Re: Evidence for Nostratic? (was Re: Proto-Uralic?)

Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> > Then again, as JRRT mentions, there is the deeply mysterious root
> > korb-, which surfaces in Italic as Latin corvus 'raven, crow' and
> > in Germanic as "harp"!  What is up with *that*?
>
> Homophony?
Either that, or neither word is PIE.  But in either case, an astounding
bizarrerie.  "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"  "Because neither one
of them is a harp."

> > (ModE "harp", BTW, is only partly a descendant of OE "hearpe"; it
> > probably owes its vowel to French "harpe", which is itself a
> > Common Romance borrowing from Germanic.)
>
> Common Romance = Late Vulgar Latin?
Presumably.  But "Common Romance borrowing" means that the borrowing
is found in all the branches of Romance (I haven't actually looked
at Romanian, so I probably should have said "Common Western Romance
borrowing" just to be safe).

--
John Cowan   <jcowan@...>   http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
"One time I called in to the central system and started working on a big
thick 'sed' and 'awk' heavy duty data bashing script.  One of the geologists
came by, looked over my shoulder and said 'Oh, that happens to me too.
Try hanging up and phoning in again.'"  --Beverly Erlebacher

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