From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 60589
Date: 2008-10-05
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
>
>> I can't help but wonder whether these Sino-Tibetan words might be
>> borrowings from Sanskrit (cf. WB <prañ>/<phrañ>, Mikir
>> <plen>/peplen> with Skt <pra:nah.> "filled, full").
> That would be from some l-dialect, then.
===========
Not necessarily,
Many languages in that area do not distinguish r from l.
Before you conclude it's from a l-dialect,
you first have to prove that these languages could _choose_ between *r and
*l,
and most could not.
Arnaud
==========
> I don't think Matisoff argues either way.
> I think it's pretty obvious they must be loans. If words could survive
> from a common ST-PIE ancestor that unscathed, where are the other ones
> then?
=========
I gave you the "scathed" cognates in a previous mail.
Full is ST *poyng < *pol-
Flat is ST *payin < *pal-
By the way, as regards full :
Yujaghir poy = cognate
Uralic pol = IE loanword
Arnaud
=======
> Against the idea that PIE is the ultimate donor is the fact that we
> can't connect the *p-l- "flat" and *p-l- "full" roots within PIE.
===
I don't understand this statement.
Arnaud.
==========
>The article was first presented in 1986. Matisoff's Handbook of
>Proto-Tibeto-Burman from 2002 has not two, but three roots of that shape:
>*blen, <> *plen, "straight(en)" ~ *plen, "flat surface, plank",
>*blin, "string, thread, cord" and
>*blin, <> *plin, "full, fill".
>Torsten
========
These proto-forms are either wrong or not ST.
It should also be noted that Matisoff's "modelization" of ST permits so much
leeway that about anything can become a root.
For example, here, voiced and voiceless are allowed to alternate.
All these constraint-free parameters render reconstructions uncontrollable
and untraceable.
This plus tones plus affixes plus semantic leeway = Everything works.
Arnaud
===========