Ix-nay on the ostratic-nay

[Glen Gordon]

DLW:
 With regard to reconstructing 1sg pronouns, there is (or so I seem
 to recall) a cross-linguistic tendency for these to be formed with
 /m-/, probably from a weaker variant of what might be called the
 "mama syndrome": sounds that babies tend to make early tend to be
 pressed into service as words that mamas and babies might use to
 relate to each other, like "mama" and "me". So seeing a 1sg in /m-/
 does not necessarily mean much.

A "cross-linguistic tendency"?! Where is this drudged up from? I'm sorry
but I can't possibly accept this. Ever considered that the
"cross-linguistic tendency" is in fact hinting at genetic relationship?
I have never heard of a language that suddenly drops its first person
plural in favor of the "mama syndrome". Do you? I don't see how that
could possibly be entertained to any sane degree. There are PLENTY of
languages I could name off the top of my head that DO NOT have /m/ or
even anything like this sound. Do Athapascans have special language
genes that give them immunity to the "mama syndrome"? What about Abkhaz?
Ingush? Chechen? Ket? Tligit? Tamil? Telugu? Mandarin? Cantonese?
Chaozhou? Georgian? Svan? Yucatec? Ojibway? Cree? Does /n/ and /n,/
count too?? What about /t/? Hell let's be really mean and point to the
fact that IE has *eg^oh (which in a Nostratic context would mean that in
fact IE had replaced what used to be a pronoun with *m- as is found in
the enclitic *me.

[ moderator snip ]

what I'm
talking about involves an entire SET of pronouns, not just 1rst person
and I'm obviously not saying that every language in the whole world that
happens to contain /m/ in 1rst person is related (and in fact I can't
think of a language, outside the realms of Nostratic, a language group
that restricts itself mostly around Eurasia and Middle East, that has
/m/ in first person!) Keep this in context with the other pronouns and
don't dilute the topic with focus on a rare if not impossible language
phenomenon. Although pronouns can change, they aren't easily replaced.

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Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com

Kisses and Hugs
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