Sabine:
>His main point is his following Kretschmer (1925) who saw three >different
>layers of languages in the Mediterranean area: "a) pre->Indoeuropean
>(Mediterranean), b) Proto-IE, c) Indo-European strictu >sensu.
My opinion: the pre-IE should be divided into Etrusco-Lemnian and Semitic
dialects with a Caucasic substratum prior to agriculture.
>[...] leading us to the conclusion that after a first wave of >agricultural
>expansion from Anatolia in the 7th mill. B.C. (of PIE >speakers),
Oh no, not again. When will people give up this idea? If this agricultural
expansion were set in 15,000 BCE we would say that IE was 15,000 years old.
Ridiculous. Circa 6,000 BCE is much to much to late for IE.
>But this historical reconstruction cannot explain why Greek is
> >linguistically closer to Sanskrit than to Hittite or to the other
> >Anatolian languages, when at the same time words in -ss- or -nd- can >be
>found in Greece and Anatolia ...
EtruscoLemnian is closer to Anatolian more than anything and contains both
these suffixes. By viewing IndoEtruscan as originating from the
Pontic-Caspian, EtruscoLemnian therefore must have travelled (before the
Anatolians did) to the Balkans in order for Etruscan to end up in Italy
further west. The EtruscoLemnians are the immediate substratum having been
laid over a bed of virtually erased Semitic substratum. Etruscan words like
semph clearly show this Semitic influence that is independant from IE (cf.
*septm is modelled on the _masculine_ number not the feminine as in
Etruscan). End of story.
>"[...] proposee jadis par V. Pisani: _makh, thu, ci, huth, tsa, >zal_,
>sequence qui est compatible /.../ avec le caractere proto->indoeuropeen de
>l'etrusque."
The rearrangement I'm in agreement with only rearranges "four" and "six",
making "four" = /huth/ (*kwetweres) and "six" = /s'a/ (< Semitic dialect).
What is proposed above is not compatable at all. Why /makh/ for "one"? There
is nothing IE about that one. It should equal "five" as is traditionally
viewed, making a connection to *megh- "big, many" possible. /s'a/ is
properly "six" not "five" which again, shows no connection to IE at all in
the latter view. The term /zal/ doesn't conform to *sweks unless we propose
a strange deletion of *-ks for the -l adjectival suffix and that /z/=*sw.
It's simpler to view /zal/ as the tradional "two", related to IE *dwe- plus
an adjectival -l (the kind used in IE as well) - final deletions need not
apply.
- gLeN
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