[tied] Re: 'Dog' revisited

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 25-11-03 16:00, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > You're probably right. So, the proper theory is then, that as the
> > domesticated dog passed out of SE Asia from one linguistic

community

> > to the next, the languages of those communities did not borrow

words

> > similar to *kwon along with the dog, but decided independently to

use

> > words similar to *kwon for that particular trade article,

presumably

> > for onomatopoeic reasons, since dogs go "kwon, kwon" in erh, some
> > language?
>
> Torsten,
>
> First of all, if we accept the results of the study you referred to
> (and, mind you, there have been other studies giving different

results,

> and the case is far from closed, so how about leaving some room for
> uncertainty),

Likewise, thank you.

>the genetic lineages in question started in SE Asia some
> 15,000 years ago. Any word coined that long ago would stand little
> chance of retaining any detectable surface similarity to its

original

> shape.

The question is, when did it start to spread out of its SE Asian
home? Perhaps on rafts caught in postdiluvian floods? I'm sure Noah
would have taken some on board.

>Talking of similarities, however, the alleged popularity of
> "kwon" as a term for 'dog' in various language families is a myth.
>It's
> only when you start cheating, relaxing your criteria until "kwon"
>and,
> say, Semitic *kalb count as similar, that you create the impression

of a

> long trail of "kwons" starting in SE Asia.

Orël & Stolbova thinks 'kalb' _may_ belong to one of their entries,
cf.
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/kur.html
Who's cheating now?

>And of course you simply
> ignore all inconvenient material. Where do Proto-Uralic *ämpV,
> Proto-Austronesian *wasu, Proto-Slavic *pIsU, etc. come from,

according

> to your "same trade article, same name" model?

I don't think "same trade article, same name" is to be understood
as "same trade article, same name everwhere".

>Similarities are easy to
> _make_ if your mode of thinking is sufficiently wishful.


>For example,
> how about combining *wasu and *pIsU into *BVsu, where *B is a

labial and

> *V is a vowel? Maybe I shouldn't be putting such ideas into your

head.

> It's already full of images of men in boats (to say nothing of the

dog).

>

Men
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/mn.html
in boats
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/wgH.html
with dogs
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/kur.html
and pigs
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/prk.html
(or perhaps pigs go "pork, pork" in that same language)
.

Torsten