Piotr to Miguel:
>You are speaking with unwarranted confidence. Since a "double avils"
>construction is nowhere attested in Etruscan, how can you know that it is
>possible, let alone "perfectly [??] grammatical".
That's what I've been trying to figure out from him for the
longest time... His whole problem involves linguistic
methodology itself. Ignoring Lemnian translation for a
moment, we might be well advised to examine what the
methodology would entail to translate this stele
professionally.
As Piotr has already mentioned, the Lemnian
numeral /zialchv-/ has an obvious counterpart in Etruscan,
_so_ obvious that the differences between Lemnian and
Etruscan, even grammatically can't be all too great as
Miguel needs to believe. Thus, Etruscan is a necessary
source to draw from because of its extreme linguistic
proximity. To translate Lemnian on a whim without
striving to identify parallels in Etruscan is foolhardy,
but this remains the approach of Miguel - trying to connect
words like /mara-/ to every language under the sun
EXCEPT Etruscan. Sometimes I think Miguel is actually
_trying_ to be ridiculous.
The following quote from Miguel shows that his
methodology is flawed and his concerns unprioritized:
>If English were as unknown to us as Lemnian (with only a little help from
>obscure Etruscan), I would say that seeing "AT THE AGE OF FORTY *AND*
>LIN..." (which is more like what we have in Lemnian) would naturally
>suggest another numeral. There would of course be a 10% chance of being
>wrong.
I would think that while both /-c/ and /-m/ can be translated
as "and" in English, /-m/ binds phrases while /-c/ binds
nouns. Thus to say "I was going to the cinema AND I ran into
Bill", one would use /-m/. Whereas, if I were to say "I have
two dogs, Fido AND Rover", one would use /-c/. Since /-m/
is found here on the Lemnos Stele, it would seem to make
better sense if it bound whole _phrases_, leaving Miguel's
translation even more ludicrous (as if it couldn't be any
more unlikely).
- gLeN
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
http://www.hotmail.com