Re: [tied] Re: Of cows and living

On 2006-02-20 13:50, tgpedersen wrote:

> The three PIE roots *lak(t)-, *galak(t)- and *melg^-/*melk^- *taken
> together* look like they were loaned from a (predominantly)
> prefixing language, eg Sino-Tibetan. The fact that there is a
> similar root with matching semantics in PTB *m-/s-lyak- and in OC
> *luk makes it likely that this is the case.
>
> So, no cognacy, in the strict sense of the word.
>

Note that PIE *h2melg^- is a verb root, perhaps with the original
meaning of 'rub, press, squeeze out' (hence 'to milk'), cf. Skt.
má:rs.t.i. The verbs based on it (e.g. Gk. amelg-o:, Slavic *melz-ti)
are primary, not denominative, which shows that the Germanic noun itself
is deverbative ('the product of milking', cf. Slavic [inherited!]
*melzivo 'colostrum, the first milk after calving').

Piotr