Taboo replacements

[Nicholas Widdows]

> <<after the old IE word *{ma:n-} or similar became taboo due to
> superstition].>>

> Interesting.  How did we find out about this taboo?

> Regards,
> Steve Long

Yeah. What he said.

What would constitute evidence for this, and for "brown" or "honey-eater"
over the ursa/arktos/rakshasa root, being a taboo replacement, as opposed to
a common-or-garden lexical innovation? How could you tell? Does a greater
frequency of replacement for certain concepts go with a greater
superstitious observance?

Or are they somehow morphologically marked? I know respect/avoidance
language is widely used in the bear-hunting North (see Joseph Campbell on
the Ainu), but might we not expect new terms like "well-intentioned one" or
"your excellency" rather than the merely prosaic "it's big and it's brown
and it likes a jar of hunny"?

Nicholas Widdows

P.S.
> L-S gives (cross my fingers) '*m&emacrns' as IE stem.

Use the semicolon, Luke. But '*mēns' probably won't work on e-mail
either.