Re: [tied] Re: PIE's closest relatives

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 29396
Date: 2004-01-12

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 15:24:18 +0000, Marco Moretti
<marcomoretti69@...> wrote:

>> >I have read many inconsistence about linking Sumerian items with
>> >something else, due to erroneous analysis of word structure.
>> >Examples: /a/ "water" is not from /ab/ ( /ab/, "ocean", "sea",
>etc...
>> >is merely a reduction of /aba/ < /ab/ "hole, cavity"
>+ /a/ "water"!!!).
>>
>> That could only be John A. Halloran's dillusions at sumerian.org.
>> There's no need to even go on about him although his sumerian
>> glossary is impressive, even if suspect at times. However, this
>shows
>> exactly why these lazy etymologies, including yours on /urudu/,
>> don't work.
>
>The proposed etymologies are sometimes strange, but in most cases
>valid. It is not a suspect lexicon: the only thing I suspect is that
>nobody read it.

I've read it. The lexicon is valuable as an online source of Sumerian
vocabulary, in as much as it's based on serious dictionaries. What I don't
like is the awkward ordering of the items, not the baseless
etymologizations. The reason for both of these idiosyncrasies is
Halloran's thesis that the Sumerians not only invented writing (which may
well be true), but that they were also responsible for the invention of
language itself (which is totally off the wall).

Sumerian core vocabulary consists mainly of short monosyllabic words (like
<a> "water"). As anyone approaching Sumerian from the sane side will
understand, the most likely cause for this is that Sumerian as attested is
the result of a long process of phonetic wear (e.g. French /o/ "water" is
the result of 2,000 years of phonetic erosion of original Latin <aqua>).
Halloran needs to prove that Sumerian is the original language, so <a> for
him cannot be a reduced form of equally attested <ab>, but must be the
original word for "water" (not just in Sumerian, but in general!). None of
this can of course be taken seriously.

<urudu> is too long to be a native Sumerian word. It's a borrowing, and
the source is quite clearly PIE *h1roudh-.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...