From: Torsten
Message: 69416
Date: 2012-04-23
>You weren't making a point, you were making a claim, which I understood several postings ago, namely that the denasalisations in the loans from Altaic and Kartvelian was done in a particular IE dialect, the existence of which I haven't seen you argue anywhere. Why posit this IE dialect (and its family); I assume you must have an independent reason for that since performing the duty of denasalisation could be done just as well with a non-IE dialect?
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > > This is precisely my point: your "PIE" is precisely the paleo-IE
> > > dialect where this word became denasalized. As I said many
> > > times, IMHO the so-called "PIE roots" don't belong to a single
> > > language but come from several paleo-dialects.
> >
> > As long as you haven't defined which IE languages this 'paleo-IE
> > dialect' fed words to, it is unnecessary by Occam.
> >
> > > As I said before, this paleo-IE dialect is actually part of what
> > > IE-ists reconstruct as PIE, so their output is more or less
> > > scattered among all the historical IE languages, although more
> > > so in the "Pontic" or "Kurgan" group, i.e. Indo-Iranian, Greek,
> > > Armenian, Albanian and partially Celtic.
> >
> > You didn't answer my question. Why posit an IE language the sole
> > role of which is the transmission of loanwords from certain non-IE
> > languages? I can agree that it is Occam-convenient to concentrate
> > all the denasalisations in the loaning process into a single
> > language, but why would that necessarily be IE?
> >
> I think you didn't understand my point.
> What I said is that what IE-ists call "PIE" doesn't represent aYes, I heard you the first time.
> single but several languages (i.e. paleo-IE dialects) which through
> several replacement and contact processes superimposed to form the
> IE family. And in one of these paleo-IE dialects denasalization
> happened.
> > > The fact the nasal survived to denasalization makes me think theWhatever. Cluster reduction from dn- would unite the "fog" word(s) with the dnóphos, gnóphos, knéphas "darkness" words. Your proposal wouldn't. Occam likes.
> > > word had originally a laryngeal at word-initial: *Hn- (clusters
> > > *Hn-/*Hr- are rather common in Proto-NEC, as for example in the
> > > 'night' word), then lost in "PIE".
> >
> > > But how would *Hn-/*Hr- explain the d- of debesìs?
> >
> > > Adrados thinks this happened by analogy with dangùs 'sky'.
> >
> > So does Pokorny. I'm not convinced.
> >
> But I don't think your alternative is much better.
> > > Remember that besides *nebh- we've also got *ºnbh- (e.g. GreekNo, you mean clairvoyance. I can't know what you're thinking. And if you want to be snotty you should check your presentations for factual errors first; it always turns out convenient later.
> > > aphrós 'foam' < *ºnbh-r-o-).
> >
> > > But we don't need a laryngeal for getting a- from zero-grade
> > > *n.-.
> >
> > > Oh, I think I should have warned you not to confuse a *real*
> > > laryngeal consonant with the so-called PIE "laryngeals".
> >
> > What you mean here is that your *real* laryngeals are different
> > from the traditional IE laryngeals.
> >
> Yes, because the so-called PIE "laryngeals" (notice the use of
> quotation marks) aren't actually laryngeals.
>
> > Should you have told us that? Yes, I think you should have.
> >
> Well, perhaps I overestimated your own intelligence. :-)