Talk:slovo

slovo
As far as Czech is concerned, given by Jiri Rejzek (Cesky etymologicky slovnik) as cognate with sluch, both derived from PIE klewos, ḱlewos is built on *ḱleu- "to hear" source ancient greek κλύω, kluō (« hear ») & κλέος, kléos (« fame, (things we heard about »).

I think it is better to underline the root "hear" than the one "fame" in the etymology.

--Diligent 08:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Czech < Common Slavic *sluxъ "hearing, rumour" < PIE o-stem *ḱlówsos "fame, rumour" (note the o-grade in the root).
 * Common Slavic s-stem *slovo "word" < Early Proto-Slavic *slawa < PIE s-stem *ḱlewos- "fame, honor" (note the e-grade in the root), and that is the meaning preserved in basically all the other branches: Ancient Greek, Sanskrit (s-stem! Sanskrit nouns are lemmatized as stems..), and more importantly Baltic: Lithuanian  and Latvian.
 * Common Slavic ā-stem *slava "glory, fame" < Early Proto-Slavic *slāwā, reflecting Balto-Slavic vrddhi, also seen in Žemaitian Lithuanian (standard Aukštaitian Lithuanian has shifted accent). Balto-Slavic */ā/ yielded Lithuanian /o/ and Common Slavic */a/, Balto-Slavic */a/ yielded Lithuanian */a/ and Common Slavic */o/. Baltic and Slavic words also match in accent paradigm ("a"), which is an additional ultimately-conclusive evidence of the common innovation. Ultimately also deriving from the root *ḱlew ~ *ḱlow- "to hear", of course.
 * The related family of words are Common Slavic *slovo "word" (> Cz. ), *slava "glory, fame" (> Cz. ), *sluxati "to listen" (no Czech reflex), *sluxъ "hearing, rumor" (> Cz. ), *slušati "to listen" (> Cz. ), *sluti "to be called" (> Cz. ), *slyšati "to hear" (> Cz. ). So basically mentioning either of the cognate terms would be valid, but the PIE s-stem noun *ḱlewos- from which Common Slavic *slovo derives must be mentioned, as its original meaning was doubtless "fame, honor", with semantic shift to "word" only coming later in Slavic (in Baltic the sense is preserved in both vrddhi variants). --Ivan Štambuk 09:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * thank you! --Diligent 12:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)