Miguel:
>How so? An analysis *woi-no- from *wei- "to turn, to wind" is
>perfectly defendable (in fact, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov do so, IIRC).
Gamkrelidze and Ivanov do many things, don't they... some not so good. Say
no to an Anatolian-based homeland, boys and girls :) I'll admit to this
*wei-no- idea being _very weakly_ defendable on the surface but we can't
honestly call it a done-deal. Piotr's comments on this are valid.
Secondly, I find it very hard to believe that the IE were at the center of
much. Everyone wants the IE speakers to be grand and glorious... Who were
the first agriculturalists? Well, they MUST be IndoEuropeans, of course! Who
wiped out matrifocal religion? Well, it MUST have been the IndoEuropeans, of
course! Etc, etc, etc.
Let's face it. IE speakers were really dull, so to speak :) The language may
have spread wide and far but it says nothing about the initial circumstance
of the language and the prehistoric period in which words like *weino-,
whether native or not, had spread.
Speaking within the context of a wider scope on IE, there are many words
that are attributable more to a Semitoid language than to IE itself such as
(yet I say for a millionth time) numerals like "six" and "seven" which are
securely Semitoid, not IE at all, and words for things that are related to
agricultural-related items and goods. I don't think anyone can argue
convincingly that "six" and "seven" are truely native IE terms - we
coincidentally find these terms spread out in Kartvelian and Semitic too,
exactly like the *weino- pattern. This provides a case for reasonable doubt.
If we keep to the mainstream and accept a North Pontic or Balkan homeland
for IE, there is no question that the IE language cannot have spread AGAINST
the tide of agriculture out of Anatolia when it started around 6000 BCE.
This is not an option. Yet the words must have been borrowed before sometime
around 4000 BCE to be an important part of Proto-IE core vocab.
Now, first, let's play Miguel's devil's advocate. If we say as you do,
Miguel, that *weino- is a natively created word for "wine", we have three
options:
1. The word travelled out of Europe BEFORE c.6000 BCE.
Um, I don't think so. Time for the funny farm.
I don't recall there being wine without agricultural
innovations alongside.
2. The word spread AGAINST the flow of farmers coming
OUT of Anatolia during c.6000 BCE spread INTO Anatolia.
Yeah, right. Add two cups of alien conspiracies
and stir gently.
3. The word spread sometime AFTER c.6000 BCE but before or
during c.4000 BCE (before the IE breakup).
Maybe, but it implies that the IEs were the center of
an agricultural-driven economy that appears to derive
most of its topic-related words from a Semitoid tongue,
a tongue that would have been without a doubt closer to
Anatolia than IE ever was. Which brings us to...
Why would IE have Semitoid loans if it is IE that was spreading far and wide
into Kartvelian, Hattic and hey, maybe even Egyptian, if you are so
inclined? These are languages occupying territories best reached only by
Semitoid languages, not IE. We might also claim that Sumerian /gigir/ is
derived from IE but I was sure that this was laughed away years ago. To say
that IE begat *weino- to the myriad of other languages is saying that IE
actually had major influence despite its tiny population densities and
numbers, knowing what we do of the probable IE world. The IE speakers could
not have been _all_ or even _mostly_ farmers like the incoming Anatolians
were - Doesn't this clinch the fact that IE speakers, while taking advantage
of innovation, were not greatly influential to Anatolia during these times?
Miguel, what are you saying in the end? How do you support *weino- being
native IE?
>Speaking of wine, you may be interested in the Basque word for
>"grape(s)", <mahats>, reconstructible to pre-Basque *<banas'>, and
>looking very much like a loan from A.Eg. <w-n-s^> "grape".
Well, it is interesting. How exactly can these AfroAsiatic words pop up in
such early stages of Basque. Is it attributable to Phoenician? What is the
date set for "Pre-Basque"? I keep on obsessing on the numerals (as you can
tell). I remember Larry Trask explaining "six" and "seven" away as native
but it wasn't convincing. Plus, /sei/ & /zazpi/ could not have been from
Latin or any IE language I know of in Europe. It keeps coming back to a
Semitoid language - in this case, probably not Semitish, but who knows. It's
a whacky world, folks :)
>If anything, it (or rather *da) was the Proto-Kartvelians' way of
>rendering IE syllabic *<r.>.
... possibly maybe. It would be nice to see other examples of this
correspondance though. Actually I have been examining patterns in Kartvelian
loans myself. I notice for instance the borrowing of Semitoid numerals with
sibilants and how they disappear almost as though it would indicate a later
sound change. Sound changes are fun to date, aren't they? Maybe we could
propose...
5500 BCE c.4000 c.3000
*s- *h- "NULL"
Just thoughts.
> >Is it like the *m- prefix in *m-k.erd "heart" which is also viewed as
> >an IE loan?
>
>No. *m- is a common PK nominal prefix. AFAIK, *d(a)- isn't.
Although, I remember it being used in Georgian verbs but of course, we can't
make much of a verb out of *xrtkos. Piotr's *tasku- suggestion has more
problems though. First of all, the size difference! :)
That's all folks.
- gLeN
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