--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
<bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:
>
> *Bhr.: in Your opinion, the distance between 'person or animal
> charatcterized by a short and thick form' and 'plumcake' isn't larger
> than the one between 'person or animal charatcterized by a short and
> thick form' and 'little lamb', is it?
>
Of course, I was exaggerating a little in order to stress my point, that
is, that the semantic connection you proposed wasn't a straightforward
one.
I'm really tired of endless discussions about particular etymologies, so
I'd like to focus on the broader picture. Ortodox IE-ists tend to
consider everything to be derived from PIE, except perhaps a small
residue of substrate loanwords and Wanderwörter. But in the case of
Greek, Beekes takes a "maximalist" approach and so considers everything
which doesn't fit in the native Greek sound correspondences as coming
from a Pre-Greek substrate. What's is odd is he claims to follow
Furnée's works in considering this substrate to be a single language
(something which defies common sense), but at the same time he
completely disengages from its external relationship (Furnee considered
"Pelasgian" to be related to Kartvelian, and more recently, Schrijver
proposed a relationship with Hattic). By contrast, Georgiev (a
continuist "avant la lettre") considered his "Thraco-Pelasgian" to be an
IE branch much like Douglas' "West Pontic", denying the existence of any
pre-IE substrate in SW Europe (although certainly not in other areas).
Although I broadly agree with Arnaud and Villar in which PIE has an
older chronology than in the ortodox theory, I disagree on details. In
my opinion, IE has its origin in the languages spoken by
hunters-gatherers in Mesolithic Europe, who advanced northwards
following the retreat of the ice cap, leaving their mark in the Old
European Hydronymy (OEH), which reflect different dialects. But
contrarily to Villar, I think the Neolithic Anatolian farmers who
colonized most of SW spoke unrelated (or at least not closely related)
languages. However, there's evidence Central Europe Neolithic (LBK
culture) was a product of autochthonous hunter-gatherers who adopted
Neolithic technology. The boundary between both groups is marked by the
distribution of the lactose-tolerant gene:
http://cdn2.spiegel.de/images/image-141465-galleryV9-ikia.jpg
In his last book, Villar made a statistical study over a sample of IE
lexicon related to agriculture, according to which Central Europe
Neolithic had a direct impact only in Italic, Germanic and Baltic, less
in Slavic and marginally also in Celtic and Greek. Other isoglosses
(studied by Georgiev and Gamkrelidze-Ivanov) group together Germanic,
Baltic and Slavic.
Also contrarily to Mallory-Gimbutas theory, Kurgan people can only be
associated with Indo-Iranian speakers, although they certainly
influenced other groups. So even when "Kurganic IE" has interesting
lexical and morphological innovations, is far from being the PIE sought
by IE-ists since the 19th crentury.
Also the linguistic impact of the Kurgan invasions should be minimized
with regard to the ortodox theory. Of course, there're many things to be
added to this theory, but as a broad picture I think it's essentialy
correct.