bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:11 amI’d be very curious to very know how
*ɦɨtʃwi and
anše are related. (No, you’re not allowed to arbitrarily add and change sounds, such as that suspiciously convenient (~ -e).)
The East Caucasian protoform isn't mine but Starostin's
NCED (North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary). This Wanderwort makes sense because horses were domesticated in the Pontic-Caspian Steppes.
bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:11 amHuh?
East Caucasian to Austronesian‽ How do you propose to explain
that one‽
By seafaring and travelling exchanges between SE Asia and the Middle East.
bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:11 amBesides,
*wHarttɬ'wǝ and
*porḱ-o- have exactly 0 phonetic similarity to each other (the sole exception being the shared presence of
r).
Admitedly, Starostin's
protoform is rather clumsy, so either he conflated two different words here, or else they were irregular sound changes such
*wH >
b. Anyway, this Wanderwort is more like
*bVr(V)k-. On the other hand, lateral affricates in Caucasian are similar to palato-velars in IE.
bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:11 amWhy not a Wanderwört?
Because in this case we're dealing with names of several wild mammals instead of a single domesticated animal.
bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:11 amThe phonetics are about as close as your other examples.
In this case, I think the problem lies in the IE protoform. On the one hand, we've got Hittite
hartagga- 'wild predator', Celtic
*arto-, Greek
árktos, and on the other, Sanskrit
ŕkṣa- and Latin
ursus. So I think a better reconstruction would be
*h₂rC(-k)-o-, where
C would be either reflected as
t or
s and
-k- is an optional suffix like in Turkic.
bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:11 amYet you seem pretty comfortable using reconstructed PIE words. Besides, if you accept IE as a family, then by definition you have to accept the existence of a Proto-IE language (though arguing about its reconstruction is fine).
Not exactly. While I accept reconstructed protoforms are useful tools for comparative purposes, I've got good reasons to think the +2000 lexical items reconstructed for PIE can't have been originated in a single language.