Bibliotheca Polyglotta

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘to be generous, to be hiġ-minded, to be noble-hearted, to honour, to do favours, to treat with hospitality, obliging, beneficent, precious; (of land) to be fertile; thoroughbred, noble; vine and grapes’

conc

▪ According to DRS, the root KRM shows 7 values in Sem. 3 or 4 of these are relevant for Ar. The value ‘season of rain’ in the Eth languages may (acc. to Leslau) be connected to ‘be generous’, the rain season being the period of the year in which the sky ‘is noble’ and spends ‘generously’. This would reduce the number of values to six, three of which relevant for Ar. Out of these, only two have survived into MSA, the item karmaẗ ‘head of thigh bone (femur) turning in the hip bone’ (Freytag1837-IV: vitis; caput ossis femoris quo in acetabulo coxae vertitur) having become obsolete.
▪ The two surviving values – ‘vine(yard)’ and ‘nobleness, generosity’ – are hardly related to each other.
▪ While ‘vine(yard)’ can be traced back into AfrAs, the same does not seem to be possible for ‘nobleness, generosity’.

hist

–

cogn

▪ DRS 10 (2012): KRM–1 Akk kirimm‑ ‘flexion des bras; relâchement, détente’, Ar ^†karmaẗ ‘tête de l’os du fémur qui tourne dans l’os de la hanche’, MġrAr krūma ‘vertèbre; cou, nuque; maillon d’une chaîne’, Amh kʷərma, Gur Selti kirmāyo, ? Har kurumbäy ‘coude’. –2 Ug krm, Hbr kęręm ‘vignoble’, korem ‘vigneron’, Ph Amm EmpAram krm, JP karmā ‘vignoble’, Syr kᵉram ‘tailler’, Ar karm ‘cep de vigne’, EAr ‘terre plantée en vignes, en pistachiers ou en figuiers (qui n’ont pas besoin d’irrigation)’, karmaẗ ‘vigne’, MarAr kṛəm ‘figuiers’. – Outside Sem, cf. also Eg kʔm ‘vigne, jardin, avec des arbres, des fleurs, des légumes’; mEg kʔmw ‘verger, vignoble’, kʔnw ‘vignoble’, Dem kʔm ‘jardin, kʔm ʔrry ‘vigne’. –4 nPun ʔkrmʔ ‘rivaliser de générosité’, Ar karuma ‘être noble, généreux; donner beaucoup d’eau (ciel, nuages)’; MġrAr krāma ‘banquet offert par un groupe pour remercier et honorer un de ses membres ayant accompli un acte louable’; Mhr kōrem, Śḥ kurum, Ḥrs. kërem ‘être généreux envers’, Te käramät ‘aumônes’. –5 Gz kərämt, Tña krämti, Te käräm, Amh Arg kərämt, Gaf krämtä, Har kirmi, Gur kärm, ḫərəm, hənəw ‘saison des pluies’. – This value seems to have cognates in Cush, perhaps also Berb: Sa karma, Bedja kerinti, Som keran, Qabenna kärmi ‘saison pluvieuse’; Cohen1969#185 ajoute le Berb du Sous kᵘrəm ‘être froid’.¹

1. Three other values have no Ar representatives. #3. Akk kurummat ‘alimentation, ration’. #6. Amh mäskäräm = nom du premier mois (correspondant à septembre). #7. Te kärma ‘interrompre, séparer, disperser’, Tña kärräma ‘diviser un animal abattu’.

disc

▪ Out of the 7 values listed in DRS 10 (2012), Ar is involved only in three, though a forth one may be relevant too:
▪ According to Leslau1987, Gz karama, karma (yəkrəm, yəkram) ‘spend the rainy season, spend the winter, be of the preceeding year (wine)’ is connected with Ar karuma ‘be generous > yield rain’ […]. Note that Dillmann’s statement »Ar karuma ‘pluviam profundit (nubes)’; deinde ‘beneficus, generosus fuit’« should read »‘beneficus, generosus fuit’; deinde ‘pluviam profundit (nubes)’«. Leslau thus holds that ‘yield rain’, ‘rainy season’ etc. are secondary.¹
▪ ‘Vine(yard)’ seems to have cognates in Eg. Unless this is a loan from Sem, or vice versa, we could then assume an AfrAs dimension.
▪ The value ‘season of rain’, realised as such only in Eth (but perhaps connected to, or dependent on, ‘be generous’), seems to have cognates in Cush, perhaps also Berb. So this is either an East African regional development from an AfrAs *‘be generous’, or we are dealing, against the above assumption, with a value in its own right.

1. Is also Eth karm ‘spring (of water)’ related?

west

–

deriv

–

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=record&uid=da3192fe-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display