From: Tavi
Message: 68939
Date: 2012-03-12
>I said (although apparently my post didn't appear on the list) that there's no PIE word for 'badger' (much less for 'skunk'). But there's a PIE word for 'bear' I've linked to other similar words meaning 'marten', 'otter' or 'badger'. This means a semantic shift must have happened, due to the migration of PIE speakers to a Boreal environment where the Eurasian Brown Bear (Ursus arctos arctos) lives.
> > I think Katz's proposal is very
> > interesting, although it actually points to a different animal, the
> > skunk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk> or polecat. But as in the
> > case of other carnivores such as 'weasel', 'marten', etc., this kind of
> > semantic shifts are rather common.
>
> The skunk? Do you locate the Indo-European homeland in America?
>