Ed:
>There is a whole layer of lexical material that is quite clearly >composed
>of recent borrowings, e.g. the names of vessels. Are you >going to weight
>this in your equation as evidence of a genetic >relationship?
I never claimed such a thing. I am very much aware of there being late
loanwords such as these in Etruscan. This is why I'm more concerned about
grammatical peculiarities and basic vocabulary terms which are less likely
to have been brought about by borrowing. If we look at the grammatical
picture of things, there is, hands down, more similarities with IE (or other
northern languages like Uralic) than with NEC and few people are connecting
Etruscan with the latter. Dem's are the breaks.
>You're ad-homineming again. Beekes is a respected academic. (Ok, >Greenberg
>is too, but you get my point). I haven't actually read >Beekes on Etruscan,
>but the fact that both he and I have come up with >the possibility (note:
>POSSIBILITY) of /-s/ being an ergative >independently of one another must
>say something about the DATA.
Alright, so I'm an ad-hominem-er. We've established my character faults
already. Point is, while we can say that *-s has a _possibility_ of having
been an ergative suffix at one time and that it's grammatically feasible in
general for this to occur, we can also admit to the possibility of getting
struck by lightning three times in Toledo. Since the ergative idea ignores
some of the objections I have already pointed out, the theory falls flat and
remains very, very low on the possibility scale for me. What's worse, the
suffix clearly functions nothing like an ergative in both IE and Etruscan.
Excuse me if I think this idea is a little lazy. Connecting the animate
nominative with the animate demonstrative *se just makes far more immediate
and satisfying sense. Why re-invent?
>I have read some book he wrote on Indo-European (I
>forget the title) and he didn't seem like a 'lunatic' to me at all. >Maybe
>I am missing something.
I don't judge based on _how_ one presents an idea, or even _who_ presents an
idea (although it's tempting). I judge based on _what_ one presents as an
idea. Ergativity doesn't explain much for the nominative and comes with too
many built-in problems. Ergo, I reject it.
>>Well, that depends on whether you look at the -n ending as an >>accusative
>>or as an oblique ending. The two cases are related >>anyways, of course.
>
>What does /cnl/ mean then?
I'm not sure because I'm unaware of its exact context. What is the rest of
the sentence? It may be /ica/ + /-n/ (functioning more as an oblique marker
than an accusative) + /-l/, the genitive. This pattern exists elsewhere.
>There are loads of proper names that have these endings.
I know. They are similar. Unfortunately for you, these endings are clearly
not accusative endings. Point?
>I have no respect for ideas that just don't work from the beginning. >There
>can never have been contact between Etruscan and Nakh, ever.
>
>Ok, PRE-Etruscans, PRE-Nakh.
>
>How: by being in the same place
>Where: Eastern Anatolia
>When: Prior to 1200 BC
But you aren't getting it! This... just... doesn't... work, Ed! There is
nothing in way of concrete evidence to support your whimsical views that the
Etruscan language could ever be traced back to Eastern Anatolia in the past
10,000 years. People have pointed to similarities between the Etruscans and
_West_ Anatolians, linguistically and culturally, from classical times and
there is archaeological evidence (like the Lemnos Stele) that shows that
this idea must have truth to it. But I don't recall anyone showing any
archaeological evidence of an _East_ Anatolian link... that's because there
isn't any.
But then... if you are lucky enough to have found this concrete evidence,
please tell us in your next post.
Oy veh, what am I gonna do with you at all? <:)
- gLeN
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