From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <
gpiotr@...>
[PG]There are stranger coincidences than those, but coincidences
nevertheless. People find it hard to believe that Lat. deus and Gk.
theos, or Latin dies and English day are unrelated.
[S] What you call in your other email "standard constraints" can
lead to a kind of linguistic myopia. Of course, you are formally
correct in stating that "deus" and "theos" are not related, though
they obviously belong to the same semantic field. But PIE *deiwo-s
for "god" or *dyew-, *diw- for sky or day can be found in Greek gen
of Zeus which was Dios.
From vocative "Zeu pater" came Latin Iuppiter gen. Iovis, early
Diovis with underlying notion of PIE *dei- reflected in Skt dideti
"shine".
Don't you think that allowances should be made for the dynamic
aliveness of the human language? Logical rules are the linguists'
metalled roads, and that's fine for the law-abiding pedestrians but
poets, writers and lovers of words like to find the own paths and
explore other possibilities. Very unnerving for the former, but
great fun for the latter.
Stefan