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

>> Dene-Caucasian SinoTib AC Basque
>> *m-lir "ear" *nli? b/ni? belarri
>[lui :]
>Hmm, well I wouldn't protest to an ST form *nlya? either.
>
>[moi :]
>Well, -ja in TB gives -ya in tib. and in burmese. It cannot be the >case.

What do you mean? I'm saying _ST_. It would seem ST *-ya:? > AC -yi? and
Tibetan /a/. It doesn't negate any connections between Tibetan and AC. At
any rate, Tibetan nra and AC are obviously related. What are you trying to
protest?

Me (Glen):

>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.

Guillaume:

>Well, analogy took place AFTER it was borrowed.

You are irrationally using _two_ assumptions where one will do. I win by
that rule by the guy with the Rasor.

>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.
>
>[moi :]
>slh- in AC would give s- in MC. Sorry for that one. However, You can
>still argue that there was an iambic prefix that disappeared without
> >leaving traces. Difficult to prove internally in AC.

I'd rather argue that anything with AC /slh-/ so far has nothing to do with
the connections I propose. We will keep with /lh-/ in /lha?/ from an earlier
ST *sl-.

I said:

>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
>
>[moi :]
>You are mistaking articulatory and acoustic resemblance. -l, -j and -n are
>articullatorily very similar, that is why and -l, which is >harder to
>pronounce at the end of a syllable because it implies a >burst at the end
>to be discriminated (or it changes to velar -l, >that changes the formants
>of the preceding vowels to be more >perceptible) can change to -j and -n.
>However, these three sound are >widely different on a spectrogram, nobody
>would mistake one for >another. Rimes are based on perception rather than
>on articulation >aren't they ?

Well -l and -j can obviously be confused. Take French for example and the
word /il/... or should I say /i'/. As for confusion with -n and -r, there
could be precedent in IndoEuropean and if -l is a "tap" sound or if -n is
pronounced weakly then -n and -l can be confused too. It would be all the
more likely if they all share palatalisation, wouldn't it?

>Besides, if what you said were true, how can you explain that only >some
>words in -j rime with some words in -n and that there are often >xiesheng
>and word-families relationships between them.

Allophonic variation of said phonemes? It would be best to provide examples
since I don't know of these things. I only provide other possible
intrepretations for what you're throwing at me.

>Finally, how come words in -j and -n rhyme with each other only in >the
>oldest parts of the Book of Odes (sywijX < b/lhur? rimes with -n >in ode
>183, which was composed roughly in the 8-7th century), and >never in the
>younger parts ? It suggests the change -l > -j /-n (dialectal isogloss, and
>then dialect mixture) occurred in
>the 6th century BC.

Huh? Where is the original -l in your example then? What is /lhur?/? Water?
Looks like "shui". If so, I thought you said /-j?/. Are you playing with me?
Anyways, all I see is /-r?/ which is quite different for many reasons from
an -n.

>[moi :]
>I think I am less speculating than you are. To prove it, I would need
>to find a language that loaned -h and -s words with otherwise similar
>sound correspondance with AC. However, this is not yet ready >although I
>think my hypothesis is testable.
>[moi :] Your arguments me laissent compl�tement froid.

Well, good luck. Call me when you do find it. At least with the connections
I make outside ST, I provide clear examples :) Ce n'est pas moi qui te
laissent froid, mon gars. C'est quoi la temp�rature l�-bas? Au Canada, j'ai
plus froid que toi, c'est s�r. :)

>You say sometimes interesting things but I think your attitude as to AC /
>TB is alarming. You seem to accept any reconstruction without >knowing the
>phonological systems of all the languages you are >talking about (eg : your
>"ST" ***lnya?).

No, that was *nlya:? (also found in NWC). It's not that I "accept" any
reconstruction but rather that I'm building it as we speak and adapting the
theory based on the objections you raise - it's called learning (just like
any good little Borg would do). You have stated that the ST reconstructions
I have are insufficient and I have found that this is true. As such, I'm
reconstructionless unless I take initiative.

At any rate, I continue to bet my life that ST is not closely related to AN
at all.

>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
>[...]
>
>[moi :] Well, is a velar initial enough to establish cognacy ?

No, a whole numerical set is. Hold on to yer hats, mes petits linguistes
lesbiennes. The following NWC is mostly Starostin's except for "three" (his
*L:@) which I would reintrepret as *s^:@ based on the actual attestation:

SinoDene NWC Abkhaz Adyghe
one *cyak *za z-n@ "once" z@
three *sla:m *s^:@ x-pa s^@
four *li *p@...@ - -
five *-Nu *s-xW@ x-ba tf@
six *Rawk *LWa f-ba ha
eight *bRya:t *bL@ "7" bz^-ba bL@
nine *bgu *bGW@ [PAT *zW@, Ub. bR@]
ten *bs?i *bc?W@ z^a-ba ps@

The last two numbers are hard to deny especially. Sorry about the new
SinoDene reconstruction I propose - I know how this troubles you so. You'll
notice however that *R regularly becomes a lateral in NWC as it does for
*m-hutL > SinoDene *mRa:wk "eye" > *bla (Abkhaz a-la, Ubykh bLa) and you'll
also notice that finals like to disappear in NWC. What's more, some
consonant clusters seem to show up as simplified tense phonemes in
Starostin's reconstructions. We even have a minimal pair *-Nu "five" and
*bgu "nine" become *s-xW@ and *bGW@ respectively. The *R is uvular but may
have become *r by the time of ST as you say.

Why, looky here. The word for mouse pops up in NWC too as *c:@GwV in
Starostin's reconstruction (Abkhaz a-c@...; Adyghe c@...). It shows that
tenseness that we should expect from loss of lateral in SinoDene *cLa:?k
(cf. AC /lha?/ via ST *sla:?) which ultimately derives from *cartLuk? before
secondary syllabic contraction, from which Basque /sagu/ "mouse" and
Burushaski /c^arge/ "squirrel" come from as well Chechen s^atq?a "weasel".
You lose. :P

>[moi :]
>Sorry Glen, you are not a specialist of old chinese, so don't talk >about
>things you don't know anything about. You didn't even look up a
>dictionary of old chinese, did you ?

Boy, somebody got testy. I never said that I was a specialist of Old Chinese
but I am aware of DC languages as a whole, more so than you seem to be - so
let's cooperate.

I would look things up in an Old Chinese dictionary if I had an Old Chinese
dictionary, but I need to move out of this impoverished city first and find
a real job with real money to buy real books from real sources (Can you feel
the bitter hatred I feel towards this bush town?). Once I do that (hopefully
this spring or summer), I will be amongst the "learned" world and shoot your
AN theory up with bigger bullets of cold, hard fact :P

- gLeN

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