Re: [tied] House and City

If it's a wanderwort, then of course the question arises whether the historical prestige of Ancient Egyptian justifies the assumption that Egyptian *must* be the source. For methodological reasons I'm also against lumping together *per(n)-, *p(o)lh1-, *bHerg^H- and a variety of Nostratic "cognates" with loosely matching meanings just because they happen to contain a substring definable as [labial stop]V[rhotic/lateral].

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2001 8:23 AM

Subject: [tied] House and City

Gasp! Why is it always the painfully baaad reconstructions that get quoted? I have severe trouble with this one. Within the IE evidence, there is only Anatolian. I have read Piotr's explanation of the etymology of pir-/parn- and it would seem that there are some mysteries yet to be resolved, as I suspected. The rest of these "cognates" found in Dravidian and AA are tempting to imagine as inherited items but I'm getting the creepy feeling that there is a wanderwort lurking in the midst. I don't want to sound overly obsessed on my early neolithic sea network idea but the word could easily have been spread to many language families this way in a short amount of time.