Re: [tied] Let dogs have their day too

----- Original Message -----

From: Vassil Karloukovski

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 5:05 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Let dogs have their day too

> at any rate the turkic and iranian words are probably related. most words for  "dog" start with k- (typically kan-) in a very large number of languges across families.

 

The above is an overstatement. I'm aware of a large number of languages in which the 'dog' word neither begins nor is derivable from anything beginning with /k/. As far as I know nobody has actually done any counting, but I doubt if the alleged high frequency of /k/ is in fact statistically significant. One gets the impression that "there is something in it" from Ruhlen's listing of "kwan" words only because the listing is so selective and ignores countless other 'dog' words in the languages of the world.

 

> new persian has sag (probably derived frm the old iranian word cited).

 

Not from <spaka-> (as in Median) but from its Old Persian counterpart *saka- (in Old Persian Proto-Iranian *cv shanged into /s/ as opposed to median or Avestan /sp/).

> menges had called sobaka "the satem version ko"pek " (I think in his book on the Igor tale).

 

I'm not sure what this statement is supposed to mean. The Turkic languages, not being IE, are neither satem nor centum. The satem change took place millennia ago, and <köpek> can't have ebeen borrowed that early; I don't even think its reconstructible to Proto-Turkic. The only imaginable reason for the substitution k -> s in <sobaka> (if it derives from <köbäk> with front vowels) would be that given by Trubachev (the second palatalisation *k > *c plus an ad hoc simplification of *c > s), which has nothing to do with the satem change.

 

Piotr