Re: Submerged Languages

>[...] it is generally due to the fact that
>the original inhabitants of an area spoke a different language than
>those who have since occupied that area.

I wouldn't dispute that reasoning.

>Now it would appear that the Early Sumerians high prowed reed ships
>very often were decorated with figure heads of gazelle or goat horns,
>or skulls. This would indicate that the Sumerians saw themselves, >not as
>coming from the north, but over the Persian gulf from the >south!

Well, I will insist that linguistically at least, Sumerian more than likely
spread from the north as it has the closest connections with
Elamite/Dravidian and Kartvelian under the Nostratic theory.

>Now, who were the substrait people? Roux in "Ancient Iraq" suggested
>that the substrait language was related to Hurrian/Urartuean.

That's what I said. Burushaski, HurroUrartean, same thing. It's all
Dene-Caucasian in the end and I claim that DC's much older than Nostratic
and therefore a very potential source for much substratum around the
MiddleEast, Caucasus, Balkans and India before any Nostratic languages had
dispersed yet.

>I have not been able to find much on the Elamite language but I >suspect
>that they may have been related.

Elamite is closest to Dravidian and Sumerian.

>Glen, I have great difficulty with Renfrew's thesis too. The trouble
>is, it seems to make archaeological sense. The European populations
>seem genetically derived from the Anatolian and Middle Eastern (See
>Carvalli Sforza's "History and Geography of Human Genetics"). He
>supports Renfrew for this reason.

Aye, there's the rub. Genetics and language don't mix, as you say. If we can
say that the genetics implies movement out of Anatolia to Europe, I will
assure y'oll that the subsequent agriculture and the likes were not brought
in by Indo-European speakers. Indo-European at that time did not exist. The
language, contemporary to this time period of agricultural expansion, that
eventually would become IE was still far to the east on the steppes
spreading westward. The language spoken by the new agriculturalists was to
make a safe bet probably either "Caucasic" or "Semitic". Semitic oddly
enough seems to actually make better sense (take note of Basque /sei/ for
"six" and /zazpi/ for "seven" which are ultimately Semitic words and
definitely not from Latin). Also note Etruscan s'a and semph which are not
quite relatable directly to IE sweks and septem which are themselves from
Semitic. Semitic influence in Europe could explain all this best.

>Personally, I feel Renfrew makes the old mistake of confusing >language
>spoken with the people using it.

Yes, absolutely.

>Hmmm.... Certainly there have been people who have claimed to find
>links between Eskuda and the Caucasian languages.

That is a different matter. I'm one of those people :) PS, It's "Euskara".

>Yes I was. I was taking it one step further and proposing a link via
>Lualabi, Kassiti, Guti, Urartu (earlier Aratta), Hurrian, South
>Caucasian and Khatti, possibly extending as far as Carian?, Lin,
>Etruscan/Lemnian, EtoCretian, and Pelasgian.

Stop! South Caucasian is Kartvelian and is part of the Nostratic group.
You're mixing everything up into a blender. Carian, Etruscan and Lemnian are
Nostratic too. There, better.

>This chain of languages, if related, would have been the languages
>spoken by those who invented cereal farming. The "Out of Anaolia
>thesis" of Renfrew would still hold, but for a completely different
>language family; a family which still has no name. It is interesting
>that this area all had pre-pottery neolithic cultures.

Yes exactly. I hate it when people conclude strongly that it was IE of all
things. The likelihood of that just isn't there. I'll play with Semitic for
a while though... or should I call it "Semitish".

>It was one of a family of peoples who from an early date inhabited >the
>Zagros mountains. Ohters included the Subartu of the Diyala >valley (who
>were probably the pre-Semitic Assyrians), the Kassites, >and Lualabi. The
>Lualabi were the neighbours of Anshan, which spoke >an Elamite language.

Oh, well then if Lualabi is Elamite then it's Nostratic too.

>On what evidence? I have not seen anything that links Minoan to
>Semetic, especially since EMI culture seems, like the ECI (Early
>Cyclades) and EHI to have much more in common with the Anatolian >area, (in
>which there were no Semitic languages) than from the >Middle East.

I'll check it out. I swore I saw something to that effect. I think I know
where I saw it. Get back to you in a couple of days.

>I am aware of these theories, and in fact my "Japethic" group would >be a
>subgroup of the Dene-Caucasian grouping, found only in the >Middle East,
>Anatolia and Aegean.

Ick, can you call it something else. Japhetic is so Nazi-ish. I don't see
what linguistic basis this Japhetic is supposed to have according to your
theory.

>Sorry for your JW past! But we still use the terms Semetic languages
>(from the sons of Noah), so why not a scientific Japethic??!!

Ick. Well, I have my own ideas thus far on Dene-Caucasian and I've already
named things a little different based on linguistics reasons. I break the
group up into the T-Group and S-Group. The T-Group was the northern branch
(NEC, Basque, Hattic, HurroUrartean) whose 1rst person singular pronouns
derived from *ti/*ni. The S-Group is southerly across Anatolia, Africa, into
the belly of Asia and eventually into North America (NigerKordofanian,
Nostratic, NWC, BuruYen, SinoTibetan, NaDene). The S-Group has *si/*ni with
palatalisation of original *ti to *si.

The DeneCaucasian pronouns are as follows the ways I sees it:

1rst person *ti, ni *tLu
2nd person *ngu *Lu
3rd person *i, *di, *mu, *wa, *bi, *ci, ...

(3rd person goes on because of
word class grammar stuff and class
agreement rules and thingies like that)

L=voiceless or maybe preglottalized lateral

>I don't assume that Japethic exists because of the Bible.

Phew, just checking.

>This is the first time I have seen Etruscan included in Nostratic. >On
>what grounds do you include it?

Bomhard made me do it. :P Allan Bomhard does indeed include it under
Nostratic. If you look at the basic grammar found thus far in Etruscan such
as the accusative in -n, the pronoun mi/mini for "I", some grammatical
aspects concerning some restricted usage of the beginnings of a nominative
-s and a genitive -un (IE -om [gen pl]) as well as another genitive -s (IE
-es [gen sing]). And then the vocabulary. Blah, blah, blah, it's a sister lg
to IE, believe me. And even conservatively it must be included under
Nostratic at the very least.

>I am acquainted with modern linguistic research. I am also familiar
>with the controversy that underlies Nostratic and Na Dene-Caucasian
>theories (or the even bigger SCAN group i.e. Sino-Tibetan, Caucasian,
>Amerind, Nostratic theory that would be between 60-90,000 years old,
>and which is supposed to have colonised Interior Eurasia. What I am
>suggesting is a sub-sub-sub grouping of these.)

Erh, SCAN?? Sino-Tibetan is a Dene-Caucasian language. I would have expected
a greater grouping of maybe DeneCaucasian and MacroAsiatic (Austronesian,
Ainu, Australian, Thai, Mon-Khmer). Oh well, whatever, I'm still piecing it
together.


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