Hi-ho, again. It's your trusty gLeNny gEe here again trying to catch up on
HUNDREDS of mail, most of which is now junk mail from porno sites I've never
gone too ;) sigh...
Anyways, I'm adding my voice to a month's worth of email from the list. Here
goes:
I think *silbar/*zilbar is interesting. I wonder if this supposed travel of
this word from Sumer to North Europe might have anything to do with Basque
/sei/ "six" and /zazpi/ "seven" which look tres Semitic.
Isn't it interesting to note how wine starts at around 5500 BCE and we
coincidentally have widespread terms for "wine" in IE and Kartvelian that
seem to be Semitic in origin. We know that the IE term *weino- is not
analysable within IE, it's not analysable in Kartvelian as far as I know.
Hmm, I wonder what the solution could be...
Joao talked about "bears" and "horses". I don't believe that there is a
mythological assocation between the two other than that the two represent
the Mother aspect of Gimbutas' Goddess. I've concluded so far that the horse
twin myth (*Manus/*Yemos) is simply a shift of generations whereupon the sun
and moon are no longer viewed as twins but rather their offspring. The sun,
being associated already with the Goddess and the mare, was transferred to
her offspring in the form of the Horse Twins (ie: Twins of the MOTHER HORSE,
aka the Sun). I'm still trying to figure out what sex we might securely
consider the sun and the moon to be in IE myth though. Maybe the sex
preference was regional and the IE-speaking community envisioned both a male
AND a female sun deity depending on who you talked to. Perhaps, we might
have to swallow a large regional variation when reconstructing this myth of
the sun and the moon so that we can at best say that the sun is the PARENT
(either sex depending on region) of the Horse Twins.
Miguel mentioned Kartvelian *das^tw- "bear" in connection with IE *xrtko-,
cited IE "eight" and obsessed over the final Kartvelian labial which I don't
find too alarming personally. We might just as well write the Kartvelian
term with a superscript *W, it doesn't necessarily imply IE *w but rather it
could indicate ANY IE (or other foreign language) phoneme with a labial
quality. In the case of "eight", Miguel writes *ok'tH3-. For clarity's sake,
it should be more properly written *ok^txW-. *H3 is known to have a
labializing effect on neighbouring vowels so let's just call a dead horse a
dead horse, 'kay? This way, the relationship between the re-written *ok^txW-
and PK *os^txw- becomes far more readily observable. Perhaps the Satem
change was already in effect when this happened?
The final PK *-xw- is nothing more than the acknowledgement of the labial
phoneme *xW in IE. When returning to our *das^tw-, the *-w- isn't anything
important. This is again the representation of an IE labial phoneme, in this
case *-o-. Thus, *xrtk^o-/*xrk^to- -> *d-as^tw-. I'd imagine the accent must
have been on the reduced initial syllable in order to properly give the PK
reflex (cf. *wlkWos "wolf")... But the question is how do we explain PK
*d-?? Is it like the *m- prefix in *m-k.erd "heart" which is also viewed as
an IE loan?
Mark O speaks of a Pre-IE language existing in Anatolia in 7000 BCE to my
horror. John continues to confuse cultural, demic and linguistic movement
and will never find himself closer to the truth for it. I have seen no
evidence to speak of on a DeneCaucasian origin for Tyrrhenian and wouldn't
want to because it will no doubt be scary to look at. While speaking on
archaeologically attested _demic_ and _cultural_ movements, any Tyrrhenian
language placed most logically in the prehistoric Balkans does _appear_ to
derive from Anatolia, but to assume that this is linguistically so is a lazy
half-assed conclusion that ignores the likeliest linguistical associations
in favor of confusion. The names with *-sso- and *-nth- are probably
immediately of Tyrrhenian or Anatolian origin and say little about
prehistory although it would be interesting to speculatively delve into
deeper layers.
As for, Piotr's "punctuations" on IE origins, I don't quite see yet how the
Balkans/NPontic area is quite as linguistically isolating as Australia and
New Guinea. Nor does it necessarily have to create prototype creoles. I
certainly can't see how we might view Semitic as part of this "proto-type"
expansion when it looks so AfroAsiatic to most people. Likewise, Kartvelian
and IE seem quite developed enough and unique from each other to strike them
out as being creoles or heavily influenced by some kind of linguistic
implosion that Piotr is speaking of. At most, we can find areal influences
caused by longterm contacts and only a core _Semitoid_ vocabulary dating
back to 6000-5000 BCE (coincidentally the beginning of European
agriculture). John can live in his own world where early farmers spoke
Asianic or Tyrrhenian, if he wishes. If we could find various sources for
IE's innovation-associated loanwords (like *weino-, *steuro-, *gheido-) for
instance, instead of only finding Semitoid origins (*wain-, *Taur-,
*gait.-), I could swallow the "linguistic implosion" idea. The Semitoid
terms, by the way, cannot be attributable to Proto-Nostratic since many of
the terms I choose can only be associated with the budding Neolithic. It's
also unlikely that the IE terms "six" and "seven" which are absolutely
un-analysable in IE but oh-so-analysable in Semitic are simply a product of
inheritance. Everything points to a Semitoid language. Let's not be daft.
You people like to fight my ideas but yet I hear no good logical arguements
against them. We don't find tonnes of Kartvelian terms in IE, nor do we find
any certain trace of Hattic or HurroUrartian - only Semitoid terms. The
identity of this so-called "proto-type" (or as John puts it: "Asianic")
language is clear. Why doesn't anyone address the lack of non-Semitic loans
first instead of imagining every logically implausible scenario under the
Sun (whatever sex She may be)?
- gLeN
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