Re: Divergence vs. convergence (was: Witzel and Sautsutras)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
wrote:

>
> Sure. There are quite a few words with */a/-vocalism, but
> many of the restrictedly attested items in Pokorny have
> "ordinary" */e~o/-vocalism, and some words with */a/-vocalism
> have, according to Pokorny, cognates in eastern IE languages,
> but many of those eastern cognates are IMHO poorly founded.
>
> > Exactly. In Pokorny's, the word 'summer' has a Sanskrit cognate, but
> > IMHO it's doubtful. This' is a paleo-IE word.
>
> Indeed, *sam- looks like a substratum loanword, and it may be
> that Pokorny's Sanskrit cognate is wrong.
>

From now on, I'd use the term "Paleo-European" for this kind of words,
because I think it's less prone to confusion than "Paleo-IE", which I
adapted from Villar.

> Anyway, the dictionary is not worth much because the phonology
> Pokorny uses is utterly out of date, and many items have
> semantic problems. He evidently tended to hammer things into
> place that actually did not belong there, and to contrive PIE
> etymologies for items that cannot be ascribed to PIE by any
> reasonable method. (Possibly in an reaction on the harsh
> criticism he earned earlier with his hypotheses about a Semitic
> substratum in Celtic.) It is widely recognized that Pokorny's
> dictionary has many problems, and that there indeed is a
> pressing need for a more modern PIE etymological dictionary.
>

Unfortunately, this is most unlikely without a major rebuilding of the
current paradigm. In an earlier post, I mentioned Mallory & Adams',
updated with regard to "laryngeals" but largely dependent upon earlier
works in semantics. And since you mentioned "hammer", Pokorny wrongly
atttibuted Latin faber 'smith' to a "root" *dhabhr-o- 'good-fitting' vel
sim, but IMHO this is actually a *phonosymbolic* root *tap- ~ *dab-
reflecting the hitting of metal.