Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 113. kötet (2017)

Tanulmányok - Róna-Tas András: Vitás magyar etimológiák. Válasz Honti Lászlónak (Disputed Hungarian etymologies. A reply to László Honti.) 37

RÓNA-TAS ANDRÁS

Vitás magyar etimológiák Válasz Honti Lászlónak

This paper contains my rejoinder to the 219 pages review written by László Honti (2017) on the book of András Róna-Tas, Árpád Bertát, László Károly West Old Turkic. Turkic Loanwords in Hungarian, 2011 (WOT).

After some general remarks on etymology, on the character of the WOT, and my personal acknowledgements to those who helped me in Finno- Ugric matters, the paper turns to the single etymologies. In the case of the first 23 etymologies the question is whether the Finno-Ugric origin of the given word is beyond any doubt and did West Old Turkic play any role in the history of the given word. In my view almost in all of the cases phonological and/or semantical questions can be solved only with the help of the WOT background. These are: 1. ár, úrik ‘to decay’, 2. dug ‘to squeeze’, 3. ér ‘to arrive’, 4. es, eskü ‘oath’, 5. gyermek, gyéré к ‘child’, 6. gyűl, gyújt ‘to catch fire, light’, 7. izzik ‘to glow’, 8. kebel ‘bosom’, 9. kert ‘garden’,

10. orvos ‘physician’, 11. sajt ‘cheese’, 12. sért, sérik ‘to hart’, 13. sok ‘much, many’, 14. szép ‘beautiful’, 15. szer ‘part of a village’, 16. szó ‘word’, 17. szűz ‘virgin’, 18. táltos ‘sorcerer, medicine man’, 19. tojik ‘to lay eggs’, 20. úr, ország ‘lord, country’, 21. vejsze ‘fishweir’, 22. vék, lék ‘hole in the ice (for fishing)’, 23. ver (kötelet) ‘to plait (rope)’. In most of the cases Honti offered new, additional data on the Finno-Ugric side, which have to be considered by later research. Some of his arguments have to be accepted, others may be debated and in the paper I offer my reasons why. Treating another group of words in WOT, I claim that though the FU origin of the given Hungarian word is almost sure, there are some unsolved problems to be addressed, and for methodlogical reasons one has to put them in a separate box. Some of these Hungarian words were treated by Honti: 24. edz ‘to harden, to steel’, 25. ezüst ‘silver’, 26. fej (verb) ‘to milk’, 27. gyalog ‘on foot’, 28. gyökér ‘root’, 29. harap ’dry leaves’, 30. harap (verb) ‘to bite’, 31. hord- ‘to carry’, 32. irgalom ‘mercy’, 33. kengyel ‘stirrup’, 34. kerül ‘to go around’, 35. köcsög ‘jug’, 36. láb ‘foot’, 37. lei- ‘to find’, 38. mese, magyar, megyer ‘tale, Hungarian’,

39. mű ‘work’, 40. ólom, ón ‘lead, tin’, 41. ravasz ‘fox, cunning’, 42. segg ‘bottom’, 43. segít- ‘to help’, 44. sir ‘tomb’, 45. szekér ‘cart’, 46. szén ‘coal’, 47. szül- ‘to bear’, 48. tár- ‘to open’, 49. üt- ‘to hit’. In some case we agree, in other cases I accept the new arguments of Honti, but there remain words in case of which I think further research is needed to make the etymology water-proof. In the third part of his review Honti dealt with some questions of historical phonology. The voicing of PFU *p-, *t- (> b,

> d) he ascribed to the tendency of avoiding of homonimy. According to my opinion this has chronological difficulties and I show other ways how Hungarian avoided homonimy if it did. In the case of the representation of PFU sibilants Honti claims that the interdental spirant 1*91 evolved already in PUgr. This is an old controversy between us. I give my arguments why I suppose that this change occurred only in POUgr, and its reconstruction for PUgr is unnecessary. In the last part of my rejoinder I treat the alleged quotation ascribed to Voltaire on the role of the vowels in linguistic recon-Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 113: 37-84.

DÓI: 10.15776/NyK.2017.113.2