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

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

>
> [...]
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> ><snip>
>
> So Gmc had words (hantag, handugs, hannarr) directly related to this 'sharp, spear, prick, goad' root but which had no semantic connection to 'hand'. To me this suggests that 'hand' comes from an entirely separate root (perhaps *k^emt- as opposed to *k^ent-).
>
> > And the answer to Andrew's question about the "ten" word:
> >
> > Russian (and other Slavic languages, AFAIK) has
> > dvenadtsat', trinadtsat' etc lit.
> > "two on ten", "three on ten" etc meaning
> > "twelve", "thirteen" etc.
> >
> > 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? 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)? Maybe Gmc 'hand' was originally a consonant stem, and then became an u-stem because of the accusative endings -um and -uns, like Gothic <fo:tus>?

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That is an intriguing idea. However if *k^omt- or *k^ont- were the stem we could not get Gmc. *hanDu- because the accusative endings would not be accented for Verner's Law to operate, just as we get Goth. <fo:tus> not *fo:dus. If *hanDu- came from a C-stem we would need something like *kondH- or *k^ondH- for the unshifted stem.

DGK