[tied] Re: Question about o-infix

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> Like I said, *pesd- appears to most people to be simply an

expressive

> verb root. Afterall, the *sd combination is a little strange

otherwise

> (not impossible, I know, but suspect) and the verb doesn't lend

well

> to analysis. Certainly breaking it down to *pes- + *-d- makes no
> sense.
>
> I'd guestimate that it's simply an echoic twist on an original root
> *perd- with purposeful confusion with *pes-, the "piss" root. [...]

The semantic relationship was made clear (if it wasn't already) in
one of the earliest papers of Holger Pedersen. I cannot locate it
right now, but it is probably 110 years old. On the basis of the
available evidence Pedersen pointed out that *pesd- designates the
silent act of farting, while a noisy event of breaking wind is
expressed by *perd-. Both are obviously echoic. Still, at least
*perd- undergoes the Germanic sound shift and is Old High German
ferzan (from *fertan by High German change of t to [ts]).

>
> I'd say that if only a handful of roots, expressive at that, do not
> conform to the picture I paint that otherwise explains a pattern

nicely,

> then I can live with that and so can most others. Minor exceptions

are

> okay as long as they remain minor. At least there's an explanation

to

> a pattern that no one else could come up with. It seems to be a

start.

I agree completely, except that I do not know that *psd-éye-ti is
*not* regular. That depends on how the rule is formulated and how
other examples look of there are any.

Jens