Re: DEBATE ON ARCHAISM OF SOME SELECT BANGANI WORDS

From: tgpedersen
Message: 47203
Date: 2007-02-01

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:
>
> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pehook/bangani.abbi2.html
>
> "What does this all prove7 Zoller's contention is correct. The
> language seems to have retained some very archaic structures,
> retaining PIE k-, -l~-, g- and -g-. Many. words in Bangani unlike
> other IA languages of the region have not witnessed palatalization
> defying RUKi Rule. It is difficult to prove at this point whether
> this is because of its affiliation to Kenturn language as claimed by
> Zoller. However, on the basis of the first-hand data acquired during
> these two field trips. it can be said without any prejudices and
> with some certainly that some Western Indo-European language
> (perhaps Tokharian) of which we have no knowledge so far. either had
> a significant role in substratumizing Bangani or, Bangani itself was
> genetically related to this unknown Western IE language. There are
> many other features in the language such as existence of O as
> against a of I.Ir., pre-verbal auxiliaries (without being a V2
> language system), and post auxiliary negatives that may also be seen
> as retentions of archaic structure in Bangani of which traces are
> only in Indo-European languages (Abbi 1997 forthcoming)."
>
> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pehook/bangani.hock.html
>
> "A related question is the nature of the western centum influence.
> Words like _gOsti_ seem to rule out Greek influence (and thus the
> possibility that we are dealing with linguistic echoes of
> Alexander's army); _lOktO_ would eliminate Germanic and Celtic; and
> _kOtrO_ would eliminate Greek and Latin. That is, no known western
> centum language could be the source for all of the relevant words.
> At the same time, the fact that *a and *o exhibit the same outcome
> (O, no doubt via *a, see below) suggests possible affiliation with
> the Balto-Slavo-Germanic group (or possibly with Antalolian?)."


Poor mr. Kelkar is being sucked into the vortex of linguistics...

Bangani has been discussed here several times, you'll find much more
about it using the Search function.

Hock discusses it in terms of Western vs. Eastern PIE languages, which
is what the kentum/satem division encourages; my approach sees instead
the transition from the original 'mixed kentum/satem' PIE stage to
either kentum or satem as a process that could take place in stages,
thus the Bangani words in question (note that their occurrences of
kentum velars are almost all of them either before O or in a
consonantal context, with only one exception appearing before a front
vowel) would be the last vestiges of the back allophone (gh, g, k) of
on IndoIranian territory; together with some Kafiri dialects with c^
etc for standard IIr s etc.


Torsten