--- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...>
> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> > > --- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: tgpedersen
> > > > To: cybalist@...
> > > > Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 1:05 PM
> > > > Subject: [tied] Re: OE *picga
> > > >
> > > >
Torsten:
Considering that Manansal's/my list contains less than 100 roots of
coincidence, isn't it surprising how much mileage I can get out of
it? Every time a central idea in IE comes up I can find a match for
it on the list? Unless one wants to consider the alternative: there
was contact?
Piotr:
Finding root equations is easy. I've just perused a list of about 100
Malgasy words and found several intriguing matches between Malagasy
and Russian.
Torsten:
Fun, isn't it? Now try it with Navaho.
Richard:
Piotr's Malagasy-Russian correspondences certainly beat my
Bagirmi-English correspondences [...] The best matches I could come
up with are:
Bagirmi ma 'I' : English me
Bagirmi debne: 'female' : English deb 'young woman starting in
Society'
...
Bagirmi dIka 'say' : English dictum 'saying (n.)'
...
Torsten:
That's not fair. You're supposed to analyse each language back to
the earliest stage reachable with your ability. I don't think you've
done that for the English set of roots.
Richard:
Doesn't that rule only apply to valid searches for genetic cognates?
The Sundaland argument for comparing Bagirmi and English is weak;
what the argument would justify is doing a Bagirmi-Austronesian
comparison. (Any Bagirmi speakers on the list?)
Torsten:
As for the 'ma' "me", more daring minds than mine have built splendid
linguistic edifices on pronoun similarities such as this.
Richard:
I'm a tad surprised 'dIka' isn't in the Proto-World set for
dik 'one', 'finger', with the derived meaning 'say'.
Torsten:
As for Sundaland reachability, there are plenty of Chadic words on
my site, e.g. for the notorious *bH/p-r/l- root(s).
Richard:
Where wasn't reachable?
(I hope it wasn't just in the Americas - American languaguages tend
not to have 100-word lists. Is it because Morris Swadesh was a
communist?)
Richard.