--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" <oalexandre@...> wrote:
>
> A similar case would be IE *penkWe- '5' ~ NEC *fimk?wV 'fist'. If I'm
not mistaken, Petr suggested that Starostin's f should be replaced by
X\W or XW.
>
> > What are the attested words on which this NEC reconstruction is
based?
> >
> See here:
http://newstar.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?single=1&basename=/data/cau\
c/caucet&text_number=1008&root=config
>
> > Very interesting. The phoneme *f is relatively rare, and the
correspondences for this lexeme are regular. That does not exclude
borrowing from an IE source after the breakup of Proto-NEC.
>
> I strongly disagree. The NEC word means 'fist', a meaning which in IE
only appears in a *derivated form* found in Germanic, Slavic and Baltic
(the latter with initial k-), while the bare lexeme shifted to '5' at an
early date, probably in the Neolithic as other numerals. So in my
opinion this would be another case where a word from a language ancestor
to IE is preserved in NEC.
>
The cases of IE 'bear' and Germanic 'horse' would also fall in this
cathegory.
Unlike Starostin and Bengtson, I don't think all the proto-NEC lexicon
is from Vasco-Caucasian (aka Sino-Caucasian), as apparently there's a
significant portion whose origin is Eurasiatic (aka Nostratic). Also
Yeniseian seems to be in a similar (or even worse) position, being a
geographical outlayer. As a rule of thumb, I consider a root to be VC if
it's attested in at least two of the following families: NEC, Burushaski
and Sino-Tibetan.