Re: [tied] All of creation in Six and Seven

Torsten:

>Logical parsimony demands that all IE forms of "seven" are borrowed
>from the same Semitic language, when the idea of a feminine gender
>wasn't?

Why are you not getting this, Torsten? I hate to be nasty but I have
to be honest: I seriously wonder if you have a learning disability or are
dyslexic. Let's try again and please pay attention to every sentence.

Semitic has feminine and masculine gender, yes. The *t in IE *septm
shows a Semitic gender marker. IE already had its own gender system
of animate and inanimate, which is not the same as masculine-feminine
obviously.

IE only borrowed the Semitic form *sab`atum, the masculine mimated
form. This produced IE *septm. It didn't borrow any other form, so
there is only *septm in IE. Whereas there is *sab`atum, *sab`um,
*sab`u, and so on in Semitic because numerals were normally gender-marked
in that language and took on many suffixes. This is not the case in IE.
Only *septm exists as _the_ form for the numeral.

So the question I naturally pose is, why on earth did IE specifically
borrow the masculine mimated form as the word for "seven"? Why
not the feminine? Why is the word *sweks based on the feminine
form and not the masculine? Why do the two side-by-side numerals
have opposite genders when analysed in Semitic?

Thus, perhaps it has something to do with the "heavenly marriage"
already mentioned.


= gLeN

> >There is already a root *septm
> > reconstructed on the basis of countless other IE languages. The
> > Hittite form is unproblematically relatable to the very same root.
>
> >
> >
> > >I didn't know Etruscan had gender?
> >
> > It's suspected that Etruscan might have an animate/inanimate
>contrast
> > like in Swedish or... IndoEuropean. For example, certain words
>like /un/
> > "libation" or *pulum "star", which happen to be inanimate objects,
> > materials or collectives, are given plurals in /-cHva/ while other
>more
> > "animate" nouns are given /-r/ like as with /clen/ "son". We never
>ever
> > see */clencHva/ nor do we see */unar/. This suggests that nouns
>might
> > be classified grammatically into two word classes or genders.
>Coincidently,
> > there seems to be a preference in given female names or nouns
> > describing women the l-genitive rather than the s-genitive. It would
> > seem to me that not only are the two genders distinguished by
> > different case endings in the genitive but that the concept of
>feminity
> > is treated grammatically more as a collective inanimate, hence the
>use
> > of this "inanimate genitive" in /-al/.
> >
> >
>Interesting! Thanks.
>
>Torsten
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca