Re: Ur- = water and Skur- = shower

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

From: C. Darwin Goranson

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 6:15 AM

Subject: [Courrier indésirable] [tied] Re: Ur- = water and Skur- = shower

What I'm trying to say is that there are cases where words can have
similar sounds and similar meanings, but not actually be related!
Take, for example, a famous example of the word for "dog" in an
Australian Aboriginal language (Mbabaram): "dog". Now, it's known
that this word wasn't borrowed from English. How, then, could a
language halfway across the world from where English was first spoken
have an identical word for the animal "Canis lupus familiaris"?
Pure linguistic chance.
============

A.F

It is not so clear that it is "pure chance"

Since you can find many words meaning "dog" with the structure d_? -b/-k

Apart from English dog and Mbabaram "dog",

Arabic dhi?-b, Hausa a-di, etc

jackal can also be from *d_?-k.

====================

The commonly accepted form of  the word is *wodr - although *wotr is the version accepted by the Glottalic school.
But the reconstruction of the form *wodr is based on real words: Old
Irish "uisce", English "water", Lithuanian "vanduo~", Old Church
Slavonic "voda", Greek "hudo:r" (the colon here denotes vowel
length), Hittite "wa:tar". In fact, the *d varies in the genitive
case with an *n, as is seen in the Hittite "witenas", the genetive
of "wa:tar", and in some languages the form with an *n has become the
standard form, such as in Latin "unda" (wave) and Sanskrit "udan"
(water).
Especially looking at the equivalence on the English, Old Church
Slavonic, Greek and Hittite forms of the word, surely you must see a
striking similarity in form! All the moreso when it's noted that the
Greek "h" could come from "w" (or "s"). 

============ ====
> A.F

The earliest (inherited) form was *ut?- and it was a verb : "to rain"

From this, a certain number of things happened at PIE stage :

1. u > w so the root functioned as w_t?-

2. t? fused with d, hence ud / w_h

3. the root being a verb : it could :

3a : be infixed with -n- hence Latin onda, Lituanian vanduo

3b : be suffixed with -r/-n (kind of particle) hence udo:r, water

*wodr is not PIE, but the probable form of "water" in Proto-Germanic.

 

Further more,

the root being a verb : Class VII in proto-Germanic

it admitted e: o: as apophonic alternations.

hence wet < *we:d

And maybe sweat is also from *ut?- with a particular semantic development.

 
> ============ =======

rock: haitz (the "h" is often dropped)
axe: aizkora

The "tz" against "z" is likely due to reanalysis.

Also worth looking into is the word "haitzulo(ko) " (cave). I've
looked, and not found any word like "ulo" or "uloko", so this is a
clear derivative of "haitz".

> ============ ==
A.F

haitz can be from k_r "stone"

hence kari > hazi > haiz-t > haitz (one more case of l/r > z and -t suffix)

Axe aizkora looks like a loanword from PIE akwesi > metathesized aizko-

Metathesis is pervading about all Basque words.

Anything like CvCv is likely to become vCCv or vvCC.
> ===========
>
> A.F
>
> Generally speaking, I do not believe there is any reason why any
word should not be borrowed. I do not believe in the "stable basic
vocabulary" B.S.

If it were true that any word could be borrowed, then how is it that
the Indo-European pronouns and such are so similar?
Look, oh friend, at the attestation of words such
as "I", "you", "we", "this", and the ridiculous and infantile (in
your words) "water" - all 12 IE groups attest the same roots:
*h1eg^ , *tuh? (uncertain laryngeal), *wei , *so and *wodr ,
respectively.

A.F

The fact that some words are stable in some particular family (here PIE) does not prove it is impossible that they can be borrowed.

This is like arguing that meteorites don't exist, because you haven't found one in your own garden.
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