Hakan:
>Let's start with an example. If we made a list of demonstrative >pronouns
>from a large number of languages from all continents, >perhaps they would
>look vaguely similar, not because they are all >related to Patrick Ryan's
>distant Proto-World language, but because >they are all "pointing sounds",
>sounds that are typical of humans who >want to point something out. [...]
>And if we follow this line of thought, could any idea or meaning be
> >connected to just about any sound? Or are certain ideas and meanings
> >predisposed to be associated with certain sounds because of the way >all
>humans think and feel?
With the demonstrative example, there isn't just one or two sounds that can
make demonstratives:
Cantonese gogo, digo
Mandarin zheige, neige
Etruscan eca, eta
IndoEurop. *e, *se, *to, *yo-
Chechen d`a-
The last example is something I love so much because it shatters the
backgrounding principle as do many NorthEast Caucasian langauges. Teehee.
Even when taking backgrounding into account though, the possibilities for a
demonstrative form are still quite abundant. I don't find the backgrounding
arguement terribly discouraging in regards to long-range comparison.
>Could the pronouns "I" and "you" be represented by just any sounds
You're treading on the now-dead "googoo" theory, if I'm not mistaken... or
is it the "bowwow" theory... maybe it was the "gaga" theory... oh well, you
get the idea. Not very well respected anymore (if it ever was). This list of
first person pronouns should sway you away from this terrible hypothesis
once and for all. Here's what I remember off the top of my head:
Chechen /so/
Latin /ego/
French /je/
Spanish /yo/
Finnish /min�/
Turkish /ben/
Japanese /watashi, watakushi, atashi, boku/
Mandarin /wo/
Cantonese /ngo, o/
Ojibway /nin/
Tagalog /ako/
Khinalug /z�/
Avar /dun/
Swahili /u-/
... As you can see, just about ANY initial phoneme exists for 1ps stems. The
belief that /m-/ is THE sound for the 1ps pronoun is a Eurocentric
dillusion, thought up by pseudolinguists who knew very little about world
languages and only spoke IndoEuropean languages where *me is common.
Phonemes that might be associated with the 2ps are just as numerous and so I
won't bore you with another long and varied list.
This is another reason why backgrounding hardly serves to undermine the
validity of Nostratic linguistics or the worth-while effort of long-range
linguistics. Unfortunately, the validity of Nostratic linguistics is often
undermined just fine by the Nostraticists themselves (Oh my! Did I say
that?! Naughty boy, I am) :)
A "Happy New Year" is comin' back atcha, Hak! And to all a good night.
- gLeN
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