Re: Austric Gleanings

Dear Richard,
What a lengthy and detailed post. Fascinating though. I did open
all links and found them very informative.

I noticed that ASLIP was a non-profit. Are most of the "societies"
incorporated? Hadn't really given that much thought. Are all
professional organizations incorporated (please pardon this dumb
question)?

Starostin's "Tower of Babel" likely does better for someone facile in
the Russian language -- as yet there is very little offered for the
English speaking audience.

There certainly were "big" names at the 4th Harvard Roundtable.
Nothing like that takes place here in Palo Alto (or else I haven't
heard about it yet). I sometimes think Stanford is the road show
before the main performance hits theatres in NYC.

Mother Tongue newsletter is filled with goodies. I have bookmarked
the site.

I joined the Astronesian group. When you and Torsten Pedersen
examine Paul Manansala's linguistic links will you be examining word
(root) similarities or endings or syntax or what?

Is a C2VC4VC3 or C2VC3VC5 word some type of code? Where could I find
the key?

So far there haven't been any "intruders" but I'm keeping my eyes
peeled.

Certainly hope Piotr decides to join this group.

Gerry




--- In Nostratica@..., "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> This is a reply to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nostratic/message/819 , viz:
>
> > Have you gleaned any further information on the web concerning
> Austric?
>
> which is itself a reply to the original of
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nostratica/message/2 .
>
> Dear Gerry,
> There isn't a great deal available on the web. However,

I

> have yet to check out Starostin's 'Tower of Babel' at
> http://starling.rinet.ru/babel.htm . It may hold more than first
> meets the eye, which is already a great deal.
>
> The best sources of information I've found are at or linked to from
> the Mother Tongue web site, at
> http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/aslip.html . In

particular,

> there is a comparative Austro-Asiatic Austronesian glossary at
> http://home.att.net/~lvhayes/Langling/langpg3.htm . On the

relations

> of Tai-Kadai to the group, there is an interesting news article at
> http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mt25g.html . There are
> tales of a very informative reconstruction of Proto-Tai-Kadai by

Weera

> Ostapirat, but it seems to buried in Weera's thesis. He believes
> Tai-Kadai's part of Austric. Maybe there's a book on the way, but
> we've not heard of it. See the thread starting at
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/austric/message/204 for what I can

glean

> on this topic.
>
> I think I can see why Austro-Tai has been built on a comparison of

Tai

> and Austronesian, rather than Tai and Austro-Asiatic. Austric

words

> in Proto-Austronesian (PAN) typically have a structure C1VC2VC3

where

> C1V is a fossilised prefix in many ways comparable to a Semitic or
> Indo-European root extension. In Austro-Asiatic, there are many
> alternative prefixes for a given C2VC3 root, and clearly there may
> well have been others that are not preserved. It is common for the
> few prefixes observed in PAN not to be attested with the same root

in

> Austro-Asiatic. In Proto-Tai, at least in Benedict's re-

construction

> of Austro-Tai, the form collapses to C12'VC3', where C12' is

largely

> dependent on C1 and may be of the form CR or C (R = l, r, w,

possibly

> y), and C3' is one of about 8 permitted finals. Given C12'VC3',

there

> are then many possible choices for C2VC3, so one can easily propose
> false cognates. The PAN options for C1VC2VC3 are far fewer, so one
> can have greater confidence in the reconstruction if one finds a
> match.
>
> It's not quite as simple as this. An Austric root C2VC3 can

produce a

> C2VC4VC3 or C2VC3VC5 word, but this doesn't seem as common, and I
> think C4 and C5 are more tightly constrained.
>
> If I've got this wrong, please post the criticism on the Austric
> group. Austric is largely off-topic here.
>
> Torsten Pedersen and I are planning to examine Paul Manansala's
> Austric-PIE links, which Torsten thinks extend to Afro-Asiatic, on

the

> Austronesian list (kick-off message
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/austronesian/message/373 ).

Everyone's

> thinking in terms of loans (or coincidence). You'd have to join

this

> group to watch the fun, which hasn't started yet. The group has a
> couple of big names in it, and Piotr's acting as the local expert

on

> Sanskrit and net-usage.
>
> Richard.