Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *gWiH3w-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2008-02-11 09:54, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > The Germanic words for "rice" clearly have no initial/w/ either.
> > Therefore they shouldn't be confused with all those pre-IA
> > *vrijhi-, Pashtu wriZE, Greek o'ryza, o'ryzon etc?
>
> We know when and how this word found its way into English etc., and
> how to account for its shape, including the loss of the original
> initial. What I'm arguing against is, in the first place, the
> reconstruction of an IE *wrugHjo- for 'rye', as proposed by Pokorny.
> The _only_ reason why he posits an initial *w is the existence of
> Thrac. briza. He doesn't offer any comments on the absence of *w- in
> Germanic. A wanderwort like *wrij^Hi- might of course explain the
> form (but not the meaning!) of the Thracian word quite nicely, but
> it wouldn't work so well for Balto-Slavic and Germanic (to get
> *rugHi- one would have to admit an irregular treatment of both the
> initial cluster and the vowel, and if the word got into Europe via
> the Iranian languages, why do we have a reflex of *gH, not *g^H, in
> Balto-Slavic?). There's also a semantic problem: why 'rice' --> >
> 'rye'? Rye is not a recent import into Eastern and Central Europe.
> It's been widely cultivated here at least since the Bronze Age as
> one of the main crops and THE bread cereal (not to mention vodka
> :)). Why borrow a word for it from peoples who did not cultivate
> rye at all? I find it safer to assume, until proven otherwise, that
> *rugHi-/*rugHjo- is a separate term.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/30337
And now I can blame the geminated Rogge etc on NWBlock/Chattic etc.

Here's a proposal for the semantic development:
The *(w)rugHjo- word is taken over as the name of 'ceral', ie *the*
cereal, there wasn't any other in these parts: a mixture of wheat and
rye. Someone succeeds in getting the rye out of the crop, and that new
improved crop is called with a name derived from *k^weit- "white". The
old crop keeps the old name, but some day someone succeeds in
isolating rye in that too, which is how it's been since.


Torsten