Re: [tied] *kW- "?"

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

> Torsten:
> > The premise (1) is a well-established fact, afaIk.
>
> It's not.
>

Is too.

>
> > It seems logical that the interrogative use of the
> > kW- pronouns is derived from [...] their use as
> > relatives;
>
> The mere _possibility_ of something doesn't make it
> significantly _probable_, nor do we know when such
> a hypothetical shift of meaning would have occured,
> whether a thousand years before IE or ten thousand,
> **assuming** that it existed.

And Glen's mere proclanation of something being merely possible or
probable does not make it so.

>And assumption is a
> logical sin.
>

You may start with 10,000 Hail Marys

> Irrelevant conjecture.
>

Glen doesn't like it.

> > And a language that uses coordination, not
> > subordination, needs no relative pronouns.
>
> Can you be sure that this was the state of affairs
> in pre-IE? No. Not without a tighter theory backing
> your claims. So far, your "theory" involves randomly
> stating each day a new series of what-ifs.

That's a wonderful description and I think I will be using it in the
future: A theory is a what-if.

>Your ideas
> have no basis, consistency or structure so far.

Aha.

> > That's because you think of it as a phonetically
> > distinct separate PIE phoneme. I think so-called
> > *k^ (etc) was actually in PIE a *k with allophones
> > *k/*c^ depending on its various environments,
>
> Which is impossible for IE.
>
> We already have gone over and proven with simple
> linguistic principles time and time again on this
> list and the Nostratic list that IE itself could
> ***NOT*** have had palatal velar stops despite the
> stubborn tradition of writing them this way. You
> continue with this irrational rot but it will
> continue to fall on deaf ears that know better.
> Traditional "plain" *k is really *q and "palatal"
> *k^ is really *k. The end.
>

After I read this tirade a couple of times it occurred to me that
you believe I believe in the traditional palatal velars in PIE. Tsk,
tsk.

> >> Why 1500 BCE? Where did you pull that date from?
> >
> > The assumed entry of the Sanskrit-speakers into
> > India.
>
> I guess you don't grasp that the homeland of the
> Indo-Iranians is settled by the presence of Finno-
> Ugric loanwords, do you. This unquestionably pins
> them north of the Caspian Sea at around 2500 BCE, so
> there cannot be any doubt by anyone not obsessed by
> conspiracy theories from what direction the Sanskrit
> language originated. It ain't the Mediterranean.
>

If you buy a map book with several pages in it, you may discover (do
you use glasses?) that the Black Sea and the Mediterranean are
connected through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the
Bosporus (try the index, if all else fails). It is actually
navigable, supertankers pass it every day. Therefore, any point on
the rivers flowing to the Black Sea is reachable by ship from any
point in the Mediterranean.


Torsten