From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 44519
Date: 2006-05-10
----- Original Message -----From: tgpedersenSent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 2:35 AMSubject: [tied] Re: Convergence in the formatin of IE subgroups<snip>
I wrote this in Nostratic-L. Perhaps it bears repeating here:
Words for "dog" of the type *kWVn/r- etc are found all over the
place, in the most diverse language families. According to recent
research, dogs were domesticated 14,000 years ago. If we assume that
the word travelled with the article, we have an example of a
recoverable root which is 14,000 years old, which is much older that
the usually assumed age of recoverability, approx. 4-5000 years (PIE)
or 6-10,000 years (Nostratic).
cf http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2498669.stm
Now if 14,000 year old roots are recoverable that easy, it means that
roots that are more difficult than that to recover are 14,000+ years
old. That means ice age, and hunter-gatherer bands. Now if it is
true, as it seems, that (almost) all the major language families of
the world have become major because their ur-ancestor community
adopted farming, the prospect is bleak that something like Nostratic
should be recoverable; the possible time depth is too great, and I
can't see a common technology for them that would have made them
multiply, as happened with agriculture. Which means 'Nostratic' might
be a mirage, created in our minds by post-farming loanwords (of which
the "dog" word is one).
This is rather loose; any objections?
Torsten
***Patrick:What possible connection do dogs have with farming???What my work suggests to me is that "dogs" were an important part of our _earliest_ ancestors' lives. And built into the earliest language is a clear distinction between "wolves" (FHA; Nostratic *wa:-), and "predators" in general; and "dogs" (KHE; Nostratic *k^A- ).The word Torsten cites for "dog" is _obviously_ not very early! "*kWVn/r-" (where in Heaven's name does the -*/r come from???; and why *W rather than *w???). The root on which it is based is obviously **k^eH- (Nostratic **k^A?-), 'to be a dog" + *-w, 'to wag the tail like a dog' (PIE *k^eHw-) + *n(A), 'a (tail-)wagger' (*k^won-). This (PIE *k^eHw-) is most probably also the basis for "howl" (PIE **k^eHwl-) rather than *ul (owls do not howl!!!) whereas dogs, when they are not wagging their tails or sleeping, frequently do.
Dogs would have been extremely useful to early man in hunting (perhaps even in scavenging) long before either herding or agriculture was adopted.What is very interesting to me is whether the earliest "dogs" were simply domesticated wolves or another canid was involved? Or, alternatively, was *wa:- originally simply a predator?***
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