From: Jörg Rhiemeier
Message: 70298
Date: 2012-10-26
On Thursday 25 October 2012 22:35:44 Tavi wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I'd say "partially right". This is the difference between seeing a
> bottle half-full or half-emtpy.
OK. The standard model does not account for *everything* in the
attested IE languages, as those languages *do* have loanwords
from other, mostly unknown languages, and may have been
influenced by them in their grammatical structures. This is
certainly true. And what regards the unknown languages, there
remains much to be found out about them.
But the *larger* part of the IE languages' lexicons and grammars
are inherited from a single (though not perfectly homogenic)
source, namely PIE. What you prefer to call "Kurganic".
> > 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.
What Trask and others mean when say that Basque was a isolate
is that it is not known to which languages Basque is related.
It is very likely that relatives of Basque have existed in the
past, and that there are living languages that are related to
Basque, but at a time depth so great that the resemblance has
withered away.
Indeed, Vasco-Caucasian is not really that nonsensical - those
languages may all descend straight from the language of the
Cro-Magnon people (the first Homo sapiens in Europe). But that
means a time depth of about 40,000 years, and it is uncertain
whether anything can be recovered over such a range of time
with the currently available methods.
> > 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).
>
> This "we know very little/cannot say much about them" of yours sounds
> like a mantra.
Then I apologize. We indeed do not know much about them *now*,
but that may change in the future. There are linguists - people
better equipped to do the job than either you or me - working on
them. That does not mean that everything you say about them was
wrong, though.
If you think that I sit back and tell myself "You will never know
anything about those languages", you are *wrong*. I am interested
in finding out more about them. But I have only limited time and
energy to invest in these matters.
> > > [Vasco-Caucasian etymology of IE *sah2l-/*sh2al-]
> >
> > 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
> <http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/iecauc.pdf>
This would be interesting to read, but unfortunately, I cannot
understand Russian. Do you? I am pretty certain that some
people on this list can read Russian. (Though given the fact
that it consists mostly of a list of words, much can certainly
be found out with a dictionary alone. At least, I can read
Cyrillic script.)
> > > [Villar's latest book]
> >
> > 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.
>
> Well, I think it's *very* relevant to the matter.
I'll see. I am certainly interested in reading it. But don't
hold the breath for that.
> > 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.
>
> I strongly disagree.
There are numerous examples of this fallacy in works of various
crackpots. You should read this:
http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm
And this:
http://www.zompist.com/proto.html
Mark Rosenfelder, the author of these two essays, is a conlanger
and amateur linguist, but his knowledge is good.
> > > 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.
>
> In my own view, the IE lexicon is full of paleo-IE loanwords.
Certainly, PIE borrowed from other languages, and its daughter
languages also did so too, in substantial amounts, and sometimes
from sources related to those found in other IE languages.
> > [problems with Pokorny's 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?
>
> Yes, but not all of them. It's not as exhaustive as Pokorny's.
I'll take a look at it. SOON. An interlibrary loan request is
under way.
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