--- In
cybalist@egroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> Stop! I can't take anymore! Please, for the love of God! :P First
of all,
> there is a clear distinction between Nostratic and ProtoWorld.
Nostratic is
> a reasonable and even likely hypothesis as long as you ignore
Joseph
> Greenberg's nasty fetish for "mass comparison", which ruins it for
the other
> Nostraticists who are validly trying the traditional comparative
approach.
> ProtoWorld, on the other hand, is definitely a theory on crack
coccaine
> without any sense of reasoning - a cult religion, candy for the
mind, a
> journey into darkness, an alchemic fantasy.
All three promoters of Nostratic: I-S, Bomhard, Dolg., have
diligently charted sound correspondences. I have Dolgopolsky
available, and I'll summarize (don't worry, I won't post verbatim the
entire list... unless y'all want it?)
Nostratic is grouped into these sections:
1) Stops (labials, dentals, velars, uvulars)
2) Affricates and Fricatives (alveolar, palatal, postalveolar,
lateral)
3) Laryngeals (uvulars, pharyngeals, glottals)
4) Nasals (labial, dental, palatal, retroflex, palatal, velar)
5) Laterals (dental, retroflex, palatal)
6) Rhotics (alveolar, palatal)
7) Semivowels (w and y/j)
Now on to the main points:
1) For each point of articulation, there are three stops: voiced,
voiceless (aspirate) and voiceless glottalized
(ejective/"emphatic"). In Indo-European, these connect to voiceless,
voiced plain and voiced aspirate. (Gamqrelidze reverses the first
two in his "glottalic" theory -- these two views are obviously
incompatible.) Afro-Asiatic (only Semitic, Egyptian and Berber are
listed) preserves the original three in all cases, but the "emphatic"
p is lost in Semitic, while Egyptian comes up with b, f, p.
Kartvelian as well as Semitic have G (uvular voiced stop) becoming a
fricative (IPA inverted R). Non-ejective q becomes X (IPA chi) in
Semitic (and certain dialects of Georgian including the Tbilisi
dialect). Uralic and Dravidian lose voiceless-voiced distinction,
and the "emphatics" become geminated (or "tense") voiceless stops in
medial position. Altaic does preserve the three-way distinction, but
I have a hunch that Dolg. did this because he included Korean.
Dravidian has Nost. medial d becoming the retroflex t.
2) The affricates are voiced, voiceless and ejective as above.
However, voiceless and voiced fricatives are also listed.
Distinction of the non-ejective voiceless affricate and the voiceless
fricative is lost in Semitic except for the postalveolars (they
correspond to _d, _t and _T; the last became _D or Z in Arabic). The
laterals show up in Semitic as s' and z' (acute accents); the latter
as Arabic D. All but the laterals are preserved in Kartvelian, but
the palatals and alveolars merge in the modern languages; yet they
are distinguised as dz/dz1, ts/ts1 etc.
Indo-European is a strange case. Here Dolgopolsky (along with Ilich-
Svitych) links alveolars and palatals to IE s or sk (and of course
s^k and skw), postalveolars to st and zd, and laterals to s and l.
Bomhard reconstructs these as initial sk, st, zd etc.
To be fair, a single Nostratic phoneme often shows up as two or three
in one of the member language families. Indo-European is the worst
example of this.
3) The laryngeals are preserved the most in Semitic and Egyptian.
But uvulars merge with pharyngeals. Kartvelian preserves the uvular
fricatives but the other two groups are lost. Indo-European has the
infamous laryngeals of the "laryngeal theory". Dolgopolsky
reconstructs X (< pharyngeal) and H (< glottal) in IE. These are
lost in Uralic, Altaic (shown separately as Turkic, Mongolian and
Tungusic) and Dravidian, sometimes resulting in vowel length.
4) Nasals are the most stable elements. (This is true within the
history of Indo-European). The distinction of
dental/retroflex/palatal/velar is only shown in Uralic, Altaic and
Dravidian. (Dravidian shows dental/alveolar/retroflex/dental.)
5) The laterals (not the lateral affricates/fricatives, but the
lateral flaps/approximants) are well-preserved in all but Egyptian,
where they show up randomly as ?i, r, 3 and n [?!]. Again,
retroflexes and palatals converge in all but Uralic and Dravidian
(but a l > n shift occurs in Mongolian and most Dravidian initials).
This is where I see problems. How Dolg. came up with *retroflexes*
in Uralic I don't know, because I know of no Uralic language with
retroflex consonants. Then again, I don't know much about Uralic (or
Yukaghir, which is probably included). The evidence weights squarely
upon the shoulders of Dravidian evidence; likewise for the nasals and
the rhotics. I think the author is being conservative, not willing
to lump together varying reconstructions since he's not sure that
Dravidian dental and retroflex liquids came from one common phoneme.
6) Rhotic history is similar to nasals and liquids. Again, Mongolian
has initial alveolar (not palatal) r showing up as n.
7) The labiovelar semivowel /w/ appears as such in AA, IE, Kartvelian
and Uralic (but many modern languages -- Hebrew, modern Latin,
Georgian and Hungarian included -- have a w > v shift). Altaic has
b, especially initially; it is lost in some cases. Dravidian has /v/
(which in some languages approaches [w] phonetically). After /u/,
the /w/ becomes a vowel lengthener. /y/ shows up either as /y/ or as
zero in all families. The distribution of these seems kinda random
to me, however.
Overall, the charted consonant comparisons are both convincing and
confusing. It seems to be more consistent in the the "first half" of
the listed groups (Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Kartvelian, Indo-
European) than the "second half" (Uralic, Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic
and Dravidian). Note that there is no unified Afro-Asiatic or Altaic
listing -- these language families I have very strong doubts about; I
personally don't think the validity of these two families is even
probable given the knowledge we have -- not yet anyway. Uralic is
probably weighted much more towards Finno-Ugric, since the status of
Samoyed and Yukaghir is also doubtful. And of course Ural-Altaic as
a unified family (at the same level as IE) has long been debunked.
At least we're sure about IE, Dravidian and Kartvelian. And
Kartvelian is no problem since we only have four extant languages to
compare!
Anyway, back to the main jist of the post -- I went way out on a
tangent, but I felt it necessary (or convenient, for me at least) to
summarize and critique Nostratic as we know it.
> Another distinction should be made between the ProtoWorld Theory,
with its
> own problems, and Patrick Ryan, who is far out there, alone on his
own plane
> of existence without any medication to help him deal with his
visions.
> Unfortunately, there are some others like him on the net who are
completely
> unapologetic about being irrational. I've collected some of their
links,
> putting them in my "schizophrenic" folder and along with more
informative
> ones, I plan on putting them up soon for all to enjoy (along with a
proper
> explanation and treatment of the Nostratic theory - and there's
more to it
> than Greenberg's Eurasiatic, BTW).
Well, I don't know about being "schizophrenic". I'm not a
psychiatrist so I can't diagnose Mr. Ryan or Mr. Greenberg. I happen
to be mentally ill myself -- I have something called schizoaffective
disorder, which "sits on the fence" between schizophrenia and
bipolar/manic-depressive disorder. And I am on four medications (I
still can't do much in the "real world", plus the meds make me
constantly sick and tired).
What I see is a "straw man argument", with a very heavy
presupposition -- not only about the nature of a Proto-Language, but
the phonomorphological structure of a highly symmertrical system of
CV syllables. (But the three-vowel system is highly likely; Bomhard
proposed it for Nost; Semitic itself sets such a precedent.)
I personally see a six-vowel system (high: i-@-u, low: e-a-o) as the
most likely candidate. I-S and Dolg. propose seven (or eight?)
vowels: a, e, i, o, u, "a and "u (the last two bear "umlauts"). But
vowels in the daughter languages are extremely unstable.
By the way, good job to you and Piotr both! You sure type a lot
here, and I'm learning new things every day. I think I like it here.
DaW.