LINGUIST List 5.1378

Fri 02 Dec 1994

Sum: Typological possibility of "rain" = "falling water"

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1. , "rain" = "falling water": summary

My sincere thanks go to everybody who responded to my query about the
typological possibility of "rain" = "falling water": to Paul Woods,
John Peterson, Li Wenchao, Marion Kee, Alan Cienki, Mari Siroinen,
Zhang Ning, Sam Mikes, Siamak Rezaei, Jeffrey Goldberg, and Steve
Matthews, who all responded and have been very helpful. Apart from the
numerous responses containing "rain falls", the case I was looking for
"water falls" = "it is raining" is attested in:
1) non-standard Cantonese lohk suei "fall + water"(received from Paul Woods
and Steve Matthews);
2) Finnish sataa vetta" "it rains", where sataa has original meaning "to fall"
and vetta" is partitive of vesi "water" (recieved from Mari Siroinen and Sam
Mikes);
3) Nepali "paani par-eko cha "it is raining', lit. "water fall-perf. is"
(received from John Peterson).
 Therefore, I believe the Altaistic etymology for Turkic jaGmur "rain"
analysing it as jaG- 'to fall" + *-mur *"water" is supported typologically
by the above information.
Sasha Vovin