--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen
>
>
> > From
>
> > http://www.irja.org/anthro/malmel.htm
>
> > "The word for "pig" in the Non-Austronesian, i.e. Papuan
languages of Melanesia is typically of Austronesian origin, deriving
from Proto-Austronesian *Berek "domesticated pig". Two conclusions
can be made here: (1) the domesticated pig was introduced into
Oceania by Austronesians, and (2) as the protoform is common to
practically the whole distribution area of Austronesians, the
domesticated pig must have already been known to the Austronesians
before they spread out from their homeland in Taiwan (or the
immediately contiguous mainland). There is one problem though. I have
learned from Matthew SPriggs that the domesticated pig in Oceania is
not the species which originated from Southeast China and Southeast
Asia, but was originally endemic in Maluku"
>
> > The Austronesian-out-of-Taiwan theory is causing Waruno Mahdi
difficulty here. Oppenheimer's out-of-Sundaland fits better.
>
> You forgot to add, however, that Waruno Mahdi offers a solution to
this problem further in the same paragraph. Should you have problems
with his explanation, you'd pull the carpet from beneath your own
idea that the "pig" word travelled from the East to Europe: the
domestic swine of Europe (known there since the Linear Pottery times)
derive from _Sus (scrofa) scrofa_, even more remotely related to the
SE Asiatic banded pigs, whose progenitors were varieties of _Sus
(scrofa) cristatus/vittatus_. There were several different centres of
pig domestication.
Yes? Based on?
Incidentally, the origin of pigs (of whatever variety) is one thing
and the origin of the Austronesian languages is another, and any
historical correlation between the two is loose at best, just like
that between the domestic horses and the Indo-Europeans (yes, I know
that the horse is fetishised by some IEists, but I'm not given to
that perversion).
>
How true. And I am pleased to hear that you are not a perverted horse
fetishist.
I think you mean this:
"
To my mind, there is one explanation for this: The Austronesians
originally must have had the East/Southeast Asian species which they
took with them on their migrations. Those who settled in Maluku,
however, met upon a different species, which was better acclimatized
to the local tropical conditions, and gradually replenished their
stock with the local species, but retaining the word for pig they
already had in their language. In other words, the ancestors of the
Oceanic Austronesians must have shared a longer stay in Maluku before
moving on eastwards.
"
Occam said: Entia non sunt multiplicanda (sine ratione). Most people
leave out the last part. Mahdi's explanation lacks the reason (well,
a sound one), since he is trying to preserve a theory (Austronesian
out-of-Taiwan) that doesn't have much going for it, since it seems to
forget that geography was much different, when the events in it
should have taken place. That doesn't mean that I reject this type of
explanation on principle. But I think I read somewhere that european
pigs had Asian genes in them.
> > Proto-Austronesian *Berek "domesticated pig" ??? Hm!
>
> Hm? I'm not an Austronesianist, but I assume that Waruno Mahdi's
transcription is the same as *beRek, which I've seen elsewhere (*R =
a trilled rhotic, apical or uvular, *e = schwa). This
is "suggestively" similar to PIE *pork^os 'piglet', the question is
only whether such similarity means anything.
True. Does linguistics mean anything?
My contention is that it means absolutely nothing by itself, being
just as uninformative as the similarity of Mbabaram dOg to English
dog.
What does "uninformative" mean? And if it's OK with you (and I should
add: nonono I have no problem with anything mr. Wahdi might want to
say), I think I will contend the opposite.
After all, *beRek is vaguely similar to <boar> (PWGmc. *bairaz) as
well, and probably similar to many other piggy things in the world
(if you cast your net wide enough), whereas *pork^os has a plausible
IE derivation and interpretation ('a spotted critter'). Indo-Aryan
lost the *pork^os word completely, though it certainly existed in
Proto-Indo-Iranian, so the hypothetical trail of *beRek across S Asia
remains discontinuous.
It is true. Since the *pork^os word has died out in Indo-Aryan, the
*beRek word can't have passed South Asia (please note the biting
sarcasm, biting as in 'boat' which has a a plausible IE derivation
and interpretation, because you bite out the interior of a tre-trunk
with an axe to make one, or else because it's made of a bit of wood).
Also, it is also vaguely similar to <bear>, and one might plausibly
argue that a bear is a very furry pig. BTW, what is *bairaz supposed
to be in PIE, and can it be analysed there?
Among the Austronesian pigs (from Manansala) in
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/prk.html
you find the r-less
puaka, pua'a- "pig" common Polynesian
wherever he got those from (somewhere in his list of references).
Note also that some of the forms have that elusive velar
ergative?/agent? suffix, others don't. Now that's a good way to spell
pi-g-. Or do-g-, for that matter.
Also note *pri- "love"
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/pr.html
There's that family pet pig again. I hasten to add that ergative
means agent for animates only, for non-animates it means instrument,
therefore a pet pig is not an agent, but a means of love (lest
someone accuses me of being a perverted pig fetishist).
>
> Piotr
Torsten