reminisce past again since even with the current Middle Iranian comprehensive pictures, we are biased towards the last centuries of Middle Iranian, when what happened was more likely before 200 CE, if we fancy Armenian having loaned. So it wasn’t *āmušn(ig) but more like *āmušnīk → Western Aramaic *ܐܳܡܽܘܣܢܻܝ (*āmūsnī), e.g. if not at the relevant point in Iranian -ī (as Victar wrote *hapašnī) then equating the Iranian -īk ending with the nisba one, and the quantity of ܘ (ū, u) has no functional load but sounds on the Armenian side distinct enough to be retained, → thus we have ամուսին (amusin), with (Urartian-origin, tellingly,?) suffix -ին (-in) if necessary.

If the age in question is far in the past enough, towards Old Iranian, then for Iranian θ faces no begadkefat, such that it also ends up giving ܣ (s) or ܨ (ṣ), when ݂ܬ (ṯ) does not exist yet.

No weak arguments for perversions and their avoidance sought, only linguistic arguments.

So Vahagn’s equation of what the Iranian would give in Armenian is not as imperative as he suggested. Armenology, Iranistics, and Semitistics have to work together to solve the issue. The Iranian alone has several development stages within a millennium, so little reason not to make it complicated. It would rather be surprising if it were easy. The etymological explanation of the Old Armenian term must have several arrows and plus signs to be complete either way. Fay Freak (talk) 16:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I have now reviewed the literature and see no reason to abandon the traditional native etymology, sorry :( Vahag (talk) 18:12, 8 March 2024 (UTC)