From: MrCaws@...
Message: 7462
Date: 2001-06-03
--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
I find the idea of Khattic words in Homeric Greek intriguing, but for
an entirely different reason. I think it could be evidence of older
pre-IE Greek cultural and linguistic similarities with Anatolia. The
distance between mainland Greece and Khattic land may be large, but
the distance from W. Anatolia isn't nearly so unreasonable. Since
Mycenaean Greece was heavily influenced by the Minoan and Maritime
Troia cultures, then old Pre-IE Anatolian vocab could still be around
from those times. Terms like chief seem like words that might survive
linguistic shifts better than most because of the connections with
tradition that such terms carry.
> Hey everyone,
>
> I searched the archives of the list to make sure that this wasn't
> mentioned before at great length and I couldn't find anything,
> so here goes...
>
> I can't help but notice that Greek /wanax/ and /basileus/ "chief"
> are without any secure etymology. For a person obsessed with
> deduction and extrapolation, I wanna take a crack at it and see
> if we can't come to an appealing solution for everyone.
>
> I recently was given a message from another, avidly interested in
> comparative linguistics who had came across my new page on Hattic.
> We shall call this person "Ned". I was glad that my site evoked
> some great questions within him. This was one of his ideas,
> which I consider thought-provoking:
>
> "Is it possible the Homeric Greek 'wanax', king, could be
> derived from Hattic 'wurun-katti', used not as the proper
> name of the war god, but as a literal meaning of 'ruler
> of the realm' (and if not from wurun-katti,
> wurun-<some other suffix>?"
>
> At first glance, it's easy to dismiss such a suggestion since
> it is clear to anyone with enough understanding of
> historical linguistics that Hattic and Mycenaean could not have
directly
> affected each other, nor could I see any likelihood that
> Hattic could have possibly lent such important words to a
> language so far away to the west within historical times. It
> seems commonly accepted that /wanax/ and /basileus/ must be from
> a native tongue and not one from something so afar as Hattic.
>
> However, this perspective changes drastically if we consider the
> possibility that the Hattic language is a prehistoric immigrant
> from the west. This is in fact what I've just recently concluded
> after, for the longest time, taking it for granted that Hattic is
> related to the Nakh-Daghestinian (NEC) language instead of the
> Abkhaz-Adhyghe (NWC) languages.
>
> If we take Ned's suggestion further and add it to the hypothesis
> that Hattic had migrated around the west side of the Black Sea,
> through the Balkans, before arriving in its historically attested
> location in Anatolia, we obtain a new interpretation of both
> /wanax/ and /basileus/ that might prove profitable.
>
> Here's what I'm suggesting and I welcome whatever criticism on
> this idea one can find. Let's say Proto-Hattic is situated along
> the Mediterranean coast line from Greece to the Balkans at about
> the same time as the entry of the proposed Semitish language into
> Europe starting c. 6500 BCE. This hypothetical language has a term
> *kWati "chief" (Hattic /katti/ "king") which is used in compounds
> like *wunun-kWati "king of the realm" (Hattic /wurun-katti/).
>
> When the Tyrrhenians arrive on scene from 5500 to 5000 BCE, they
> borrow some terms from Proto-Hattic. Thus, we have Tyrrhenian
> **kWati "chief" or *kWati-lewe "chief of the people" (Note the
> characteristic reverse ordering of the Tyrrhenian compound, an
> IndoTyrrhenian phenomenon discussed at length in previous posts!)
> and also we have Tyrrhenian *wenakti/*wenatti "chief; God of War"
(Etruscan
> Vanth). After that, the Hattic tongue is gradually
> pushed into Anatolia by the growth of Tyrrhenian languages as I've
> already proposed.
>
> It is only after the spread of Indo-European that Hellenic
> finally arrives in Greece, but by this time, surely any traces of
> Hattic would be minimal to non-existent. Rather, Tyrrhenian and
> Anatolian would have the greatest influences on Hellenic. Thus,
> Hellenic borrows the Tyrrhenian terms *wenakti and *kWati-lewe
> as *wanakt-s and *gWatileu-s. This is then inherited
> into Mycenaean, written as [wa-na-ka] (wanax/wanakt-) and
> [qa-si-re-u] (gwasileus) respectively.
>
> Summary:
>
> PHattic Tyrrhenian Hellenic ----> Mycenaean
> ------- ---------- ------------------------
> *kWati > *kWati-lewe *gWatileus [qasireu]
> *wunun-kWati > *wenakti *wanakts [wanaka]
>
> Hopefully I haven't frightened yous too much with my theorizing.
> Please respond. I'm lonely <:(
>
> - gLeN
>
>
>
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