>To be fair, there are a lot of consonants to account for in
>Daghestanian (and NWC, of course). Nakh is *much* simpler.
Of course, the reason why protoNWC has so many consonants is due to its
unusally simple vowel system (2 vowels). ProtoNEC on the other hand must
surely have had an average run-of-the-mill vowel system which contained much
more than just two.
>The fact that Nakh is so much simpler consonant-wise makes me suspect
> >there is something non-genetic going on here, like language contact >or
>creolisation compared to the rest of NEC.
Maybe, maybe not. Possible reasons for phonological simplification are
abundant for any language. You can't make pronouncements like these until
you know what's going on.
>Certainly Johanna Nichols says she thinks the Nakhs arrived at their
>current position from the south west. BTW, where and when do the
>Kartvelians fit in to your model for the Caucasus?
I just take all the best theories proposed and blend them together in my
bowl, add flour, mix in the eggs, and then let it bake for a while. And
voila! It doesn't take much intelligence on my part, really.
Since Kartvelian is supposed to be a Nostratic language (which is believed
to have spread from somewhere in the MiddleEast), it must have lingered near
its eventual area for some time but certainly was not native to it relative
to the older residents (NWC and NEC). I haven't read much about Kartvelian
origins but I suspect that the Kartvelian language spread into the Caucasus
from its position on the south to southeast shores of the Black Sea much
like the NEC language did earlier (Erh, you mean NEC not Nakh itself,
right?). If they were there, I figure the Kartvelian move must have been
completed somewhere around 5000 BCE. I've been playfully suspecting that
there may have been early NWC influence in Kartvelian.
>Absolutely not. I think there can be no doubt about NEC, including
>Nakh. I just think that the fact that the variation in divergence of
>different aspects of Nakh from the rest of NEC needs an explanation.
>One explanation could be a substrate.
Ah, now I understand. Alright. Substrate, substrate, substrate (thinking...)
Nope. I don't see anything other than the ol' NWC & Kartvelian languages in
prehistory, or the newer ones as was mentioned before. Isn't Proto-Nakh
supposed to have existed in historical times? If so, there is a whole myriad
of languages to choose from in the area and any one of them have a "simple"
phonology by Caucasian standards.
>>I hope you won't do something silly like mention
>>Etruscan /ci/ and desperately connect it with Hurrian /kig/.
>
>Well, yes, I'm afraid I am. And I'm going to link that with Nakh >/qo/.
Oh my. Here we go. I knew you were getting to this :) I'm afraid that this
connection is clearly problematic for many reasons.
First, the most important problem is location. No matter how much you try,
protoTyrrhenian itself could never have been any further east than the west
coast of Anatolia. It could not have travelled very far into Anatolia
because of other languages firmly placed there (Hattic, Hurrian, Kaskian and
goddess knows what else) and it could not have travelled the other way over
the north shores of the Black Sea due to the IE language established there.
The linguistic offspring of Mother Tyrrhenian (Lemnian, Etruscan and
Rhaetic) are also very much more western than your theory can support.
Clearly the Tyrrhenian homeland lies along the eastern Mediterranean
coastline far from any direct or even indirect NEC influence throughout the
entire post-mesolithic era up to the present day.
...And if by small chance, they managed to boat their way to the eastern
shores of the Black Sea, one would expect NWC contact first, before they
would ever get to the NEC area.
So after you're able to overcome unsurmountable location problems, we arrive
at the lesser problem of semantics when comparing Chechen /qo?/ and Etruscan
/ci/. Two does not equal three. "Two", not "three", appears to be the soup
du jour for this little etymon:
Avar /k.i/ "two"
Lak /k.i=a/ "two"
Akusha /k.e-l/ "two"
Khinalug /k.u/ "two"
Chechen /qo?/ "two"
Lezghi /q.We-d/ "two"
Tsezi /q.Iano/ "two"
Starostin reconstructs *q.Hw� and while his phonetics may be called into
question, the word appears strongly to have existed and could only have
meant "two" from the very beginning.
Your connection is impossible.
>Hurrian and Nakh /shi/, '2' fit quite nicely with one another, but
>Etruscan /sal/ doesn't so well. Maybe if Proto-Tyrrhenian was *sai it
>might.
One shouldn't adjust the reality to fit the theory. I have yet to update my
site and put up my list of pTyrrhenian reconstructions but I would rather
reconstruct pTyrrhenian *c'e- "two" (the phoneme *c' is caused by the
palatalization of an earlier dental stop as in *deuk:e > *c'ekke > Etruscan
/s'ec/ "daughter"). Etruscan /zal/ (also /esl/) can be better related to IE
*dwo- than to an NEC language in a faraway land.
>The Nakh for '1' /c'h'a/ is probably (unlike most of the numerals in
>Nakh) clearly related to the Daghestanian. But a cognate with >Etruscan
>/thu/ may survive in Batsbi /dui?re/ 'first'.
This is too fantastical to be taken seriously. It might be interesting for
you to note that the *de- in IE *dek^m which suspiciously disappears in
higher numbers like "twenty" (*-k^ont-) and onward can be connected to
Etruscan /thu/. This is an artifact of IndoTyrrhenian *t:eu (enclitic *t:e
as in *t:e-kam "ten"). Etruscan /thu/ preserves this word while IE has
replaced it with a form based on a pronoun *ei- (*oinos).
>And then of course there is Etruscan /max/ and Nakh /pxi/ for '5'.
Come now. Let's stop this craziness. The relationship of /mach/ to IE *megx-
"large, abundant in number" (Greek /mega/, Sanskrit /maha/) is quite obvious
and proposed long ago. Another similar Etruscan word /mech/ is used for the
word "people" in Etruscan, again relating to the meaning of "abundant". It
certainly has no real similarity to NEC because NEC securely has an initial
labial stop *p- based on Khinalug /pxu/ (Starostin reconstructs an PNC *f-
based solely on meager evidence from NWC but he's certainly not loony enough
to propose an *m-).
Unless you're willing to dream up more outlandish ideas about how an NEC
*px- comes from **mxi which would _still_ not explain the phonetics here,
you're totally burned toast! (Remember: you still have to explain away the
location problems above! Your case is as good as nil.)
>The Nakh for '4' doesn't
>really fit, but interestingly, it's the only numeral that uses class
>prefixes.
Etruscan /huth/ relates to IE *kWetwor-, both meaning "four" from
IndoTyrrhenian *kWetWan. To be honest, some contraversy remains whether
/huth/ is really "four" or "six" because of a pair of dice. However, there
is the ancient town name of Yttenia (as it is written in Greek) on my side
lying in the Eastern Mediterranean which is also known as Tetrapolis ("Four
Cities"). The native name could have been pronounced *Huttena and meaning
the same thing. (Note the -ena ending found in many Etruscan names of cities
and ethnicities like /Tarchuna/ or /Ras'na/). Thus, it looks to me like
/huth/ means "four" but either way, it doesn't relate to NEC at all but oh
so well to IE.
>To stick to numerals, there are morphological parallels, too. To take
>'3' as an example again, we have Etruscan /cealx/ '30', Nakh
>/qo'algha/ '3rd'. Folk etymologies derive this from the Nakh for '3
>said', which is very similar, and which might actually fit in >Etruscan as
>well as a derivation.
Not at all. You need guidance. Etruscan /cealch/ is comprised of /ce-/
"three" + /-al-/ + /-ch/. The ending /-al/ is used as a genitive ending. To
understand the last component /-ch/, we need to take a look at Lemnian where
we have /si-al-chve-is/ "of sixty". The Etruscan /-ch/ must therefore be
short for /-chva/, a common collective suffix seen elsewhere in Etruscan
(cf. /pulum-chva/). I suspect however that this numeral formation arose from
a misanalysis somewhere along the line. Here's how it would all go:
IndoTyr *k:Wel-ela kam "three tens"
> Tyr *k:ielakon
> EtrLem *k:iela-kuwa "three groups" (misanalysis)
hence Etruscan /cealch[va]/
I think I have IndoTyrrhenian *k:Wel-kam reconstructed on my site. That may
have to change, but I'm not sure.
>Then we have the parallel Etruscan ciz/cizi, Nakh qu'uz/quuza '3
>times'. The pair in Nakh is without/with focus gemination, [...] Exactly
>the same thing might be going on in the Etruscan pair.
No, you're not on the ball here. Etruscan /ciz/ versus /cizi/ is simply a
difference in spelling. Etruscan primarily had a strong stress accent on the
first syllable. Vowels that were unstressed were sometimes written sometimes
not. If you spent a little time reading a book on Etruscan, you would know
this.
>Finally, '19' is formed subtractively in Nakh, just as it is in
>Etruscan (and Latin).
But... The question you need to ask yourself is whether this happens at the
_NEC_ level, not the Nakh level. That is, after you can solve the disastrous
geographical puzzle.
- gLeN
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