Re: [tied] Proto-Steppe Numerals

Dear Glen,

First, thanks for your long and detailed reply. As I find it necessary to answer point for point, this posting will be lengthy as well. My apologies to Cybalist if it develops into an essay.

Your explanation of the relation between '3' and '9' in Japanese in ingenious and I have no difficulty accepting it. However, some problems remain: what you gain by solving this problem is a rough match between Japanese, Mongolic and Uralic, with Samoyedic, Turkic, Tungusic, Korean, Nivkh, Yukaghir, Chukchi-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut showing apparently unrelated forms and the alleged Indo-Tyrrhenian cognate giving you headaches, as you yourself admit. As the Proto-Japanese numeral is somewhat conjectural, everything really hangs on the agreement between Mongolic gur- and Uralic kol(me) -- this is in fact the REAL basis for your kWul(mu). You seem to believe that this kind of double agreement (involving '3' and '4') between two languages (Proto-Uralic and Proto-Mongolic in this case) is unlikely to be mere coincidence. But if you compare, say, the numerals of PIE and Proto-Quechua, you'll find even more spectacularly similar words for '5' and '6'; and if you take Proto-Austronesian and PIE, you'll find the correspondence between the words for '2' and '3' in both families quite literally too good to be true. In other words, you fail to show that the degree of similarity on which you build your reconstruction exceeds that which could occur by chance.

By "reaching down", i.e. using forms not from proto-languages but from their arbitrarily chosen daughters you depart from the normal procedure of the comparative method and greatly increase the probability of a chance match, as in Greenberg's mass comparison (especially when you work with very short roots such as *ra or *na). Frankly, I still can't see why Samoyedic should be less likely than Finno-Ugric to have retained Proto-Uralic forms. After all, Tungusic is also spoken way up north, and yet you don't hesitate to use exclusively Tungusic evidence (ignoring Mongolic and Turkic, not to mention the rest of Steppe) for some items. To give a concrete example, Tungusic is your only witness for '6' (with some feeble support from Japanese).

Your admission that there is NO ATTESTATION AT ALL for the reconstructed numeral '8' is staggering. What's the point of reconstructing it at all, then? As a matter of fact, you abandon the comparative method entirely in this case and simply project your Nostratic form onto Proto-Steppe by "inverted reconstruction". Since that word does not exist in the Steppe languages, a suspicious question arises: what is the Nostratic reconstruction based on? A naive reader might hope that there is at least some non-Steppe comparative justification for *munri (or the like), but as far as I can see, the corresponding Sumerian, Dravidian and Afroasiatic numerals (if reconstructable at all) can hardly be cognates. From what evidence and by what esoteric method did you distil your Nostratic reconstruction then? The answer is the same as before: you project a still more ancient (Dene-Caucasian) form onto Nostratic -- ALL THE TIME WITHOUT A SHADOW OF EVIDENCE. So here we have a Dene-Caucasian word passed on to Nostratic and then to Steppe without leaving any tangible traces in any of their daughter branches.

You promise there is a long story behind it all. I'd be interested to hear it, but I'm not actually holding my breath. Ironically, you seem to have overlooked the single Steppe '8' word similar to *munri - I mean Nivkh minr (Nivkh is the currently preferred term for what you call Gilyak). But I wouldn't get too excited about this word. Your "Steppe" contains several hundred languages. It would be a real miracle if never a one of them had something similar to a prespecified "protoword".

If your aim is to demonstrate distant relationship you should claim no data that violates the proposed sound correspondences. Of course actual language change is often irregular, but the requirement of admitting only regular sound change in TESTING a relationship scheme is a sound methodological principle which reduces the danger of chance resemblance. If you relax it ad hoc (as you do for the numerals '3' and '4' in your response), you sabotage your own project. In the case at hand you make things far worse by relaxing semantic constraints at the same time, as when you allow the '5' word for to mean '4' or '6' (even with so much latitude you can't get an unambiguos reconstruction for '5' and have to be content with two different forms in free variation). Of course it you were more rigorous you'd get no matches -- but that's the whole point. If you relax the requirement of regularity you get SPURIOUS matches that can't be distinguished from genuine ones. Again, it's a suicidal departure from the straight and narrow in comparative analysis.

Your protoword for '5' (*kit:u/*kWut:u) develops the meaning '4' in one branch (Indo-Tyrrhenian) and '6' in another (Uralic). Oritur quaestio, dominus Glen: is there a Steppe branch in which it means just what it's supposed to mean? Your answer is "Altaic" -- but in actual fact you only mention Old Japanese. Let's look at the words for '5' elsewhere in Altaic: Mongolic *tabun, Tunguzic *tuNga, Korean tasôt, Old Turkic beS. No good. How about extending the search? If we look farther afield (and I've checked Nivkh, Samoyed, Yukaghir, Eskimo-Aleutian and Chukchi-Kamchatkan, lest you should think I'm lazy), *kit:u/*kWut:u just can't be seen anywhere in the wide Steppe. Is it just another Nostratic (or Dene-Caucasian) ghost?

It becomes clear that despite paying lip-service to the comparative method you don't actually apply it in reconstructing the Steppe numeral system. You POSTULATE a list of numerals justified mostly by external considerations (namely, by what you believe the Nostratic or Dene-Caucasian forms to have been like). There are isolated matches or near-matches here and there (quite naturally, with so many language groups to choose from) and you claim them as supportive evidence, but even if there are no matches at all you aren't greatly worried. After all, you know in advance what the protoforms should be -- as if Nostratic or Dene-Caucasian reconstructions were more solid than Steppe ones.

I understand your private methodology well enough to see that it's self-defeating. By saying that it's better to reconstruct ANYTHING rather than nothing at all you ignore the distinction between a serious proposal and unfounded speculation. A methodology that ALWAYS allows you to reconstruct SOMETHING would yield a phantom reconstruction of a non-existent protolanguage even for entirely unrelated languages (such a thing would apparently be "better than nothing"). You present a sketchy and highly speculative reconstruction and then challenge other people either to accept it or to offer a superior hypothesis -- in other words, you claim null hypothesis status for your reconstruction (as a reward for pioneering work?) thus evading the burden of proof: "Got a better one? No? Then I win."

This is a misunderstanding of scientific methodology. The null hypothesis must always be as conservative as possible in order to exclude unwarranted inferences. Thus, you can't start by ASSUMING that the Steppe families are related and what remains to discovered is just HOW they are related. Such a proposition could never be falsified, for it cannot be proved that two languages are unrelated: the evidence of their genetic relationship may have been obliterated by historical change. The initial null hypothesis must assume their NON-relatedness -- only then can we hope to make some progress by trying to falsify it. You can replace it with a new null hypothesis only if you manage to demonstrate that all or some of the languages being compared show systematic resemblances which exceed non-genetic "background similarity" (due to borrowing, chance, etc.). The QUALITY of proposed cognate words and morphological paradigms is much more important that their number. Their DISTRIBUTION is important (in the initial testing of a hypothesis one should exclude cognates that can't be found in most of the daughter groups). If you postulate a model of relationships which is not solid enough (and even professionals sometimes indulge in such games out of impatience), you won't make it better by "extrapolation and evolution"; you'll just move in circles instead of making progress.

We are all lumpers to some extent; otherwise who would believe in Proto-Germanic or PIE? Lumping is a healthy activity: you challenge the current null hypothesis (which assumes by that languages are NOT related unless demonstrated otherwise) and sometimes you win. Do you think I've never spent evenings studying Etruscan or Uralic word-lists and paradigms? I'm generally sympathetic to your efforts and I hope you'll see my criticism as friendly and constructive even if you reject much of it. At any rate stop seeing the ugly snout of politics everywhere.

Cheers,

Piotr

----- Original Message -----

From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>

To: <cybalist@egroups.com>

Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 10:36 AM

Subject: [tied] Proto-Steppe Numerals

> Piotr:

> > Oh, you apparently missed my very direct comments concerning

your

> > >numeral list:
> >
> >

http://www.egroups.com/message/cybalist/3159
>

> Now where did that come from? I

apparently was unaware of this page

> otherwise I would be certainly

putting my opiniative two-cents worth in :)

> Frankly, by asking these

questions, you don't know what kind of genie you

> let lose from the

bottle - I apologize for the extreme length of this

> post...
>
> > (1) Unless you want to propose a ternary system of

counting at some

> > >point, why should the Japanese word for

'nine' have anything to do >with

> >the Proto-Steppe word for

'three'?

>
> Eeeeeexcellent question. This is a great time for

JAPANESE LESSON #1!

> Japanese is known to have a _binary_ counting

system as can be seen in Old

> Japanese which I can only at the moment

quote from heart (so be good little

> boys and girls and verify what

gLenNy is saying at your local library):

>
>
>

ENGLISH (like duh!) OLD JAPANESE

>

-----------------------------------------

>

one/two hito"-tu/futa-tu

>

three/six mi-tu/mu-tu

>

four/eight yo"-tu/ya-tu

>
> Here we can see clearly that the vowels alternate

in a premeditated way (o"

> with a, i with u) in a manner that is totally

Altaic-vowel-harmony-like.

> Obviously, odd numbers above three don't get

to be part this happy binary

> clique. Thus we have the following numbers

alone, cold, helpless. In a sad

> sense, they are truely "odd", like me

>
>

five itu-tu

>

seven nana-tu

>

nine ko"ko"no"-tu

>
> Now it stands

to reason that if there are any numbers harking back to an

> earlier

stage like Altaic, only _half_ of the binary set could possibly be

>

inheirited, unless of course, there is some sort of evidence for this binary

> opposition outside Japanese (and there isn't). The question is which

ones

> are likely to be inheirited and which are to be derived from their

numerical

> counterpart? This is the way I see it:
>
>

one *bitu -> hito"-tu (> futa-tu "2")

>

three *gur- -> ko"ko"no"-tu "nine"

>

four *du"r- -> yo"-tu (> ya-tu "8")

>

five *hitu -> itu-tu

>

six *nu -> mu-tu (> mi-tu "3")

>

seven *na -> nana-tu

>

ten *tuhan -> to"wo"

>
> As for /kokonotsu/ "nine", the word

literally means "three times three" and

> is nothing strange given the

fact that higher numbers in Steppe languages

> tend to be compound words

anyway (cf. Finnish kakdeksa"n/ykdeksa"n

> "eight/nine" < kaksi/yksi

"two/one"). Why, even my reconstructed "nine" for

> ProtoSteppe is itself

a compound word meaning "one away from ten"! To boot,

> "nine", because

it is an odd number, could never be formed using the above

> binary

process. Duh! :)

>
> Piotr:
> >Needless to point out,

Classical Japanese mi 'three' doesn't match >your

> >protoform.
>
> Sorry, irrelevant. The Japanese numeral /mitsu/

is a derivation from "six".

> It was "six" that was inheirited from

Altaic, not "three" (except as part of

> the compound word for "nine",

ko"ko"no"-).

>
> Piotr:
> >For Altaic, you offer

*kul/*gur. I don't know what your extra-Japanese

> > >evidence for

*kul- is, but *gur- is definitely Mongolic rather than

> > >common

Altaic.

>
> Yes, Mongolian /ghurban/, for example. The first

element of these

> reconstructive pairs (like *kul/*gur) is meant to

represent Altaic with

> Korean (Altaic I), versus post-Korean Altaic

(Altaic II). Of course, in this

> case, Korean doesn't show this numeral

but rather /set/.

>
> >Likewise, you sell Finno-Ugric forms as

Proto-Uralic. It's a well->known

> >fact that common numeral

protosystems (even in the 1-5 range) >are only

> >reconstructable

for the subfamilies of Uralic and Altaic, and >yet you

> >boldly

erect a Proto-Steppe reconstruction, complete with the >decads.

>
> Yes. First, I may seem "bold" to you only because you don't quite

understand

> yet the methodology I use. My view is that it is better to

reconstruct

> _anything_ rather than nothing at all. In my manner of

thinking,

> extrapolation and evolution are key elements to advancing

knowledge in

> theoretical studies and what I reconstruct is not meant to

"sell" anything

> but rather is a proposal fully replaceable with a

better theory in the

> future, made possibly by people like you. Have

one?

>
> Second, it is evident why certain subfamilies of Uralic

and Altaic should

> retain the numeral system and others not. In the

Uralic family, Samoyedic is

> the most ancient branch and yet, it resides

so far up north that one can see

> very clearly why a standard numeral

system would not be retained here. In

> this instance, only the other

branch, FinnoUgric, can be expected to offer

> data about the ancient

numerical system. In the Altaic family, the speakers

> of these languages

have been historically as well as pre-historically

> nomadic. Their

lifestyle doesn't lend itself either to retaining standard

> numerical

systems, so we see bits and clips of the original system across

> this

family.

>
> However, the stems for "three" and "four" are too

clearly related and

> phonetically regular in sound correspondance

between Mongolic and

> FinnoUgrian to be mere coincidence:
>
>

Mongolic FinnoUgrian (as found in EncBritt)

>

*gur- *kolme

>

*du"r- *nelja"

>
>

Two things to help put this pair further into perspective:

>

----------------------------------------------------------

> It must be

noted that Uralic avoided Steppe's consonant-final stems (cf.

> *nil

"four") by added a terminating vowel - This is the reason for the

>

overwhelming number of disyllabic terms (also *wete "water" < *wit:). Thus

> the word *nelja" was originally athematic like many other Uralic words.
> Palatalisation of *l naturally occured from the neighbouring vowel *i

> *e).
>
> It must also be noted that Altaic II has a

strange sound change that turns

> many initial nasals of Altaic I into

stop counterparts. Thus *m becomes *b

> and *n becomes *d, further Altaic

I *r- helped to fill back in some of the

> initial nasal gap by becoming

Altaic II *n- (as in the word for "seven").

> Since there is no initial

velar nasal in Steppe, there is no velar

> counterpart to this

phenomenon. (cf. Turkish ben "I" < Altaic I *mun)

>
>

Finally, *-mu is often attached to monosyllabic numerals between three and

> ten (hence *kolme).
>
> Now, in the end, we must either

view these two numerals as borrowings or as

> inheirited words from an

earlier stage. As far as I know, Mongolic and

> FinnoUgric were not in

contact with each other, hence they are likelier

> inheirited terms.

Further, *du"r- "four" is fully attested across Altaic.

>
> > (2) How did the original word for 'five' come to mean 'four' in
> > >Proto-Indo-Tyrrhenian and 'six' in Uralic? BTW, my Tyrrhenian

is not

> > >very strong, but Etruscan huth is usually interpreted

as 'six' rather

> > >than 'four' (pace McCallister's online

glossary) on combinatorial

> > >evidence (for example, the

arrangement of numerals on Etruscan dice

> > >implies that HUTH +

THU = 7).

>
> Hmm, well the contraversy lives on. The word /huth/

is still not agreed on,

> AFAIK. Some say "four" and some say "six". I go

with "four" since it matches

> IE's numeral well and because, this way,

six is /s'a/ which can be explained

> as a borrowed numeral from a

Semitoid language. Other numerals prove clearly

> that there was a

Semitoid influence on the Etruscan number system (semph

> "seven", s'ar

"ten").

>
> Now all this would mean that IndoTyr *kWetWe shifted

the meaning of this

> word from "five" to "four". If so, why? Well, I

have an idea... but I can't

> be sure whether it's a reasonable one or

not yet.

>
> Five to four??
> --------------
> You see,

if IE *penkWe (through which we also get "fist" from) is an ancient

>

word derived from an IndoTyr **penkWe as it regularly should, we might not

> think anything of it other than a possible differing term for

"five".

>
> The question is, if this word existed in IT, how was it

formed? Inheirited,

> borrowed, compound word? Curiously,

SinoTibetan has a similar word for

> "five", *bNa (Cantonese ng, Mandarin

wu), but surely IT and ST were not side

> by side!
>
> Why

mention this? Well, I'm coming to the interesting conclusion that

>

IndoTyrrhenian and _Pre-NWC_ were side-by-side. Unfortunately, the term

>

reconstructed in the later NWC stage would seem to be *sxW@, which is not

> what we imaginative comparative linguists are hoping for.
>
> Of course, I'm not one to give up. Upon an unrelated closer examination
> (fueled in part by Guillaume), I've become convinced that NWC, Na-Dene

and

> ST share relatively close commonalities and must have derived from

a parent

> language (SinoDene) located in C Asia prior to the arrival of

ProtoSteppe.

> As IndoTyrrhenian spread out from the Steppe linguistic

area, Pre-NWC was

> ahead of it to the west, after having spread out from

its own SinoDene

> language area just before Steppe's arrival.
>
> There are common numerals to be found between NWC and SinoTibetan...
> including *p@...@ "five" (N=velar nasal). The velar nasal, which was

probably

> unvoiced, regularly becomes a laryngeal in NWC. The curious

initial *s- that

> Starostin has difficulty explaining in NWC *sxW@ is

the result of

> assimilation via *s-initial "three" which spread like

wildfire to "four",

> then "five". This occured in a similar fashion in

SinoT where we find a

> spread of *b- from the numeral *bNa to others

like "four", "nine" or "ten"

> in some ST languages.
>
>

Along with the seemingly strong areal influence on phonology between NWC and

> IndoTyrrhenian, a Pre-NWC loanword would be just what I need to help

clinch

> things. And the phonetics work so well too :)
>
>

Pre-NWC *p@...@ -------> IndoTyr *penkWe

>

(Note: IndoTyr *e is a _schwa_)

>
> > (3) Why are

your sound correspondences so capricious? E.g., ITyrrh.

> > >*kWetWe > IE *kWetwores, but ITyrrh. *kWel > IE *tréjes (via
> >*tWeréi->ec). Why doesn't your *t: in *kit:u/*kWut:u show up as
> >(traditional) >IE *d?
>
> Okay. This is a bugger to explain

>
> About *kit:u/*kWut:u
> --------------------
>
> First, IndoTyr *kWetWe would normally have become IE **kWetu.

Evidently,

> there is a plural suffix secondarily attached here. Thus we

should expect

> MidIE *kWetwer-ec... but how do we explain the

intrusional *-r-?

>
> The likeliest idea to come to mind so far is

that this form *kWetwer-ec is a

> _LATE_ MidIE term which was spoken

_after_ the *-n > *-r sound change. Thus

> we might suspect Old

IE/Early MidIE *kWetWen(-ec). Now, for some funny

> reason, Old IE likes

to add *-n to many monosyllabic roots... like for

> instance, the word

for "water" which would originally have been Early OIE

> *we:t: but

certainly ended up Late OIE *we:t:en, to be later changed to Late

> MIE

*we:t:er. The inanimate *-n is mentioned in my Steppe grammar where it

>

originally was a singular topic marker found also attached to pronouns.

> Perhaps it later acquired a collective singular meaning (and hence an
> inanimate gender).
>
> In Etruscan, everything appears

kosher. The final vowel is not present but

> we can't be certain whether

Etruscan omitted it or not. Etruscan scribes

> seem to like to omit

unstressed vowels alot.

>
> Finally, why it is that *kWut:u becomes

IndoTyr *kWetWe instead of *kWet:We

> is up for grabs. Suggestions? Is it

some sort of typological restriction

> preventing voiceless aspirate

stops (*kW) from coexisting with tense ones

> (*t:)?...
>
>
> *kWul- "three"
> --------------
> This numeral is giving me

some severe headaches in IndoTyr. It seems

> possible that it may be

attested in Etruscan as /ci/ but as for IE, we seem

> to have this odd

numeral *treies. Again, as with "four", the word is given a

> superfluous

plural suffix. Thus, we might logically project back a MidIE

>

*t(W)erei-ec.

>
> This isn't what we should expect. A form *kWul-

should regularly become

> IndoTyr *kWel-. On the other hand, let's remind

ourselves that numbers

> aren't alone but part of a system, surrounded by

other numbers, and

> sometimes, phonetics can get mingled amongst each

other.

>
> The IndoTyr word for "two" appears to be *t:Wei (Steppe

*t:ui). If we were

> to suppose for a moment that *t:Wei had influenced

**kWel to produce a

> poetic **kWel-ei (and mind you, Steppe *-i is

itself a plural suffix), we

> get farely close already to the eventual

form of MidIE *t(W)erei. Perhaps,

> further dental-initial assimilation

could have brought about a pleasant

> numeric triplet in Old IE *[t:u /

t:Wei / tWelei].

>
> If so, the addition of a plural suffix *-ec by

the time of the penultimate

> accent changes would first produce

*tWeleiec with accent on the second

> syllable, followed by expected

vowel reduction to produce an awkward

> **tleies. From here, it's easy to

explain why *-l- should become *-r-.

>
> It's a thought anyways.

Other suggestions?

>
> > (4) What is the contrast

(if any) between *kit:u and *kWut:u?

>
> Variants of the same

numeral, that's all. The form *kit:u is attested in

> Altaic while

*kWut:u is shared between IndoTyr and Uralic. I'm still not

> sure

whether Nostratic has *hut?u or *hit?u (Coptic fto "four", Hausa huD'u)

>

or whether I'm imagining things :)

>
> > (5) What's

your evidence for *ri, *ra, and *munri (the most >mysterious

> >of

them all, for which I can't see a shred of support in >the attested

> >"Steppe" languages [or perhaps Nivkh is meant to be your >sole witness,

but

> >why?])?
>
> So many questions! Wonderful. This

mystery has an exotic explanation. First,

> these three numerals oddly

seem to go back tens of thousands of years (along

> with many of the

lower ones too). I know that this sounds counter-intuitive

> given that

many think these numerals shouldn't be recoverable from such an

> ancient

time.

>
> I reconstruct Nostratic *rut, *ra(-mu) and *munri as well

as the parent

> DeneCaucasian numerals *rutL, *sul-rit "three from" and

*mn-rit "two from".

> You're probably frightened by these reconstructions

right now so I'll step

> back a moment and just talk about

Steppe.

>
> The evidence in Steppe is mostly from Altaic (as what

Starostin presents for

> the same numeral online where, after making some

really stooopid errors, he

> reconstructs Altaic *n'u "6" and *nad[i]

"7"):

>
> Altaic I *ru
> Altaic II *nu "six"
>

-------------------

> Old Japanese mu-
> Tungusic *n'uNgun
>

Negidal: n´uNun

> Manzhu: niNgun
>

Nanai: n´uNgu~

> Ulcha: n´uNgu(n)
>

Orok: nuNgu(n)

> Zhurzhen: niuN-z^u

(641)

> Even: n´uN'n
> Evenki:

n´uNun

>
> (/N/ = velar nasal)
>
> Altaic

I *ra

> Altaic II *na "seven"
> ---------------------
> Old

Japanese *nana-

> Tungusic *nadan
> Negidal:

nadan

> Manzhu: nadan
> Nanai:

nada~

> Ulcha: nada(n)
> Orok:

nada(n)

> Zhurzhen: nadan
> Even:

nad'n

> Evenki: nadan
> Mongolic *dal- (?)
>
> Starostin attempts to include Turkic in his reconstruction for "seven"

- I

> couldn't possibly describe how utterly stupid that suggestion is,

so I

> won't.
>
> The word for "eight" has no attestion at

all :( and is just a suggestion

> based on some other Nostratic languages

which seem to suggest that DC *mnrit

> was inheirited into Nostratic as

*munri. This requires LOTS of explaining in

> itself so I'll respond to

that in a seperate posting if anyone asks me.

>
> I hope I answered

everything so far. Now tell me, what do you have on Nivkh,

>

perchance?

>
>
> - gLeN
>
>

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