Germanic Child? (was: [tied] Nori)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@> wrote:

> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@> wrote:

> > > At 3:53:38 PM on Saturday, September 13, 2008, Arnaud
> > > Fournet wrote:

> > > > By the way, as you are talking about Germanic homeland,
> > > > you can check in Starostin's databases the word "child",
> > > > Yeniseian zi-l < g^il

> And the final -d is from?

> > I didn't realise that 'i-' was meant to be a vowel symbol.) 'z^_l
> > (vowel unclear)' is probably the best way to cite it. 'Vowel
> > unclear' actually makes the etymology look less weak, for then one
> > can include the possible Swedish and Danish cognates.

> Erh, which? Pokorny has ON kundr "Sohn" and with þ ON a:s-kunnr "von
> göttlicher Abkunft", but they have no descendants in Danish or
> Swedish that I know of.

Onions, in the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, describes
_child_ as a 'word peculiar to English'. He gives the Germanic
reconstruction as *kilþam, "related to Goth _kilþei_ womb, _inkilþo_
pregnant, quasi 'fruit of the womb'; OSw _kulder_, _kolder_ (Sw.
_kull_), ODa _kol(l)_ (Da. _kuld_) young of a litter, child, have been
compared."

The final dental might just be analogous to 'd' in _hound_. However,
while the Scandinavian v. Gothic differences might reflect -e- v. zero
grade and Verner's law depending on the placement of the stress, I
can't see how to get Old English _cild_ from Germanic *kilþam. Why /d/?

Richard.