From: tgpedersen
Message: 15842
Date: 2002-10-01
> On Tue, 20 Mar 2001 11:31:47 -0000, tgpedersen@... wrote:of
>
> [stuff about Austronesian, or was it Austric?]
>
> While I don't believe a word of this whole Oppenheimer-Manansala
> stuff, it's still interesting to note that in 1840, Franz Bopp, one
> the fathers of Indo-European studies (although pre-Junggrammatiker)that,
> published an article where he advocated a (genetic) relationship
> between Indo-European and Malayo-Polynesian. I have never read
> so I cannot say exactly what his idea was based on, but one can make(PAN
> an educated guess that the numerals had something to do with it.
> Austronesian forms such as <duwa> "2" (PAN *dewsa) and <teru> "3"
> *telu) certainly strike the imagination, and Bopp thought he was onto
> something, just like he (justly) thought to be on to something whenhe
> noted (as one of the first) the similarities between the Sanskritand
> Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic conjugation systems.to
>
> Nowadays, of course, these similarities are thought to be mere
> coincidences, but about a year ago I found something strange. I was
> reading up on Ancient Egyptian in Schenkel's "Einführung", and came
> the chapter on the numerals. The Egyptian for "four" was <jfdw>(Hausa)
> (*/?Vft.aw/ < *<?-p.-t.->). Schenkel compares this with forms like
> Somali <afar> "4", and Beja <fad.ig> "4". I might add Chadic
> <f(w)ud.u> "4". The interesting thing is that Schenkel nextcompares
> Semitic <?arba3-> "4", from *<?arp.aG->, and by metathesis andthat
> (irregular) *t. > r, ultimately from a PAA prototype like
> *<?Vp.t.-VGu> (> AEg. <?afd.aw>, Somali <afar>) or *<p.Vt.-VGu> (>
> Beja <fad.ig>, Hausa <fud.u>).
>
> At the time, I was thinking about the possibility that cases of
> Germanic *f/*b, besides general PIE *kw, might reflect a PIE phoneme
> *pw, so a hypothetical *<pwetwor-> "four" (**putVwa:r-) fit right in
> with this PAA form *<p.Vt.VGu>. And so did PAA *c^VlVc^- (PSem
> *t_ala:t_-) "three", if from **tila[:]ti-, in view of PIE *trey-,
> where the *-y might reflect palatalized *t^ (cf. the ordinal *<tr.t-
>)
> and the unacceptable cluster **tl- may have developed regularly to
> *tr- (so *t[^]ret^- from pre-Nullstufe **tilati-).
>
> To this, we can add Basque <hirur> "3", which can be derived from
> **<tilut->, and <laur> "4", possibly from **<lapt->.
>
> The amazing thing is the link with Proto Austronesian. We have
> *<telu> "3", and *<xepate> "4". The *x is a reconstructed sound
> mostly goes to zero, /h/ or glottal stop, but appears as /s/, /s^/or
> /l/ in the Taiwanese languages. Maybe it was a fricative lateral,accept
> which is interesting, considering Basque <laur> "4" < *<lapt->.
>
> Now relations between PIE and PAA, whether genetic or involving the
> mere borrowing of numerals, are not surprising (think of *septm).
> Basque is not terribly surprising either ("6" and "7" in Basque are
> <sei> (*<s^ei>) and <zazpi> (< *sasbi)). But what the hell are
> PAA/PIE numerals doing in Taiwan? I have no explanation. I'll
> "coincidence".I don't think we have to include the Taiwanese forms by going all the
>
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...