From: Rick McCallister
Message: 57765
Date: 2008-04-21
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"This is all well and good but how did the word get
> <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
>