Re: [tied] Polecat

I'd adduce *k^onk- 'hang', which is probably far more solid than most of these roots. I doubt if any leading IEist (other than G or I) would be able to recognise more than two or three items in the list. Dictionaries like Pokorny's are infested with "protowords" reconstructed on little real evidence. A word in Armenian looks like a word in Latvian, give or take a consonant, so a shaky reconstruction was offered by someone somewhere and Pokorny recorded it conscientiously, giving it eternal life.

*geig^- is the strangest of'em all. Two plain voiced stops in one root??

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 6:17 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Polecat

On Tue, 5 Dec 2000 15:40:11 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote: >Mind if I tsk-tsk over this one, Miguel? As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong), the "polecat" reconstruction *kek^- is founded upon a root equation (?) between Indic and Baltic. The meaning is only roughly similar in both branches, and the putative root forms involved are Skt. kas'- (< *kok^- or *kak^-) vs. Lith. s^es^-/Latvian ses- (< *k^ek^-), which means that *if* the words are related at all (chance similarity is a near-certainty in cases where neither the vowels nor the consonants match with any rigour), neither the Indic nor the Baltic variants reflect *kek^-. As I don't really have G & I (just some notes I took when I had it from the library), I just took the first example I found in Pokorny. You're quite right that it's not a particularly solid one, although a case could be made. Looking at my notes, it's not, in fact, one of the examples adduced by G & I. Their examples are: *geig^- "bitter, sharp" *kak^- "thin, weak" *k^ak- "be able, to help" *k^a(:)k- "branch, plough" *g^halg- "stick" *g^hengh- "ankle, leg; to go" *gheug^h- "hidden, secret" *k^e:ko- "grass, greens" *kork^- "thin" *k^euk- "white" *kok^- "armpit ~ leg ~ body" *k^uenk- "brush; to open"