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

>These two forms are unrelated as far as my understanding of AC
>morphlogy goes.

Yes, in AC morphology but they can still be related in SinoTibetan
morphology.

> > Dene-Caucasian SinoTib AC Basque
> > *m-lir "ear" *nli? b/ni? belarri
>The TB word has a -a, never a -i, unless you know a language that
>has??..

Hmm, well I wouldn't protest to an ST form *nlya? either.

>> *m-hutL "eye" *mriwk b/mriwk begi
>> *m-NuN "heart" *sny@... b/sym bihotz
>> *m-kug "leg" *kuk b/kak --
>>
>>Hmm, lookin' good so far in terms of the consonants but I haven't
>>figured out the vowel pattern in AC yet, obviously. The form for >>
>>"heart" seems to have an s- prefix instead of the expected *m-.
>
>There is in fact a m- prefixed word for "heart in TB. mgul in tib.

Hmm, strange. Where would /mgul/ come from, I wonder. Can't place it within
DC.

>MC chinese has kjak.
>Now, I just has a look at Yue Hashimoto 1972, "phonology of >cantonese",
>which gives the correspondance between MC and cantonese, has -oe:k in
>her notation for -jak. This is all very regular.

Oh. Cool.

> > Dene-Caucasian SinoTib AC Basque
> > *sul-mu "three" *sl@... slym hiru
> > *li-mu "four" *li b/s-li lau
> > *piNu "five" *pN@ a/nga? bost
> > *rutL "six" *truk b/rok (sei)
> > *sulrit "seven" *snit b/snit sortzi "8"
> > *mnrit "eight" *prit b/pret bederatzi "9"
> > *hmsi "ten" *psi b/gip hamar
>
>No. WT bcu reflects something like *p-cip, I think, although it is
>difficult to prove. The word for "water" in WT has chu, but a >literary
>word for water is chab. I can't explain those variations, >but it is not
>surprising that loanwords have a funny phonological >behavior.
>>form in -u might be explained as influence with "nine"?
>That is also a interesting explanation.

Thought you'd like that one. I think it's better than pleading for an
unlikely "borrowing" from an AC form with an extra /-p/ and a different
vowel.

>>Huh? Where does the /-r?/ come from? I think you mean that b/lhuj?
>>from *sluj? so that we can explain the otherwise problematic lh- >> sound,
>>just as AC /lha/ is from *sla? "rodent", yes?
>
>I told you already, sy- in MC comes regularly from b/lh-.

No problem. I'm not reconstructing AC with /sl-/, I mean _SinoTibetan_ *sl,
although it would seem that AC /slh-/ would still be proper since the
sibilant seems to carry through to Chinese unaffected.

>Final -j reflects often -r or -l, as final -n does also. This is >reflected
>in early Zhou riming where words in -j and -n rime with >each other, and of
>course in word families and phonetic series.
>Note that AN has a very clear root luR "flowing", possibly related to
>chinese.

The AN root is not convincing because the Basque form /elur/ has nothing to
do with this and the remaining AC root simply doesn't have -r. Plus, how do
you explain AN *R = AC /j?/ with final glottal stop...??? Basque /elur/
"rain" appears derived from *u-sili (> ur "water") with an initial Vasconic
element *il- - perhaps "falling water". The AC finals could be "rhyming"
because these phonemes share a common characteristic like palatalisation,
resonance, etc and not because they are the same phoneme - that's
nonsensical. They are written differently because they are different
phonemes, duh. :P

>>The AC form b/wa? is beautiful for my evil purposes. The /?/ can
>>easily be
>
>My personal opinion is that there was a -h in AC, but its behaviour
>was the same as -s (because -s needs to become -h before it can change into
>a tonal feature). I am sure it is true (it is the case >in AA languages),
>but it is rather difficult to prove with riming, >phonetic series or even
>loanwords. So I don't think ? > h is a good >idea.

Speculation without any substantiation is never a good rebuttle. Your point
is that there is no observable /-h/. So DC *? can very well become AC /h/
and it's not an unusual sound change either.

>There seems your proto-language was as difficult to pronounce as >georgian,
>with all those consonant clusters.

Yes, more like Abkhaz though. :) I've been extrapolating and analysing some
more and have discovered that the syllabic contraction happened at a time
when NWC and SinoTibetan were still one language. The syllabic contraction
to second syllable can also be observed in NWC where insane initial
consonant clusters and unpopulated finals are also commonplace. Only after
this special contraction did NWC retreat to the steppes and go the same
route that the would-be IndoEtruscan from Steppe would eventually follow
later on.

In fact, on a side note, Bomhard mentions NWC loans in IndoEuropean
suggesting pre-NWC substrate in Steppe, but I digress. Perhaps this can be a
side topic. :)

I now wonder if one can find this same contraction in the proximate Na-Dene
too which contains oddities like pre-glottalized final nasals which seem
perfect for my evil linguistic purposes. It's really looking less and less
like SinoT is close to AustroN, don't you think? Or are you still in denial?

The NWC-SinoTibetan connection also serves to explain the eerily close
similarity in numerical systems such as the common word for "nine" with
velar. This would lend clout to my view that Starostin is wildly off the
mark in reconstructing a "North Caucasian" since the Caucasus-based NEC
would be very much more remote than ST is.

>By the way... Starostin proposed a comparison of chinese bjun < b/byn
>"big horned goat with various TB words. However Sagart showed that >the
>primary meaning was 'big horned', not 'goat'. Sorry for that one.

I don't see how this is necessarily unrelated within SinoTibetan. Terms such
as these can end up having slightly different meanings anyway. Consider IE
*loks-. Is it "salmon" or "salmon trout"? How does Sagart go about proving
such an impossible arguement? How does he know that it truely meant
"big-horned"? My, there's alot of information encoded in them-there
syllables! :P

My Nostratic reconstruction *bu seems to be applied to many large
artiodactyl/ruminant/horned animals with varying suffixes. Basque /behi/
means "cow" from Vasconic *bih. Together with an AC byn "big-horned goat"
from a DeneCaucasian *buN, all is well in regular-correspondance-land. :)

I'm going to start looking at NWC more closely from now on...

- gLeN



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