> Bomhard would perhaps disagree, even about *b-. In an article >I've
>just read he supports a Nostratic etymology for Latin bi:lis >'gall, bile'
>(< *bistlis [*-st- visible in Celtic] < Nostratic *p'is-, >with Uralic and
>Dravidian cognates).
Hmm, a desperate reconstruction. Sure it's Bomhard? However, he does show
"(p?)" as the counterpart of Nostratic *p? in this book, making it clear
that he felt unsure of whether traditional *b existed in IE or not.
>While such etymologies are a little on the fanciful side, I don't >think
>PIE *-b- was completely absent, though it was definitely very >rare (a fact
>which also calls for an explanation).
I don't understand your reasoning. Whether **-b- (or rather *p*/*p:) is rare
or is completely absent is an irrelevant issue. The same need for
explanation, as you say, is present regardless. This would mean that even if
we were to find the elusive **b, nothing would change until we found an
abundance of it. (Not gonna happen...)
>Could you refresh my memory as regards your proposed etymology for the
> >"apple" word with postulated *-ml- > *-bl-?
It was *(s)amlu- and it's not really _my_ etymology but it sounds clever
enough to adopt. This word is irrelevant to the topic of *-b- as well, since
the IE **b is an illusion in this case. Coincidently there are similar words
in Altaic for "fruit". I have to check a Turkish dictionary but I remember
/alim/.
> All right, Glen, I'm sure you know your Bomhard better than I do.
> >Nostraticism is a confusing business. For some unfathomable reason
> >Bomhard's ejectives correspond to Illich-Svitych's plain voiceless
>stops and vice versa.
Oh, that's not so confusing. Basically, IS was mad (...well, maybe not mad
but severely gone awry in the ejective department). He thought that these
plain voiceless stops in IE should correspond to lost ejectives found
outside in other Nostratic languages.
Bomhard has reworked the system so that it actually makes sense with
traditional IE [*d, *g, (*b)] corresponding to the Nostratic ejective series
[*t?, *k?, *p?].
Bomhard's arguement against ejectives being equated with these voiceless
stops was largely due to the fact that many of these words were pronouns and
grammatical elements. Pronouns and grammatical elements do not favour
ejectives.
For instance, IS reconstructed *k?o "who", which Bomhard sees as being more
properly reconstructed as two items of slightly different function,
*kWa-/*kW@ and *kwi-/*kwe- (Bomhard strangely thinks that Nostratic had
ablaut). I personally go for _one_ reconstruction in Nostratic (*ku) with an
added derivative in Steppe, giving *kWi "what?" vs. the *ku enclitic. (I use
a simple three-vowel system without ablaut which was probably caused by NWC
areal influence later on in Karvelian and IndoTyrrhenian). The Steppe
inanimate interrogative *kWi was corrupted by the animate interrogative *mi
"who?" and the original contrast of animacy is to be found in Uralic. Later
we find enclitic *kWe and interrogative pronoun *kWei in IndoTyrrhenian.
Tada! Much better.
>The Moscow School scholars (including Dolgopolsky) follow their >founding
>father contra the evil Americans.
Yes, I notice that the Cold War isn't quite over yet.
> BTW, the most recent version of Bomhard's Nostratic I've seen [...]
>the three series are symbolised *TH, *D, *T'. It seems he >regards
>aspiration as relevant in the voiceless stops. I've no idea if or how it
>affects his views on Proto-Altaic.
Hmm, well it would seem that he has revised some things since 1996 then. I
can't say it would affect too much with what little he had to offer
regarding Altaic in this book here.
> As for the Proto-Altaic system, it woud be interesting to know, >in
>the first place, what professional Altaicists think of it.
It would be interesting to know what Altaicists who aren't biased against
the Altaic Hypothesis think about it. This is half the problem. I expect
little to no agreement. From what I've gathered, Altaicists are more
interested in bickering about linguistic irrelevancies than in earnestly
finding the inheirited qualities of these languages.
>There is no standard reconstruction, in a word. The first-ever Altaic
> >Etymological Dictionary (by Starostin, Dybo and Mudrak) is to be
> >published soon; the authors do reconstruct a series of aspirated stops.
Hmm, thanks for the warning. I hope that they reconstruct the first person
singular with *m- like they're supposed to. Some of Starostin's
reconstructed numerals (the higher ones for "six" and "seven") are
interesting after we take away the errors caused by ignorance regarding the
binary nature of the Japanese numeral system: hitoru/futaru "one/two",
mitsu/mutsu "three/six", yotsu/yatsu "four/eight". In other words, if we
propose an etymology for one numeral of a pair above, chances are the other
one should be derivative of the first and not inherited from Altaic. Deep
stuff.
- gLeN
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