From: Octavià Alexandre
Message: 64217
Date: 2009-06-19
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Octavià Alexandre oalexandre@ wrote:
> >
> > This is why I regard *sreneh2/4- 'hip' as more adequate to explain
> > the Latin word. Futhermore, Basque has errain, errein- 'kidneys' (with
> > protetic e- because Basque doesn't allow for rhotics at
> > word-initial) from a lost IE language (Italoid aka IE-Ligurian).
> >
> > Perhaps the liquid *s- was simply dropped. In that case, the root should
> > be *(s)reneH2/4-. It still seems to me the most likely etymology for
> > Latin re:ne:s.
>
> Why would Ligurian *rena: lengthen its stem-vowel and become an /i/-stem (gen. pl. <re:nium> several times in Plin.) upon borrowing by Latin? What parallels do you have for the semantic transition 'hip' > 'kidney'?
IE *sre:neH2/4- (with long /e:/, sorry for the misquotation) is reflected in Iranian (Avestan ra:na- 'the outer part of the leg, thigh', Persian ra:n 'thigh') and Baltic (Lithuanian stre:na 'loin, hip, leg ', pl. stre:no:s 'both hips, both thighs; cross, lumbar, hip area, the cross, (for horses) croup, crupper; (dialectal) hip or sacrum, back, or dorsal fin').
The Basque forms are errain 'kidneys, loins', errein-ezur 'sacrum' (a compound with ezur 'bone').