From: mkelkar2003
Message: 48407
Date: 2007-05-02
>"The failure of Indo-Europeanist and other historical linguists even
> I myself lean towards the theory of a Pontic-Caspian home base for
> PIE. However, the issue with likely borrowings with Semitic poses
> some issues. Along with the ongoingly discussed PIE *(s)tauros -
> Proto-Semitic *t~awr- (both bull, first also aurochs, second also
> ox), one should note PIE *medhu (honey) - Proto-Semitic *mVtk-
> (sweet), PIE *septm - Proto-Semitic *s^ab'atum (both seven), and PIE
> *woinom - Proto-Semitic *wayn [Mallory & Adams: 2005]
>
> It's unlikely there was any form of vessel worthy of the high seas of
> the Black Sea, so travel via that method that can likely be ruled
> out. Therefore, as I see it, there are two possibilities for how
> these Semitic words came into IE:
> 1) Trading with Semitic people
> 2) Words taken into another culture with whom the PIEans traded.
> Now, the second seems more likely when taking into account the
> distance from, say, a pre-Akkadian non-Sumerian culture in Northern
> Iraq or Northwest Iran. The face that there are so many examples of
> Wanderwoerter in Western Eurasia seems to vouch for the latter.
>
> Continuing on this hypothesis, there appear to be two routes through
> which such words could have come:
> 1) Across Anatolia, into the Balkan regions, and from there to the
> PIEans, who very likely did trading with them, considering the spread
> of some ideas but not others into seemingly non-Kurgan cultures there
> (again, this is debatable; there are hypotheses that say the Balkan
> people WERE the PIEans)
> 2) Through the Caucasus. The seemingly most likely culture for this
> transmission was the Maikop culture (again, unless they were IE as
> well), which shows several similarities with Kurgan traditions. Some
> evidence of intensive trading there is suggested by Mallory and
> Adams' discussion about the IE numbers: the comparison of the
> notoriously uncertain "6", *(k^)(s)(w)ek^s to the Proto-Kartvelian
> *eks^w [s^=sh] and Hurrian s^eez^e [s^/z^=sh/zh], as well as the
> apparent dual-form for "8", *Hxok^toh3(u), potentially from *Hxok^toh1
> (u) (with problematic laryngeal switching) with a singular *Hxok^to-
> meaning "4" perhaps being reflected in Proto-Kartvelian as *otxo
> ("four").
>
> Finally, I might as well point out some potential PIE - Proto-Uralic
> connections. Aside from the commonly discussed pronouns, there are a
> few precious examples of connected words. Anaysis is considered as
> though these were borrowings from PIE to Uralic:
>
> PIE *mei- (exchange)- PU *miGe [G = voiced velar fricative] (give,
> sell) (either with metathesis of the e and i, or related to the PIE
> zero-grade; a glide between the two has become a velar fricative. The
> similarity in meaning is clearly visible)
>
> PIE *mesg- [phonetically *mezg] (dip under water, dive)- PU *mus'ke
> [s' = palatal s] (wash) (/z/ becomes /s'/, then devoicing, and the
> vowel changing to high back under influence of the /m/. Both have to
> do with covering something with water)
>
> PIE *h1nomn (name) - PU *nime (name) (if h1 was a glottal stop, it's
> no surprise it doesn't show up in PU. The final syllabic /n/ has been
> converted into an /e/. The issue of PIE /o/ vs. PU /i/ remains
> troublesome, though. The meanings are identical)
>
> PIE *sneh1wr (tendon) - PU sene (vein, sinew) (an epenthetic /e/
> isadded between the first two letters /s/ and /n/, and the last three
> letters /h2nr/ are dropped. This seems a stretch, unless PU roots are
> all bisyllabic. Both describe long, string-like parts of the body)
>
> PIE *h2weseh2- [likely phoetic *h2wezeh2] (gold) - PU *was'ke (a kind
> of metal) (the first h2 is lost, the first /e/ becomes /a/ (like in
> Indo-Iranian), the /z/ becomes /s'/ (like in *mesg-), and
> SURPRISINGLY, the final h2 becomes a /k/. If this is an actual
> pairing of roots, then it has some impact on the laryngeal issue.
> Both terms refer to a metal)
>
> PIE *wodr (water) - PU *wete (water) (Borrowed with an /e/
> conjugation (the /o/ in *wodr is an ablauting vowel), the /d/ was
> devoiced and the final syllabic /r/ became an /e/. The meanings are
> identical)
>
> PIE *deh3- (give) - PU *toGe [again, G = voiced velar fricative]
> (bring) (After /d/'s regular devoicing, the /e/ becomes an /o/ (it
> likely already was an /o/ in PIE, thanks to the adjacent h3), and
> STRIKINGLY, the h3 becomes a verlar fricative; one more point towards
> the phonetic identity of the laryngeals. Both words refer to a
> purposeful movement of something to someone)
>
> Having noted these, one should note, however, that there is a major
> possible fault. There is more than one reconstruction for Proto-
> Uralic - the field has yet to solidify as much as Proto-Indo-European
> has - which means that the comparisons are on thin ice.
>