Makes sense to me. I did some of my own
comparisons of AA words, and it seems that Semitic has the larger and more
conservative phonology. We just know so much more about Semitic, Egyptian
and Berber than we do about Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic, so I was worried we'd
have a bias here.
My thoughts: Semitic, being closest to the Nostratic
homeland, were the most conservative. Egyptian and Berber follow.
Cushitic and Omotic seem to have simplified phonologies, possibly from
Niger-Congo influence. (I think there was assimilation of some Niger-Congo
ethnicities into conquering AA cultures many millennia ago.) Nilo-Saharan
languages, however, have larger consonant inventories, and Hausa and Chadic
in general probably got its implosive voiced stops from NS.
After Proto-Semitic and Proto-Berber, I've seen a good
number of reconstructed Proto-Chadic roots; it's Cushitic that's pretty tricky
since it's split up into a number of groups (East, South etc.).
The vowel theory according to Bomhard, I think, was
this: the three Nostratic vowel phonemes were merged into a single phoneme,
a~@. Remnants of the vowel o~u are evident in labialized velar and uvular
stops (i.e. ko>kwa). I'm not aware of palatization resulting from lost
e~i showing up in AA; that's pretty much a feature in IE (velars and
"laryngeals" only) and Uralic.
~DaW~
[Correction: in a previous post, I
stated a theory of an Egyptian origin of Judaism and its child religions.
But I forgot about Abraham's home country being Ur, Lower
Mesopotamia...]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 12:30
PM
Subject: Re: [nostratic] A question on
Proto-Afro-Asiatic
Dear Danny and
Nostraticists:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny Wier"
<dawier@...>
To: <nostratic@yahoogroups.com>
Sent:
Sunday, June 10, 2001 6:47 PM
Subject: [nostratic] A question on
Proto-Afro-Asiatic
> Well I've been doing more research on PAA,
and I've noticed the reconstructions
> I've seen seem to be closer to
Semitic, and Proto-Semitic is most like Arabic.
> Is this really because
Semitic and Arabic are such conservative languages, or is
> there a bias
involved here?
[PCR]
Being human is, unfortunately, being biased to
some extent. "Scientists" probably only ever succeed in minimizing the effects
of their biases.
Wouldbe scientists who are aware of this sad situation
therefore should try as hard as possible not to be unrealistically dogmatic
about any conclusion.