PROTO: *=ɨ̆šwĔ
MEANING: son, daughter
COMMENT: See Abdokov 1983, 89. Cf. also Urart. aršǝ 'young people, children' (see Diakonoff-Starostin 1986, 36). One of the widely spread nominal stems with changing class prefixes. The WC evidence suggests that it may have been originally verbal ("to bear"), but in all modern languages it is used only as a noun. Phonetic correspondences are quite regular; the only problem is Lak. -s (-š would be expected normally). The seemingly classless forms (PC *ʔožǝ, Lak. ars, PD *ʔurši, Khin. ši) reflect the PEC form with the weak male class prefix *u_=ɨšwĔ; the only form which can reflect an original prefixless stem is the PL plural *š:i-p:V ( < *šʷi-bV). In Lak., Darg. and Urart. the stem obtained a secondary medial -r- (no trace of it in any other language); it can not be a feminine class affix, because the word means only 'son, boy' in these languages. This -r- probably reflects an oblique stem with the *-rV suffix (*-ɨ̆šwĔ-rV- > *-ɨ̆ršwV).
