--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> Torsten:
> Møller never published anything in way of substance concerning
> these long-range comparisons because he ignored (perhaps
> purposefully) the sheerly immense span of time seperating the two
> languages and the obvious possibilities for mutual contact after
> Nostratic seperation that would obscure relationship over these past
> seventeen thousand years! Given this, it's beyond me how you can
> insist on deifying him as a true source of information. My ideas
> on Nostratic are based on others too, but this doesn't mean that
> any single reference of might put in my bibliography one day are
> a large wealth of ideas.
You still haven't read him, have you? Yes, German is a difficult
language.
>
> Without fully understanding the intermediate stages of either
> language group (which we don't at all as it currently stands),
> the above two factors (span of time, later mutual contact)
> cannot adequately weed out reality from fantasy. I feel IE and AA
> *are* ultimately related but deeper thinking must be devoted to
> this problem. Certainly, making Greenbergian word lists does
> nothing to help and is only acid to a sore.
Møller never made "Greenbergian word lists", he related the IE and AA
with rules. As far as I can check them, they apply and make sense.
But of course you would have to actually read him to discover that.
> Unfortunately, even today, Nostraticists are still ignoring
> rather than remedying the problems existant with properly proving
> genetic relationship between IE and AA.
>
Which means? And the relevance is?
> -------------------------------------------------
> gLeNny gEe
Perhaps I should relate why this idea of loanwords from Austronesian
to Afro-Asiatic got into my head in the first place.
I read Møller some years ago out of curiosity. I found him
interesting and well-argued.
Some time later I came across Stephen Oppenheimer's "Eden in the
East". Fascinating and well-argued. It contained a reference to the
lists of supposed Austric-Sanskrit and Austric-Sumerian cognates that
Paul Manansala had published on the net.
Imagine my surprise when I recognized Møller's IndoEuropean-
AfroAsiatic cognates in the majority (actually 78%) of Manansala's
Austric-Sanskrit cognates.
Now why was this? Manansala's thing was a theory that Sanskrit was
derived not from IndoEuropean but from Austric. He doesn't appear
interested in IndoEuropean as such, judging from his postings on the
usenet. How come that his list which was compiled with a completely
different purpose should show such agreement with Møller's
IndoEuropean-AfroAsiatic cognates? Since I agree with Glen that
recovering the genetic relationship between IndoEuropean and
AfroAsiatic would be very difficult, where did these almost
transparently related roots fit in? Answer: loanwords.
And when I look at the semantic filds covered by some of the roots, I
get a suspicion that the originating language is indeed Austronesian:
magic(*bhA- "appearing into this world"), travelling (by boat) (*bh:p-
l:r- "going across (a strait, also sipritually)", *wgh- "boat, wain,
travel"), navigation > surveying and astronomy (*Hrg- "rex", "reach",
*md- "mid", "measure", "order of the world")
And BTW, in the back of my head were the rich bronze age finds
(weapons, rock carvings, magic boat models) in Denmark that I know
from museums here.
Torsten