> From Matisoff: Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman
>
> Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m-lyak (*m-rak) ->
> Written Tibetan h.dz´ag "grass"
>
> PTB *m-lyak/*s-lyak "lick/tongue/eat (of animals)/feed (animals)"
> of which *m- is an intransitive prefix, *s- a causative prefix
>
> PTB *m-lyak -> Lahu lè? "lick"
> PTB *s-lyak -> Lahu lé "feed an animal"
>
> (cf Germ. lecken, Eng. lick vs Germ. schlecken, Da. slikke)
>
> PTB *m-lyak -> Old Chinese mlyak "eat" -> Mandarin shí
>
> OC dyat "tongue", gyok id.
> internal variation -t, -k
> TP: any connection with -kt of PIE *galakt-, *lakt- ?
The whole "cow tecnology" thing is not necessarily an item of *the*
Proto-Sino-Tibetan-speaking society. It might as well have been off-
center, some early branch that died or from an equally dead Para-
Siono-Tibetan language. Which I say in order to permit loan-
relationships in cow technology, as long as the semantics fits.
In casu Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-lyak/*s-lyak vs. Old Chinese (Sagart)
*luk "to nourish, rear, breed"
from Sagart's The Roots of Old Chinese
(p. 84):
"mu4 .. (1037) *(b)mr-luk > mjuwk "to herd, herdsman" (rearer of
animals). The root
*luk "to nourish, rear, breed" occurs in
yu4 .. (1020a) *(b)luk > yuwk "to rear, breed; to nourish"; and
xu4 .. (1018a) *(b)q(r)-hluk(-s) > xjuwk, xjuwH, and
*(b)hlruk(-s) > trhjuwk, trjuwH "to nourish; to rear; domestic
animal".
Infixed -r- in mu4 .. must be supposed since otherwise MC zy- woould
result. The infix here indicates an action involving a collective
participant (domestic animals)."
(p. 102):
"In Shi Jing, Ode 202 Lu E, we find the following lines (the
translation is Karlgren's:
fu4 xi1 sheng1 wo3
mu3 xi1 ju1 wo3
fu3 wo3 xu4 wo3
zhang3 wo3 yu4 wo3
Oh father, you begat me
Oh mother, you nourished me
You comforted me, you cherished me
You brought me up, you reared me
The charater ju1 .. (MC kjuwk) in the second line means "to nourish"
(yang3 ..) according to the Mao commentary. The Shuo Wen Tong Xun
Ding Sheng treats it as a loan character for yu4 .. *luk > yuwk "to
rear, nourish". Since according to my assumptions an OC *(b)k-luk
would result in MC kjuwk, the possibility arises that the character
ju1 .. in Ode 202 writes a morphologically complex form of the verb *
(b)luk "to rear, nourish" having prefix k-. The character yu4 ..
itself occurs in the fourth line.
If the assumption of prefix k- here is correct (even though we have
no independent confirmation of a complex initial in ju1 ..), why
does the root *luk "to rear, nourish" occur with the prefix in the
second line, but without it in the fourth line? we may observe that
the stanza recounts the parents' favors in chronological order: I
would suggest that in the second line ju1 .. specically refers to
breast-feeding, since the phrase ju1 zi3 .. .. means
specifically "small child"; while in the fourth line yu4 refers more
generally to the care, food and education, provided [by?] the
parents from birth on. I suppose that ju1 .., a k-prefixed form of
yu4 .., acquired the meaning "give the breast" from "nourish for a
little while" "
So: PIE *lak- "feeding", *ga-lak- "breast-feeding" ?
Torsten