Re: Question about an idiom / figure-of-speech in Indo-European languages

KDS wrote:

Hello,

I wonder if any contributors to this group would assist me by
addressing an inquiry. (It has to do with some research into an
ancient Persian dialect.) The question pertains to an entire family of
languages, though -- of course -- I would expect contributors to this
group to address it with respect to the language this group is
dedicated to.

"This group" is not dedicated to any particular language.

The English words 'herd' and 'sheep' colloquially and figuratively
mean, and are used to connote, the great mass of common folk,
especially the group-think'ing masses and/or what are known as the
'plaebians' or the 'proletariat'. I would agree that these words, when
used in the specified sense, carry a slight pejorative implication, and
so I must clarify that any such implication is of no relevance to my
inquiry. (Up until a century ago, 'cattle' was another word that was
figuratively used with very nearly the same connotation but in our time
it is infrequently used in that sense.)

I am interested in knowing whether (the equivalents of) 'herd' and
'sheep' plus 'cow', 'ox', 'cattle', and/or 'kine' colloquially and
idiomatically have the same or similar connotations in the language
under consideration.

You probably ought to say what "the language under consideration" is.
There is a rather large number of "ancient Persian dialect"s, and few of
them have corpora sizeable enough for such a usage to be attested.

(Also, I am interested in finding out whether such words are suspected
or known to have had the same connotations in the following defunct
languages: Sumerian, Hittite, Vedic, and Sanskrit.)

Hmm, which language doesn't belong in that list?

Thank you for any help.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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