Re[2]: [tied] From here to eternity [was: *y-n,W- "subordinate"?]

At 2:08:04 PM on Thursday, November 20, 2008, Arnaud Fournet
wrote:

> From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>

>> On 2008-11-20 19:10, Arnaud Fournet wrote:

>>> It's quite strange that our anscestors : people with 35
>>> years life expectancy could confuse youth, life-time and
>>> eternity.

>> They used "a lifespan" as a unit of time. It then came to
>> mean 'a long time, aeon' (Gk. aio^n). Lat. aevum (with
>> several close cognates) is a thematic vr.ddhi derivative
>> of *h2jw-: *h2-e-jw-ó- > *h2aiwó- 'life-long' (>
>> 'eternal'). Of course even in the Neolithic there were
>> people individually blessed with a long and healthy life.
>> I suppose they were called *h2júh3ones.

> I don't buy a word of this. They were obsessed with the
> fact they were mortal and unfortunately very short-lived
> when the gods were immortal.

Somehow I don't feel the slightest inclination to prefer
your mindreading of people who have been dead for millennia
to the clear linguistic evidence.

[...]

>>> This makes no common sense at all. I think it just has
>>> to be stated to be blatantly absurd.

>> I see. It's blatantly absurd to say that a child's "age"
>> (another cognate of *h2aju) is, say, three years when
>> "age" may also mean a century or even hundreds of
>> millennia (as in "the Ice Age").

> That use of "age" in that meaning "period of" like in
> Middle Ages, Stone Age is about 150 years old.

On the contrary, it's more than 700 years old:

Of þe world ... þe firste age & tyme was from oure firste
fader Adam to Noe.

This is from 1297, from the metrical chronicle of Robert of
Gloucester.

The same collocation of meanings is found much earlier in
Latin <aeta:s>.

Brian