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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Puppies, Dogs, Canines, and Wabbits (was Re: Gaelic eye?)
In-Reply-To: alex@lindbrook.math.ucla.edu's message of 18 Apr 1995 16:17:02 GMT
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In article <3n0olu$gq2@saba.info.ucla.edu> alex@lindbrook.math.ucla.edu
(Alex Langley) writes:

>Latin "rabbit" cuniculus, Latin "hare" lepus, not to be confused with Latin
>"dog" canis, Latin "wolf" lupus, or are canis/cuniculus and lepus/lupus grade
>forms of the same word from Proto-Indo-European?  This is interesting because
>clearly all four are not the same animal, but genetically a canis and a lupus
>are at least the same genus, as we as cuniculus and lepus.  No?

No, these are not ablaut grades of the same stems.

To start with, "lupus" shows a late metathesis; the PIE form is *wlk{^w}-o-s
(i. e., it's a thematic, which is relatively late, too), cf. Skt. vrka-,
SC. vuk, English wolf.  (Oh, and the "p" in "lupus" shows that it isn't Latin,
but borrowed from one of the so-called p-Italic languages; we'd expect **luquus
in Latin.)

"lepus" is an s-stem, which is a fairly old formation; I don't have an etymolo-
gical dictionary with me, so I can't tell you if it has cognates.

"canis" also has some problems, but I don't think "cuniculus" can go back to
any form of *kwon- (just my opinion, here).
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
