PIE *dom- 'household' (was Re: Gimbutas)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Marc Verhaegen" <marc.verhaegen@...> wrote:

>
> Transitions of meanings like this (eg, Latin
> "domus" = English "timber" suggest houses were made of wood) could be
> important for reconstructing the PIE lifestyle.
>

A common BELIEF among Indo-Europeanists is that PIE *dom- 'household' derives from *dem(h2)- 'to build'. But this view has been challenged by some authors, e.g. Pierre Chantraine, who in his Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, p. 292-293, remarks that this root refers to an INSTITUTION ('dwelling place') rather than to a building ('house'). With regard to this, it's remarkable the compound *dem-s-pot- 'master of the house', with the genitive form *dem-s-.

This is why I derive *dom- from Proto-Afrasian *dam- 'to live, to last, to sit', which AFAIK has no Eurasiatic correspondences. This makes sense within a Neolithic context, when (pre-)IE speaking hunter-gatherers (IE speakers) learned Neolithic farming techniques and thus became sedentary. By contrast, Afrasian speakers (mostly nomadic pastoralists) had a different lifestyle and didn't develop the household institution.