Re: [TIED] Re: IE, AA, Nostratic and Ringo

--- Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...> wrote:

> Perhaps it was a bad choice of words. I wouldn't wish to insult the
> schizophrenic community with association to Mr Ryan. No need to feel
> depressed though. That's my job. Have a Paxil. I'm personally now medicated
> for depression, so maybe we're all mentally ill. :) Even though I would
> still like to see a large, firey explosion wiping out all traces of this
> wretched, 3rd-world hictown I live in, I find I have a more chipper spirit
> and carry myself with a little less violent hostility towards humanity in
> general. >:)

Aw I wasn't offended! I was just rambling really, typing just to type.
Incidentally, I take Paxil. It's one of the few things I've tried that really
work. Right now I'm worried about my brother, who is having terrible
depression. He takes Zoloft, but that's counteracted upon by high blood
pressure medications, which tend to screw with serotonin levels.

In fact, concerning the controversy with Jim Carrey's newest neo-slapstick
cinematic product _Me, Myself and Irene_, and how it lampoons schizophrenia and
reinforces common stereotypes about the mentally ill... I wasn't even offended
by that (I never saw the movie). I know Mr. Carrey has dealt with mental
disorders himself. What does offend me is how the mentally ill are portrayed
as being predisposed to criminal (especially violent) behavior by otherwise
well-meaning shows like America's Most Wanted.

Anyway, I'm WAY off topic here.

> Why, I can even take John's outright denials of southern influence in SW
> Anatolia circa 8000 BCE with a grain of salt even despite his aggravating
> ignorance of quotes obtainable from the Enc.Britt and The Ancient Near East
> by Charles Burney (1977) which state both architectural and religious
> influences from nowhere other than the direction of Syria and Palestine. But
> I digress. :)

It's the stuff that makes great conspiracy theories. Last night I was
researching the alleged evil agenda of the Illuminati. (Does it even exist
today?)

> It must be noted however that Bomhard takes the Glottalic Theory approach
> and correlates the Nostratic ejectives with IE's voiced plain stops rather
> than voiceless. Thus the lack of IE **b is to be explained as an early loss
> of the labial ejective and it also solves severe typological problems that
> exist in the Dolg./IS system like the unlikely "ejective" pronouns. In this
> respect, I think Bomhard's idea should be adopted. I, however, am resistant
> against reconstructing ejectives for the actual Common IE stage. As I've
> said before, I think a better solution is IE [*d, (*b), *g] as fortis stops
> [*t:, (*p:), *k:] rather than ejective.

I was thinking about glottalism in IE -- and I've come to something of a
conclusion, that if there was a glottalic stage, it probably involved *voiced*
glottalic (i.e. implosive) consonants. Then a <t-d-dh> system would easily fit
into the scheme of things; *dh would be a simple voiced stop, while *d would be
the implosive. (This same pattern is pretty common in Bantu languages,
including Swahili.)

> I'm personally skeptical of lateral affricates but it seems to be agreed
> upon amongst the Three.

In view of Semitic data (especially 's and 'z in South Arabian), and how what
shows up as /l/ in one language family appears as /d/ in another, I do accept
lateral affricates. But a full three-way set of affricates <tl'-tl-dl> plus
two fricatives <hl l3> may not be all that plausible. (I-S reconstructed only
hl and dl. And of course the lateral approximant /l/.)

> Yeah, it sounds like that to me too but I don't have Dolg.'s substantiations
> for his reconstructions available to me yet. Perhaps Starostin's website can
> provide a clue...

Yeah, I should've checked that. The three-way system might have been preserved
in Tungusic, but instead of ejective-voiceless-voiced, I'd be more inclined
toward favoring a tense-lax-voiced (i.e. <tt-t-d>; the middle element might be
aspirated as well). It makes perfect sense for Korean, though initial and
final voiced stops are devoiced (and in the modern language, final sibilants
become dental stops).

> >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.
>
> Where does Bomhard do this? His list of sound correspondances in
> "Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis" don't show any of this. At any
> rate, these correlations I find absurd.

I goofed. It was Manaster Ramer, not Bomhard. His connections:

I-S M-R Kart I-E
s s s s
's ^s s1 s
^s ^st ^s(k)s
c sk c sk
'c ^sk c1 sk
^c st ^c(k)sk

I'm still confused.

> Never heard of nasal retroflexes in Uralic. :) I only think that there is
> one *n in Nostratic.

The whole idea of a retroflex n is based on Dravidian data alone, like you
said. I accept four nasals: m, n, 'n and N (eng). And only m and n are
present in West Nostratic (A-A, I-E, Kart.)

> Neither do I. I don't know of Yukaghir having any either. Personally, I
> think the retroflexes are only a Dravidian thing. Of course, the retroflexes
> of Semitic are something else entirely and not connectable.

No Semitic languages have retroflexes. But a few Cushitic (and possibly
Omotic) languages do. Somali has `d (written dh), and some Cush. languages of
Ethiopia (Chaha, Bench) have Ge6ez syllabric sets with a lower left stroke on
postalveolar sibilants, indicating retroflex sibilants.

> Are you sure it's just Mongolian?

It *could* also be in Egyptian... (I'm just going by the book here.)

> I don't see an Altaic *b = Nostratic *w relationship in Bomhard's list.

You have Bomhard's list? Why didn't you say so; I wanted to do a comparison!
Anyway, I think it only occurs in certain cases within Uralic, if at all.

> >I personally see a six-vowel system (high: i-@-u, low: e-a-o)
>
> Neah. I still go with a three vowel system. Why make it complicated?
> Further, I disagree with Bomhard that Nostratic had ablaut. Therefore, it
> would have been alot like Sumerian in syllabic simplicity:
>
> i u
>
> a
>
> The vowels in Uralic and Altaic are a product of vowel harmony. IE's (or
> rather IndoTyrrhenian's) vowel system collapsed when *i and *u became *e
> (originally schwa), perhaps through pre-NWC influence. Similarly,
> Kartvelian's system underwent similar changes.

Whoops. What I meant is that the six vowel system I proposed, contains three
phonemes, each with two allophones (one high, one low).

> I, to the chagrin of many on the Nostratic list, maintain that Dravidian had
> a vowel shift (*u > *ya-/-i-, *i > *a:) and hence we can correlate the
> absolutive first person *u/*un "I, me" (AfroAsiatic *a-; Dravidian *yan-;
> Steppe *-hW) and second person absolutive *nu/*nun (Dravidian *nin-, Steppe
> *-n). So far, people have ignored me on that one, even though one would
> think that grammatical linkages would lend a larger hand to its relationship
> to Nostratic than, so far, semi-random vocabulary.

Never heard of that. I don't know anything about Dravidian though.

> AfroAsiatic's system either collapsed (if we go for the *a/*@ system and
> reconstruct items like *baw-) or it was preserved (and therefore
> reconstructing *bu-). Sumerian appears to be the most conservative.

Sumerian has four vowels, doesn't it?

Anyway, e-mail me privately if you want; I'd like to compare Bomhard's sound
correspondences with Dolgopolsky (I had Ilich-Svitych's chart printed out
somewhere; at least I memorized part of it...) Or better yet, how do I get the
entire list of reconstructed roots (but not whole detailed etymologies; just
the compared roots at the level of Proto-Afro-Asiatic, Proto-Indo-European
etc.)?

DaW.

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