Re: PIE suffix =t in food?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:

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> > the existence of Khowar òhts 'bear' (which never had a- and didn't get ts < Cy) makes it likely that Finnish otso \ ohto (etc.) was borrowed from an Indo-Iranian l. like Kh, possibly even proto-Kh.
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> Khowar in particular still has the same couple issues brought up last time.
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> 1) It is not spoken anywhere near Finnic

Its loc. far in the past is what's important.

> 2) This form does not explain the Mordvinic cognates (Erzya _ovto_, Moksha _ofta_) which lack an affricate.

That is IE. Supposedly the dif. in ursus/arktos is from t ( > ts ) > s . A borrowing from an Indo-Iranian l. like Kh (as opposed to a Nuristani one like íts = bear Kmv; w more dif.) could be one in which no t > ts occurred in that pos. (possibly even proto-Kh., dep. on its history and the time of borrowing, etc.).

> 3) The occurrence of /ts/ here is an unrelated coincidence since _otso_ is a literary Finnish hypercorrection for _ohto_

Kh. ts is not from IE ts. Exactly which language, or what its full features were, can't be determined, only that it looks closer to Kh than any other. I also wouldn't be certain of the original form in Fin. from just that ev.

> 4) As noted by Francesco B, apparently the actual Khowar form is _orc._ anyway: http://tinyurl.com/392fyzu
>

There is no "actual Khowar form" dif. from what I said. There are dif. dia., and I know (and said) that r > R > X > h here (words borrowed < Skt have -x not -r in Kh (uxtì = next Kh; úttara- = upper/etc V)). In that dia., R > r. > r , probably not reg., but opt., (causing r.ts > r.t.s. at the right time).

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> > Finnish borrowings from Indo-Iranian are known, and the existence (even in ancient sources) of many odd (in comp. to most modern) Indo-Iranian l. in NE Europe increases this likelihood.
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> In general this does seem like a good approach to the various layers of II loans in Uralic, much of which are of rather localized distribution. Specific evidence includes Samic *oarjé (< *orja) "south" vs. Finnic *orja "slave", which seem to have been loan'd under different circumstances, hence the wildly different semantics; or the word for "iron": Mordvinic E, M _ks^n´i_ seems to reflect an original close to Avestan (rt > s^?), while Permic *kort shows the bare root, and Mari *kYrtn´i represents an intermediate form or derivational influence from Mordvinic.
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> _j.
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