--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 12:00 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: House and City
>
Torsten:
>
> > I see. In the particular instance we are discussing I suggested a
> wanderwort originating in Austric, ie.
>
>
> burunga- "clan" Arosi
> barangay- "communal unit usually
> smaller than village, ship" Philippines
> baronga- "character, disposition, nature" Arosi
> perangai- "character, nature, disposition" Indonesia, Malay
> bal.u- "village, community, house" Proto-Austric
> (Benedict)
> fera- "village" Proto-Malaitan
> puruwa- "village" Faita
> peuru- "village" Bilua
> felakoe- "village, ship" Lavukaleve
>
> > and suggested this was reflected in various IE and AA words. I
fail to see where your complaint fits in here and I don't think I
need a licence to posit *-l/r- here.
>
Piotr:
> So it's Austric now, not just Austronesian? It would be nice if you
made your position a bit more specific. The Austric phylum is a
somewhat nebulous hypopthesis, and Proto-Austric reconstructions are
extremely tentative at best. But let's agree for the sake of the
argument that Austric is for real. Then, if you claim that the source
of the loan was *bal.u, let it be *bal.u (or perhaps the
corresponding Proto-Austronesian term), not a whole set of modern
cognates with a whole variety of reflexes. The people who, according
to you, carried that word into Eurasia were not Bilua or Lavukaleve
speakers. The confusion of protolanguage *r and *l happens in IE too
(in Indo-Iranian, of course, and to a lesser extent in Albanian,
Greek, even Portuguese), but that doesn't mean that IE *r and *l are
freely interchangeable.
Torsten:
The people who, according to Oppenheimer (and Manansala?) and me
carried the concepts and words into Eurasia spoke whatever language
was spoken in Eastern Indonesia (see the latest issue of Sciennce on
that) at the time of the last rise in sea level. It might have been
the language known as Proto-Austronesian now. It might have been an
immmediate predecessor. It might have been an immediate sub-branch.
It was probably not the very tentatively suggested Austric, and the
non-Austronesian cognates Manansala listed are probably related as
just cognates. Let's for the sake of argument call it Proto-
Austronesian.
What I (will have to) claim is that a term in Proto-Austronesian was
borrowed into Eurasia. Now what is it? Should I posit either *-r- or
*-l- for this term? And even if I were able to positively identify
the phoneme as one or the other, can I then say that it has only *-l-
or only *-r- reflexes in IE and AA languages? No, I can't. So I have
to entertain both possibilities or even the possiblity that the word,
after having wandered several times over in the Mediterranean was
reflected in both words with *-l- and words with *-r-.
> > Well, look at the Austric roots. I can't possibly narrow it down
further than *bH/*p with a clean conscience. I think the problem is
that you insist on the IE roots being internal, thus begging the
question of whether they are Austric loan words. And within the last
month in cybalist, similar and worse matches have been proposed. I
don't recall you protesting then.
>
> But an unconstrained search for cognates far and wide ignoring
their quality (a la Greenberg and Ruhlen) will only get you a bagful
of lookalikes. What will you do with them? Beg people to take them
seriously? If you don't narrow the search down, you will find
whatever you want to find, but you'll sacrifice whatever empirical
power there is in the comparative method.
>
> It's good practice to try down-to-earth solutions as long as they
work before resorting to exotic ones. If there is an internal IE
etymology for an IE word, the assumption of Austric influence would
require some extraordinary justification, especially if both the
phonology and the semantics of the comparison ("village, clan, ship,
disposition, etc." = "hill-fort" = "house") are loose. I agree that
many strange etymologies have been offered in Cybalist recently. I
have reacted to them as often as humanly possible, but I hope you can
forgive my ignoring some threads -- my leasure time is limited.
>
> >> [Piotr:] ... and ignore all morphological extensions and
productive suffixes (it's the root that counts, isn't it?). Sporadic
manner-of-articulation variability is a fact of life, but intemperate
recourse to it to explain prehistoric forms for which we have no
documentary evidence is unacceptable.
>
> > [Torsten:] Intemperate? Moi? Should I join a temperance society?
I have been trying to make heads and tails of this turgid peace of
prose for some days now. I give up. I think it says that you can't
reconstruct past linguistic forms, but that would put Piotr out of a
job, so that can't be it. What do you mean, Piotr?
>
> What I mean is that there is a place for sporadic irregularities in
historical linguistics, but you can't use their existence as a
regular excuse for equating anything with just about anything else.
What I specifically object to is impressionistic "root equations"
like *pel- = *bHur- = *bal- = ... (and let the devil take
derivational morphology).
>
Torsten:
Yes, yes. Here's some food for thought from EIEC and Orël and
Stolbova:
"extend"
IENH 98: *t[h](a|ë)l´- "to stretch, spread, extend" (primary
meaning)
IENH 106: *t[h](a|ë)n´- "to extend, spread, stretch"
IENH 113: *t[h](a|ë)r- "to spread, spread out, expand, extend;
to stretch, stretch out, scatter, strew"
IENH 123: *t'[a|ë]l- "to stretch, extend"
IENH 179: *c'(i|e)l- "to stretch out, extend, exceed;
be wealthy, prosper, do well"
("extend" =?) "reach"
IENH 128: *t'(u|o)l- "to reach, attain, strive for, come to;
goal, end, result"
IENH 149: *t´(a|ë)r- "to advance toward an end or a goal;
to attain or achieve an end or a goal,
reach, come to, arrive at;
to master, become master of"
"flow"
IENH 145: *d´[a|ë]w- "to run, flow, gush forth" + l/r ->
IENH 83: *d(a|ë)n- "to run, flow"
IENH 118: *t'[u|o]l´- "to drip, fall in drops, sprinkle, wet,
moisten"
IENH 157: *t'´[u|o]r- "to run, flow"
HSED 747: *dur- "flow"
"shine"
IENH 15: *b[a|ë]l´- "to shine, be bright"
IENH 16: *b(a|ë)r- "to shine, be bright"
"settled place"
IENH 19: *b(u|o)rg´- "to protrude, be prominent"
IENH 55: *p[h](a|ë)l- "settlement, settled place"
IENH 61: *p[h](i|e)r- "house" (?)
which is OK when we talk of land of islands, I suppose
"divide"
IENH 35: *p[h](i|e)l´- "to split, cleave"
IENH 37: *p[h](a|ë)r- "to separate, divide"
"fear"
IENH 64: *p[h](i|e)l- "to tremble, shake;
to be frightened, fearful, afraid"
IENH 68: *p[h](i|e)r- "to tremble, shake;
be afraid, fear""take"
IENH 222: *g(a|ë)r- "to take, take hold of;
to take away, carry off, remove"
IENH 226: *g(a|ë)t´- "to take (with the hand), grasp"
"twist"
IENH 227: *g(a|ë)w-al- "to twist, turn, bend"
IENH 239: *g(u|o)r- "to turn, twist, wind, wrap, roll"
IENH 263: *k[h](a|ë)r- "to twist, turn, wind"
IENH 267: *k[h](a|ë)d- "to twist, wind, wrap, bend"
IENH 293: *k'(a|ë)r- "to twist, bend, wind, tie (together),
bend,
(adj.) curved, bent, crooked"
IENH 306: *k´[h](e|ë)l- "to twist, twine, wind around, plait"
IENH 331: *kw[h](u|o)r- "to twist or twine together,
tie together, bind fasten"
"bend"
IENH 261: *k[h](u|o)n-k'- "to be bent, curved, crooked;
hook"
IENH 317: *kw[h](u|o)l- "to bend, curve turn, revolve;
to move around"
IENH 349: *G(u|o)l- "bend, corner, edge, valley, ravine, gully"
"strike"
IENH 229: *g(u|o)l- "to cut, cut off, pluck off, break off"
IENH 246: *k[h](a|ë)r- "to cut"
IENH 312: *gw(a|ë)n- "to hit, strike, slay, kill, wound, harm,
injure"
IENH 342: *k'w(u|o)d- "to strike, wound, hurt, slay"
IENH 354: *q[h](a|ë)r- "to strike, split, cut, wound, injure"
IENH 359: *q'w(a|ë)l- "to strike, hit, cut, hurt, wound, slay,
kill"
"grow"
IENH 4: *b(a|ë)r- "to swell, puff up, expand"
IENH 10: *b[u|o]l- "to swell, expand, spread out,
overflow, puff up, inflate"
IENH 24: *b(a|ë)r- "seed, grain"
IENH 39: *p[h](i|e)r- "to bring forth, bear fruit"
IENH 487: *wal- "to be or become strong"
"dog"
HSED 917: *ger- "dog, wolf"
HSED 1425: *kan- "dog"
HSED 1434: *kar-/*kayar- "dog"
HSED 1498: *kun- "dog"
HSED 1511: *küHen- "dog"
HSED 1525: *kVwVl-/*kVyYl- "dog"
and I have left out all the *man-/*mar-/*mat- words.
Now I see 3 possibilities:
1. Bomhard's rules don't work properly.
2. Bomhard should introduce some d/l/n/r latitude in his inventory
(or getting rid of some of them?).
3. Loanwords from an d/r/l/n-vacillating language have messed up the
picture.
Pick your poison.
> >> [Piotr:] I am prepared to consider *per- as a Near-Eastern
wanderwort (with one or two question marks), but *bHerg^H- and
*polh1- have their own histories and semantic connections, and there
is no ground for dumping or lumping them together (d- and l- are
really the same, huh?).
>
> > This would be true if they were not Wanderworte. You are just
restating your belief.
>
> Contrariwise, I refuse to believe in things that cannot be cogently
demonstrated.
>
[snip]
> >> [Piotr:] If you give priority to the cultural implications and
other non-linguistic aspects of your hypothesis, neglecting the
underlying phonological and morphological analysis, or if you try to
explain the formal shortcomings away by arbitrary recourse to
putative variation in foreign sources, you won't construct a
convincing case.
>
> > [Torsten:] Note in the margin of the priest's Sunday sermon: "Bad
argument. Raise your voice".
>
Piotr:
> Or resort to rhetoric if you can't think of a good argument.
Torsten:
That's what I said.
Piotr:
Did I sound as if I were flying off the handle?
Torsten:
No, you sounded like you were running low on arguments.
Piotr:
I really think you put the cart before the horse. You begin by
becoming strongly committed to a highly idiosyncratic version of
history, taken from Oppenheimer, Saxo Grammaticus, or a compilation
of miscellaneous sources. You feel that it must be true, but there
are other people out there who might consider it goofy, so some
persuasive support for it would be most welcome. That sends you on a
desperate quest for linguistic evidence, which ends in the fringe.
>
> Piotr
Torsten:
A compilation of miscellaneous sources? Oh, horror!
I will admit that you caught me on the wrong foot when you asked me
to document the claim that Danes came from Asgard na Donu, so I
probably won't get 10 for style. But it was fun. I read on the net
that Heyerdahl now subscribes to the same idea. So if you should
happen to see from your windows a reed boat cruisin up the Odra,
would you please post it here? If on the other hand he should try the
Tanew route, would you help him get a visa? There seems to a lot of
bureaucrats in Poland trying to keep other people off their
waterways. I still haven't got one:)
Your fringe is my center. And vice versa. I'm sorry you guys won't
drink tea with me, but that's what science is like. Sometimes you get
ostracized. That doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong. I thought you
knew that?
Torsten