PIE vs. Proto-World (Proto-Language)

Ralf-Stefan Georg Georg at home.ivm.de
Mon Jul 19 09:36:29 UTC 1999


>Pat interjects:

>Here I think you are dangerously introducing the mistaken terminology of the
>opposing argument. I do *not* look for "look-alikes"; I only am interested
>in "cognates" the phonological forms of which can be supported through
>multiple comparisons. For example, one set of interesting IE and Sumerian
>"cognates" shows IE *-wey- = Sumerian -g{~}-; interestingly, this
>development *is* found in *some* IE languages, like nearby Armenian.

"interestingly" ? Why interestingly ? The only way this could be
"interesting" would, imho, be to base a claim of Leskienian solidaric
innovation on it, leading to a Sumero-Armenian subgroup of Indo-European.
Very interesting.
Or some kind of areal phenomenon, potentially interesting (this time
without irony). But: supposing for a split-second that IE and Sumerian are
somehow related, the /w/ --> /g/ shift would be something very old, right ?
Now, the Armenian /w/ ---> /g/ shift is young, since known loanwords
participate in it (so young actually, that Kartvelian managed to preserve
the intermediary stage /gw/ in some of those LWs). And of course, even if
chronology were no obstacle, the whole thing still begs the question of
Sumero-IE, but I understand that this is a) not a topic for this list and
b) that I don't stand the slightest shred of a chance to talk you out of
it; so I don't try.

St.G.

Stefan Georg
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