Re: The cat domestication happened more than 100,000 years ago

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>
> > It is an interesting question why cats weren't common enough

in

> > the ancient Indo-European world to have a general I.E. name.
>
> It seems to be older that the IE invasions.
>
> Trask: The History of Basque, p. 265
> "
> Sex-marking is not common in Basque, except by lexical means, as in
> gizon 'man' and emakume 'woman', behi 'cow' and zezen 'bull'. The
> adjectives eme 'female' (a loan from Gascon) and or 'male' are
> sometimes attached to animal names when the distinction is thought
> necessary: katar 'tomcat', kateme 'female cat' {katu 'cat'), oilo
> 'hen', oilar 'cock, rooster'.
> "
>
> Besides katu Basque also has kathu and gatu; Trask assumes (as

always)

> a loan from Latin. For some reason Italian (gatto) and several

Romance

> dialects seems to have sporadically the same lenition which is

typical

> of Basque (but which katar/katu seeme to have escaped).
> German Kater, Du. kater "tomcat"
> German Katze, Du. kat "cat"
> That suffix -er "male" is very rare in German and Dutch.
> Perhaps = -er in Engl. gander?
>

1. We have Slavic cotU too : Does somebody knows its etymology?

2. Romanian cotoi 'tomcat' is considered 'from Slavic + oi'


Could we assume an 'European' root *kat- ?

Marius