--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > "
> > What my work suggests to me is that "dogs" were an important
> part of our _earliest_ ancestors' lives. And built into the
earliest
> language
"On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, Adam Hyllested wrote:
[This is a reply to a posting on the IE list; the moderator has asked
for the thread to be moved to Nostratic.]
[on Bengtson and Ruhlen's proposed Proto-World etymon for `dog']
> Proto-World allright, but don't worry. The science of cross-
linguistic
> comparison is still at a cradle stage, and nobody can be *sure*
about
> anything. However, the examples are striking, at least some of them
(I
> already mentioned the Nostratic ones):
> Archaic Chinese: *khiw@... 'dog'
> Tibetan: khyi 'dog'
> Ket (Yenisey-Ostyak): ku:n~e 'wolverine'
> Basque: haz-koin 'badger' (lit. 'bear-dog')
> Proto-(North)Caucasian: xHweje 'dog'
> Achomawi (a Hokan language): kua:n 'silver fox'
> North Yana (Hokan): kuwan-na 'lynx'
> Esmeralda (Equatorial): kine 'dog'
> Pila (Papuan): kawun 'dog'
> /'Auni (Khoisan): /ka~i~n 'hyena'
> /Xam (Khoisan): !gwa~i~ 'hyena'
> etc. etc.
>
> Coincidence? Maybe. Certainly not borrowing everywhere.
Coincidence, almost certainly, apart from the odd borrowing, perhaps.
But there's something even more fundamental to consider: do the cited
forms exist at all? B and R adopt a very cavalier approach to the
treatment of data. Let me illustrate this with the Basque word cited
above.
B and R cite the Basque word for `badger' as "<hazkoin>", insert a
morpheme boundary not justified in Basque, and unhesitatingly gloss
the
supposed formation as `bear-dog', thus yielding them their required
"<koin>" for `dog'. But most of this is fantasy.
First, the Basque word for `badger' appears in at least seventeen
regional variants. B and R have no business selecting just one of the
numerous variants merely because it suits their purposes: that is
unprofessional. With this shabby methodology, they could equally have
selected some other single form if that had happened to suit their
purposes better, such as <asku~> or <azkenarro> or even the very
dubious
hapax <akomarra>.
Second, their cited variant, *<hazkoin>, does not exist. No such form
is recorded anywhere in any of my scholarly sources, and B and R, who
provide no source for the Basque data they cite, appear to have
invented
it. Apparently not one of the seventeen or more genuinely attested
variants suits their purposes so well as this imaginary form.
Third, it is *far* from clear that the Basque word is a compound
meaning
`bear-dog', or even that it is a compound at all. It is even far from
clear that the word is native.
The Basque word for `bear' is <(h)artz>, itself often suspected of
being
a loan from an early IE language. The two Basque words for `dog' are
<(h)or(a)>, today confined to the east but sparsely recorded centuries
ago in the west, and <zakur>, found today throughout the country,
either
as such or in its diminutive form <txakur>. Both words are recorded
early. But there exists nothing resembling B and R's required
*<koin>,
which in any case would have a bizarre form for a native Basque
lexical
item. So, the cited Basque *<koin> `dog', presented as fact by B and
R,
is a fantasy without justification. The cited comparandum is not
Basque, but a kind of fantasy Basque apparently constructed merely to
allow B and R's comparison to go through.
Anyway, the Basque word for `badger' is widely suspected of being a
borrowing from late Latin <taxone>, or perhaps even from Celtic; this
was discussed a few days ago on the IE list.
If you are willing to massage the data to this extent, you can
probably
prove any damn thing you like.
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK"
http://members.aol.com/yahyam/protoworld.html
"9. *KUAN'dog' canine; cynic; hound; !Kung /gwi 'hyena'; Proto-
Afro-Asiatic *k(y)n 'dog, wolf'; Proto-Indo-European *kwon- 'dog' >
Sanskrit s'van, Phrygian kan, Latin canis, Greek kuon, Germanic hund;
Proto-Uralic *küinä 'wolf'; Old Turkish qanchiq 'bitch'; Monglian
qani 'wild dog'; Proto-Tungus-Manchu *khina 'dog'; Korean ka 'dog' (<
kani); Gilyak kan 'dog'; Chinese kou 'dog' (<Archaic Chinese khjwen);
Tibetan khyi 'dog'; Proto-Oceanic *nkaun 'dog'; Taos kwiane-, Tewa
tukhwana 'fox, coyote'"
posted by M. Kelkar