Re: [tied] Athena, Tritos and the painfully obvious origins of Ind

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

From: João Simões Lopes Filho

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2000 9:33 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Athena, Tritos and the painfully obvious origins of IndoEuropean

 

As I wrote a few weeks ago, Polish has something that may or may not be a residual 'wildcat' term -- Zbik, zdeb < *stubH-j-os ?? I'm venturing this reconstruction only in the hope of eliciting a cognate somewhere; there is a potentially related Sanskrit root meaning 'shout, utter a sound', and wildcats, were probably more often heard than seen.

 

Incidentally, our 'squirrel' word is wiewiórka, a diminutive of *wewer- (Czech veverica, cf. Latvian vAvers, Lith. voverE), one of you furry tree-climbers. The name must be reduplicated, hence the dialectally variable coda of the first syllable.

 

There's little doubt that PIE had as many words for small critters as could be expected of any ordinary language. There was probably quite a lot of regional variation in naming them (typologically the normal state of things for minor fauna members). Most of these names have been replaced so thoroughly that they are gone forever now.

 

Piotr

 

 

Yes, the Common European word for "cat"came from Latin CATTUS which is of
African origin (Romans brought the cat from Egypt). But Latin has
FELES/FELIS, which could be cognate with OHG belihha,bilih (dormouse),
Russian belka (squirrel), Welsh bele /*beleg- (marten). Greek had AIELOUROS,
which can be cognate with PIE *wewer- "squirrel, dormouse, ferret, weasel,
little tree-cilmbing fur mammal" (*weworo- > *eoro- > -*ouro; or *waiwero- >
aiero- > -aielo (dissimilation by -ouRos).
Had the Germanic languages a name for the wild cat? And the Balto-Slavic?