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

From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 43312
Date: 2006-02-08

 
----- Original Message -----
From: etherman23
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.
===
 
 
Does anyone really have any serious objections to these semantic connections? 
If so, let us read of them in detail.
 
Vacuous generalizations will not be taken seriously.
 
I could substitute 'in front' for any of these usages, and construct an English phrase which would be understandable if awkward.

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