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Concerning a few shared lexical items of the agricultural and mineral domains in the word stock of the Tjero-Khazian and Tenarian families.

Introduction

For a long time scholars have harboured suspicions regarding the general similarity between a few words concerning trees and gemstones in Gharian and Tenarian. I postulate a shared intense period of lexical contact 5000 BP between a late form of Proto-Tjero-Khazian (PTK) and an early stage of Proto-Tenarian (PT).

Part 1 : From Proto-Tenarian to Proto-Tjero-Khazian

STONE

1. *ot’o-k’, *ot’o-moχ

   Khz. ašakh ‘stone’, ašamô ‘gravel’; Tjer. ru’ut ‘jewel’.

   The root for stone, tentatively isolated as *ot’o-, formally matches Proto-Tenarian *oʔto (Cf. OVa. ooton ‘aquamarine’, West Lilli vodoig ‘jewelry box’ ( < Late PT. *oʔte-ns {accusative form} ). The lack of class suffixes in the Tenarian family hints to the origins of this root being placed in Proto-Tenarian.

1. *laχa-

   Khz. alâri ‘ruby’ ( < *laχa-zi), Tjer. lahaze ‘blue dye’ (id.), lahanu ‘blueberries’ ( < *laχa-moχ).

   Proto-Tenarian *təlaqa ‘chisel’, composed of *təla- ‘hard’ and -qa ‘tool-suffix’, offers an interesting opportunity for resolving this item. It is not inconceivable that an early variant of Proto-Tenarian which had already dropped the weak schwa would result in *tlaqa. If this is the variant that was loaned, the forbidden onset cluster *tl would have been resolved by simple deletion of the first element, as seen in the oldest strata of Proto-Indo-European loanwords (Cf. PTK *lat’o-k’ < PIE. *tḷh₂tós).