Re: A SinoTibetan-Vasconic Comparison: A very, very, very, very len

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 1412
Date: 2000-02-07

Guillaume:
>Merry chinese New Year to everybody.

Oh yeah, Xin Nin Fak Joy everybody. Merry Chinese Christmas too.

WWW.me.COM wrote:
>>Ah yes, and *cir(tLi)k?u & *r-tLik?u "squirrel/weasel/mouse"

Guillaume wrote:
>The only word I can think of is syoX < b/lha? I think, which is used >in
>the modern mandarin compound song4shu3 "squirrel". This lh- is
>reconstruted by some people (like Starostin) as sl-, but it is wrong
>for several good reasons. This word means "rodent" in general, not
>especially squirrel. In tibetan, the word for "weasel" is sre-mo. It
> >should be unrelated to the chinese word according to my >reconstruction,
>although I suspect the form that you cite to be an >unconsistent mix of
>unrelated word in different languages as "tibeto->birmanists", especially
>in USA, are used to do.

I wouldn't know. I'm from Canada, a very different country on many levels
from USA (such as gun control, government, culture, population density,
official languages, dialects, spelling, etc). Perhaps you might be accused
of confusing an inconsistent mix of unrelated countries as
"anti-tibeto-burmanists", especially in France, are used to doing to
stubbornly hold an impossible stance against SinoTibetan.

You claim that Tibetan /sre-mo/ and AC /sla?/ are unrelated under ST. Why
does Tibetan always show a regular correspondance of AC /l/ to Tibetan /r/
just like Tibetan /nra/ and AC /nyix/ from a likely /*nlyax/ "ear"? And why
does DeneCaucasian in general seem to regularly reduce sylables in a
predictable manner (always preserving the second syllable) so that I can
provide these connections so easily and with little convincing?

And finally why haven't you gone into honest detail about why /lha?/ should
be preferred over the filthy American /sla?/? Correct me if I'm wrong but
doesn't the *s- causitive help to clarify verb forms found in Chinese
languages that have both an initial aspirate stop form and an inaspirate
form? Gee, maybe you'll have to admit that I'm dead on about consonant
clusters where the initial phoneme predicts the quality of the second
phoneme as in *m-h > *mr (ie. mriwk) and that voiceless l, r, n and m are
caused by derivation only.

Let's revisit the past, shall we? So far based on what you give me in AC
with Cantonese terms to fill in some blanks where your AC terms haven't been
given, and based on a revised ST reconstruction on my part, adding Basque
references for more intrigue we can observe the following. Please note,
other words have been added to provoke fun and DeneCaucasian-enriched
dialogue [N=velar nasal, L=voiceless lateral, @=schwa]:

PRONOUNS AND GRAMMATICAL ITEMS:
Dene-Caucasian SinoTib AC Tib Khin Basque
*tLu "we" *la /la/ ? ? gu
*Nu "you" *ny@ /nye-x/ ? ? hi
*ni "I" (erg) ngo ni
*ti "I" (abs) -t
*Lu "you (pl)" -zu-e
*mi "who?" maat
*na "what?" [M na] nor "who?"
*su "what?" [M shei] zer
*uLu "not" ez
*di "3p" d- (d-aki-t)
*i "3p"
*Ni "that" [M na] hara "this"
*ma "do not!" m, mou, mai

BODY PARTS:
Dene-Caucasian SinoTib AC Tib Khin Basque
*m-lir "ear" *nlix /nyix/ /nra/ /na/ belarri
*m-hutL "eye" *mruk /mriwk/ ? /myi/ begi
*m-NuN "heart" *mluN bihotz
*m-kug "leg" geuk
*m-busti "beard" bibote
*muhini "brain" buru-muin
? *kati "chin" *mka kokotz

NUMBERS:
Dene-Caucasian SinoTib AC Tib Khin Basque
*sul-mu "three" *sl@... /slym/ ? ? hiru
*li-mu *li sei lau
*piNu "five" *pN@ m ? ? bost
*rutL "six" *truk lok ? ? (sei)
*sulrit "seven" *snit /snit/ ? ? sortzi "8"
*mnrit "eight" *prit /prat/ /brgyad/ ? bederatzi "9"
*hmsi "ten" *ts@-p sap ? ? hamar

OTHER:
Dene-Caucasian SinoTib AC Tib Khin Basque
*cartLuk?u *sl@?k /slya?/ ? ? sagu "mouse"
"rodent"
*buN "ruminent" behi "cow"
*hu-sil "water" soey ur
*ama "mother" ama
*ait?a "father" aita
*c?ic?i "bark" txotx "twig"
*uha "rain" yu (elur)
*Nuc? "home" *l@?s /lejs/ ? ? etxe "house"

The last one is for fun. If one can make an obscure connection to a single
form in d- in an AustrAs language, I may as well offer a tentative
hypothesis too even though I find my proposal just as unsatisying. However,
the term *Nuc? is probably existant in Nostratic as *kuc? and becomes an
unusual Vasconic *hitx (etxe). Maybe you can find a better cognate.

>No, -r becomes -n. Want the demonstration ?

I was refering to DeneC *-r > SinoT *-x but sure, make my day. Demonstrate
something.

>Kachin has myi, which can come from mli or myi.
>Oh, by the way, Ngari dialect has Xnyi < gmyi for eye. Don't know >what
>that means.

It means: "late prefixing". So Kachin DOES show regular treatment of ancient
DC word class prefixes! These true syllabic prefixes you speak of in Kachin
must be of late origin.


- gLeN
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