Re: Family terms [was: Kluge's Law in Italic?]

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> W dniu 2012-02-14 02:11, stlatos pisze:
>
> > Are you saying that 'brother', etc., all happened to have a laryngeal
> > each but 'mother' didn't? Analyzing the common ending as *-ter- not
> > -xter- leads only to baseless folk etymology. Even if from babbling,
> > such a *ma- could have been old enough to undergo a>e, back to a only by
> > the following x (even if not so old, it causes the lengthening seen in
> > historical IE).
>
> I'm open to any explanation that makes sense od the peculiarities of the
> PIE family terms. 'Father' can hardly have been originally segmented as
> *p-h2ter-

What are you saying? Wouldn't accent, something like * paxtèr- > * pxtèr- but retention of -a- in * maxter- allow for original segmentation of * pa-xtèr- ? Your argument seems like it would only make sense if there had never been a V there, something I've never seen in any theory. You must know about the voc., at least.


If you think * p-h2ter- doesn't make sense because of the appearance of * h2ter- , it could easily have been from a complete word, now lost elsewhere.


(even if it should have been resegmented in this way later

> on), and I find *ph2-ter- (a transparently formed agent noun) easier to
> swallow than *ph2t-er-. Of course 'mother' can be *ma(:)-h2ter-, as far
> as I'm concerned (with *-h2ter- taken from 'father'); all that I'm
> saying is that *h2 is unlikely to be part of the "baby talk" element so
> comon in 'mother' words the wide world over.

If these were really from "baby talk", why would one be real "baby talk" ma- and the other happen to resemble "baby talk" pa- , both w a common ending whose meaning ISN'T known (never shown id. to '(agent)', or partially created by analogy (that affected every ter>xter in the group)? You're attempting folk etymology on one w/o taking into account the other, just like putting 'milk' w 'daughter' , as many have done before w no ev. in its favor.


If I did the same thing, I could just as easily say it was conn. w potis L; pósis G; páti- S; by * petxtèr- > * pextèr- > * paxtèr- > * pxtèr- with dis. of t-t > 0-t . Also, if * mar-x-wó+ > maro = mellow/soft OHG; mearu \ mearo = tender OE; was conn. w * marxxter- > * marxter- > * maxter- with dis. of x/r , there's just as much ev. for that as anything else: none.


Neither your ex. or my false ex. has any ev. in favor or against in standard theories. You have no reason to think what you said is true, you just prefer it for illogical reasons, just as others have done before. If you want to reconstruct anything new, you have to understand if what you believe has any reason to be true, and abandon it if something better is shown to you.


In Dravidian, words like (w many dentals = t* / etc.):

* po?t*l*en*t*s*yû \ pot*l*?en*t*s*yû = father-in-law >

po:tlesi \ potle?esi \ potheleesi Kuwi; potad.eenju Kui;

could easily be taken as ev. of the eq. of the segments po?tl- / paxtr- with some suffix for 'in-law' , but it isn't. The ev. you see for your der. of * ph2t-er- is similarly superficial and wrong. You must understand most of the whole to be fairly secure w one of the parts.