Re: Color Words - purple

----- Original Message -----

From: Ivanovas/Milatos

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 2:30 AM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: Color Words - purple

Hi, we had the exchange: > Now tell me, Pjotr, could the Lin. A/B sign 33 that looks like a crocus and has the phonetical value ra(i) be the acronym of a word from the IE 'red'-root *hroudho-/hrudh-ro-? Dunno. It is too short and the only similarity to the "red" word is the consonant. Too little food for speculation, I'm afraid. Does that mean from an acronym like this there is no way of telling more about the possible origin of the word in IE? I'd really like to challenge you here - tell me what more you need and I'll try to get it - what would you expect to follow - all in all - to make a possible IE 'RED' root? Which kind of syllable would fit? Let's see if it exists ... even without knowing any meaning so far. It's a real basic what I'm looking for - it might not exist in the little material (Lin.A/B) we have, anyway, but I'd like to give it a try anyway. Tell me your conditions, and next time I'll have a look at the dictionnaries it'll be only for that! Speculate... I can't get any further without your daring ... What would the possibilities be? Everything tells me the IE version is the best - and may be the oldest known so far. PIE in the widest sense - even the one that is not as logical as linguists would like it to be !! What would clean linguistic theory have to look for? There is the - albeit small - material of an unknown language using syllables roughly (?) similar to other IE (Anatolian) ones (including R/L changes!). Which following vocals are plausible, which aren't? Any other possible/impossible connections? If I come up with any 'possibilities', we'll see further. It doesn't seem like anybody else has worked over this material like this before, why not try? Sabine

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Dear Sabine,

 

Easy does it. It's never a good idea to let your pet theory make you blind to other possibilities. You WANT the Linear A language to be IE. Very good, I wouldn't mind it either. But with such a subjective attitude you run the risk of becoming desperately biassed in favour of such an interpretation. The ra3 character must be a crocus, that's for sure, and crocuses may be purple-coloured. It's more than likely that ra- or something like it is the first syllable of the "Linear A" word for 'crocus'. You propose that "Linear A" is IE because ra- may be the first syllable of a word related to *hr(o)udh-. Well, ra- is difficult to equate with Gk. eru[thros], as there are no matching vowels at all. Hittite has no cognate of *hr(o)udh-; instead, it has esharwant- 'blood-coloured' for 'red' -- also a poor candidate for the target of your acronym. Even if we assume that the root is accidentally unattested in Anatolian, we can predict what it would sound like there: **arut-. It would require unacceptable sleight of hand to equate this with ra-.

 

The phonetic traits of Linear A (to the extent that they can be reconstructed) match those of Anatolian, but also of countless other languages. The falling together of r and l, or their occurrence in complementary distribution, is a common phenomenon outside Anatolian and IE. I remember my own momentary puzzlement when a Korean visiting student asked me in English 'How often do you have eRections?' We were discussing politics, and the question sounded a little out of place.

 

Remember how Ventris and Chadwick cracked the Linear B script? It was hard work rather than inspired guessing. Ventris had no precise expectations when he studied the distribution and cooccurrence of the symbols. He was quite surprised to find that the partially decophered tablets yielded some recognisably Greek words. And the hypothesis that "Linear B" was Mycenaean Greek wasn't widely accepted until its spectacular confirmation through Blegen's reading of newly discovered inscriptions. In the case of Linear B there are hundreds of interconnected facts which support one another -- the initial hypothesis has become a solid structure. In the case of Linear A all we don't seem to have any solid clues whatsoever. You may speculate at will but your hunches will not convince any expert unless you can substantiate them. Even if you handed me an IE "red" etymology with ra- in it, I'd still be sceptical. But if you showed me a NUMBER of plausible IE explications of Linear A/B characters (e.g. those that read ni, sa, qi, mu and represent, respectively, a fig-tree, a flax plant, a sheep, and an ox), I'd begin to share your feeling that it all hangs together.

 

My best regards,

 

Piotr