Re: [tied] West bird

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Exu Yangi" <exuyangi@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> >
> >
> > > See
> > >
> > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/16097
> > >
> > > (by Guillaume Jacques, an Old Chinese and Sino-Tibetan scholar)
> > >
> >Maybe Pulleyblank is Older?
> >
> > >
> > > "Le mot pour "chien" a effectivement été proposé comme un des
> > > Wanderwörter qui se retrouvent en IE et en chinois, mais je n'y
> >crois
> > > pas du point de vue phonétique : nous avons des raisons très
> >fortes
> > > (basées sur les rimes dans les bronzes chinois) pour

reconstruire

> >ce mot
> > > en particulier *kwir avec un -r.
> >
>
> if one wanted to cast a bit of doubt on the argument, one could

look only as

> far as Hittite to see final -n changing to final -r. My question

would be:

> Can this be a regualr change in the corpus of OC as well, or

perhaps

> betraying a way to date a borrowing?
>

Some reconstruct final -r for the "dog" word in OC, Pulleyblank
reconstructs final -n. If you go for the first option and deny the
possibility that -r > -n, then Finnish koira, Estonian koera "dog"
might be a loan from Chinese, but PIE *kwo:, *kwon- might not. BTW
dogs were first domesticated in China appr. 14,000 yrs. ago and all
dogs are descended from them. Either the name followed the article,
or the dog spread on its own initiave to various human communities
who then came up with fortuituously similar names for the newly-
arrived.

> Hey ... I just ask the questions ... put down that flamethrower ...

On the above hinges such questions as whether our civilisation
started in the Middle (polycentric theory) or Far (monocentric
theory) East. Hic dracones.


Torsten