Re: Negau

--- On Mon, 9/29/08, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:

> >
>
> I see. By "earliest language splits" are you
> referring to the splits
> that led to the various branches of IE, or are you
> referring to a
> possible split that led to IE on one hand and Semitic

Remember, Semitic is part of Afro-Asiatic. The rise of AA seems to correspond very well with that of agriculture and its spread west into Africa. So where was AA at that time --a great icebreaker if you want to see fists fly in no time. Maybe somewhere along the west side of the Red Sea, or maybe not.
Obviously AA split from whatever else before c. 10,000 BCE or so, since it started around that time.

(and

> maybe
> Kartvelian, Uralic, Yeniseian, etc.) on the other?
> I'm still a
> little confused: if agriculture in the Fertile Crescent
> began around
> 9500 BC according to Wiki, then you are saying that the
> split between
> IE and Semitic/etc. occurred before this? Or are the word
> correspondences between Semitic/etc. and IE purely the
> result of
> borrowing, and there was no split between these, they are
> completely
> unrelated (and therefore the earliest splits you refer to
> were
> intra-IE splits, and occurred before knowledge of
> agriculture,
> possibly explaining the lack of correspondence of
> agricultural terms
> between Indo-Iranian and western IE languages)? And if you
> _are_
> referring to the intra-IE splits, how early did these
> splits occur?
> And when did Indo-Europeans acquire agriculture? Who
> taught it to
> them? And what people are the source of the common
> agricultural
> vocabulary in (at least western) IE? Is it the Semites?
> Perhaps there
> is a chronology of language development and agricultural
> development
> on the Internet?

The rise of IE may be due to pastoralism, a secondary semi-nomadic form of agriculture and its spread to the horse and the wheel

> These questions may seem pointless, too many, and maybe
> confusing -- I
> just want to be informed and satisfy my curiosity so that I
> can fully
> understand these aspects of IE history. I don't think
> I will be able
> to do this by scanning the archives, since they are often
> about
> specific words rather than general IE history.
>
> Andrew

They're all excellent questions. As Gille Deleuze put, a true philosopher finds problems rather than answers.