--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:
>
> Do you have any data to support Etruscan thu = PIE *dw?
>
> Patrick
My original thought was to link Etr tHu with PIE *sem, via PIT *tsom,
*tsum, or *tum (any would work by the sound laws that I have deduced).
I'm not crazy about the first two possibilities because the law PIT
*ts > PIE *s, Etr tH is only supported by one other etymology and that
one is weak (*kxautsa dawn, sun > PIE *h2eus dawn, Etr CautHa sun
god). The last possibility is better and is what my current thinking
is. It might also be related to the *tm and *mt (with metathesis)
found in *septm and *dek^mt. Interestingly if *tum means one or count
then it has a parallel in *tom, one or ten, found in Nilo-Saharan,
Niger-Congo, Cushitic, and Omotic.
That said, linking Etr tHu with PIE *dw is attractive. I have 7 other
correspondences that link PIE *d with Etr t or tH (I'm not convinced
that aspiration was phonemic in Etr because there are frequent
alternations between aspirated and non-aspirated consonants). I could
then reconstruct PIT *t'u& > PIE *deu(e/o) (*dw(e/o) in the
non-singular due to zero grading), > Etr tHu. The change of PIT *u >
PIE *eu/u, Etr u has 4 supporting etymologies (this one would make 5).
The loss of & in Etr, with it becoming the thematic vowel in PIE has
7 other correspondences. Unfortunately this doesn't explain the nasal
that occurs in the Etr ordinal. Still, the correspondences are fairly
trivial (though my PIT reconstruction has non-trivial correspondences
as well) and the semantics are clear (the dual of one is two).