From: Torsten
Message: 65412
Date: 2009-11-12
>French papillon.
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > > > In order to explain these alleged doublets as AA loanwords,
> > > > you need either two distinct branches of AA with divergent
> > > > treatment of Old PAA stops,
> >
> > > Carleton Hodge has a list of examples of that, but I forgot in
> > > what book.
> >
> > The article is available at
> > <http://tinyurl.com/ya74m9v> .
>
> Hodge's methodology leaves a great deal to be desired. What he
> recognizes as "an unsatisfactory state of affairs" involving
> "problems in the establishment of regular sound correspondences" in
> Afro-Asiatic, between AA and Indo-European, and beyond (p. 237) is
> not remedied by his approach. Indeed, such problems as there are
> become even worse.
>
> It is astounding that the following (p. 250) even got published,
> unless the reviewers were on Valium:
>
> "Note. IE /w/ corresponding to other /b/ is normal ... There are
> sporadic survivals of /b/ (Skt. <balam> 'strength'), and there are
> conditioned survivals. An example of the latter is the /b/ of Lat.
> <bis> 'twice' from **dbis, where cluster simplification results in
> Gk. <dis> and Lat. <bis>. The alternate Latin form <dwis> shows
> that ordinary Indo-European /b/ alternates with /w/. LL [Livlakh,
> i.e. Indo-Afro-Asiatic] **b is the source of both AAs /b/ and IE
> /b/w/, and the scarcity of /b/'s as reconstructed for Proto-
> Indo-European is due to the general shift to /w/. ..."
>
> If this sort of poppycock were posted to Cybalist, its author would
> quickly be laughed out of the forum. We all know that Lat. <bis>
> and Grk. <dís> are perfectly regular reflexes of IE *dwís. The
> Dvenos vase and archaisms like <Dvelonai> (S.C. de Bacch.) show
> that the Latin shift /dw/ > /b/ occurred in historical times.
> Hodge has misrepresented a secure Latin protoform as a synchronic
> "alternate form" in order to justify his ludicrous **dbis by
> circular argument. Moreover, the claim of a "general shift to /w/"
> to account for the scarcity of IE /b/ merely doubles the trouble,
> since the "sporadic" survivals of original /b/ remain unexplained.
> Anyone attempting long-range comparisons which include
> Indo-European should first acquire enough IE background to avoid
> such farcical fumbling.
>
> The list of 32 sets of comparanda, which Hodge calls "core
> vocabulary related etyma" (pp. 240-5), consists of a mishmash of
> good AA comparanda (pronouns, body parts, basic verbs and nouns),
> bad AA comparanda (arbitrarily justified conflation of vaguely
> similar forms), and with few exceptions ugly IE pseudo-comparanda.
> The latter were supposedly collected from Szemerényi, an
> astonishingly bizarre choice for AA-IE comparative work, since Sz.
> was one of the least laryngeal-friendly IEists of the second half
> of the last century. Here I will briefly comment on the sets which
> contain good comparanda for more than two AA branches.
>
> 1. Hodge notes (p. 246) that the Egyptian consonant transcribed
> /3/ actually had the phonetic value [l] in the Old and Middle
> Kingdoms. We thus have Egy. <p-l> 'fly up', <n-p-l-p-l> 'flutter'
> which can reasonably be compared with Hausa <filfilwàà>
> 'fluttering', Ometo <pal-> 'fly', and Cushitic *pal- 'flutter'.
> (Semantically close, though not mentioned by Hodge, is Semitic
> *p-l-t, Arabic <falata> 'flee, escape', and perhaps Sem. *p-l-s,
> Ge`ez <falasa> 'emigrate'.) Also, Egy. <p-r-t> 'fruit' can
> reasonably be compared with Sem. *pary- 'id.' (Hebrew <pri:>). But
> there is no basis for relating this 'fruit' root to the 'fly' root,
> simply because fruit flies like bananas. Hodge attempts to bridge
> these senses with Egy. <p-r-?> 'go out', High East Cushitic *ful-
> 'id.', and Sem. *-prur- 'flee'. But the presumed relation between
> <p-r-?> and *ful- contradicts that already assumed between Egy.
> <p-l> and Cush. *pal-, and throwing in *-prur- helps nothing.
> Likewise, connecting Chadic *p-r 'fly, jump' with Cush. *par- 'id.'
> and Berber *f-r-f-r 'fly' (Touareg <fereret> 'take flight') makes
> good sense, but including these with Egy. <p-l> and the rest
> assumes an arbitrary r/l-alternation. That seems to be the heart
> of the problem with this sort of research. To me it appears that
> Hodge has conflated three distinct AA roots:
>
> 1a. *p-l 'fly', frequentative *p-l-p-l 'flutter', in Egy., Chad.,
> Omot., and Cush., possibly in Semitic 'move swiftly' with
> root-extensions.
>
> 1b. *p-r 'jump, take flight', freq. *p-r-p-r 'fly', in Ber.,
> Chad., and Cush.
>
> 1c. *p-r 'fruit', with nominal suffixation (not root-extensions)
> in Egy. and Sem.
>
> The other words listed here by Hodge have only gratuitous
> similarity. His inclusion of IE *per- 'fly' (actually 'pass
> over'), *per- 'forward', *per- 'bear offspring', and *pel- 'thrust'
> is too silly for comment.