Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin]

[Steve Long wrote]

> Not to rile anyone but just to express a minority opinion in the
> short time I'm allowed lately -

> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

...

> My little suggestion here is again that brown did not give its name to the
> bear, but that the bear's fur gave its name to brown.

Being an outsider to serious PIE work, where to the earliest attested
Indo-European languages and PIE fall on the Berlin and Kay color scale?
This is an important thing to know before discussing whether 'bear' >
'brown' or vice versa.  Ultimately, 'brown' should be traced to something
non-color (since it's a VERY late color term to develop), but did this
happen before, during, or after PIE?  If there isn't a full range of
white/light, black/dark, red, yellow, green, and blue, then we can't really
expect 'brown' and perhaps the PIE term reconstructed 'brown' might better
be reconstructed 'bear' with the understanding that the development of
'bear-colored' to 'brown' might be very early.  I'm just guessing, so would
one of the real Indo-Europeanists like to factualize the discussion?  (I'm
in a creative derivational mood today. :-)).

> I suspect that - as today - most folks back then had more contact with the
> by-products of wild animals than they did with the animals themselves -
> witness the large number of wild fauna remains at Troy until it
> appears the
> local wild fauna ran out.  And perhaps most folks back then would have had
> more contact with bears by way of bearskins than by way of mortal personal
> experiences with bears.

Your (longer) discussion on this matter assumes that PIE was more urbanized
than not.  I must disagree.  While there was a certain amount of agriculture
and pastoralism involved, the time dates and locations for PIE suggest a
culture much more closely tied to the environment than modern communities in
the Middle East.  Among hunting peoples around the world, there is virtually
no one in a community who has not seen a large local predator.  Stories from
the North American frontier are replete with encounters with bears by
virtually every adult in a tribe or community.  During the earliest layers
of PIE, this would undoubtedly be more true than not.  You also argue that
fear is not so great among those who are not in regular community-wide
contact with the source of that fear.  Witness, however, the continued human
revulsion to snakes, yet how many urban Americans have never even seen a
garter snake, let alone a Mohave Rattlesnake (the most aggressive and
poisonous of the bunch)?  However, I do agree that prolonged non-exposure
does lead to a reduction of the immediate caution and fear, but that this
reduction requires urbanization and not just agricultural communities.
While most modern urbanized Americans understand on an intellectual level
the danger posed by a female grizzly with cubs, they still picture her in
the light of Yogi, or Smokey, or Baloo.  Most of the grizzly maulings and
bison gorings that occur each year out here in the Yellowstone and Glacier
country are performed on city people.  Rural people know better.  They
aren't hunter/gatherers, but being a part of an agricultural community close
to wild country is enough contact to maintain healthy fear and respect,
whether one has ever actually seen the creature or not.  One of my
colleagues here in the English department specializes in the literature of
monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.).  His conclusion is this very thing,
that fearsome wild creatures and monsters tend to become more 'tame' the
more urban the environment, but that there is a distinct difference in the
level of the "Barnification of Tyrannosaurus Rex" and the "Count
Choculization of Dracula" in urban areas versus rural areas.  (For the
non-Americans here, "Barney" is a friendly purple T. rex with straight white
herbivore teeth that hosts a preschooler afternoon show on television and
"Count Chocula" is the name of a chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal made by
General Mills [it's the chocolate version of the fruit-flavored
"Frankenberry"].)

To reiterate my earlier questions, where do the earliest IE languages stand
on the Berlin and Kay scale?  Where does PIE stand?

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
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