From: John
Message: 1064
Date: 2003-08-06
> --- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jdcroft@...> wrote:unmarked),
> > wi 'I', tw 'you (masc)', tn 'you (fem)', sw (he, him), sy and st
> > (she, her), *-n 'we', *-tn 'you (plural)', *-sn 'they'
> >
> > whereas in Basque the pronoun set is
> >
> > ni `I`, hi `you' (singular intimate), zu `you' (singular
> > gu `we', zuek `you' (plural). The intimate hi is ofextraordinarily
> > restricted use: it is regularly used only between siblings andIt
> > between close friends of the same sex and roughly the same age.
> > may optionally be used in addressing children.applied
> >
> > Unlike vocabulary items, pronoun sets tend to be conserved
> > enormously. As you see there is very little similarity between
> > Ancient Egyptian and the Basque language.
>
> Isn't the connection obvious? A few simple sound change laws
> to Basque gives the Egyptian pronouns.OK, now lets look at English
>
> n /V [+front] > nw > w
> Hence ni > wi
>
> z /_V [+back] > d > t
> u has w as al allomorph
> Hence zu > tw
>
>
> g /_V [+back] > n
> u /C_# [+nasal] > 0
> Hence gu > n
>
> Finally zuek > tn through analogy.
>
> This is all pretty basic stuff you know.