John:
>Glen, is it possible that we have this back to front? Could it be >that we
>have Proto Kartvelian words in both Semitic and PIE? Now >this *WOULD*
>make excellent sense archaeologically.
John, you're making me dizzy. Please sit down and stop running around in
circles. I stated quite clearly that this is unlikely because of Kartvelian
tidbits like *eks1w- "six". How do we get IE *sweks out of that? The word
must have been borrowed very early into IE as *swekse from _Semitic_ itself.
If the Semitic form is truely *s^idc^u, then the *-ks- in IE should be a
direct mimickry of the cluster found in Semitic. The final vowel is
subsequently lost in Mid IE, as in many other IE examples helping to explain
the nature of IE's seemingly chaotic stress patterns. Thus we naturally
arrive at *sweks. Tada!
Now the question you have to answer is not only how a missing initial
sibilant reappears in IE but also how Kartvelian "seven" enters IE as *septm
with final *-m?? Might I remind you, or inform you if you aren't aware yet,
that the meaning of *-m is only explainable in a Semitic context since it
has a rational function in Semitic grammar but not in Kartvelian or IE. IE
does have an accusative *-m but its use here for a numeral would hardly be
explainable in comparison to the Semitic explanation of the same suffix. As
well, only Semitic contains the very indivisible root for "seven" *seb- to
which the masculine and feminine suffixes are attached... Not so in the
genderless languages like IE and Kartvelian.
>But Glen, historically, and archaeologically, there were no Semites >or
>proto-Semites on the shores of the Black Sea at any time from
>mesolithic to Persian times.
Please stop confusing Semites with Semitic-speaking people and then we will
have an easier time understanding one another. If you dress up a
Semitic-speaker in Hattic clothing, give her a Hattic roof over her head and
have her worship Hattic gods, she's still a Semitic-speaker.
>Glen, if Semitic had got into Northern Anatolia, they would have left
>evidence surely. Onomastic evidence in Hittite or Classical place
>names.
But wasn't this area dense from ancient times with many other languages
anyways?
>Sorry mate, the archaeology doesn't compute. From pre-pottery
>neolithic stages agriculture did not move from the Semitic into
>Anatolia, but rather moved the other way. The emmer wheat grown by >the
>first farmers in Palestine has just been confirmed to have come >out of
>Anatolia, against the flow of languages once again.
No, guy. You're confused. Like I've been saying, some Anatolians were
speaking Semitic dialects with a culture native to the area, farming just
like the natives. Please don't get confused. I'm not talking about Semites
(the ones speaking Semitic with identifyable Semitic cultural elements). I'm
talking about Semitic-speaking people with Anatolian cultural elements.
You've just confirmed everything I've been saying. What's more, we just
don't find native Kartvelian loanwords for agricultural items (unless you
can supply some for me). This is because the Kartvelian language was present
to some extent in the local economy but was nowhere near as prominent as
Semitic. The loanwords are all or at the very least majoritarily originating
from Semitic as far as I'm aware and must originate from Anatolia based on
the spread of these words.
Words like *gheido- "goat" and *weino- "wine" are linked to Semitic. Oh I
suppose we could claim that *weino- is via Kartvelian perhaps although this
is unnecessarily more complicated than a Semitic origin since we have even
more Semitic words like *bhars- "grain"
and *melit "honey" that show where the innovations were coming from. It just
goes on and on...
>Catal Huyuk and Halicar were huge settlements in which late >Paeleolithic
>survivals show they were related to the previous hunter->gatherers of the
>area (T group Dene Caucasian Proto-Khattic). Even >the period after the
>Black Sea disaster (circa 5,500 BCE) when Catal >Huyuk was abandonned show
>a movement of people out of Anatolia, not >of early Semites into the area.
Again, I stress: not Semites but Semitic speaking people with native
Anatolian culture.
>This is beginning to sound like a re-run of our Out-of-Africa
>Into-Africa discussion, but applied to the Balkans now instead of >Egypt
>and the Middle East.
Yes, but the difference here is that the direction of Semitic that I suggest
coincides with the apparent direction of people and innovation. It seems
that now _you_ are fighting against the direction of flow, the flow of
language.
>Sorry Glen... unless the Semites levitated from Syria to the Balkans,
>or became invisible or travelled underground, there is no possibility
>of getting them into contact with proto-PIE, except through possibly
>common origins of Semitic and PIE terms from an intermediary group.
>This intermediary group would probably have been those that invented
>agriculture and taught it to both the PIE and to the Proto-Semites.
Who's theory is more conjectural? I'm not hypothesizing that an imaginary
language happened to exist, showing absolutely no signs of its presence even
in the archaeology that you like to throw at me to attempt to dismiss my own
theory!
I'm simply saying that the Semitic language (a language we know existed)
travelled farther than the Semitic culture did. The words for "six" and
"seven", complete with uniquely Semitic grammatical suffixes, are clearly
from Semitic and nothing else as well as the other words like those above,
so your theory still seems more like a desperate attempt at self-amusement
by contradiction, something that I am more reknowned for :P
- gLeN
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