Re: Germanic 'bear'

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

>
> > I agree on that relationship, but IMHO the Slavic word underwent a
> > semantic shift, because it's patently clear from 'werewolf' and Baltic
> > 'bear' that this root designated some kind of carnivore.
>
> Or some characteristic shared by wolves and bears. Note that Slavic
> *tlakU 'tuft of hair', coll. *tlaka 'fur' refer precisely to the thing
> that bears were hunted for. Slavic *vIlko-dlakU has the same structure
> as ON berserkr.
>

This is comparable to the classical question: Which came first, the hen or the egg? In this case, I'm in favour of the animal.

> Long range or short range, weasels are not bears and before Linnaeus it
> would not have occured to anyone to group them together. One could call
> it a Hamletic etymology:
>

As I said before, semantic shift is part of language evolution, so a root can evolve into diverging meanings among its descendants. This why across many millenia we've got long range cognates such as IE 'bear', NEC 'marten; otter', Altaic 'fox, marten' and Yeniseian 'badger'.

And if you want a really striking example involving *h1ek´w-o- 'horse', you can read my own blog:

http://vasco-caucasian.blogspot.com/2011/11/indo-european-horses.html