Re: PIE's closest relatives

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

> Richard:
> >I thought Palestine was part of the fertile crescent, so I don't
> >agree with your literal statment about the distance.
>
> The homeland of Proto-Semitic is posited to be somewhere
> around Syria or Palestine. Not in Sumer. Do you agree with
> that?

I've seen Syria or Palestine proposed, whereas the ancient theory has
them coming from Yemen. I don't think Abraham's coming from Ur has
much bearing on the matter, if that is what you are driving at.

> >IE's being in Eastern Europe doesn't rule out its also being in
> >Anatolia.
>
> Yes, it does because there is no trace of it before the arrival of
> the Anatolians.

What do you expect to see? Anatolian is basically the continuation
of PIE in Anatolia. (I don't know what to make of Phrygian, though.)

> >I'm still tempted to put Proto-Indo-Hittite in Anatolia.
>
> You must resist the temptation. It's a fringe theory that doesn't
> pay attention to Uralic. We've gone through this a million and
> one times before.

I don't see the contradiction. Uralic and Japanese are widely
separated, and you don't see Uralic as being any closer to IE than to
Altaic.

> IE _was_ affected by Semitic or something close enough to be
> mistaken for it but even still there is a rift between _inland_
> Eastern Europe and Palestine. You seem to be under the
> mistaken belief that IE speakers were largely coastal fisherman...
> ????

????????

Anatolia makes the connections easier.

> >How common is this IE noun formation? I can only think of

*bHebHru-

> >'brown aquatic animal' and Greek _kiki_ 'castor-oil berry'.
>
> Right, but even still, assuming that we can even coin "wheel" so far
> back into prehistory in the first place, Semitic *galgal- is a

sufficient

> intermediary. Even so, the "wheel" connection just doesn't look
> solid. The reduplication is common enough in IE to be native
> nonetheless. When you think of it simply as a reduplicated verb
> stem (suggesting iteration) with a thematic vowel it's not strange

at

> all. Thematicized verbs are the most common way to create
> derivative nouns. This verb stem here only happens to be
> reduplicated but only for valid semantic reason and your extra
> example of *bHebHru- negates what you say.

*bHebHru- does not have a thematic vowel! What are your examples of
deverbal thematic nouns from reduplicated stems?

Richard.