[tied] Re: PIE's closest relatives

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>
> Richard:
> >Why is it more ridiculous than contact between Semitic and pre-

Indo-

> >European?
>
> First of all, Sumerian was in the Fertile Crescent and IE was in

Eastern

> Europe in all likelihood. There's an even greater distance than

between

> Palestine and Eastern Europe, don't you agree?

I thought Palestine was part of the fertile crescent, so I don't
agree with your literal statment about the distance.

IE's being in Eastern Europe doesn't rule out its also being in
Anatolia. I'm still tempted to put Proto-Indo-Hittite in Anatolia.
You've already got Tyrrhenian off the South coast of Anatolia.

I think the deduction of 'Semitish' speaks volumes about how a
priori implausible you found the IE-Semitic contacts.

> In contrast, evidence for Sumerian is completely non-existent.

There are

> wild attempts to get Sumerian and IE in close quarters but this

just

> doesn't work. It's crap.

Picking a fight with Jens, eh? (See
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/17933 .)

> Only a handful of words might be vraisemblable
> enough to be connected. There is /girgir/ and *kWekWlo- but, as I
> already said, *kWekWlo- derives from *kWel- already so to try to

connect

> it with Sumerian is etymological overkill.

How common is this IE noun formation? I can only think of *bHebHru-
'brown aquatic animal' and Greek _kiki_ 'castor-oil berry'.

> Even so, Semitic *galgal- is
> sufficient intermediary and logically so since it is
> geographically in-between the two languages.

I think the three words are related, with at least one of PIE and
Sumerian being refashioned by popular etymology. (I'm not sure
about Semitic - the semantics are appropriate for a reduplicated
root.)

Richard.