Re: [tied] Re: Of cows and living

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

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 6:52 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Of cows and living

On 2006-02-14 13:28, tgpedersen wrote:

> Now if "cow" is connected by ablaut to "live" in PIE, one might
> conclude that it's native to PIE, and that if the Chinese word is
> related, it is a loan from PIE. However, Pulleyblank posits an 
> ablaut a/& for Old Chinese, and the Chinese word appears in Tibetan
> and Burman too. So it seems we are back where we started: it could
> be loan either way (or from a third source?)

I know too little about Sino-Tibetan to have a strong opinion either
way. For my purpose, it's sufficient to be sure that the word is PIE,
whatever its ultimate origin. The fact that it _might_ be connected with
the verb for 'to live' in PIE (but apparently not elsewhere) would be an
argument in favour of its being native there. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov
attempted to link the ST(and IE) terms to Sumerian and Old Egyptian,
assuming an original (onomatopoeic?) velar nasal, but Sumerologist now
agree that Sumerian <gud> had an initial /g-/, not /N-/ (the latter
would correspond to /m-/ in the Emesal dialect, but the Emesal forms are
<gud>, <gu2-ru>). It has been conjectured (Whittaker 2004) that the
Sumerian term is of IE origin.

Piotr