--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>"
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, guto rhys <gutorhys@...> wrote:
> I looked up up Franz Bopp's original article on IE and Malayo-
> Polynesian. He had a remark on Latin caecus: He relates it to
Gothic
> haih-s, and claims it should be divided ha-ih-s, originally
> meaning "one-eyed", and compares it to ha-lt "limping", ha-nf "one-
> handed" and even ha-lf itself; the ha- part he claims to be
identical
> to Sanskrit -ka in e-ka "one" (and -lf equal to the ending of
eleven
> and twelve). Any sense in this?
Well, *-lb- in 'eleven' and 'twelve' is explained as meaning 'left
over', so if IE *ka- meant 'one of a pair', the derivation of 'half'
makes sense. But what are the second elements in Gothic ha-ih-s,
English 'halt' and (language?) 'hanf'?
If you accept the implicit suggestion, supported if not proposed by
Patrick Ryan in his Proto-Language works, that some PIE *h2 and *h3
(our notation - he tolerates 4 PIE laryngeals) might alternate with
*y (he derives them from a Nostratic phoneme yielding Semitic ayin),
the Gothic -ih- might conceivably derive from the precursor of PIE
*h3okW 'eye', presumably to be derived from *`oku. (I tremble at
trying to relate it to Semitic `ayn 'eye' itself. Please, no half-
witted comments about '`ayn' and 'eyne' being similar.)
I cannot explain '-lt' or '-nf', so although the idea might be true,
I don't think there's enough evidence for it. Moreover, don't we
already have PIE *sem with the meanings of 'one' and 'half'? One
might therefore raise the weak objection that we already have a word
with the meaning proposed for *ka.
Richard.