About the Yew1

[Douglas G Kilday]

[DGK]

>> Conventional wisdom takes [Lat. <e:bur>] 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>.

>[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.

[DGK]

You're right; this isn't really an "alternation", but the attachment of an
adjectival suffix directly to a neuter stem, as seen also in Lat. <ae:neus>
'brazen' < *ayes-neos. My views were poorly worded, and Patrick Ryan seems
to think I was referring to -r/n- alternation, which is an entirely
different matter. Nevertheless I think Lat. <e:bur> 'ivory' shows enough IE
behavior to be considered a native IE word, whether or not it has cognates
in I-Ir or other branches.

Regarding PCR's objection that the long vowel in Lat. <pe:s> 'foot' arose by
compensative lengthening from *peds instead of gradation: Palmer gives this
as an example of gradation. Apart from this crude appeal to authority, we
may note <capis> 'one-handled sacrificial vessel', gen. <capidis>, which
shows that Latin d-stems did _not_ regularly undergo compensation of *-ds in
the nom. sg.