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摘要
Marha-, ‘god’ or ‘guest’, appears in a Palaic version of the Anatolian ‘Disappearing God’ myth. It belongs with the Palaic verbs marh- and marhina- and perhaps the Luwian hapax verb ˋˋmarh-, but has no convincing Indo-European etymology. The Anatolian words may be related to IE *morh2/3-eh2- > *morah2 ‘supernatural being, spirit, demon’, which IEW 735–737 places under a root 5. *mer-, *merə- ‘aufreiben, reiben’ und ‘packen, rauben’. The noun shows up in Celt. *morā ‘supernatural being’ (in OIr. morrígan ‘wargoddess, female demon’), Gmc. *marōn- ‘nightmare’, and Slav. *morā ‘demon, spirit’. The descendants of *morah2 have been derived from *merh2- ‘grab, crush’, also in Gk. μάρναμαι ‘fight, battle’, and Skt. mr̥ṇā́ti ‘robs, seizes, crushes, grabs’, assuming that the demon sits on her victim, crushing their chest. Although such a demonic presence (likely a description of sleep paralysis) is wide-spread in Germanic and Slavic folk traditions, it is not attested until the Middle Ages, and this is not behavior in which the Irish morrígan engages. Instead, the Palaic noun and IE *morah2 are from a *merh2/3- ‘appear’ (in Luw. marh-) and a root noun *morh2/3- : *mr̥h2/3- ‘apparition’. Alternatively, an underlying verb has not been preserved, and these nouns are from a root noun *morh2- : *mr̥h2- originally meaning ‘small god’. In either case, non-Anat. *morah2 is an innovation, formed after the breakup of Indo-Hittite.