Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"


"me" <noreply@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:h1zgg.3474$f76.3272@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
me wrote:
I said it *is*n't *the* Dravidian word. With the meaning "star", [mi:n]
is used only as a morpheme; it isn't used as a word. That is, Dravidians
use words containing the morpheme [mi:n] meaning star but Dravidians
don't use
[mi:n] as the word for "star". "vAnil mIn irukku" and "AkAs;attil mIn
[uNDu"
would invite quzzical frowns since they would mean ONLY "there are fish
in the sky" in Tamil and Malayalam, respectively.

And me wrote:
Even words using [mi:n] as a morpheme are not used by most Dravidians,
especially illiterate ones, since they are esoteric words.

I think you're missing the point. Nobody's talking about what words are used
or are commonly used by most Dravidians today. The question is what
morphemes can be reconstructed for the ancestral language to the modern
Dravidian terms five thousand years ago. Over that kind of time period, you
would well expect that words would change register or fall out of use. As an
example, the Indo-European root for 'woman', *gwen-, has changed register in
English (it's modern form is 'queen'); for the general context we prefer
another word which we made up from compounding 'wife' and 'man' (Old English
'se wi:fman', masculine in gender). Although it had a reflex in Sanskrit
(jan-), that is not found in everyday modern Hindi (which prefers borrowings
like 'aurat'). That doesn't mean that I can argue that, since it's absent in
modern Hindi, it was absent in Indo-European, obviously.

If you want to check the evidence for how Dravidianists reconstruct 'mi:n'
as 'star' for Proto-Dravidian and then challenge it, go ahead; I'm not
committed to that etymology myself (since I don't know the evidence) and am
open to hearing a proper discussion. But simply saying that it's not the
word for 'star' in two modern Dravidian languages does not make the argument
for you. (My hunch is that the reconstruction will be based on Old Tamil -
do you know that language as well?)

Neeraj Mathur


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"
    ... is used only as a morpheme; it isn't used as a word. ... Dravidians don't use ... their word for star" ... register in English (it's modern form is 'queen'); ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"
    ... therefore they use the fish pictogram with ... other pictograms when writing about a star. ... That doesn't say that Dravidians *currently* use pictograms. ... Dravidians typically use "abugida" scripts and don't use pictograms. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"
    ... therefore they use the fish pictogram with other ... pictograms when writing about a star. ... That doesn't say that Dravidians *currently* use pictograms. ... Dravidians typically use "abugida" scripts and don't use pictograms. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"
    ... therefore they use the fish pictogram with other ... pictograms when writing about a star. ... That doesn't say that Dravidians *currently* use pictograms. ... Dravidians typically use "abugida" scripts and don't use pictograms. ...
    (sci.lang)