[tied] Re: 'Dog' revisited

> >
> > True. That slipped by me. As far as I can see your theory works,
> > given one small extra assumption: that the dogs who strayed to

the

> > neighbors had the name 'kwon' engraved on its collar, so that the
> > neighbors didn't start calling it something irrelevant.
>
>
> Hi Torsten- and if you make the further assumption that Piotr and

all

> his linguistic colleagues, who say that the supposed commonality re
> the term for dogs is illusory, are correct, then it works fine. :-)
>

If I knew what "the supposed commonality re the term for dogs" was
and what it meant for that entity to be illusory, I might even agree.

>
> Your statement is a wonderful example of two wrongs making a right.
> As has been pointed out, the point of origin for domesticated dogs
> was supposedly East Asia, not South East Asia. Fortunately for the
> tatters of your theory, at that time the predecessor language of
> Austronesian was probably spoken in East Asia and not South East

Asia

> too.

Or on what's now the bottom of the strait between China and Taiwan.

>
> However, whether any group deserves the description "the traders"

at

> that time has not been established.
>

Do you know when that title will be officially awarded?

> while speakers of
> > the other language groups are landlubbers,
>

> I don't see why being landbound would have been an impediment to

the

> spread of dogs- it wasn't to the spread of wolves.
>
> furthermore that these
> > Austronesian-speakers even today are associated with these two
> > animals, and to top it, that these two species are considered
> unclean
> > in the Middle East, as though it were a reflection of an old
> > controversy between trading Austronesians and sedentary

AfroAsiatic-

> > speakers. It's almost too tempting, right?
>
> Evidently right in your case, but not in mine. Anyway there is a
> chronological problem with your hypothesis re the uncleanness of
> pigs. There is no evidence that pigs were regarded in the Middle

East

> as unclean until the emergence of the Hebrew tribes c. 1100 BCE

(one

> way archeologists judge whether a site of that time was Hebrew or
> Canaanite is the presence or absence of pig bones). There is too

big

> a gap between the introduction of pigs and the emergence the taboo
> against them to fit with your hypothesis. I don't know enough about
> the history of attitudes towards dogs to judge that aspect.
>

As far as I know the Egyptians considered pigs unclean too, although
they had swineherders.

> > >
> > > Since the perceived common root for a canine term in many
> different
> > > language groups is probably illusory anyhow,
> >
> > I don't think so. Here are Orël & Stolbova's "dog"-words for
> Hamito-
> > Semitic:
> >
> > HSED 917: *ger- "dog, cub"
> > HSED 1425: *kan- "dog"
> > HSED 1434: *ka[ya]r- "dog"
> > HSED 1498: *kun- "dog"
> > HSED 1511: *küHen- "dog"
> > HSED 1521: *kV(w|y)Vl- "dog, wolf"
> >
> > This looks like a several times borrowed word.
>
> If so, it would only show a borrowing (or common ancestry) between
> PAA and PIE, not a chain stretching across Eurasia.
>

PFU *küjna (by memory). I'll go check.

Torsten