On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:03:19 +0000, ardfilidh <ardfilidh@...> wrote:

>yeah i was wrong about the altai. i didn't have the book with me .
>
>so saka khotanese is clearly indoeuropean then? and what branch?

Indo-Iranian/Iranian/East-Iranian

>and is it related closely to the sakas in india(assuming they left any
>writing)?

I don't think they did.

>and is it close to osettic. this would seem to be the link necessary.
>for that matter how close are these languages to persian and or
>sanskrit?

For Iranian, we can set up a family tree looking roughly like this:

Proto-Iranian
[W] [E]
_________/___ /\
| | / |\__Avestan
Old Persian (Median) / |____________________________________
| | / | | | | |
Middle Persian Parthian | Khorezmian Sogdian (Bactrian) Saka (Scyth-Sarm)
/ \ / | | | | |
Farsi, Central, Baluchi, Parachi Yaghnobi Pashto, Ossetian
Tajiki Caspian Kurdish Ormuri Pamiri,
... ... ... ...
[SW] [NW] [SE] [NE]

(Less well attested languages in brackets).


The old stages of Iranian (Avestan, Old Persian) are still quite close to
the old stages of Sanskrit (Vedic).

>my second interest is the nilo saharans relationship to
>elamodravidian. it was pointed out that nilo saharan is a grab bag of
>languages that don't fit anywhere else. i was content with this
>refutaton untill i realized that this doesn't rule out one or some of
>the nile saharan grab bag being related to elamodravidian. whaddya
>think?

I know virtually nothing about Nilo-Saharan.

Perhaps you'd better ask on nostratic-L@yahoogroups.com. This group is
dead [I'm still subscribed out of laziness].


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...