Re: OT: an axe to grind

On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 15:46:22 -0500, R A Brown <ray@...>
wrote:

> Paul Bennett wrote:
>> On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 11:22:43 -0500, R A Brown
> [snip]
>>>
>>> The word [pelekus] is held by some to be borrowed - cf. Babylonian:
>>> pilakku,
>>   Beekes states (about a third of the way down p 37) that:
>>  The old connection with Akkadian |pilakku| is incorrect, because this
>> word  never meant 'axe'.
>>  He does not, however, expand upon this point. If there are any
>> Assyriologists reading, I'd love to hear more about it.
>
> It's all very well saying the word never meant axe, but it would be
> helpful if he had said what it did mean.
Indeed. That was rather my point.

>> I have learned to trust Ray's Greek etymologies very strongly,
>
> Thanks  :)
Well, I have. You're clearly a scholar, and it seems a venerable one, if
you'll excuse some of the implications of that word.

> Tho note that I said "is held by some", which implies doubt.
>
> I've checked Furnée and am reminded that there are also forms in Greek
> where the kappa is doubled: to pelekkon; ho pelekkos.  Both have the
> same meaning as _pelekus_. Also the verb _pelekaein_ (to hew with an
> ax), has an alternative form _pelekkaein_. This is not the sort of
> behavior one expects with a word of IE origin.
>
> Furnée, if I've followed his German correctly, seems to suggest that
> these Greek words, like the Assyrian _pilakku/pilaqqu_ and Sanskrit
> _paraśú_ are all borrowings from a neolithic 'Kulturwort' from the
> Caucasus and northern region of the near/mid east.
>
> Thus Furnée does not say that _pelekus_ is borrowed from the Akkadian,
> but he suggests that both are independent borrowings of a pre-IE (and by
> implication pre-Semitic) neolithic 'Kulturwort'. I imagine that
> double-headed axes for tree felling were quite important to neolithic
> peoples   :)
I'm vaguely suspicious of such "vaguely primitive, of unspecified nature"
etymologies by, well, nature. The word must have had a home at some point,
and for it to have spread between Greece and India (taking in
Mesopotamia), it fairly definitely must have been a home within one of the
established and familiar major families. One only has to look at the other
terms that surely must have been essential to Neolithic (or even
Mesolithic) life (as witnessed by the global archeological record), in
comparison with the linguistic record traceable to something near the same
period. It's clear that primitive technology does not spring into
existence fully-formed over the span of continents, complete with a
premade panlinguistic term (more modern technology, given more modern
manufacturing, transportation and communications technlogy may spread
quickly, but that's all infrastructure that wasn't there 4,000 or even
1,000 years ago). There has to have been a language family from which
**peilakku must have sprung, and it would surprise me greatly if a term so
widespread had come from a family that left no other evidence of its
existence.

More pressing, to me, though it's hardly an empirical point, is that a
borrowing of Mesolithic or Neolithic age ought (I intuit) to have gone
through rather more sound changes by the beginning of writing. I feel the
resemblance ought not to be so readily apparent, especially when the
situation with borrowing directions and sources being so muddy in almost
every single other case of early Semitic/Uralic/IE/Caucasian contact. It's
like a C-average student getting 100% on one exam out of the blue -- it
raises something of a red flag, or at least IMO it should raise an eyebrow.




Paul

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