Re: [tied] Let dogs have their day too

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 15995
Date: 2002-10-07

 
----- Original Message -----
From: tgpedersen
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Let dogs have their day too


> Why "cognate"? Claiming it to be a loan word would fit much nicer. Besides, crossing the Bering Strait bridge (in Ice Age weather, brrr!) would be much nicer with dogs pulling stuff. And if dogs were brought into the New World, when did they decide to call it something else?

I've no idea what anyone called dogs in the Pleistocene; I'm convinced that a fairly large number of 'dog' words were in circulation at the time. I said "cognate" because I was discussing mass comparison, which is reputed to detect "deep" genetic relationships, not mere diffusion patterns. When they say that the Proto-World word for 'dog' was *kwan, they mean that attested words like Greek kuo:n represent inheritance from Proto-World, not, say, an ancient Wanderwort. I don't exclude family-to-family borrowing (even between IE and Sinitic) if any reasonable evidence can be offered.
 
Piotr