From: tgpedersen
Message: 57743
Date: 2008-04-20
>Well, one could always propose a substrate language containing words
> At 1:11:00 PM on Sunday, April 20, 2008, Patrick Ryan wrote:
>
> > From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>
>
> >> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan"
> >> <proto-language@> wrote:
>
> >>> Piotr is, of course, correct that the word cannot be
> >>> derived from *dheugh-; it is, in fact, derived from
> >>> *dheug(h)-, which does not appear in Pokorny although we
> >>> are fortunate to have an English cognate: 'dug', meaning
> >>> 'animal teat'.
>
> >> What series of loans do you propose for English _dug_?
> >> It can't be inherited from *dHeug. Alternatively, what
> >> mechanism do you propose for getting it from *dHeugH?
>
> > That was written a little too fast for clarity.
>
> > I propose that English 'dug' is the inherited reflex of
> > *dheugh-; our good fortune is that it shows the required
> > meaning.
>
> An obvious difficulty is that it first shows up in the 16th
> c. And in the two earliest citations in the OED it refers
> specifically to a woman's breast ('Tete, pappe, or dugge, a
> womans brest' 1530, and 'Her dug with platted gould rybband
> girded about her' 1583), though I shouldn't put too much
> weight on that.
>
> It's also very difficult to concoct a history that works.
> OE *dugV would have yielded something like ME *doue, *dowe,
> so you need a geminate *dugg-, and I don't see where it
> would come from.