Well, this is your private etymology, and
the same objections apply here. The French examples you gave are not relevant to
the matter in hand. Those with "porte-" are verb+noun compounds like
English spendthrift or pickpocket (as opposed to hypothetical
thrift-spender or pocket-picker). They are not endocentric -- that is, they
don't meet the criterion X-Y "is-a" Y or X: a "porte-parole" is neither a
"porte" nor a "parole"; nor is cheval-vapeur a horse or a cloud of steam. By
contrast, river-people are people. "Le Roi-Soleil" (which you might thing of as
the next counterexample) is a "dvandva" compound like Skt. pita:putrau 'father
and son', where "X-Y" means BOTH an X and a Y. "Hôtel-Dieu" is not a real
compound but a fossilised phrase like "the Hotel California" or "the River
Thames" (in British English).
All you could argue is that your
"river-people" word is also a lexicalised phrase: "people river-Gen.pl.", but
this is not how you originally reconstructed it. I'm sure you'll make the
necessary adjustments immediately; however, this will remove only one of my
objections. What about the remaining ones?
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 9:05 AM
Subject: [tied] People of the Rivers - Thought #3
I just realized that I have already uncovered another
compound word in
IndoTyrrhenian that curiously follows the same opposite
order of that in
English. For instance *k:al-axwa "female-in-law" consisting
of *axwa
"brother" and *k:al-, presumably "woman". Strange, come to think of
it.
Hmm... say, Piotr? What can you tell me about a language that does
this sort
of compounding?