Re: "The explanation for Semitish"... one more time :)

Glen Gordon:

> Therefore, the only satisfying solution I can possibly think up
> is the following: There is an unattested sister language to
> Semitic, which I call "Semitish", spoken further north in
> Western Anatolia and the Balkans c.6500-6000 BCE. Its speakers
> would have been the first agriculturalists into Europe, which
> would explain why a large chunk of identifiable Semitic words in
> IE are agricultural in nature. The Semitish speaking peoples
> would have spread marginally into Europe, interacting with IE
> and Tyrrhenian to the north. (Tyrrhenian is the mother language
> of Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic.) By 5500 BCE or so, Tyrrhenian
> would have started to spread and to supplant Semitish in the
> Balkans. Then by 5000 BCE, Semitish had completely died out in
> the Balkans and West Anatolia due to the new preference for
> Tyrrhenian in these areas...

You are placing your Semitish-speakers on either side of the Bosphorus
land bridge. For *direct* loans, you have to have old PIE speakers
somewhere north of the Danube and east of the Carpathian arch, or up
in the Middle Danube, and at rather deep time-depths.

If you want Semitic-IE interactions, somewhere around the Caucausus,
the Caspian and/or Iranian Plateau offers some possibilities. The
'Semitish' speakers would be pioneering farmers coming from the
Iranian Plateau, interacting in the area north of the Caucasus. The
Volga delta is a wonderful place for agriculture.

If one is to accept an eastern Ponto-Caspian Steppe location as the IE
homeland (Gimbutas' favored thesis), this is the most likely place to
place Semitic-IE loans.