Re: Eating, Cattle and Elbow (was: Hermes/=Mercury)

Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> > >
> > It would if p>t>k occcured.
>
> Unconditioned t > k is very rare. In the examples I can think of (all
> Polynesian, some still in progress), k was missing (also unusual), e.g.
> because of a shift k > h. It is associated with very small consonant
> inventories.

If the RSC is true, all the t-words would disappear leaving only k-words
so it would not be
possible to know anyway. There is also the possibility of p>k>t. I
discuss this in my article
in the J. of Quant. Ling. Assoc. It is also in my book. And I do find
cases of these happening.

>
> > > Incidentally, what's Greek ul-?
> >
> > I thought Greek also had words with ul-
> > having to do with arm like Latin.
>
> All the Greek words in the abridged Scott and Liddell starting ul- (or
> rather hul-) are to do with wood (e.g. hyle:) or the barking of a dog.

I just read the discussion (or parts of it) on cybalist and it should be
with ol-.

>
> >
> >
> > It might have something to do with the nonlinearity of the vocal tract.
>
> I think so to.
>
> > What is naturalness? That is the reason we need explicit postulates.
>
> Research in progress, I'm afraid.
>
> > > How is you automation of theoretical physics progressing?
> >
> > I guess this is a joke.
>
> An analogy.
>
> > > Richard:
> > > You start by assuming that sound changes are overwhelmingly regular.
> > > If by
> > > 'dh' you mean a voiced fricative you have precedent for dh > z, dh > d
> in
> > > Semitic, e.g Hebrew v. Aramaic, and possibly in Arabic dialects.
> However,
> > > having both in one language is unusual.
> >
> > Turkic and Semitic languages might display something that IE apparently
> > does not. The mixed with each
> > other regularly apparently. IE probably did too.
>
> The penny drops. You're thinking in terms of continual borrowing as the
> explanation of the Nostratic group, rather than common descent. Do
> you also
> see that as the explanation of the Indo-European group?

No, I am thinking more like mixing of two language families, and an
approximation of what
happened as two phases: the initial mixing phase (chaotic, turbulent),
and the secondary phase,
(more laminar) in which a lot of the RSC took place, and enough time
passed to produce
more regular things; a kind of a relaxation phase.

>
>
> > I actually wanted to write something about that too. M. Witzel (and
> > others) have been digging around
> > for the source of some of the "substratum" words in Sanskrit and have
> > gone as far as Ket but ignore
> > Turkic which stretches from the Pacific to the Adriatic.
>
> Reaching the Adriatic is fairly recent.

Large numbers of them must have existed for a long period of time in
order to have spread
out and not disappeared. Supernova-ing is a rare event. In any case
they were in the Asian
region for a long time.

>
>
> > But some of
> > those words are Turkic. And this
> > despite the existence of Mongoloids in Northern India circa 2400 BC,
> > even if they did think that
> > Turkic was originally spoken by Mongoloids. It is just a bad habit.
>
> What sort of Mongoloids? Northern or Southern? If they're Southern
> Mongoloid, they'll obvously think in terms of Austro-Asiatic first. Any
> chance of Central Asian contacts?

I am not sure. I have to read the book again. If they were
Austra-Asiatic they would have been
found in the south of India, not north.



--
Mark Hubey
hubeyh@...
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey