The PIE root is *k^won- (nom.sg. *k^uo:n,
gen. *k^un-os), hence e.g. Old Indo-Aryan s'van-, Gk. kuo:n, OIr. cu:, Lith.
s^uo~, Arm. s^un, Toch. ku. Whether Lat. canis is connected with this set is
still a moot question; regular Latin changes don't seem to permit any such
thing. Perhaps it's a loan from a language in which *k^wn.- > *kan-). Eric
Hamp's ingenious but controversial proposal connects *k^won- with *pek^u-
'livestock': pk^u-on- 'herder' > *k^won-.
In some branches we have suffixations
based on the weak form *k^wn-: Iranian *cva-k-a- > *spaka- (cf.
Skt. s'vaka- 'wolf' < 'dog-like') and
Germanic *hun-d-a-. Russ. sobaka (not a pan-Slavic word) is generally assumed to
be a loan from Iranian, but it appears to be relatively modern (_not_ from
Scythian or Sarmatian) and perhaps not _directly_ from Iranian.
Slavic *pIsU 'dog' is a mystery. The *s
must derive from *k^ or *k^s (PIE *s would have become *x in this
environment). Various etymological guesses can be ventured, all of them
unprovable at present. For all we know, it may have originated as a dog's proper
name like 'Spot' (*peik^- 'paint, ornament' yields some colour terms as well as
words meaning 'spotted, speckled'; cf. Skt. pis'a-, which refers to a species of
deer).
Eng. dog (which has replaced OE hund) is
attested only once in Old English (docgena = gen.pl. of *docga). It looks like a
typical OE hypocorism (pet-name) and may be another proper name
that acquired a generic meaning.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Let dogs have their day too (Was Re: More
numbers)
--- Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> The dog was the only
pre-Neolithic domesticated
> animal. I'm not aware of any
>
evidence that it comes from SE Asia.
******GK: Speaking of man's best
friend (PIE man's
best friend too?)what's the story on basic "dog"
words
and roots? Canis (chien of course), hund, dog etc.. In
Ukr. (and I
presume other Slav tongues) we have "pes"
(any relation to or confusion with
the catty p:s?) and
"sobaka" (the latter I have sometimes heard
described
as cognate to Iranic forms?)******