Re: t > k, kVr turn, and Language Expansions

Richard Wordingham wrote:

--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote: > > > Richard Wordingham wrote: > > > - > > > > One of the advantages of the Austronesian languages for studying > > sound changes is that it is such a large group. A change t > k shows > > up in comparison with other languages, and if you had, say c~t~k > > collapsing to t~k~k, it should show up by comparison with a large > > number of unaffected languages. (I know, I ought to write t~k, but I > > let you call your bags - or were they sequences? - sets.) > > > > What are your accepted p>k>t and p>t>k examples? > > > The famous ones which occur accross Semitic, Turkic and IE are tVr, and > kVr having to > do with "rotation, turning, etc". And there is also evidence of it in > form pVr. I cannot tell > if it was p>t>k or p>k>t. That's more like a single word. What examples do you have as a _regular_ _unconditioned_ sound change? (Interchange of tl and kl is well known, but that is a _conditioned_ change.)
I've been posting about these for a long time all over. There is also the pVr and pVl that
occur across major language families. I think these come from PTh.

The *th and *dh are very useful since we can have *ath>aw > u,o and *adh > ay> e,i.
That would only require a single vowel as a start.

Here is another little thing that hit me reading Hayes book on Sumerian.
(The changes are not necessarily in that exact order.)

*ninth > nin (lady, Sumerian)
*ninth > inth > insh > ish (lady, woman, Hebrew)
similarly for Sumerian and Turkic (see previous posts).
*ninth > inth > ins(an) (human, Arabic)

PT inital-n disappeared. e.g,. KBal nalmaz=almas (diamond) and nakut( yakut).
Both yakut and almas are said to be Arabic and almas is said to be related to
diamond, adamant etc. Here they show up with initial-n, and it is not a
reconstruction. Such anomolies can either be buried away or attempts can be
made to handle them.

I am pretty sure that somethings like -nth-, -rth-, -lth- existed and it existed
before there were languages like PIE.

Looking at Torsten's list of <plosive>Vr roots at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nostratica/message/90 , I can't help thinking that there's some sort of sound symbolism going on here. In English we've got 'whir' and 'whirl', and in PIE there's a root wer- with several extensions, all related to turning.
I do not see onamatopeia. OTOH, th>w and th>t and you get words like whirl, and twirl
and there is the tVr already. There are too many tVr and kVr root words (including tVl, and kVl)
to actually list right now. They are all over and must be truly ancient. Some of these are
*gilgul (Sumerian, Witzel), Greek ghorentus (market, encircled place?), Tk. kurshow, etc
even Finnish Turku (marketplace), Tk karIn (stomach e.g. round thing), Akkadian (a?)garinnu,
etc. Pardon the misspellings. I can't remember everything. Then there is kwel, kwer(?),
English turn, dr- (verbs in GErmanic languages for turning), torque, Latin circle (kirik.el),
circus, Turkic teker (*ter.ker), Magyar kerek, etc etc.

Perhaps it's universal onamatopeia. w- > gw- is fairly common (Welsh, Old French and American Spanish leap to mind), so if such onomatopoeic words keep being generated, over the millenia all the various combinations could be generated without violating SCR. These words are found well beyond Nostratic. > In other areas it also mostly disappeared. It made significant inroads into Fars as well.
Iran and Central Asia is still Iranian-speaking.

> Russian spread over Slavic > lands. ? I was thinking of the Eastward expansion, which you've included in the '1700 year' Slavic expansion.
Well it starts around the time of the Huns. That is a long time.

Over time, they > probably picked up > complex syntax and morphologies and some irregularity would be expected. The above weren't associated with urban civilisations.
I think this is what happened in the Mideast especially to the Semitic languages. The authors
I mentioned agree.

> I think there was something like Sanches, Badillo or something. I look forward to your coming across it and telling us more about it.
Here is something interesting.

Speaker 4 Marc Buhler, Institute for Immunology & Allergy Research, NSW, Australia

- Title of Presentation Could admixture of the CCR5-delta32 allele into Ashkenazi Jews and Vikings be explained by an origin in the kingdom of the Khazars?

The conference below is not exactly the Kook Konvention. Maybe science will take care of what historical linguists refuse to do.

http://www.geneticscongress2003.com/index.php

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

Speaker 4		Marc Buhler, Institute for Immunology & Allergy Research, NSW, Australia
- Title of Presentation		Could admixture of the CCR5-delta32 allele into Ashkenazi Jews and Vikings be explained by an origin in the kingdom of the Khazars?