Re: Brothers-in-law
| From: | Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, May 4, 2006, 20:38 |
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On 5/4/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> Apparently, there is no common PIE word for "wife" reconstructable, nor
> for any wife-relative family terms. What this says about the structure and
> nature of PIE families is left as an exercise for the reader...
Would it be reasonable to guess that PIE, like
modern French, used a single word for both
"woman" and "wife"? Ancient Greek seems to have
lost the PIE root for husband as far as I can tell,
substituting a generic "aner, andros" for man/husband.
What other languages (IE or not) have common
words for "man/husband" and/or "woman/wife"?
Are there any commonalities obvious about their
present or recent past marriage customs?
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
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