Re: Latin merx

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

>
> An IE root *merk^- is found in the zero-grade in Sanskrit <mr.s'áti> 'he

touches, grasps, handles' and in Greek <brakeîn> 'to come together, meet,
assemble', <bráketon> 'crowd', <bráttein> (*brákyein) 'to fill, load heavily'
and <dusbrákanos> 'hard to handle'.

>
> > The Greek word has a doublet parptó: 'to catch, seize, lay, hold off,

overtake'. Beekes then devises a Pre-Greek root *mr(a)kW- > brap-, brak- with
different outputs of the labiovelar cluster.

>
> Beekes's error of making only superficial changes to Furne'e's completely

wrong-headed Pre-Greek reconstructive methodology is most unfortunate, but such
 matters probably belong on the other list.

>

There's an IE root *bhrak- 'to stuff, squeeze together' (Latin farcio:, Greek phrásso:, phrátto:), which looks like a non-native one due to its *a. In this way, both *bhrak- (with denasalization) and *merk^- would be (borrowed) reflexes of a former root *mreH-k- ~ *meHr-k- (with metathesis CRVC ~ CVRC), possibly connected to Sino-Tibetan *mre:(H) 'to buy, debt'. A relationship with IE *meH2ºr/ºn- 'hand' (Greek máre:, Latin manus) and Uralic *mOrV 'handful' is also possible.

I should remark Sergei Nikolayev merges Latin merc- with some outputs of IE *per- 'to exchange, barter', although IMHO linguistic data don't support this. The latter seems to be a Wanderwort related to Afro-Asiatic *pVxVr-  'gathering, assembly'.