Richard:
>Why is it more ridiculous than contact between Semitic and pre-Indo-
>European?
First of all, Sumerian was in the Fertile Crescent and IE was in Eastern
Europe in all likelihood. There's an even greater distance than between
Palestine and Eastern Europe, don't you agree? So geography ruins
that idea.
Plus, *septm alone, a Semitic word with fossilized Semitic morphemes,
can only be Semitic. Therefore, there is contact between IE and Semitic
or a Semitic-related language. The contact _must_ be during pre-IE
because the numeral is well established in the core vocabulary.
Suggesting an intermediary between IE and this Semitic(-like) language
is logically unnecessary because there is no proof that this language is
significantly different from Proto-Semitic itself. At best, one might
suggest Semitish, a northern close-sister to Semitic. Yet they must
have been in contact to explain a transparently Semitic-derived word.
It's undeniable.
In contrast, evidence for Sumerian is completely non-existent. There are
wild attempts to get Sumerian and IE in close quarters but this just
doesn't work. It's crap. Only a handful of words might be vraisemblable
enough to be connected. There is /girgir/ and *kWekWlo- but, as I
already said, *kWekWlo- derives from *kWel- already so to try to connect
it with Sumerian is etymological overkill. Even so, Semitic *galgal- is
sufficient intermediary and logically so since it is geographically
in-between
the two languages. There is also /urudu/ and *?roudHo-, which as I've
admitted, could be connectable, but only indirectly and it is Semitic that
supplies the underlying meaning of the word. It makes a bundle of sense
that a chain of cultures would be trading copper during the neolithic. We
don't need to connect IE and Sumerian directly together.
= gLeN
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