Re: [tied] Re: PNC Playland

In a message dated 03/03/01 00:07:06 GMT Standard Time,
glengordon01@... writes:

Just because somebody creates a reconstruction something it doesn't
mean it actually happened. If we compare these two statements:

> Since Kartvelian is supposed to be a Nostratic language

> Isn't Proto-Nakh supposed to have existed in historical times?

Your second one is reasonable because the Nakh languages are so
similar it is unlikely that they do not share a common ancestor and
that this was not fairly recently (say 1000 years ago). Arguing from
your first statement is much more problematic. One can reconstruct
something apparently obvious (putting any known history on the back
burner) such as e.g. Proto West Romance, and people have done so as an
exercise. But it never happened and the common ancestor of the
languages involved that we actually have evidence for is rather
different. The idea that Kartvelian forms part of some macro group
requires a leap of faith. Or some more evidence. Aren't some
Nostraticists even starting to regard its membership as problematic?

> >>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.

I didn't say they *went* there, I said they *came from* there. Such a
distance itself is not a problem. Up until 1864 the Ubykhs were in the
Caucasus. The following year they were in Western Turkey. There is
evidence of Etruscoid adstrate/substrate influence on Lydian (or
rather, its ancestor). So they must have been in the vicinity for a
while. There is evidence of IE Anatolian areal influence on Etruscan,
so they must have been there for a while. Most classical sources keep
saying they came from Lydia, (including Vergil, who came from an
Etruscan speaking area) but one should not take their geographical
accuracy for granted. After all, I keep meeting Eastern Europeans who
think Scotland is in England, and this is after they have visited the
place. Even Western Europeans used to think this until recently. Yes,
there is obviously a problem with Etruscan surviving the second
millennium BC in Anatolia with all that was going on. Because,
clearly, it didn't.

The whole Pelasgian thing is problematic, so I would not take it for
granted that they and the Tyrrhenians are identical or even related
or that the Etruscans stayed long in the Aegean. Raetic is problematic
too. I think a genetic relationship between Etruscan and Raetic is far
from being proved. It is not even clear that the inscriptions ascribed
to Raetic are all in the same language. I for one am sure there are a
couple of Celtic ones in there. The idea that Etruscan influences in
Raetic are due to nothing more than a late northern military excursion
has not been disproved.

> 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.Hwä 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.

Sorry to disappoint you but in all the materials on Nakh languages I
have here, Chechen /qo/ (or /qo'/) is THREE. Ingush /qo?/, THREE
again. Batsbi /qo/, well blow me down, that's THREE as well. As you so
eloquently put it yourself:

> Two does not equal three

Sorry to disappoint that nice Mr Starostin as well with his pretty
reconstruction. There is no way the Nakh form fits in with the
Daghestanian ones. So this bit cannot be Common NEC and must have come
from somewhere else. But we do not have to do any tricks like make 2 =
3 for the Nakh to have a striking resemblance to the Etruscan and
Hurrian forms.

> >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 don't think the sound shift -l < *-i is unreasonable, after all,
there is evidence for it in archaic Etruscan.

> >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).

Yes, yours is the more interesting story. But it's assuming that a
close genetic relationship with IE exists.

> >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-).

There is evidence for prenasalisation in a number of Etruscan words.
Therefore max < *mpax is quite plausible. We also have to account for
the -u- in /muvalx/ '50'. So *pxu isn't so far away. And Nakh is
confused about m/p in a number of borrowed words, so why should we
be so sure about reconstructions involving one or the other of these
sounds? Anyway, /mex(-lum)/ is just another way of writing /methlum/
which doesn't fit your etymology quite as well.

> >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"

You could maybe be right. I agree, /huth/ is '4', not '6'.

> >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.

Nice story, but my story for -al- and -x also fits. Often there seems
to be no problem putting a case ending immediately after -alx as in
/cealxl/ so the -ve- or -va- isn't usually there.

> >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.

I have numerous books on Etruscan written in English, Italian and
German and I have read them. Dropping vowels at the ends of words
doesn't happen as much as it does internally and it is a late
phenomenon anyway. Funnily enough, Nakh has a strong stress accent on
the first syllable, just like Etruscan.

> But... The question you need to ask yourself is whether this happens at

the

> _NEC_ level, not the Nakh level.

I have to agree with you there. And I have to admit that my knowledge
of Daghestanian is still pretty patchy at present. But if things happen in
Nakh
and Etruscan, but not in Daghestanian, then there is something worth further
investigation here.


Ed.