Re: Pre-Greek loanwords

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" <oalexandre@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > I agree with the connection between *-thur- of the Pre-Greek words and
> > the zero-grade of PIE *(kWe)-twer-, also between *thri- of <thriambos>
> > and the zero-grade of PIE *trei-.
> >
> > > I'd tentatively link this *kWe- to Vasco-Caucasian *q'Hw�
> > >
> <http://newstar.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?single=1&basename=/data/ca\
> \
> > > uc/caucet&text_number=2315&root=config> '2'. IMHO PIE '2' would be
> a
> > > borrowing of the prefixed NWC form.
> >
> > I have difficulty correlating 'and, moreover, indeed', etc. with the
> numeral 'two'. PIE *kWe-twer- and *pen-kWe probably acquired *kWe from
> counting rituals, and the discrepancy between *seks and *sweks might be
> due to dissimilation, *sweks-kWe > *seks-kWe.
> >
> I strongly disagree with your interpretation, specially because the
> numerals '5' and '6' are foreign loanwords, respectively Vasco-Caucasian
> and Semitic.

Loanwords can go either way. Semitic has borrowed such IE terms as *burg- 'tower', *tawr- 'bull', and *qarn- 'horn'. It may well have borrowed '6' and '7' from IE for use in counting cattle.

> > > > As you may recall, in 2008 I argued that this is a "mid-range"
> > > connection and Pre-Greek belongs to a "Para-IE" group.
> > > >
> > > Yes, your "West Pontic", whose stop system is largely similar to
> > > Georgiev's Thraco-Pelasgian.
> >
> > Poor naming, since others have used "Pontic" differently. A better
> choice would be "Balkano-Danubian". The stop system in my model had
> five points of articulation, preceding the centum-satem business.
> >
> Interesting. I'd like to read more about it.

Everything I wrote in 2008 needs to be reworked; perhaps I can reissue it by 2015.

> > Georgiev's Th-P was satem, with a much shallower time-depth.
> >
> Not really, because Georgiev's chronology is actually deeper than the
> std one. See for example the lower map on p. 357 of the 3rd edition of
> his book. He also states (p. 361): "the Pelasgians probably developed
> the pre-Sesklo (and Sesklo), Larissa I and Servia cultures, while the
> Thracians developed the Karanovo I-III (6th-4th millenium BC)."

How Goropian of that Bulgarian to place satem languages so far back. The best presentation of satemization I know of is Pisani's, and he puts it in the middle of the 2nd mill. BCE, spreading outward from Iranian, where it went to completion.

> > Most languages which have been studied in depth have stratification,
> but "hybridization" is a poor term for this process.
> >
> The latter term is mainly used by proponents of the "Paleolithic
> Continuity Theory". Anyway, mainstream IE-ists are oblivious to
> stratification.

Mainstream IEists give us most of the material we work with. I am not about to take potshots at them.

> > > Pre-Greek would reflect one or more languages directly descending
> from
> > > the ones spoken in Neolithic Europe which survived to kurganization.
> One
> > > of these survivors was Etruscan itself.
> >
> > Regardless, attempts to find a close relationship between Pre-Greek
> and Etruscan have failed.
> >
> But this doesn't mean somebody could eventually succeed, as there's
> already a number of reasonable Etruscan-Pre-Greek correspondences.

And somebody could eventually leave me a million dollars, as I already have a few in my pocket.

> > > But as suggested by Villar's and my own researches, both "Kurgan"
> and
> > > "pre-Kurgan" IE branches would be part of a larger Eurasiatic phylum
> > > which included Altaic (and possibly other families such as
> > > Eskimo-Aleutian), and whose common ancestor was spoken in the Upper
> > > Palaeolithic.
> >
> > Do you have an opinion on Seefluth's Uralo-Eskimo?
> >
> No, but I don't think Uralic is a close relative of IE.

Kortlandt seems to think so. I do not know enough about Uralic to have a valid opinion.

> IMHO the problem of long-range theories such as "Nostratic" is their
> inability to differentiate between inherited lexicon and loanwords,
> which lead them to posit inexistent genetic relationships. For example,
> it looks like Afrasian (mostly Semitic) and Kartvelian received a large
> number of loanwords from the European Neolithic languages (there're also
> borrowings in the opposite direction, although their number is less
> significant), which at least in Central Europe and the Danubian area
> were descendants of the ones spoken by the indigenous hunter-gatherers
> (and thus belonged to the paleo-IE continuum).
>
> However, in the Mediterranean area predominated the ones brought by the
> Neolithic colonizators from the Near East. They were a most important
> source of loanwords into Afrasian and Kartvelian, e.g. a word 'pig'
> related to a Vasco-Caucasian root relative to equids ('horse' in North
> Caucasian and 'donkey' in Sumerian), both steming from an older root
> applied to hoofed animals.

Part of the problem is this inability to distinguish inherited from borrowed lexicon, and part is the strong, almost unconscious tendency to force an agreement with preconceived ideas.

> > > BTW, I think the practice of reconstructing PIE "laryngeals" from
> every
> > > Greek prothetic vowel is rather absurd.
> >
> > It makes more sense than assuming arbitrary prothesis.
> >
> I don't think they're arbitrary at all. At least in the case of *e-, I
> think it's a genuine prothetic vowel.

Do you have clear examples for which prothesis works better than a laryngeal?

DGK