>This is the standard Egyptological view. See Loprieno "Ancient
>Egyptian", Kammerzell's introduction to Hannig's "Grosses
>Handwoerterbuch Aegyptisch-Deutsch" or Schenkel's "Einfuehrung in die
>altaegyptische Sprachwissenschaft".
I'm not able to judge good pre-Egyptian from bad so I'll stick with
*wanaxi-. No big whoop.
> >Your views on pre-IE seem honestly to me to be very
> >counterintuitive, using research from other people whose views are
> >frightfully amateurish.
>
>Such as? I only mentioned Jens Elemgaard Rasmussen (without holding
>him responsible for my theories), who is one of the most original
>Indo-Europeanists of our time.
"Original" is a good word. I've got to remember that word. Yes, we might say
that Rasmussen is "original"... but is he credible? I don't think so.
>That's also my view[*]. Additionally, (*p), *t and *k in the Auslaut
>also result in laryngeals, in IE. This explains the curious absence
>of any of these stops at the end of the word (except for verbal 3rd.p.
>*-t, which is a relatively recent extension, as we can see from the
>fact that it *follows* the plural morpheme *-en in the 3rd.pl., and
>that it's frequently absent). More specifically, the developments I
>posit are:
I mentioned this before on the Nostratic List. There is no need to stress
oneself out from the "curious absence" of final stops. Due to the synthetic
nature of IE, bare roots functioning as complete words rarely exist.
Therefore, the curious absence of final stops in IE might be less
deceptively refered to as an absence of final stops within the IE suffix.
However, we can't use *t as an example. Both *-t and *-d do indeed appear to
exist word finally. Further, a final stop was more probably undifferentiated
according to aspiration or voicing (much like Etruscan appears to behave).
Thus, IE *-t and *-d were probably one and the same. Afterall, there is
little basis for the distinction.
This leaves *k and *p which probably were truely never final as far as we
know. Still, the lack of *k-final or *p-final suffixes is hardly indicative
of anything at all. I surmise that as recently as Mid IE, roots and even *k-
or *p- terminating roots COULD be bare due to the less obsessive use of the
nominative, originally unmarked for both animate and inanimate nouns.
Further, thematic vowels, another Mid to Late IE grammatical concept, helped
to further eradicate any lingering final stops after the Mid IE loss of
final vowel.
Even if these are all lies on my part and I am hopelessly mad, your solution
is definitely not credible for many and remains overly mechanical, if not
painful to look at.
>*-tw > -s [e.g. vb. 2sg.; nom.pl. -es]
This is ridiculous. A better solution is simply:
ProtoSteppe *-t > Late IE *s (via IndoTyrrhenian *c /ts/)
This is all we need. Thus, the 2sg *-s was originally *-t (the extra *w you
have is unnecessary and even likely to be wrong). While the 2ps *-s probably
did indeed come ultimately from the affixed pronoun *tu via a form *-t (or
if you like *-tw), the IE nom.pl. *-es would be better reconstructed at an
earlier stage as ProtoSteppe *-it. The suffix is still used within the
Uralic and EskimoAleut families (Inuktitut inuk/inuit). Where does one see a
*-tw plural within or outside of IE?? Can you honestly justify the labial at
all?
By the way, any later final stops in IE were caused by the loss of final
vowel in Mid IE. For instance, 3ps *-t from Mid IE *-te, an affixed
demonstrative. Ablative *-et is from Mid IE *-eta (Uralic *-ta) just as
genitive *-es is from Mid IE *-ese (compare Etruscan). Support for this loss
final vowel is found within the chaotic IE accent. Underlying it all is a
regular Mid IE penultimate stress accent. The loss of final vowel caused the
accent to appear finally while in words that had no final vowel to begin
with, the original penultimate accent remained. This is the ultimate cause
for the alternation of accent between the singular and plural secondary, and
later primary, conjugation (*est/*sent <= *ec-te/*ec-ene) and the
alternation of accent in the non-thematic declensional paradigm:
[nominative sg] *-se => unaccented *-s
[nominative pl] *-ec => unaccented *-es
[2ps secondary] *-es => unaccented *-(e)s
[genitive sg] *-ese => accented *-es
Of course, on top of this change were further innovations to the accent,
like the creation of thematic nouns, the acrostatic accent of such nouns,
blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada...
>Can't think of any *p's, except that *pw probably merged with *kw
>(except in Germanic[**]) and should have given *-h3 in the Auslaut.
There was no *pw. There can't be any *pw sound. The sound *p is inheirantly
labial to begin with! How does one honestly distinguish *p and *pW? Any
examples of this in a HUMAN language? And, in the end, how necessary is it
to posit this?
>[*] Although differing in detail. For instance, my Nostratic
>laryngeal inventory would be something like: *3 (`ayn), *?, *h [the
>voiced, glottalized and aspirated variants of the "null" consonant],
>plus *G, *x [velar fricatives]. The uvular series *G", *q, *q., while
>not strictly belonging to the "laryngeals", gives Semitic *3, *x, *h.
>(but IE *gh, *k, *g [as e.g. in Sem. *3as'r- "10", PIE *g^hesr-
>"hand", but Luw. isri-]).
I find typical Nostratic phonologies overly complex and inadequately
justified. I prefer a simpler phonology until we can more accurately
reconstruct the language. For now, I would call only for *x. I'm unconvinced
that *? is even a distinct phoneme or whether it is automatic (like the
glottal stop in English /apple/). I suspect that the disappearance of
Bomhard's Nostratic ayin in Kartvelian or Sumerian might just be a specific
treatment of a back-coloured *x (coloured by neighbouring back vowels).
>And I thought you would be pleased to see pPIE pl. *-atu, du. *-aku
>reconstructed, when compared to PU pl. *-t, du. *-k[a]...
Aha! But we don't see any trace of the supposed *-u of **-atu in Uralic, do
we. Secondly this Uralic dual *-k[a] that you cite is a mirage. Even if what
you say were valid, your *-k[a] doesn't demonstrate the non-existent labial
vowel either. Are you aware of Uralic *ka"kte meaning "two"? If you were,
you'd understand that this Uralic dual suffix is related to the numeral. The
numeral doesn't display a labial vowel either. Time for a new theory. This
one's toast.
>>But... On another topic, Kartvelian *wenaq- seems to be a clue to the
>>ultimate origins of the "wine" word... but what is it saying? What is
>> >>the *-q- at the end supposed to be?
>
>An unvoiced aspirated uvular stop.
I know that. What I meant was "What is it supposed to represent
grammatically?". It was an intro to the next paragraph.
Miguel on the Basque recording:
>You wouldn't: he's from Mutriku, very close to the Bizkaian border.
>Bizkaian (and neighbouring Gipuzkoan dialects) does not distinguish
><s> and <z> anymore (both sounding as "Spanish" apical /s/), nor <ts>
>and <tz> (both sounding as "French" laminal /ts/).
Interesting, thanx for the info.
- gLeN
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