On the etymology of Latin signum and its Sabellic counterparts

Abstract The etymology of Latin signum ‘mark, sign’ and its Sabellic cognates such as Oscan segnúm ‘statue’ has long been disputed. I reevaluate the two main hypotheses as to what verbal root of Proto-Indo-European underlies these forms: * sekH - ‘cut’ (Lat. secō ) or * sek w - ‘follow’ (Lat. sequor ). The former, though well received among scholars, will turn out to be problematic from a phonological standpoint; while the syncope of the vocalized laryngeal in the putative reconstruction * sekH - no - and the subsequent voicing assimilation of * k before n could account for Latin signum , the same explanation is not applicable to the Sabellic data due to the forms like Oscan akeneí ‘year’ with a voiceless velar. The reconstruction * sek w - no - thus enables us to pursue a unitary treatment for both Latin and Sabellic. Furthermore, I argue that the wide range of semantics of signum can be better explained by * sek w -. As the Germanic derivative * sek w - ni - shows (e.g., Gothic siuns ‘sight, appearance’), the underlying notion ‘follow’ of the verbal root is used as not only ‘physically follow’ but also ‘visually follow’; this binary value is sufficiently broad to encompass the various senses of our ‘sign’ words.