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

On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 13:07:05 -0000, "tgpedersen
<tgpedersen@...>" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>> It's not uncommon. The Dutch for "nothing" is <niets> [nits]
>> (accidentally very close to the Polish for "nothing", <nic>
>[n^its]),
>> but is commonly pronounced as [nIks].
>
>Weet ik wel. But in German "nothing" is "nichts", also commonly (Low
>German and Low_German) [nIks], and Dutch has borrowed before from
>that language (überhaupt, zich (cf. mij)).

Even if "niks" is borrowed from German, synchronically there is an
equivalence ks/ts.

>> I've been toying with the idea of something similar in PIE, in
>another
>> borrowed numeral, "6", if from Semitic *s^eds^ (*s^ets^), giving PIE
>> *sWeksW.
>>
>"6" and what else? Now I see two thumbs on the weight.

There is, as far as I know, no /ts/ in PIE. This may be accidental,
or it may reflect an earlier soundlaw with got rid of /ts/ in favour
of, say, /k(^)s/. In either case, if /ts/ was not in the langauge
when teh word was borrowed, that may explain why it was adopted with
/ks/ instead of /ts/.

>On the other hand it seems Hawaiian and other eastern Polynesian has
>*t > *k, which at first I found hard to believe

Seen in context it's not that strange. Proto-Polynesian had:

*p *t *k *?
*f *s *h
*m *n *N
*r
*w *l

In Hawaiian we have:

p = p, t > k, ? > 0
f > h, s > h, h > 0
m = m, n= n, N > n
l = l, r > l
w = w,

giving:

/p/ /k/ /?/
/h/
/m/ /n/
/w/ /l/


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...