[tied] Re: Armenian.

So. This makes the RUKI-rule a later (post proto-Armenian breakoff)
rule, with RUKI affecting [pre-?]proto-Balto-Slavic separately. But it
makes e-augment earlier, I think.

All of these isoglosses make one's brain overheat.

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Armenian is a Satem language; in fact it's more consistently Satemic
than any other branch. I suggest that until ca. 2000 BC, pre-Hellenic,
pre-Armenian and Proto-Indo-Iranian dialects (as well as ancestors of
minor groups such as Phrygian, which was closer to Greek, Thracian,
Getic and perhaps Albanian) formed a Sprachbund north of the Black Sea
and the Caucasus, with Greek splitting off before the Satem
palatalisation and some other eastern features began to spread. Some
early innovations affected Greek, Armenian and Indo-Iranian but did
not diffuse into other neighbouring groups such as pre-Baltic/Slavic.
As regards Armenian, some scholars propose a very early migration
date, not later than the middle of the second millennium BC. Werner
Winter (1997) argues that the most likely derivation of Hurrian
es^s^i- 'horse' is from an ancestral form of Armenian e:s^ (now
meaning 'donkey' but reflecting *eis^- < ek^wo-; the shape of the
Hurrian word rules out Anatolian or Indo-Aryan origin). If so,
however, the date of Proto-Armenian/Hurrian contacts would likely have
preceded the borrowing of Indo-Aryan horse-breeding and horse-training
jargon by the Hurrians, and the area where the contacts occurred may
have been well to the northeast of historical Arme (= Armini, attested
in the mid-8th c. BC), possibly in or near the Caucasus.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: cas111jd@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 4:45 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Armenian.
>
>
> Yeah, I know. I'm just looking at it from history and archaeology. I
> see no way that they could just appear out of nowhere in the post-
> Assyrian period.
>
> As far as the Greco-Armeno-Iranian language isoglosses, I've always
> wondered if their was some substata of pre-IE poplations across this
> area whose common language features can help explain that
> commonality. Otherwise we might surmise that the early Greeks were
in
> close contact with the proto-Armenians and Iranians of the Pontic
> steppe. However, with the Greeks peeling off first for the sunny
> south, followed a millenium later by the Iranians, then about three
> or four centuries later by the Armenians? I suppose the Armenians
> would have followed in the wake of the Cimmerians and Scythians from
> the north Caucasic steppe?