šλẽcad

This lexeme is found in a dedicatory inscription with two types of content, a funerary text and an oracle poem. The stele with its main text has not been dated accurately, although it was reused at a later period, and a second inscription was inscribed on the side.

[D.S.]

nom./acc. sg. n. or 3sg. pres. act.	šλẽcaḍ	LW 10.11 (Sardis)
	šλẽcad	LW 10.15 (Sardis)

Meriggi 1935a:100 interprets šλẽcad in line 11 as an adverb modifying laλẽns ‘saying’ meaning ‘steady’ and in line 15 as an adjective modifying qirad ‘property’, also meaning ‘steady’. Differently, Gusmani 1961a:188 takes kot šλẽcad in line 11 to mean ‘in truth’, whereas in an earlier paper (Gusmani 1960a:278 n. 12) he had suggested the meaning ‘sacred, indisputable’, which implies the same concept of speaking truthfully.

Both scholars consider the clauses in which šλẽcad is used to be nominal (pace Gusmani 1964a:198f., laλẽns may belong with the previous clause and not with kot šλẽcad, which could simply be an inserted modal clause). A different approach would be to see a denominative verb in -a-^(d). In this case, both clauses would receive a predicate. However, without understanding the semantics of the word, there is no way to be certain about its lexical category here.

The unusual phonological sequence in the word may point towards a compound made of šλẽν and ca-. The latter may be related to the noun ca- ‘share, allotment (?)’, which would be contextually supported.

[D.S.]