Talk:गोष्ट

On etymology

The current etymology posited for the word is unconvincing for me as a native speaker.

1. The semantic bleaching from "cowshed" > "place for conversations" > "conversation" > "story, thing" makes sense, the form however is a bit off. गोष्ट​ [goʂʈə] is definitely a hyper-correction of Older गोठ​ < गोठि [goʈʰi], a process seen with other words like स्वस्त​ as well.

2. The Old Marathi dictionary of Tulpule and Feldhaus shows that the older form गोठि and गोष्टी existed in free variation in Old Marathi, but unlike normal tatsama words गोष्टी wasn't rendered as गोष्ठी, but Old Marathi Phonology doesn't have any qualms with the cluster ष्ठ/ renders it as the cluster ष्ट anywhere else. It is clear that गोष्टी is a sanskritized version, but for some reason it's not rendered as गोष्ठी, the associated tatsama, and remains unexplained.

3. The sense of गोष्ठी itself as "place for conversation" comes from vividhatīrthakalpa by Jinaprabhāsūri in the 13th century AD, (although I don't know how accurate the source is, I couldn't find anything else on the word's attestations in that sense), although goṭṭhī has the sense of "conversation" in paia-sadda-mahaṇṇavo.

I think that the connection between गोष्ठी and goṭṭhī is purely cosmetic and was fabricated later on, rather than being a continuous process of semantic bleaching. The final ī is also suspect since in compounds it's attested as goṭṭhilla ~ goṭṭhillaga, and goṭṭhi is also attested.

So at the very least, the word probably does not descend from गोष्ठी, according to my understanding of it's etymology. The oldest unproblematic predecessor I can trace with certainty would be Prakrit "goṭṭhi", with further origin uncertain.

I do however have a hypothesis for the etymology of goṭṭhi, PSM gives two meanings for the word: "conversation" and "assembly, meeting; particularly of a group of similarly aged people". I posit that it's a dissimilation of unattested *ghoṭṭhi, not a terribly unlikely sound change for MIA, and hence comes from the root घुष् "to announce; publicly, cry out". Under this hypothesis, I can reconstruct the Sanskrit reflex as **घोष्टि or **घोष्टिस् (similar formation as ज्योतिस्). Varca mumbaikar (talk) 23:57, 25 October 2024 (UTC)