On Mon, 27 Jan 2003 07:42:26 +0000, "Glen Gordon"
<
glengordon01@...> wrote:
>
>Miguel:
>>I gave the example of *péku(r), *pk^w-ós (e.g. Arm. asr, asu).
>
>Yeah, so what? Armenian and... what? If Armenian is the only
>language you can come up with for evidence, you're talking
>bullsh*t.
I assumed you were familiar with the evidence. I gave the Armenian
forms as they are the clearest evidence for an oblique root *pk^w-.
Besides Armenian, we have Sanskrit ks^u, Avestan -fs^u, fs^u- in
compositis (Sanskrit twice on its own, Pok. IEW sub *pek^u-). Cf.
further Hamp's (?) proposal of *pk^wó:n "dog" (= the collective of
*pékun + *-s) and Slavic *pIsU (< *pk^us) "dog". Perhaps from the
same root with t-extension *pk^téns, *pk^tnós "comb" (Grk. kteís,
ktenos; Lat. pecten)
>>Another example is *sém(s), G. *sm-és, f. *sm-íh2 "one".
>
>But this is not just a regular noun. It's a numeral.
Yeah, so what?
>So what do you expect me to do? Am I supposed to come up with
>ideas that only describe the origins of the least common
>patterns rather than focusing on the most common first???
I would expect anyone to come up with explanations that explain as
much as possible. In linguistics, it's the irregular and infrequent
forms, in the obscure languages, that most often hold the key to
reconstructing the original state of affairs. "Armenian so what?" is
not the attitude that makes a scholar of Indo-European.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...