John stick with me here, you desperately need some modern knowledge...
>Does anyone know of some good research into submerged languages of >the
>ancient world.
I don't think it's possible to find good research on "submerged languages"
at all since to prove that a language has loans from an invisible language
you have to first rule out that these supposed loans are not really native
words or loaned from another "visible" language (good luck). And certainly
these supposed loans can't say anything very accurate on its sounds or
grammar anyway.
However I do remember a theory (not good research) that I chanced upon
concerning a "Proto-Euphratean" language whereupon this language was
supposed to exist before the arrival of the Sumerians into the Fertile
Crescent. You must have chanced on that it seems, by your email.
Even though I theorize myself that Sumerians must have travelled from the
north at one time to their eventual location based on promising linguistic
connections and the fact that I like to fantasize in the shower that
Proto-Euphratean was a magical language remotely related to Burushaski
(perhaps I've shared too much), I doubt that Proto-Euphratean or other
submerged languages can ever be reconstructed in a reasonable way until we
have a better grasp of how all these _visible_ languages evolved and fully
lay to rest from where they and their vocabularies all came from.
>The Greek word for sea - Thalassa - is also supposedly derived from >a
>submerged language. Does not the presence of non-IndoEuropean >submerged
>languages in classical Greece (eg EteoCretian) disprove >the thesis of
>Colin Renfrew that Indo-European came from Anatolia?
I would be careful basing anything on shakey submerged language theories.
But the Out-of-Anatolia idea bothers me severely concerning IE.
Indo-European seems _completely_ absent in Anatolia until the arrival of the
"Anatolian" lgs by the third millenium BC. That's reality.
It is a dissatisfying theory as well for the fact that it ignores the many
similarities between Uralic and IE which are not a result of FinnoUgric
contacts with IndoIranian (ancestor of Sanskrit, Iranian, Avestan) such as
the quite apparent accusative *-m, terms like *mete "honey" or *wete
"water", personal pronouns and question words like *ki "who?" and other
simple grammatical connections that certainly demonstrate a connection of
some kind to the northerly language. Uralic and IE are also ultimately
connected to Altaic for the same reasons, a language group which is again a
northerly and a quite eastward language group.
I surmise that Renfrew's theory is insisted upon by some through some
archaic need to feel that our IE-speakers were the centre of everything,
whether that be geographically, genetically, physically or by innovations
such as agriculture, etc. Look John, the IndoEuropeans were ordinary,
imperfect, non-Aryan folk who were not even united under a single leadership
or a single camp of people like say Canadians are :) They more than likely
lied around the north and northeast shores of the Black Sea around 3500 BC.
I don't find a need to lose that theory over a very radical one that just
invents even more problems for itself than it solves.
Indo-European is undeniably and ultimately linked to the steppe lands and so
the only acceptable path that IE had made would be through the
Pontic-Caspian region (north of the Black/Caspian Seas) INTO Anatolia. A
southward path through the Caucasus Mts is severely unlikely and
unsupported. They certainly didn't enter Anatolia from the east by going
around the Caspian or Aral Sea until IE had fractured into dialects like
IndoIranian. Finally, it would be quite impossible that IE had been, for
thousands of years previous, within Anatolia and not have had an effect on
Semitic lgs and others in that area that are already almost certain to have
been there natively for a long period of time.
If you examine through a simple diagram that shows the _demonstrable_
linguistic interactions between IE, East Semitic and Kartvelian...
Indo-European
/ \
/ \
E Semitic ----- Kartvelian
...we see that the relative geographical positions are obvious.
Indo-European lies to the north in the Pontic-Caspian region. The dash
between East Semitic and IE runs through the Black Sea and Kartvelian is
further south in the Caucasus. We don't find Hattic or HurroUrartean
influence on IE as far as I know.
If we interpret it upside-down where IE is found in Anatolia, we would have
to conclude that IE must have had linguistic contact with Sumerian or other
languages in that general area
E Semitic ----- Kartvelian
\ /
\ /
Indo-European
/ \
/ \
HurroUrar Sumerian
...but that's garbage.
>(perhaps it could be linked to Basque).
Alot has been linked to Basque without firm reason. I blaim the Basque
language for my dwindling bank account.
>David Rohl has recently suggested links between the Sumaerian kingdom
>of Aratta, Ararat and the Armenian kingdom of Urartu. They spoke a
>language akin to the Hurrian of the Mitanni (the Horite of the >Bible).
Are you speaking of Urartean? This is indeed related to Hurrian and part of
a family called HurroUrartean. There is some evidence that would ultimately
relate it to NorthEast Caucasian.
>Thus while all terms of the city, government, law etc are
>clearly Sumerian in origin - the words for agriculture, for various
>crafts, various place and city names, and the names of certain gods (eg
>Inanna) are non Sumerian.
How could this possibly be proven? They could definitely just be ancient
words. What proof?
>Another submerged language is that of the Guti or Kardu (the origins >of
>the Kurdish people).
Yes, Gutian or Qutian I do remember. Don't know anything about that one and
I was unsuccesful at finding anything on it. Not knowing anything, I have no
clue what it could be related to.
>I don't know if perhaps we can recognise a whole extinct (or nearly
>extinct) ancient language phyllum, stretching through a
>dialectical-language chain from Susianian in Khuzistan, through >Anshan,
>Kassite, Lualabi, Gutian, Urartuan, Hurrian, Caucasian, >Khattic, Etruscan,
>Minoan, EteoCretian, Pelasgian.
Erh, that's quite a giant and dangerous leap of logic. First Etruscan is
probably very closely related to IndoEuropean. Minoan is often said to be
Semitic.
You need to catch up on Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian language studies but
ironically, you may be making sense for all the WRONG reasons.
Dene-Caucasian usually is thought to be comprised of Basque, NECaucasian,
NWCaucasian, Hattic, Hurro-Urartean, Burushaski-Yeneseian, Sino-Tibetan and
Na-Dene. The range is quite extensive geographically and if the theory is
true, the group must be exceedingly ancient (we're talking some 10,000 to
20,000 years ago). The centre of gravity would seem to lie somewhere between
Anatolia and Central Asia. Whether the above list of "imagined" and real
languages you are listing are part of this group or not is full of unknowns
let alone this Dene-Caucasian theory itself that I mention.
Japhetic, btw, is the old name given to a horribly misguided theory a
hundred or more years ago originating from the reliance on the Bible as a
source of undeniable historic and pre-historic fact _over and above_ common
sense. There is no support anymore (or perhaps there never was) of there
existing three main branches of human language which were named after the 3
sons of Noah: Japhetic (Indo-European), Shemitic (or rather Semitic) and
Hamitic (the languages of the blacks). As you can see John, the theory was
based on outright racism of the time such that the language groups were
conveniently patterned on race as well as Bible and not on proper language
research: (Japhetic) Whites, (Shemitic) Jews, (Hamitic) Blacks.
YIKES!!!
I know this crap because I was once a Jehovah's Witness and they still
insist on these lies out of radical conservatism and distrust for science
(as well as logic in general).
>If there is any reality to the extinct Japethic language phyllum
>underlying the Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European and Uralo-Altaic language
>families of this region,
Japhetic does not exist. Stop assuming that it does just because the Bible
says so. I don't think God would mind if you questioned it with the
functioning brain he gave you nor should he mind if you found out that the
Tower of Babel was simply a story without historical basis.
Nostratic, however is the language group said to be ancestral to
Afro-Asiatic, IE, Etruscan, Uralic, Altaic, Chuckchi-Kamchatkan,
Eskimo-Aleut, Dravidian, Sumerian, Elamite and Kartvelian (South Caucasian)
and is often viewed as seperate from Dene-Caucasian. But again, Nostratic
and Dene-Caucasian are not the languages of Noah either. The Tower of Babel
is simply a cute story to show children that they shouldn't make very high
towers with leggo blocks or else they'll fall down on them and permanently
damage their ability to speak properly.
Get yourself acquainted with modern linguistic research. It's fun! Your
views are out of date by a 100 years and you had better get on to that Y2K
problem soon :P
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