--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: João Simões Lopes Filho
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 1:04 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Eagle and salt
>
>
> > How salt and sweet (sladuku) can be cognates?
>
> Formally, there's no problem at all: OCS sladUkU, Pol. slodki, etc.
< *sold-U-k-U, cf. also Lith. saldus, Latv. salds, so that Proto-BSl.
*sald-u- 'sweet' is a secure reconstruction. There's only the
semantic problem of non-matching tastes ('sweet' can be opposed
to 'salty'), but at least we are dealing with two words from the same
(gustatory) field, and since 'to salt' can be understood as 'to
improve the taste of', there's a possible area of semantic overlap
with 'to sweeten'. There are few traces of PIE *swah2d-u- 'tasty,
sweet, pleasant' in Baltic, but these seem to include Lith. (pa-)
su:dyti, meaning, of all things, 'to salt' and su:dytas 'salted,
soused, pickled', words that show semantic development in the other
direction.
>
> Piotr
Zero-grade: Da. sylte "pickle", but syltetøj "jam, preserves".
Apparently preservation, not (sour or sweet) taste was foremost in
their minds, since their survival depended on it.
Torsten