Danny Wier conveys:
> > For instance, Bomhard has four
> > reconstructions for the first person alone - *mi, *na, *?a and *wa!
>[...]
>Four reconstructions from six families equals major doubt.
Not really. It's just analysed improperly. Take my hypothesis for a spin:
If we divide the Nostratic family properly into branches and subbranches
then everything makes more sense. So, by proposing the suppletive 1ps *nu/*u
for the most ancient stage of Nostratic we can first explain the AfroAsiatic
pronouns and their usage. Consider for instance the prefixal set [*a-, *ta-,
*ya-], derived from bound absolutive pronouns.
Kartvelian and Eurasiatic languages don't use *nu, so much as, *mu - a
special mutation of *n next to a labial vowel which may have been also
productive grammatically since *nu seems to also be the 2nd person
absolutive. Thus I would propose the following set of pronouns in the
singular for the ancientmost stage of Nostratic...
absolutive ergative
1ps *u *nu
2ps *nu *ku (masc)
*tu (fem)
3ps *i *ci
It might look like I'm reinventing Nostratic but in reality, all of these
pronouns have already been identified loosely by Bomhard, Dogolpolsky,
Illych-Svitych and Greenberg. Sadly, they also like to resist explaining
their functions accurately.
The absolutive pronouns would simply be used as the subject of an
intransitive verb and the object of a transitive one while the ergative
would be used as the subject of a transitive verb. Thus we might say that
the pronouns marked the transitivity of the Nostratic verb. The 2ps
absolutive *nu and 1ps ergative *nu would not have clashed grammatically as
long as the pronouns were not simply implicit.
The 3rd person is a kind of iffy thing to reconstruct because I suspect that
there may have been still a trace of a more ancient stage when Nostratic
used word-classes and ergo, a million and one functionless demonstratives
that were originally designed for different genders. Imagine if Swahili
suddenly went genderless. Yikes! ...but I'm explaining theoretical grammar
c.20,000 BCE+ which is well beyond the topic of IE, so I will digress now :(
The earliest stage of Eurasiatic, the branch of Nostratic from which IE
would later spring, would have the following more familiar set...
absolutive ergative
1ps *u *mu
2ps *nu *tu
3ps *i *ci
All pronouns had an optional suffix *-n (a topical marker, perhaps?).
Kartvelian too would have had a similar set to begin with although it has
evolved its own special way. Regardless the pronouns are there. I gather it
went something like the following but this is only my loose thoughts
spilling out:
*c^wen "I" < *c^un < *ti un "it is I"
*tkwen "you" < *tkun < *ti kun "it is you"
Proto-Steppe (c.9000 BCE), being a subbranch of Eurasiatic and the mother of
Uralic, Altaic and IE for example, would have the following. Note, the
derivation of subjective/objective conjugation from these pronouns, that
would later find itself in the IE paradigm with a different function,
observable in Nenets (Uralic), and note also the loss of the unbound
absolutive pronouns in favor of the ergative ones:
absolutive ergative
1ps *-xW *mu, *-m
2ps *-n *tu, *-t
3ps *-i *su
I see ElamoDravidian lying between the early Eurasiatic stage and the
Proto-Steppe stage, with the following in "Late" Eurasiatic where the
affixation was starting to begin:
absolutive ergative
1ps *u, *-xu *mu, *-mu
2ps *nu, *-nu *tu, *-tu
3ps *i, *-i *ci
McAlpin reconstructs the following for ElamoDravidian and note an
interesting vowel changes that nobody has noticed yet on the originally
absolutive pronouns that are found in Dravidian (*ya:n, *ni:n):
1ps *i
2ps *ni
3ps *ta(n) [resumptive]
*i [reflexive]
ED *ta is of course derived from a Nostratic demonstrative *ti (Bomhard
*ta-). Unfortunately, Bomhard doesn't explain the evolution of the
pronominal system as accurately as this, especially vis-a-vis
ElamoDravidian, so I did it for him ;) You like?
> > As for kinship terms, basically Bomhard has:
> >
> > *?ab- father
> > *?at(t)- father
> > *?am(m)- mother
> > *?an'- mother, aunt
> > *?ay(y)- mother, female relative
> > *?ak(k)- older female relative
> > *xaw- a maternal relative
>
>Bear in mind that some of these are "nursery words". In particular,
>any of the possible "double consonant" roots.
Right, the double consonant thing is a little weird. The problem is that
Nostratic is clearly not a consonant-rich or syllabically rich language. It
was very simple and straight-forward phonetically which makes reconstructing
these words with certainty difficult sometimes. I realise the iffyness of
these words but until I can find something better I would reconstruct them
without double consonants.
At any rate, this is where more organisation rather than reconstruction is
vital. I wish that Nostraticists became more involved in tracing the exact
etymologies of some of these reconstructions rather than simply "mass
comparing" like Greenberg, not paying attention to the in-between stages. I
think that some of Dolgol.'s words are probably later than protoNostratic
like his *kalu.
My suggestion for **kalu is that IE's word derives from IndoTyrrhenian
*k:alaxwe (remember the penultimate accent law too...) ultimately stemming
from an earlier Steppe compound *k:al-axWi "brother's lady" which is
attested in Uralic and Altaic as well. The compound is not attested outside
Steppe as far as I know, but the individual components (*k?al and *axwi)
are. In my world, this particular word is _not_ attributable to Nostratic
but rather Steppe, thus making it only an 11,000 year old word. So throw
that one away; we won't be needing that.
> > Looking at *?an'-, something looks fishy to me. It's based on:
> >
> > Uralic *an'a "mother, aunt"
> > Dravidian *an.n.- "a woman, mother"
> > Altaic:Turkish ana "mother"
> > AfroAs:PSC *?aN- "father's sister" (N = ing)
>
>Depends on how stable words for relatives are. (And what kind of
>social structure the member families constitute. You have matrilinear
>and patrilinear societies mixed together in these.)
That's my problem, I don't know about the structure of the societies
speaking these languages. Now, we can see that language and culture both
spread fluidly but it's always possible for them to go their seperate ways.
Caveat.
Again, I would like to see more being done to acknowledge each and every
minute stage between one language or another and Nostratic so that these
words can be more accurately traced. It's no use trying to reconstruct
Nostratic accurately if time isn't taken to understand exactly how we derive
these later language groups from it - What about reconstructing
Proto-Steppe, Proto-IndoTyrrhenian, Proto-Eurasiatic, Proto-ElamoDravidian,
etc? No, of course not. Nostratic is too far soaked in linguistic prestige
to ignore. :P
>By the way -- what is the status of Nilo-Saharan? I've heard it linked
>with Niger-Congo, and less commonly, Afro-Asiatic. (The Nubians live
>south of Egypt and north of Ethiopia, after all.)
Unfortunately I'm totally ignorant about Nilo-Saharan. I just know that it's
not viewed as a Dene-Caucasian language and certainly not Nostratic. (I view
Nostratic as a Dene-Caucasian language, BTW)
>Some link Eskimo-Aleut to Eurasian, don't they?
Eurasiatic, yes. I would say that it's most closely related to
Uralic-Yukaghir actually, but as for the origin of IE's Omaha style system
and how it might relate to a possible Eskimo system in Nostratic is a
question left to ponder sleeplessly all night.
- gLeN
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