Re: Submerged Languages

From: Guillaume JACQUES
Message: 969
Date: 2000-01-18

"
> It is a dissatisfying theory as well for the fact that it ignores the
many
> similarities between Uralic and IE which are not a result of
FinnoUgric
> contacts with IndoIranian (ancestor of Sanskrit, Iranian, Avestan)
such as
> the quite apparent accusative *-m, terms like *mete "honey" or *wete
> "water", personal pronouns and question words like *ki "who?" and
other
> simple grammatical connections that certainly demonstrate a
connection of
> some kind to the northerly language. Uralic and IE are also
ultimately
> connected to Altaic for the same reasons, a language group which is
again a
> northerly and a quite eastward language group.
>

I am not convince by the evidence you adduce to prove some close
relationship (be it genetic or not) between PIE and uralic. I am not at
all familiar with uralic, and so I can't juge the reconstructions that
you cite, but the comparation of *ki with PIE *kwei does not satifies
me, and as for *mete, it seems natural that this cultural term got
loaned into uralic.
In chinese, you have the same word mjit < b/mit (MC Middle Chinese < AC
Archaic Chinese, a/ and b/ in AC indicate a suprasegmental feature),
probably from tocharian because it does not look much aryan.
Strange enough, 3rd person pronoun in AC, sometimes interrogative, is
MC gi < b/g(r)i or MC ki < AC b/k(r)i, which, by chance, looks very
similar to uralic *ki.

As for Na-Dene-Caucasian, I think is is highly prematurate anyway,
because no real reconstruction of "Sino-tibetan" is available. Besides,
chinese might be in fact genetically related to austronesian.

Guillaume