Re: [tied] Re: Milk and a Gaulish Love Poem

Certainly, all mammals know what milk is. But PIE had a semantic distinction between the "suck; suckle, give the breast" family of terms and "to milk (a dairy animal)". We don't know if there was a PIE word for human milk or, if there was one, whether it was also used of other kinds of milk.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: ehlsmith

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 3:58 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Milk and a Gaulish Love Poem

Am I missing something, or is this thread ovelooking the fact that all human cultures would be familiar with milk, and likely have a word for it, regardless of whether or not they kept dairy animals? And thus wouldn't the verb be more likely to develop from the noun than vice verse?