I was unsure whether to put this on the new Nostratic or IE list. I decided
to put it on the IE list since it really involves the IE family specifically
and it started here afterall. Should I have put it on the Nostratic list? I
dunno. We'll see. Here goes...
Miguel:
>Just an update: the articles at http://home.planet.nl/~mcv are now
>available in HTML.
Ah, excellent! Koudos on the work regardless of the chaotic manner in which
you arrive at your anti-establishment deductions. We both certainly agree,
past the spelling mistakes and strange grammar that will follow in my
quotes, "that the irregularities, syncretisms, suppletions etc., in short,
the flexional system as we generally find it in PIE is to be derived from an
earlier 'regular' agglutinative system."
I have just examined your "THE PERSONAL PRONOUNS" section. I will ignore for
the moment the moot points of contention I have for your hyperdiacritical
style of reconstruction.
In this section, you first correctly dissect the first person pronoun *eg^o:
for what it really is - a composite of a pronoun *e [pronoun] + *g^e/*ghe
[emphatic particle] + *-o: [1ps thematic]. It's such a shame that you should
ruin this breakthrough by stating something silly like:
It is therefore likely that the form [of the 1ps
pronoun] was simply *h1e, extended with the
"universal" case suffix *gy, and further enlarged
by what appears to be a first person verbal ending
There simply is no "universal case suffix" to fane speak of and your
insistance of it without further explanation insults the attention span of
the reader.
Despite your learned understanding of the elements of *eg^o:, you seem
unaware that this is a classic IE verb formation meaning in effect "I am
here" (*e-g^(h)e- is functioning as a thematic verb meaning "to be here"). I
have never seen the origin of Latin /negare/ layed out explicitly but it
looks to me similar to this *e-g^(h)e- formation (< *ne-g^(h)e- "to not be"
? or at least derived from an emphatic *ne-g^(h)e existing elsewhere). Do
note the exact same semantics for the first person pronoun in EskAleut
languages which attest that this sort of thing goes on elsewhere: Inuktitut
uva-nga, Aleut ti-ng.
Your mention of a first person **e is simply unconceivable since its
_attested_ usage in IE is either as a locative as in Anatolian languages
("here/there") or as a past tense prefix whose temporal usage must certainly
be related to the former locative meaning. It is surely related to the
_third_ person stem *ei-. Your views on the origins of *eg^o: therefore are
unentertainable fantasy. You are not alone however since our famed
Nostraticist Bomhard slices *eg^o: in similarly oblivious fashion.
Here is another example of your unthorough deduction and self-contradiction,
if I may be so free with the serrated edge of my blood-stained honesty:
The oblique form *me, by analogy with 2nd sg. *twe, must
go back to earlier **mwe [SL #1: mw > m]. The ending -we
itself can go back to accusative *-m�2 ~ *-mw�."
Why _MUST_ *me derive from **mwe at all? As usual, you fail to elaborate on
your assumptions, hoping perhaps to pull the wool over the eyes of some
unsuspecting, sheepish readers. As if an unproved *me<**mwe was hard enough
to swallow, you further assume that **-we is an ending without giving good
reasons to your slice-and-dice surgery. (Does that mean that *mw- is NOT a
single phoneme afterall??) If this isn't a clear cut example of
"multiplication of hypotheses", I don't know what is.
Here's another example of self-contradiction that you have refused to solve
to this day:
IE **usweks, *sweks < *sWesWek^s
IE *yus, **us < *sWesW-
What you're obviously saying is, "*sW can become anything it wants - *y, *s
AND *u/w at the very same time without any way of predicting!". What you're
saying is, "Sound changes need not be tied down with those pesky formal
rules which would otherwise expose my views as complete and utter nonsense."
After reading your opaque view that *sweks must derive from *sWesWek^s (?!!)
based on nothing but an imposed, ad-hoc sound change, I could no longer
continue with the text for I found myself jabbing my eyes out with a sharply
carved pencil due to the intense insanity I was subjecting myself to. I do
hope, Miguel, that you will do a re-work of your theory, preferably in
Braille form next time 'round :)
... And these are just some of the problems facing your views. Other
unresolved dilemmas might include the big problem of IE palatalization and a
uvular solution mentioned by Piotr (also ignored) and the rebellious
position your views take in relation to the standard Nostratic theories
(ignored, yet again). But, we can beat you over the head with these latter
matters later in the program.
- gLeN
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