Re: [tied] Re: Hittites and others

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...>
> wrote:
>
> *****GK: But surely the proto-Hittites etc. should
> have
> known [the horse] in their pre-Anatolian
> habitat.*****
>
> Not so surely. If they came from the Middle Danube
> basin (as
> I propose) and spent some time in the Balkans before
> migrating to Asia Major, they wouldn't have had much
> chance
> to see wild horses, and would have had to wait for
> someone
> to show them domesticated ones. Even if originally
> living
> close to the tarpan's range (if we speculate that
> *h1ek^wos
> is really PIE), the Proto-Anatolians may have lost
> the word
> as they moved south into the Balkans, where _Equus
> ferus_
> did not occur in PIE times.

*****GK: But even if this population really did
originate on the Middle Danube etc. in what way is my
suggestion that they ought to have had a word for
"horse" before moving into Anatolia negated by what
you have just said? I have no difficulty in accepting
the notion that "somebody showed them domesticated
horses" prior to their move (that's what I mentioned
as an alternative to a Mitannian borrowing). I take it
you would be sceptical as to the meaning and identity
of the many "horse head" stone "scepters" [we call
them "kosturs" but since you don't care for kos'kos' I
won't insist (:=))] found in the Danubian area in the
epoch prior to the proto-Hittite etc move. (Unless you
have a different time in mind: I'm still thinking late
3rd millennium BC).I like MCV's reading of the
Sumerogram as "donkey from foreign parts". This sounds
EXACTLY like the sort of thing locals might have
called this exotic beast. And there is little
difficulty in seeing the incoming proto-Hittites
adopting the established local term instead of their
own (if that was the same as or close to Luwian) as
part of their acculturation process.*****

>
> *****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: In terms of grammatical structure, the Anatolian
> branch is
> _very_ different from the rest of IE -- enough to
> justify
> the theory that the differences are at least partly
> due to
> shared innovations in the non-Anatolian part of the
> family.

*****GK: Could this very different grammatical
structure have been the result of a contact process
between IE and another (non-IE) population in the
Danube, resulting in the emergence of
"proto-Anatolian" groups prior to the move across the
Bosporus (or whatever the old name)? Is there any way
of conclusively demonstrating that this is not what
happened? I read some time ago (forgot the source
though) that the very early "French" texts (10th c.)
clearly demonstrate a "Germanic" sentence structure,
indicating that this was an effort by Franks to speak
the local Romance language by adapting it to their
grammatical rules. Now here we are talking "upper
classes" influencing a "subject" speech they are in
the process of adopting. But the other possibility
(subjects adapting an "upper class" speech to their
rules) is also available.*****

> Even "stray sheep" like Armenian and Tocharian, in
> which a
> non-IE substrate is equally evident and which were
> spoken in
> relative isolation from the bulk of IE, don't
> diverge from
> the "classic" IE type to a comparable degree.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>

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