Re: Sos-

----- Original Message -----
From: "Petr Hrubis" <petr.hrubis@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 8:17 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Sos-



Hello, Arnaud,

Good evening to you, as well. I've just found a little time to react. :-)

2009/1/28 Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud@...>:
> I agree with some of the examples :
> /túl-/ (back vowel) "red" < */sur/ < PIE *H1sr. "blood"
> /kut/ (back vowel) "horse" < */ku?s/ < PIE *kr.s "run"
> /tú/ (back vowel) "half" < */su-/ < PIE *sm-
> Zero grade is *u in Yeniseian.

Hm, let us stay downstairs now. I know you consider IE and Y related,
but let us stick to the topic of the regular change within Yeniseic
itself. Actually, this is the Cybalist. I take that back. This
discussion would be off-topic if we didn't mix IE in. :-P ;-)

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We just need a little bit of Tocharian on top of that
and that would be nice.
A.

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> I also agree with :
> /uta/ (back vowel) "birch" < */xu:sa/ < Uralic *ku:s-
> /lat/ (back vowel) "vulva" < */rJOs/ < Uralic *low-k^ "hole"
> Loan-words behave the same.
>
> So a "back vowel" is mainly *u

Yes, quite often.

> Now I don't understand these examples :
> /but/ (back vowel) "hare" < */be?s/
> /dat/ (back vowel) "eye" < */des/
> Where is the back vowel of C-e-C ??

Sorry. Pumpokol back vowel, i.e. /u/ in /but/ and /a/ in /dat/.

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Why is it that Pumpokol _only_ has a back vowel,
when the other languages do not ?
This is _dirty_.

A.

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This is not an answer, Arnaud. Tell me, what is the actual reflex of
PY */s/ in Yeniseic? And if it is not /t/ next to back vowels, does
Pumpokol have any reflex of /s/ at all? Does PY have any */s/? You
know, the */s/ > */t/ development makes pretty good sense in the
context of Pumpokol and Yeniseic.

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So far, you have provided a couple of convincing examples of *su > tu or *us
> tu in Pumpokol.
There are some unclean examples.
And there is no examples with *o
and is *a to be considered a back vowel or not ?

A.

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> And it's interesting to note these hydronyms are concentrated near the
> ostyak dialects that are l-sigmatic in Ob mid-stream.
> A.
> ======

I see. Good observation.

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Yes,
The major problem is Yeniseic alternation is a geographically limited
application of what Uralic does.
l where ostyak has l and y where ostyak has y (no Yenisean language does
that)
t in Pumpokol where Ostyak and Samoyedic have t as well.
Conservation of *s elsewhere.
This "coincidence" is troublesome for a "spontaneous" Yeniseian development.

A.
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Well, have you read Vovin's article on the possible Yeniseic
membership in the Hunnic alliance? (I don't recall the precise
reference at the moment) If he is right, this may have interesting
implications...

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i haven't but I'm interested to do so !

A.

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> /cía-N/ < */si-/ "four" (front vowel, anlaut)
> /ciku/ < */s[U]Ga/ "year" (front vowel, anlaut)
> /cel/ < */so?ol/ "sleigh" (front vowel, anlaut)
> => this last one looks like Turcic.

Dear Arnaud, this is typical you. :-) You throw a claim here and don't
give it a proper back up. Which Turkic word do you have in mind? The
/KUzak/ etymon or the /K(i)aN/ one? (http://tinyurl.com/dlxs8u)

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I was talking about the last one,
and the Turcic origin is mentioned by Starostin himself.
A.
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>> I'm still waiting for a conditioning factor in Yeniseic.

Mostly the factor is the back/front opposition in (Pre-)Pumpokol, but
as I mentioned above, I'm going to get back to it some time soon.

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ok
A.
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Where's the problem, Arnaud? What I meant was that the few last bits
of an original population, when surrounded by a majority of, say,
Uralic speakers, would be willing to adopt the vital vocabulary in
order to trade and, after all, survive. So, the fact that Yeniseians
have borrowed from Uralic doesn't in itself constitute a sufficient
proof they are not native to Siberia. They may just come from a
different part of it or have gradually adopted to survive in the
overwhelmingly non-Yeniseic land (whether it once was Yeniseic or
not). Consider the situation of Basque in Iberia. Heavily romanized,
but still, much longer there than Romance...

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Hm
So this is the implicit premice I have mentioned before,

How comes that _none_ of the languages 3000 km around Yeniseic does not
share _any_ typological feature (Mongolian, Turcic, Korean, Uralic,
Tungusic, Japanese, etc) ?

There is no doubt that Basque is not like Indo-European, nor Berber and
that's a major reason to think it's autochthonous.
Yeniseian is not like Mongolian, Turcic, Korean, Uralic, Tungusic, Japanese,
etc and that's a major reason to think it's _not_ autochthonous.

Which part of Siberia could Yeniseic be native to ?
All, all languages there have the same syntaxic and morphological system.
From the Volga to the Pacific ocean.

You may disagree with Yeniseic being IE but one thing is clear : it does not
originate in Siberia.

Arnaud

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