Re: [tied] Etruscan and Nakh

In a message dated 10/03/01 13:48:30 GMT Standard Time,
glengordon01@... writes:

> >I don't rule out a remote connection between IE and NEC. You probably
> >know John Colarusso has put forward the idea that NWC and IE
> >together form a 'Pontic' macrofamily. You probably have something to
> >say about this, which I would be interested in. At least we all think
> >NWC and NEC aren't that closely related. Sorry, Sergei.
>
> NEC and IE? Seperated by some 40,000 years. NWC and IE? Yes, I have
> something to say about this. First, this "Pontic macrofamily" is already
> called Dene-Caucasian. The genetic seperation of NWC from IE (via

Nostratic)

> would be on the order of some 30,000 years. However, I agree with what
> Bomhard says about a later NWC influence on preIE. This influence would

have

> occured between 9000 and 7000 BCE as both NWC and IndoTyrrhenian travelled
> westward from Central Asia together. That would explain why preIE stages
> appear to have only two vowels (just like in NWC).

Sez you. But I'm not allowed to say the Etruscans were in Anatolia prior to
1200 BC?
Which of us is operating with more evidence than the other?

> >Yes, that's Uralic; /-ce/ doesn't seem to have a correspondence in IE
> >and neither does the 'passive' related to it, /-xe/. The two endings
> >everybody is 100% certain of the meaning of. Cf. Chechen past temporal
> >converb: /-cha/.
>
> Ha! So you're saying that Etruscan /c/ (pronounced [k]) relates to Chechen
> /-cha/, eh??

I know. Nobody believes Italian is descended from Latin. The sound shift /k/

> /tS/

is just too fantastic to be credible.

> >Only Lydian has morphological redetermination, i.e. l + s like
> >Etruscan. I would suggest therefore that this is an areal feature in
> >Lydian due to Etruscoid influence.
>
> Quite right, opt for the less likely option. That's what Occam's Razor is
> for. To destroy, to maim, to twist, to contort to one's own feelings.

Only an idiot believes that the simplest explanation is always true. Etruscan
is
quite clearly not a member of Indo-Anatolian, as the core vocabulary just
does not
fit.

> >Morphological redetermination is
> >also present in Nakh to form new nouns from oblique cases e.g. Etr.
> >/Uni/ 'Juno', /unial/ 'Juno's temple' (lit. 'of Juno'), cf. Batsbi
> >/cu/ 'oats', /cun/ 'bread' (lit. 'of oats').
>
> This can be found in IE as well. So what?

Examples?

> >In Chechen, /-l/ is used for the comparative case, while /-alla/ is >used
> >for deadjectival abstractions, e.g. /xazalla/, 'beauty'.
>
> Hmm, I guess it must be relatable to Latin then (cf. abilis, nominalis,
> habilis, etc).

Who knows? A lot of stuff entered Latin from Etruscan.

> >A 'nominative' ending that only gets used sometimes sounds dangerously
> >like an ergative.
>
> You obviously don't have a clue what an ergative is used for and you don't
> have a clue about Etruscan. No one would be so daft as to propose such a
> thing for Etruscan /-s/.

Beekes?

> >Hmmm. Your -s 'nominative' (male Gods) and -n 'accusative' (a handful >of
> >words) are so non-mainstream that they could either be i) recent
> > >innovations, or ii) archaic relics in which case Etruscan would be a
> > >daughter of IE, which it patently isn't, [blah, blah, blah]
>
> Look, listen for once. There are many languages including IE and Dravidian
> where pronominals and demonstratives are given different case endings than
> the regular nouns. This is simple first-year linguistics. Etruscan /-n(i)/
> happens to be the pronominal-demonstrative accusative, not found in

regular

> nouns, not found in the "mainstream" as you so put it in laymen's terms.

Sorry, there are THREE instances of /cn/ in the whole Etruscan corpus. The
same
number of instances as there are of /cnl/, in fact. Now why would anybody
want to
stick another case ending on to a word which already had an 'accusative'
ending?
Then there's /ecnas/, derived from the supposedly 'accusative' /ecn/. If I
ask you to
show me an inscription where /cn/ is used as the accusative, you'd no doubt
wheel
out TLE 51. What about TLE 334 where /eca/ should obviously be in the
'accusative'
case but isn't? And how do you know that the handful of nouns with /-n/ added
aren't just alternative forms for /-ne/ or /-na/?

> >> ... Vac-al tmia-l avilchva-l amu-ce pulumchva snuia-ph.
> >> (Notice both the verb /amu-ce/ and the locative /-ph(i)/ at the >>

end.)

> >
> >Not everybody agrees there is a locative /-ph/ at the end. In fact
> >there are many interpretations for /snuiaph/, although the sense of
> >the rest of the sentence is clear. What do you think it means?
>
> Treating /snuiaph/ seems so absurd to me. By seperating it properly into
> /snuia/ (with a familiar -ia ending) and -ph (a common locative ending) we
> get closer to the truth. Perhaps it means something like "The yearly

temple

> libations were (put) beside the tomb vaults of the ancestors." I can't for
> the life of me figure out how /pulumchva/ is translated as "stars". Maybe
> others on this list will know?

As Miguel has just pointed out, /pulumchva/ is translatable as 'stars'
because of the
Punic rough translation on another tablet. Some people have related this to
Latin
/fulmen/. Another inscription has the word /fulumchva/. I can't relate this
to Nakh
unfortunately, but the Nakh word for 'sun', /malx/ may have an Etruscan
connection.
The Etruscan words for 'mirror' are /malena/ and /malstria/. This might imply
that
/mal-/ has something to do with 'shiny'. Nakh /malx/ has the ending /-x/
which is an agent suffix (in both Nakh and Etruscan), and could originally
have meant 'the shiner'
just as the modern Scottish Gaelic word for 'sun' /grian/ does. Nakh /malx/ is
another of those weird words that are not shared by the other NEC languages,
yet
must have come from somewhere.

> The contact between Nakh and IE is unquestionable. But what about the
> contact between NEC and Hurrian. Is this as likely? It doesn't appear to

be.

I can't believe you just said that. You leave me speechless. Diakonov and
Starostin's
work has many flaws, and in my opinion is not sufficient proof for a genetic
relationship, but even they could not obscure the fact that there is a
connection
of some sort between these two language families.

> Can these words and names be analyzed in Greek terms?

I can't remember the exact argument that was used by people objecting to them
being analysed as pre-Greek, but they can certainly be analysed in Anatolian
terms.

> >Setting aside the architectural
> >and religious similiarities, there is also the matter of the
> >Latin/Etruscan bilingual TLE 455/CIE 272 which reads:
>
> This is too offensively fantastical to comment on.

Forming a family name from /hapiru/ would involve dropping the final syllable
(because of the secondary stress introduced by the suffixes we are about to
add),
adding the adjective ending /-na/ and the genitive /-l/. This gives precisely
/hapirnal/.

> >We're talking about Etruscan ethnogenesis. In eastern Anatolia. And
> >about who else might have been around at the time.
>
> If you don't have a hypothesis, you don't have a point.

I do. You just don't like it because I don't find the answer in hypothetical
macro'families'.


Ed.