Re: 'Dug' from PIE? (was: Rg Veda Older than Sanskrit)

From: tgpedersen
Message: 57764
Date: 2008-04-21

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> At 3:31:30 PM on Sunday, April 20, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 1:11:00 PM on Sunday, April 20, 2008, Patrick Ryan
> >> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> 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.
>
> > Well, one could always propose a substrate language
> > containing words with geminates? [...]
>
> OE had all sorts of geminates.

I also had toponyms and appellatives in P- and roots of the TVT- type,
for T unvoiced stop.

> This particular one,
> however, is a problem. And do note that I'm specifically
> addressing Patrick's proposal, *not* casting about in search
> of an etymology.

That would be most uncomely. There must be other ways of finding
etymologies.


> (Yours is a non-solution to the more
> general problem anyway: at this point, at least, it's just a
> fancy way of saying 'We don't know where this came from'.)

No, as far as I'm concerned, Schrijver's 'language of geminates' is
the NWBlock language, which I've said several times before.


Torsten