--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > Check it also for 'cow' and/or 'cattle' and compare to the prosed
> > cognate pair Old Chinese *n,Wiu ~ PIE *gWow. The former wins.
> >
>
> Correction: Chinese níu, Old Chinese *n,W&´w/*n,W&´G (Pulleyblank)
from
http://www.ancientscripts.com/linearb.html
"
Some syllabograms also double as logograms. Curiously, the phonetic
values of these syllabograms do not match the word they represent. For
example, the logogram for 'sheep' is the qi syllabogram, but 'sheep'
in Mycenaean Greek should be owis (compare with Classical Greek ois,
Latin ovis, etc). In the following example, you can compare the
syllabogram's phonetic value ... with the reconstructed Mycenaean
Greek word ... :
...
[(syllabogram)
phonetic value: mu
meaning: ox
Mycenaean Greek word: *gwous
]
...
It is theorized that these dual-role signs represent initial
syllables of words in the language underlying Linear A, as
many ancient writing systems create phonetic signs by using
pictographs of objects to represent the initial sound or syllable
of the objects' names (a contrived example in English would be
using a picture of an apple to represent the [a] sound).
"
Torsten