That Torsten person stated:
>Bomhard (IndoEuropean and the Nostratic Hypothesis, root 83) has 1, >which
>he relates to a Proto-Kartvelian *den-/*din- "to run, to >flow"), *dn- "to
>melt" (BTW, afaik IE replaced a Caucasian language >exactly in the *d-n-
>river area, which doesn't make things easier),
Cool, you have the book! Let me make things easier. I always am skeptical of
those roots of Bomhard's that only contain evidence from AA and Kartvelian
(the two oldest branches of Nostratic).
While the sound correspondances check out okay, we should ask ourselves
where the rest of the correspondances between the oldest branches of
Nostratic and IndoEuropean is. Where are the roots attested in the
"in-between" languages: Sumerian, Elamite, Dravidian, Uralic, AltaicGilyak,
EskimoAleut or ChukchiKamchatkan? It would seem far likelier given the
present data that either the roots are coincidence, there are errors, or the
root has been borrowed into IE via Kartvelian or Semitish (yes, the Semitish
language again :P).
The concept of "primordial waters" and the story of creation out of water
appears to me to be the core part of a EuroAnatolian mythology circa
7000-5000 BCE, a hybrid of European-Semitoid hybrid of beliefs, centered in
a land where Semitish (an AA language) would have been spoken. The original
IE myths, I figure, were more aligned with Steppe shamanistic beliefs. I can
see how mythological concepts could travel and lend *dhen- to the IE
vocabulary via Semitish. I've already argued with Piotr on some of those
Semitoid myth terms that appear to have taken a trip into the IE language
(*nebhos = *napis^tu-, *pexwr = *ba`lu-, *xste:r = *`aTtaru-/`aTtaritu-,
etc).
As for *d-n-, I was under the impression that this was *dexn- (*da:n-). So,
we should be writing *d-x-n-, nej? But, when I think about this for a
minute, I can't help but notice that *dhen- and **dxen- (a hypothetical
alternative accent for *dexn- that we were talking about earlier) look alot
alike.
This "*dx > *dh" mix-up is exactly the same phenom as what I suspect for an
Early Late IE *lxudxros "(IndoTyrrhenian) people", a thematic version of an
earlier *lxud�xr, becoming the more familiar *leudhros.
*dxen- > *dhen-
*lxudxros > *leudhros
Intriguing. Comments?
- gLeN
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