Re: Another PIE origin theory

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "ehlsmith" <ehlsmith@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "C. Darwin Goranson"
> <cdog_squirrel@> wrote:
> >
> > This may all be for the rubbish bin, but since I'm not the best
> > judge of this, I'll share the idea.
> >
> > Thousands of years, maybe 2 thousand or 3, before PIE as we know it
> > existed, its ancestor lived in eastern Anatolia. This ancestor may
> > also have been the ancestor of Minoan (judging by what can be
> > deduced from the grammar of Linear A) and of Etruscan, as well as
> > Pelasgian if it is not Indo-European. There is a chance that it was
> > also related distantly to Kartvelian, however this might just be due
> > to borrowings between the two in a Sprachbunde.
> >
> > Then, the Semites arrived. They were around long enough that a few
> > Semitic words got into this language, but the speakers of the
> > language soon went seperate ways. The Minoans and Etruscans went
> > east (and the Pelasgians?) while another group went north over the
> > Caucasus mountains.
> >
> > After this, the group that went north met with and joined part of an
> > Uralic culture. After this, everything goes as usual with the Kugan
> > ideas.
> >
> > Myself, I can't say I'm completely comfortable with the idea.
> > However, I don't want my emotions to have too much of a basis in
> > judging it. What do you think?
> >
> > I prefer to think of PIE as closer to Uralic... just with an
> > adstratum from some pseudo-Caucasian tongue. It's just that there
> > are some discomforting similarities to some Semitic traditions.
>
> I have nothing to contribute in the way of linguistic evidence, but
> just looking at the theory you propose wonder if you could not resolve
> your dilemma by proposing that rather than the Pre-PIEs being the ones
> carrying the Semtic loanwords north from the Caucasus, it was your
> hypothetical Psuedo-Caucasians who did, bringing them to a pre-PIE
> population already in place? That way it seems you could have your
> cake and eat it too.
>
> Ned Smith

I like your idea very much. The trouble is, which group is to be
called "Proto-Indo-European," the Caucasian group or the Uralic group?

I've found an article that deals well with the Uralic side. Yes, it's
unfortunately heavy on ideas that are still considered controversial,
but I think the ideas make good sense, and the result that the author
comes to is the same as the one I came to independantly a few years ago.

http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art203e.pdf
(Also, the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Uralic)

I would, however, question the word "substratum." I think it could
well be an adstratum or even superstratum, considering the amount of
non-Uralic words.

For those of a more experimental spirit, I actually suggest some
further research into the Lhughoravetlhan (Luoravetlan - my spelling
just tries to reproduce the voiceless lateral and voiced velar
fricative) languages' connections to PIE. They are, of course, very
few. But, BUT, there are significant ones, especially in the pronouns:
1st person singular in Chukchi is "gym" (like an "h"-less "egG HIM!",
2nd person singular is "gyt" (similar to the English insult "git"),
and the 1st and 2nd persons plural are "muri" and "turi" respectively.
Now, aside from the admittedly problematic "-ri" endings in the
plurals, the similarities to the Proto Indo European pronouns are
striking: "gym" to *eg^Hom, and from analogy, "gyt" as though from
**eg^Hot, keeping the 2nd person "t". The "muri" and "turi" again have
the "m" and "t".
Admittedly, this is only one example. However, the similarity of the
first person form is not easy to miss.