From: Torsten
Message: 65761
Date: 2010-01-27
>But the sense I derive it from is not just "side", but "a body (of people) on the side", and seeing society (= its army) in the image of a body with organs is pretty common, cf.
> At 5:50:43 AM on Tuesday, January 26, 2010, Torsten wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@ wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> The direction "side" > "limb" is shown in the metaphor
> >>> "wing" used in an attacking army (cf. Latin 'ala',
> >>> German 'Flügel').
>
> >> That's still "limb" > "side" too. "Wing" originally means
> >> "limb" and its meaning is extended to the side of an
> >> army.
>
> > 'Wing' has the most diverse explanation in DEO, de Vries
> > and Skeat.
>
> Whatever the etymology of the word, you still haven't given
> an example of 'side' > 'limb'.
> (The sources readily available to me all derive it, if at all, fromSo does de Vries, I discover after looking first in the wrong place
> *h2weh1- 'to blow'.)
>See above.
> >> Try again.
>
> > I could arraign such forms as
> > Dutch rechter-, linkerkant "right, left side"
> > rechter-, linkerhand "right, left hand"
> > Swedish högern "right wing/hand", vänstern "left
> > wing/hand"
>
> To what end? None of them shows 'side' > 'limb'.
> [...]I did.
>
> > The basic distinction in military disciple, as manifested
> > in the command language of parades is between being
> > directly subordinated to the will of a superior, and being
> > "on your own time" (within limits, of course). The
> > mode-changing commands are 'Attention' and 'At ease'. For
> > an army, getting through the landscape in a single file is
> > done on your own time, so to speak, like the legions of
> > Varus did at Kalkriese. Calling that formation, or rather
> > non-formation "an arrangement of soldiers" is therefore
> > misleading. It is, if anything, a lack of arrangement.
>
> I think that you'll have a hard time persuading anyone who's
> actually served.
> >> Basic vocabulary does not tend to come from sophisticatedPlease remove it from the text at the first URL then.
> >> cultural concepts.
>
> > That is generally assumed, and I think that's wrong.
> > Vocabularies abound with words having suffered a
> > sociological deroute.
>
> >> Your assumed developments are on the same level as
> >> /kokakola/ ending up as "red".
>
> > A better example is "dirty white"
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabelline_%28colour%29
> > from "Isabella"
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile
>
> The second URL is irrelevant:
> all that we actually know isI was trying to match John's example. Will 'purple'
> that the color term is from the feminine name. The example
> itself is irrelevant: the color term in question is hardly
> basic vocabulary, and a personal name is not an example of a
> sophisticated cultural concept.
> >> I don't see you even trying to explain there how a singleThank you for providing further examples of the rendition in English of that Welsh sound.
> >> *L could yield all of *g *gl *dVl *d *l etc.
>
> > I assume you already know that the /L/ is meant to denote
> > an unvoiced /l/. That's a rather rare phoneme, and tends
> > to get substituted with exactly those combination when
> > words containing it are loaned. Eg. the Welsh placename
> > Llanberis is rendered in English as /klanberis/,
> > /hlanberis/ or /lanberis/.
>
> After simple <l(l)>, the most common English attempts to
> represent the Welsh sound are probably <fl> and <thl>. The
> <Fl> forms have given rise to well-known English surnames,
> <Flewelling> (and variants) and <Floyd> (ditto), from
> <Llywelyn> and <Llwyd>, respectively.
> > The Spanish chose the digraph -tl- to represent NahuatlOkay. I can only guess anyway at the nature of the /L/ I reconstruct in *Lun,-
> > /L/.
>
> No, they used <tl> to represent the Nahuatl voiceless
> lateral *affricate*, [tL]; Nahuatl [L] is an allophone of
> /l/ and was represented by <l>.