Ed:
>As I keep saying: Nakh's membership of NEC is not in question (on the
>whole).
I fully understand and agree. I've understood this for some time now.
>HEALTH WARNING: This is speculation.
This fact has been already established. There is nothing mentally damaging
about speculation as long as we understand it as such. Some people have
difficulty seperating probability from reality and this is where it can be
perilous. However, I would like to clarify that the word "speculation" is
still not an excuse to try anything that suits one's fancy whether absurd or
not. A distinction must be made between healthy speculation and outrageous
speculation, albeit the line between the two can blur sometimes, depending
on the world you live in. I would call your speculation outrageous.
>> First, when exactly?
>> Second, where??
>> Third, how???
>
>When: I suppose we must be talking about the period 4000-1200BC.
>
>Where: Eastern Anatolia/Southern Caucasus
>
>How: By means of a language of unknown affiliation [...]
>which left no inscriptions and died out.
Far too vague. A whole slew of things can happen in a 2800-year period. It's
also suspicious when one suggests a language smack dab in the bustling
Middle-East which had completely died out, leaving no trace, not even clear
evidence to support one's claim. As it stands, comparing Etruscan to Nakh
for a glimpse at an invisible language is tantamount to looking for
extraterrestrials in caves. But hey, the "truth" is out there if you squint
hard enough.
>Perhaps a key event might be the arrival of Kartvelian speakers in
>the area around 3000 BC [...]
Um, 5000 BCE.
This brings us to the sham of connections you have listed to somehow refute
the much more solid Etruscan-IE connections in favor of a third party
circus. Let's go through some of the blunders together:
1. Cf. Etr. /than/, Nakh /dan/ 'to build'.
Sorry. The word in Etruscan is /tham-/ not */than/ (also /tmia/ "building")
and, for anyone in IE studies, the connection to IE *dom-, or to a later
Latin or Greek word built on the same root, is painfully obvious.
2. Cf. Chechen causative -u"tu.
You're mad if you think that the causative and imperative are
interchangeable. The Etruscan-IE connection compares only the _imperative_
endings of the two languages. Nakh doesn't come close for both its phonetics
and its meaning.
3. Oof! That's stretching it a bit, isn't it? Cf. Lezgian am- 'to be'.
Look who's stretching things! You had me believe that we were focusing on
the Nakh branch, not the Lezgian branch. Doesn't look like Chechen to me...
How desperate can one be to accept evidence that patently contradicts one's
assumptions about a third party affecting _only_ Nakh?! What is it then?
Does it affect Nakh AND Lezghian? Figure it out, already!
4. Yes, o.k. but numerals can be borrowed. (Which is my whole point).
Say wha?? Now this third party language is apparently affecting IE itself.
Are you saying now that IE was in on this and that IE had loaned *kWetwores
from the third party? The boundaries of the third party disappearing act are
getting comically extensive, don't you think? I think you are seriously
confused. Perhaps you should go to a cafe with your drawing board, start
over, sip two large cups of jav' (none of the decaf crap), then crawl back
and recount to us how you have seriously erred in judgment.
5. How about Etruscan /tesinth/ 'overseer', Hurrian /tesh-/ 'elder',
Nakh /tish/ 'old'.
There's an enormous leap to jump between "overseer" and "old". This /tes-/
root could mean anything and you know it - that's why you use it as
"evidence".
>Cf. Ingush /shajx/ 'sacred'.
While IE *sek^- and Etruscan /sac-/ are as direct a connection as one can
find both phonetically and semantically, Ingush looks beaten up in
comparison. This is all you could find? Ingush is only one Nakh language and
there's always the chance of borrowing or coincidence.
>Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I just assumed it might be from
>Daghestanian, as I remembered some of them having things like /yi/ >and
>/ya/ for 'we'.
Laterals can become [j] very easily if they are already palatal. This occurs
in Romance languages like French /fille/ for example. In addition, being
voiceless, the chances of this occuring are facilitated. You're probably
speaking of the Lezghian branch: Rutul /ja"/, Kryz /jin/, Budukh /jin/, Udi
/jan/. Note however that within the same branch, Agul has /xin/ and Archi
has /nen/. Clearly Agul is related to the rest of the group but the /x/ is
harder to explain if we were to have reconstructed *y-.
The voiceless lateral *L helps explain the results in this branch while also
connecting it with the rest of the family where laterals are more abundant.
The change from *La to /txo/ is not so hard to understand if the *L was
preglottalized (which explains why it's voiceless in the first place). The
initial stop in Khinalug /kin/ suggests this analysis as well. It would
become an absurd easter-egg hunt to try to find assumed third/fourth/fifth
party languages for all the variation seen in the NEC 1pp pronoun. That one
doesn't find /vaj/ outside of Nakh suggests all the more that this word is
borrowed from an IE language. Starostin reconstructs *z^i as the other 1pp
pronoun (exclusive).
>Sorry. I don't agree. Where is the evidence that the Tyrrhenians were
>resident in Europe proper until they hit Italy?
Place names. Second, I never included North Picene with this, so why talk
about it?
>I meant the Ubykhs as an example of the relatively trivial distance
>from the Caucasus to Western Anatolia. And I checked, it couldn't be
>train either as there were no substantial railways in Turkey until
>after 1918.
They had invented horses by then, I'm sure >:) Point is, this time period
doesn't compare to prehistory for so many reasons so no need to explain
further.
>Yes, but that's not what happened to the Ubykhs. And probably not the
>Etruscans either.
The Etruscans immigrated by sea to Italy, obviously. Of course, in this
instance, the movement was both linguistic and demic.
>Because these two inscriptions might constitute a virtual bilingual,
>silly!
...But, darling, this is stretching things a lot to suit one's own pet
theories, don't you think?
>The English city Bristol is a local dialect version of an original
>*Bristo.
This is one of your worst arguements. You're claiming a regular sound change
of [l] > [y] but the above is an isolated occurence caused by _analogical_
processes, not regular sound changes. Find a language where [l] > [y] is a
regular _sound change_ and then we'll talk. If you do find anything, it will
be far too rare and irrelevant for consideration anyways.
>Briefly, he establishes a number of possible borrowings by inserting
>a missing -n- or -m-, e.g.
Oh, well, in that case, I'll just inject /r/ wherever I please and connect
Etruscan to Mandarin. How's that? I mean, get real! You're talking
pseudo-linguistics and I'm not interested.
>Etruscan /acila/ 'handmaiden' <-> Latin /ancilla/ 'servant girl'.
>
>This might be a nasal vowel in Etruscan unrepresented in writing.
>You know, nasal vowel like in French, Polish and umm, Nakh.
And some Chinese dialects and American Indian languages and Japanese to some
degree, and.... Nasal vowels are not shocking in the least and Etruscan
probably didn't have them, but Latin did! Hmm. The plot thickens...
I'll get to your long-range debate in a seperate post soon. But first, I've
got to do the laundry.
- gLeN
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