Re: Stacking up on standard works

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

> W dniu 2012-04-02 17:34, Francesco Brighenti pisze:
>
> > I don't know how you arrived at the "Proto-North Caucasian"
> > reconstruction "*=unddzE 'to hide, to steal, to conceal'
> > (= stands for a class-prefix)". Starostin just reconstructs an
> > isolated Proto-Lezghian (East Caucasian) root *pinc.w- 'feather'
> > (based on the *actually attested* Agul word pinc. 'feather' --
> > further glossed as 'eyelash' without any explanation -- *only*),
> > and doesn't even attempt to reconstruct a "North Caucasian"
> > protoform. See both at
> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/bvsc9gv
> >
> > and at
> >
> > http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/glossary.pdf (p. 160),
>
> See page 204, Francesco, and this:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/cu5j5v4

Oh, I see. Therefore, according to Tavi Basque mintz-, p(h)intz- 'membrane (covering an egg or nut)' would be cognate with an etymologically "somewhat dubious" (as per Starostin's own admission) "PNC" root whose meaning would be 'hide, conceal, steal'? Do eggshells and nutshells "conceal/hide" something, really? Would that be a semantically plausible designation of an eggshell or nutshell?

By the way, in the _Diccionario de la Lengua Española_ of the Real Academia Española the Spanish term binza 'membrane in an animal's body; onion skin' is derived from brinza < brenca 'fiber, filament', which is there regarded as a pre-Roman word borrowed from Celtic *bri:nica: < *brinos 'fiber, filament'. I don't know if such an etymology holds, but it's an alternative etymology anyway, which does not imply any borrowing from Basque mintz- etc.

Regards,
Francesco