Re: [tied] Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

----- Original Message -----

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 8:19 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

On 2007-09-24 23:26, Rick McCallister wrote:
> Obviously Chinese did not borrow the word directly
> from IE. I forget what the word is in Tokharian
> languages BUT there may have been an unpacking of /KW/
>> /ku-V/. This happens all the time in English. The
> movie Blazing Saddles is joy to listen to when
> redneck Chill Wills yells out /buw@... Siy@.../. Go to the
> US South and Appalachia where they jokingly say <eggs>
> has 4 syllables --although I hear only 3 /ey@...@/

The PIE nom.sg. *k^wo:(n) had a disylabic variant, *k^uo:(n) (like
*dje:us ~ *die:us), due to Lindemann's Law (not to the presence of a
laryngeal!). Toch.A/B ku might derive from either, while the oblique (TB
kweM, TA koM) reflects acc.sg. *k^won-m. > PToch. kWën&.

There can be little doubt that the Middle Chinese word for 'honey' is a
loan from Tocharian. The Chinese 'dog' word, however, has cognates
throughout Sino-Tibetan, and so probably has nothing to do with the PIE
word and any similarity between them is fortuitous. I don't exclude the
possibility of an extremely old Wanderwort, but I prefer to suspend my
judgement until such time as PST reconstructions based on solid
comparative work become relatively stable and uncontroversial.

Piotr