Re: [tied] *ekwos, equus hemonius khur?

On Wed, 31 Oct 2001 15:53:05 -0000, "S.Kalyanaraman"
<kalyan97@...> wrote:

>Is the jury still out or is it settled that *ekwos connoted equus
>caballus spp. Linnaeus?
>
>Are there PIE terms for 'foal', 'mare', 'ridle' or 'cheek-piece'? If
>not, *ekwos could have referred to a domesticated onager (which was
>used to draw chariots in Mesopotamia)?
>
>The term *ekwos for `horse' as Proto-Indo-European only indicates
>that the horse was known to the speakers of the language; it does not
>indicate that the term in fact denoted a domesticated horse.
>Dolgopolsky observes that in horse-breeding cultures, there are words
>for `mare' and `foal'; these terms cannot be reconstructed for PIE;

"Foal" (*po:l(h1)os) is attested in Celtic, Germanic, Albanian
("mare"), Armenian ("kid") and Greek. Words for "mare", while
generally feminine forms of the "horse" word (*h1ek^wah2, *markah2),
do exist.