--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Jun 2003 10:46:39 +0000, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> wrote:
>
> >> Do you think there exist cases where pronouns or verbal endings
> >> were loaned (except 'they', of course), or is it all inheritance?
> >
> >Well, no answer is also an answer.
>
> Well, you already mentioned "they", so yes, there exist cases.
>

I almost feel bad about asking the question, since it's about a
premise at the bottom of your magnificent edifice. It seems to me it
goes like this: You have shown to most people's satisfaction that the
pronouns and corresponding suffixes (and in earlier postings also the
low numerals) of the Nostratic languages are related. Therefore the
Nostratic languages are related _provided_ that those elements are
inherited and not borrowed. The question is: does that premise hold,
especially given Austronesian 1st sg. *aku and something similar in
Niger-Congo (forgive me for not looking it up)? I would argue
something like this (this is not news): Japanese does fine without
pronouns, so obviously pronouns are not a philosophically necessary
category in languages; can we therefore exclude that the idea
of "pronoun" arose with the spread of a set of ideas of "animateness"
or the like (as you know I would like to link an original 1st sg
pronoun *m-(n)- to an idea related to Austronesian 'mana' (and that
*m-n- "man, soul, think, remain, mound" favorite of Proto-Worlders)
and the *eg-/*ak- etc 1st sg pronoun to Austronesian 'aku', spread
with the dispersal from Sundaland).

You might find the speculation behind this idea hazy, and I can't
contend that, but ... can it be excluded? And then what remains of
the central relatedness of the Nostratic languages?

Torsten