>I am not at all familiar with uralic,
Well, then that would be a problem then... I can't help that. Read a book on
Uralic. University libraries are the best place to go.
>and so I can't juge the reconstructions that you cite, but the >comparation
>of *ki with PIE *kwei does not satifies me,
Unh-huh... and... you have no reason to give?? No point in talking about it
if we don't know why you're unsatisfied. Explain yourself. Both forms have
initial velar, use a high front vowel and they both mean exactly the same
thing. But this is one of many similiarities that you'll find out about
shortly.
>and as for *mete, it seems natural that this cultural term got
>loaned into uralic.
It's not _completely_ "natural". Yes, one can take up the view that it got
"picked up" through trade and so if you're going to take it that way then I
expect you to find the language that it got picked up from. However one can
also take up the other view - that it is cognate with IE *medhu-. It is true
that it's not found in Uralic's most archaic branch, Samoyedic, but then
again, should we expect to find "honey" in such an arctic branch? Probably
not. So, I can accept a neutral verdict on this one word.
>Strange enough, 3rd person pronoun in AC, sometimes interrogative, is
>MC gi < b/g(r)i or MC ki < AC b/k(r)i, which, by chance, looks very
>similar to uralic *ki.
I don't know exactly where you're getting all those parentheses but I
recognize the form you speak of. It's found in Cantonese as "hoey" or "koey"
meaning "he, she, it, him, her, his, hers" (Mandarin has a different pronoun
"ta"). I know that Cantonese NEVER uses "koey" as an interrogative (There
only is: "bingo", "miye/maatye", "dimgai", etc). Likewise Mandarin employs
nothing of the sort for interrogatives ("shenme/shenmuo", "zenme/zenmuo",
"shei", "ji-dian", etc). Where did you read that this pronoun was used as an
interrogative?? Was this book printed in 1893?
Anyways, that's all nice but you're not going to pull the wool over my eyes
and tell me and everyone on this list that one can make as convincing a case
in correlating IE to Archaic Chinese as one can with Uralic. Fortunately I
can speak basic Mandarin & Cantonese and know some important points about
SinoTibetan grammar if you wish to dispute.
FYI, SinoTibetan would have been spoken circa 4000 BCE and thus
contemporaneous with Uralic and a little older than IE. The 1rst and 2nd
person pronouns are *nga and *nei, respectively and are very UNrelatable to
IE's *me and *twe/*te without resorting to stupidity.
Secondly, SinoTibetan even uses word class prefixes like *m- for many terms
relating to the body and bodily functions or more mysterious ones for other
nouns like *r-, *t-, *k-, etc. (quite the opposite to IE suffixes employed
to divide nouns into a simple animate/inanimate distinction). The concept of
word class as it is in ST couldn't be more absent in IndoEuropean. In fact,
IE barely uses prefixes at all and none correlate save perhaps an indulgeant
and quite false connection between IE *s- and SinoTibetan causitive *s-. In
the end, the connections remain quite boring and patheticly meager no matter
how much heart you put in it.
Now for IE-Uralic comparisons which are a little more fun since they
actually correlate without having to pretend that a 3rd person has an
interrogative meaning when it doesn't, etc:
IndoEuropean Uralic
who? kwei- "who/what" ki
kwe "which"
what? mo- "which" mi
[found in Celtic, Anatolian]
I, me me me-
you tu, twe te-
[accusative] -m -m
[ablative] -ed -ta
These are the some of the many grammatical correlations available. What's
more, Uralic has two distinct sets of pronominal suffixes just as IE does.
This can be seen in Samoyedic Nenets "xada-d?m" and "xada-v" where one means
"I kill" and the other means "I kill (it)". It's called subjective/objective
conjugation and even correlates to IE's 1rst person suppletive suffixes
*-m/*-H2 from an earlier *-m/*-hw. One set of suffixes in both IE and Uralic
ultimately derive from their respective pronouns for the most part (Like in
IE *-m=*me, *-s=twe) but the other set (IE *-H2) are definitely not
derivable from the pronouns that now exist in either group (If you get into
Nostratic research, you'll understand why the other set corresponds in fact
to Dravidian pronouns instead).
How many languages do you know of operate like IE and Uralic where one set
of verbal suffixes derives from the pronouns but the other set definitely
does not? I will tell you now: none.
And even if you do find that Basque is such a possible language, you'll
notice that there is no correlation whatsoever between the prefixed and
suffixed suppletive forms in Basque and those purely suffixed in IE and
Uralic. How many unescapable similarities do you need before you accept the
inevitable?
>As for Na-Dene-Caucasian, I think is is highly prematurate anyway,
>because no real reconstruction of "Sino-tibetan" is available. >Besides,
>chinese might be in fact genetically related to >austronesian.
You obviously are not reading. The term is Dene-Caucasian (or sometimes
Sino-Caucasian or Sino-Dene). Sino-Tibetan does SO have real reconstructed
items. For instance, *m-lung "heart" definitely exists and although the
exact forms of the reconstructions aren't completely agreed upon (as if this
minor quibbling can possibly denounce the language group and its
reconstructions just because phonemes aren't reconstructed to 100% accuracy)
there is much in common mainstream knowledge to be learned about ST.
The numerals for example are very much agreed upon where the initial
phonemes of most ST words have a regular tendency to drop off in Chinese:
*gsum "three" (Mandarin san, Cantonese saam)
*bli "four" (Mandarin shi, Cantonese sei)
*bnga "five" (Mandarin wu, Cantonese ng, m)
*drug "six" (Mandarin liu, Cantonese lok)
*bryat "eight" (Mandarin ba, Cantonese baat)
The only problems facing ST are sometimes determining only the initial
phoneme of the reconstructions (sometimes people reconstruct *blnga or *lnga
for "five" because of the way it shows up in Tibetan but *bnga seems like
the safest bet.) It's often just a case of a word class prefix that was
replaced with others. Just like in IE lgs where originally inanimate words
end up with animate suffixes or masculine ones become feminine through
suffixing. Does that discount IE? No. Neither does it discount ST.
And... you may think Dene-Caucasian doesn't have a chance but you probably
haven't a clue what Dene-Caucasian is yet besides the name since you haven't
even bothered to read up on Uralic (basic first year linguistics). There is
so little to connect Austronesian to Sino-Tibetan that it pains me to even
discuss it seriously with you. Austronesian is quite seperate from both
Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian studies. Ainu is a better connection if you're
hard up.
Can't try this on me, I've got all the continents covered, baby, and I know
deep into the topics you're casually skimming through. :)
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