Re: Words versus Roots

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...>" <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
> > >An example is the word for 'red'. The stem is *h1reudH- (unless
> Greek
> > >misleads us about the laryngeal), but what was _the_ word?
> >
> > In which dialect of PIE? Or are you hoping to discover a

dialect-

> free
> > version? There may never have been a single original proto-

dialect

> from
> > which the others differentiate. PIE should I believe, be seen as

a

> cluster
> > of close dialects, influencing each other mutually and unequally.
>
> Your bottom line is the conclusion I am trying to derive from my
> observation that PIE is rich in roots but poor in identifiable

words

> (I should have said 'stems', not 'words'), which would argue for a
> long history of dialect interaction and provide extra time depth.
> The issue is whether this view can be sustained. Jens Rasmussen
> seems, under 'Does Koenraad Elst...', to have described this view
> as 'heretical'; perhaps I misunderstood what was 'heretical' about
> his suggestion.
>
> A word that came up yesterday, in the context of Sanskrit
> putra 'son', is the whole family of forms related to English 'son';
> looking at Pokorny, PIE seems to have had a collection of stems,
> namely *su:nu-, *sunu-, *suto-, *suyu- 'son' and possibly even

*suka:

> > Welsh hogen 'maiden'. I suppose one solution is to suggest that
> these 'son' stems are independently derived (or moved from poetic

to

> normal usage) from the verb *sew 'to bear (a child)' and are not

PIE

> at all.
>
> (As to Sanskrit 'putra', the question was whether it was a good PIE
> word. I took one look at Pokorny and concluded that it was, though
> the meaning has clearly been specialised.)
>
> Richard.

Or *sw- "our side" again. I have played before with the idea that it
goes back to a society divided into two halves (moieties, phratries)
on both side of a river, as in Austronesian. Thus 'son', 'sister' and
the various in-laws (German Schwäger, etc) is from this
side, 'brother' from the far side.

Even odder: 'sow', 'swine' is from this side, 'boar', German 'Eber'
from the far side.

In order to include the "give birth" idea: *sw- means "of our stock"?

Torsten