Re[2]: [tied] 'Dug' from PIE? (was: Rg Veda Older than Sanskrit)

At 1:11:00 PM on Sunday, April 20, 2008, Patrick Ryan wrote:

> From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>

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

>>> Piotr is, of course, correct that the word cannot be
>>> derived from *dheugh-; it is, in fact, derived from
>>> *dheug(h)-, which does not appear in Pokorny although we
>>> are fortunate to have an English cognate: 'dug', meaning
>>> 'animal teat'.

>> What series of loans do you propose for English _dug_?
>> It can't be inherited from *dHeug. Alternatively, what
>> mechanism do you propose for getting it from *dHeugH?

> That was written a little too fast for clarity.

> I propose that English 'dug' is the inherited reflex of
> *dheugh-; our good fortune is that it shows the required
> meaning.

An obvious difficulty is that it first shows up in the 16th
c. And in the two earliest citations in the OED it refers
specifically to a woman's breast ('Tete, pappe, or dugge, a
womans brest' 1530, and 'Her dug with platted gould rybband
girded about her' 1583), though I shouldn't put too much
weight on that.

It's also very difficult to concoct a history that works.
OE *dugV would have yielded something like ME *doue, *dowe,
so you need a geminate *dugg-, and I don't see where it
would come from.

Brian