From: george knysh
Message: 10439
Date: 2001-10-19
----- Original Message -----From: "george knysh"
<gknysh@...>To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>Sent:
Friday, October 19, 2001 2:34 AMSubject: Re: [tied]
Re: Dating PIE>
*****GK: ... Interesting though that these should have
borrowed the> term while Hittite did not. I suppose
the L/L> borrowing substituted for something else
since these> languages would not have waited for the
Mitannians to> give them a word for designating
horses. /GK: Thanks for the clarification about the
nature of Sumerograms/
PG:The point is that the horse became a familiar
animal in Asia Minor only when the Indo-Aryans
introduced it.
*****GK: But surely the proto-Hittites etc. should
have known it in their pre-Anatolian habitat. Would
they have lost the word because the locals were
unfamiliar with the beast? If your surmise that the
obscure Hittite Sumerogram actually tries to state a
word similar to the Luwian is correct then we might
just wonder if that word was not there from the
beginning, without the need to borrow it from the
Mitanni. I can understand the borrowing of specialized
terms (Kikkuli) but such a basic one as �horse� ? The
satem form suggests the possibility that the
proto-Hittites themselves may have had a new ruling
class from the northeast [probably not Indo-Aryan but
some "proto" satemizing group] when they marched into
Anatolia, but that its assimilation had been more
complete than that of the more recently arrived
Mitanni Indo-Aryans by the time the Hittite language
began to leave evidence of itself.*****
PG:If PIE split into two dialects(let's call them
Proto-A and Proto-B) at a very early date, the chances
that a term would survive in Proto-A or Proto-B alone
were roughly equal. Now let's imagine that Proto-A is
Proto-Anatolian and Proto-B is the parent of all the
non-Anatolian languages.
*****GK: This is where I have a problem. I take it
that the theory of the very early �Anatolian�
branch-off must be based on something more solid than
lexical matters. But would these other elements
(morphology, syntax, etc..) be sufficiently compelling
evidence for such a major split without the assumed
lexical points? A situation where �An.� has a term for
X missing from �non-An� could easily be explained as a
foreign borrowing in �An.� given the known cultural
context. I realize that each case should be analyzed
separately but on balance the probability seems higher
that it is �An.� which has suffered substantial
lexical losses from IE and gains from non-IE . Again,
because of the geography. BTW is there any information
which can be derived from the extant common vocabulary
of �An� and �non-An� which might be helpful in the
matter of determining the time line of the split? Or
is this too tenuous or suspect (like the �horse� word
issue?)******
PG: Hittite and the other Anatolian languages are
not exceptional in having a rich non-IE substrate:
****GK: Yes. I understand this. Which is why I asked
my original question about known percentages of such
borrowings. The sources that I know have this at 50%
or so for Old Greek, at perhaps more for Hittite, and
at about 30% for Germanic. I don�t know the
percentages for the other languages. My impression,
which could be wrong is that they were much lower. The
impression is based only on the fact that the quantity
claim has not been made as noticeably with respect to
these other languages. Incidentally I absolutely agree
with your point about there being no �shame� in a
particular IE language�s possession of a substantial
non IE baggage. It�s just a question of identity, not
of value.******
Piotr
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