Lynx (was Re: Uralic and IE)

[Robert Whiting]

On Tue, 6 Apr 1999, Peter &/or Graham wrote:

Subject: Re: Lynx (was Re: Uralic and IE)

>Lynx was surely intended by whoever mentioned it as an example.

Indeed it was meant as an example, but it is actually the only
possible example.  Flash Gordon said that there were no IE stems
in -(n)k and Miguel replied "Not sure.  There is in Greek
(lynx)."  So to prove the point there has to be an example in
Greek that (1) is inherited from PIE and (2) preserves an -nk
stem that other IE languages have lost.  More below.

>It is not the only Greek word ending in -nx.

No, there are quite a few.  Many of them have meanings having
to do with holes, caves, cavities, passages, tubes, pipes, and
other little round things or the like, or sounds made by birds or
musical instruments or have to do with swirling motions or
sounds.  In many instances there are variants between forms in -x
and -nx.  Clearly, the -nx ending is used expressively over a
wide part of its range.  But lynx (the animal; I will use <y> for
upsilon so it will be easier to compare with modern English
usage) has a genitive lynkos which makes it stand out like a sore
thumb from the rest of the -nx words.  Not just any Greek word
ending in -nx will do.

>There is also syrinx (shepherd's pipe), and of course sphinx,
>and (shame on you all for not spotting it!) larynx.

Syrinx is one of those pipe/passage words (origin of English
"syringe") as are larynx, pharynx, and pharanx (actually this
last is "chasm"), but sphinx is just a by-form of an ending
in -x.  Even the Greeks were aware of this and of the expressive
use of the -nx ending.  I don't often recommend the Cratylus for
accuracy in historical linguistics, but like a stopped watch, it
is correct sometimes (Loeb translation, copied from Perseus):

  Socrates: My friend, you do not bear in mind that the original
            words have before now been completely buried by those
            who wished to dress them up, for they have added and
            subtracted letters for the sake of euphony and have
            distorted the words in every way for ornamentation or
            merely in the lapse of time. Do you not, for
            instance, think it absurd that the letter rho is
            inserted in the word kaaptron (mirror)? [414d] I
            think that sort of thing is the work of people who
            care nothing for truth, but only for the shape of
            their mouths; so they keep adding to the original
            words until finally no human being can understand
            what in the world the word means. So the sphinx, for
            instance, is called sphinx, instead of phix, and
            there are many other examples.

>These are all -ng stems.

Which is where they diverge from lynx, which is an -nk stem.
There is also a second lynx word that is an -ng stem, but this
means "hiccup" or "retching noise" and is the word that connects
with larynx.  There may be some confusion between the first and
second lynx words by some authors, but that the animal lynx is
an -nk stem is shown by the compound lykolynx, "wolf-lynx," which
is also an -nk stem (gen. lykolynkos).

So getting back to the two criteria that could prove a survival
of PIE -nk stems in Greek, there is little doubt that lynx is a
PIE word as it occurs in practically all of the main IE branches
(see Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1995, p. 431, 2.1.5.1).  However, it
is also generally connected with the PIE root *leuk[h]/*luk[h]
(ibid.) and I don't see any way to get a consonantal n into
this root.  It seems more likely that the Greek -nx is
expressive, added "to dress them up ... for the sake of euphony"
as Plato says (or has Socrates say).  But there is still the
nagging fact of the -nk stem which goes against all other -nx
words in Greek.  Can this be laid to the fact that this is a
sole surviving PIE -k that received this expressive ending?

G & I (ibid.) say:  "The phonetic alternations can be ascribed
to the fact that this is an animal name; also relevant is the
nasalization in Greek , _lun-k-_, paralleled by Lith. dial.
_lu,'ns^is_."  One can also put this together with Armenian
lusanunk` (pl.), but what the significance of this is someone
who knows more about Armenian than I do will have to explain.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi