Richard Wordingham wrote:

> --- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote:
> > > 4. geme Magd (MSL, III, 125; D. 45)
> > > eke büyük k?z kardes, (DLT, I, 685, eget gerdek gecesi gelin
> için
> > > gönderilen hizmetçi kad?n (DLT), I, 51)
> >
> >
> > The word is related to Akkadian eHatu(m), eHaSu(m) (sister) which
> shows
> > up in Luwian
> > as negash.
>
> So the Semitic word for brother (e.g. Hebrew ah., I forget the vowel
> length) is a back formation?

My Semitic is very weak, basically nonexistent. I got the Akkadian words
from the CAD,
Akkadian dictionary.

>
>
> > It shows up in Turkic in various forms as eke, eket, egech
> > (sister) and
> > then in rounded forms such as Og (mother), Oge (foster, adopted),
> OgsUz
> > (orphan).
> > ProtoTurkic initial-n is lost, leaving negash>egech. The Nostratic
> root
> > had to be
> > *nekathum which also gave rise to Turkic katun (woman). Notice the
> words
> > nephew
> > and nepot. No sound law of linguistics explains w=t (last
> consonant)
> > except mine,
> > and it works accross several language families. Notice that since
> we see
> > English
> > f (ph, e.g., nephew) and Latin nepot (p) and since Latin p=f
> Germanic
>
> A double gotcha! 'Nephew' is from Latin, and the traditional
> pronunciation of the <ph> is /v/. The inherited form lives on as the
> English surname 'Neave', so the springing of the trap is irrelevant.

Yes, nephew is from Latin. So is nepot (e.g. nepotism). Obvious that
these two are related.

Mark Hubey
hubeyh@...
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey