Re: [tied] Metathesis - The armchair linguist's favourite tool

Dear Torsten and Cybalisters:

I agree that Møller was a true pioneer; and without his ground-breaking work, others would have come to the idea of a Nostratic connection between IE and AA much more slowly.

I have a copy of his _Vergleichendes indogermanisch-semitisches Wörterbuch_, reprinted in 1970, that I will look at when the well has run otherwise dry.

Not everyone on the list can read German, which is one difficulty; secondly, Møller's notational conventions are a bit off-putting but he certainly anticipated Lehmann's "syllabicity" stage of IE by reconstructing bases for IE without indicated vowels: e.g. bh-l-, 'break out'.

I also have his 1906 _Semitisch und Indogermanisch_. Like much early linguistic work, I believe it is fair to say that it does not take full cognizance of what we now know to be typologically reasonable realtionships between consonants but it still has much of interest for those who can master it.

Without this work, it is difficult to see how Nostratic as it is currently formulated, could have come about.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@... (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 5:14 PM
Subject: [tied] Metathesis - The armchair linguist's favourite tool


>
> Torsten:
> >I wonder how you discovered my cleverly disguised intention of
> >uniting the wet *w-'s. [...] Anyway, the reason was that Møller posits for
> >*u:r- etc a root approx. *w-H-r-, and since he occasionly
> >lets H's (laryngeals) wander in and out of roots by means of >metathesis, a
> >term I find employed often in the Hamito-Semitic
> >Encyclopedic Dictionary by Orël & Stolbova [...]
>
> The term "metathesis" is employed prolifically in long-range
> comparative linguistic materials because it is one of the best tools
> for the hopelessly uneducated or for the tragically dyslogical to
> link any word with any other word without having to go through the
> pain of proper thought or research. Starostin uses it for almost
> every one of his "North Caucasian" reconstructions in the hopes that
> no one will notice (and many don't because they don't focus enough
> to pay attention to detail - must be something in the water nowdays).
>
> All this doesn't get to the heart of the truth at all, but perhaps the
> results are interesting to conlangers trying to make new exotic
> languages for science-fiction novels and movies. I believe there is another
> list for conlangers somewhere.
>
> Torsten, you've been trying to sell your Møller-based theory on the
> Nostratic list but you can't get around the fact that this is just
> mass-comparison combined with what I like to call "mathematical
> linguistics", a branch of linguistics involving the mathematization
> of human language to the point of absurdity to reap whatever strange
> satisfaction one can find out of such a fantasy-oriented hobby.
>
> Of course, there's no reason to presume a metathesis in *wed- because
> of Uralic *wete and other external links made by other Nostraticists
> that don't demonstrate the initial *H1, let alone the lack of evidence
> *within* IE for the initial phoneme in this and other *w- words (as
> Piotr mentioned). Your theory is very, very weak for many
> reasons - unacceptable methodology, unintuitive, and based on outdated
> and/or contraversial materials.
>
> - gLeN
>
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