From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2890
Date: 2000-07-27
----- Original Message -----From: Guillaume JACQUESSent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 12:57 PMSubject: [tied] elephantI was shocked too. Gothic ulbandus 'camel', OE olfend, OHG olbanta are regarded as loanwords by everybody else, and with good reason. Whether Greek elephant- may contain IE *el- 'antler(ed beast)' (cf. elaphos 'red deer [of either sex]', (h)ellos 'fawn' < *elnos) is a difficult question. PIE *el-ho:n (*el-hen-) 'hart'/*el-hn-i: 'hind' are supported by Balto-Slavic reflexes, and the 'elk' (= American 'moose') word is apparently another member of the same family, restricted to northern Europe (English elk < OE eolh < *elx-a- < *el-k-o-, Slavic losI < *olsI < *el-k-jo-; but Latin alce:s and Greek alke: are probably loans from some northerly language).The problem is that elephas (unlike elaphos and ellos) can hardly derive directly from *el(h)n- (the 'deer' word), and Greek has no 'antler' word involving *el-. Elephas and elaphos are likely to be "false friends". But even supposing that some late IE-speakers used an inherited word for 'antler' to describe imported ivory (this is the only meaning of elephas in Homer) and then to refer to the animal that provided ivory, certainly doesn't mean that the elephant was a familiar feature of the PIE homeland.Piotr
Guillaume wrote:Puisque l'on parle des animaux, j'aurais pas mal de questions a poser sur les reconstructions de Gamkrelidze et Ivanov. J'aimerais commencer par le mot ho elephas, -antos, que G&I comparent avec le gothique ulbandus (qui a donne le russe verbljud' 'chameau'); et qui suggerent sur cette base que les proto-IE connaissaient l'elephant. J'avoue avoir ete beaucoup choque par cette remarque, et j'aimerais savoir si ça tiens bien la route du point de vue phonetique.