From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 17965
Date: 2003-01-22
>Like it or not, the assyriologist Gordon WhittakerThanks, that was the name I was trying to remember.
>of Goettingen has been=======================
>making a strong case for an IE substratum in Sumerian over the past decade
>or so. The substratum is seen in a large number of IE loanwords in
>Sumerian and in a number of sign values which make perfectly good sense as
>IE. I understand it to be Whittaker's thesis that the Sumerians took at
>least part of their writing system from a neighbouring IE population. If
>correct the discovery adds over a millennium to the direct attestation of
>IE linguistic material. I have bee present at two presentations by
>professor Whittaker and have been genuinely impressed and, within the
>limits of my judicial powers, quite convinced that he is basically right.