----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 6:30
AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Idle note on
Sebastian (Knight)
Grigori: the deeper linguistic point is whether hard-b
and soft-b are separate phonemes in Russian! The b-sound is simply
influenced by the following vowel (hard a or soft yah). (As indeed is the s
before the soft e!) The Russian syllables s’eb and s’eb’ are “semantically”
identical. Don’s interesting connection between seb’ya and Sebastian, whether
etymologically sound [sic] or not, cannot be faulted on the grounds of
consonantal mutation.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 23/05/2010 11:47,
"Grigori Utgof" <utgof@TLU.EE>
wrote:
Dear Don,
Your explanation is great, but
there's always be a matter of palatalization: the reflexive pronoun "ñåáÿ"
is pronounced with the soft [á'] (like in the Russian "ðåáÿòà"), while the
word "Sebastian" has the hard [á] in it (like in the Russian "áàøíÿ"); see
also: Ðóññêàÿ ãðàììàòèêà. Ì., 1980. T. 1. C. 35-40.
All the
best,
Grigori
On May 22, 2010, at 9:36 PM, Don Johnson
wrote:
Food for (s)peculation.
"I am
Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we are both someone neither
of us knows"
None of the historical persons or places evoked
by the name
seem to be obviously connected to VN's novel (see www
below). In an idle moment it ocurred to me that the first syllable of the
name echoes the Russian pronoun SEBYA meaning "one's self ." Given the
tangled relationship between the narrating half -brother and
his brother Sebastain, I wonder if this pseudo-etymology sheds any light
on the novel.
Tennis,
anyone?
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