Re: Oedipus

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>

> ===========
>
> Could you explain how you go from Semitic to Venetic to Latin ?

It's more like an MO, a modus operandi.
I assume that those words in Latin in which a root vowel /a/ can't be
explained by schwa secundum, those Ernout & Meillet are calling 'mots
populaires' are loans from one or several other languages. I make the
risky assumption for methodological reason they are from just one,
unless proven otherwise.

==============
It's one possibility,
but I tend to think that some technical jargons retain archaic features and
do not behave like standard words.
So some of these "popular" words can only be professional dialects with odd
features.
Arnaud
===========

If they occur with /a/ in other IE languages,
so much the better. If they have initial p- or are of the form *TVT-
where T is an unvoiced stop (Kuhn's criteria for Nordwestblock-ness)
and occur in Germanic, so much the better. If they occur unshifted
(relative to the Latin term) in Germanic, so much the better.

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i suppose you already have posted a list of Nordwestblock words,
I'm interested in getting the references.
Arnaud
=========

The ethnic background is what I read in Okulicz 'Einige Aspekte der
Ethnogenese der Balten und Slawen im Lichte archäologischer und
sprachwissenschaftlicher Forschungen' and Gol/a,b 'Origin of the
Slavs' about the Veneti on the Baltic' on the Baltic Veneti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_Veneti
and I've taken some facts from Joz^ef S^avli/Matej Bor: Unsere
Vorfahren die Veneter (Engl. transl.: "Veneti - First Builders of
European Community"), especially the many place names derivable from
*venet- all over Europe
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I think it's a bit dangerous to assume that all words that _sound_ like
[venet] should be considered as _derived _ from a common source *venet.
This is much too rash for me.
Arnaud
========

(by the way, apropos, what's up with the
Vendée? some Danish reporter noted among their political
representatives a special suspiciousness towards central government
initiatives and thought it was related to the way they were treated
during the French revolution, but is that attitude older?).
==========
That's an interesting question.

I give you another one :
Does it make sense to compare the percentage of the socialist party in 1978
with the ethnic composition over France's territory in -500 BC ?
The question is much less absurd than it seems !
I can tell you more if you like this.

Arnaud
==========

I don't
buy their idea that the Baltic Veneti spoke Slavic, but the idea that
the Baltic Veneti, the Adriatic Veneti,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Veneti
and the Veneti of Gaul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneti_(Gaul)
were once one people seemed worth investigating. Lately, Scandinavian
archaeologists have pointed out that the Scandinavian bronze age seems
to be related to similar cultures of the Mediterranean, it would seem
reasonable that such a people would be the transmitters
of Wörter und Sachen along with the Semitic-speaking Phenicians, and
also that they, being sea-borne, should have contributed the
Old-European river names.

============
We know for sure that the Phoenicians settled in north Africa,
Their impact on Berber languages is very slight.
I know of only one word, onion bz.alim
As a matter of fact, the impact of Latin over Berber is stronger, reaching
even the Touareg.

This makes me very very sceptical about any impact of the Phenicians on the
northern side of the Mediterranean where Phoeniceans never really settled.
The Greeks settled as early as -600 and their impact on Southern French
dialects is provable. And on standard French too.

I believe this Old-European river-names can be explained otherwise.
In my own scenario of PIE,
Originally, say around -15 000, standard PIE was in the western part of
Anatolian,
Across the Aegian sea, there was a close relative of PIE ("pelasgian or
whatever") ultimately overrun by Greek.
In the north of Anatolia (at the place where the black Sea now exists) there
were early PIE splitters like Yeniseian and Salish.
After the end of Wurm ice age around -12 000, "Aegian" PIE moved north and
occupied central Europe,
creating the layer of Old-European names with archaic features like a
instead of e.
Yeniseian and Salish moved east to their current places.
Standard PIE also moved north and began to split in Western, central and
Eastearn PIE.
After - 8000, when agriculture was invented, a new layer of people and PIE
languages with modern features *e started to invade (central and eastern)
Europe.

Everything can be explained with different historical layers of PIE.

Arnaud
===========

> If you have already written this , could you paste it without
> drowning me under ten references.

It's difficult, which is why I took so long in answering, since it's a
work in progress.

===========
Thank you for taking your time to explain your framework.
Otherwise it's impossible to understand what you say.
Arnaud
========

>
> ===========

The -er BTW is a suffix of the pre-Saami language

========

Which I consider is Baltic.

Sometimes this "suffix" in moutain names is *or- mountain, hence a word, not
a suffix.

Arnaud
=========

> The /w/ in -wes is related to the m/w in verbal 1pl and in the
> suffix *-ment-/*went-. That, in my world is from my favorite
> phoneme, the labio-velar nasal /n,W/. Thus, a ppp of *kad- would be
> *kadán,W-, from which one gets both *kadán,W-r- > cada:uer and
> *kadán,W-i- > calami-(tas) (BTW, note the /g/ of OE(?) popoeg,
> which can be explained as < /n,W/). That means I can give up the
> reconstructions with -ni- for calamitas/catamitas.

BTW, if *kat-án,W- (*katl-án,W-?) is a ppp it would mean "fallen,
defeated" which would explain 'catamite' as spoils of war.

=======
I don't really know what to think about this idea.
Postponed to another day !
Arnaud
======

> This supposes that the alternation w/m is two allophones not two
> phonemes.
> The same kind of reasoning leads MArtinet to think the alternation
> -r/-n goes back to *nt.
> I'm very much sceptical about that.
> More over if /ngW/ were a phoneme, it should be frequent. and this
> w/m should be widespread.
> We don't see anything like this.

I think it might be a foreign element in PIE. Note *akWa, if you posit
that as a variant of *an,Wa, you could get *(a)n,Wa-t- > *wat-, *mat-,
*nat- free of charge. Or it is an element of PPIE which already in PIE
has decomposed into /w/, /m/ and /n/ and if our only criterion for
finding it is the presence of alternating w/m/n we wouldn't find it in
many places.
======
Labio-velars in PIE are frequent.
this NgW should be frequent too.
There should be _a lot of_ traces like for H1 and H2.
it does not seem so for this *NgW.
I'm therefore sceptical.

I agree that *akWa is a puzzle.
It can't be analysed as being a-mobile + whatever root kW or k_w.
It does not have clear cognates elsewhere.
Arnaud
=========

T. Burrow: 'The Sanskrit Language'
'The behaviour of the suffix of the 1 pl. is in several ways
reminiscent of the corresponding nominal suffix. In the first place
the coexistence of two forms, one beginning with w and one with m,
which is seen in Hittite, is matched by a similar duality in the
infinitival forms containing the same elements : tiyawar, tiyawanzi ;
tarnummar, tarnummanzi. In Sanskrit the suffixes -vant and -mant are
found in the same way side by side with similar function. Another
similarity between the verbal and nominal forms is seen in the
variation of the latter part of the suffix : IE wen/wes, men/mes. '
Torsten
========
Yes, but this is not enough to posit that these are allophones.
Otherwise the same reasoning applies to *so/to "anaphoric"
and to any consonantal alternation.
Arnaud
==========