Re: PK

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "richardwordingham" <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> I'm beginning to have some qualms about liver ~ spleen. I was
> thinking of liver ~ pancreas. Is the use of a word for liver to
> refer to the spleen attested? I have a vague suspicion that
> Thai 'tap lek', literally 'iron liver', might mean 'spleen', but I
> can't find it in my dictionaries. Does anyone on the list know Thai
> well enough to answer?

I never got a reply that justified words for 'spleen' and 'liver' being cognate as suggested by Miguel (Carrasquer Vidal) in http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/14952 :

> Nostratic evidence is hard to come by, and even if found not likely > to convince many people. PIE *ye:kWr "liver", pre-PIE **lyé:pWn.t <
> **lí:punt can be compared to words for "spleen" in Cushitic (Afar
> ale'fu:, pl. a'lefit); Chadic (Angas lap); Uralic (Cheremis lep(a),
> Votyak lup, Zyryene lOp, Saami *dapde, Teryugan Ostyak LAp&tne,
> Hung. lép, Forest nenets Laps'a) and Tungus (Orok lipc^e):
> Dolgopol'skij #104), while PIE *kWétwor- "four", pre-PIE
> **pWét-wa:r- < **pút- can be compared to Afro-Asiatic
> *p.ut.-/*?a-p.t.- "four" (Chadic *fud.u, Eg. ?ftaw, Beja fad.-ig,
> Somali ?afar, Semitic (with metathesis) *?arb-a3-).

Looking for this entry in Dolgopolsky's 'Nostratic Dictionary' by searching for the word 'liver', I found quite a few case where 'spleen' occurred as the meaning of an alleged cognate of a word meaning 'liver'.

Moreover, I am now in possession of a copy of the Thai Royal Institute Dictionary. So I looked up Thai 'tap lek'. The meaning is given as _mA:m khO:ng mU:_ - 'spleen of pig'! Bingo! The semantics match. It's a been long time, but I think this confirmation is worth posting.

Richard.