Well, gals and dolls, I'm back from Vancouver and might I say that the
public library they have there is enough to make me want to flee from this
dopey welfare town... Oops, I'm being negative again, breathe in, breathe
out, I'll get out soon enough ;(
John:
>Semites in the Balkans? By 5650BCE? Glen hardly please? It just >does
>not hold water either linguistically nor archaelogically.
John, as we have seen with your responses, you have an excellent grasp of
archaeology but don't know enough, as you have even admitted, of
linguistics. If I said "Semites in the Balkans", I apologize. I mean only
"speakers of a Semitic dialect" which can be a little different from the
connotation of "Semites".
Asserting outright that Semitic speaking peoples could not have been there
based on archaeology alone is poor reasoning. There is very much linguistic
evidence for a widespread Semitic influence on surrounding languages and I
urge you to learn more about Indo-European (as well as Kartvelian) within
which Semitic words abound. I could supply a reeeally long list of Semitic
IE words that I'm aware of and that other more knowledgeable people have
supplied on the Nostratic List of LinguistList, if you like. I plan on
putting this online soon on my new site for discussion.
>Glen, is it possible that IE and Semites got the *swekse and *septem
>from a third (and intermediary) linguistic source - eg. Kartvellian >or
>Khattic-Hurrian perhaps. Even from Paleo-Etruscan?
John, give it up. This is a matter of linguistics, not archaeology.
My rebuttle comes in three parts :P
First and most importantly, Semitic words show up in Kartvelian in such a
way that Kartvelian couldn't possibly be such an intermediary source, this
is undisputably true at the very least for words like IE "six" and "seven"
which preserve admirably the initial consonants in Semitic as if they were
borrowed directly. In contrast, the Semitic phonology is twisted heavily in
Kartvelian and would make it obvious if Kartvelian were a source. We might
better put forth that it is more likely that _Kartvelian_ had an
intermediary between it and Semitic than IE did.
And Hattic contacts?? John, when you find some Hattic borrowings in IE, I'll
believe you, but for here and now, continuing to bring this fantasy up does
not make it any less imaginary than it is without a linguistic case to back
it up. HurroUrartean, like Hattic, is too far from the IE speakers to be in
contact with them and again is science fiction until real borrowings and
possible intermediary words are found. These Semitic loans into IE are quite
one-on-one both in meaning and phonology, making it seem all the more
probable that the loans were infused in early IE speech through _direct_
trading. This can easily be achieved via boat trips across the Black Sea and
is not a shocking hypothesis given that we can reconstruct the word for
"boat" in IE.
Second, it is irrational to strive endlessly to explain Semitic words
through hitherto unknown and unsubstantiated "intermediaries" in order to
skirt around the simpler truth of the matter. The words ARE Semitic in
origin, there is no doubt. Unless further proof is laid out, the simplest
conclusion is a _direct_ Semitic origin. The Semitic speaking peoples were a
large part of the ancient economy and were no doubt further spread out into
places like northern Anatolia than they appear to be by the time of writing
as is evidenced by a volume full of linguistic data. There is no other
conclusion without ignoring linguistics altogether.
The hypothesis of IE-Semitic relations is well footed in linguistic fact.
So, the deduction that a Semitic dialect had simply reached the environs of
the Balkans is nothing contraversial. Rather, it could help explain
obviously seperate Semitic borrowings in Tyrrhenian lgs like Etruscan
/semph/, /s'a/, /ein/ and maybe /vina-c/ as coming from the west in Europe.
This is where some archaeology comes in. Agriculture would have arrived via
Semitic speaking farmers up towards the N. Pontic from Anatolia and then
stopped at some point. Could the Tyrrhenian speakers, at least in part, be
the Bug-Dniester culture which served as an early linguistic buffer zone
between Western Semitics and IE? Early IE would get its supply of Semitic
words from the south. These Southern Semitic people could also be the
suppliers of hitherto foreign animals like goats (*gheido-), etc. which
appear to be of southern rather than western origin.
Third and last, what archaeology could possibly prove _against_ an early
intrusion of a Semitic language into the Balkans (as opposed to Semitic
_culture_ which is a different matter altogether). You're simply being
contradictory for the sake of contradiction.
ME (Glen):
>>Does Pitmann and his buddy actually go into real detail in re of
>>mythological comparison or is this just archaeology with a little
>>linguistic fluff mixed in like I'm always afraid of?
John:
>Glen, you'd love it even more.... Its good geology with a dash of
>popular mixed up potboiling archaeology and a soupcon of linguistics
>thrown in for good luck....
Just a soupcon, hunh? I'll keep my money then. :P
- gLeN
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