>> Let me start from the 1st Shift / Grimm's "Law" (rule in
>> fact). It is often treated as exceptionless but in real we
>> should have doubts. For example, the English "touch" and
>> "take" look like cognate of the Latin tangere with *t-
>> preserved.
> English <touch> is a borrowing of OFr <tochier>, from VLat
> *toccare, so it’s irrelevant.
> Brian
Of course, but this *toccare may be a Germanic loanwods in turn. The
geminate -cc- seems to make it probable.
All hypothesis like those of "echoic" origin of this word (and many others)
seem to be less probable (the fact that authors of etymological dictionaries
copy them one after another - is no proof yet). If we took under
consideration that the human language must have developed from nothing many
thousands of years ago, all words must have been echoic to more or less
degree originally. So, such a hypothesis cannot be treated as the zeroeth
one, and must be proved or positively argumented just like others. The
echoic / onomatopoeic etymology means only that the etymologist, who
investigates a given word, actually resigns, surrenders.
Anyway, it is also the semantic proximity which can vote for relation of
"take" and "touch". Below I am going to give another possible etymology
(other than "echoic").
> Yes, of course (except that I can't accept take = tango &c. because
> phonological irregularity must prevail on semantic proximity,
I agree, but there is proximity here, and that is why I have given both
verbs together.
> otherwise we could never demonstrate that a given hypothesis is
> false) [...]
Latin tangere "to touch" comes from IE *tH2g- (de Vaan, Etym. Dict. of
Latin..., p. 606). But its undoubtful (I hope) cognates may have the meaning
"take". This is the proof that there is semantic proximity between "touch
and "take".
They are especially Greek tetagō'n "having seized" (does it mean "having
touched" or "having taken" rather?) and Latin tagāx "thievish" (does a thief
touch or take his loot rather?).
Another kind of a proof is that Gothic tekan means "to touch" (taítōk "I
touched") while Icelandic taka means "take" and tók = took (the English verb
is of Nordic origin). So, the Gmc. *tekana-/*takana- yielded both "touch"
and "take" meanings. We cannot separate them from one another. The meaning
"touch" is probably original, as "*nema-" was used for "take", also in OE.
It is simpler to accept the Germanic origin of *toccare as both "take" and
"touch" share the same consonantal structure of the root (t-k) and we know
Germanic verbs with this very structure which mean either "touch" or "take".
But there is indeed another possible etymology of *toccare, other than
echoic. First, we should reconstruct *tuccare here, as Latin u > (closed) o
in Romance. The further source of this word is not known, but we find a
similar root, among others, in Slavic. Namely, *tŭkti, *tŭknǫti (Polish
tknąć, Serbo-Croat taknuti and taći, etc.) mean "to touch" and also "to
knock", "to push". He have also Latvian tukstēt "knock" and Greek týkos "war
or stonemason hammer, hatchet etc.".
Should it destroy the possibility of Germanic connection of
*toccare/*tuccare? Not necessarily. We find the formally exact conterpart of
Gmc. *tugg- or *tukk- in German: zücken "whip out" and "draw (e.g. a dagger
or a sword)"; notice also den Bleistift zücken "to take/draw out/use the
pencil". The non-umlauted zucken means "twitch", zuhhen was also present in
OHG. All these meanings are not very distant from "touch" in fact. And yet
closer to "draw (out)".
However, *tugg- and *tek- should have nothing in common. Indeed it is so, at
least from the Neogrammarian point of view. I will not interpret this in any
way but I will only notice that there are astonishing connections between
*TEK- and *TUK- roots (T= t, d, dh) in IE.
Slavic *tŭkati means "to weave" (< *tuk-) and Latin texō means "to weave" (<
*tek-). Notice also German Zeug "cloth, stuff" (so, "something woven")
(<*deuk-).
Slavic *tŭk(nǫ)ti (related to the one above) means "to touch" (< *tuk-) and
Latin tangere means "to touch" (<*tH2(n)g-).
Slavic *tęg(nǫ)ti means "to pull, to draw" (<*te(n)g-) (formally close to
Latin tangere), and German ziehen means "to draw" (<*deuk-) just as Latin
dūcere "lead".
There also are other, more various meanings of both Slavic *tŭkati and
*tŭknǫti, esp. with prefixes. For example, Polish wtykać "to stick (a finger
into a hole)", spotkać się "to meet", wytknąć "to point out", zetknąć się
"to encounter", zatkać "to cork, to clog, to plug", przetkać "to
intersperse, to clear" (and "to interweave"), potknąć się "to walk
unsteadily, to stumble, to slip, to trip up", potykać się "t.s.
(imperfective)" but also "to fight" (bookish). It should help to understand
why the difference between "take" and "touch" is not too much.
I should mention yet another possible etymology of "take": Greek dékhomai
"accept, take". Actually, the Germanic form (<*deg-) looks like if a hybrid
of *degh- (see Greek) and *teg- (see Latin).
Here is a list drawn up by possible IE forms for better comparison:
1. *tek- = Latin "weave" (actually texere may come from *te-tke- but this
form does not still fit the Slavic one),
2. *tuk- = Slavic "weave", "touch", a possible non-Germanic source of
*tuccare "touch",
3. *deuk- = Germanic *"weave" (actually "woven thing") and "draw", and also
"touch" if *tuccare comes from Gmc. *tugg- < IE *duk; Latin "to lead",
4. *te(H2)g- = Latin "touch", Greek "take" (actually "seize"), Slavic
"draw",
5. *deg- = Germanic "take" (Nordic) and "touch" (Gothic),
6. *degh- = Greek "take".
Grzegorz J.