From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1861
Date: 2000-03-14
----- Original Message -----From: Guillaume JACQUESSent: Monday, March 13, 2000 9:22 AMSubject: [cybalist] Re: sorokGuillaume writes:
I find Comrie's etymology difficult to accept, as I think the
similarity betwween russian and turkic is hardly a coincidence. I find
the dissimilation explanation very attractive if there are other such
examples. The number "fourty" is the origin of the name Kirghiz, it may
have been loaned because of its strong symbolic meaning [...]
I find BOTH etymologies difficult to swallow. The one cited by Comrie is phonologically unassailable but the proposed semantic development seems a bit on the fanciful side. The Turkic etymology looks convincing semantic-wise but the sound correspondences can hardly be said to work. I've seen many a dissimilation in the languages I've studied, but none so strange as kVrk > sVrk.First, dissimilation should not be proposed ad hoc; there ought to be some reasonable motivation for it. It's a well-known fact that dissimilation is disproportionately common with liquids (rhotics and laterals), it may also affect multiple occurrences of nasals or of complex articulations (labiovelars, aspirated or glottalised stops, etc.) -- and there are very good reasons for that. I'd have no difficulty accepting a change like kWrkW > prkW or krkW. But kVrk is hardly the kind of sequence that could be expected to cause any articulatory problems. Sequences like kark-, krak-, krok-, etc., are common in Slavic and I've never seen them distorted by dissimilation. I wouldn't expect English kick to change into sick through assimilation, would you?Secondly, s would be a remarkably odd outcome of a hypothetical dissimilatory change affecting k. Dissimilation alters the "offending" feature -- the one that makes a word difficult to pronounce. It may change the manner or the place of articulation of a consonant, but not BOTH of them at the same time.Piotr