----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 7:46 AM
Subject: Re: [nostratic] AA-IE
> I have never asserted that *g^en-
meant 'make love', just fornication; it means 'beget', 'fertilize an ovum
with sperm'. I hope you are not asserting that it does not mean that because you
would be dead wrong!
First, PIE-speakers knew precious little
about the fertilisation process, so a modern technical meaning like 'fertilise
an ovum with sperm' cannot have existed at the time. The meaning 'to introduce
semen' was expressed like 'to sow' (PIE *seh1-, *se-sh1-e-, etc.). What I
mean is that *g^enh1- refers to the vertical relation between the parent
and the offspring: 'be the parent of, give birth to', and by extension also
'cause, produce, create'. Hence also derivatives like *g^enh1-es- 'descent,
origin; race, offspring' etc. It does _not_ refer to fornication, insemination,
etc., and if you think it does, please show your evidence rather than
declare me dead wrong ex cathedra, as it were.
> And I believe there are forms in IE
languages which require *g^en-.
You mean, forms which require *g^en- but
rule out *g^enh1-? Which particular forms?
> You mix apples with oranges: first, there is 'beget', then 'bear'.
And frankly, I doubt whether tu(d) means 'beget'. The archaic sign depicts a
'seed with a sprout'.
> I suspect that tu(d) is ultimately
cognate with *do:u-, and simply means 'give', i.e. 'produce'.
Well, I'm not a trained
Sumerologist (neither are you, I presume), so I'm inclined to respect the
interpretation offered as standard by those who know better. "A seed with a
sprout" sums it up rather nicely as far as I'm concerned.
> Yes, one must be careful. But, I will say, that I consider Nostratic had a
heavy bias towards nominal forms. And again, Arabic kurki:y-un, 'crane', shows
no sign of a 'laryngeal'.
I don't think PIE *h2 was a "laryngeal" in
articulatory terms -- a velar~uvular fricative, more like. But that's quite
irrelevant. My point is that most bird names with the segmental structure
KVr-C- are sound-imitative and may be coined independently in unrelated language
groups. My native Polish has <kura> for 'hen' (and <kurka> for
'little hen'), <kruk> for 'raven', <sroka> for 'magpie' (with s <
*k^), <krakwa> for 'gadwall', <krakac'> for 'croak',
<gruchac'> 'coo (of pidgeons and doves)', etc. (I _mean_
"etc.").
> It is the cognates from other
languages, which cannot represent *g^ that incline me in this direction. But
there is also Old Indian gárta-H, 'wagon-seat'.
Well, to be frank, I don't see any
solid evidence for EITHER *g^er- OR *ger- meaning 'twist, turn, plait' or
the like.
>> PIE has *gerbH- 'carve, notch'
plus several "scratchy" roots like *skrebH-, all of them no doubt onomatopoeic
...
> Ridiculous!
What's ridiculous -- the phonaesthetic
value of [skr-]?
>> ... and thus of little use in
distant comparison. As for <zrák>, why cite only a Czech word if the root
in question is found everywhere in Slavic and a precise reconstruction is
possible? The original meaning of the word is 'sight' (the semantic development
as in German Gesicht), derived from the Slavic verb *zIr-E-ti 'look, see;
appear, be visible', from *g^Her- 'shine' (Slavic *zorja 'light in the sky'). I
think you lump together unrelated items here.
> I think the idea is rather 'become
visible by being scraped'.
So we have your word for it, but where's
the evidence? Have you really examined the data or just accepted a
reconstruction offered by somebody who took it from somebody else, who'd made it
up? The root *g^Her-, by the way, is not pan-IE but restricted to the NW
area (best attested in Balto-Slavic, with possible but
slightly uncertain Germanic and Celtic cognates. The notion of getting
exposed through scraping is not reflected in any of the actually attested forms.
For example, *zorja refers to the break of day or the fading light at sundown.
The cognates I'm aware of suggest an original meaning like 'glow, produce
luminescence'.
Piotr