About the Yew1

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2001 11:42 AM

> Eduard Selleslagh (28 Jun 2001) wrote:

[snip]

>> [Anecdotal info: I was born in Hoboken, a S. suburb of Antwerp, Belgium,
>> which was founded by the Salic Franks after the 5th. c. (date unknown). In
>> the 10th.  c. a Latin text calls it Hobuechen, meaning 'High Beeches'. It is
>> located on a former heath on glacial sand deposits. On less inhabited parts
>> of this heath belt you can still find the odd taxus, but they are rather
>> rare, if not exceptional]

> Thanks. The name "Hoboken" (in New Jersey) puzzled me for years.

[Ed]

Lots of Peter Stuyvesant's crew members were actually Flemish, and often from
Antwerp, a consequence of the mass migration to Holland at the end of the
religion wars (1585 and on).

[snip]

> I regard *ebur- 'yew' as pre-IE (Old European), but Lat. <e:bur> 'ivory' as
> IE. Conventional wisdom takes the latter as a Hamitic loan (from Egy. <3bw>
> vel sim.) which fails to explain the /r/ or the other peculiarities: nom.
> <e:bur>, gen. <eboris>, adj. <eburn(e)us>. The long/short vowel-alternation
> and -r/rn- behavior could hardly come from Hamitic, and loanwords are
> usually normalized to common forms. This looks like an IE word which has
> preserved two archaisms: the gradation seen in nom. <pe:s> 'foot', gen.
> <pedis> and the alternation seen in nom. <acer> 'maple', adj. <acernus>.
> Boars have ivory, and boar-hunting has been a macho-thing for millennia, so
> it's not necessary to assume that PIE-speakers had access to elephant-tusks.

[Ed]

I don't think there is an -r/rn alternation. In my view, the -n after the -r is
an (abbreviated) adjective-forming suffix indicating origin, source etc. Cf.
Slavic -no (hladno, krasno...) or even Lat./Etrusc. -na.

Ed. Selleslagh