Michael:
> Glen, do you Sumerian as being more with Nostratic or Sino-Caucasian?
Nostratic, like Bomhard thinks. However, unlike Bomhard, I think that
Sumerian is the first to split from a "Eurasiatic" branch comprised
of Elamo-Dravidian and Steppe (IE, Uralic, Altaic, EA, CK, etc). They
share the common feature of a 1ps *mu but differ in some respects
from Kartvelian which also has *mu (AfroAsiatic seems to show *nu
instead).
I suspect that the reason why Sumerian is so hard to pin down is
because it is the product of HurroUrartian elements that came from
the north (c. 6000 BCE?) and that it lacks the innovations that
Elamo-Dravidian and Steppe created together like a firmly accusative
*-m. Although, Sumerian /-e/ might be a nasalized *-m, however used
to mark the ergative.
> Unrelated question #2: Do you see a Semitish or Berberish substrate
> (or any substrate for that matter) in Germanic speaking northern
> Europe? Wikipedia says (not that that means anything) that a pre-
> Germanic substrate can't be detected in Northern Europe.
The only notable theory in the cobwebs of my brain involves the
"Atlantiker" theory which was meant among other things to explain the
universally rare VSO pattern of Celtic languages as being a product of
European Berber (which also has VSO) spreading along the west coast.
I must say it's intriguing and excitingly multicultural in vision but
what else can be said about it without further data? There do seem to
be some AfroAsiatic words in Basque though. Like /arrano/ is suspicious
and /zazpi/ "seven" even more so since we know it didn't come from
any IE language (and even IE *septm is probably a Semitic numeral
from *sab`-atu-m!).
At any rate, we'd be talking about Western Europe not Central. I'd
expect Basque to have had a wider territory in more eastern and
northern areas than it is now, in the areas later occupied by
Germanic and Celtic speakers. It's a matter of debate though
what the linguistic mix of Western Europe was like before the
Roman Empire.
> Unrelated question #3: Did you check out that Nuclear Rabbit band
> I e-mailed you about?
What is the relevance? I don't respect emails with unsolicited topics
that have no bearing on linguistics >:( Why do I need to check it out?
Did I ask for a music review? Did Nuclear Rabbit speak about Nostratic
at their latest concert? Erh, somehow I can't see that.
> Unrelated question #4: Do you think the History Channel should be
> called the Hitler Channel or the Nazi Channel? I do, cuz that's all
> they ever show.
Hehehe. Now that is funny! That's totally true. They _do_ have an
unnatural obsession with Hitler and the World Wars which is why I got
fed up with the one-tracked plot of that channel. I wanted to see
Ancient Egypt, the Romans, the Mayan Empire, y'know, history? Yeah.
Dead on :)
> Ritalin's kickin' in, gotta go do something productive,
Damn, everybody has a doctor but me :( Well keep medicated. Talk to
you later then.
= gLeN