Vedic dāśvā́ṃs- ‘pious one’, Homeric ἀδηκότες ‘inattentive’, and the “long-vowel” perfects of Proto-Indo-European

Abstract

Although the morphological components of the Vedic noun dāśvā́ṃs- are, from the Indo-European point of view, relatively transparent (root */dek̑-/ ‘perceive’, perfect participle suffix */-u̯ós-/), the exact derivation of the form is disputed, insofar as its history is bound up with an understanding of Proto-Indo-European “long-vowel preterites” (Schumacher 2005, Jasanoff 2012). This article argues that a shallow synchronic derivation of dāśvā́ṃs- in Vedic Sanskrit encounters problems in both morphology and phonology that have been overlooked by proponents of such a derivation (Jasanoff 2012, LIV2: 110–111). The article then further proposes that a cognate of dāśvā́ṃs- is to be found in the isolated Homeric adjective, ἀδηκότες, previously without certain interpretation or etymology; here the gloss ‘inattentive, oblivious, unheeding’ is proposed. The etymological connection of dāśvā́ṃs- to Homeric (ἀ-)δηκότ(-ε/ας) thus supports the reconstruction of a Proto-(Nuclear)-Indo-European (PNIE) form *[dēk̑u̯ós-]; within the grammar of PNIE itself, such a form would be synchronically derived as a perfect participle /RED-dek̑-u̯ós-/, in which a “long-vowel” form surfaces in perfect stems whose zero-grade form is phonologically dispreferred and therefore repaired (cf. Schumacher 2005, Zukoff 2014, Sandell 2015a, Sandell 2015b: Ch. 8, Zukoff 2017a: Ch. 5, 7). The larger implication is at least some “long-vowel” preterites of PNIE can be explained as phonologically driven allomorphs of perfect weak stems.