Re: Which Manansala? (was [tied] a(i)s-)

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 1:16 PM

Subject: Re: Which Manansala? (was [tied] a(i)s-)

> ... But another thing struck me, and this is the reason I used it on my website: 78% (as I later calculated it) of the Sanskrit roots of the comparisons he makes are descended from roots I had seen earlier on the IE side in the root pairs in Møller's comparison of IE and AfroAsiatic. Now how the heck did Manansala arrive at that? He doesn't show any interest in AfroAsiatic (or IE, for that matter). He probably never read Møller. And even if he had, and had secretly followed a list of Møller's IE-AA "cognates" (probably loans, there are just a few hundred), how could he come up with up to a hundred (at least) similar-sounding Austronesian roots for those pairs? I found it puzzling.

 

I don't know the answer to the first question. Perhaps, quite simply, it's easier than you imagine to match any simple (and often pretty general) meaning with one or another of "a few hundred" items found in Møller. It is not difficult to answer the second question. Manansala does not quote "Austronesian roots" but only words selected ad hoc from miscellaneous AN languages (plus, from time to time, other languages of SE Asia and the Pacific). If you reflect that the AN family accounts for ca. 20% of the world's languages, it's clear that their combined lexicons are practically infinite. It's easy to misuse that infinity. Take any Sanskrit (or Finnish, or Quechua) word and something similar in terms of meaning and sound _will_ be found sooner or later somewhere in the vast AN material if you search hard enough. Who's interested in the etymology and older form of these words? Not Manansala, certainly. He does not even exclude obvious cultural borrowings from Sanskrit into Malay and other languages of the region. I suspect he has no idea how linguistic data should be screened to exclude recent loans, onomatopoeic words and the like.

> As regards contact, Oppenheimer has done some genetic research on the Orang Asli, aboriginal peoples of Malaysia. Some markers from that group reappear not just all over the South Sea islands, but also in Kuwait, Turkey, and even, in one case, the Czech lands. Other markers reapear in some Swedes and Finns.

 

Orang Asli ('autochthonous peoples') is a cover term for various minority groups in Malaysia. They are officially classified into three major divisions, which are rather heterogeneous linguistically (some are Austronesian-speakers, others speak languages from the Aslian branch of Mon-Khmer), culturally as well as genetically. I'd like to see a geneticist's opinion on Oppenheimers "Aslian" markers and their distribution.

 

> There is only one way for that to have happened. The only question then is: Did they forget every single word on the journey? Dog? Pig? But if one or two words can make the trip, where's the limit?

 

One would need to show first that the "dog" and "pig" words made the trip. Skt. kurkura is a loan from Dravidian, but who says it's Austronesian? The superficially similar words (<kuri> etc.) cited by Manansala all come from several Oceanic languages (most of them Polynesian) and represent a "local" innovation. The PAN word for 'dog' was *wasu. Skt. vara:ha- looks slightly more promising at first glance, but its primary meaning is 'wild boar' (PAN *babuy) rather than 'domestic pig' (PAN *beRek).

> And as for the trick of denigrating an opinion because the man who holds other opinions that are patently wrong, I've hitch-hiked too much to fall for that. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone is right at least to some degree. That is my basic outlook, and I don't think I will change that.

Just to what significant degree is Manansala right? No-one's denigrating him as a human being. But as an author of linguistic essays he's done enough harm to his own reputation.

 

Piotr

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