> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: nostratic@...
> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 6:45 PM
> Subject: [nostratic] Re: ouralique et IE
>
>
> Yes, them dry bones... There's the Sahara to contend with.
> As for the "3" *t-r- in Niger-Congo, if you are thinking of that...
> Piotr tried to reduce it to a Proto-Bantu thing, but obviously it's
> bigger than that. But it is not omnipresent in Niger-Congo, it
occurs
> in some languages and not in others; and isn't that the situation
> you'd see if that term were borrowed?

--- In nostratic@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Actually, it was *t-t-, not *t-r- in the protolanguage, as I have
explained before. The -r- results from t-voicing in _some_ daughter
languages.
>

This is what you wrote (explained? claimed? suggested?):

Actually, *táto` is Guthrie's Proto-Bantu reconstruction for "three".
If anyone's interested, the reconstructed Proto-Bantu numbers from 1
to 5 are as follows (capital E and O are open vowels, acute = high
tone, grave after vowel = low tone):

*mÓ
*ba`dé
*táto`
*nE`E` ~ *na`
*táánO`


This is what you find in

http://www.zompist.com/benu.htm
:


Proto-Bantu-X+ *-mó *-bàdé *-tátò *-nà *-táánò

That is not the "proto-language". It is Proto-Bantu. Bantu is part
of the Niger-Congo languages.

You did say in an earlier posting that the -r- might be derived from
a -t-. I don't think that qualifies as an "explanation"

Torsten