Re: obscure languages - Kaskian, Hattic,

--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:

>
> Geoff would appear to be in a huff because I don't take everything

he

> says at face value... Oh well, a chaqu'un son gout. It doesn't mean
> that I'm not listening.
>
>
> >The astronomical argument is rather long, I'll save that for

another

> >posting. It hasn't escaped my attention that the bull word, Taurus,
> >etc, is shared between IE and AfroAsiatic only. Was it borrowed at
> >the same time as the star-word, as the name of the zodiacal bull?
>
> It would seem that *Tawru- and *`aTtar- are reconstructed for Proto-

Semitic.

> Since Proto-Semitic must surely have occured some time before the

appearance

> of Assyrian, it is reasonable to conclude that the transfer of these
> mythological themes across the Middle-East was well underway even in
> prehistory.
>
> I don't doubt that there continued to be successive spreads of new

themes

> from different directions however even earlier Sumerian mythology

has some

> themes that exist in other traditions in the north. I'm not one to

think

> that
> everything originated with the Proto-Sumerians however. Rather it

would seem

> that the Eastern Mediterranean was a large centre of trade in the

neolithic

> and the real source for this common mythology.
>
> As far as I know, the bull was a symbol associated originally with

the moon

> since bull horns look like a crescent moon in both shape and colour

(with

> the sometimes-accompanying "double axe" being the sun). Later we

read of

> "The Bull of Heaven" in Sumerian mythology and there become many

deities in

> other traditions that are associated with horns (like Egyptian

Hathor).

> As for the origin of the word, I feel that Semitic *Tawru- is a

word

> borrowed
> from elsewhere. I've suggested that it came from Proto-Hattic *Launu
> (Hattic /taru/ "storm god") with an initial lateral fricative,

providing the

> seed for the "lion" word as well.
>
> I feel that the word *`aTtar- was adopted a little later (c.5000

BCE)

> via Tyrrhenian *xastora which was in turn borrowed from Late Mid
> IndoEuropean *xëhëstérë (> *xsté:r) before syncope took place. The

word

> is derived from *xëh- (> *xah-) "to burn, glow". The word would have
> originally signified both Venus (the morning/evening star) and the
> goddess herself. A subsequent semantic shift caused IE *xsté:r to

mean

> simply any "star". I suspect that the Egyptian name of Hathor is

also the

> product of borrowing via Tyrrhenian but it then would appear that

it has

> been cleverly reanalysed in native terms as "Horus' house".
>
> Is this satisfactory?
>
>
> - gLeN

Quite.

But I've noted that I, for other reasons, have come up with up the
same division of the "star" word into two morphemes as you did using
also the Austric stuff you so detest. In this analysis the morpheme
*ter- itself would originally mean "star".

http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Hstr.html

BTW, assuming that the constellations were defined at a time where
Taurus played a major role, is there a get either way from your
Hattic /taru/ to a star word /ter-/?

Torsten