--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Here's a simple example. The "Italo-Celto-Germanic" word for 'fish'
has traditionally been reconstructed as *pisk(o)- (Latin piscis, OIr
íasc, Gothic fisks), but if we analyse it as *pik^-sk(o)- with
cluster simplification, an attractive hypothesis emerges: *peik^-
means 'paint, mark, decorate', and so the 'fish' word can be
interpreted as 'speckled, spotted' -- the original meaning being
perhaps 'trout'. We violate the principle of parsimony (*pik^-sko- is
not the simplest analysis, though it remains within the bounds of
formal acceptability), but the payoff may justify this offence: we
find previously unrecognised cognates outside the Western IE area
that support the new analysis, like Slavic *pIstr-o~gU 'common trout'
(with *pIstr- < *pisr- < *pik^-r- = *pIstrU 'piebald, variegated'),
and by finding a semantic derivation for *pisko- we arrive at a more
elegant and intellectually more satisfying etymology. Of course the
next step should be to show the new hypothesis to the public so that
critics can identify its weak points and possibly make us abandon it.
>
> Piotr
Proto-Slavic *ryba 'fish' can be (and has been, by Toporov)
interpreted as *ry2ba, where y2 is a hypothetic phoneme for nasalized
*y (*y,) < *o:n (this developement is usually postulated for auslaut
only, but there are some facts that allow to extend it to inlaut in
some cases [most probably prosody plays some role]). A connection to
Proto-Slavic *re,b- 'specky, pocky' is obvious in that case. This can
support pik^-sk(o)- reconstruction typologically.
Sergei