Re: swallow vs. nighingale

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

From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 1:04 PM

Subject: [Courrier indésirable] [tied] Re: swallow vs. nighingale

> 4. "Blackbird": if Germanic *a- in *amVsla- was from a laryngeal,
> it would be rather strange since Germanic, as a rule, has not
> preserved initial laryngeals as vowels. But if the word is Semitic,
> and *a- was the article, which are its cognates in known Semitic
> languages?
>

> A.F (old)
> *a being the article is not the only possibility.
> You have the Form IV in verbs that allow C_C_C to become ?_C_C_C.
> This can be something like that in PIE waiting to be described
> properly

from Möller: Vergleichende Indogermanisch- semitisches Wörterbuch
==============

A.F : new
My point of view about these "bird-names" with #a- ""mutable"" first syllable

supposedly being not from PIE is this :

1. A lot of words in Greek display #i- or #a- as a kind of "prothesis".

This ruins the hypothesis that western PIE words displaying #a- could be from a substrate.

This must be inherited, even though not properly described so far in the standard theory of good old PIE.

2. The idea that this #a- could ""just"" be the semitic article is "forest-gumpish".

Semitic has an active morphological process : Form IV

that allows derivation of ?_C_C_C from C_C_C

so my hypothesis is that such a process also existed in PIE.

====

Next

Concerning the word lark, a couple of words display -iw- as the reflex of -l- in Germanic :

lalarka > laiwarka. Cf. alauda : the singing bird

maiwa "gull" : Cf. Saami bup-mal-as and Norse ful-mar. *mal = maiw- = gull

This could be a PIE substrate in Scandinavia before Germanic got there.

=====

Next

as another possibility to be investigated,

is there a class in North-Caucasian for birds starting with prefix #a- ?

or animals or anything the like ?

====