Richard Wordingham wrote:

--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote:
>
>
> Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> > --- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com,
> > "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote:
> > > The final result as far as I can
> > see is:
> > >
> > > If the words are IE, then there
> > is a strong case for making Turkic
> > IE.
> > > If on the other hand people
> > insist Turkic is not IE, then the
> > words are
> > > not IE.
> > There is another explanation,
> > namely that they have a
> > *discernible* common ancestor, a
> > descendant of Proto-Nostratic.
>
>
> Yes, but even if they have a common ancestor
> an ancestor has descendents, and descendants
> have their own words.

I'm afraid I don't understand what point you are making.  Are you
saying anything that wouldn't apply to a comparison of English and
German?

In general I do not believe in the split into language families first and then
further splits into subfamilies etc. Specifically, I said that if there is Nostratic
and if Nostratic is the common ancestor of IE, AA, Turkic etc. then if the
family splits occurred, we still have to start from the common ancestor and
split into families. The principle is that Turkic evidence has to be taken
into consideration.

Now, the way things were produced although "body parts" were used
in the Swadesh list etc, only those body parts that made the IE family
look good were used. For example, Turkic has auz (mouth), Hittite ais,
Latin o:s. Turkish has omuz (shoulder), etc. The point is we still have
to take into account Turkic. Bomhard's excellent book is very light
in Turkic mainly because Turkologists use a Zeroth Postulate more than
anything else: Mongoloid, Mongoloid, Mongoloid. The data has been
twisted out of shape, and if Turkic is taken into account there could
be serious changes. Turkic has words that are so archaic, it can be
used to reconstruct Akkadian. I see now that it had to be this way.
They got lost in the steppes for a long time, then mixed with some Mongoloids
and historians, especially led by the xUSSR, have been busy keeping the
Eurasian steppes clean and squeaky for Aryans, misled by some historians
who deliberately falsified the records.

Here is a simple example. Suppose we use *patar for father. Even nonAltaist
Turkologists agree that the prototurkic initial-p changed to a bilabial fricative,
like in Japanese, and then to h-, and then got lost in most dialects except
Khaladj. Turkic also seems to have lost most final liquids. So we can easily
get ata from *patar. That means there is no reason to avoid the ata, ama, mama
words and that immediately throws a monkey wrench into the works. Even today
there is no agreement, after 200+ years, and this will make it even worse. It is
easy to see that athir went through similar changes as ata.

Let me continue with this example. In this case *matar does not work, because
Turkic (and Hittite) has ana, amma, etc. So then we might try *apatar, and
*amatar. Then it looks like apatar is a duplicated word e.g. apa-ata. But both of
these words mean father in many languages. Therefore it looks like this duplicated
word is created from an earlier split. But then we also get, as a bonus,
ama, Latin amore, Turkic amrak (loving), imren (to covet), em (to suck),
emchek (breast), am (vagina), yum (to close, eg. mouth?). The neat split
into families does not look so neat anymore.

> > > Except for minor change e.g. put
> > Slavic homeland slightly more to
> > the
> > > east, and make Tokharian a recent
> > accident of some sorts, the diamond
> > also
> > > splits the satem and centum
> > branches.
> > No, Baltic, Albanian, Dacian and
> > Thracian are satem languages to its
> > West.
>
>
> That would be likely late move like Russian but it could
> be wrong.

It's more likely that Turkic came (back?) South.  Kazakhstan is seen
as having been Indo-Iranian in speech at one time.

While the satem languages may be a genetic unit, there is no evidence
that the centum languages are.

The evidence for Scythians being Iranian is based on one word circa 1800s. The authors
kept giving references to each other with nothing else to back them up.  There is plenty of
evidence that they were not. Furthermore, there is no evidence Huns were Mongoloid or
that they came from the east. These are all part of fantasy. Huns flattened their noses and
Mongoloids are not the likely ones to be flattening their noses. Their horses were clearly
adapted to the very cold. The books by Thompson and Maenchen-Helfen, despite this
claim they were Mongoloid. Despite the fact that Priscus who was at their camp confused
a Greek with a Hun, they still claim they were Mongoloid. Furthermore, these authors
claim that skull-binding is Hunnic and connect them with others more to the east who also
have pointed-skulls because of the skull-binding (nose-flattening is more accurate).
Apparently the nose flattening also forced the back of the skull to be peaked about 3-5
inches higher than the middle. You can see this in the book(s). But then it is silly
not to notice that the Tigrahauda (pointed-hats) were not Iranians. After all, pointed
skulls would need pointed hats. There is a great deal of inconsistency and confusion
in the matter. For example the name of Danaster is given also as Tyras. Now, the Kuban
is given as Hypanis, so Tyras is Turas, and likely Danaster is Danus-tur. Danaper is
likely Danu-apar, nothing to do with Iranians. Since the name of Huns is given as
Hounni, and Ounni (not Hynni) it is likely Kowunni, or Kuwunni, which ties them
directly with Kubanni/Kumanni. Kuw (*kub) means "light, light-colored,white-colored"
and is also the name of  "swan". Kipchak is thought to descend from *kub-sak (light
saka). Anyway, there is much more. The often-repeated comment about steppes
being Iranian is based on basically nothing, but errors confounded by deliberate
distortion.


There is plenty of evidence that Turkic even retains words form pre-Semitic,e.g.
more archaic words than those that exist in Akkadian. It has too many words
from the Mideast Sumerian, and Akkadian.

>
> I have the list someplace, but I am not sure what
> you are getting at. Are you talking about Kessler's book?

The point is that words on the Swadesh list do get replaced,
sometimes by internal development, sometimes by borrowing. 

Yes, and which words are used should be used iteratively e.g. select the set N and look
for a family. If the family does not look good, change the set and look at the family.
So the original set was selected deliberately to make a neat family. And that is
where Kessler's book is extremely important. The list must be selected independently
of the family. If body parts are to be used, then all the parts should be used not only
those that make Latin, Sanskrit, Greek belong most tightly or something similar. I think
it is really time to look at the list much more carefully, this time more carefully
making sure that independence is preserved.

The
history of the Swadesh word lists is interesting; they started out as
meanings for which every language should have a word.  A few meanings
on the 100-word list are particular liable to replacement - 'road' is
one example, and some much stabler meanings are omitted from the 100-
word list - e.g. 'salt', 'snow'.  'Snow' is missing because it is not
an important word in hot climates.  I am not sure about 'salt';
perhaps it is a less stable among Australian Aborigines, who have
less use for it than the rest of us.

Time to redo. That is especially pertinent for Nostratic.
"road" should show up after use of animals as draft animals, more or less.

I think more words should be used, and the words should be given weights so that we
can estimate things about what time periods the words started traveling.

In general, there are, inconveniently, regional variations in
relative stability - S.E. Asian personal pronouns are less stable
than elsewhere, and IE numerals (cardinals, that is) are remarkably
stable.

Richard.


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-- 
M. Hubey
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can be created by unskilled labor. Arthur C. Clarke

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