Re: Odp: joatsimeo-Loan Words

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 575
Date: 1999-12-15

 
----- Original Message -----
From: JoatSimeon@...
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 1999 5:59 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: joatsimeo-Loan Words

 
JoatSimeon@... says, in reply to Brent:
The words that originally made it obvious that the Indo-European languages 
were genetically related (descended from a common ancestral language) were 
for things like the numerals from one to ten, parts of the body, kinship 
terminology, and words for common objects -- trees, animals, wagons, and so 
forth.

These are the things _least_ likely to be borrowed between languages; they're 
extremely stable.
I agree with the rest of your posting and most of what you say in the above paragraphs -- except in the matter of "words for common objects". First, as a amatter of fact, words for trees and animals are easily borrowed and are not always very stable, let alone "extremely" so. Secondly, the agreement for 'wagon' is very different from that for 'three', 'mother', 'foot' or 'sky' as you will easily see for yourself if you examine the actual data. This remark doesn't apply to the verb *wegh(e)- but to the nouns derived from it.
 
Piotr