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Indo-European Lexicon

PIE Etymon and IE Reflexes

Below we display: a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) etymon adapted from Pokorny, with our own English gloss; our Semantic Field assignment(s) for the etymon, linked to information about the field(s); an optional Comment; and Reflexes (derived words) in various Indo-European languages, organized by family/group in west-to-east order where Germanic is split into West/North/East families and English, our language of primary emphasis, is artificially separated from West Germanic. IE Reflexes appear most often as single words with any optional letter(s) enclosed in parentheses; but alternative full spellings are separated by '/' and "principal parts" appear in a standard order (e.g. masculine, feminine, and neuter forms) separated by commas.

Reflexes are annotated with: Part-of-Speech and/or other Grammatical feature(s); a short Gloss which, especially for modern English reflexes, may be confined to the oldest sense; and some Source citation(s) with 'LRC' always understood as editor. Keys to PoS/Gram feature abbreviations and Source codes appear below the reflexes; at the end are links to the previous/next etyma [in Pokorny's alphabetic order] that have reflexes.

Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings may appreciate the source & meaning tips that pop up when the mouse pointer hovers over a non-obvious word or name that he coined from Indo-European (usually Old English or Old Norse) stock. But only reflexes of PIE etyma can be included, and these tend to concentrate in the vocabulary of Rohan and the Shire.

All reflex pages are currently under active construction; as time goes on, corrections may be made and/or more etyma & reflexes may be added.

Note: this page is for systems/browsers lacking Unicode^® support, or having less than full Unicode 2.0 font support. Versions of this page rendered in alternate character sets are available via links (see Unicode 3 and Unicode 2) in the left margin.

Pokorny Etymon: so(s), sa (nom. sg. demonstrative stem: he, she)

Semantic Field: Human Being

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	se, seo/sio	def/dem.art/pron	the, that; he, she	LRC
Middle English:	she	pron.3.sg.fem	she	W7
English:	she	pron.3.sg.fem	that female one	AHD/W7
	Shelob	prop.n	spider in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
W-Germanic
Dutch:	ze	pron.3.pl.nom/acc	they, them [atonic form]	TLL
	ze	pron.3.sg.fem.nom	she [atonic form]	TLL
	zij	pron.3.pl.nom/acc	they, them	TLL
	zij	pron.3.sg.fem.nom	she	TLL
Old High German:	si/si	pron.3.sg.fem	she	RPN
German:	Sie	pron.2.sg/pl.nom/acc	you (polite)	TLL
	sie	pron.3.pl.nom/acc	they, them	TLL
	sie	pron.3.sg.fem.nom/acc	she, her	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	sá	dem.pron	that	LRC
Old Icelandic:	sú	dem.pron.fem	that	RPN
E-Germanic
Gothic:	sa	def/dem.art/pron	the, this, that; he, she, it	LRC
	so	dem.pron.fem	this, that, she	RPN
Italic
Old Latin:	sam	dem.pron.fem	her	RPN
	sas	dem.pron.fem.pl	them	RPN
	sos	dem.pron.masc.pl	them	RPN
	sum	dem.pron.masc	him	RPN
Albanian
Albanian:	ai, ajo	pron	he, she; it, that	IEW
	ky, kjo	dem.pron	this	IEW
Hellenic
Greek:	ê	def/dem.art.fem	the, this, that	RPN
	o	def/dem.art.masc	the, this, that	LRC
Anatolian
Hittite:	sa	conn.pcl	this, that	RPN
	-se	enc.dem.pron	this, that	RPN
Iranian
Avestan:	ha-	dem.stem	this, that	RPN
Indic
Sanskrit:	sá	dem.masc	this, that	RPN
	sa/si	dem.fem	this, that	RPN
Tocharian
Tocharian B:	sa(-)	dem.fem	this, that	RPN
	se(-)	dem.masc	this, that	RPN
Tocharian A:	sa-	dem.masc	this, that	RPN
	sa-	dem.fem	this, that	RPN

Key to Part-of-Speech/Grammatical feature abbreviations:

Abbrev.		Meaning
2	=	2nd person
3	=	3rd person
acc	=	accusative (case)
art	=	article/determiner
conn	=	connective
def	=	definite
dem	=	demonstrative
enc	=	enclitic
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
nom	=	nominative (case)
pcl	=	particle
pl	=	plural (number)
pron	=	pronoun
prop	=	proper
sg	=	singular (number)
stem	=	stem

Key to information Source codes (always with 'LRC' as editor):

Code		Citation
AHD	=	Calvert Watkins: The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2nd ed. (2000)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
RPN	=	Allan R. Bomhard: Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic (2002)
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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