Re: [tied] a(i)s-

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 01 Oct 2001 11:23:53 -0000, tgpedersen@... wrote:
>
> >--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
> >> Gmc. *aiz (> Eng. <ore>) has nothing to do with Gmc. *i:sarn- (>
> >> Eng. <iron>). The froms <ayas>, <aiz>, <aes> etc. derive from a

PIE

> >> *aio- (*h2ai-o-) "copper (ore)".
> >
> >All this assuming, of course, that the words weren't loaned, in

which

> >case there's no telling whether or not they were related.
>
> There's telling. The form *h2aies- {this is the correct form}
> "[copper] ore" (secondarily in Indo-Iranian "iron") is found, with
> regular correspondences, in Indo-Iranian, Latin and Germanic, which
> surely means that the word, if borrowed at all, must have been
> borrowed at least as early as the period of "post-Anatolian PIE".

The

> form *i:sarno- "iron", is limited to Celtic (and borrowed from

Celtic

> into Germanic), and, if borrowed, must have been borrowed as late as
> the proto-Celtic period. Since copper metallurgy is native to the
> area where, IMHO etc., PIE first emerged (the Balkans), there's no
> reason at all to suppose the word *h2ayes- is anything but native

IE.

> The Celtic word *i:sarno- may well be a borrowing, and we have two
> possible known candidates in Etr. <ais> "god", pl. <aisar> and in
> Basque <izar> (/isar/) "star". Iron is known as the "sky metal"

(e.g.

> in Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian) because of its earliest use as
> meteoric iron. Both candidates are defective in that there is no
> known evidence from either Etruscan or Basque that <aisar> c.q.

<izar>

> were ever used in those languages to denote "iron" or any other

metal

> (I don't know the Etruscan for "iron", and the Basque is <burdina>

[+

> variants]).

I wondered what "native to" would mean wrt metallurgy and regions.
Does it mean "was first used (in this part of the world) in"? Does it
mean "was discovered in"? In the latter case you would expect the
name of the product to be derivable in the language spoken in the
region (cf "plough" from *pl- "swim" or "split"). In the former, you
would expect an opaque word, but with difficult-to-derive cognates in
other languages in case the word was borrowed several times over
(which a word related to an important insight would be more often
than not, cf. *bh:p-l:r- "getting across to the other side, > growth,
strength"). Oppenheimer argues for very early copper technology in
South East Asia.
Suppose you are in the Balkans at the proper time. You discover
(probably by accident) that heating copper ore gives a useful by-
product. Would you then say: I think I'll call this *h2ai-o-? The
only example of that I can think of is Helmondts naming of "gas" (and
even that calqued on "chaos").

Torsten