Grigori: the deeper linguistic point is whether hard-b and soft-b are separate phonemes in Russian! The b-sound is simply influenced by the following vowel (hard a or soft yah). (As indeed is the s before the soft e!) The Russian syllables s’eb and s’eb’ are “semantically” identical. Don’s interesting connection between seb’ya and Sebastian, whether etymologically sound [sic] or not, cannot be faulted on the grounds of consonantal mutation.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 23/05/2010 11:47, "Grigori Utgof" <utgof@TLU.EE> wrote:
Dear Don,
Your explanation is great, but there's always be a matter of palatalization: the reflexive pronoun "себя" is pronounced with the soft [б'] (like in the Russian "ребята"), while the word "Sebastian" has the hard [б] in it (like in the Russian "башня"); see also: Русская грамматика. М., 1980. T. 1. C. 35-40.
All the best,
Grigori
On May 22, 2010, at 9:36 PM, Don Johnson wrote:
Food for (s)peculation.
"I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we are both someone neither of us knows"
None of the historical persons or places evoked by the name
seem to be obviously connected to VN's novel (see www below). In an idle moment it ocurred to me that the first syllable of the name echoes the Russian pronoun SEBYA meaning "one's self ." Given the tangled relationship between the narrating half -brother and his brother Sebastain, I wonder if this pseudo-etymology sheds any light on the novel.
Tennis, anyone?