It was a warm, sunny day with a temperature of -20something degrees Celsius
(you start lose count after minus 10). The birds were... um... well, hangin'
from trees like popsicle sticks. Anyways, it was sunny and that's the
important thing.
After taking a trip to the library and checking out The Sanskrit Language, I
discovered a teensy booboo of mine. I should point out that the
nominative-only stem of "blood" is /asrj-/ with a nom.sg. realisation of
/asrk/. Whatever. Point is, the -k/-j- (which would be IE -*g^) is secondary
and hardly can be related to /sanguis/ when so many other phonetic problems
exist with this connection.
Now it seems I can't blaim Miggy for this mishmash equation between
/sanguis/ and /asrk/ because it turns out that Burrow, author of The
Sanskrit Language, dishes out the same crap. After explaining that Sanskrit
did not tolerate final vocalic -r and avoided it by adding stops like -t (as
in /yakrt/ "liver"), he turns around and connects the -k of /asrk/ (Hittite
eshar without *-g^) to the -g- of Latin /sanguis/, claiming that /sanguis/
and /sanies/ "gore" are of the same "n-terminating root" which he doesn't
explicitly state (perhaps /sano:/ "I heal"?). He doesn't even provide a bold
reconstruction of this IE form behind the two words. Is it supposed to be
**?sxen-gW-? We aren't told.
Clearly there's something cowardly going on here. Burrow doesn't seem to be
brave enough to explicitly go into enough detail about this etymology to be
taken seriously and if he did, he wouldn't be anyway. How exactly does
/sano:/ relate to /sanguis/. Blood heals?? If I see blood on my clothes, I
would hardly think that I've "healed" - I'd be running to a doctor quick to
_BE HEALED_. In the end, he seems to contradict all that he had been saying
in the preceding paragraph about the secondary nature of Sanskrit stop
phonemes after vocalic final IE *-r. What is the grammatical usage of **-g^-
in IE and how is it attested?
Finally, concerning his implicit **?sxen-gW- reconstruction, why would we
not find *-r- instead of *-n- in this derived stem? What basis for an accent
shift? Nothing here is substantiable within the context of known IE grammar.
The word is obviously a sliced-and-diced farce, the product of ad-hoc word
splicing. It's time for a reality check. Time for a REAL etymology for
/sanguis/ and /asrk/.
Taking Burrows initial and valid explaination of avoidance of final vocalic
-r, the -k is obviously just a product of that purely Sanskrit rule, just as
with /yakrt/ < *yakr < *yekWr. Case closed.
As for /sanguis/, there doesn't seem to be any certain etymologies given for
some odd reason. Given that it's safe to say that it does NOT derive from
*esxr without the clever use of wordplay, I can think of one possible
_GRAMMATICALLY AND PHONETICALLY VALID_ inanimate noun that it derives from.
/sanguis/ < *s�ngWu literally "that which is shed"
< *sengW- "to fall"
Apparently, the verb *sengW- is attested in Gr /he�phthe:/ "he sank" (for
*es�phthe:), Armenian /ankanim/ "I fall" and in many Germanic languages like
Old English /sincan/, which means "sink" just like your unorthodox views on
/sanguis/ are doing right now.
Thank you for playing the gLeNny gEe Battle Of Wits Game. Don't trip on your
way to the exit sign. Next!
- gLeN
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