Hipponyms in Indo-European: using register to disentangle the etyma

Leonard Stephen Pax (Moscow State Linguistic University; s.leonard@linguanet.ru)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 19/1-2, 2021 - p.1-14

Abstract: What was the distinction between the *márkos and *h1ékwo- etyma for horse in Indo-European? It is argued that the distinction could be explained by a register based hierarchy that is likely to have existed in the proto-language. There is good evidence for the *h1ékwo- reflex being used in Göttersprache like semantic associative networks. The *h1ékwo- word is associated with the divine and appears in lexically identical poetic formulae and fixed locutions. On the basis of the multiple terms for horse in a number of the IE daughter languages, it is likely there was more than one term for horse in the IE period. A differentiation on the basis of register may have been a possibility, even at this early stage.

Keywords: hipponyms, language registers, Indo-European languages, etymology

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