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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: original Indo-European words
In-Reply-To: fgao@interaccess.com's message of Wed, 01 Mar 1995 00:30:10 -0600
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Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 18:33:22 GMT
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In article <fgao-0103950030100001@nb-dyna107.interaccess.com>
fgao@interaccess.com (ab113) writes:

>If I recall correctly, linguists have possibly identified where proto-IE was
>spoken by the appearance of several geographically words in most Indo-European
>languages.  Without getting into too much detail, I think one of these is a
>words for salmon, which we carry down into English as "lox".  Another is a
>word for "birch".  From these clues, linguists can make a reasonable guess as
>to where proto-IE was spoken.

This methodology, known as linguistic palaeontology, is not much used since a
number of its assumptions have been challenged.  For example, fossil pollen
studies show us that the birch had a much wider area of occurrence at the time
of the hypothesized breakup of the Indo-European community.

More damning, to my mind, is a paper I read (20 years ago, so I don't have the
reference off-hand) which collected all the Indo-European cognates for all the
Salmonidae and showed that there is no good reason for assuming that the proto-
referent is a particular North Sea salmon.

>My question is, what are some of the other words that fall into this list?

I think one was a word for "turtle" or "tortoise"; certainly other tree names
came into play as well.
-- 
Rich Alderson		[Tolkien quote temporarily removed in favour of
alderson@netcom.com	 proselytizing comment below --rma]

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