Indo-European zoonyms in Afroasiatic perspective

Václav Blažek (Masaryk University, Brno, blazek@phil.muni.cz)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 9, 2013 - p.37-54

Abstract: The main purpose of this contribution is to serve as a summary of such zoonyms as might be common for Indo-European and Afroasiatic, to define them from the point of view of zoological classification and to compare them to cognates with other Nostratic branches. The results of this comparison are important for the discussion on the beginnings of animal domestication in the Fertile Crescent, the area that is currently singled out by some researchers as the most probable Afroasiatic homeland.

Keywords: Indo-European languages, Afrasian (Afro-Asiatic) languages, Nostratic, zoonyms, linguistic reconstruction, animal domestication

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