Re: [tied] Re: PNS

On 2006-09-22 10:01, tgpedersen wrote:

> It gets more difficult that that. Here's what Schrijver has in 'Lost
> Languages in Northern Europe':
>
> Proto-Saami *ku:ti-
> Norwegian Lappish guttâ 'fish roe, fish sausage'
>
> *ku:ti- or a derived *ku:tian-.
> Middle Low German ku:t, ku:te,
> Modern Low German (dialect of Mecklenburg)
> kü(h)t 'entrails, weak parts of the animal body,
> roe, calf of the leg'
> Middle Dutch cute, cuut, kiet, kijte
> Modern Icelandic kut-magi 'fish stomach'
> kýta 'fish stomach, roe'
> Frisian ku:t 'roe, calf
>
> *kunt-:
> Middle Low German kunte,
> Dutch kont,
> English cunt 'buttocks, cunnus'
>
> *kutt-:
> Dutch kut 'cunnus',
> Bavarian kütze 'part of intestines',
> Middle High German kotze 'prostitute',
> Middle Low German kutte 'cunnus'
>
> and from elsewhere
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/34933
> Finnish kusi, gSg kuden "piss"
> Danish kusse "cunnus"
> Da. kød, Sw kött "meat"
> Eng. chitlings
>
> EIEC's *kutsós, *kutsnós is a Notbehelf
>
> cf. Da. fisse, Sw fitta, ON fuT, German Votze.
> Same -tt-/-ss- variation that looks like it
> goes back to dialectal variants of PIE t + t
> (as in Chatti, cassis, hatt, ho:d-,
> mado, Motte, mattuc (with NWBlock suffix))

*kut-tó- and *kut-nó- are simply two alternative ways of forming a
verbal adjective in PIE. The latter is probably older with roots ending
in a stop, but the former was more productive and must have been gaining
ground at the expense of its rival already in the protolanguage, hence
occasional doublets of this kind. The change *-tt- > *-ss- is
characteristic of the whole western fringe of IE (Germanic, Italic,
Celtic) and there's every reason to believe that any lost branches in
that region knew it as well. As for me, the <cunnus> connection is more
persuasive than those fishy links with Saami, and I'd rather suspect a
loan from Germanic into Finnish than the other way round in this case
(and in this lexical field allowance must be made for taboo distortions
and folk etymologies). At any rate *kut-nó- etc. makes sense in terms of
IE morphology ('that which is covered/hidden'). See also the
O-derivative *skout-áh2 'concealment, protective covering', possibly
underlying PGmc. *skauðo: > OIc. skauð 'sheath'

Piotr