[language] IE word for tongue

[H.M. Hubey]

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I just found something very interesting and which is relevant.

It is from Hock, Principles of Hist Ling, p. 304

I will first copy some material and then point out the obvious.

---------------------------------

A case in point is the IE word for 'tongue'..... we can be sure that
there must have
been a word for 'tongue' in IE. ... However as far as phonological shape
of this word
is concerned (especially of its initial consonant) the comparative
evidence is quite
uncertain.....
[Leaving out [most] diacritical marks]

(49)    Oscan            fangva
            Lat.                lingua
            OLat.               dingua
            OIr                 teng(a)e
            Gmc               *tungwo:
            OCS                jezyku
            Lith.                liezuvis
            Skt.                 jihva
            Av.                  hizu
            Toch. B.         kantwo
-------------------------------------------------
There are more interesting comments that follow this but maybe another
time.

First, throw out Old Church Slavonic. That is a clear-cut case of
borrowing
(of all languages) from Turkic. The root in Oguz is yaz, and in Kipchak
caz/jaz.
Today's Turkish yazı is from an earlier *yazık/*yazıgh. It might even
exist
exactly in this form in Clauson. The word for tongue in Turkic is 'til'
and that
for tooth is 'tish'.

Secondly, Anttila has a famous example of "ti" in Sumerian and why and
how
it means both "arrow" and "life". I wrote a 60 page paper on this and it
is
probably floating around but it is hard to get people who spent their
lives
memorizing things to get them to view anything objectively or even view
it
at all except by a kind of a vote. They think that is how science is
done.

Anyway, let's go to why it is so. There are a zillion words derived from
these.
The main meaning of that (and that of a related word t>s, sig) is that
it is a
long pointed thing (Lahovary). Both Turkish til (tongue), and tish
(teeth) are
long pointed things. So is an arrow. But why "life" ? (Yes, in Turkic
tiri (alive),
and tin (life) come from this word.) And so does Iranian jan in all
likelihood.

The main reason is that in those old days, without metal tools, to make
arrows
(or spears) one would have had to start with something as nearly
straight as possible.
The closest thing would be a sapling (vertical standing thing)
especially those trees
that don't branch out but go straight up. The meaning tik (vertical)
exists in Turkic
also. And there are probably a hundred others.

No matter.

So there it is.

th > {t,l,s/sh,w}  and dh > {d,r,z,y}

>From *thith we immediate can obtain til, tish, teeth (yep English),
teng(a)e,
*tungwo etc.

Some will also recall my claim earlier (about a year ago) that there is
a dh>ng
in Turkic but that the evidence was slim. I posited that on the basis of
the simplification
it introduced into derivations in the same way James Clerk Maxwell added
a
term to the known equations governing electricity and magnetism purely
for
symmetric and aesthetic reasons and derived the Laws of Electromagnetism

circa 1865, a feat that the Nobel Laureate Feynman called an event of
much
greater significance than the American Civil War.

With the additional dh> ng these pose no problem at all. To boot we also

get dent- . The lingua is no problem because of th>l. I showed earlier
that th=Hittite H. We know that Russian uses f for th (e.g. Skif for
Scyth)
thus, we now also have explanation for fangwa and hizu.

That only leaves Skt. jihva and Toch B kantwo. With a little
manipulation
that can also be done.

The second consonant is almost all ng, and since th>dh>ng no problem at
all.

That  leaves the hv of Skt and z of Av. But th>dh>z takes care of Av,
and that
only leaves Skt.

And finally, the quote from the bottom of the page of Hock.

"Finally, what remains unexplained is why this word should have
undergone
so many unusual, metathetical or contaminatory changes."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, I can also easily explain some of the other comments on the page,
e.g.
dacrima OLat vs lacrima. This is about as unusual as the names Tabarna
and
Labarna one finds in the Ancient Mideast. That is also quite easily
explicable
now. But in the book I also explain what these words mean and where they

come from.

Time to do some real work now.

Stefan, why are you so quiet? Are you racing to beat me to publication?

--
M. Hubey

hubeyh at mail.montclair.edu
/\/\/\/\//\/\/\/\/\/\/http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey



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