Ed:

>You seem to be saying the PK homeland was in Anatolia.
>Yet Kartvelian specialists seem to be indicating an
>expansion *westwards* from central Georgia to account for
>PK's break up into dialects. Also, both Bomhard and
>Nicholls seem to indicate PK entering the Caucasus from
>the SE, Nicholls saying ultimately from central Asia via
>the south of the Caspian. Comments?

I can't see how it makes linguistic sense for Kartvelian
to have come from Central Asia. There's nothing connecting
it to that region of the world. There is a connection, however,
to the Middle-East and other neighbouring Nostratic languages.
As for Bomhard's ideas on Kartvelian, having lost my
"Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis" as of late (gee,
I hope I find it soon...) I'll have trouble commenting deeply,
but I don't recall Bomhard having very specific viewpoints on
the origin of Kartvelian. I don't think his views on this, both
archaeologically and linguistically, are solidly thought out anyway.

>I think your assumed HU/ND homeland is too small and too
>far west. What about the Qutians and the EC substrate in
>Sumerian? Burney associates the Proto-Hurrians with the
>Shulaveri culture in east central Georgia in the 4th
>millennium BCE.

East Anatolia is too far west? The presumed "EC" substrate
would be caused by a southward movement of the HU/ND language
area during the neolithic into Sumerian territory. Of course,
I've yet to be see this substrate demonstrated...

As for the Gutians, the first question is what is their
language like?? It could be something related to Elamite, it
could be Caucasic or it could be something else. I desperately
need information on that language in order to develop any
theory at all on them.

>Areal influence certainly, but maybe not necessarily
>needing to be as long-standing as you suggest

Maybe but I'm not sure how one could rework the timeline in
a pleasing way without "breaking the delicate web" as it were.


Concerning the prehistoric transcaucasian cultural movement:

>Well, yes. What is it all about indeed? Proto-HU/ND?

Yes, that's what I think, or rather, just ND.

>I don't think that the IEans can be credited with this
>until later, until we have the Ossetians arriving in the
>central Caucasus, and Armenian ethnogenesis in the south
>Caucasus in the first millennium BCE. Anatolia yes, but
>Caucasus no.

No, I didn't mean that IEs had entered the Caucasus as soon
as they arrived in the North Pontic. I figure the core of
the IE settlement would've rested at the NW end of the Black
Sea, spreading eastward into the Caucasus only in PostIE times.

>If we're talking earlier than that, we should
>probably be thinking about peoples of Semitic and/or
>Sumerian origin being responsible for breaking up the ETC.

Hmm, didn't Bomhard mention a "reversal" of the direction
of cultural influence? That would most definitely be the IEs.
So... the IEs would seem to be the cause of the reversal. Wait
a minute, what does ETC stand for?

>I am much more familiar with Nakh than with Daghestanian but
>a couple of other things strike me:
>
>a) the nouns and the verbs in Nakh feel as if they come
>from two different languages.

You can't go on feelings. What is the basis for this feeling?
Is it a reaction to some non-subjective fact that you can express?

>b) There's a lot of lexical economy in Nakh, including
>relating to kinship terms, if I remember rightly.

Lexical economy? How do you mean?

>c) The noun classes which Nakh and Daghestanian have in
>common, and which are sometimes held up as proof of a
>genetic relationship, could in actual fact be of relatively
>recent borrowed origin.

How can an entire noun-class system be borrowed? There certainly
nothing Semitic about ND noun classes.

It seems like you're using anything to deny the relationship
even though evidence exists to the contrary. I think that a good
phonological system can be worked out for ND and just looking at
Starostin's icky reconstructions gives me a sense that there
is much room for improvement. In general, it looks as though
ND would have had a large system of phonemes. I'd estimate at
least five vowels are in order. Consonants, particularly stops
would also be numerous with labial, palatal and ejective varieties.
Probably a large variety of sibiliants, shibilants and tsibilants.
Oh, yeah and at least three laterals.

>If you're now saying 8000 BCE, that's 7000 years, which is still
>too much.

Oh yes, 9000 BCE. Starting to get confused now <:( Well... another
idea would be to move the date of HU-ND down to maybe 4000 BCE,
while keeping Caucasic to 9000 BCE. Hmmm. Not sure though.


- love gLeN




_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com