Horses

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>So this appears to be a different word for horse - coming from a different
>(?) root than *ekwos - with the sense "mover, self-mover, something that
>propels?"  (I think.)

Yes.  Or simply "the swift one", as may have been the semantics
of *ek^wos itself (*ok^us "fast").

>I assume that *g^hei has not been suggested as >*ekwos or vice versa

Indeed not.

>(that
>may be a mistake) so this suggests that the two words may reflect different
>'traditions'.  And the traditions possibly conflicted in Armenian or at least
>the outcome was that both words appear and either the *ekwos word was applied
>to donkey first or the *g^hei word was applied to horse first?  And the other
>was applied by default?

>Does this make sense?  And if it does, could it be possible that ji<*g^hei
>reflects a more native PIE word for horse or equid than *ekwos - which does
>not necessarily show known PIE roots (that's my understanding at least)?

Not necessarily so (see above).

Skt. haya-, Arm. jio- clearly represent a much more recent
"tradition" than *ek^wos (Skt. as'va- "horse", Arm. e_s^
"donkey").

If we look in C.D. Buck's dictionary, we see that *ek^wos, though
widespread, has been replaced with more recent terms in many IE
languages (this is a perfectly normal process).  ModGr. has
<alogo> "< irrational, non-human" (military term: the army's
personnel consisted of humans and horses).  Romance has
generalized *caballu, which may be connected with Russ. <kobyla>
"mare" and Slavic <konjI> "horse" (if < *kobnj-).  Semantics
unknown (I suspect *kop(h)- "hoof" may have something to do with
it).  Not necessarily an old word, not necessarily recent.
Germanic hross ~ horse from a word meaning "to run" or "to jump".
German/Dutch paard ~ Pferd, from Celto-Latin para-vere:dus "post
horse".  Celtic-Germanic *marko- "horse".  This might qualify as
ancient, in the neighbourhood of *ek^wos.  Lithuanian arklys <
"plow horse", Baltic z^irgas, zirgs "wide-stepper" [similarly,
from "ambler", maybe the Basque word for "horse" <zaldi> < IE
*del-, German Zelter "ambler", thieldo- "Cantabrian ambling horse
(Pliny)"], Russ. loshad' < Turkic, Skt./Arm. haya-/jio- "horse".

All these words, with the [just] possible exceptions of *marko-
and *kab-, are more recent terms than *ek^wos, which is
undoubtedly the common PIE word for "horse".

>Also mcv at wxs.nl wrote:
><<Sum. ans^e, Grk. onos, Lat. asinus, Gafat ans^@la, Argobba hansia, etc.>>

>Would this suggest that onus/asinus are not from PIE and that the occurence
>of 'ass' in IE languages happens late?

Yes.

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