IE, Uralic, SinoTibetan and incompetent sources

>>>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.
>
>Well, I was just suggesting it is not possible to understand fully a
>reconstruction by simply read books about languages you don't >actually
>speak. In fact, min� my�s puhun v�h�n suomea, sin�k� ?

Min�k�? No I don't, my Finnish friend but I can read it. My mother language
is English, I speak French fluently and have conversational knowledge of
Swedish (from my dear varmur), Cantonese and Mandarin (from good friends)
but I also have a very good grasp of grammar and simple vocabulary in a wide
variety of languages. I still understand you regardless of what human
language you speak.

I question whether just because you don't fluently speak a language makes
you disqualified to observe its relationships. You certainly have to read,
so read. If you know Finnish, then you have to get a handle on other Uralic
languages like Estonian and Lappish and then even further ones like
Hungarian and Nenets. And it's important to know Uralic itself. Many English
speakers would find IndoEuropean very foreign to them (However, Uralic is
very similar to Finnish in form so you're lucky).

>Well, then just find other cognates of PIE with uralic where
>labiovelars in PIE correspond to velars in uralic. Besides, what is
>your opinion on the glottalic theory ?

Cool, now we're communicating. There is Uralic kala and IE (s)kwal- "fish".
IE never had ejectives but I can tell that you cherish this theory to your
heart.

>OK, I am NOT talking about this word, MC gju, which appears only in >the
>Weijin period. I am talking about qi2 in mandarin (I you knew >your middle
>chinese correstly, you could have guessed MC gi gives >qi2 in mandarin).

Hen dui. You "qi-". Xianzai, wo mingbai. Mm, Qing wen, tongzhi, ni zhen shuo
Hanyu? Sik teng Gongdungwa ma?

>It starts getting used as a personnal pronoun in the late
>SHang oracle bones. I suggest you read Baxter 1992 and Starostin >1989 to
>catch up with Old Chinese reconstruction.

Oh-oh, the plot thickens. I'm not reading Starostin except in regards to his
"North Caucasian". The other reconstructions that he has on his site such as
Altaic are frighteningly problematic (He makes a painful connection for the
term "three" between Japanese mitsu "three" and other numerals patterned on
*gu(C) showing that he is completely unaware of the binary nature of the
Japanese numeral system (hitotsu/futatsu "1/2", mitsu/mutsu "3/6",
yotsu/yatsu "4/8". Demonstratably incompetent!).

Even his "North Caucasian" reconstructions, are all over the place without
any clear pattern as to how they evolve in the daughter branches, although
he at least provides some insights for later reconstruction artists. For
instance, I wholly am in opposition to his fluffy use of rare phonemes to
reconstruct the pronouns. Where are the rest of his examples of the lateral
*L- other than in the first person plural or the use of the special
sibilants found in another first person plural and the second person
plural?? And you use him as a qualified source...

Starostin means well but I hardly qualify him with the ability to
competently reconstruct proto-languages because he doesn't start simple and
lay out an observable pattern of some kind. Every language evolves under a
pattern. I find it odd that you would deny Uralic *ki and IndoEuropean
*kwei/*kwe and yet accept something stranger like Starostin's
reconstructions and connections.

>Come on : IE is much older than that. I personnally agree with >scholars
>such as Kortland who accept a much older date (5000 BC at >least). Don't
>forget that skr and avestan are already at least 3500 >years old, and that
>neither is proto-indo-arian or proto-iranian. >That places the dae for
>proto-aryan at least 2500 BC in my opinion.

Yes, from an IE spoken 3500 BCE in the Pontic-Caspian region as opposed
however to the IE spoken by the eventual Anatolians which was earlier but in
the same area. It depends on how you see it. The IndoEuropeans didn't just
"split" and so the linguistic (as opposed to the geographical) divisions
could have stemmed much earlier even though the spread of the language took
a while.

>>person pronouns are *nga and *nei, respectively and are very
>>UNrelatable to IE's *me and *twe/*te without resorting to stupidity.
>Well, I suggest you read Sagart 1999, Benjamins "The roots of old
>chinese". AC a/nga > MC ngu > mand. wu2 is created by analogy from >b/la MC
>yo > yu2 which is the only singular pronoun in the shang >oracle bone.

And what's your point? Mandarin has wo3 with rising-falling tone, related to
Cantonese ngo with low-rising tone. The pronoun *nga "I" stands as before
with even more examples than this.

>a/ngaj? > MC ngaX > wo3 had a ng-, but it is plural at that period.

I severely question your sources.

>The pronouns of Chinese or not cognate with TB : they are loaned into
>TB, and not only : also in some Miao-yao languages and thai >languages.

Sure, everything was loaned in TB I suppose. I suppose the numerals and the
grammar and everything was loaned into TB. Come on. Stop spitting out bad
information and read something from acceptable sources.

>I don't believe in any genetic relationship between IE and chinese.

Well, so far you've shown that you believe in so many other odd things that
I wouldn't put it passed you if you did.

> > Now for IE-Uralic comparisons [...]
> >
> > 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
>
>OK, that's not bad, but are we sure of the value of the affix you >cite as
>ablative in IE ? it is not widespread in IE.

Not bad? It's pretty good considering we're talking about grammar and not
simple vocabulary terms like amateurs do. How do you explain *-ed in
Anatolian? Are you going to use that ubiquitous borrowing arguement again?

> > *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)
> >
> > Well, that's nice : these are all loanwords from chinese.

Of course they are, my dilluded Finnish/Chinese friend. How can you relate
languages together if you continue to proclaim "borrowing" for every
connection without any competent evidence. Very convenient of you.

>MC sam < b/ s-lhym it is a lateral series of phonetics

Oh my god. You're crazy. There is no such thing and no evidence to prove
such a god awful reconstruction. I'm sorry. I can't help but be insulting at
this point. You're making this up completely! This *s-lhym reconstruction is
based on nothing. The vowel *y is hardly motivated in this case.

>All of this is explained in Sagart's book.

A book to not waste my time on. Look, you just live in your own SinoTibetan
world then and I'll do some real research for the both of us, okay? I can't
debate with someone who uses any crackpot source he can find and claims it's
correct in blunt opposition to mainstream linguistics. Byebye now.

>I fact, I speak fluent chinese AND tibetan, and I also know some
>Siamese, so I talk about data I know well.

I've met people on the net who even have fancy degrees to put on their wall
but believe in alien conspiracies under the secrecy of the United States
government. I base your knowledge on the reasoning you use and it doesn't
look promising so far.

- gLeN

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