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Reconstruction talk:Proto-Kartvelian/berg-

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Latest comment: 2 years ago by Vahagn Petrosyan

@Vahagn_Petrosyan: What's the best IE root to list here? How are Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- and *bʰreg- related to each other? Why are they listed separately as synonyms rather than alternative forms? Semantically "to break ~ to hoe, hack" sounds OK to me, what do you reckon?

Also Proto-Georgian-Zan *toq- was on my todo list, though the ambiguous wording from Klimov kind of suggested it was a wider than Caucasus cultural term. :p კვარია (talk) 10:33, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@კვარია: PIE roots do not alternate like that. If some descendants point to a root with an -r- and others without it, then we have to reconstruct two unrelated roots. Klimov compares to the "extended" roots *bʰrey-ǵ- and *bʰer-ǵ- found in Pokorny, Julius (1959) Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [Indo-European Etymological Dictionary] (in German), volume 1, Bern, München: Francke Verlag, page 167. As far as I can tell, these reconstructions are outdated and are in any case different from *bʰeg- and *bʰreg-. If you now want to compare these two roots on your initiative, go ahead, but I see little value in noticing similarities between such short terms and broad concepts.
As for *toq-, Klimov probably suspected a Western Asian cultural term because he noticed the Armenian parallel, but he was unaware it is a Kartvelian borrowing. Vahag (talk) 13:21, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
I see, thank you. I assumed they were the same things as Pokorny's roots because I don't know how to "update" the forms he quotes to match the modern IE reconstructions. Northeast Caucasian look related however. კვარია (talk) 13:37, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Pokorny is severely outdated. Updating it is the major task of Indo-European studies. {{R:ine:LIV}} and the IEED series are the most important new works, so you can check the reconstructions there or ask me. The Northeast Caucasian parallels do look interesting. Starostin connects them and the Kartvelian with the family of πέλεκυς (pélekus), परशु (paraśu). Vahag (talk) 17:54, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply