--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Jan 2004 17:52:11 -0800 (PST), David Steel
> Not that Ruhlen's opinions carry much weight, but I'd be very
surprised if> Ruhlen said that. In general, he tends to follow
Greenberg, and Greenberg> does not include either PAA or PK in his
Eurasiatic grouping (which does> include PIE and PU).
Words which unite world's languages:
(Ruhlen p. 105)
sound meaning
papa father
mama mother
kaka brother/uncle
ku who
ma what (ma is used in Mandarin as a question indicator)
pal two
akwa water
tik finger
kanV arm
boko arm
bunku knee
sum hair
putV vulva
cuna nose smell
KamV squeeze
parV fly
(the capital V represents a vowel whose original pronunciation is
unknown)
"Another striking resemblance among the world's language families is
a word whose original meaning was probably 'finger' (though it has
evolved to 'one' and 'hand'[='fingers'] in many languages), and
whose original form was something like tik. I first became aware of
the widespread nature of this root at a public lecture that
Greenberg gave at Stanford in 1977, in which he mentioned three
roots that were widely distributed around the world: tik 'finger,'
pal 'two' (which we will look at in the following section), and
par 'to fly.' As you no doubt noticed in your examination of Table
10, no less than eight of the twelve families show traces of
tik 'finger,one,' namely, Nilo-Saharan (B), Niger-Kordofanian (C),
Afro-Asiatic (D), Eurasiatic (G), Dene-Caucasian (H), Austric (I),
Indo-Pacific (J) and Amerind (L)." ~Merritt Ruhlen, The Origin of
Language, (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994), p. 115