Horses

[Vartan and Nairy Matiossian]

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".

Actually, it's es^ (<*ek^wos), genitive is^oy "donkey" (the s^ is
phonetically "sh"). Interestingly, Hurrian eshshi and ishshiya mean
"horse". It has been suggested that the name of the land of Ishuwa from
Hittite times, corresponding to the Classical Sophene, in the
Southwestern corner of the Armenian Highland, is related to the
Indo-European word for "horse".