Horses

[Vidhyanath Rao]

<X99Lynx at aol.com> wrote:
To: <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2000 2:19 AM

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

In Sanskrit, the difference seems to be everyday name versus poetic
language. There is an example that I cant place at the moment, but goes
something like `` ... bhu:tva: deva:n avahat, ..., as'vo bhu:tva:
manus.ya:n''. `... becoming as'va he (carried) men.' Look up papers that
refer to ``language of gods vs language of men''.

If this was the original difference, Armenian shift may simply have been
``ek^wo -> low-prestige horse -> donkey''.
[BTW, why do we cite most words in stem form but some, like ek^wos, in
what seems to be the nominative?]