Re: *ka/unt- etc, new conquests, a whole bundle of them

> > > Suppose PIE had 'dwó do komt', 'trí do komt' vel sim. (cf. the
> > > Lat. -gint-, Gk. -kont- for decades), then by false division
> > >*dé-komt- "ten". Voilà!
> > >
> > Great, but did *komt- mean "bundle of fingers" or "bundle of
> > hands" or something else?
>
> More like "handful".
>
> > Why not just "hand", and then go along with Pokorny in making
> > *dek^mt- a reduced form of *dwe/dwo k^mt (or *k^omt)?
>
> I like my proposal better. The *kom-t- thing means "ten" in Volga-Finnic and "hundred" and "decade" in IE. Nowhere does it mean "five". Obviously it must mean "group" (of something) in in a field where decadic numbers were preferred. And that was in the field of military venture / hunting.
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65159

> Torsten

For meanings closer to "five", Uralic has *kämme- "palm".

But, do you have evidence anywhere for decadic organization in hunting groups? Or for decadic organization in Uralic anywhere? Or anything suggesting that *kümmen ever had a cluster with /t/, or alternately, a morphological explanation for the /t/ elsewhere?

I still think you're more or less indiscriminately clumping together words that have a dorsal + vowel + nasal + /t/ structure... used to be /nt/, but now you're even allowing for either of /m/ or /n/, and for lack of /t/. Needs way too many assumptions about substrates doing this or that.

Don't get me wrong, this is all interesting, and some of these words might well be related after all, but the evidence we have is not sufficient for conclusions AFAICT.

(Longer reply to the other offshoot also in coming.)

John Vertical