Horses

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>Dr Stefan Georg wrote:
><<The fact that Hittites use Sumerograms and Akkadograms does not mean that
>they didn't mean them to be read aloud as native Hittite words (nor does it
>mean that they used the Sumerian/Akkadian terms as a loan-element).>>
>
>I take this to mean that the Sumerian/Akkadian horse symbol used in Hittite
>may have been nothing more than an ideogram and therefore give no phonetic
>information about the sound of the Hittite word.

In fact we can be pretty sure it *was* an ideogram.

>My question then becomes how often Hittite does this sort of thing -

Too often...

>use a
>Sumerian symbol with no phonetic correspondence.  It could not be all the
>time or we would have no basis for sounding the Hittite language.

Indeed.  Some words, though, are never spelled out using the
syllabary subset of cuneiform, and we only have the ideogram.

>[...]
>Let me suggest then that the answers to two questions that may help a little
>here:
>
>- What was the word/symbol for donkey in Hittite?

ANS^E (ideogram, pronunciation unknown, I think).

There is a Luwian word, apparently (I.M. Dunaevskaja, "Jazyk
xettskix ieroglifov") <tarkasna-> or <turlakalisa->, syllabic
<ta4>.  I don't know if one can segment tark-asna, which would
allow a connection with Sum. ans^e, Grk. onos, Lat. asinus, Gafat
ans^@la, Argobba hansia, etc.

>- What was the word for horse in Armenian?

ji

>If Armenian used the *ekwos word for donkey, what is the source of its word
>for horse? (And does that explain perhaps the 'semantic drift'?)

*g^hei- "antreiben, lebhaft bewegen (schleudern) oder bewegt
sein".  Skt. hayah. "horse".  See my other message.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl