Re: ach y fi (was: CHAT Starbucks (was: Hymn to Ikea etc.))

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 19:21:30 -0500, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

> Paul Bennett wrote:
>> > AiYah! (Oy vey...)
>>
>> You know, that actually fits my putative Proto-x /aE_^x@Bi:/ mold
>> relatively well (it might end up being /6E_^x@Bi:/ by the time I've
>> mangled it to absorb all the evidence), although it's clearly divergent
>> (due to the required age of separation?). However, it *is* missing the
>> central guttural.
>
> From my point of view, the problem is that it's too divergent
> semantically,
My theory, such as it is (and it is not much of one at the moment, the
research being exactly the sum total of what I've read in this thread), is
that the phoneme sequence had a Proto-meaning (probably Proto-Centum,
especially now I know the origin of Yd. |vey|), that has been
folk-etymologised, with terms like Eng. |my|, Nor. |fy|, Wl. |fy|. Ger.
|Weh| being taken by the speakers of various languages as what is meant by
the underlying /Bi:/ sequence, and things like Eng. |oh|, Wl. |ach|, Yd.
|oy| being taken by speakers of various languages as what is meant by the
underlying /aE_^/ or /aE_^x/ sequence. This allows for the Scandanavian
data, which IIRC has something like a "the Devil" morpheme, where Germanic
looks to have "pain", and Celtic/English ("British"?) both have "me", as
well as accomodating expressions like |cacapfui| (source lg forgotten
(Swiss German?)).



Paul

... OTOH, like I sugested in another of my posts, this could be phonetic
convergence rather than semantic divergence, which would be a much sweeter
pill to swallow.

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