Re: Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

>
>
> >
> > However, your reasoning that since /j/ (<y>) is not found in the
> > eastern branch in this root, then it must have been borrowed (in
> > Greek and Germanic, as I understand you to mean): I don't think that
> > this must necessarily be so.
> > AJ
> ========
> Yes, that's the reason to think it's borrowed in Eastern PIE.

Here, by "Eastern PIE" you mean Greek, do you not? The root doesn't
occur in the Eastern PIE branch of Indo-Iranian.

> ======
> > Right now, I think your hypothesis is plausible and
> > possible, but at the same time I see no compelling reason to discard
> > the traditional view of this root. And even if it is a borrowing of
> > Semitic *z_r_&, it could not have been borrowed any earlier than
> > agriculture appeared in the Middle East, which as I take it is
> > considered to be in the Neolithic period -- which argues against your
> > final conclusion.

>
> I don't understand your last sentence.
>
> Arnaud
> ======
>

My reasoning was flawed. For some reason I confused 4000 BC, the
conservative estimate of the splitting-time of the Indo-Europeans,
with the time of the first appearance of agriculture. So you can
ignore my last sentence, _it_ is erroneous.

> >
> > I would think, the later the split, the less likely major differences
> > would be found between the eastern and the western branches (just as
> > in genetic differences in evolution) -- hence the less likely one
> > would find the H2/y alternation. If the split were early, on the
> > other hand, this would give time for phonetic change, and therefore
> > phonetic drift, to evolve, making the H2/y alternation more likely.
> >
> > If the H2erH3- root were borrowed from Semitic before 8000 BC, this
> > would give it time to evolve differently in the eastern and western
> > branches (H2- vs. y-).
> ===========
> yes.
> From Semitic (or probably something else)
> Arnaud
> ==========
> > If it were borrowed from Semitic e.g. around
> > 4000 BC, I would think one would expect that it would appear
> > comparatively less changed in the various adoptive languages -- hence
> > one would expect *s- as in Latin <sario:> (as an example, I know you
> > consider it a substrate word) more so than *H2- in the western
> > branch.
> =======
> In that case, one would expect a uniform *s
> like in the word *sal 'salt' related to zaGwa 'sea'.
>
> This means that the word H2erH3 spread in indo-european languages,
> AFTER the regular change *z > y in eastern IE,
> but early enough to be reflected by *sar- in Latin substrate.
>
> It seems you are finally agreeing to the fact this word cannot be a

cognate,

> whatever the time it entered IE languages ?
>
> Arnaud

I think my reasoning would imply that it was borrowed _late_ enough to
be reflected by *sar- in Latin substrates (since /z/ has changed
little in this substrate word), and _late_ enough not to show evidence
of a change *z > y in eastern IE, and therefore so late as to be less
likely to be reflected by *H2- in western IE, if it indeed came from
Semitic *z_r_&-. But since it _is_ reflected by *H2- in western IE, I
would think it therefore is not borrowed from this Semitic root. But
of course you have implied earlier that the time of the *z > y change
is irrelevant to this root since the eastern languages borrowed it not
in the *z- form but in the later western *H2- form. So based on that
it could still be a loan from Semitic *z_r_&- (or Kartvelian *zil-).
But I still don't see why it absolutely _cannot_ be a cognate (you
mean native to PIE?) that only survived in the western branches of IE.
Are there no cognates that were not borrowed from Semitic or other
language family that survive only in western IE and not in Indo-Iranian?

> ===========
>
> > In the eastern branch, *y- might still be expected, as it is
> > less different from *z- than is *H2-, but I would think one would
> > rather see an assimilation to e.g. the reflex of *g^- in these
> > languages.
> > AJ
> ============
> I don't understand this.
> Arnaud

You can forget about it. I thought /z/ would be acoustically more
similar to /g^/ than to /j/, and thought of the change /g^/>/z/ in
Avestan (not /g^/>/j/ where /j/ is the palatal semivowel) and words
such as <jealous>, F <jaloux>, from Gk <zêlos>. But on actually
pronouncing the sounds, I have realized that /z/ is probably more
acoustically similar to /j/ than it is to /g^/.

Andrew