Marco:
>If I'm not wrong, you consider all you can't attest as not existing.
You're wrong. From what I can gather from another post you just
made about the "decadence of Science", you seem to think that
it's not healthy to question things. If we didn't question things, we'd
all be in perfect agreement, wouldn't we? :)
Occam's Razor forbids me to propose anything that I don't need
to propose. This doesn't mean that something may not exist. It
merely means that given my assessment of the facts that are _known_
and based on the established theories that are deemed reasonably
probable, this is what I've come up with. If something factual or
at least credible shows that I'm wrong, then it is for the pursuit of
truth that I must modify my view. Science in a nutshell, really.
>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.
Why are you mispresenting my opinion? The Latin word /nepo:s/ is
most certainly from *nepo:ts. My arguement though is that while
Etruscan /nefts/ would seem somehow borrowed from an IE language,
it doesn't appear to be Latin as we know it because of the /t/. That
combined with Lemnian /nafotH/ would show that maybe the word
is a little older (before the arrival of Etruscans to Italy from Asia Minor)
or at least from another adstrate besides Latin. Another possibility is
that it's a genuinely native word despite the apparent correlation with
IndoEuropean.
>Finally you said: an IE *nepo:t-s is not documented in this form so
>it doesn't exist, so Etruscan nefts is native.
??? Marco, it's time to give it a rest and stop contorting or inventing
things that I've said from personal discussions between you and I.
That's unfair and inappropriate nettiquette. IE *nepot- exists based
on plentiful IE data. I never said contrary! However, we can't just
whimsically claim some IE Language X for these loans. A good case has
to be made to show that such a language existed based on many
non-Latin loans that cannot be anything other than from this
mysterious language. It's not scientific, rational thinking on your part
to insist that Etruscan borrowed from such a mysterious IE language
that otherwise doesn't seem to be evidenced.
Additionally, it seems to me that the linguistic picture of Italy is
adequately reconstructed for this time period, so what language
per se would /nefts/ come from? What is the exact or probable
form of the word in that language? The answer has to be more
definitive than just idle suspicion.
>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").
But you _can't_ deny the presence of a Semitic(-like) language having
affected IE! We all agree that *septm is a transparently masculine
form of the Semitic root for "seven".
Rather you deny the geographical distances that seperate the two
languages. An intermediary language is logically necessary. Unless you
want to join the battered camp that still thinks that IE could possibly
have been in Anatolia at the time despite the shotty logic of the
theory. Joining the likes of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov is ironic considering
your quest to be rational and scientific (nb. their unlikely cognate sets
for "monkey" and "elephant").
>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.
As I said, this is just an unfair attack based on correspondances
between us personally. Since the Forum can't judge our correspondances
on mere hearsay, I'd ask you to stop this line of attack. It's fruitless.
Let's create a new debate here for everyone to evaluate and forget
our own.
= gLeN
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