"Piotr Gasiorowski" <
gpiotr@...> wrote: ...
The formal PIE terms for "father" and "mother" (*ph2té:r, *mah2té:r) seem to
have been lost in Anatolian. Or were they? One could legitimately wonder if
they are indeed PIE -- that is, older than the separation of the Anatolian
branch. But Lycian has the PIE "daughter" word kbatra < *dbatr- < *duatr-
(Hier. Luwian tuwatri-) < *dug(h)atr- < *dHugh2te:r, so it's likely that
other, more primitive-looking family terms in *-h2ter- also existed in the
ancestral language.
The replacement of central family terms may seem odd, but it isn't all that
rare. Proto-Slavic replaced *ph2te:r with the nursery diminutive *at(t)-iko-
(> *otIcI), and Proto-Baltic with enigmatic *tawa-s; Gothic used attas
instead of Germanic *fade:r-, Latin lost the inherited "son" and "daughter"
terms. The original "grandparent" words have survived in very few branches.
...
Piotr
* * * * * * * * * * *
"boy" and "girl" are comparatively recent additions to English.
I suspect boy is related to Semitic PaG = boy before puberty.
Compare page = boy servant or attendant.
Girl may be related to Aramaic aiyin-oo-lamed-heh 3ool = young girl
and/or aiyin-lamed-mem-heh 3almah = lass, maiden, girl. There are
quite a few initial aiyin words that have initial CR/GR in other langs.
The original Hebrew words for mother [aleph-mem] and father [aleph-vet]
have been replaced by Aramaic aleph-mem-aleph and aleph-vet-aleph.
Today, nearly all Israeli kids use these borrowed-from-Aramaic words.
Note the parallel between aleph and h2t above... in the format
C1-(C2)-h2t = aleph-C1-(C2).
A similar parallel occurs with the Hebrew word for wife [aleph-shin-heh]
and *dug(h)atr- < *dHugh2te:r. This presumes a "dental" shin = D/T
and a DH sound for the heh. The semantics may be influenced by the fact
that the ancient Hebrew wife went to live with the tribe of her husband.
For everyone else in his tribe, she was like another daughter.
The Hebrew word for daughter is bet-saf BaS/BaT.
As for *xana/*hana/*ana, I think these terms are more likely to
represent a love-goddess rather than a mother-goddess. They are not
quite the same. Hebrew XeN = charm is probably related to Latin Venus.
The Greek equivalent was Aphrodite.
With yod = G, heh = DH, and vav = F, YHWH may represent god + father,
similar to Ju-piter.
Israel Cohen
izzy_cohen@...