Pre-Greek languages

[Stanley Friesen]

At 12:37 PM 10/20/99 +0100, Gordon Whittaker wrote:

>such a group, and this evidence argues strongly for the presence of speakers
>of an Indo-European language in the Mesopotamian area itself at a time-depth
>of roughly 3100 B.C. It has long been debated in Assyriology whether a
>number of polysyllabic terms in Sumerian might derive from a so-called
>substrate of unknown origin. ...

>In the first issue of the Goettinger Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft
>(1998), based on a series of lectures given since 1978, I discussed
>unmotivated phonetic values in the Sumerian script and their association
>with the pictographic antecedents (Uruk IV) of the respective cuneiform
>signs. Signs depicting, for example, a fish, fox, bird, beer vessel and
>wagon have the orphan phonetic readings *pesh*, *lib/lub*, *hu*, *bi*, and
>*gurush/geresh*, recalling IE *pisk-i- 'fish', *wlp-eh- 'fox', *haw-i-
>'bird', *pih- 'drink', and *krs-o- 'wagon'.

Some care needs to be taken in interpreting these words.  For one thing,
there *is* attested Iranian (or Indo-Iranian) contact at a very early date,
so my first suspicion would be that these are II borrowings, from after the
PIE period.  Certainly, in regards to migrations etc., identification of
subfamily is important, and I am not sure this sample is sufficient for
doing that.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com