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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: habere/haben -- false cognates?
Message-ID: <petrichDyDn07.921@netcom.com>
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References: <4vvkje$guk@news.xs4all.nl> <ALDERSON.96Sep20110222@netcom16.netcom.com> <R.hubey.843267999@pegasus.montclair.edu> <52cglb$t3g_002@news.cyberix.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 05:52:55 GMT
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In article <52cglb$t3g_002@news.cyberix.com>,  <Berlant@cyberix.com> wrote:

	[a whole lot of other bleating deleted...]
>As i said, two of the most compelling principles of deductive reasoning are 
>the Law of Parsimony and The identity Principle; and, in the absence of more 
>compelling evidence that "habere" and "haben" are not cognate, these 
>principles must be invoked as the basis for recognizing that cognation. ...

	The reason why is that this would-be correspondence is contrary to
sound correspondences that can be established from numerous other words. 
In fact, both come from two well-defined Indo-European roots (one each, 
of course :-):

*kap- > English "have", German haben, Latin capere "to take", etc.
*ghabh- > English "give", German giben (?), Latin habere "to have", etc.

	My trusty AHD lists the first one as meaning "to grasp" and the 
second one as meaning "to give, receive".

	Both roots may derive from some earlier one in some
pre-Indo-European language; one may be a modification of the other to
express some distinction in meaning.

-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
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