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

----- Original Message -----

From: Dennis Poulter

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 5:16 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: IE, AA, Nostratic and Ringo

 

Mille pardons, Dennis. We owe you an interesting topic. The purpose of my remarks was only to caution the Cybalist members against "word games" (as Jasanoff & Nussbaum put it) in lieu of serious etymology -- something that Bernal is certain guilty of playing. The soundest derivations among those you quote as appetisers don't happen to be Bernal's but have already been sufficiently discussed and justified by competent specialists (H. Lewy, O. Szemerényi, E. Masson and many others). It's a pity Bernal didn't begin with Volume 3 (the philological groundwork). It's another pity he has an ideological agenda.

 

In some cases the assumption of Afroasiatic origin helps to clarify the relations holding between terms occurring in different IE languages. E.g. Greek elephas (Myc. e-re-pa) and Latin ebur 'ivory' could not be combined into a single etymon if they hadn't had an Egyptian protoplast.

 

Piotr

 

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Dennis wrote:

Please give me some credit. I was only listing some samples of connections that Bernal has made. To give the justifications would have entailed writing out whole chunks of his books (copyright infringements?). And to give Bernal his due, he goes to some lengths to justify his derivations. Furthermore, the two volumes do not deal specifically with language - this was supposed to be the main theme of volume 3, which has not yet been brought out. So, again this list was only supposed to be an "appetiser". If it provokes interest, then the full course is to be found in Black Athena.