tommy.tyrber-@... wrote:
original article:
http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=2
> I'm very interested in up-to-date view on Nostratic stem *kor'i- (a
> sheep, a lamb). This stem was given by Illich-Svitych in his Nostratic
> Glossary as #173. Do you know other Nostratic stems concerning
> agricultural terms (a goat, corn, weat, barley, to sow) or something
> like this?
>
According to Dolgopolsky (Aharon Dolgopolsky: The Nostratic Macrofamily
and Linguistic Palaeontology, Cambridge 1998) Proto-Nostratic contains
a number of terms relating to gathering of cereals, and of course
animals, but no terms that definitely indicate agriculture. A few of
these (only approximate since I can´t reproduce Dolgopolsky´s very
complex consonant notation:
qaRpV- 'to gather, harvest' (=IE xarp-)
zükV- 'edible cereal' (not in IE)
galV- 'cereals' (=IE xelk-)
XäntV- 'kernel, grain' (=IE (x)et(e)n-)
gawV- '(wild) sheep/goat' (=IE xowi-)
diga- 'goat' (=IE digh-)
bukEgh- 'ram, billygoat' (=IE bhugho-) (=buck)
gadi- 'kid' (=IE ghaido-) (=goat)
None of these however indicates agriculture, and Dolgopolsky thinks
that Proto-nostratic probably reflects a late paleolithic culture,
which seems reasonable given the time-depth of Proto-nostratic (if it
really existed)
Tommy Tyrberg