John:
>Similarly, "Altaic" also seems more closely related to Uralic,
>for instance, than it does to "Tyrhennian".
Erh, no. I consider Altaic just as related to Uralic as Tyrrhenian
is. All three are representative of three seperate branches of
Steppe.
>On his own terms, Proto-Indo-European has a closer relationship
>to Uralo-Yukaghur than Tyrhenian has to Uralo-Yukaghir.
What do you mean by "closer relationship"? When have I said this?
>Running from West to East this chain goes as follows
>
>Tyrrhenian<-->PIE<-->Uralo-Yuk.<-->Chu-Kam<-->Esk-Al
> ^
> |
> V
> Altaic
Yes. That looks right.
>Although glen calls this chain "Steppe", apart from the fact that
>Altaic, and possibly PIE, none of the languages were in historical
>times found anywhere near the Steppes.
When Finnish was first written, it was nowhere near the Volga. I
fail to see the relevance.
>But there is nothing linguistically anywhere else which suggests
>any movement in any direction.
I beg to differ. Think of language as belonging to linguistic
networks where each language is in contact with the next. Now
apply Occam's Razor to identify the likeliest linguistic networks
of the past. From this, directions of movement can be deduced over
time.
>The question is, do we here have evidence of a "family" with a
>common origin, or rather a chain of languages existing from the
>West to the East. What are the similarities between Tyrrhenian
>and Eskimo-Aleut that would justify putting them in a single language
>family? This is important as it bears upon the question
>of the Urheimat of the language family that Glen proposes.
That's like asking what Armenian has in common with Hittite. Well,
depending on how you look at it, one could say, "Not very much.
Therefore Armenian and Hittite are unrelated." This doesn't
seem like a logical course of deduction.
I think there are connections in morphology between EskimoAleut
and Tyrrhenian but these connections are very much obscured over
time. First of all, EskimoAleut appears to have dropped the
familiar Steppe pronouns *mu and *tu in favour of new constructs.
(From memory, I recall *uvaNa and *ilvit being reconstructed in
ProtoEskimo and Aleut has /ting/ and /txin/.) The new terms are
formed using pronominal endings and demonstrative stems. As well,
Boreal languages in general use a subjective-objective system of
conjugation inherited from a system of transitivity in Steppe.
While I think IndoTyrrhenian uses a related system, it appears
that the intransitive-transitive system had shifted to a system
distinguishing between stative and active, making similarities
even harder to see.
>The question Glen suggests is that the languages began in Central
>Asia and moved west. But on what evidence? Why couldn't the
>spread of "Steppe" langauges have taken the same path as the spread of
>mesolithic cultures.
Language has nothing to do with technology. It's like asking: Why
couldn't the spread of Steppe languages have taken the same path
as the spread of Starbucks franchises?
What on earth does one have to do with the other?? Why are you
asking this moot question when you have admitted to accepting that
these are two different items that can move differently over time?
>Just to stop Glen suggesting that langauge can move against the
>flow of technology (which I know already), I can accept this view,
>but what evidence is there? Rather than have languages moving hither and
>yon such as Glen suggests, with his movement of Tyrrhenian from the Pontic
>to Anatolia and Rhaetia (any evidence
>Glen?), I propose we allow for the languages to evolve as their
>current or recent historical locations suggest.
Yes {evil grin} I agree. Let's allow for "the languages to
evolve as their current or recent historical locations suggest".
Recent historical locations of Uralic and Altaic suggest epicenters
for both of them in Western Asia, not Anatolia. As well, recent
historical locations show that Indo-European languages have spread
along a vast area whose apparent epicenter is likewise not in
Anatolia but rather in Eastern Europe.
There is nothing in history that suggests Anatolian origins for any
of these language groups and long-range comparative linguistics
seems to suggest Asian origins.
- love gLeN
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