From: Jörg Rhiemeier
Message: 70276
Date: 2012-10-25
On Thursday 25 October 2012 20:45:37 Tavi wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
>
> wrote:
> [...]
> > So if you don't *mean* "anything of that kind", why are you
> > *doing* that all the time? If you suffer from a compulsion
> > and do that against your will, you should consult a psychologist.
>
> You attribute me things I never said. What I think is the classical
> genealogic tree model, where all branches stem from a single parent node
> (PIE), is too simple and inadequate for the IE family.
You are *quibbling*.
The burden of proof that the tree model was inadequate rests on
you, and I doubt that you are well-equipped to carry it. And
what regards "attributing things you never said", it is true
that you put it differently, but you *do* claim that handbook
knowledge was wrong.
> > It is certainly not impossible that Basque, NWC, NEC and an
> > unknown number of extinct languages of Europe are all related
> > to each other. But the evidence I have seen so far did not
> > convince me, and people who are more qualified than me to make
> > statements about this matter tend to reject the proposal as well.
>
> Well, many substrate loanwords in European languages (my own speciality
> are the ones spoken in the Iberian Peninsula) can be explained thanks to
> the Vasco-Caucasian hypothesis. But I can't say the same of, say,
> "Indo-Uralic" or "Nostratic".
Nobody denies that Ibero-Romance languages contain loanwords
from Basque. What regards the pre-Roman languages of the
Iberian peninsula, they are so poorly known that one cannot
say much about them (at least, we can say that Celtiberian
is Celtic and Lusitanian is IE, but that's about all of it).
Indo-Uralic is indeed not proven yet, but I find it hard to
believe that the morphological resemblances between IE and
Uralic are due to either chance or contact. The matter needs
closer investigation. As for Nostratic, I am very sceptical.
> [...]
>
> > AFAIK, there is evidence for *both* *sah2l- and *sh2al- in PIE.
> > It seems to be a case of Schwebeablaut.
>
> IMHO this word is cognate to NEC *q?eh\l(\)- 'bitter', with initial s-
> coming a post-velar (probably uvular) fricative. I know you favor
> *sH2al- because it fits your hypothesis, but IMHO there's no need for
> it, as the isogloss *s- ~ *h- has a better explanation as different
> reflexes of a former post-velar fricative. Look for example at
> *sam-/*sm-ro- 'summer' ~ *H2e:m-r- '(heat of) the day'.
What tells us that this etymology is valid and not sheer
fantasy? What tells us that NEC did not borrow it from a
language related to PIE? These questions are not meant to say
that the etymology is wrong, but they have to be considered.
> > I haven't read Villar's latest book yet (none of the libraries
> > I have access to carries it, and I am quite short on money, so
> > I don't want to buy it), so I have nothing to say on it. What
> > regards your points, I have said what I have to say about them
> > often enough, and there is no use repeating that once again here.
> > There really is not much to say on them in absence of supporting
> > evidence.
>
> You can't keep saying "there's no evidence" while at the same time you
> refuse to look at it!
I *don't* refuse to look at it! But I simply lack the means
and dedication to buy every book that may perhaps be relevant
but may just as well be a waste of time and money.
So far, the evidence I have seen from you are just words that
look vaguely similar to each other in form and meaning, but
such word-pairs can be found in any pair of languages, be they
related or not.
> What Villar and his team show is there was a very ancient dialectal
> fragmentation in paleo-IE before "Kurganic" (i.e. the language(s) of the
> Kurgan people) swept in.
Certainly, there was a high diversity of languages in the area
where IE moved in later. You are battering an open door here.
The notion of a single pre-IE (or "paleo-IE", if you insist on
calling it that) language in all of western Europe is nonsense,
and I never made such a claim.
> [...]
>
> > Sure. There are quite a few words with */a/-vocalism, but
> > many of the restrictedly attested items in Pokorny have
> > "ordinary" */e~o/-vocalism, and some words with */a/-vocalism
> > have, according to Pokorny, cognates in eastern IE languages,
> > but many of those eastern cognates are IMHO poorly founded.
>
> Exactly. In Pokorny's, the word 'summer' has a Sanskrit cognate, but
> IMHO it's doubtful. This' is a paleo-IE word.
Indeed, *sam- looks like a substratum loanword, and it may be
that Pokorny's Sanskrit cognate is wrong.
> > Anyway, the dictionary is not worth much because the phonology
> > Pokorny uses is utterly out of date, and many items have
> > semantic problems. He evidently tended to hammer things into
> > place that actually did not belong there, and to contrive PIE
> > etymologies for items that cannot be ascribed to PIE by any
> > reasonable method. (Possibly in an reaction on the harsh
> > criticism he earned earlier with his hypotheses about a Semitic
> > substratum in Celtic.) It is widely recognized that Pokorny's
> > dictionary has many problems, and that there indeed is a
> > pressing need for a more modern PIE etymological dictionary.
>
> You've got Mallory & Adams (2006).
Thank you for your advice. I shall take a look at it. Does it
list cognates for each item?
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