Re: [TIED] IE apple

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

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2000 6:26 PM

Subject: Re: [TIED] IE apple

A very ingenious solution, Glen, but not without problems.

 

(1) If Greek me:lon < *xmaxlom or *xmxlom, where's the expected prothetic vowel? On the other hand, the regular Latin reflex of *xmaxros (or *xmxros, for that matter) should have been ma:rus, not ama:rus -- Latin has no pre-nasal laryngeal reflexes, cf. Gk. amelgo: 'milk (v.)' vs. Lat. mulgeo, or Gk. omeikho: 'piss' vs. Lat. mingo.

 

(2) Can you offer any evidence to support the ad hoc proposal that *-mxl- became *-bl- (via your *-p:l-)? I can suggest a counterexample: the Old Indic word for 'sour' is amblá-, not *ablá-.

 

(3) I don't think *am(a:)r- (?*xam[x]-r/l-) 'sour' occurs in Germanic, Baltic or Slavic. The root does seem to occur in Celtic, but its meaning there is 'raw, crude, uncooked' (BTW Latin ama:rus is 'bitter, pungent' rather than just 'sour'). Old Indic a:mla means 'mango', a fruit which is definitely sweet rather than bitter or sour. All this shows that the semantic links you propose are very tenuous.

 

Piotr

 

---

 

Sorry I was silent - I'm sure you all missed my infamous "ascorbic tongue",
as it were. At any rate, I figure I should respond more to Piotr's
discussion of the word "apple" because I have some new thoughts on it and
the topic seemed to die once I got busy with things in my physical world. :(

Simply put, is it possible that the word is in fact based on the root *xem-
"to taste sour"? I guess apples were more like crab apples back then :)
Plus, is it possible that the root here was in reality *xemx-/*xmex- with a
final laryngeal? I explain...

If we reconstruct *xemxlos for "apple", we get a literal meaning of "sour
(thing)" since it would be formed from the adjectival stem *xmxlos (Sanskrit
a:mra, was it?). We might further explain the "southern dialectal" forms
that Piotr mentioned as being related to a related form with *xmex- (Latin
ama:rus).

Finally, the solution seems sufficient to explain why *-ml- becomes *-bl-
instead of **-mpl- since the laryngeal would serve as a devoicing element
for the *m, producing *p: (later *b). So *xemxlos becomes *xep:los (later
*ablos).

There. I think this is a happy solution solved the gLeN way.

- gLeN