Re: Germanic KW

> > > > I think that PIE *kaltlos kl,tl(e)+ 'pole/pedestal
> > > > used to raise something' came to mean 'neck' (as, for
> > > > example, using 'pot' for 'head').
> > >
> > > That root is new to me.
> >
> > It's *kel/kal+ 'raise' + *tlo+s used in tools.
>
>
> I think the English semantics of 'neck' might be misleading you.
> 'Hals' in 'Scandinavian' and German means both "neck" and "throat",
> and it's the latter sense ("narrows") you see in place names:
> Helsingfors, Helsingør etc.

The village Hals, the reef Hals Barre at the mouth of the Limfjord.

> And then there's Kalundborg and Kolding at the end of fjords, Kolind
> Sund, a now reclaimed longish lake. That sense might have been the
> first one.

Also, languages have tended with time towards subject + active-verb
constructions, like 'my throat hurts'. In this case, English is one of
the few languages to have reached that stage, most other modern IE
languages will for that use something like 'there-is-hurt
in-my-throat' (which is why the distinction throat/neck is unimportant
for such a language), ie impersonal-verb + locative. Actually the
locative suffix is Finnish -ssA, Estonian -s, "in the neck/throat"
would be 'kaelas' in Estonian. Compare with Germanic *xal-sa-.


Torsten