СКОТЪ versus SKATTR: the Language of the Varangian Minority and the Paths of the Loan Words [СКОТ и SKATTR: язык варяжского меньшинства и пути заимствованных слов]

This talk is addressed two problems of Slavic and comparative linguistics: 1) the semantic structure of the cultural term СКОТЪ lit. 'cattle', 'animal', 'movables', and, finally 'money'; 2) the origin of this term and its Germanic counterpart SKATT- (cf. Gothic SKATTS 'money', 'denarius', Old Icel. SKATTR 'tax, money' and the paths of the loan words in Slavic and German. I argue that most Old Russian texts lack ambivalent contexts, where two or more readings of the term СКОТЪ are possible: i.e. it can normally either signal the meaning 'cattle' or the meanings 'movables' or 'money', but does express them simultaneously. I argue that the meaning 'money' tagged СКОТЪ4 in this paper is a semantic loan borrowed from the Varangian dialect of Old Scandinavian. Almost all uses of СКОТЪ are tied up to the Old Novgorod rule, since Novgorod still had a Varangian community in the XII сentury: the corresponding uses are attested in the birch bark letters, in the project of the peace treaty with the German and the island of Gotland, in the brief version of the "RUSSIAN PRAVDA", and finally, in the 1018 episode from the "TALE OF THE BYGONE YEARS" (POVEST' VREMMENNYH LET). Nevertheless, the late semantic loan (from Varangian SKATTR to Old Novgorod СКОТE4) does not prove that the term СКОТЪ comes from the Germanic languages. In fact, the hypothesis that СКОТЪ is an early Germanic loan into Proto-Slavic is unlikely. The borrowing in the opposite direction (from СКОТЪ to SKATT-) is more likely but not conclusive. Finally, there remains a possibility of the parallel borrowing from some East Iranian language.