From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 59967
Date: 2008-09-11
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
>> > --- On Wed, 9/10/08, Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@> wrote:
>> >
>> > > [citing a historical linguistics hypothesis advanced in Tsung-
>> > > tung Chang's paper at
>> > >
>> > > http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp007_old_chinese.pdf ]
>> > >
>> > > ... during the third millennium BCE, a Proto-Indo-European
>> > > vocabulary showing a Germanic structure became dominant in
>> > > Old Chinese, ...
>> >
>> > Pre- or post-Grimm shift Germanic, acc. to CTT?
>>
>> You should better go through the lexical comparisons offered in the
>> paper to better evaluate this question.
>
> I don't think you are supposed to do that. Brian says you have to
> criticize it yourself first, if you want to be a real scientist.
>
> Torsten
>
==========
It's quite clear that the thesis of M. Chang is appalling from a scientific
point of view.
His middle Chinese is not too bad but his archaic Chinese is beyond words.
Examples from p.37
dewo (sic) *dyew "day" is compared with di4 "emperor" < Baxter *teks
Chang has *deëg (ë = schwa)
mork (sic) "horse" is compared with ma3 "horse" < Baxter *mra?
This word is Asiatic : *mor- is the original form
Chang has *mog
gheul (sic) two-year-old horse with Chinese gou1 'poney, small horse' <
Baxter *k(r)o
Chang has *keu
Actually this Chinese word is interesting, as it provides the origin of the
word colt.
English colt
Sanscrit kiçora < *kik^eula
Persan kurre
The Chinese word points at *k_l as the root.
According to PIE loan-words, the vowel was u, hence *kul-
Germanic sides east...
Arnaud