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

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > --- 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>?
> > =====
> > 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.
> >
> Good point (although /t/ doesn't alternate with /ð/ or /d/ in Gmc, it's only /þ/ with /ð/ or /d/ (pardon the non-IPA symbol)). If *handuz is then an original u-stem, the only similarly formed noun I can think of is OE <hearg>, OIcel. <hörgr> (I am saying this because I believe you or someone else objected earlier to the formation of o-grade feminine u-stem with Verner's shift). <hörgr> most probably goes back to a form *k(^)orkús or *k(^)arkús, and similarly *handuz most probably to a form *k(^)ontús or *k(^)omtús (or *k(^)antús or *k(^)amtús), since voiceless plosives were very seldom followed by voiced aspirates. If it was a loan, I don't see how IE *dH could appear in a loan from any other language family, which also argues for *t rather than *dH. If it was *k(^)omtús, then -tús must be a derivational ending, since I don't think the sequence *-mt- arose any other way, so then 'hand' would have to have a derivational etymology, contrary to what I said earlier. Could it be related to *k(^)om "with", i.e. "holding, having"? If it was *k(^)ontús, then there is no relation to *dek^mt, which would be very disappointing for me, but I think it not likely that it would be a loan from elsewhere because it is such a basic vocabulary item. Perhaps *k(^)ontús (or *k(^)antús) has no derivational etymology, it always and only meant 'hand', with no source verb.

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Lapsus cerebri. I was supposed to use 'tooth' as the example, rather than sticking 'foot' in my mouth; a second's reflection shows that Verner cannot act on 'foot' no matter where the accent lay. Anyhow, to continue yesterday's argument, Vedic and Greek examples of m./f. C-stems with monosyllabic nom. sg. forms show that the acc. sg. and pl. take the accent on the stem, not the suffix. The C-stem *h1dont- has evidently become NWGmc *tanTu- by extraction from the acc. sg. and pl. *-um, *-umz, leading to ON <to,nn>, OE <to:T>, Eng. <tooth>. (Gothic <tunTus> apparently reflects zero-grade *h1dn.t-, like Latin <dens>.) If a C-stem *k^omt- or *km.t- had done this, we would expect Gmc. *hanTu- or *hunTu-, Eng. *hooth or *houth, not <hand>.

Another mechanism suggests itself. The inst. pl. *-bHis, replaced in Northwest IE (Balto-Slavo-Germanic) by *-mis, is accented with Vedic monosyllabic C-stems. With the stem *k^omt-, the inst. pl. *k^omt-mi's would be reflected as *k^omtm.'mis by Sievers-Edgerton, this becoming *k^omtu'mmis. After Grimm and Verner, it would be *hanDummiz, from which *hanDu- could be extracted. The reason the Gmc. inst./dat. pl. would dominate the other forms, nom. sg. *hanTs, etc., is that we do a lot of things WITH OUR HANDS, many more things than we do WITH OUR TEETH. The main difficulty here is that the deciles, Lat. <tri:ginta:> etc., seem to imply a sense of 'ten' for *km.t-, but there may be a clever way around this problem not involving ad-hoc absorption of *-d(w)- or whatever supposedly indicated doubling.

In my earlier proposal *ken-dH- was root plus extension, so the root-restriction business was sidestepped, but the weaknesses of poor documentation of *ken- 'compressed' vel sim. and few morphological parallels (only Greek <ko'rthus> 'millstone', and possibly *monus 'intellect') remain. The objection I had to *kontu'- is that I could find no examples of fem. oxytone *-tu-, but given the sparse parallels to *ko'ndHu-, this objection itself is weak.

If the protoform was a C-stem *k(^)omdH-, then possibly the sense was 'that which places together, that which fashions' vel sim., which certainly fits hands, and no extraction of *hanDu- from oxytone oblique cases would be required.

I think that *hanDu- is very unlikely to be a borrowing, and we should be looking for an inherited IE explanation. We now have several to examine in more detail, and hopefully eliminate all but one.

DGK