Miguel:
> If /s^/ was borrowed as /sW/, *s^ids^ must have been borrowed
> initially as sWetsW ~ sWeksW.
If you want me to listen to your preaching that we should not follow
preconceived notions, you should at least walk the talk. Since there is
absolutely (and I mean _absolutely_) no evidence for *-ks once being
**ts(W), why theorize it? Why theorize a mysterious and completely
hypothetical dialect of early IE that changed **ts(W) to **ks(W)? Loans
can be misheard, making for unexpected changes in the recipient language.
So all these extra ideas of yours on the subject are completely, wildly
unnecessary.
I could come half-way with you and say that the original form could have
been *sWeksWa, since it is clear that IE did not allow labialized phonemes
in final position. It must have wiped them out somehow by delabializing
them, perhaps after the syncope, although there certainly wasn't as many
of these phonemes in regular speech as you would have us believe. However,
MIE *sweksa is safer since there is no evidence of earlier *sW in the
second sibilant. We are only basing this on an expected pattern but since
we're talking about a borrowing not inheritance, the sound correspondences
between IE and Semitic are not entirely dependable.
> And how is that in contradiction to what I said?
You were speaking of not succumbing to preconceived notions. Your
preconceived notion is, among other things, that *ks in *sweks must derive
from earlier **ts(W). This is a preconceived notion because there is
nothing in IE that suggests this. This is just your own whim. Therefore,
you contradict your own sermon.
I compare quotes from Miguel in different posts
>>> I mentioned East Semitic and North-West Semitic together (they
>>> both share the development *s > *s^).
>>> [...]
> As I said, not in East Semitic (Akk. sebettum).
Nope that looks like a contradiction. East Semitic could not have
shared the development of *s > *s^ if Akkadian has /sebettum/,
not */s^ebettum/. Is it any wonder I don't understand you?
Let's compare some quotes again:
>>> The numeral "7", on the other hand, suggests a later borrowing,
>>> more specifically from East Semitic (because of *s-, not *sw-),
>
> As I said, not in East Semitic (Akk. sebettum).
As you said when? You said "more specifically FROM East Semitic"
(look above) not "NOT FROM East Semitic". Hmmm. Whatever. You
don't make sense sometimes but I'll just move on :(
At any rate, I can agree with you that *sweks and *septm could be loaned
from different times and/or different Semitic dialects. Of course, we
seldom find loanwords from a language occuring at exactly the same time.
They usually trickle in during a long period in which changes can continue
to take place between both the donor and lender language. However, the
loanwords have to be brought early enough before c.4000 to have been so
succesfully nativized into IE, which would suggest that these loanwords
would have to be practically, if not in reality, from Proto-Semitic
itself.
= gLeN