German (-stell-) and Slavic (-stav-) languages: who was first?

Question

I have been wondering about the following close parallel between German (I'm not aware of any other Germanic language for which this would hold) and Czech in particular:

• postavit ~ stellen (to place something)
• nastavit ~ einstellen (to adjust a setting)
• odstavit ~ abstellen (to put out of operation)
• výstava ~ Ausstellung (exhibition)
• představa ~ Vorstellung (image, vision)
• představit ~ vorstellen (to introduce)

and a few others. In English these words don't have any part in common, as illustrated. The latter two examples show perhaps most strikingly that there must have been a direct influence in how these words formed. I checked some etymological sources but I have a very limited knowledge on where to find good ones, so I only found the obvious, decomposing the words into a prefix, root, and suffix, and explaining the origins of the root. The roots have departed already in their corresponding reconstructed Proto-Germanic (*stallijaną) and Proto-Balto-Slavic (*stāw) forms so my question is whether the clearly corresponding prefixes could have survived longer than that or whether this was a more recent influence.

If so, was it German taking these forms from Slavic languages or vice versa?

I'd be surprised at both: to my best knowledge Slavic languages were never excessively influential outside their own family (I might be very wrong in this point), but if it was them taking the pattern from German, it would have spread as far as into Russian (представление, выставка etc.)

Answer 1

Your compound examples are mostly calques, usually from German into Slavic but in fact often ultimately from Latin or French or Italian into both German and Slavic, in the middle ages.

The calques use translated elements, not necessarily cognate elements, although in some cases it was mixed, for example entreprendre become unternehmen, and interdire became untersagen. Usually Latin ponere was calqued into German as stellen, and into Slavic as staviti. (Czech stavit is in fact cognate to German stehen. It may be that stellen is also cognate with those, but in any case that was not a consideration at the time of calquing.)

We can see similarly haphazard interplay between German and Czech happening today with all the internationalisms and calques from English, like Schadesoftware and škodlivý software, and the occasional use of a cognate even when the meaning is confused, Seite and stránka (to mean page and site, even though both literally mean page), and other cases where Czech went its own way, for example the translations of download and upload.

In the past of course, German and Bohemian literate society were if anything more intertwined.

Answer 2

I agree with czypsu that the two roots are probably not identical (though there is a theory that Proto-Germanic *staljan is not cognate with Greek stellō, but derives from *st(e)h₂- with the suffix *-dhlo-, in which case the Germanic and Slavic roots would in fact be related). However this may be, the prefixed forms in Czech are evidently calqued on the corresponding prefixed verbs in German. This is a result of the widespread bilingualism in the Habsburg Kingdom of Bohemia.

Answer 3

The German -stell- forms and Slavic -stav- are neither related nor borrowed in one way or another.

The 'clearly corresponding prefixes' may very well be just a coincidence.

Slavic root * stāw- is a continues Proto-Indo-European root * steh₂- 'to stand, to stand up, to make sth stand' which is seen in such Paradebeispiel as Gk. ἵστημι, Skt. tíṣṭhati or Lat. sistō. It also has continuants in the Germanic branch, namely: Ger. stehen, Dutch staan Sw. stå or Goth. stōjan.

German -stell- forms ultimately come from Proto-Indo-European root * stel- 'to put, to locate'. This root was not as productive as the aforementioned one but still it shows it self (beside the German forms you mentioned) in Eng. stall, Gk. στέλλω, and maybe Lat. locus.

Answer 4

This is more like a longish comment than an answer.

Note that the the German word stellen is very vague specially in compounds. For the word in the example,

• nastavit ~ einstellen (to adjust a setting) einstellen can mean besides that: to hire, to stop doing something (e.g., to smoke), to show up (sich einstellen). With the given technical meaning, the Czech word is probably a calque from German
• odstavit ~ abstellen (to put out of operation) Also abstellen has other meanings; most common is to put down, to park (a car), to second someone (specially, soldiers). Again, with the given technical meaning, the Czech word is probably a calque from German
• výstava ~ Ausstellung (exhibition) German Ausstellung is a calque from Latin expositio (probably brought up by Goethe). The Czech is probably either calqued directly from Latin or from German.
• představit ~ vorstellen (to introduce) German vorstellen is a calque from Latin proponere, again the Czech word is probably a calque from German

Some information was taken from DWB (Deutsches Wörterbuch by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm):

http://woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=DWB&lemid=GV15494&mode=Vernetzung&hitlist=&patternlist=&mainmode=

Answer 5

I agree these are calques, but they found their way into seemingly all Slavic languages.

• Bulgarian: пред-ста́вям "represent"
• Russian: пред-ставлять "introduce, represent" + more meanings
• Croatian/Serbian: pred-stavljati "introduce, represent"

But notice that some Croatian/Serbian verbs with this root deviate from the expected meaning:

• na-stavljati "continue", not "adjust" (the German verb einstellen has also the meaning "stop", which is directly opposite)

And some simply don't exist:

• od-stavljati = not found

This can't be a result of "widespread bilingualism", since there was no widespread German-native bilingualism in Bulgaria and Russia. These words were probably introduced via translation and schools, and some could be direct calques from Latin.

Each word should be separately investigated.

Answer 6

VI-IX century Illyrian root cluster {s'T(a,o,u)} > [st:] It's the semantics of symbol T, which alone means 'ground': Something standing, something to stand upon, upon which the acquired s, (the launchpad of its seme) forms the initial cluster st*.

Very productive, because it's a logismus it can be used to describe everything from standing, firm, immovable, stuck, static, to stacking upon, setting on etc etc etc.

therefore it can produce lots of words with minor modificators from the top of my head stay; stand; stop; stub; staple; stock; stuck; stack; static; station; state; stupid; stub;... you name it.