domina/womina, haber, bad

[H.M.Hubey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Larry Trask wrote:
>
> dialect, in which it means `girl', which we believe to have been its
> original meaning, since the etymology is *<eme-kume> `female offspring'.
>
> The earlier word for `woman' was <emazte>, which today has been
> specialized to `wife', except in Salazrese, where it still means
> `woman'.
>
> It will surprise no one to learn that both <emazte> and <emakume> are
> compounds built upon the word <eme> `female', whose regular combining
> form is <ema-> (look at two of the examples above).  We suspect an
 
I don't recall writing that it was borrowed into Basque. What I did
write, however was that Lahovary (Dravidian and the West) writes
about the pre-IE and pre-AA languages of the "Mediterranean" and
tries to connect them with Dravidian and Caucasian. That 'em' word
shows up in them, with related meanings.
 
von Soden, points out that pre-IE and pre-AA languages of the
region confused the liquids /r/ and /l/ (especially in
the beginnings of words), etc. Obviously, the languages which do
not have words beginning with liquids and which confuse them
are Dravidian and Altaic.
 
Obviously all of this matters to some people.
 
> etymology *<eme-gazte> `young female'.  And, as Miguel C V has pointed
> out, this <eme> is borrowed from Gascon <hemne>, itself from Latin
> <femina>.  Basque contains many loans from Gascon.  The /mn/ cluster
kap>capere, ulu/uru > ululare, karnash > carnal, tes > seks,
oghlan > clan,  and now fem > hem > em, etc.
 
 
> The Sumerian word is not relevant, and it has been effectively disposed
> of by Miguel.  Turkish <amma> does not mean `mother'; it means `but'.
 
Turkish yes, Turkic no. Karachay-Balkar uses ata, ana, atta, anna,
appa, akka, amma,... and most of these words can be found in Turkic
languages.
 
> The Turkish word for `mother' is <ana> in Anatolian Turkish but <anne>
> in standard Istanbul Turkish, this last apparently being an expressive
> variant of <ana>.
 
It is also a part of similar changes. I think Chuvash is also anne or
ane.
 
> Turkish <meme> `nipple' is not available for comparison.  One of the
> best-known facts about Turkish is that native Turkish lexical items do
> not begin with /m/ unless they are imitative words or nursery words.  In
> all likelihood, we are looking at a nursery word here, and nursery words
> cannot be cited as comparanda, because they are so often created
> independently.
 
This statement seems to fly in the face of what is known. Babies can
create and do babble every sound there is. That means that there is
some reason why parents pick up certain types of words. The most
likely explanation is that those words already exist in the language
and the parents are happy to hear those words. This means that
your argument is backwards (ahistorical accretion) and one (or the
only) purpose for its existence is the fact that it makes the IE
theory look good and the proto-world look bad. Just recently you
mentioned that there are 6,000+ languages. In how many of them
are "nursery" words present? The list posted to sci.lang (or some
other usenet list) by Miguel listed less than 100 languages.
That is 100/6,000 which is 1/60. Since when does 1/60 become
the standard? By whose arithmetic?
 
> The stem <em-> `suck' is the source of the derivatives <emcik> `nipple',
> <emzik> `nipple', and <emzirmek> `suckle'; these can only be counted as
> one word.
 
So there is some value to doing clustering analysis and semantic
distances, and Swadesh-like lists after all.
 
> Finally, <amcik> is merely a diminutive of <am> `vulva', containing the
> usual Turkish diminutive suffix <-cik>.
>
> Hence all we have here for Turkish is a verb-stem <em-> `suck' and a
> noun <am> `vulva'.  And nothing whatever can be concluded from this.
> It's every bit as impressive as English `ear' and `hear'.
 
That once again shows the classic method. Take each possible cognate
one at a time, and ignore them one at a time. When someone spends from
1947 to 1990 patiently collecting words (Dr. Tuna) and presents it
all at once, then what? Change the Sumerian words?
 
Once again this gets us in the thick of things. How many such
words are needed?
 
If it happens all the time, why don't linguists list them someplace
instead of listing the perennial 'bad' (English,Farsi),
haber (Latin, German), domina/womina (Italian,Japenese) etc.
 
Maybe this is the real big reason I want things quantified. IT reminds
me of the joke about the accountant. At a job interview he is
asked "How much is 2+2?". He says "How much do you want it to be?"
 
Is this how science is supposed to be done, or is this how
linguistics "science" supposed to be done (according to you)?
 
--
Best Regards,
Mark
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