From: Tavi
Message: 70278
Date: 2012-10-26
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>I'd say "partially right". This is the difference between seeing a bottle half-full or half-emtpy.
> 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.
>
> Nobody denies that Ibero-Romance languages contain loanwords from Basque.
Not exactly. Direct loanwords from Basque are few and rather modern. I'm talking about pre-Latin substrate lexicon, part of which is shared by Basque, where it suffered phonetic changes which made it almost irrecognizable. This is why Vascologists like Trask consider Basque to be an isolate.
This "we know very little/cannot say much about them" of yours sounds like a mantra.> 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).
>
> > > 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?
I'd call this "IE-centrism". As a matter of fact, Kurganic (i.e. "PIE") has quite a few Vasco-Caucasian loanwords, some of which were studied by Starostin in an old Russian article: http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/iecauc.pdf
Well, I think it's *very* relevant to the matter.> > 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.
>
I strongly disagree.> 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.
>
In my own view, the IE lexicon is full of paleo-IE loanwords.> > 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.
>
Yes, but not all of them. It's not as exhaustive as Pokorny's.> 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?
>