IE in Balkans and Semitic?

[manaster at umich.edu]

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> 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

[snip]

>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),

He used to.  He just wrote to me pointing that he has, as Michalove
and I have urged on him in print, accepted that Illich-Svitych
was right to treat it as loanword

>(b) the word was borrowed from Sem. into IE,

As Illich-Svitych did.

>(c) the word was borrowed from IE into Sem.

I know you are not kidding, but... Are you kidding?  How
many PIE words with this vocalism do you posit?

> 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",

Wurzeletymologie.

> 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.

Illich-Svitych gives specific reasons for position (b).
Why not respond to those first?

AMR