Re: [tied] Re: Earth and Thorn

----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 3:20 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Earth and Thorn


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-
language@...> wrote:

[Jens:]
> You don't? Fair enough. The word for "earth" is Hitt. tekan,
gen.
> tagnas, which must represent a more original form of the
paradigm
> which was changed in the other branches by introduction of the
> product of the cluster *d(h)g^h- as it had been in the locative,
**d
> (h)g^h-ém(-i) > IE *g^h{th}ém(-i) (Ved. ks.ámi). This is one of
the
> mainstays of the understanding of the "thorn" clusters in IE. It
is
> of course also one of the basic arguments for an Indo-Hittite
model,
> indicating as it does that Anatolian was the first branch to
split
> away from the IE unity. This is all classical knowledge by now.

<[Patrick:]
> Some very competent linguists of the past (Benveniste, for one)
<looked at the disconnect between Hittite and _ALL_ the other IE-
<derived languages, and concluded that Hittite introduced the
<metathesis; so the original form was *g^h-Dem- (I will use -D for
<bar-d, thorn).

I think nobody mentioned the fact that Lith. z^eme. and OCS zemlja can
easily be interpreted as *dhg'hem- with the simplification of the initial
*dhg'h- to *g'h-. This is in accord with Hittite tekan. If we started with
*g'hdhem- for BSl., it would be difficult to explain why *g'hdh- > *g'h-.

Mate