From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 47214
Date: 2007-02-02
----- Original Message -----From: tgpedersenSent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 7:30 AMSubject: [tied] Re: Cow
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Such facts increase the plausibility of the relatedness of PIE *gWou-,
*gWu- and Sumerian GUD 'bull; cattle' proposed long since by Ipsen
(1923:175ff. ). The word reflected in Sumerian gu(d) 'bull; cattle',
phonetically g.u = [n,u] according to Diakonoff 1967:49, is evidently
a Near Eastern migratory term of wide distribution. It is found in
Egyptian (beginning with the Old Kingdom) in the form ng3w 'type of
large bull with long horns, especially as a sacrificial and harness
animal', 'god in the form of a bull' (Erman and Grapow 1955:II.349) ;
it also the later attested gw 'type of bull' (ibid. V.159). It is
highly plausible that the Sumerian and Egyptian forms are connected -
perhaps via other languages - with the postulated Indo-European forms
*gWou- and *gWu-. The sequence of a velar nasal /n,/ and a
pharyngeal in Egyptian is comparable to the glottalized labiovelar of
Indo-European. 48
"
Or rather, the PIE root was really *NgWou, *NgWu- and the traditional
PIE phonemes b, d, g^, g, gW are not glottalized as G/I want, but
prenasalized: Mb, Nd, Ng^, N,g, N,gW.
***The proposal that PIE had pre-nasalized stops is completely unwarranted.
Even as PIE, at one early stage, had /b/, /d/, and /g/ (with palatalized allophone /g^/), it had the corresponding nasals /m/, /n/, and /n,/.
There is simply no reason to analyze /n,/ as /n/ + /g/ (unless one is a New Yorker).
While it is true that PIE /n,/ occurs in later PIE as /g/ initially (possibly also as /Vn,/it does produce an medial/final /n,/, which, however, often devolves to /g/.
I think the Egyptian cognate is most certainly [g.w] but certainly _not_ [ng3w].
There is _no_ PIE glottalized labio-velar.
The ultimate basis for this is earliest PIE /n,o/, 'round container, sack'. Although we normally expect this /o/ to become the Ablaut vowel (/e/o/Ø), it rarely becomes /gWV/ in the combination /n,o/.
One of the aspects of cattle that interested our ancestors were their comparatively large scrota. I believe this characteristic provided the impetus for the nomenclature [*n,o-w], 'two scrota'.
The cattle-breed gur may also be of interest here.
Patrick
***
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