19-11-03 18:40, alex wrote:
> Alb. "edh" should derive from PIE *aig^- but Rom. "ied, iezi" should
> derive from Latin "haedus". Of course there shouldn't be any connection
> between Latin "haedus" and *aig^- since Latin should derive from a
> certain *ghaidos because there is the Germanic cognate( nothing else as
> the Germanic). It seems very unlike that the IE languages does not share
> a common word for a such important word in the pastoral life as the
> "haedus" is. I don't make any assumptions here because that will mean a
> loan into Germanic and Latin of this word from a language where g^ > d
> (see the (g)haid- versus (h)aig^-))
> for "(h)aig^- I assume there was in fact a *ghaig^- if the word can be
> interpreted semantic to "little beeing" as the PIE "me:lo" (Pok
> #1272).
As for the broad meaning of "goat", "sheep", "cattle" or "pig", there
were several different words for each in IE -- precisely because those
critters were important in PIE animal husbandry. In Modern English, for
example, we have <sheep>, <lamb>, <ram>, <ewe>, etc. (not to mention
more technical words), and the more you have to do with shepherding, the
more of them you'll have in your active vocabulary (them ignerant
townees may feel satisfied with <sheep>). Which of them (if any) becomes
a generic term for all domestic ovines may be a language-specific choice.
Both *gHaido- and *h2aig^- are reconstructed for PIE (beside some other
"goat" terms; I actually think *h2aig^- is a variant of the more common
*h2ag^-, with the diphthong due to contamination with *gHaido-). As for
Alb. edh, it used to be derived from Lat. (h)aedu-, and you'll find that
in some books, but the derivation presents serious formal difficulties,
while *h2aig^- > edh is entirely unproblematic, so the tendency these
days is to abandon the assumption of a Latin loan. Rom. ied, on the
other hand, is a regular reflex of Lat. (h)aedu-. Its similarity to the
Albanian word is therefore fortuitous.
Piotr