The Traditional Practice of Personifying Mushrooms and Other Plants in Myth and Art

Reveals a Need to Reconsider the Validity of Historical Indo-European Linguistics, The

Comparative Method, and the Proto-Indo-European Lexicon

(An edited version of an article that appeared in Semiotica · January 2008)

by

Stephen R. Berlant

Abstract: After briefly summarizing the history of the Comparative Method, which

historical linguists use to determine cognation, this paper argues that the laws comprising

that method were formulated in egregiously unscientific ways. The paper then goes on to

show how adhering to those laws has prevented linguists and scholars in other disciplines

from recognizing the anciently widespread practice of personifying mushrooms and other

plants as feet and legs. Finally, the paper shows how that lexicon can be reconstructed far

more logically and parsimoniously by ignoring the restraints alleged linguistic laws have

placed on scholars.

Keywords: Historical IE linguistics; The Comparative Method; Ethnomycology;

Ethnobotany;
 Berlant -- 1

Introduction

Rene Descartes recognized that preconceived notions can affect the way people treat ideas.
Accordingly, he argued in his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) that stripping oneself
of such notions is often necessary to establish a firm basis for solving a problem,
particularly if the problem has chronically resisted elucidation.

The necessity of ridding oneself of preconceptions before attempting to interpret evidence

is also especially important because, as the eminent philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn

(1962: 52-53) noted, "philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than

one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data." In

addition, Kuhn (1962: 52-53) pointed out that discovery commences with the awareness of

anomaly, closes when the paradigm theory has been adjusted, and that this adjustment

often involved shifting a paradigm's underpinnings in a way that significantly changed it to

the extent that its adherents could never have foreseen and often resisted.

One of the reasons for this lack of insight, foresight and subsequent resistance was typically

that professional education had led students to view things the same way their professors

had viewed them, and getting either group to view those things differently was extremely

difficult. Kuhn (1962: 52:53) therefore also astutely recognized that outsiders often were in

a better position to effect a paradigm shift than the paradigm's own adherents.
 Berlant -- 2

These factors, coupled with the failure to recognize that the age of a theory and the number

of authorities supporting it does not make it true, allowed geocentrism to survive for

centuries -- in some circles even after experiments conclusively showed otherwise -- to a

large extent because heliocentrism severely threatened a world-view that many people had

been psychologically, emotionally, professionally and religiously vested in for ages. For

similar reasons, although the 17th century physicist Christian Huygens showed that light

was a wave, physicists were so immersed in a Newtonian world-view, wherein light was

conceptualized simply as the flow of particles, Huygens finding was all but discarded until

19th century physicists recognized that a wave theory was needed to explain many of light's

otherwise unexplainable characteristics.

Most scientists and many laymen now take heliocentrism and the wave-particle nature of

light for granted, but the human mind has a tendency to accept and maintain any sense of

closure it has already obtained, rather than entertaining the possibility that its sense of

closure is a false or limited one. Consequently, throughout science’s history, many

scientists initially resisted evidence that severely threatened the sense of closure they had

been obtaining from world-views that ultimately turned out to be relatively limited or

entirely false. Accordingly, if history repeats itself -- as it so often has -- posterity will view

many of the theories that many scholars now consider proven the same way we view

geocentrism and the particle view of light.

 Berlant -- 3

This paper argues that one of the theories that posterity will consider erroneous is the one

that has held for close to two centuries now that alleged linguistic laws could be used to

reconstruct the so-called Proto-Indo-European (PIE) ancestor of IE languages. Instead,

this paper argues that this supposedly reconstructed lexicon is the product of “presentism,”

insofar as it was constructed by historical linguists projecting their own literal minded,

cognitive structures back onto the minds of the figuratively minded, wordsmiths who

constructed the actual PIE lexicon. In addition, this paper argues that the alleged linguistic

laws that historical linguists have been using to reconstruct the PIE lexicon were

formulated in egregiously unscientific ways, resulting in a lexicon that contains a multitude

of counterexamples of the type that often led to the collapse and reformulation of other

paradigms. Finally, the paper argues that the PIE lexicon can be reconstructed far more

logically, parsimoniously and instructively by abandoning the notion that alleged linguistic

laws are inviolable, and using figurative associations to cognate words.

A Brief History of The Comparative Method

To begin to recognize the validity of the above claims, it is necessary to understand a little

about the history of modern historical linguistics, which arguably began when the Italian

monk Bonaventura Vulcanius noted in the late 15th century that twenty-two words in

German and Persian were identical. Later in the same century, the Dutch philologist and

historian Joseph Juste Scaliger suggested that European languages could be divided into
 Berlant -- 4

Latin, Greek, Germanic and Slavonic branches according to their words for God deos,

theos, gott, and bog, respectively, and in 1725, the German missionary Benjamin Schultze

suggested that many other words were also very similar in German, Latin and Sanskrit.

Still later in the same century, the mathematician Wilhelm Von Leibniz suggested that

many other similarities existed between European languages, but these similarities were

not of any great interest to anyone until the Orientalist Sir William Jones suggested in the

following, now famous passage of his 1786 address to London’s Asiatic Society that

Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Germanic, and Celtic were all descended from the same extinct

language:

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure;

more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more

exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger

affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could

possibly have been produced by accident; so strong', indeed, that no

philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have

sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is

a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the

Gothic and Celtic, though blended with a different idiom, had the same

origins as the Sanskrit -- See Bodmer (1944:173-174).

 Berlant -- 5

Nevertheless, Jones’s observation wasn’t systematically explored until the German

philologist Friedrich von Schlegel and the Danish philologist Rasmus Rask showed

independently in the early 18th century that the letters of many Greek and Latin words

corresponded to the letters of many semantically identical or very closely related Germanic

words.

In accordance with these showings, the folklorist Jacob Grimm hypothesized in his

Deutsche Grammatik (1819-37) that two major series of sound shifts had caused some PIE

words to come into, for instance, Latin in one way, Greek in another way, and into the

Germanic languages (e.g., Gothic, Old Norse, Old English, Old High German, Dutch,

Frisian, and Old Saxon) in still another way. Grimm, moreover, invoked these sound shifts

to argue that specific Greek and Latin words were cognate with specific Germanic words,

insofar as the words had apparently been derived from the same PIE root.

Among the most notable sound shifts Grimm hypothesized, several of which Rask and

Schlegel had noted earlier, was one that had apparently caused the initial *k sound in car

to come into, for example, Greek and Latin as such, represented by c or k , but into the

Germanic languages as *h, having the throaty sound of Scottish loch. For example, Grimm

noted that the *c in Latin cornu ‘horn’ and the *k in Greek karnon ‘horn’ corresponded

neatly to the *h in Old High German Horn, Dutch horen, and Gothic haurn ‘horn’.
 Berlant -- 7

Similarly, he noted that the *h in Germanic words for ‘heart’ (e.g., Old English heorta ,

Old Saxon herta, Old Norse hjarta, and Dutch hart) corresponded neatly to the *c in Latin

cor and cordis ‘heart’, as well as to the *k in Greek kardia ‘heart’.

In addition, Grimm hypothesized that*d in many Greek and Latin words corresponded to

*t in Germanic words, and he succeeded in finding many examples where that

correspondence was apparently valid. For instance, he noted that*t in the abovementioned

Germanic words for ‘heart’ corresponded neatly to*d in Latin cordis and Greek kardia

‘heart’.

This and many similar observations led a large group of late 19th century, historical

linguists who now call themselves Neogrammarians, or simply Neograms, to believe that

these sound shifts were inviolable laws that could be used to determine which IE words

were cognate and the structure of the original PIE root. Despite the now virtually,

unanimously accepted Neogrammarian belief, however, Jacques Rosenman (1969, 1972,

1991), a physician with extensive training in empirical science concluded an intense forty-

year study of historical linguistics by claiming that every such law was fallaciously

formulated and applied injudiciously to organize the linguistic record into a flimsy

patchwork. Rosenman concluded, moreover, that the Neograms had been passing this

patchwork down from teacher to student for so long they had come to believe it was a

factual reconstruction of the way the PIE lexicon had evolved, as opposed to the maze of
 Berlant -- 8

poorly assembled inferences, assumptions, beliefs and hypotheses Rosenman concluded it

was.

For instance, after scientifically re-analyzing the same data Grimm and his followers had

analyzed in framing their laws, Rosenman (1991: 1-2) argued, first, in opposition to

Grimm’s hypothesis that Greek *k and Latin *c invariably corresponds to Germanic *h by

pointing out that:

Since Grimm matched words in other Indo-European languages bearing a *k

[or *c] with Germanic *h, he should have tested the combination with a

control: IE *k [or *c] with Germanic *k [or *c]. Similarly, IE *h requires a

control against Germanic *h. This minimum of two controls was never

allowed or guessed at.

They [these studies] were performed by the writer who found in a vast

majority of cases that a German *k [or *c] is best matched to an IE *k [or *c]

while German *h is found strongly with an IE *h. Thus the rules introduced

by Grimm and followed carefully by linguists for language relationships

were proven to be false, at the very beginning.

 Berlant -- 9

For instance, if Grimm had compared Old Saxon herta, Old Norse hjarta, Dutch hart and,

particularly, Old English heorta to the stem hort- of Latin hortari, hortatio, hortamen, and

hortativus for ‘heartening’, he could have deduced that the stem of these Latin words was

an *h_t variant of the stem cord- of Latin cordis ‘heart’. Accordingly, Grimm could have

gone on to logically and parsimoniously cognated these Latin words with the foregoing

Germanic words for ‘heart’, considering especially that English encourage, a synonym for

‘heartening’, was derived from Latin cor ‘heart’ (via Middle English encouragen and Old

French encoragier).

In addition, Grimm could have logically cognated the foregoing words for ‘heart’ with

Sanskrit hrd ‘heart’. Since, however, Latin hort- and Sanskrit hrd should have lawfully

existed in the Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, neither Grimm nor his

followers logically and parsimoniously cognated these words with their obvious Germanic

cognates, and the neograms later went on to consider hort- an extended, *t form of a

hypothetical PIE root gher- that supposedly yielded IE words for liking and wanting.

Similarly, in the interest of establishing and maintaining their claims of inviolable

lawfulness, the Neograms have held, after Grimm, that Greek kaleo ‘call’ is cognate with,

for instance, Old Norse heitan and Gothich haitan ‘call’, but not English call, even though

the *t in these Germanic words bears no phonetic relationship whatsoever to the *l in

kaleo. In contrast, Rosenman concluded logically and parsimoniously that kaleo had to be
 Berlant -- 10

considered cognate with English call, regardless of whether or not kaleo was also cognate

with the foregoing Germanic words, just as the world renown linguist Otto Jespersen

(1928) had argued almost four decades earlier in an effort to bring the Neograms to their

senses:

If in the etymologies you propose, you do not observe these [Grimm’s] rules, if, for

instance, you venture to make Greek kaleo ‘call’ equal English call, in spite

of the fact that Greek *k in other words corresponds to English *h, then you

incur the severest punishment of science, your etymology is rejected and you

yourself are put outside the pale of serious students.

As Jespersen also noted, a linguist’s refusal to agree with alleged Neogram laws resulted in

his being ostracized and his papers rejected.

Nevertheless, as both Rosenman (1969) and Jespersen (1928) correctly concluded, there is

no logical or evidentially justifiable reason why Gk kaleo and E. call cannot be as cognate

as they clearly reveal they are, regardless of whether some or many other, initial Greek

*k’s do or do not correspond to Germanic*h’s. However, because the Neograms have

insisted that their discipline be “inviolably lawful”, like chemistry and physics, recognizing

this obvious cognation has been out of the question for them.
 Berlant -- 11

Indeed, based on my own investigations over the last decade, it is very clear that in

cognating many Latin words bearing an initial *c with Germanic words bearing an initial

*h, the Neograms selectively sampled the available evidence in ways that supported their

claims of inviolable lawfulness, and that they have been attempting to attribute the

resulting counterexamples to sundry other factors. For instance, Grimm chose to cognate

the German verb ‘to have’ haben with the Latin verb ‘to seize’ capere knowing full well

that the root of the Latin verb ‘to have ‘ habere is identical to that of German haben.

Grimm, moreover, could and should have inferred that (1) the English verb kip ‘to seize’,

(2) the Middle Dutch verb kippen ‘to catch’, (3) the Old Norse verb kippa ‘to snatch’, and

(4) the Old- and Middle English ancestors cepan and kepan, respectively, of English keep,

‘to lay hold of’ were all evidently derived from a Germanic root for seizing *k + vowel + *p.

Accordingly, Grimm certainly had more than adequate grounds for cognating Latin habere

with German haben, and Latin capere with Germanic kip, kippen, kippa and keep.

This would, however, have disproved Grimm’s hypothesis that Latin *c invariably

corresponds to Germanic *h once again. So, Grimm chose to not cognate these words.

Hence, in the following passage of the FAQ’s section of the Internet newsgroup Sci. lang.,

Neograms trumpet this illogic by citing as a glowing example of their alleged science the

same fallacious logic Grimm used over two centuries ago to deny what he should have

considered the self-evident cognation of habere and haben:

 Berlant -- 12

At first glance we might think that German haben and Latin habere 'have'

are obvious cognates. However, after noting the regular correspondence of

German *h to Latin *c, we are forced to change our minds, and look to

capere 'seize' as a better cognate for haben. Thus, similarity of words is only

a clue, and perhaps a misleading one. Linguists conclude languages are

related, and thus derive from a common ancestor, only if they find 'regular'

sound correspondences between them.”

It evidently never occurred to these linguists that the “regular sound correspondences”

they have been invoking for almost two centuries now to deny the cognation of habere,

haben and many other equally obvious cognations could only have been proven by

excluding from evidence the semantic and literal identity of Latin hab- and German hab-,

along with many other identities or virtual identities too numerous to mention. In other

words, the evidence was selectively sampled, resulting in the creation of what are arguably,

if not certainly, counterexamples.

Using similar methods, Grimm cognated the Latin word for the head caput with the Old

English word for the head heafod, again presumably proving his hypothesis that Latin *c

invariably corresponds to Germanic *h. These words are, however, bi-syllabic, whereas the

PIE word for head must have been so basic that it was originally monosyllabic.
 Berlant -- 13

Accordingly, Grimm logically could and should have matched the root cap- of caput with

the monosyllabic German word for ‘head’ Kopf and the English word cop, for a top,

summit or head, thereby disproving his hypothesis one more time. In fact, Rosenman

offered to send this and at least 100 other etymologies unequivocally associating Germanic

*k with Greek *k and Latin *c to a linguistics professor at a leading university, but the

professor refused to even look at them because, as he put it, “They would be in conflict

with Grimm’s rules,” thereby egregiously begging the question.

Indeed, if Grimm or his followers had deemed the abovementioned phonetically and

semantically identical Latin and Germanic words true cognates, rather than the ‘false

cognates’ the Neograms claim they are, the Neograms would have ended up with a series

of phonetically and semantically identical or virtually identical correspondences strongly

supporting those cognations:

(1) Latin habere, German haben, English have;

(2) Latin capere, Old English cepan, Middle Dutch kippen, Old Norse kippa, Middle
English kepan, English keep , English kip;
(3) Latin caput, German Kopf , English cop.

This conclusion fully agrees with Rosenman’s (1969: 209-210) conclusion that, “The first
effort in etymology should always be made with matching consonants. Only if the fit is bad,
should we consider that a shift may have taken place.”
 Berlant -- 14

Nevertheless, recognizing the above and many other self-evident cognations would have
prevented the Neogramms from raising Grimm’s original hypotheses Latin *c invariably
corresponds to German *h to the alleged law the Neograms have been attempting to defend
for over a century now. Hence, no such recognition was made.

In addition, if Grimm had concluded that Latin caput was indeed as cognate with German
Kopf and English cop as it clearly reveals it is, he and his followers would have also had
more than adequate grounds for cognating these words with Greek kephale 'head’. Doing
so, however, would have also prevented the Neograms from establishing alleged laws
which specify that (1) initial Greek*k invariably corresponds to initial Germanic*g; while
(2) Greek*ph invariably corresponds to Germanic *b and Latin *f. Accordingly, the
Neograms arguably or certainly orphaned Greek kephale from its self-evident Latin and
Germanic cognates. Then, to explain kephale away, the Neograms went on to
hypothesize, extremely unparsimoniously, that the PIE lexicon had another, bi-syllabic
root for the head, *ghebh-el- — even though the Neograms recognized PIE lexicon
that the PIE was extremely limited relative to the lexicons of the languages it yielded.

To support the alleged claim that initial Germanic *b invariably corresponds to Greek *ph,
the Neograms then went on to orphan the Greek word bôlos for an ‘earthen ball’, which
subsequently yielded the Latin words bolus for ‘round mass’, from the Greek verb ballein
‘to throw’, and from the phonetically and semantically identical Germanic words for balls
(e.g., Old Norse bollr, English ball, Dutch bol, Old High German Bolla, etc), by invoking a
series of hypothetical sound shifts that traces ballein to a hypothetical PIE root *gwele-.

The Neogram Defense

It is clear from these and many, many other examples far to numerous to even mention
that Grimm’s alleged laws were framed by refusing to admit into evidence words that, if
 Berlant -- 15

admitted, would have prevented the Neograms from raising Grimm’s hypotheses to laws
scientifically. Consequently, the Neograms have been ignoring the resulting
counterexamples or attempting to explain them away as coincidences. More specifically,
the Neograms have held that:

(1) These counterexamples result from the probability that a limited number of
sounds would have randomly formed in the non-IE substrate of IE languages
words with roots that are identical or virtually identical to IE words;

(2) The sounds just happened to be retained in each language after the
language became distinctly IE;

(3) These words therefore have to be "false cognates."

Why? Because of the action of one or more inviolable sound shift laws .

By analogy, if early microbiologists had exposed bacterial cultures to antibiotics, and found
that the antibiotics did not kill every microbe, these microbiologists could have
simply concluded that this was a coincidence given the sheer number of microbes in the
culture. If, however, they had done so, say, in an effort to prove that antibiotics
invariably killed all bacteria, microbiologists would never have discovered bacterial
resistance. Yet, this is arguably exactly analogous to what the Neograms have been doing
for decades by claiming that words that do not conform to their alleged laws are merely
coincidences.

Similarly, if a physicist in an effort to prove the Law of Gravity dropped a ball 100 times
and found that it flew into space 1 time, he could not very well say that his finding is a
coincidence given the number of things the ball could do, and the number of times the ball
fell to the ground. Nor could he say that there are no exceptions to the law that a ball will
fall to the ground every time it is dropped. Again, however, that is essentially what
 Berlant -- 16

Neograms have been claiming for decades; that is, they have been claiming there are no
exceptions to Grimm’s or any other alleged sound shift laws, and that any exceptions that
appear to exist just have to be coincidences, not counterexamples.

In so doing, the Neograms seem to have been modeling their alleged laws after probabilistic
laws, like the gas and radioactivity laws, specifying that phenomena involving an enormous
number of events and entities, none of which are meaningful or measurable in isolation,
have to be explained statistically. In contrast, the so-called sound shift laws were
formulated by considering letters and words individually when they supported a
hypothesized law and probabilistically only when they did not. Hence the alleged sound
shift laws differ significantly from the gas and radioactivity laws.

Nor can the alleged sound shift laws be considered inviolable, for claims that there are no
exceptions to any such laws clearly fly in the face of the observation that many words that
are literally, or phonetically, and semantically identical must be considered cognate by the
Identity Principle, which grounds any mathematical proof. For instance, if the cognation of
Latin habere and German haben was tested formulaically, the formula would read:

hab- hab- = ‘ 1
have have

Similarly, if the cognation of Greek bolos and Old Norse bollr, Dutch bol, or Old High
German bolla was tested formulaically, the formula would read:

bol- ‘ bol- ‘ = 1
ball ball
 Berlant --17

In addition, many so-called false cognates must be considered true cognates by Occham’s
Razor, otherwise known as the Parsimony Principle, insofar as no hypothetical sound or
semantic shifts are required to cognate Latin habere with German haben, or Latin caput
with German kopf or English cop. In contrast, two hypothetical sound shifts and one
semantic shift is required to cognate capere with haben, and two sound shifts are required
to cognate caput with heafod. Accordingly, from the inception of the Comparative Method,
haben should have been considered cognate with habere; and caput should have been
considered cognate with cop and kopf.

The existence of any number of correspondences between the letters of any other words are
insufficient grounds for denying the above or other semantic and phonetic identities. To
claim otherwise is to over-generalize from the observation that some or, even, many X’s
correspond to some or many Y’s, to all Xs must therefore correspondsto all Y’s in this case
despite compelling evidence to the contrary. Consequently, so-called false cognates should
have been accepted as true cognates by the Neograms from the inception of their alleged
science.

Again, however, if the Neograms had recognized that the multitude of obvious
counterexamples that exist to every one of their alleged laws are logically not false
cognates, the neograms would have been forced to recognize that their findings were not
inviolable laws, but statistically significant relationships, like those to which empirical
scientists regularly lay claim. In fact, that such correspondences should have been
considered statistically significant should have been evident from the need to attribute data
that did not support a claim of lawfulness to statistical factors. Instead, however, the
neograms invoked all statistically significant relationships essentially a priori — i.e., as if
they were already proven laws —to discredit any and all evidence that would have
prevented them from raising such relationships to laws scientifically.
 Berlant --18

By invoking coincidence to explain away any and all evidence that would have prevented
the Neograms from raising their hypothesized sound shifts to laws scientifically, the
Neograms have also essentially rendered historical linguistics even less of a science than it
otherwise might have been by making their hypotheses non-falsifiable. That is, experiments
cannot be set up to see if evidence contradicting theses laws existed, because no such
evidence can be accepted. Historical linguistics is therefore no science — at least, in the
restrictive and most meaningful sense of the word science as it pertains to the empirical
sciences.

Another method Neograms have been using to explain way obvious counterexamples is to
claim that such counterexamples must have been borrowed prehistorically before the
sound shifts took place. For instance, some attempts were made to attribute German Kopf
to borrowing despite the fact that two of the most widely respected authorities on the
relationship between German and other IE languages, Alois Walde (1973) and Per Person
(1912), categorically rejected that notion. Rosenman (1991:234 ), too, categorically rejected
it after performing an extensive etymological analysis, which he summarized as follows:

The Germanic may have borrowed from Latin, through some round-about
process which went through Middle Latin , or it may have had its own PIE
root parallel to the one seen in Sanskrit & Latin ... In the period about
1950-1952, when I worked on the above Grimm etymology, I decided that the
explanation seen above was too complicated and forced, probably
manufactured to enable explanation of the close similarity between
Germanic and the balance of IE not only for 'head' but also for 'cup'.

Often as a last ditch effort to defend their alleged laws, Neograms will claim that, even if
counterexamples do exist, such counterexamples are so few that they are hardly worth
making issues of, and that they probably result from the action of some yet undiscovered
laws. As Kuhn (1962) also pointed out, however, it was often one or two seemingly small
 Berlant --19

anomalies in a theory that led to its overthrow. For instance, with respect to the situation
that led to the fall of Ptolemaic astronomy, Kuhn (1962: 68) wrote:

When the Ptolemaic system was first developed during the last two centuries before
Christ and the first two after, it was admirably successful in predicting the changing
positions of both stars and planets. No other ancient system had performed so well .
. . But to be admirably successful is never, for a scientific theory, to be completely
successful. With respect both to planetary position and to precession of the
equinoxes, predictions made with Ptolemy's system never quite conformed with the
best available observations. Further reduction of those minor discrepancies
constituted many of the principal problems of normal astronomical research for
many of Ptolemy's successors . . . For some time astronomers had every reason to
suppose that these attempts would be as successful as those that had led to Ptolemy's
system. Given a particular discrepancy, astronomers were invariably able to
eliminate it by making some particular adjustment in Ptolemy's system of
compounded circles. But as time went on, a man looking at the net result of the
normal research effort of many astronomers could observe that astronomy's
complexity was increasing far more rapidly than its accuracy and that a
discrepancy corrected in one place was likely to show up in another . . .

In the sixteenth century, Copernicus' co-worker, Domenico da Novara, held that no

system so cumbersome and inaccurate as the Ptolemaic had become could possibly
be true of nature. And Copernicus himself wrote in the Preface to the De
Revolutionibus that the astronomical tradition he inherited had finally created only
a monster.
 Berlant --20

The linguistic analogy of the crisis in Ptolemaic astronomy to which Copernicus and da
Novara were referring is exemplified in the following discussion three Neograms had in the
Internet newsgroup “sci. lang” about why the root of the Latin word cunnus ‘vagina’ is
phonetically and semantically identical to the root of Germanic words for vagina (e.g., Old
Norse kunta, Scandinavian kunta/kunte, Old Frisian, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch
kunte, and the vulgar slang English word cunt), in opposition to Grimm’s alleged law that
Latin *c equals German *h.

Gerald Van Wilgen (1996) claimed:

Cunt is almost certainly a Romance loan: If we take Latin cunnus and Attic Greek
kusthos, we can posit (weakly, as we'd really need a third independent
etymon, and I've not found one myself) a stem *kudh- (Latin *-dh-n- ‘ -nn-, Greek
*-dh-t- ‘ -sth-). This would yield a Gmc. **xud- with an initial fricative that would
develop to English /h/. If cunt is to be Anglo-Saxon, we need a *g if it is to be Indo-
European, and the Greek and Latin won't let us have it.

Richard Alderson, III (1996) then replied:

Perhaps, if cunt is really related to those Latin and Greek words. Related forms of
cunt are however found in Dutch and Frisian so the word would have to be a
loanword in these languages as well. But maybe there is no connection with cunnus;
perhaps it is related to Middle-Dutch kute ‘hole’.

And, finally, Miguel Carrasquer-Vidal (1996) wrote:

 Berlant --21

I doubt *-dhn- would have given -nn- in Latin, but I can't think of a counterexample
off-hand. At any rate, Pokorny thinks cunnus is derived from *kut-nos, and -tn-
certainly does give -nn-. The Greek example can be derived from *kudh-tos, but
just as easily from *ghudh-tos (Grassmann's Law: asp+asp ‘‘ plain+asp). The
Germanic forms other than English ‘cunt’ (e.g. Dutch ‘kut’ from older ‘kutte’) can
be derived from *gud-nos, *gudh-nos or *gut-'nos. [*t ‘ *dh before the accent
(Verner's Law), and both *dn and *dhn give Gmc. -tt- (Kluge's law)]. The English
form (as well as ON ‘kunta’, MLG ‘kunte’) might show metathesis of the ‘n’
(*gudnos ‘ *gundos ‘ *kuntaz), and then would suggest PGmc *gud-nos (which can't
really be PIE, because PIE did" not allow *g and *d in the same root).

What we have here is somewhat analogous to the case of Latin ‘habere’ (*ghabh-)
and German ‘haben’ (*kap-), where the consonants agree (which it shouldn't),
because of variations in the PIE root. In this case, we have three parallel forms:
*gud, *ghudh and *kut, with consonants assimilated (*g with *d, *gh with *dh, *k
with *t). If Pokorny is right about connecting (the Latin and Greek forms) with a
root *(s)keu-, with "s-mobile," that would explain the hesitations in the initial
consonant (there is no opposition *g/*gh/*k after *s).

Of course, it never occurred to these or any other Neograms that Grimm’s Law was
framed by also ignoring the identity Latin cun- equals Germanic kun- , which they were
trying so hard to explain away, and that the most parsimonious and reasonable explanation
of these identities has always been that the words are as cognate as they reveal they are.

Alleged Linguistic Laws Have Prevented Scholars From Recognizing The Foot, Leg, and
Other Metaphors that Prehistoric Wordsmiths Used to Derive One Word From Another
 Berlant --22

To fully understand the extent to which alleged linguistic laws have prevented linguists
from recognizing the figurative associations prehistoric wordsmiths used to derive one
word from another, it is only necessary to examine IE lexicons without the restraints these
alleged laws would have otherwise placed on people. For instance, it is well known that
people have traditionally personified plants and plants parts, as Toporov (1985) noted in
his classic paper Mythological Conception of Mushrooms, showing that people have
traditionally personified mushrooms as, for instance, legs.

By the same token, Wasson (1986) presented the following German children’s rhyme
personifying a mushroom as a monopod:

Ein Mannlein steht in Walde

(A manikin stands in the wood)
Ganz still und stumm..

(Stock-still and mute.)

Er hat von lauter Purpur
(He has of purple pure)
Ein Mantlein um.
(A mantle around him. )
Sag' wer mag das Mannlein sein
(Say, who may the manikin be) Das
da steht auf einem Bein?
(Who stands there on one leg?)
Gluckspilz! Fliegenpilz!
(Happiness mushroom! Fly-
agaric!)
 Berlant --23

Now, the names of mushrooms are often intimately related to the names of the trees on
whose roots or trunks the mushrooms grow. For instance, the Russian word for a birch
tree is beryoza; a mushroom, technically known as the Boletus scaber, that lives under the
birch is called the pod-beryozovik; and the Russians word for the Boletus rufus that
typically lives under the aspen is the podosinovik.

In agreement with the traditionally widespread practice of personifying plants, Russian

pod means ‘foot’; while what most people think of as a mushroom is technically the
mushroom’s “fruit body,” or simply ‘fruit’, that emerges from a pod, technically known as
a primordium, that often grows at the feet of trees. In fact, English pod specifically refers to
‘a fruit, a pouch, or a protective container, exactly like a primordium, just as (1) the form
ped- of Latin pes which appears in, e.g., English pedicle refers to (a) the stalk and husk, or
pod, of a fruit, and (b) the pod-like structure known as a ‘skin tag’; while (2) Latin pedes
refers to ‘beet roots’. Accordingly, there are more than adequate reasons for believing that
English pod is as cognate as it clearly reveals it is not only with Russian pod and Latin
pedis, but also with the following IE words for the foot: Greek podos; Avestan pad-; Skt.
padam, Greek podos; Lithuanian padas ‘sole’; and Lithuanian peda ‘footstep’.

In addition, there are more than adequate reasons for believing that the preceding words
for the foot are as cognate as they reveal they are with: (1) Low German and Flemish pad
‘sole of the foot’; (2) English pad ‘to walk’;(3) Middle Dutch paden ‘to walk; and (3)
English paddle ‘to splash with the feet (or hands)’ and ‘to waddle’. In other words, it is
clear that prehistoric wordsmiths personified mushrooms growing on the roots or trunks of
trees as the trees’ pods or feet using the very same association we use when we call the base
of a tree its ‘foot’, and mushrooms things like The Blue Foot, The Yellow foot, The Velvet
Foot, etc.
 Berlant --24

Unfortunately, an alleged linguistic law has fallaciously held for close to two centuries now
that the *p and *d in the foregoing Germanic words for the foot and for walking cannot
correspond to the *p and *d in Greek podos; Avestan pad-; Skt. padam, Greek podos;
Lithuanian padas and peda, even if the words are consonantally and semantically identical.
So, Neograms have simply attempted to explain away English pod by claiming it must be a
variation of English cod ‘bag’.

In other words, the evidence did not fit the law; so the Neograms simply changed the
evidence. Moreover, the neograms simply ignored the existence of these Germanic words
for ‘foot’ and ‘walking’ — the absurdity of which should now be readily apparent to
anyone with the ability to view the foregoing evidence logically and unprejudiciously .

Indeed, once the false restraints alleged linguistic laws would have placed on our ability to
understand the world view of the prehistoric wordsmiths that constructed the PIE lexicon
are removed, we can go on to elucidate some of the other associations comprising the
preceding intuitively based, botanical, foot metaphor. For instance, a legume is a plant
characterized particularly by the “pedicles” and “pods” bound to it. Notwithstanding an
alleged linguistic law claiming that Greek and Latin *g cannot correspond to Germanic*g
here, we can parsimoniously and instructively cognate Latin legumen and English legume
with: (1) the Germanic words for the leg (e.g., Old Norse leggr ‘ Middle English leg;
Danish laeg, Swedish lägg (Buck 4.35); and with (2) the Greek verb legein for going,
passing, wandering or following one's footsteps. The stem pis- of the Latin word pisum
for the pod known commonly as the pea can then be identified is an *i form of the Latin
word for the foot pes.

We can then go on to explain why the Old Norse etymon lag of English log reveals it is a
differentially vowelized, so-called a-grade variant of the stem of Latin legumen and lignum
‘wood, transparently cognate with Germanic words for the leg; namely, prehistoric
wordsmiths personified tree trunks and logs as the trees’ legs. Further, we can go on
to explain why the stems of the foregoing words for legs, legumes, and lignum
are
 Berlant --25

consonantally or phonetically identical to the following words for ligating and ligatures:
Latin ligare ‘ Italian legame, Rumanian ligatur|; Middle Low German lik, and Middle High
German geleich. Prehistoric wordsmiths evidently personified mushrooms and other pods
as feet ligatured to the lignum of logs personified as legs. The Latin and Greek etymons
lichen and leichen, respectively, of English lichen for an algae or fungus that
characteristically ligates itself to the lignum of a log therefore also reveal their cognation
with the abovementioned words for legs, legumes, logs, lignum and ligatures.

The neograms did, however, logically cognate the foregoing words with Greek leichein ‘to
lick’ and other IE words for licking based on the assumption that lichens were named
for licking the things they grew on. Since licking is, however, essentially the act of placing
the lingual or some other surface (like a whip) on something else, these words for lichens
not only reveal their cognation with the aforementioned words for legumes, legs, logs,
lignum and ligatures, they also reveal their cognation with the following Germanic
words for licking and lingual surfaces: Old English liccian ‘to lick’; Dutch likken,
German lecken, Gothic bi-laigon, the sibilated Armenian lizum "I lick," Greek leikhein,
Old Irish ligim; and the nasalized forms Latin lingere and lingua ‘tongue’. Again,
however, because the *ch in Gk leichein cannot “lawfully” correspond to the *c’s or k’s
in Old English liccian Dutch likken, German lecken, the neograms have implicitly
maintained that the words could not possibly be cognate.

It is then also logical to conclude that prehistoric wordsmiths conceptualized lichens as

plants that ligated themselves to or licked things they liked. Hence, we can also explain why
the abovementioned words for legs, legumes, lichens, licking, and ligating also clearly
reveal they are cognate with the following Germanic words for liking: Old English
lician, Old Norse lika, Old Frisian likia Old High German lihhen, and Gothic leikan.

Considering that legs are ligatured structures that bend, we can now go on to
cognate the aforementioned words for legs, legumes, and ligatures with the following
IE words for bends and bending: ON lokkr and lykna -- in fact, the latter refers specifically
to ‘the bend
 Berlant --26

of the knee’; Lithuanian lugnas; Lettic liekt and luocit; and their nasalized cognates Old
Norse lengj; Germanic lenken, Old English hlencen; and Lithuanian lengti. (Buck 9.14)

In the minds of the prehistoric wordsmiths who coined the PIE lexicon, legs were
also evidently related to and symbolic of the concepts of long, lengthy, leggy, and lanky,
deducibly because making things longer was named for ligating one leg or ‘stretch’ of
something to another. In any event, the following words for long, length, and lanky
clearly reveal they are nasalized forms of the aforementioned words for legs, ligatures,
ligating, etc: O.N. lengd, O.Fris. lengethe, Du. lengte. O.E. lengðu ‘length’, O.E. lang
‘long’, O.E. hlanc ‘slender, flaccid’; German lenken ‘to bend, turn aside’.

That the foregoing words for legs, legumes, ligatures, ligating, lichens, long, lengthy, and
lanky are as cognate as they reveal they are can be supported by observing that the
relationship between these words is perfectly paralleled by the relationship that exists
between Germanic words for the leguminous pod known as the bean, and Germanic words
for binding, banding, bending and bones, given that (a) these and other IE words for bones
also mean ‘leg’; and (b) many of these words originally referred, and in some cases still
refer, to the foot as well as the leg. (Buck 4.16)

Bone (Leg) -- Old Norse bein, Danish ben, Old English b~n, Dutch been, Old High
German bein;

Bean -- ON baun, Danish bønne,Old English b‘an, Dutch boon, Old High German
bana

Bind -- Gothic gabinden; Old Norse binda, Danish binde, Swedish binda, Old English
binden;
 Berlant --27

Bond -- Gothic bandi, Old Norse band, Danish baand, Swedish band, Old English
bend, Old High German bant;

Bend -- Old Norse benda, Old English bendan.

The derivation of these Germanic words for bones, beans, binding, bonding and bending
from a single PIE, consonantal root *b_n therefore perfectly parallels the derivation of the
synonymous words for legs, legumes, ligatures, and lengthening from a PIE, consonantal
root *l_(g)(k).

Literal minded, historical linguists like to derogatorily call the foregoing etymologies
‘Fanciful, folk etymologies,” because such etymologies do not adhere to alleged linguistic
laws. The term is, however, very apropos, because such etymologies clearly reveal that the
prehistoric wordsmiths who created the actual PIE lexicon were indeed “fanciful folk.”

That a relationship clearly existed between beans and feet in the minds of the prehistoric
wordsmiths who coined the foregoing words can also be supported by observing that the
following Germanic words for feet, food and fodder clearly reveal their cognation with
each other, given that beans are a food, a fodder and, anthropomorphically speaking, the
foot of a legume, as we have just seen:

Food - Gothic fodeins, ON fœða, Danish føda, Old English fóda Swedish föda,
Danish föde;

Fodder - Old English fódor , Middle Dutch and Dutch voeder, Old High German
fuotar ‘Middle High German vuoter & German futter ON. fóðr ‘Swedish & Danish
foder ;
 Berlant --28

Foot -- O.N. fotr, Ger. fuß, Gothic fotus.

Also related to this group of words is apparently the Latin word fetus, for ‘a shoot, a fruit,
or a pod, notwithstanding the alleged linguistic law specifying that (1) initial Latin *f never
corresponds to Germanic *f; and (2) Latin*t cannot correspond to Germanic *t in these
words.

This prehistoric, alliterative, mythopoetic motif can be elucidated even more by noting that
the Old English verb fættian ‘to cram, stuff, or fatten’ that yielded the Old English etymon
fætt of fat also clearly reveals its cognation with the aforementioned words for food and
fodder, obviously because prehistoric wordsmiths logically conceptualized and named
fattening as the act of feeding food, fodder or fetuses (in the sense of fruit or shoots) to
animals or humans. The Latin words fartor for a person who fattens (fowl in particular)
and fautor for a person who fathers can then be logically and parsimoniously cognated with
the preceding Germanic words for fattening, feeding, food, fodder, and fetuses -- again
notwithstanding the alleged linguistic laws specifying that (1) initial Latin *f never
corresponds to initial Germanic *f and (2 ) Latin *t cannot correspond to Germanic *t
here.

The foregoing botanical, foot complex can be elucidate even more by considering that

fathering something means making it grow. Hence we can also logically and

parsimoniously cognate the abovementioned Germanic and Latin words for fattening and

feeding with the following IE words for father and fathering: Danish fader, Swedish fader,

Old High German fater, Old English fæder, Old Norse faðir. In other words, it is now clear

that these words were derived by affixing _(e)(i)(o)r for ‘one that performs an action’ to a

PIE root for ‘fat’, because fathering originally referred to fattening and feeding food or
 Berlant --29

fodder to animals or people. Pastor and father are therefore synonymous insofar as

inherent in both were and still are the notions of feeding and fattening. Moreover, these IE

words for fathers are as cognate as they clearly reveal they are with

Peopl have generally assumed that the preceding and other bi-syllabic, tri-consonantal, IE
words for ‘father’ referred narrowly to fathers, and were derived directly from baby-talk
(Buck 2.35), like the reduplicated, familial words papa and mama. On the contrary, the
preceding analyses show logically and parsimoniously that these words for fathers were
derived from the same PIE root that yielded words for fattening and feeding.

By the same token, Latin words for feeding clearly reveal their cognation with Latin words
for feet, feeding, fathering and fathers given the well documented tendency *t had of
becoming *s through palatalization during the development of many words in many
languages: Greek pettannui ‘spread out’; Latin patere to open wide --hence, make fatter,
make grow, or father; Latin pascere ‘feed’ ‘ French paître, Czechoslovakian pasti to
pasture, hence feed; Latin pastus, < pascere ‘to lead to pasture, graze’ ‘ Latin pastorem
‘shepherd’.

The assertion that prehistoric wordsmiths personified plants as feet and legs finds a great
deal of support in its ability to fit perfectly with the Russian practice of using pod to name
mushrooms, as well as with Toporov’s (1985) and Wasson’s (1986) finding that ancient
mythopoets personified mushrooms as feet and legs. Indeed, in addition to the German
children’s poem discussed above, Wasson (1969) argued convincingly that ancient Hindu
priests personified the A. muscaria, a mushroom that grows particularly at the feet of trees,
as Soma and ekapad meaning ‘single foot’, just as the ancient Mayans personified a
mushroom as Hurakan, meaning ‘One legged one.’
 Berlant --30

By the same token, Ruck (1986) showed that ancient Greek mythopoets and Roman
naturalists, including Pliny (Nat, Hist. 7.2.23), Aulus Gellius (9.4.9), and Theophrastus
(How Plants Grow 2.25, Enquiry into Plants 9.18.8) personified mushrooms as monocoli ‘one
legged ones’, and steganapods ‘Cover Feet’, evidently for the same reason C.S Lewis in The
Dawn Treader personified mushrooms jumping around on one thick leg and an enormous
foot as Monopods, Duffers, and Dufflepuds -- using personification and the same type of
word-play prehistoric wordsmiths clearly used to derive the word groups discussed above.

These foot and leg metaphors were meliorated, in some cases to an astonishing degree.
However, a discussion of these meliorations is beyond the scope of this paper.

Conclusions

I have provided evidence showing that the allegedly inviolable laws grounding the
Comparative Method were fallaciously formulated; that prehistoric wordsmiths used
figurative associations to derive the PIE lexicon; and that such associations can only be
appreciated by abandoning the notion that such laws are indeed inviolable. Recalling
Kuhn’s (1962) statement that “than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon
a given collection of data,” I have also reconstructed a small, but exemplary portion, of the
PIE lexicon in a far more parsimonious, logical, instructive, and syncretic way than the
Neograms previously have using their alleged laws. The validity of my reconstruction is,
I believe , well attested by its ability to reveal the previously hidden foot and leg symbolism
that exists in IE lexicons evidently because the prehistoric wordsmiths that created the
PIE ancestor of these lexicons personified plants and plant parts as feet and legs.
 Berlant --31

It is highly unlikely that a series of coincidences could fit together as logically as the words
in the foregoing etymological analyses do to reveal the previously hidden prehistoric
practice of personifying plants as feet and legs. Consequently, these analyses cannot be
simply explained away as a series of coincidences based on the supposed inviolability of
alleged linguistic laws.

Finally, in light of Kuhn’s (1962) statement, "discovery commences with the awareness of
anomaly and . . . . closes when the paradigm theory has been adjusted," I have also
eliminated a number of the multitudinous anomalies that exist in the PIE lexicon due to the
Neogrammarian insistence that their alleged laws were proven scientifcally. I therefore
urge anyone who wishes to fully appreciate the figurative associations that prehistoric
wordsmiths used to derive the PIE lexicon abandon the notion that such laws are any such
thing, or can be used to reconstruct the PIE lexicon in any meaningful way.

References

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 Berlant --32

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