Re: [tied] Lemnos stele and Polish semivowels

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

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 7:22 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Lemnos stele and Polish semivowels

>> Eichner (in J. Gvozdanovic "IE Numerals" 1992) argues that both *kWetw(o)r- and *meiwo- are reconstructible for Anatolian '4', the latter mainly in a collective function.

> Based on what evidence?  (I don't have the book, and seem to recall it was obscenely expensive).

 

Oh, it's a careful analysis of all attested Anatolian forms that could be either the one or the other. I haven't got the book at home, but if I don't forget I can copy some interesting bits for you tomorrow. For example, Eichner analyses Hittite kutruwas 'witness' in oath-taking formulas as 'the fourth man'.

 

>Apparently the "locative" in these construcions is expressed in
Etruscan as an endingless absolutive (avil).  (L. Bonfante: "Evidently
<avil> indicates a continous action [this is not terribly well
expressed, but we get the idea], "he lived for X years...", while
<avils> expresses a precise action or occurrence, "he died at
such-and-such a year" [example <... svalce avil LXIII ...> "... lived
for 63 years ..."]).  There are similar cases in the Liber Linteus
(<eslem zathrum> "on the 18th") and the Pyrgi tablets (<ci avil> "for
three years" (Phoen. <s^nt s^ls^ III>), possibly <churvar> if it
translates Phoen. <b yrH krr> "in the month of KRR (dances?)").

 

I know, I've got Bonfante's book(let). So we'd expect "X-Gen. avi(l)s" for '(he died) in the year of X'. That's just what I said.

 

 

>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 protest again, not as a linguist but as a mathematically literate person. Here we have something slightly more complex than dice-throwing. The stele inscription is a unique specimen of its type; you aren't sure in advance what syntactic structures to expect. Even the way you answer my objection show that you intuitively realise that the likelihood of finding a given category in a given position depends on how much we already know about the language of the text.

 

Consider the following argument (somewhat simplified for the clarity of exposition). There is a certain likelihood, determined by typological considerations for arbitrary languages -- let's say 50% (though it's possibly higher for related languages) -- that Etruscan and Lemnian have the same decad-unit order. If so, there is also a 50% chance that they use different orders. In the former case the dying age (N) of the man MUST be forty (100% likelihood), because none of the words preceding "forty" can be interpreted as a numeral; in the latter case let's accept your reasoning and say there's a 10% chance that it's forty. The total likelihood that N=40 (rather than 40 < N < 50) equals 0.5 x 1 + 0.5 x 0.1 = 0.55 . Your probability of N *not being* 40 is therefore not 90% but a mere 45%! Why? because the fact that we can already identify the numeral 40 and the word <avis> (and know the latter not to be a numeral) gives 40 an unfair a priori advantage over 41, 42 and the rest.

 

Piotr