[tied] Re: "Will the 'real' linguist please stand up?"

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S.Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@...>"
<kalyan97@...> wrote:

> Treating the 'non-Indo-Aryan loan' words in Prakrits as offspring
> from PIAS.

The term "offspring" had better be reserved for the domain where it
belongs (genetic relationships). Loans are by definition "foreign
bodies" in the lexicon.

> Together with Nahali, are we not dealing with an antique stratum in
> India?

But that's Miguel's point. There is ample evidence of residual non-IA
languages in the area.

> If three non-IE languages [assuming Nahali also to be one such --
> even though Piotr considers this to be an Indo-Aryan language? --,
> apart from Burushaski and Language 'x']

I've discussed that before. Nahali is an IA language with a very thick
layer of non-IA loans, many of which come from a language apparently
unrelated to anything we know. It has been partly relexified; so was
English in the Middle Ages, the difference being that in the case of
English we know the source(s) of the vast majority of mediaeval loans.

> In a contact area of IVC, across the gulf, there are some hints that
> a substrate language may explain Sumerian words: sanga 'priest';
> simug 'blacksmith' and tibira 'copper smith'; engar 'farmer',
> apin 'plow' and absin 'furrow; nangar 'carpenter', a:gab 'leather
> worker'; kish 'name of a city'.

How do you know that, given that we know next to nothing about the
Indus Valley substrates? You can't "explain" what is obscure by what
is still obscurer. In any event, the words above are not IA or IE.

Piotr