Re: [tied] Etruscan and Nakh

>Sez you. But I'm not allowed to say the Etruscans were in Anatolia >prior
>to 1200 BC? Which of us is operating with more evidence than >the other?

I'm working on common sense and deduction. When the "Etruscans" were in
Anatolia, they weren't "Etruscans". We can only call them such when they
arrived in Italy. So there weren't any "Etruscans" in Anatolia.

>> Ha! So you're saying that Etruscan /c/ (pronounced [k]) relates to
>> >>Chechen /-cha/, eh??
>
>I know. Nobody believes Italian is descended from Latin. The sound >shift
>/k/ > /tS/ is just too fantastic to be credible.

Italian is known to be related to Latin by regular sound correspondances
which you fail to operate under, hence my laughter.

>Only an idiot believes that the simplest explanation is always true.

Only an idiot goes for the more complex answer without fully weighing the
data. I'm not saying that it _must_ be a simple answer but one thing is for
sure: You'll never get the answer at all if you start with a megalomaniac
over-the-top theory.

>>>Morphological redetermination is also present in Nakh to form new
>>> >>>nouns from oblique cases e.g. Etr. /Uni/ 'Juno', /unial/ 'Juno's
>>> >>>temple' (lit. 'of Juno'), cf. Batsbi /cu/ 'oats', /cun/ 'bread'
>>> >>>(lit. 'of oats').
>>
>> This can be found in IE as well. So what?
>
>Examples?

Thematic adjectives, for example. Nouns derived from the genitive plural
-om, for another.

>Who knows? A lot of stuff entered Latin from Etruscan.

An assumption, of course. One might want to pretend that everything that is
shared between Latin and Etruscan is the result of borrowing but when the
entire evidence is weighed it becomes severely unlikely.

>>You obviously don't have a clue what an ergative is used for and you
>> >>don't have a clue about Etruscan. No one would be so daft as to
>> >>propose such a thing for Etruscan /-s/.
>
>Beekes?

My point exactly. I rest my case. You may as well say "Greenberg" for all I
care. Just because a lunatic proposes something doesn't mean it's true.

>Sorry, there are THREE instances of /cn/ in the whole Etruscan >corpus. The
>same number of instances as there are of /cnl/, in fact. >Now why would
>anybody want to stick another case ending on to a word >which already had
>an 'accusative' ending?

Well, that depends on whether you look at the -n ending as an accusative or
as an oblique ending. The two cases are related anyways, of course.

>And how do you know that the handful of nouns with /-n/ added
>aren't just alternative forms for /-ne/ or /-na/?

No, that ending doesn't mark regular nouns. The most we can say is that the
accusative was marked for pronominals and demonstratives.

>As Miguel has just pointed out, /pulumchva/ is translatable as >'stars'
>[...] I can't relate this to Nakh
>unfortunately, [...]

Unfortunately. Too bad. :(

>> Can these words and names be analyzed in Greek terms?
>
>I can't remember the exact argument that was used by people objecting >to
>them being analysed as pre-Greek, but they can certainly be >analysed in
>Anatolian terms.

Yes, like Parnassos.

>> If you don't have a hypothesis, you don't have a point.
>
>I do. You just don't like it because I don't find the answer in
> >hypothetical macro'families'.

No, you have an uneducated, un-thought-out hunch that doesn't conform to
accepted archaeological or linguistic evidence. Perhaps it sounds cruel but
it's true. You're out on a giant limb here. You haven't fully outlined how
this supposed contact has come to be, where and when, and you're relying on
Beeks (yixe!). I have no respect for ideas that just don't work from the
beginning. There can never have been contact between Etruscan and Nakh,
ever.

- gLeN

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