Re: Meaning of Aryan: now, "white people"?

Be careful with Bengtson's information. Even after
Larry Trask showed him that much of his Basque
vocabulary consisted of loanwords from Romance, he
refused to even consider the possibility. I don't know
how good his information is from other sources but his
work on Basque is seriously flawed because he lets his
grand design get in the way of facts.
Basically Bengtson refused to believe that pre-Basque
lacked /m/, something that Basque specialists seem to
agree on. He also refused to consider words from
Gascon, Aragonese as probable sources for loanwords
into Basque --e.g. eme "woman, female (morpheme)" <
Gascon heme "woman" < femina; okondo < native Basque
oko "arm" + ondo "bottom (morpheme)" from Gascon or
Spanish hondo are a couple I remember.
If Bengtson took Trask's and many others
recommendations into account, his work would be much
more credible.
I can't speak to his competency in regard to other
languages but he ignores experts in Caucasian et al.,
his work is worthless.
I'm not opposed to the Dené-Caucasian enterprize, just
to willful sloppiness.
If you're pursuing DC, then you should definitely
consult van Driem to see if he's on the right track or
not. I'm not a linguist and can't vouch for his work
but if Burushaski and Yenisseian form a lx unit, it
behooves you to take that into account.


--- Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <gpiotr@...>
> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003"
> <swatimkelkar@>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Burushki [sic] languages of Pakistan has been
> classified as
> > > Dravidian.
> >
> > Our friend has probably confused Burushaski with
> Brahui, the way
> > some people confuse Sweden with Switzerland
> because they too
> > alliterate.
>
> Burushaski is almost certainly a member of the
> Dene-Caucasian
> macrofamily, more closely related to the
> Macro-Caucasian superfamily
> (a sub-division of the former, a.k.a.
> Vasco-Caucasian) proposed and
> studied by John Bengtson. See Bengtson's latest
> paper dealing with
> this posited language superfamily at
>
> http://jdbengt.net/articles/burush2007.pdf
>
> Michael Witzel has attempted to relate the languages
> of the BMAC
> (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, ca.
> 2200-1700 BCE) to this
> hypothesized language superfamily; references can be
> provided on
> request.
>
> Always in this connection, re: the following
> question posed by
> another listmember:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> <gabaroo6958@...>
> wrote:
>
> > Who knows anything about Karasuk? Proposed by
> George van Driem,
> > it purports to link Burushaski and Yeniseian. I've
> only seen
> > references to it. My understanding is that van
> Driem doesn't get
> > into Dené-Caucasian.
>
> I don't know of this "Karasuk" grouping, but if you
> need this
> information, I can look in van Driem's book
> _Language of the
> Himalayas_, which I have at home (please write me
> off-List for
> that).
>
> I distinctly recall that some statistical studies
> suggest that
> Burushaski is closer to the western Dene-Caucasian
> language group,
> whereas Yenesseian is closer to
> Sino-Tibetan/Tibeto-Burman.
>
> See a map of the Dene-Caucasian macro-family at
>
> http://starling.rinet.ru/maps/maps5.php?lan=en
>
> Kindest regards,
> Francesco
>
>

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