The Single *PIE Village Theory

[Douglas G Kilday]

Steve Long (21 Jul 2001) wrote:

>First of all, the arrowwood example - which you [DGK] dismissed - is how I
>must understand the ordinary behavior of tree-naming on a local level - before
>science, trade or dictionarians intervene.  All our historical experience with
>"common names" for trees and plants is that they are highly local and
>irregular.

The arrowwood example was not given with any illustrations of
correspondences to the yew-name problem, and that's _your_ job. It's not up
to me to point out that Gk. <smi~lax>, like <arrowwood>, can refer to
several distinct plants, or that yews are indeed known by different words
and phrases in different parts of S Europe (you might have drawn a parallel
between "high-bush cranberry" and "albero della morte", pace Euell Gibbons).
Simply shoveling a big pile of data into a reader's face isn't the best way
to make a point.

Also, I don't believe your sweeping generalization is correct. _Some_ of our
historical experience points to "highly local and irregular" phytonyms.
_Other_ experience indicates widespread and highly stable ones. Both
extremes may characterize names for the same plant, as is indeed the case
with Taxus baccata. Some Mediterranean areas show your "highly local and
irregular" behavior, but a large part of N Europe is content with reflexes
of *eiwo-, and has been for a long time.

>I cannot with any integrity accept the idea that most *PIEists even knew the
>name for a yew tree or most other trees.  And that is because when we look at
>pre-lierate societies we see that such comprehensive distinguishing between
>flora is limited to a specialized group within the group, if it is anyone's
>job at all.

This is likely to be true of all societies having specialized groups,
literate or not, which takes us back at least to the upper Palaeolithic. I'm
neither a botanist nor a woodworker, and I couldn't tell you the difference
between a mulberry and a sycamore without help. But as long as society
contains recognized experts (which in this case might simply be
"lumberjacks"), it is probable that most members of a speaking community
will defer to those experts in naming trees, and there is no reason to
expect a chaotic outcome.

>So, if I were to look for the source of the names of the yew, it would not be
>*PIE speakers.  It would be linguistic communities that would have some real
>vested interest in finding a common name for the yew among themselves.  These
>would be people who made a living out of trees and wood - especially those
>along the intergroup supply chain who were trading wood in a manner that what
>tree the wood came from would make a difference.

I have no quarrel with this paragraph. It fits well with the notion that PIE
*takso- originally referred to yew-wood. This word might well have been
borrowed into PIE from non-PIE-speakers along the intergroup supply chain,
which harmonizes with my original claim that PIE-speakers lived in a yewless
environment.

>We have evidence that stone and metal workers were specialists at a very early
>date.  We have evidence of trade in worked goods ranging several hundred miles
>and that evidence extends from Cro-Magnon to the mesolithic obsidian cutters
>of the Italian coast - even the Iceman's arrow points were from a site 300
>miles from his home.  Workers in wood, bone, tusk and antler would have looked
>to extend their markets beyond a few local customers - the other trades were
>doing it.  This means they needed to identify the raw materials they needed to
>tree-cutters and describe the wood they used to traders and customers.  And
>the primary "name" standardizers would be those who moved goods from market to
>market, buying and selling raw materials and finished products.

Again, no quarrel, and I see no discrepancy with the "yewless PIE homeland"
proposal.

>That is the primary way I see a standard name coming about, reconciling the
>highly observable inconsistency of local names - and that would include early
>IE speakers.  Scientific botany is comparatively recent - its an anachronism.

>If this has any possible connection with "a recognized PIE tree with a
>European naming pattern," then I might be able to answer your question.

Allow me to be more concrete. We have Lat. <fa:gus> 'beech', Gk. <phe:go's>
'type of oak', and Germanic forms (e.g. OE <be:ce> 'beech', <bo:c> 'carved
beech-staff, document, book') pointing to PGmc *bo:k-, all of which
presuppose PIE *bha:go-. This is what I mean by a "recognized PIE tree".
Yes, scientific nomenclature is recent, and I don't envision prehistoric
Linnaei running through the woods insisting on "one genus, one name". PIE
*bha:go- didn't necessarily denote a single genus in the Linnaean sense; it
might have referred to any member of the beech-family Fagaceae, or
(conceding one of your points) to trees having dense, fine-grained wood. At
any rate, trees called *bha:go- appear to have actually _grown_ in PIE-land.

The nature of prehistoric societies with respect to the use of dendronyms
could be argued ad infinitum. That is why I am asking you to find another
tree (not necessarily a Linnaean taxon) whose behavior in European IE
languages resembles that of the yew, and which beyond a reasonable doubt was
known in living form to PIE-speakers. Whatever questions we have about the
speaking communities, at least in regard to the matter of "standard" naming,
should be canceled out by the fact that we are dealing with the same
speakers, places, and migrations.

DGK