Slavic *melko- (was: An example)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Dusan Vukotic" <whitedawn@...> wrote:

>
> >Slavic shouldn't
> > have k (it has because *melko is a borrowing from Germanic).
> _______________________________________________
>
> I do not understand why it schould be a borrowing from German? There
> are other Slavic (Serbian) words derived from the root *melg. For
> instance, "mlak" (lukewarm, tepid; natural temperature of milk),
> "mlaz" (spurt, jet; spurt of milk from the cow's udder); "milkiti"
> (fondle; touch lightly an udder of cow during milking or stroke a
> woman's breast; gliding movement); "muzha" (milking; in fact mulga >
> mulzha > muzha; from the same basis as Latin "emulgere" (to milk out,
> milk is a classic example of an emulsion); Milka - a personal female
> name; "mljackati" (champ; eat or chew loudly as a suckling do);
> adj."mljecav" (gooey); "milostiv" (benign, merciful; benigne behavior
> of a suckling); "militi" (crawling as baby does); "moliti" (beg,
> plead, solicit)...?

*melg^- and *melk- have two differences - 'soft' velar v. 'hard'
velar, voiced v. voiceless. However, irregular changes in the voicing
of velars are far from unknown, and there are several cases of
variation between hard and soft velars. Interestingly, Sanskrit seems
to show a variant based on root _marg_ (e.g. _nirma:rga_ wiping away
from verbal _nir_-mr.j, so perhaps the evidence for a Germanic (not
German) loan is not so strong.

Richard.