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

Joe scripsit:

> > Oh, and by the way, I've noticed something rather interesting about Latin
> > and Greek.  In root nouns, where Latin has -e- for PIE stressed vowels,
> > Greek has -o-.  For example, Latin pes, pedis 'foot' vs. Greek pous,
> > podos 'foot'; also Latin dens, dentis 'tooth' vs. Athenian odous,
> > odontos 'tooth'.
>
> The latter, incidentally, is H1ed(0-grade)+ont, which originally meant
> 'eating', apparently.
It's not 100% clear that dent- originally meant "tooth".  Its formal
English equivalent "tine" (< ME "tind", as in JRRT's "Tindrock") means
"sharp projection", as on a fork, and has no connection with eating.
So these may represent separate PIE roots.

There is a similar story with "deus" and "theos", IRRC.

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*?

(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.)

--
Do what you will,                       John Cowan
   this Life's a Fiction                jcowan@reutershealth.com
And is made up of                       http://www.reutershealth.com
   Contradiction.  --William Blake      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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