Doing historical linguistics (part 1)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
"H.M.Hubey" <hubeyh at montclair.edu> wrote:
 
>Larry Trask wrote:
>> <eme> `female' (which itself is borrowed from Occitan), plus <-kume>
>
>And where is that borrowed from?
>
>em (to suck), am (cunt in Turkish), amma (mother), amcik (pussy),
>emesal (female speech in Sumerian), emcek (breasts, udder), meme
>(breast), emzirik, etc etc.
 
This illustrates the fact that a little knowledge of the languages
involved is never a bad thing.  Larry should have been slightly more
precise by indicating that Basque <eme> was not borrowed from vanilla
Occitan, but from Gascon/Bearnais.  Then it immediately becomes clear
that the word is simply Latin FEMINA, which regularly becomes hemna
(hemm@ ~ hemno) in Gascon (f > h).  The ultimate root is IE *dheH1-
"to suck" (*dheH1-mHn-oH2 > femina).  The coincidence with PTurkic
*eme "woman" is entirely coincidental.  And so is, with even more
reason, Sumerian <eme.sal> where the element <eme> doesn't mean
"woman" at all, but "language, tongue".  The word <sal> means "thin,
refined" (it used to be thought that <sal> was "woman", and one can
still find that in older books, but in fact the Sumerian word was
<munus>).
 
>Do you understand the probabilistic implication of such patterns?
 
Yes.  In short: "Coincidences happen" and "Garbage in, garbage out".
 
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam