Re[2]: [tied] Re: Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Cauc

At 4:05:11 AM on Monday, September 29, 2008, Arnaud Fournet wrote:

> From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>

>> That IE and PSem. words for '3' are cognates? No. By
>> the way,
>> <http://en.wiktionary.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).

> Well,
> if we first go back to real DATA,

I pointed you at real data.

> not to what M. X or Y thinks right,

> PIE trey "three"
> Hebrew sh_l_sh
> Arabic th_l_th
> From *t_l

Apparently not.

> I can't see any reason why the first phoneme should be
> different from the last.

Because you haven't looked at enough data. I imagine that
the Ge'ez, Tigrinya, Sabaean, and Mehri reflexes are part of
the evidence for the different third consonant. There's a
lot more to Semitic than just Hebrew and Arabic.

But trying to find regular correspondences between PIE and
PSem. is rather pointless, unless you think that PIE is a
branch of Afro-Asiatic. I pointed out the error of your
PSem. root simply as an aside.

[...]

> Who is this M. Saenz-Badillos ?

Hebrew Professor at the Departamento de Hebreo, Universidad
Complutense, Madrid, Spain; one of his particular interests
is the history of the Hebrew language, on which he has
written a widely-used survey. (It was revised and
translated into English a few years ago; I believe that a
translation into French is in the works.)

Brian