Gerry:
>Then what is the Hyperborean family? Is it not real?
>And about Gilyak -- where does it fit if it is not Boreal?
I don't think that Hyperborean could be real but then I'm only conjecturing.
Based on the scanty stuff I know on Gilyak, I would still say that it is
either more closely related to Altaic or that it is part of a seperate
branch all its own, perhaps even the most ancient branch of Steppe.
According to Zompist (
http://www.zompist.com/asia.htm), the Gilyak numbers
are the following (together with my Steppe reconstruction):
Gilyak Steppe... or Pre-Pre-Pre-IE :)
1 ny(i)- *t:u
2 m(i/e)- *t:ui
3 c(e)- *gul
4 n(@)- *nil
5 tho- *ut:u
6 ngax- *ru
7 ngamg *ral
8 minr *munri (?)
9 nyenyben **t:u-bi (kum-ta)
10 nyandorng *t:u-kum
First off, I am certain I saw /mxo/ for "ten" before but then again, I could
very well be losing my mind... (get the ants off me!)
The word for "four" has good connections with Eurasiatic *nil "four" (Uralic
*nelja, Altaic *nu"lu" (<-my Korean-included reconstruction), Dravidian
*na:l). As well, we find a version of Steppe *ut:u "five" in Gilyak tho-
(Uralic *witte, Altaic *utu > Old Japanese itu-tu).
What gets weird about "eight" is that it looks eerily like my reconstruction
for DeneCaucasian *mnrit (Basque bederatzi "9", SinoT *bryat)... Now the
problem is that although I think that Nostratic is a DC language, I can't
recover "eight" from Steppe because all the languages in Steppe other than
Gilyak like to create compound words, usually something like "(five) and
three" or "two from (ten)". The form wouldn't be from SinoDene or its
daughter languages because we should find *mRy@:t with the distinctive
syllabic contraction.
Is it possible that *mnrit has survived in Steppe as *munri? Is it connected
with forms in AfroAsiatic with a prefixed *s- (Coptic s^moun) or Dravidian's
lack-of-initial-*m form? One would imagine that *munri was an ancient Steppe
numeral which had been later lost through use of derivative forms like IE's
corrupted dual form of "four". This would justify Gilyak as being a most
ancient branch of Steppe and hence very seperate from Boreal or
ChuckchiKamchatkan.
Just a thought. Carry on.
- gLeN
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