From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 6673
Date: 2001-03-22
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001 11:31:47 -0000, tgpedersen@... wrote:
[stuff about Austronesian, or was it Austric?]
While I don't believe a word of this whole Oppenheimer-Manansala
stuff, it's still interesting to note that in 1840, Franz Bopp, one of
the fathers of Indo-European studies (although pre-Junggrammatiker)
published an article where he advocated a (genetic) relationship
between Indo-European and Malayo-Polynesian. I have never read that,
so I cannot say exactly what his idea was based on, but one can make
an educated guess that the numerals had something to do with it.
Austronesian forms such as <duwa> "2" (PAN *dewsa) and <teru> "3" (PAN
*telu) certainly strike the imagination, and Bopp thought he was on to
something, just like he (justly) thought to be on to something when he
noted (as one of the first) the similarities between the Sanskrit and
Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic conjugation systems.
Nowadays, of course, these similarities are thought to be mere
coincidences, but about a year ago I found something strange. I was
reading up on Ancient Egyptian in Schenkel's "Einführung", and came to
the chapter on the numerals. The Egyptian for "four" was <jfdw>
(*/?Vft.aw/ < *<?-p.-t.->). Schenkel compares this with forms like
Somali <afar> "4", and Beja <fad.ig> "4". I might add Chadic (Hausa)
<f(w)ud.u> "4". The interesting thing is that Schenkel next compares
Semitic <?arba3-> "4", from *<?arp.aG->, and by metathesis and
(irregular) *t. > r, ultimately from a PAA prototype like
*<?Vp.t.-VGu> (> AEg. <?afd.aw>, Somali <afar>) or *<p.Vt.-VGu> (>
Beja <fad.ig>, Hausa <fud.u>).
At the time, I was thinking about the possibility that cases of
Germanic *f/*b, besides general PIE *kw, might reflect a PIE phoneme
*pw, so a hypothetical *<pwetwor-> "four" (**putVwa:r-) fit right in
with this PAA form *<p.Vt.VGu>. And so did PAA *c^VlVc^- (PSem
*t_ala:t_-) "three", if from **tila[:]ti-, in view of PIE *trey-,
where the *-y might reflect palatalized *t^ (cf. the ordinal *<tr.t->)
and the unacceptable cluster **tl- may have developed regularly to
*tr- (so *t[^]ret^- from pre-Nullstufe **tilati-).
To this, we can add Basque <hirur> "3", which can be derived from
**<tilut->, and <laur> "4", possibly from **<lapt->.
The amazing thing is the link with Proto Austronesian. We have
*<telu> "3", and *<xepate> "4". The *x is a reconstructed sound that
mostly goes to zero, /h/ or glottal stop, but appears as /s/, /s^/ or
/l/ in the Taiwanese languages. Maybe it was a fricative lateral,
which is interesting, considering Basque <laur> "4" < *<lapt->.
Now relations between PIE and PAA, whether genetic or involving the
mere borrowing of numerals, are not surprising (think of *septm).
Basque is not terribly surprising either ("6" and "7" in Basque are
<sei> (*<s^ei>) and <zazpi> (< *sasbi)). But what the hell are
PAA/PIE numerals doing in Taiwan? I have no explanation. I'll accept
"coincidence".
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...