Bembi, Baiberi, and Baibai (was: Re: Barba and Bestia)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "caotope" <johnvertical@...> wrote:

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> > I gave ev., most from material Wietze Baron put on the internet that was unpublished elsewhere, to support this and you ignore everything but the complexity of the rec. forms and use this alone as enought to condemn it.
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> > It is not a small set, I've done it for over 100 words.
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> Having told this up front (and preferrably, with said set available for inspection) would probably have help'd your reception.

I answered some questions with what I believed. I'm not able or required to provide all the information that led me to that conclusion, especially when it would take so much time and effort to give it. Even so, I have provided quite a bit and would be prepared to give more if I thought it would help (see below).

>Regularity is everything: just because Guriaso has /kOru/ and Baibai /kubwO/ "leg"

Bb kubhO "leg" (with bh for bilabial fric. since B for bilabial r, which is also used in some previously published material for these languages) and Bb kubhO with Kw kuri (dis. < *kuBu < *kuBOw) makes chance unlikely, as all 3 groups have similar words.

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does not yet mean there is any connection between /r/ in the former and /bw/ in the latter;

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The existence of B in Fas, closely related to Baibai, makes a B > bh-r change likely.

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and just because Mafuara has /wOrOmuO/, still with the same meaning, does not mean there is any connection between the initial /w/ and the initial /k/ in the former two.

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I'm not sure you realize how closely some of these languages are related, or how similar many cognates look. Since I was discussing the alt. in F / Bb (not always B / mb), I used the relevant ex., and not all the ex. were the easiest to reconstruct, or the best to show the relationship among them. But:


F muEna; Gu mutEnu; Kw futEne; Bi finobu 'mouth';

Bb wayE; Kw gwaiyE 'cassowary';

Kw mamële; Bb mamëne; Gu momëni; F sëmoney 'crocodile';

Bb afwë; Kw asëne; Gu agësi0 'crab';

F monbu; Bb muni; Maf munimO; Gu manëm 'louse';

Kw masambi; Bb mësEmbi; Wat mësEmpi; F nëBësi0 'sweet potato';

F kafëki; Gu këpau 'tobacco';

Bi ñauwe; Bb nëgwa; F nuu 'betelnut leaf';

Bb fukwarE; Kw afunE 'mountain';

Bb fifiyas; Kw fibhëri 'wind';

F mEmEnow; Kw bEbriyEbhu 'old';


The consonants are what should be immediately obvious from these examples, but the vowels are even more stable, often exactly the same for three or more (especially if you know that u/o and i/e are in free variation in Fas, and probably in others). Almost immediately obvious are simple changes, such as a>O before u (as kau, koO).

When at least a third of the vocabulary among these three supposedly "not certainly related" groups is obviously shared, I think I can be fairly safe in saying kw > w / k in Mafuara and Guriaso when no one doubts there relation, or even call one a dialect of the other.

> And then you go and present us "*Oq'wOBBumWO" with, in addition to boldly connecting the three words, has no apparent reason for an initial vowel, for an uvular insted of a velar, for glottalization, or for a geminate *B. You're also not explaining if -mWO is a suffix only present in Mafuara, or if you need it for the other forms too.
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The existence of complex labial clusters (mw0; bhw; fw; fr; etc.) and many different alternations between certainly related words (Bb muni; Maf munimO; or Gu fatëpu; Maf fatëmu; or Gu mutEnu; Kw futEne) seems to require many types of P, P clusters, and nasal dissimilation. That is, in ALL THREE groups, if they were really unrelated, which seems unlikely. The simplest explanation is that they are all related, and desc. from one that had the many types of P, P clusters (partially resulting from the changes mpr > mpB, fr > fB, etc.), and so on.

Denasalization in some sounds and clusters is needed, as in Gu fatëpu; Maf fatëmu 'wing'. Since I wrote *kOBuw, I think it was reasonably clear that mW > w and mW > m were the changes in each group, since I said nothing of suffixes. From all the feedback I've received, positing changes such as those, and rec. sounds like mW and mY, seemed to be the reason some called mine too complex, etc.

It should be obvious after a short examination of the data that when two V's are together, it comes from a loss of C or metathesis. Since I said a>O before u, etc., and a>O before w, CWa > CWO in some, the order of V in the above is needed. I'm curious how any other rec. could account for 3 O's and 1 u in wOrOmuO, or how O-u and u-O in the others could be coincidental, not genetic, especially considering the large similarity between the C's, when many others also look similar on first glance.

I had *BB because *B came from *R next to P/KW, had a different outcome depending on what cluster it was in. *RXW > *RWRW > *BB.

> Also setting off crackpot alarm lights: positing language NAMES as cognate. Take for example "English", "Deutsch", "Svenska", which do not go back to **zGenLeska (via **hjengLeS **dgentS **zwenLsk ?) or what-the-heck-ever. And this should be obvious even before we can etymologize the names.
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Many of these languages are named after the villages in which they are spoken, although often it's the same as that of the people who live in them and probably it went people > village for many. I didn't simply assume they were all related and force a rec. to fit my idea; I know Fas came from the word for *'village', and since its close relative, Bembi, is related to Baibai and Baiberi, they should have been the *bEmBy or *bEBy in the past. All these from *bayamBya.

Considering the names of many other people in New Guinea, including the Kombai and Korowai (which show mb / rw variation where F / Bb show mb / B), there is far too much similarity to attribute to chance. Many came from *at't'RWuq'w'aRYyA > *at'q'Buw'aRyA > *aqwumaRtya / aqwumtaRya / aqwumBatya / atqwumBaya / etc.

> BTW, I admit having lost sight of what relevance this entire discussion has in the first place? I was trying to ask what justifies the forms you're positing as the originals for _barba_, _bestia_

I hope you mean L bestia, be:lua; I didn't say L barba was borrowed, and it was not.

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and suddendly the discussion is about obscure Papuan languages.

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Brought up as another instance of B, which also opt. > w, and in some > r. I continued discussing them after doubt was raised about the source of B (not from mb, in my mind).

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Surely you're not trying to say that the Latin words are loans from there!

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No, but though it's not especially relevant here, it happens that they are closely related, since all known languages are.