Re: [tied] Of bulls and balls

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 16677
Date: 2002-11-10

Alex,
 
This is a comedy of errors, or ... talking of bulls ... never mind. No stretch of the imagination will make <bull> and <Bulle> (Gmc. *bullo:n) related to Lat. bo:s or any other reflex of *gWou-, since *gW can't be reflected as /b/ in Germanic (Grimm's Law takes care of that). The actual reflex of *gWou- in Germanic is *ku: (Eng. cow, Ger. Kuh). The most likely derivation of <bull> is that given by Pokorny -- from *bHel- 'grow, swell' -- namely, *bHl.-no-s (with weak-noun inflections in Germanic), meaning approximately 'grown, fat'. The Greek reflex of the very same form is <pHallos>, also meaning something that can swell and that every bull is equipped with.
 
The little that we know about Thracian does not exclude the possibility that <bolinthos> belongs to this word-family as well. Eng. ballock < OE bealluc 'testicle' imply non-diminutive OE *beallu < *bHol-n-u-s (its direct descendant is Eng. ball). My guess is that <bolintHos> reflects *bHol- plus hard-to-analyse suffixes, perhaps the Thracian version of whatever underlies Greek nouns in -a:s, -antos (as in <elepHa:s>). Duridanov's analysis of the word as *bHl.n-ent- (not your "bhun-ent-", which owes its form to careless copying) is also worth considering. The latter solution assumes that syllabic *l gave Thr. ol, which is possible but hard to confirm for lack of reliable evidence. In any case there is no connection with *gWou-, and no support for Mr. Vinereanu's fantasies.
 
Piotr
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: alexmoeller@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 6:50 PM
Subject: [tied] Piotr, is this the cybalist site?

http://www.geocities.com/indoeurop/atree.html


if so, I remember the discution where you argued about the
imposibility of PIE gW > b in thracian.
Let see please not Vinereanu, but this definition from the
o.m. site

bolinthos 'wild bull, bison'. The word is attested in
Aristotle, according to whom that animal lived in the
Messapian mountain, which separated the country of the
Peonians from that of the Maideans (a Thracian tribe
inhabiting the middle course of Struma and upper course of
Mesta), and that the Peonians called it mónapos. Therefore,
bolinthos was a Maidean, that is, a Thracian word. It is
compared to the German Bulle 'bull' and is derived from the IE
*bhun-ent.
bonassos 'a bull' [IE *gwou-, Latin bos, bovis 'a bull'].

So, I dont care now about bolinthos and I care about gW> b in
thracian.
As I showed in  hidronimes of Dacia kw<p
I doubt now if vinereanu is so wrong. We have more as clear
that in thracian kW>p and gW>b.
How can you argue that Vinereanu is wrong here?