On Sun, 8 Apr 2001 11:48:35 +0200, "Guillaume JACQUES" <xiang@...>
wrote:

>Tu sembles sous-entendre que les etymologies de Koivulehto sont dans l'ensemble peu concluantes. Pourrais tu en donner des exemples ?

On the other Nostratic group [<nostratic@...>] (or was it
<indo-european@...>?), Ante Aikio gave some examples:

PU PIE
*pel(x)i- "fear" *pelH-
*toxi "bring, give, sell" *doH-
*koki "see, find" *Hokw-
*kulki "move, flow, walk" *kwelH-
*(x)aja "drive" *Hag^-

Piotr said:

>As regards Indo-Uralic, the earliest shared vocabulary (assuming the validity of at least some of Koivulehto's "laryngeal" etymologies) has a skewed geographical distribution within Uralic, the cognates in question being Finno-Ugric, Finno-Permic or even Finno-Mordvinic much more often than common Uralic. This fact might after all tip the scales in favour of areal diffusion rather than inheritance. On the other hand, the similarity of grammatical morphemes between the two families is really striking.

From the Nostratic point of view, one of the frustrating things about
Uralic is that, in spite of these striking morphological similarities,
perusal of a list of PU etymologies as the one by Sammallahti (which
excludes those very morphemes and pronouns by virtue of it being a
list of polysyllabic etymologies), yields very little etymologies
indeed that seem relatable to PIE (I should have said, "from the
Indo-Europeanist Nostratic point of view"). And if Koivulehto is
right, that little, too, is blown out the *weti, leaving us with
essentially nothing. Except them striking morphological similarities,
of course.

>Finalement, quelaue chose me gene chez certains qui cherchent a demontrer que le semitique et l'IE sont apparente (voir le chinois, comme Pulleyblank). Il y a la derriere une idee quasi-raciste que tous les peuples qui ont construit des grandes civilisations ont une origine commune. Moi, je prefere croire que les peres des grandes civilisations n'ont rien a voir entre eux - j'aime trop la diversite pour apprecie l'idee d'une origine unique - mais bon, nous tombons dans l'ideologie, et nous eloignons d'un debat serieux.

I prefer (to expect) neither one or the other. Wherever the facts
point to is fine, and I do think the facts point towards a
relationship between AA and IE[*]. What I find indeed strange
("suspect" in the sense of what you say above) is the little attention
given among Nostraticists to possible links further south. If
Nostratic is a question of "the foot bone connected to the leg bone,
the leg bone connected to the knee bone, the knee bone connected to
the thigh bone, the thigh bone connected to the back bone, the back
bone connected to the neck bone, the neck bone connected to the head
bone, Oh, hear the word of the Lord!", as indeed it sometimes seems to
be the case (AA <-> PK, PK <-> PIE, PIE <-> PU, PU <-> PEA, etc.),
then why not look for connections between (at least) PAA and PNC or
PNS? From what little I have seen of them, they look as promising (or
unpromising, according to your tastes) as most of the other proposed
Nostratic connections.

[*] From my article at <http://home.planet.nl/~mcv>: the (pro-)nominal
plurals in *-a:tu/*-ati, the stative conjugation *-k, *-tk, -0.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...