Uniformitarianism and the Arrowwood

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/25/01 12:02:47 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

> Actually, I'd rather put the onus on you to justify the identification of
> *ebur- or *eiw- with any particular modern tree classification.  I do not
> doubt the phonology in the reconstructions.  I think that anyone who looks
> closely will find that the meanings are anywhere as stable as you contend.

-- *eiuos produces a word meaning "yew" in Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and
probably Hittite.  In Slavic, it's shifted to "willow".

The rules generally used for historical linguistics would accord a high
probability of this being the PIE meaning.

Again, if you want to argue in the field of historical linguistics, you have
to accept the rules in general use.

> What YOU must prove is that there's no chance that the "yew" word would
> have changed if *PIE had had a yew word.

-- that is not so.  As mentioned above, the general rule is that three
separate language families with the same meaning render a PIE meaning highly
probable.  Particularly if one or more is widely separated from the others.

> evidence says that the word would have changed - possibly many times in
> 2000+years.

-- odd that you haven't produced one scrap of it, then.

Semantic shifts in _other_ words have no relevance to the original meaning of
_this_ word.

Incidentally, yew wood was used for bows throughout northern Eurasia from
Mesolithic times on.  The Alpine "iceman" had a yew bow.

The evidence indicates that PIE had _two_ words for "yew", one (the older)
with the general sense of "evergreen tree with reddish heartwood and
berries", and the other (possibly a late dialectical word of the PIE center
and east) meaning roughly "bow-wood".