Re: Allofamy, allofams

We've been treated to a long thread with the above subject, the
root of which is Torsten's posting reproduced below. The most recent
posting show's Torsten's answer to his own question "Is 'allofamy' a
term cybalist should consider using for PIE?" is "Yes".
I've checked every Google citation of "allofam" and "allofamy"
and am still thoroughly confused, but I have a suspicion that the
unknown author has oversimplified a concept that may only apply to
Sino-Tibetan languages.
Has anyone here read (or have access to and would read) Matisoff
himself and tell us what allofamy really means?
Dan

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
> from
> http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~jblowe/REWWW/RE_fn.html
> (unknown author)
> "
> The term 'allofamy', due to Matisoff (1978), refers to
> relationship 'among the various individual members of the same word-
> family'. English royal and regal, borrowed from French and Latin
> respectively, are both ultimately traceable to the same PIE root *reg-,
> and so are co-allofams in Modern English (Matisoff 1978:16-18, Matisoff
> 1992:160). A word family might contain both native words and words
> borrowed from related languages; the borrowings may be recent or
> ancient.
> "
>
> Is 'allofamy' a term cybalist should consider using for PIE (eg. are
> the two roots PIE *gWen-/*gWax- (*gWen,-/*gWax-?) "come, go" and PGerm.
> *gan,/*gax- "go" co-allofams)? It would of course in each case imply
> the possibility of a loan.
>
>
> Torsten
>