Jon har skriva:
>You will be pleased to note that your disagreement about the >proximity of
>Sino-Tibetan and AN is entirely confirmed by genetics >:-)
Well, we'll just keep that to ourselves... But linguistically it might be
confirmed by a reduction of all vowels to schwa (which will be written *a),
an accent shift to second syllable, and final metathetic inversion which may
be present in not only SinoTibetan, but NWC and Na-Dene as well.
An example would be *m-hutL "eye" to Pre-SinoDene *mRa:kW to SinoDene
*mRa:wk (final metathetic inversion of *kW > *wk). The length of the vowel
is determined by compensatory lengthening from syllabic contraction. Thus
*rutL "six" would evolve to SinoDene *Rawk without length since it is a
monosyllabic word. Another DC example like *cartLuk? "mouse" (now new and
improved without *-u) would yield SinoDene *cLa?k (ST *sLa? > AC /lha?/).
The *?k is again caused by metathetic inversion and frankly looks alot like
Proto-Athabascan.
More importantly, all this would explain the vowels present in Guillaume's
Little Shop of AC Horrors (cf. *m-hutL > *mRa:wk > /mriwk/ "eye" and *m-lir
> SinoDene *mlya:x > /nyi/) and everything becomes regular from vowel to
consonant. I came up with it the other night when I was drinking coffee at
Robin's Donuts at 3:00 in the morning. Am I mad? Perhaps.
If correct, this would imply the following (renaming VascoCaucasian as the
"T" Group and SinoDene as the "S" Group in order to use SinoDene for a more
specific subgrouping):
|-"T" Group (VascoCauc.)-------- Basque, NEC...
|
DeneCaucasian---| |------------------ NigerK.
| |
| |------------------ Nostratic
|-"S" Group--|
| |-- Burushaski
|----BuruYen----|
| |-- Yeneseian
|
| |------- SinoTibetan
| |
| |
|-SinoDene-|
| |----- NWC
|-|
|----- Na-Dene
I'm currently hypothesizing at the moment. Now, if DeneCaucasian is from
Africa, then there were two smaller migrations within the second larger
migration that you mention John which you seem to attribute to DeneC. One
migration for the T-Group and later for BuruYen-SinoDene of the S-Group.
These two migrations would have occured within your estimate of 40,000 to
30,000 BCE.
- gLeN
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