--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2008-04-18 07:26, stlatos wrote:
>
> > Is there any evidence that this is a substratum within another
> > language instead of native words in a non-Indic, non-Ir language that
> > was fairly heavily influenced by Indic recently?
>
> Bangani is a perfectly ordinary Mod.IA language.
> > Though the "centum" words have drawn the most attention, they are
> > certainly not the only words showing unusual (non-Indic) features, and
> > the oddities are so varied and scattered throughout both basic and
> > other vocabulary it seems impossible they are borrowings.
>
> Have a heart. You should learn something about Indic _before_ you start
> such wild speculation.
Let me start simply: did the supposed substrate language change e>a
or not? There's getu but dOkO. The IE language that doesn't e>a but
contains an oddity for '10' is Arm. tasn which doesn't change n,>a.
Arm. changes kY>s^>s, etc.
This language, then, would have been a cross between Greek, Arm.,
and wind up in the same place as Indic.
However, Indic and Iranian are already close to G and Arm in
IE-relational terms. What are the chances that an otherwise unknown
group that was near only Greek in the PIE homeland would move along
with the Indic and not be known except by borrowings into an Indic
language? Instead, a group of many (now) small languages, related to
G, Arm, Ir (and perhaps Indic), moved together with their large
neighbors into Asia and all (or most) survive today (but with various
degrees of influence from their larger neighbors).
This is accepted for Nuristani (and by many for Dardic), so what
evidence is there to show this isn't so for Bangani?
Are these borrowings only words with k/g retained? Isn't it more
likely that there are many words, perhaps most words, from the same
source, whether borrowed or native, that aren't so easily distinguishable?
Since Arm. has sw > xw > kHw > kH wouldn't the presence of kH in the
reflexive pronouns at least warrant an investigation? Since I said
w>m, isn't the presence of n. / r. instead of r in the possessive
indicative of the possibility of a nasal previously in the stem (which
transfered nasality to the following r as it regularly became p)?