> > > I would think that *h1eg'(H)om would more likely be a borrowed
> pronoun
> > > (perhaps also *yuHs). Don't the Austronesians have a pronoun
> something
> > > like *aku?
> >
> > Torsten made this point way back at
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/17214 and
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/17923 .
> >
> > Richard.
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Quite frankly, it amazes me that anyone could _seriously_ maintain
> that personal pronouns are ever borrowed.
>
> There has to be a good reason why _anything_ is borrowed; or, when
> there was contact between any two language families, there would
be
> a wholesale exchange of vocabulary.
>
Laurent Sagart: Tai-Kadai as a Subgroup of Austronesian
in
Laurent Sagart et al: The peopling of East Asia
(I like this book, in case someone hadn't noticed)
"
Benedict (1942, 1975) argued from similarities in basic vocabulary,
including personal pronouns and numerals, that Tai-Kadai are two
distinct phyla goint back to a common ancestor - PAT"
"
"
Thurgood (1994) claimed within Tai-Kadai, the AN-related vocabulary
obeys different correspondences from the rest. He concluded that the
AN-related vocabulary is borrowed from an early pre-AN source.
However the vocabulary shared by Tai-Kadai and AN is very basic: it
includes the 1sg, 2sg and 2pl personal pronouns; all the numerals
above 'one'; bodypart terms like 'eye', 'tongue', 'hand'; terms for
natural objects like 'moon', 'water'; verbs like 'die' etc.
Borrowing such a set of vocabulary is probably not impossible, given
sufficient pressure, but if so, one should expect also to find many,
many loanwords in the cultural vocabulary. This is precisely where
the difficulty arises: items of cultural vocabulary shared by Tai-
Kadai and AN are quite scarce ... It appears, then, that neither
chance nor borrowing are likely explanations for the lexical
comparisons between Tai-Kadai and AN. The only remaining explanation
is genetic, as Benedict argued.
"
This is interesting, because according to the list compiled by Paul
Manansala and myself (I probably shouldn't repeat the URL once again)
this is exactly the relationship that holds between IE and
AfroAsiatic on one hand and Austronesian on the other. So if
Sagart's argument holds logically, it should apply here too.
"
I [Sagart] will therefore hypothesize that Tai-Kadai has its origin
in an early AN language called here 'AAK'. AAK was a daughter
language of PAN, and a close relaive of PMP... In historical terms,
one may suppose that AAK speakers ... settled the Guangdong coast.
There they sustained intimate contact with a local population. As a
result of this interaction, AAK was to a large extent relexified,
with only the most basic elements resisting. The linguistic identity
of the relexifier remains an open question: ... but the fact that
much of the non-AN and non-Chinese vocabulary in Tai-Kadai is
without clear connections points in the direction of a language
belonging to an extinct phylum...
"
Aha. Therefore I must conclude:
PIE is basically an Austronesian (cybalist: howl!) or Tai-Kadai
(cybalist: scream!) language relexified by an unknown language.
That should keep us entertained in January. Hehehe.
Torsten