Re: [tied] [Nostratic-L] Re: Why are Indo-Europeanist opposed to a

----- Original Message -----

From: etherman23

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 8:54 PM

Subject: [tied] [Nostratic-L] Re: Why are Indo-Europeanist opposed to a "proto-language" for all

There are two major flaws with your reconstruction of Proto-World.
First, each of your monosyallables is given several meanings. The very
first one, *?a, can mean "forehead, brow, face, here, this (near
speaker), across, at, location, abut, be in contact with, (plant-)top
(foliage), nuclear family, straight, bird's beak, interrogative,
inanimate stative, 'be adjective';" With so many meanings for each
monosyllable I doubt speakers of such a language could even
understand each other!

 

***

Patrick:

 

This first "criticism" of the PROTO-LANGUAGE monosyllable

 

?A

 

can easily be disproved to any even partially objective reviewer:

 

the underlying semantic theme of this monosyllable is

 

 

F-R-O-N-T

 

 

which is _easily_ and _naturally_ semantically relatable to 'forehead, brow'.

 

1) what is 'in front' is 'here', and is 'this' object as opposed to 'that';

 

2) what is 'in front of me' is 'across from me, in contact with me', i.e. 'near the speaker';

 

   a) what is 'in front of something' is 'at something'; and, with slight emphasis, 'abuts' it;

 

      1) where 'something is at' is its 'location';

 

3) the living human beings who will most often be 'in front of/contact with me' are 'my nuclear family';

 

   a) this monosyllable is also used for human beings who have 'gone in front of us, preceded us', i.e. 'ancestors'; 

 

4) a plant-analog to my 'forehead/brow' is a '(plant-)top/foliage';

 

5) an animal-analog to my 'forehead/brow' is 'bird's beak';

 

6) not having a proper word for '*where?', a question to elicit location is framed as:

 

'the man here?' (interrogative) = 'where is the man?';

 

7) the inanimate stative, 'be (adjective)', could be argued in a similar fashion but let us just consider it as an arbitrary assignment of meaning _temporarily_(!!!).

 

===

The proper word for 'face' is K?XE but ?A is semantically closely enough related to occasionally be extended to this meaning, or so it seems to me.

===

 

'straight' may be an improper inference; I will allow that as a possibility.

===