[tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic vo

> And why does Russian have
> > the very similar 'vor' "thief" (BTW in the comment to this, please
> > leave out the sentence "the two are completely unrelated"; I have a
> > copy of Pokorny too)?
>
> Shouldn't IE *bho:r give Russian _bar_, all other things being equal?
>

But I was implying it was a loan from somewhere else. Thus no need for
exact matches.

> Concerning the semantics, I think there's another possible
> explanation. We begin from the same starting point: normally, when
> someone steals something, he literally carries it off. So, one could
> ask "Who carried it?" (cf. idiomatic English "Who lifted it?"). A
> ready answer to the question would be "So-and-so is the carrier".
> From there, it only takes a stigmatic association with the
> old "carrier" word for it to shift semantically to "thief".
>

Yes, that seems to be the traditional solution. I'm not convinced.


Torsten