IE in Balkans and Semitic?

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>I was thinking of the root of taurus & steer [I'll let someone else come up
>with the exact root].

PSem *t_awr- (or *c^awr-), PIE has *steur-, *st(H)uHr-
(*st(h)u:r-), *stewHr- (*stew at r-), *tHwr-/*t at ur-, with the usual
mess when laryngeal meets semivowel (is that *(s)tewH2r-,
*(s)teH2wr- or *(s)tH2ewr- ?)  Not everybody is convinced that
the forms with s- (e.g. ON stjo:rr) are related to the forms
without (e.g. ON thjo:rr).  Not everybody is convinced that the
IE and Semitic forms are related, and those that think so are I
guess divided into three camps: (a) the relationship is genetic
(from memory, please correct if I'm wrong, Alan Bomhard lists
this as a Nostratic root), (b) the word was borrowed from Sem.
into IE, (c) the word was borrowed from IE into Sem.  Again, as
with the "copper" word, I'm not sure if the Semitic word has an
internal etymology within Semitic.  In IE, the word may be
connected to the root *(s)teH2w- "be strong", and again there is
some archaeological evidence that cattle was indeed a later
Anatolian or SE European addition to the original Near Eastern
Neolithic inventory of livestock (sheep and goats).  So I would
lean towards the third camp.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam