Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

W dniu 2012-03-09 12:52, Tavi pisze:

> My own reconstruction is **XrC-o-*, with *C being an affricate sibilant.

There's nothing to be gained in this way. The reconstruction doesn't
explain more evidence than the orthodox analysis, and it *fails* to
explain some of it (Hitt. hartakka-) without arbitrary special pleading.
You also complicate the reconstruction by proposing an otherwise unknown
PIE phoneme. Ockham's Razor applies here.

> You might redefine "PIE" to designate the most recent lexicon layer in
> the IE family, but then you should create new names for the older strata.

No, I'm not *redefining* anything. I use "PIE" in the standard sense. if
X is a language family, Proto-X means (and has always meant) the latest
common ancestor of all its members. If you want to refer to its earlier
stages, you can use "pre-" (pre-PIE etc.).

> > > One does not even have to insist that *h1ek^wos referred originally to
> > > domesticated horses. Wild horses were very common throughout Eurasia
> > > and they may have kept their name after domestication.
> >
> > Only that there's no actual evidence this domestication was done by IE
> > speakers.

This is irrelevant.

> My theory is that **h1ek´w-o-* specifically designated the domesticated
> horses from the Pontic-Caspian steppes. As in the case of other
> domesticated animals, this is a loanword which originated in the
> language of the domesticators.

If you put forward such a theory, the burden of the proof lies squarely
on your shoulders. I am not aware of any IE language that shows a
consistent generic distinction between the terms for wild and
domesticated horses, like that between "wolf" and "dog" (while different
types/breeds of domesticated horses are often distinguished).

> Of course, as horses were also domesticated in more than just one place,
> there're also other 'horse' words. For example, I've already suggested
> that Germanic **xurs-a-/*xruss-a-* must have coined by people familiar
> with the wild animal.

Just about everybody was familiar with wild horses in all putative IE
homelands. Show me one scrap of evidence that the Germanic word meant
specifically 'wild horse' before you claim that it *must* have been the
case.

Piotr