--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Hittite /.../
> has no words based on *weg^H- (the most widespread
> non-Anatolian root
> meaning "convey, transport in a vehicle")
*****GK: But it does have some word or words denoting
this activity? Presumably it has been difficult to
find IE analogs for them?******
; the
> Hittite "wheel" word
> is mysterious <hurki>, which may or may not have a
> Tocharian cognate
> (<w�rk�nt> 'circle, wheel',
*****GK: Yahoo can be mysterious also. Did it render
your word correctly? I notice that when
M-E-D-I-E-V-A-L
is typed it comes out as M-E-D-I-A-R-E-V-I-E-W (at
least for me and some others). Would you kindly retype
the Tocharian cognate in split capitals? I'll make the
adjustments. So Tocharian has one of the usual IE
terms for "wheel" plus this one?*****
a possible
> reconstruction being derived
> from _very_ hypothetical *h2werg- 'turn'; Puhvel
> adduces Germanic
> *wurgjan- 'strangle', but the semantics is so-so at
> best), but has
> also been suspected of Hattic origin.
*****GK: Is the proof for that as problematic as for
it being a possible Tocharian cognate?*****
The Anatolian
> words
> for "horse" -- Hieroglyphic Luwian <a-su-wa-> and
> Lycian <esb-> (for
> Hittite we only have the Sumerogram AN�U.KUR.RA) --
> look more like
> loans from (Mitanni) Indo-Aryan *as'wa- than native
> developments of *
> (h1)ek^wo-.
*****GK: Because Luwian and Lycian are not "satem"?
Interesting though that these should have borrowed the
term while Hittite did not. I suppose the L/L
borrowing substituted for something else since these
languages would not have waited for the Mitannians to
give them a word for designating horses. I'm wondering
if the Hittite Sumerogram and the replaced L/L horse
word might have been some kind of poetic
circumlocution (in a substrate non IE language?).
Seems like a lot of letters for a "basic" animal.
"swift as the wind" or something like that.******
>
> The percentage of inherited vocabulary is not a very
> good measure of
> relatedness (quite apart from the question what
> should be taken into
> account -- types or tokens, basic vocabulary or the
> entire known
> lexicon). In contact situations borrowing from a
> prestigious language
> may happen quickly on a massive scale.
****GK: Quite. English is a case in point I suppose. I
think someone on this forum has already said that for
all of its Franco-Latin lexicon it remains basically a
Germanic language. But the Hittites (and other
Anatolians?) seem to have borrowed not only language
but culture, religion et sim. They went further here
than the Indo-Aryans of Mitanni did they not? At least
these kept some of their major deities in their
Hurrian environment. But perhaps they had symbiotized
for a shorter period.*****
Still, the
> complete absence
> of "wagon terminology" from Anatolian (especially of
> the most popular
> terms like *weg^H- or any of its numerous
> derivatives, *kWekWlo-
> 'wheel', *h2ak^-s-i- 'axle', etc.) is curious. In
> all the other
> branches there may be one or two accidental gaps in
> this lexical
> field, but not so much blank space.
*****GK: Are there lexical substitutes from other
(identified or not yet)non-IE languages? After all the
Hittites had a marvelous war chariot machine. They
must have had words for its components "spare parts"
etc..?*****
>
> Exactly how much in Anatolian was borrowed is hard
> to estimate
> because of the general philological problems
> complicating Anatolian
> etymologies. Moreover, since Anatolian seems to be a
> primary branch
> (or subfamily) of IE, the chances that many words
> survived in
> Anatolian but were lost elsewhere are relatively
> high.
*****GK: I think this is entering very slippery
ground. Are you saying that many of the "mysterious"
terms in Hittite etc. which some deem non IE could
actually be IE words lost in every other IE language?
The reverse seems far more likely. One of the problems
(if I am not misreading you)would be to explain why
the other IE languages should have deemed it necessary
to replace the words kept by Hittite etc. with new
ones. And are Anatolian terms always related in their
narrower context? Not always from what I've seen.*****
We can be
> reasonably sure that an Anatolian word is a loan
> only if a likely
> source form is documented in Hattic, Hurrian,
> Akkadian or another
> known language and/or if the form of the word
> clearly gives away its
> non-IE origin.
****GK: Very "favourable" assumptions indeed. On that
basis what would be your estimate as to Hittite. I.e.
% of certain IE terms, % of certain non-IE terms, % of
"unclear" terms. As I remember my Mallory his source
for Old Greek contended that in that language 50% of
its lexical fund was certainly IE. 8% was not, and 42%
was unclear.== But I must say that for me "unclear"
would just be a euphemism for "non-IE items we can't
bring ourselves to admit being such"...****
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
>
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