Piotr:
>The analysis of *k^wo:n as *pk^wo:n = *pk^u-o:n (derived from *pek^u-
>'livestock') has already been discussed on Cybalist. It has occurred to me
>that the etymology fits in very well with the known patterns of IE compound
>formation.
I can't say this isn't interesting but even though it is a reasonable idea,
it's
just always second fiddle to the simpler theory: that *kwon- is just an
unspliceable root, underived from *peku. Yes, the semantics don't rub
me the wrong way, the morphological wizardry is clever, but is it sufficient
to abandon the null hypothesis? In fact what _could_ be logically
sufficient?
However, you said that "the compound analysis of the 'dog' word explains
in a simple and natural way its apparently aberrant -- actually archaic --
forms
and accounts for the observed range of variants (*k^won- fares worse in
these respects)." How do you mean by "observed range of variants"? Are
you referring merely to the declension (which can be explained otherwise)?
Are you referring to variants of the root itself whereby *kwon- isn't the
only
reconstructed phonetics of this root? I didn't quite follow the jist of that
last
paragraph. If you could elaborate, that would be dandy.
= gLeN
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