It's the fascination with
eye-catching connections (deus : theos) that may make you
blind to real connections (deus : Zeus). Who do you think pointed out the latter
and proved they were genuine? Bards or myopic comparative linguists with
their boring standard constraints? You might just as well complain that the
formal rigour of mathematics leads to "mathematical myopia". Believe me, you'll
need some creative imagination to realise why we need all those formal
rules.
Stefan, I sincerely recommend you should
read some introductory book about historical linguistics and its methods if
you're going to cultivate your interest in language and linguistics. Reference
books are not enough. You can copy etymologies from them, but you don't get the
grasp of the methodology -- you can't see how etymologies are arrived
at. As the Polish saying goes, "Wiesz, ze dzwonia, ale nie wiesz, w ktorym
kosciele".
You say, for example, very generously: "Of
course, you are formally
correct in stating that 'deus' and 'theos' are not
related...". Thank you. But why "of course"? How does one tell they _can't_
be related? How would you go about proving formally that 'theos' and 'Zeus'
are unrelated, for that matter? Check their derivatives up in the OED? But OED
may be wrong, so how would you do it on your own, just in case? Incidentally,
Iuppiter did not come from (Greek) "Zeu pater" but from a related interjection
in a language ancestral to Latin.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 10:19 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Ford -furta- fare
[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".