Re: Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

--- In cybalist@..., "caraculiambro" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > Thank you Pavel!
> > This is the "cover" root:
> >
> > http://bartleby.com/61/roots/IE214.html
>
>
> Do you mean that both a helmet and a skin may cover or protect
> something so *xelma- and <zalmo-> must be related? The notion
> of 'covering, concealing, protecting' is extremely general -- lots

of

> things are 'covers' or 'shelters' in a sense, e.g. house, sky,
> clothes, shield, lid, eyelid, roof, etc. Note that you are

comparing

> two _derived_ meanings, leaving out the prototypical one.

"Skin" is not derived, see below.

> Without a
> more detailed justification the equation is too rough to exclude
> chance agreement. The vaguer semantics, the more accidental

matches.

> For example, Sanskrit has <s'arman-> 'shelter, protection'

(probably

> < *k^el-men-, i.e. related to Gmc. *xel- 'protect', Lat.
> celo 'conceal' etc.; cf. also Skt. s'aran.a- 'protective') and
> _unrelated_ but coincidentally similar <carman-> 'skin' (< *ker-men-

,

> cf. OPrus. kermen- 'flesh').

Why "unrelated"? To magical thinking "skin" is a detachable (still in
Danish <ham>, both of magical shape assumed by wizardry and of the
shed skin of snakes and lizards), therefore something that "covers"
the real person or spirit inside.

>
> In another posting you adduce <holm> 'islet' as "most likely" the o-
> grade of *xelm- "inspired by the shape". This is another accidental
> lookalike, and not even an o-grade (IE o-grades have Gmc. a!).

<holm>

> derives from *xulma- < *kl-mo- (related to Eng. hill, Lat. culmen,
> celsus, Lith. kálnas, etc.).

You're right, embarassing, I should have proposed zero grade.

> Reflexes in Satem languages show no *k^,
> and the root *kel- means 'rise, project' (see the next entry in the
> ditionary of IE roots).

Yes but given the idea I had (which you might remember) that the
kentum/satem dichotomy was caused by the regularization, with
occasional mis-categorizations, of original -c^e-/-ko-/-k- in
inflections this counter-argument would not apply (given a semantic
slide from "(conical) head cover" to "anything protruding").

>
> Piotr

Torsten