Horse Sense (was: [tied] Re: Hachmann versus Kossack?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:

>
> There is a steady association of the segment *k^(h)e- and 'fast'
> in PIE.

No, there's no steady association. Pokorny lists only
*k^e:ibh- and *k^e:igh- beginning with that sequence
and meaning 'quick', but no *k^(H)e-.

> I propose that early PIE words for 'deer', like our 'hind',
> contained the segment *k^(h)e- so that *k^em-, 'hornless',
> should be regarded as a generalization of 'hind' rather than
> 'hind' being derived from 'hornless'.

Why would the sense 'fast' be generalized as 'hornless'?

This is your semantic-chain game again, this time going
from 'fast' to 'deer' to 'hind' to 'hornless'.

As I pointed out before, one can derive any meaning he
wishes from any other meaning whatsoever by means of
this "method", and so it has no probative value at all.

> In my opinion, this presupposes a PIE **k^(h)em-, 'doe'.
>
> What application does this have to the present discussion?
>
> I believe that *ek^(-)wo-s is compounded of of the initial
> segments *e- (cf. *ai-ra:, 'kind of grass'),

There's no P.I.E. *e- meaning 'grass', so by what novel
method do you convert 'aira:' into 'e'?

> '*grass' + *k^(h)e-, 'deer', so that the compound should have
> the core meaning of 'grass-deer'.

If you're going to be allowed to invent your own roots,
as you've done with *k^(h)e- 'fast' and *e- 'grass',
I would think you could come up with a vastly superior
explanation for 'horse' than 'grass deer'.

Moreover, why not follow the shorter route available to
you, from *k^em- in its properly reconstructed meaning
'hornless'? Horses are similiar to cattle and deer in
many ways, yet always hornless, and the insertion of an
'e' and the elimination (or conversion to 'w'?) of 'm'
surely involves much less voodoo than converting 'aira'
to 'e'.

> If this is true, then it indicates importantly, that PIE's
> discovered horses long after they had become familiar with
> deer.
>
> A corollary is that the PIE-speaking ethnos could not have
> been situated on the grassy plains of Eurasia originally
> because deer are predominantly forest-dwellers.

It would be a very bad idea to try to build any further
extrapolation on such a poor basis as this 'grass deer'
explanation.

Speculation built upon speculation built upon speculation
a fragile structure makes.

> Old habits die hard.

So we see.

David