Re: General Rule

--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote:

>
>
> Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> > --- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...>

wrote:

> > >
> > >
> > > Richard Wordingham wrote:
> > >
> > > > --- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com,
> > > > "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote:
> 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.

The immediate problem here is that we are talking about 'nursery'
words. The probability that a language will have such a word is
fairly high (typically 20%?), and that has to be remembered when
using such words to make comparisons. What makes the words useful as
an indicator of IE-relatedness is the suffix-like '-ter' (currently
seen as PIE *-h2ter).

> 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.

Why a split? English has both 'pa' and 'daddy'.

> 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.

How do you cite Latin nouns? Latin amo:re 'love' is ablative
singular, whereas I would expect to see the nominative (amor) or
accusative singular (amo:rem) cited.

What is 'ama'? The stem of the Latin verb to love? Mind you, citing
the infinitive ('ama:re' in case any lurker is unaware) would give
the impression that you were comparing the /r/ of the Latin suffixes
(< /s/) with /r/ in the Turkic words :)

'Mama' is, worldwide, a very common starting point for words
meaning 'mother' or 'nipple'. (In our family, our first baby gave us
the word 'maman' for food, which my wife tells me is Chinese!)

> 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.

Loans or common inheritance?

> > 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.

That approach throws away evidence! It must complicate the
statistics enormously!

> 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.

For establishing a family, yes.

> 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.

Some parts bind their referring words better than others. An
alternative is to look at data from several families, and select
items that way. There is a very large database for Austronesian.

>
> > 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.

Weighting is one thing that calculated replacement rates can be used
for. Mind you, I got criticised for using IE replacement rates to
assess a comparison of Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic (or rather
Malayo-Polynesian and Mon-Khmer as the data turned out).

I think it would be desirable to find some way of capturing cognates
when their meaning has drifted apart. It looks laborious, if only
because some way would have to be found to compensate for allowing
more false matches in.

Richard.