Greek μάρτυς ‘witness’, σειρά ‘rope’ and PIE *ter(H)- ‘to bind’

• Claire Le Feuvre ^[1]
  1. [1] Pierre and Marie Curie University

     Pierre and Marie Curie University

     París, Francia

     
• Localización: Historische Sprachforschung = Historical linguistics, ISSN 0935-3518, Nº. 134, 2021, págs. 225-238
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The paper shows that the thematic form μάρτυρος in Homer is metrically conditioned. The only old form is the athematic μάρτυς < μάρτυρς. This leads to a reexamination of Frisk’s explanation for μάρτυς, which is only partially correct. The word probably goes back to *(s)mer- ‘to have in mind, to remember’, as assumed by Frisk, but it is a compound, not a derivative. The paper argues that the second member of the compound is a root noun of *ter(H)- ‘to bind’, a root found in Greek σειρά ‘rope’ and σορός ‘funerary urn’, and otherwise attested only in Baltic and Slavic. The witness is the ‘memory-binding’ one, which agrees with the older meaning of μάρτυς in Homer and that of its denominative μαρτύρομαι.