Re: An example

From: Petr Hrubis
Message: 43393
Date: 2006-02-13

--- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> Or it could have been Sino-Tibetan -> PIE.

Yes, ST or an early pre-OC stage. I'm no ST expert.

> > Anyway, I wonder what those prefixes meant or what
> > their functions were (e.g. in *galakt- and *melg).
> >
>
> I'll get back on that.

OK. I'm looking forward to it.

> > The Old Chinese -> Indoeuropean direction is
> possible,
> > of course, but I doubt it was OC -> PIE due to the
> > chronology (but I may well be mistaken). We might,
> > however, think of the predecessor of Old Chinese
> > (which I know little about, unfortunately).
>
> S(ino-)T(ibetan)

See above.

> > Also, I wonder what the most common semantic
> source of
> > milk is. Since, as Miguel pointed out, the
> *galakt-
> > root is only attested in Greek and Latin, my
> > pre-Tocharian suggestion gets weakened a bit.
> >
> Greek *galakt-, Latin *lact-, Germanic and Slavic
> *melk- (note that
> Germanic has -k-, which it shouldn't).

Hm. That's right. Difficulties with internal
reconstruction often indicate borrowing, indeed.

> > I'm not sure what semantic shifts could lead to
> > "milk", but let's consider the following
> expressions,
> > more or less connected to the concept of "milk",
> from
> > languages that did have linguistic contacts with
> > Indoeuropean languages, as well as, perhaps, PIE
> > itself:
> >
> > Kartvelian comparanda:
> >
> > PKartvelian *.qwel- "cheese"
> > PKartvelian *lok.- "to lick"
> > PKartvelian *loq.- "insipid, sweet"
>
> > Uralic comparanda:
> >
> > Saam (Lapp): lak'ca^ -âvc- (N) "cream; thick sour
> > cream" (a loan? from where?)
>
> Arabic has a root for "lick" something like l-s^-,
> OC something like
> *lVk- (by memory). But maybe it's not surprising
> there's an /l/ in
> words for "tonge" and "lick".

Yes. They seem to be onomatopoeic. Physiology-induced
:)

> > I'm not claiming anything at this point. The
> > expressions above may well be ordinary
> look-alikes.
>
> It does look a bit suspicious.

It really does.

Best,

Petr



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