--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-
language@...> wrote:
> I went to the message and found the following entry:
>
> pa[']&n "(what serves a fodder =) bait", *pah2-
>
> This corresponds to what I would reconstruct for PIE, namely
>
> *pa-?a, 'flat' + stative (inanimate)
>
> So, 'to have grazed' is 'to have flattened', a perfectly good
visual description of 'grazing'.
>
> Perhaps there is a reflex of *pa-ha, 'flat' + stative (animate)
there that I missed?
>
Actually I think most of the roots I mentioned are derivatives from
the loan word *h2ap- "water". The words for "flat" and "graze" are
joined semantically by referring to low-lying meadows along rivers,
being especially fertile (*p-i- "fat; juicy"). Cf
Basque 'bide' "road", Trask notes that because of the nature of the
Basque country, roads run along rivers.
One could make a half-parodied IE root for "flat (area)":
*(p)(l)a(n)(t)-
cf.
Proto-Austronesian *lan.d.et "lowland" (Dempwolff 1938)
with cognates ('land' et sim.) in Finnish, Germanic, Romance (not
Latin), Celtic and Basque. Note the geographical distribution of
this supposed IE word: on the western seabord of Europe, all in
contact with water.
Torsten