>Then you are truly a "communist"... many people in this forum come >from
>former soviet union or from socialist countries, they might >dislike
>communism. [...blah, blah, blah...]
Cute. I guess even though you know many languages, you don't understand them
as well. I was hardly serious nor should any other komrads care too much on
a linguistics list. Besides, I made other allusions to my ideas on
government on a side topic if you care to look. I don't care too much about
government as long as it doesn't interfere with the direction of my own
life. Let's just try to stand firm and work in unification for the purpose
of the One, okay? :P
Secondly, I can't _read_ Chinese, my knowledge is mostly oral. (Please, no
rude jokes.)
>Chinese reconstruction is NOT based on the comparative method. That's
>the point. It's 90% internal reconstruction.
"Reconstruction" seems to be the operative word here and I don't remember
Chinese written in an alphabet or even a syllabry. What is *s-lhym from?
>A name has been suggested by Stanley Starosta of Hawaii university :
>SinoTibetoAustronesiaN = STAN.
>[...]
>Of course, it is too new. In ten years, when our work has progressed
>and we find cognate of AN and TB, [...]
>But notice not much can be said for certain either of ST : a >causative
>prefix, a few basic items (to give, to go, body parts, >etc...). Chinese
>and AN seem to share an -r- infix marking >'repetition, intensification'.
So you have no cognates for this STAN. Just some possible tiny grammatical
connections that, in their scarcity, could be very easily relatable without
much foundation (as you hypocritically jest with me on the subject of Uralic
and Indo-European which certainly has more to offer than this).
SinoTibetan has grammatical connections AND cognate terminology found. So it
sounds like there's alot of work to be done yet before it can be seriously
considered an alternative hypothesis.
I accept that Austronesian and other languages in the area like MonKhmer
could and did affect SinoTibetan. That's not in question. I question that
SinoTibetan is directly related to Austronesian. I find them quite seperated
by some 30,000 years or so (a guesstimate).
As well, even if we say that ST _IS_ related closely to AN, there is still
the matter of terms that seem to, in the very least, suggest a
Dene-Caucasian substratum. Besides the unAustronesian pronominal
relationship to DeneCaucasian, I note some widespread forms:
*mnrit "eight" which shows up in
NEC: Chechen barx (Starostin NC *b�nLe)
Vasconic: Basque bederatzi "nine"
< *bidrac < *minrac : an etymological shift in
the numerals occured via the adoption of Semitic numerals
"sei" and "zazpi", six and seven)
HurroUrartian: Hurrian miri
*rutL "six"
ST *drug: Cantonese lok, Mandarin liu
NEC: Chechen jalx (Starostin NC *?r�:nLE)
Nostratic *ru(gw) (?)
>Who wrote the article in the Brittanica ?
I'll check. I don't own a copy at home. It's at my local library.
>Zhengzhang had personnal problems with Wang Li, the guru of >linguistics in
>China until twenty years ago. That's why he his >research had not the wide
>audience they deserved.
Should we depend on these Chinese scholars to determine the origins of the
Tibetan culture and language, a culture whose government, that these
scholars are _trapped_ in, continues to oppress? I find it interesting that
there would seem to be many _Chinese_ scholars that would fight a
SinoTibetan hypothesis in order to make Chinese a proud and fearless isolate
from time immortal.
>I'm not using "parenthetic phonemes". (r) means that we can't prove
>that an -r- did not exist at that place. It is Baxter's notation.
Hmm, well you are using "parantheses", and "phonemes" like "r"... I would
dare say they are "paranthetic phonemes", but then who's to say.
>Boku is simply a late chinese word, MC buwk. [...]
>Anyway, it is often written with this very character.
>It has no relationship with AN. In paiwan, you have the following set
>of pronouns :
Cool. That's what I figured. The pronouns in Paiwan are familiar. The first
person k-pronoun (Tagalog ako) is very well attested in AN. Also note the
equivalent Hmong pronoun kuv. I also see Tagalog tayo in this tja- prefix.
>1sg ku-
>2sg su-
>
>1pl ex. nia-
>1pl ic. tja-
>2 nu-
>
>Nobody know yet precisely how the proto-AN pronoun system looked >like, but
>it was very likely like this.
Hmm, well given what I know of DeneCaucasian, the Austronesian family, as
part of a larger hypothetical MacroAsiatic grouping, would probably have a
sister-similarity to Dene-Caucasian's:
SINGULAR PLURAL
1 ni, ti tLu
2 ngu Lu
3 i, di, mu, wa, ci...
May I offer the suggestion:
SINGULAR PLURAL
1 ka taya
2 ku nu
The first and second person would derive from a MacroAsiatic *ngi and *ngu
(as in Australian languages)...
>Anyway, we are going a bit too far away from IE, aren't we ?
Yes, but I won't get lost because I know how to find my way back ;)
- gLeN
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