--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> Ned:
> >If I recall correctly, you once posited the existence
of "Semitish",
> >a sort of para-proto-semitic, which influencing PIE. If the term
for
> >seven was borrowed by PIE speakers from Semitish rather than from
> >Proto-Semitic how would that affect your argument below? Might not
> >the accents or number of syllables be different?
>
> I only say "Semitish" because it doesn't seem to me that it was
> likely that Semitic directly affected IE, and it seems assumptive to
> presume that it was a non-IE, non-Semitic language. So I presume
> instead that it was not "core Semitic", situated in Palestine, but
> some para-Semitic language.
>
> Yes, it could be different from Semitic, but not knowing what
> those differences could possibly be, I try instead to work within
> the framework of what we do know. We know Semitic, not
> para-Semitic dialects.
Hello, Glen.
If I'm not wrong, you consider all you can't attest as not existing.
I remember a long discussion about possible IE loanwords in Etruscan.
Transparent borrowings like Etruscan nefts < *nepo:ts were absurdly
dismissed by you because you can't prove that Latin nepos:s is from
*nepo:ts. Final reduction of IE *-t-s in -s occurred in several IE
languages like Italic, Greek, Celtic, but you seem to ignore it.
Finally you said: an IE *nepo:t-s is not documented in this form so
it doesn't exist, so Etruscan nefts is native.
You fiercely opposed to any proposal of detection of old borrowings
from not attested IE languages censuring it as ridiculous, ludicrous,
etc...
Now you posit a para-Semitic language.
But we have only the evidence of loanwords in IE, that is not more
consistent than my IE borrowings in Etruscan.
Even if something similar to Semitish should have existed, your
procedure is a quite anti-scientific one:
1) You cannot deny the presence of Afro-Asiatic items in IE, so you
build up Semitish (as for me, Semitic is sufficient to explain "six"
and "seven").
2) It's useful for your shotty Indo-Tyrrhenian theory to consider
every IE-resembling item in Etruscan as native, so you demolish the
idea that there are IE loanwords in Etruscan.
Regards
Marco