Re: [tied] (ex-One.) UNICORN and YALE

I wonder what would be the origin of these legendes of giant animals, king of animals, etc. Mastodont's or Mammooth's bones? Distorted descriptions of foreign animals, like hippos, elephants or rhinos? An one-horned beasted seems to be the rhinoceros, but many zoo books mentioned the oryx as source of unicorn. In Middle Age Unicorn became a composite animal, with deer's hooves, goat's beard, sometimes boar's tusks. Nowadays Unicorn is traditionally depicted as a forehead-horned white horse, usually with a long haired tail.

Visiting a book store I saw a book about mythical beasts' paintings that showed a beasted called Yael or Yale, a goat with boar-tusks. What is its origin?

Joao SL

Rio

----- Original Message -----

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2001 12:15 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] One.

The actual Slavic reflex of PIE "one" is *inU, recycled semantically as "another, diferent". The original meaning survives in a couple of old compounds -- *ino-rogU 'unicorn' and *ino-xodU 'amble, lateral gait'. It may be contained (as *-in-) in *edinU 'one' > *jedinU (with the variant *jedInU), East Slavic *odinU, though I don't know of a really convincing interpretation of *ed- (a locative particle like *e-dH(i)-?).

I don't know where the initial *v- in the East Baltic reflex comes from. Such prothesis is unusual in that branch; perhaps Sergei knows more about it. Apart from this irregularity, OPrus. ains, Slavic *inU and East Baltic *[w]ienas can be reconstructed as Proto-BSl *ainas, with an acute accent on the diphthong evidenced throughout Balto-Slavic. The accent suggests that there is something amiss about the traditional IE reconstruction *oi-no-. My personal preference is for *oi-h1n-o-, with a variant of the suffix *-h1on-. I think the same suffix may account for Latin distributive numerals (bi:n-, tri:n-/tern- 'two/three at a time') and for a few other IE formations involving numeral roots.

A by-form of *inorogU (*inUrogU > *inrog > *indrok?) is probably the prototype of Indrik, a fabulous animal in Russian folklore, commemorated by palaeontologists in the name of the indricothere (Paraceratherium (Indricotherium]), an Oligocene/Miocene relative of rhinos, believed to be the largest land animal of all time.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Yves Deroubaix

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2001 2:26 AM

Subject: [tied] One.

Can someone explain the word Old Church Slavonic word jedinu (one)? I cannot see PIE *oi-n-os in it.

Why is there a v in Lithuanian vienas?

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