Re: Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo

----- Original Message ----
From: Brian M. Scott <BMScott@...>
To: Andrew Jarrette <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 10:15:47 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European

At 12:58:50 PM on Saturday, September 27, 2008, Andrew
Jarrette wrote:

> --- In cybalist@... s.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <

[...]

>> The only thing that really proves something is that
>> Semitic *tel is reflected by PIE treyes "three". there is
>> not a single word in Indo-European that is **tl- "three".
>> This is a cognate, not a word that can be created about
>> any time in the history of each Indo-European language.

> Makes sense to me; are any other Cybalist members
> convinced?

That IE and PSem. words for '3' are cognates? No. By the
way,
<http://en.wiktionar y.org/wiki/ Appendix: Proto-Semitic_ *%C5%9Bal% C4%81%CE% B8->
gives the PSem. as *s'ala:þ- (*s'laþ-), with a list of
reflexes; this is significantly different from Arnaud's
*tel. I've looked very little at Semitic and AA, but
according to Sáenz-Badillos, *s' is thought to have been
belted-l (voiceless lateral fricative).

Brian

I have problems in that there is no coherent number system for AA.

In Arabic, the various forms include TalaTah (classic) but also salasah, tleyte, etc. Ethiopian forms are with /s/ e.g. the late Haile Salasse "the Power of the Trinity".

But step outside of Semitic and see what you get.

If you even pretend to believe in long-range linguistics, you are wasting your time by comparing IE and Semitic.

There are some suggestions bandied about that IE 3 is related to "thr-" words for "many" such as "throng", "thorp". And if you went back to some very early time in pre-proto-IE, obviously before agriculture, perhaps the language worked like that of various hunter-gatherer groups where you have 1-2-MANY, who knows?

But if, for arguments sake, words such as throng and thorp work, look at the IE level for possibly related words with *tr- or *tVr- maybe the ancestors of words such as turba, turma, storm ("lots of water"), through (in the sense of "beyond, much distance, many steps")

If you're looking at adstrate relationship, the problem is that IE and Semitic were not in contact.

If you look at the Anatolian model, it's a wild guess whether or not Semitic was formed and separated out by 7-9,000 BCE and who knows where it was --most likely in either the Sinai or Palestine.

If you look at standard IE models, IE was north of the Black Sea c. 4,000 BCE.

So unless you have some proof of intermediate carrier languages, then your hypothesis looks DOA