>
>Unfortunately for the state of my
> proposal, Vennemann's "Europa Vasconica, Europa Semitica' just
> arrived at my local library,
Vennemann argues that the AfroAsiatic donor language of roots to IE
must have been Semitic (which he places at the pillars of Hercules at
the appropriate time, later to migrate to the Middle East), since the
matches IE-Semitic he finds are with Semitic triliteral roots (C-C-C-
), and only Semitic has carried to almost completion the idea of
extending all the originally biliteral roots (C-C-) with an extra
consonant.
This is _not_ correct.
Both Møller (whom he cites extensively, with the same twist as I:
Møller lists, unbeknownst to himself, loans from AfroAsatic into IE)
and Bomhard match predominantly with biconsonantal roots. Almost
every time Møller finds a direct semantic match between an IE and a
Semitic root, he either makes a special note of it, or promotes it to
have its own entry. Thus triliteral matches IE-Semitic are rare, and
there's nothing to prevent that the AfroAsiatic loans could be eg.
Berber; no one seems to have checked. Also note the relative ease
with which both he and I find matches in Orël & Stol'bova's Hamito-
Semitic root collection, almost every time there is a IE-Semitic
match in Møller's books; that doesn't corroborate any possible claim
of Semitic as the specific source of loans into Western IE.
Torsten