Fallow Deer/ The Original *Kerwos?

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/19/01 10:46:41 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

> The real issue here is that the reconstructible PIE words for red deer may
> have in fact originally also referred to the fallow deer.  Or may even have
> started as words for the fallow deer.

- Then why aren't there cognates of this term used in Anatolian or Indo-Iranian
for "fallow deer"?

There are reflexes of this word in:

Baltic -- Lith. 'ellenis' (red deer)
Slavic -- OCS 'jeleni (red deer)
Greek -- Mycenaean e-ra-pi-ja ('pertaining to deer'), and classical Greek
(red deer)
Armenian -- eln (hind, female deer)
Tocharian -- yal (gazelle)

etc.

Not one single one of them means "fallow deer".

Since there aren't _any_ instances of this word meaning "fallow deer", you
might as well claim that *h(1)elh(1)en was the PIE word  word for "tortoise",
or "giraffe".

There are specific PIE terms for "red deer/elk" and "roedeer".  None for
"fallow deer", nor is there _any_ indication that the term for red deer may
have meant fallow deer.

You are putting forward the hypothesis that there was a word for "fallow
deer" which survived ONLY in places with no fallow deer, where it underwent
semantic tranferral to another animal -- the _same_ animal in every case.

Except in Greece, where, despite there being fallow deer around, it was
_also_ transferred to red deer.

That, to be frank, is grotesque.

> The Greeks don't seem to have a word for specifically the red deer or fallow
> deer.

-- actually, they did.  And it's from *h(1)elh(1)en, via pre-Greek
*h(1)elh(1)nbhos, specifically referring to "red deer", _cervus elaphus_.

And, of course, a reflex of *iorks, "roedeer".

> Since Indo-Iranian doesn't have the I.E. deer names, that doesn't help with
> any deer name.

-- well, yes, it does.  Again, we see that Greek, Anatolian, and Iranian have
no common lexical items for "fallow deer".

Or, as I seem to need to keep reminding you, for the other southern faunal
items.  Once can be coincidence.