Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 08:00:51 -0400

From: "M. Lynne Murphy" 104LYN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA

Subject: Re: Corn in the USA



At 11:28 PM 9/15/96 +1608, you wrote:

And one can see the effect of Grimm's Law in the Indo-European cognates

'corn' and 'grain'.



hearing about grimm's law reminds me that roger lass has recently

published a paper in which (and he claims he's the first on this) he

shows that a certain 4-letter word beginning with f that censors

love to hate is related via grimm's law to the root of _pugnacious_.

(though i've heard many people trace the semantic history of the word

to striking, i have never seen anyone trace it all the way back to

indo-european, as lass tries to.)



the paper's in _diachronica_, if you're dirty-minded enough to want

to check it out. i haven't read it, but have heard the cocktail

party version, which was a lot of fun.



lynne



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