Horses

[Sean Crist]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> Sean Crist <kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu> wrote:

>> A few months ago, I made a post to the list in which I stated that the PIE
>> word *ekwos "horse" is not probative in the question of the PIE homeland,
>> since one need not have domesticated the horse to have a word for it.

>> I want to retract that post.  Beekes (1995) reports that horses (wild or
>> domesticated) were not found in Anatolia in the period which Renfrew
>> claims for the final IE unity, and Ringe (personal communication) has
>> corroborated this claim.  This is an important incongruity between the
>> firmly reconstructed IE vocabulary and the homeland which Renfrew posits;
>> it is a strong argument against Renfrew.

> But Armenian eys^ (< *ek^wos) means "donkey".

A transparent case of semantic drift.  Are you arguing that this poses
some problem for the reconstruction of *ek'wos as "horse"?

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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