(no subject)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>hubeyh at montclair.edu

>Semitic is being formed around the same time as PIE.

-- however, when we get the first historical glimpse, Semitic is far to the
southwest, completely unrelated languages like Hurrian separate it from any
contact with PIE, and Semitic itself is related to Cushitic, Old Egyptian, the
Berber languages, and Hausa -- suggesting that it originated far from the
Middle East.  Analogy with the later Semitic migrations would suggest that
Akkadian came into Mesopotamia from the southwest, from the Arabian
penninsula.  There's absolutely no indication of any Semitic or proto-Semitic
speakers in Anatolia.

>The IEans move out westwards via the south of the Caspian. A secondary home
>is found in the northwest corner of the Black Sea. The flooding chases them
>out of there.

-- aren't we multiplying the hypotheses somewhat, here?  It's starting to
sound like a Biblical epic, with ping-pong ball migrations all over the place.

>Some move to the Balkans. Some Thracian speakers cross over the Bosphorus
>into Anatolia and make it to the original homeland where all the mixing was
>going on. They mix with the people there including the ancestors of Iranian,
>Hittite and
>Armenian, and more borrowing from Semitic which is itself being formed.

-- it's generally agreed that the Indo-Iranians were already in the northern
Eurasian steppe zone by about 2500-2000 BCE, identifiable as the Adnronovo
culture.  Indo-Iranian certainly shares late isoglosses with Balto-Slavic and
Finno-Ugrian has early IE loans that are specifically Indo-Iranian in nature.

>This is the second churning and is around the time of the Sumerians, and
>Akkadians. As a result of reflux actions and mixing Akkadian, Armenian
>and Hittite are the most divergent.

-- however, Armenian wasn't anywhere in Anatolia until late in the second
millenium BC at the earliest.  That whole area was Hurrian/Urartian (that is
to say, non-IE) speaking until then.

Armenian's closest links are with Greek, which would support the traditional
argument that the proto-Armenians and proto-Phyrgians only entered Anatolia
after 1200 BCE or so.