On Thu, 30 May 2002 23:20:26 +0200, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>Miguel suggested that <tabira> could be a loan from IE --
Yes. I think I also mentioned that an alternative hypothesis is a
borrowing from Hurrian into Sumerian.
>namely, a borrowed reflex of *dHabHros, as in Lat. faber; Miguel glossed it as 'smith, carpenter',
>but cognates like Slavic *dobrU 'good' and, possibly, Eng. deft, OE gedafen 'fitting', suggest
>'skilful, dexterous' as the primitive meaning.
Or "fitting". That's what the semantic field of the root *dhabh-
suggests, but I'm not so sure anymore. The development might also
have been in the other direction: from "carpenter" to "like the work
of a carpenter -> fitting -> good". Admittedly, the case for such a
development within the context of the cognate-group of *dhabh- is weak
(Latin <faber> and Armenian <darbin>, basically), but it gets rather
more solid if we pull in the root *dha(m)bh- "to beat, [to hammer]",
clearly onomatopoeic, and a very _fitting_ source for naming the
profession of the carpenter, or indeed the smith, both of whom _thump_
away with hammers extensively. As you know, I think some cases of PIE
*/a/ represent a special development of an earlier nasalized vowel, so
the connection between *dhabh- and *dhamb(h)- is unproblematical for
me.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...