From: Tavi
Message: 66130
Date: 2010-05-07
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>I'm sure *medhu- is a Vasco-Caucasian borrowing from PNC *midzzV 'sweet'.
> And is *medhu- certainly originally "honey" (I assume the meaning "fermented honey, mead" is later) or could it be simply "sweet" as in Sanskrit?
>
According to Starostin (see this old Russian article: http://newstar.rinet.ru/Texts/iecauc.pdf) and my own research, PIE received a large amount of loanwords relative to Neolithic products and technologies from an extinct Vasco-Caucasian language (remember that post-Anatolian PIE chronology is Late Neolithic or Calcolithic). This (hypothetical) macro-family (also called Macro-Caucasian) includes North Caucasian (=NEC+NWC), Burushasaki as well as Basque and extinct languages like Iberian, although the inclusion of Hattic, Hurro-Urartian, Etruscan (originary from NW Anatolia, see Beekes) and even Sumerian has also been proposed.
For example, PIE *bheH2g^o- 'beech' (but 'a k. of oak' in Greek) is another Vasco-Caucasian loanword from PNC *mh\oqqwe (~ ¿-) 'oak-tree' (h\ and ¿ are the voiceless/voiced pharyngeal fricatives). Out of PIE, Vasco-Caucasian substrate loanwords can be also found in regional words like *perkW- 'oak' (m.) (Latin quercus), 'pine' (f.) (English fir), from PNC *XwIrkkV 'tree, oak', with *Xw- > *p-.