Re: Germanic KW

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>
> > > > > I think that PIE *kaltlos kl,tl(e)+ 'pole/pedestal
> > > > > used to raise something' came to mean 'neck' (as, for
> > > > > example, using 'pot' for 'head').
> > > >
> > > > That root is new to me.
> > >
> > > It's *kel/kal+ 'raise' + *tlo+s used in tools.
> >
> >
> > I think the English semantics of 'neck' might be misleading you.
> > 'Hals' in 'Scandinavian' and German means both "neck" and
> > "throat", and it's the latter sense ("narrows") you see in place
> > names: Helsingfors, Helsingør etc.
>
> The village Hals, the reef Hals Barre at the mouth of the Limfjord.
>
>
> > And then there's Kalundborg and Kolding at the end of fjords,
> > Kolind Sund, a now reclaimed longish lake. That sense might have
> > been the first one.
>
> Also, languages have tended with time towards subject + active-verb
> constructions, like 'my throat hurts'. In this case, English is one
> of the few languages to have reached that stage, most other modern
> IE languages will for that use something like 'there-is-hurt
> in-my-throat' (which is why the distinction throat/neck is
> unimportant for such a language), ie impersonal-verb + locative.
> Actually the locative suffix is Finnish -ssA, Estonian -s, "in the
> neck/throat" would be 'kaelas' in Estonian. Compare with Germanic
> *xal-sa-.

Lerchner, Studien zum nordwestgermanischen Wortschatz has approx two
pages' worth on kil f. "water course, shellow ditch, river bed"
(obviously the origin of the many kill's around New York), eg. kil,
ke:l etc and compares with Germ. Kehle "throat", Kelle "scoop" and
Keil "wedge" (cf Est. keel, Finn. kieli "language, tongue"?). These
would be un-Grimm-shifted versions of the kael/xal-sa- word (for some
reason he left out 'tom Kiele', "at the kiel", the old name for the
city of Kiel). Several of the cognates mean "deep water between
obstacles" which makes one wonder if 'keel' goes here too.


Torsten