From mcalamia at hotmail.com  Mon Apr  2 18:13:31 2001
From: mcalamia at hotmail.com (Maria Anna Calamia)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 14:13:31 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.141331.0400.>

Could you please define "dialect mixture"? How does this relate to Italian
having a structrue where the orthography is matched by its phonetic system?

Maria Anna Calamia
University of Toronto

>From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
>Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 15:52:58 -0600

>>> The main advantage Italian has, to simplify a bit, is that it did not go
>>> through the Great Vowel Shift.

>> That might be simplifying a bit too much

>         I admit I should have mentioned dialect mixture as a major
>contributor to the problem.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr  1 17:53:08 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 13:53:08 EDT
Subject: Minoan is an IE language?/Sound Equivalence
Message-ID: <SUN.1.APR.2001.135308.EDT.>

I wrote:
<< If the situation in English can be attributed in any way to imported words,

In a message dated 3/28/2001 9:44:03 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<<-- it's not the imported words, it's the changing sounds.  First,
one-to-one correspondences between sound and symbol have collapsed as
the language changed and the orthography didn't.  >>

Respectfully, this does not seem to account for the facts as given.  The
report said that there are in English "more than 1,100 ways that letters in
the written language are used to symbolize the 40 sounds in the spoken
language."

If true, this situation cannot be accounted for by mere sound changes and
conservative orthography, internal or even imported.

The mathematics are plain.  If all 40 sounds in English (today) all changed
not once or twice but five times, you should have no more than 200
orthographic equivalencies, counting the new and all the old ones coexisting
at the same time.

Presume English had even fifty or sixty sounds at any point, and each sound
had one and only one corresponding symbol.  If each and every one of those
sounds changed and each of those sounds were given a new symbol, the total of
all new symbols and old symbols could only be at most 120.

Let's say the total number of sounds EVER used in English, past and present,
amounted to 100.  Then EACH and EVERY sound would have to be represented by,
on the average, ten different ways of writing each of those sounds.  To reach
1,100, each of those 100 sounds would have to have changed at least 10
different times each, on the average.

I keep on writing "if true," because these are astonishing numbers,
especially when compared to the figure given in Italian: "the 33 sounds in
Italian are spelled with
only 25 letters or letter combinations."

There can be only a few explanations for this.  One is that English was
constantly shifting a small set of sounds and each of those sounds changed
many, many times.  The other is that English tried to accommodate new sounds
with new spellings, but that the sounds disappeared but the different
spellings were retained.

Awhile ago, I looked up the dozen different spellings of the word "condition"
in OED.  One of them, "condycyoun", I think implies that the early attempts
in spelling the word were meant to reflect the French word.  As the French
word became Anglified, its sounds transformed, <-cyoun> e.g. moving towards a
single syllable, but the orthography - stabilized in the 1600's - could not
quite give up all its heritage and that compromise is where it stands today.

Except in Mark Twain, of course, where a character quite properly spells the
word "cundishun."

Regards,
Steve Long


From Salinas17 at aol.com  Sun Apr  1 07:11:29 2001
From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 03:11:29 EDT
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <SUN.1.APR.2001.031129.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<....<anapsao:> is cited early for wipe up, clean out.>>

In a message dated 3/29/2001 2:58:35 AM, acnasvers at hotmail.com replied:
<< I see no connection between <psa-> and <sap->, but it is very tempting to
relate Gk. <psa:r> 'starling' to OE <st&r>, OHG <stara>, Lat. <sturnus> (from
PIE *stor-). Other than this I have no plausible comparanda for words with
initial "psi".>>

If I understand correctly, this approaches the issue as a matter of descent
from a common source in the proto-language.  But perhaps the question might
be, as far as "soap" goes, how <psa-> words would look if they were borrowed
into Germanic, sometime before 1AD.  Direct cognacy in this case might be
irrelevant.

"Soap" in the specific sense gives all appearances of being a relatively
recent innovation.  If the word were borrowed before the current era, there
is probably no special reason to think that signs of either Pelagasian
ancestry or native morphology would go with it.  The question might be merely
how the word was heard by the borrower and how he accommodated it within his
native phonology and morphology.  (Presuming that at this point in time
Germanic was not adopting Greek or Latin words in their "learned " form.)

Putting aside the <psa-> matter for the time being, the word "soap" in itself
has more to do with Greek, Latin and possibly Celtic than with any possible
semantic connection to a Proto-Germanic "sieve", to which it is supposed to
have cognacy according to Pokorny.

One of the earliest appearances of the word gives it as "a Gallic invention
(hair-dye) adopted by the Germans." (L-S Grk Dict)

This connection to "dye" is totally consistent with what we know about the
early development of what we call soap.  "Saponification is... accomplished
through reaction of a fat or fatty acid with an alkali.... soap was not
invented for purposes of personal hygiene.  Rather, it was invented early on
to solve a problem with textiles: wool as it comes from the sheep is coated
with a layer of grease that interferes with the application of dyes... In
some cases, the causticity of soap was itself a dyeing agent."

Basic early soap is a mixture of fats and alkali such as potash or lye.  "A
soap-like material found in clay cylinders during the excavation of ancient
Babylon is evidence that soapmaking was known as early as 2800 B.C.
Inscriptions on the cylinders say that fats were boiled with ashes, which is
a method of making soap,... Such materials were later used as hair styling
aids." (All this is from the Kirk-Othmer Encycl of Chem. Technology or soap
history sites on the web.)

Early soaps would have been highly caustic and capable of having strong
effects on anything they were applied to.  This is confirmed by Latin
references to "causticus" as "a kind of soap with which the Germans colored
their hair, Mart. 14, 26, 1."  (Lewis & Short).  This name from the Greek
<kaustikos>, burning, caustic, corrosive.

If we did not know this, we might think soap was just the modern Mr. Bubble
stuff.  But the origins of soap as a caustic treatment for wool or hides
gives us some better candidates for the origin of "soap."

In fact, <se:po:> which meant make rotten or corrupt or mortify, is also
attested as meaning to "soak hides" in the fifth century BC in Athens,
("dermata se:po:", Lidell-Scott).  And not surprisingly in Greek <sapon>,
soap, also appears as <se:po:n>.

As to the apparently incongruent presence of such ideas as "rotten" or
"rancid" with soap, this again is only due to an unfamiliarity with the early
soap-making process.  In fact, one of the main ingredients of most early
soaps would have been rendered animal fats, boiled down from rancid
leftovers.  An accurate description of such a product would be
<se:pe:/se:pon>.

In Latin, pertinent is <sebum /sevum>, tallow, suet, grease; <sebosus>, full
of tallow or grease, tallowy, greasy, as both refer to the fatty ingredient
of soap, although I am not sure when these words are first attested (Sebosus,
a Roman surname, is mentioned by Cicero.)

Also related perhaps in meaning is <apo/zeo:>: boil till the scum is thrown
off. (Cf., <exuper/zeo:>, boil over.)  Under these circumstances, one can
conceive of perhaps a co-occurence of <zeo:>, to boil, with the word for fat
<pion>.  <Zeo:> in the form <zei> makes its appearance for example in regard
to wine ("oinos zei").  And <zo:pissa>, the mixture of pitch and wax
"scrapped off from old ships", may have some association in meaning, if that
mixture was thereafter boiled.

The other ingredient in soap is ash, potash, lye, etc.  Along with <nitron>,
soda, we find the ash word <spodion>.  Thus, <Spodo-nitropoios> "maker of
soap from potash" (called dubious in L-S). Interestingly, we are also given
in Latin, ultimately from <spuo>, in the sense of froth, foam, boiling,
"spuma caustica, a pomade used by the Teutones for dyeing the hair red,...
called also spuma Batava,... nitri." (Lewis & Short)  Here, <spuma> seems
related to the caustic alkaline element in soap.

In none of all this as far as I know is a "sieve" involved, the word
referring to quite different processes, with no apparent relationship to soap.

In all of the above, the word "soap" seems to relate mainly to the
manufacturing process, rather than to end use of human bathing.  This brings
up again the Greek <psao:>, <pse:xis>, <psairo:>, <psapharos>, <anapsao:>,
etc., all words that can be related in meaning to one degree or another to
the gentler end use of soap as a cleaning, polishing or staining agent.
Compare <psao:> to <spao:>, in general meaning to draw-off, strip, suck in,
derive, tear away.  And in the form <spadizo:> "to strip off" as in stripping
hides ("spadixas to derma" Herodotus 5.25).

Regards,
Steve Long


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Mon Apr  2 18:53:51 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 14:53:51 -0400
Subject: [linguist@linguistlist.org: 12.921, Jobs: Classics,
 Ling: Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK]
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.145351.0400.>

Forwarded from the Linguist List.

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Approved-By:  linguist at LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Date:         Mon, 2 Apr 2001 17:52:15 -0000
From: The LINGUIST Network <linguist at linguistlist.org>
Subject:      12.921, Jobs: Classics, Ling: Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK

LINGUIST List:  Vol-12-921. Mon Apr 2 2001. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 12.921, Jobs: Classics, Ling: Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK

[ snip ]

Date:  2 Apr 2001 11:40:28 -0000
From:  Dr G M King <secretary at classics.cam.ac.uk>
Subject:  Classical Philology & Ling: (Asst) Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK

Rank of Job: Lecturer/Assistant Lecturer
Areas Required: Classical Philology and Linguistics
Other Desired Areas:
University or Organization: University of Cambridge
Department: Faculty of Classics
State or Province: Cambridge
Country: UK
Final Date of Application: 20 April 2001
Contact: Dr G M King secretary at classics.cam.ac.uk

Address for Applications:
Sidgwick Avenue
Cambridge
Cambs CB3 9DA
UK

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Faculty of Classics

Two posts in Classics (Philology and Linguistics)

University Lecturer or Assistant Lecturer:

Applications for this post (to start on 1 October 2001) are invited
from suitably qualified and experienced candidates. The Linguistics
and Philology section of the Faculty is responsible for teaching
descriptive linguistics of Greek and Latin for Part I of the Classical
Tripos, and the historical linguistics of the two languages and
comparative linguistics of the Indo-European languages for Part II, as
well as for supervising graduate students working in these fields.
The successful candidate will be required to take a full part in these
activities and to engage in research relevant to the teaching
programme.

Faculty Assistant Lecturer:

The Faculty is also seeking to fill from 1 October 2001 a two year
post to cover for a member of staff on research leave. The successful
candidate will be expected to contribute to the Faculty's
undergraduate teaching programmes in Classical philology and
linguistics and to assist with the running of the M Phil seminar.


Further information for either post may be obtained from the Secretary
of the Appointments Committee, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue,
Cambridge CB3 9DA (e-mail: secretary at classics.cam.ac.uk) or from the
Faculty website http://www.classics.cam.ac.uk.

Applications, including a detailed curriculum vitae and list of
publications, together with the names of two referees should be sent
to the above address not later than 20 April 2001.  Applicants'
referees should be asked to write directly to the Secretary to reach
the Faculty by the closing date.  There is no application form.
Applications from women and those in the early stages of their career
are particularly encouraged.  Candidates are asked to state whether
they wish to apply for one or both of the posts.

The pensionable scale of stipend for a Faculty Assistant Lecturer or
University Assistant Lecturer is GBP 17,755 - 23,256; and for a
University Lecturer GBP 21,435 - 33,058 per annum.

The University is committed to equality of opportunity.

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From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr  2 19:46:29 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 14:46:29 -0500
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.144629.0500.>

> Could you please define "dialect mixture"? How does this relate to Italian
> having a structrue where the orthography is matched by its phonetic system?

> Maria Anna Calamia
> University of Toronto

        Dialect mixture is when words in one dialect have the form that is
proper to another.  All or just about all dialects have it to some extent.
Italian, for example, has some cases of intervocalic voicing, though ths is
not in general characteristic of (Standard) Italian.  (It occurs in the
dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)   I cannot
off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
pronounced as in another.  A great deal of dialect mixture went into the
formation of the London Standard.  A possible example (I don't know, someone
else out there probably does) might be things like "bead" versus "head",
where some words are spelled as if they have long vowels when in fact the
vowels have been shortened, or,  to put it from the other perspective, not
all vowels that might be expected to have been shortened actually have been.
        In any event, coming up with a series of rules that would correctly
predict the pronunciation of native (or pre-1500) words in English is a
problem, and probably the main one that derails children learning to read.
The Great Vowel Shift itself would not have created an unsolvable problem,
and it is perhaps more appropriate to say that it is the sub-cases that are
problematic.  For example, one could come up with a rule to say that "-ead"
is pronounced long after labials and nasals, which is at least a start (I
vaguely recall that there is no principled account of "ead"), but beyond a
point it becomes more efficient to simply memorize spellings, which is what
is traditionally done.  This disconnect seems to be what causes the greater
incidence of dislexia in English readers.  To what extent it is related to
dialect mixture (most of which in the present case amounts to differences of
dialectal opinion about matters related to the GVS) or sub-cases (again,
mostly related to the GVS) is not clear (to me).

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Apr  2 20:02:28 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 16:02:28 EDT
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.160228.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/2001 2:05:55 PM, gordonbr at microsoft.com writes:

<< > "Peter" is not Aramaic. It represents Greek <Petros>, lit. 'piece of
rock', given by John (1:42) as the translation of <Ke:pha:s>, the nickname
bestowed upon Simon by Jesus. >>

Just a note.  James Joyce called "thou art Peter and upon this rock..." "a
pun in the original Aramaic."  Whatever Joyce meant, there is a question
among Biblical scholars which word Jesus used.  I see here "Along with petra,
petros entered the Hebrew language: Petros was the father of a sage of the
land of Israel, Rabbi Yose ben Petros..."  For a news story discussion, see
http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/articles/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=1463.
Peter might possibly just been called Peter, as Petra may have already become
part of the Aramaic language, and this would appear consistent with the
naming practices in the NT, even nicknames, not being translated.

S. Long


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Apr  3 09:30:23 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 10:30:23 +0100
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <3FBE0C2659BC3B4EAB3536F20FA2503902B88D91@red-msg-02.redmond.corp.microsoft.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.103023.0100.>

--On Thursday, March 29, 2001 9:13 am -0800 Gordon Brown
<gordonbr at microsoft.com> wrote:

> DGK's posting reminds me of a question I've had for quite a while.  In
> an article about Bede (Baeda), I saw a bibliographic reference that
> implied that the name Baeda might be somehow related to the name Peter.
> Is this possible?  In any case, does Baeda equate to any modern name?

According to the only source I have handy, which is not wholly reliable,
Bede's name is a derivative of Old English <bedu> 'asking, prayer', and is
therefore related to modern 'bead' and 'bid'.

I know of no modern form.  The first name that popped into my head was that
of Bid McPhee, the great 19th-century second baseman, who was voted into
the Baseball Hall of Fame last year.  However, on checking, I find that his
real name was John Alexander McPhee, and that 'Bid' was a shortening of
'Biddy', apparently a nickname conferred in those days on a player of
diminutive stature (McPhee was small).

Now, if someone will only tell me how the old-time third baseman Charles
'Piano Legs' Hickman acquired his nickname, I'll be a happy man.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr  2 23:57:46 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 18:57:46 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.185746.0500.>

>> There are no valid generalizations, but abandonment of a language, once it
>> becomes seen as "the thing to do", can be quite rapid.

> Agreed. But we do have one thing to go on here, in contemplating the presumed
> replacement of pre-Etruscan, and that is the replacement of Etruscan itself
> by Latin in Etruria. If we reckon from the Roman conquest of Veii to the
> latest inscriptions at Volaterrae (ca. 50 CE) it took about 450 years for
> this to happen.

        Yes, but the Etruscans who slowly allowed themselves to be
assimilated to the Romans were the bearers of an ancient high culture, quite
respected (at one time).  Presumably any pre-Etruscan native population was
not.

> A few shiploads of refugees from Troy or its allies, arriving over a decade
> or two, simply don't cut the mustard in this picture, no matter how dazzling
> their High Culture might have been.

        I think it was more than that.  But be that as it may, there could
have been what I call a "rolling assimilation", whereby the earlier
assmilees aid in assimilating the later assimilees.  For example, in America
a great many Germans have wound up "Anglicizing" (or Americanizing) more
recent immigrants.  (This is especially true in parts of Texas, where once
upon a time the predominant white population was German.  It used to be
assumed in San Antonio that anyone who was not a Mexican was a German.  Yes,
to some extent the Mexican were there first, but their assimilation, which
is what is relevant, was often later.  But I digress.)

> As for mysterious North Aegeans, where exactly was their homeland? The island
> of Chryse, east of Lemnos, which sank into the sea according to Pausanias
> (VIII.33.4)?  (Migrationist doctrine, rigorously pursued, eventually leads us
> either _down_ to Atlantis and similar sunken lands or _up_ to von Daeniken's
> ancient astronauts.)

        Well, I now have the unique(?) honor of having been accused both of
being a migrationist and of being an anti-migrationist.  (Perhaps I am
somewhere in the middle?)  By "North Aegean" I intended a cover term
embracing Thrace/Chalcide/Lemnos, in keeping with the accounts of the
geographers which, using an ethnonym I forget and am too lazy to look up,
seem to indicate a southward drift along those general lines.  I was hoping
someone wise in the ways of the archeology of Thrace, which would be what is
called for, might have something to say on this.  But a fairly small and
heavily genericized (for lack of a better word) East Mediterranean culture
might not leave much of a signature.

> Most Etruscan funerary inscriptions (alas!) consist only of names, but the
> language is clearly Etruscan, with genitives of parents and possessives of
> spouses commonly found. Lower-class "monuments" in some cases are crudely
> marked ceramic tiles. The language is still Etruscan. Tiles and other
> markers are there to identify the deceased to the living, and there is no
> reason whatsoever to convert the deceased's actual name into a form
> unrecognized by the living.

        That Etruscan names were often taken up by non-Etruscan people is
shown in a recent posting, where a word meaning
"Etruscan" is used as part of an Etruscan-style name among people evidently
not Etruscan, or there would have been little point in using such a name.
So I don't see that there is any contradiction here.  It is perfectly
possible, even to be expected, that lower class Etruscans even if
"originally" of different ethnicity, would have used Etruscan names, on
funerary monuments as elsewhere, regardless of whether they might have been
bilingual in Etruscan and some other language, or largely descended from
folk who had been.

> Speaking of hinterlands, I've seen speculation that Etruscan might have
> persisted as a spoken language around Mt. Amiata (the most "remote" part of
> Etruria) for several centuries after its extinction in the cities. But since
> hillbillies seldom concern themselves with permanent written records, we'll
> probably never know.

        Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of
this aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become
effectively depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.
(Nothing fails like success:  the Romans created so many subtypes of
themselves that they exterminated the main branch, with a little help from
malarial swamps.)

> If "Nueces" isn't shortened from "Rio de las Nueces", might it represent a
> modified substratal name? ...)

        It might.  But since pecan trees do, strangely enough, grow that far
southwest (or almost that far:  I have seen them growing wild out in the
middle of nowhere west of San Antonio, not too far from the Nueces) I would
imagine that the name is related to this, especially since pecans are
water-loving trees, which in a semi-arid environment would (probably) tend
to grow near rivers.  On the other hand, I recall that most of what grows
along the waterways I am thinking of(which cannot really be called rivers)
is cypresses.  But the Nueces is out of my zone.  (If I ever get out there
again, I'll keep my eyes open and report back ...)  Considering that pecans
are sometimes described as being native to "the Mississipi valley", the
Nueces area might have been the first place Spanish explorers coming up from
Mexico encountered them.

Dr. David L. White


From ymeroz at earthlink.net  Tue Apr  3 06:10:06 2001
From: ymeroz at earthlink.net (Yoram Meroz)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 23:10:06 -0700
Subject: Etruscan
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.231006.0700.>

Sociolinguistic questions:

-- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
language? Did it go through a phase of being used as a written
language for more 'traditional' uses, while not spoken, much as Latin
was in later times?

-- Is there any indication of the uses of written Etruscan beyond
what has survived? For example, do any Roman writers mention written
Etruscan in the form of manuscripts or such?

Yoram


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Wed Apr  4 01:48:51 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 01:48:51 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.014851.0000.>

Stanley Friesen (29 Mar 2001) wrote:

>At 10:26 AM 3/25/01 Douglas G Kilday wrote [responding to Dr. White]:

>>Your proposal was /trosy-/ > /trohy-/ > /trooy-/ with later loss of /y/ when
>>not re-analyzable as suffixal. The first form, being foreign, evaded your
>>postulated metathesis, so no /troys-/.

>>I just don't like the necessity of invoking foreignness in order to evade one
>>sound-change, then insisting on "naturalization" in order to obey subsequent
>>changes.

[SF]
>Why, as far as I can see this happens all the time.  A borrowed word ceases to
>be perceived as foreign after a few generations, after which time it is
>subject to any *subsequent* (or even concurrent) sound changes in the
>borrowing language.  Consider for instance ME 'chief', borrowed from Medieval
>Norman French and then subjected to the Great Vowel Shift just like a native
>English word.

[DGK]
Yes, phonetic naturalization of loanwords must be normal, otherwise
languages which borrow extensively would accumulate hundreds of phonemes. My
objection was to the claim that */trosy-/ would have evaded the general
metathesis /sy/ > /ys/ (postulated by Dr. White to explain non-lengthening
in Epic Greek genitives) because it was perceived as a foreign word, and
_then_ would start behaving as a native Greek word, even though it contained
the sequence /sy/ which had just been metathesized to /ys/ in all native
Greek words! This is beyond coincidence; it requires a conspiracy by the
Demons of Phonetic Change to confuse moderns. Thank goodness for those
enlightened migrationists who know in their hearts that Trojans are
phonetically altered Tyrrhenians.

If this sort of thing had happened with 'chief', the pronunciation [c^yef]
vel sim. would have evaded the Great Vowel Shift because it was perceived as
French, all ME-speakers being acutely aware that French words are exempt
from English phonetic shifts. Only later would the "normal" pronunciation
[c^Ef] be acquired, which would rhyme with the more recent borrowing [s^Ef],
and there would be no [c^iyf]. If someone has examples of foreign words
which actually did evade the GVS this way, it would largely deflate my
objection to this stage of Dr. White's scenario.


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Apr  3 01:24:03 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 17:24:03 -0800
Subject: Getae as Goths
In-Reply-To: <002301c0b886$d1704c20$1a2363d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.172403.0800.>

At 01:30 PM 3/29/01 -0600, David L. White wrote:
>         Here is a somewhat wild, and probably worthless (or at least wrong)
>possibility:  could the name of the Getae be from umlaut of /got-thiuda/ or
>something of the sort?  Probably not:  all Germanic umlaut is supposed to be
>a lot more recent than that,

Also, I am not sure that umlaut would cross a double consonant like 't-th'.

>         By the way, how did the umlaut in "Goeteborg" (or is that "-burg")
>and "-goetland" get there?  Does it suggest an earlier form (at least in the
>north) with following /i/?

At least in combining forms, very likely.  In fact the 'e' in "Goeteborg"
probably goes back to an old 'i' (i.e. it was originally something like
Go:tiburg).

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Wed Apr  4 08:07:26 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 10:07:26 +0200
Subject: Getae as Goths
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.100726.0200.>

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:30:43 0600 David L. White wrote:

>Here is a somewhat wild, and probably worthless (or at least wrong)
>possibility: could the name of the Getae be from umlaut of /got-
>thiuda/ or something of the sort? Probably not: all Germanic umlaut is
>supposed to bea lot more recent than that, and the original Getae were
>pretty clearly Iranians, according to what I just read in "The Oxford
>Illustrated Prehistroy of Europe".

Others seem to put the Getae with the Thracians. Anyway, AFAIK the Getae are
first mentioned by Greek authors from the 5th century BC, so it seems pretty
unlikely to me that they are (or got their name from) speakers of a Gmc.
language - and one cannot assume umlaut that early.

>By the way, how did the umlaut in "Goeteborg" (or is that "-burg")and
>"-goetland" get there? Does it suggest an earlier form (at least in the
>north) with following /i/?

Not necessarily. /oe/ is the regular outcome of Gmc. /au/ in Swedish, with
/oe:/ being attested already in the Old Swedish period. So, *gauta- > to
/goet-/ would be a regular development. And, it's "-borg" in Swedish.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Apr  3 14:26:26 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 16:26:26 +0200
Subject: Gothic "au"
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.162626.0200.>

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 12:58:18 -0600 David L. White wrote:

>I am not too sure this is such a good idea.  The Greek/Hebrew names
>in Wright show that the basic rule is what I said it was (what a
>coincidence!):  long /oo/ comes across as "o", short /o/  as "au".

I don't think we are too much apart on this question. What I said is that
<au> and <o> denote two vowels of different quality, of which <o> probably
denoted a long, open /o:/ and <au> a closed /o/ (long or short) or /ou/.
AFAIK, at that time there was no distinction of vowel length in Greek any
more, and I'm not sure whether there was a quality distinction between the
sounds represented by <o mikron> and <o mega>. Traditionally, Greek short
/o/ was closed, and long /o/ was open, so what was said about the rendering
of the Greek "o" letters (Gothic <au> for <o mikron>, Gothic <o> for <o
mega> could have been triggered by the different qualities of the "o"s,
which would support my analysis - if there still was a quality distinction.

>  I suppose I can dredge up the Damned Thing and
>send to anyone who may be interested.

I am.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Apr  4 19:27:36 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 15:27:36 EDT
Subject: Goth-like Names
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.152736.EDT.>

<<Then there's the whole question of the initial "G".  There is a rather
large group of names that share the time and place with the Goths that might
even be considered as referring to the Goths if the loose orthography of the
time were also considered.  I have a folder full of examples of "c" and "g"
and "k" interchangeability that applies to a wide range of persons, peoples
and things, but never it seems to the Gothic name. >>

In a message dated 3/29/2001 12:26:01 AM, hwhatting at hotmail.com replied:
<< Going back to examples you quoted, we know, e.g., that the Chatti have
been sitting on the right bank of the Rhine for quite a time, and that the
name of the area of Hesse derives from their name, so we have a confirmation
that the name had to be pronounced /(c)hat-/ in Tacitus time, and that they
basically stayed there afterwards.

Now, we can of course say that they are identical with the Goths, that their
name just got mangled by intermediaries, and look for reasons why the Goths
"invented" a Scandinavian origin and forgot about their Hessian cousins. But
does this get us any further?>>

Once again, thanks for your patience.  I think I haven't been clear about
this.
My point is not that the Goths were "identical" with the Chatti, Chauci,
Cotti, Cotini, Codan(i), Cotensi, Quadi, Atta Cotti (3d Century invaders of
Roman Britain), Jutes, Geats, Getae, Gitae, -gatae, Chudi, Goe:tae, etc., nor
whether or not they were even distant cousins.  (Not any more than Bretons
and Britains, or American Indians and Asiatic Indians, or Vlakhs and Welsh
need to be.)

I'd like to return to the Chatti and their name later, but my point does not
go to the people but to the source of the various names which was used to
describe the Goths.  Recognizing that those initial consonants were often
interchangeable might suggest -- and I think does suggest -- that the Gothic
name(s) were not unique to this group.  Other people may have used the same
or related names across northern Europe.  The need for an ablaut explanation
might suggest the same thing -- that these names were all approximations of
each other rather than the constant renaming of one specific people.

<<But does this get us any further?>>

Yes, it appears to.  It opens up the meaning and source of the Gothic name to
more reasonable interpretations than something like "the ejaculates" which is
what some Scandinavian scholars are suggesting.  It allows us to consider the
source of those other names involving perhaps different IE or Germanic
speakers and see if there isn't a broader and deeper origin for the name Goth.

For example, it is very common for scholars on the subject to see the
"Butones" mentioned by Strabo (writing in the first part of the 1st Cent AD)
as a reference to the Goths.  Text are frequently "emendated" to replace the
B with a G.  This works happily with the notion of the Goths being a tribe
worth mentioning, supports Tacitus in connecting them with the Marcomanni and
places them somewhere out there, at least in the general direction of the
Vistula.

But making the Butones the Goths has a serious downside.  One of these is
that the tribe being described might well be the "Cotini".  These people,
whom Tacitus tells us spoke Celtic, were a significant factor in this region.
 Ptolemy places them thusly:
"the Corconti and the Lugi Buri up to the head of the Vistula river; and
below them first the Sidones, then the Cotini, then the Visburgii above the
Orcynius valley."  Tacitus tells us they should be embarrassed because they
pay tribute to neighboring tribes even though they are the ones who control
the IRON MINES.  (This becomes important because there is some evidence that
the Goth name may have something to do with forging, casting, iron and the
metal trade.)

Now, at the time Strabo was writing, the Marcomanni under Marobodus are the
main force north of the middle Danube and it is in this context that he
mentions his "Butones".  It is often reported (in Heather for example) that
this is evidence that the Goths, way up east of the Vistula, were part of the
Marcomanni's Danubian "alliance" of tribes.

But a closer read shows that this is not what Strabo wrote.   Strabo
statement of the relationship is a much stronger description of Marobodus'
dominance ("edunasteuse kai katekte:sato") - literally, to take power over
and possession of the "Butones". If these are the Goths, Strabo says they
were subdued and occupied by the Marcomanni.  On Ptolemy's map, the Gythones
are about 20 tribes, forty cities and 700 miles from Marobodum, where all
this is happening.  All this would suggest therefore that these are
references to the Cotini rather than the Goths.  (On the other hand, is all
this related to the old wives' tale Jordanes mentions of Gothic servitude to
Celtic folk?  Does this have anything to do with Tacitus' description of "a
youth named Cotwalda from among the Gotones" being supported by the Goths
against Marbodus?  Was Tacitus confusing Cotini and Gotoni?)

There are other tribes (including the Cotti of the Alps) that present similar
ambiguity in names if not in people.  And this confusion about names even
extended to Jordanes, as much as I think he tried to avoid it.

In naming the tribes of Scandinavia, Jordanes mentioned two groups that
deserves special attention.  He writes:

"Now in the island of Scandza, whereof I speak, there dwell many and divers
nations, though Ptolemaeus mentions the names of but seven of them....
Behind these are the Ahelmil, Finnaithae, Fervir and GAUTHIGOTH, a race of
men bold and quick to fight. Then come the Mixi, Evagre, and Otingis... And
there are beyond these the OSTROGOTHS, Raumarici, Aeragnaricii, and the most
gentle Finns, milder than all the inhabitants of Scandza." (from John
Vanderspoel's translation on the web).

Who are the Gautigoths - a name Jordanes never uses otherwise?  Recall that
this name is according to Jordanes in addition to Ptolemy's "Gutae".  What
this says, prima facia, is that Gauti, Goth and Gutae were not equivalent.  A
friendly interpretation can be made, but if we are going to apply any kind of
objective standard here, the plain interpretation is that these may be
similar names, but they are not the same name. Note that there are also
Ostrogoths in Scandinavia, up there with the Finns, but no Visigoths or just
plain original "Goths."

These names do not support a single, well-defined Gothic name, but instead a
good number of similar names for different people.

Where does this take us?  Well, a suggestion I have is that the Goths
acquired their name because of their association with a vital factor in the
economics and history of the region they were in.  I think there is some
linguistic support for this, some of it I've tried to suggest in past posts.
 (And it offers a better and more respectable origin than some of the ones
being offered these days.)  I'll try to clarify all this in the next post.

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr  3 00:59:29 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 19:59:29 -0500
Subject: "Colorado"
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.195929.0500.>

----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 9:26 AM
Subject: Re: "Guadalupe"

> BTW: Don't forget Austin's Colorado River
> I've also seen Spanish language maps with the Red River as "Ri/o
> Rojo" but I don't know if this was the original form or just a translation
> Which begs another question:
> Spanish rojo vs, colorado for "red"

        I had always thought, knowing next to nothing of Spanish, that
"colorado" was cognate with "colored", and meant the same.  Perhaps the
meaning 'red' is recent?  Certainly the Colorado, if it is anything, is
green, not red, though the Llano, a tributary, might perhaps be said to be
pink due to granitic sand.  The general rule, from my observations, is that
the Colorado and rivers SW of it are green (or if small enough clear) while
the Brazos and rivers NE of it are muddy brown.  No red rivers around here,
that I have seen ...

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Apr  5 04:31:34 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 00:31:34 -0400
Subject: "Guadalupe"
In-Reply-To: <l03130319b6e8f3853a58@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.003134.0400.>

At 09:26 29/03/01 -0500, you wrote:
>	Mozarabic, said to be from (seomthing like) Arabic wadi "valley" +
>Mozarabic lup, lupe < Latin lupus
>	Medina, of course, is Arabic for "town"
>	BTW: Don't forget Austin's Colorado River
>	I've also seen Spanish language maps with the Red River as "Ri/o
>Rojo" but I don't know if this was the original form or just a translation
>	Which begs another question:
>Spanish rojo vs, colorado for "red"
>	Why are some things <rojo> and other things <colorado>?
>	A chile is <rojo> if it's matured to that point. But a <chile
>colorado> is a specific type of chile. Which suggests that --at some
>level-- rojo is for anything that happens to be "red" but colorado for
>something that is "naturally red." But this isn't always the case. Any
>ideas?

>Rick Mc Callister

[Ed Selleslagh]
You might add that red wine is 'vino tinto', which makes this matter even
more curious.
BTW, your theory seems to be confirmed by a translation I saw in Perú: the
city of Pucallpa (on the Ucayali River) has a Quechua name (given by
missionaries, because the local native language is Chiama, an Amazonian
lg.) : Puka Allpa, translated as 'Tierra Colorada', not 'Tierra Roja' (Puka
= red, Allpa = earth, soil, ground).

Ed.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr  3 03:55:44 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 23:55:44 EDT
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.235544.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/01 6:18:50 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
dlwhite at texas.net writes:

> So though low population density probably is a factor, I doubt that
> is can be considered decisive.

-- using Spanish names for local features was a general policy in the Spanish
Empire, both at the governmental and local level.

English settlers in North America, by contrast, tended to use (with some
exceptions) local names, even though they made a much closer approach to
total elimination of the Indian population.


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Apr  3 15:13:03 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 09:13:03 -0600
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <003701c0b874$5719ce40$7b6063d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.091303.0600.>

As an Americanist, I'd better put in my 2 cents.  The Gulf Coast of the SE
U.S. was one of the most densely populated regions of North America
aboriginally, even more than California's central valley.  It was also quite
diverse linguistically, including known (and almost all unrelated) languages
such as Coahuilteco, Cotoname, Comecrudo, Karankawa, Tonkawa, Western
Atakapa, Eastern Atakapa, Caddo, Adai, Tunica, Natchez, and Chitimacha west
of the Mississippi Delta down to just beyond the mouth of the Rio Grande
(there are a couple others around the mouth of the Rio Grande, but I can't
remember them right now).  No one can tell how many other languages may have
been there, but were unrecorded before becoming extinct.  Unfortunately,
this area was also one of the first regions entered by Spanish and French
explorers carrying measles and smallpox along with them.  There was a
serious amount of depopulation surrounding this, but just as serious was the
Spanish attitude toward Indians in general during the 17th and 18th
centuries.  The Indians of this region were considered pagans, so that their
languages were heathen by nature.  There was some attempt among the Spanish
to write catechisms in the languages (thus our only records of Coahuilteco,
Cotoname, Comecrudo, and Aranama), but the attempt was piecemeal and most of
these languages went without any records whatsoever before the languages
were extinct due to disease, slavery, and the forced assimilation to
Spanish.  The languages of almost the entire northeastern quadrant of Mexico
are virtually unknown to us and are long extinct.  In this environment, I
think it's more of a question of conquerors' attitudes, technological
superiority, and speed of conquest, than of any population density issue.
Indians were generally destroyed rather than conquered in these areas.
This, combined with the prevaling religious attitudes, meant that native
names were not preserved along the Texas and Louisiana coastlines.  In West
Texas, to the contrary, the population density was always tiny, yet there
are no fewer Comanche names in that area than there are native names along
the Gulf Coast.  But overall, the native names throughout Texas (indeed,
throughout the United States) are not the names that the Natives applied to
a particular place (as, for example, "Danube" is the name the locals called
the river and later waves of people just kept calling it that), but Indian
words or names that whites thought were cool and applied to a new place
(e.g., "Quanah" and "Nocona", town names in northwest Texas that are not
Native place names, but Comanche names applied to white towns, in this case,
the names of "Quanah Parker" and his father "Peta Nocona", famous Comanche
war chiefs).  Here in Utah, there are only a handful of Native place names
that are actually pre-White retentions, and these are all in regions where
the Spanish were at the outer limits of their reach at the northern end of
the Old Spanish Trail in central and eastern Utah.  However, these names are
all mountain ranges and not rivers (Wahsatch, Oquirrh, Uintah, Mt.
Timpanogos).  The rivers all bear European names (Green, Colorado,
Duschesne, Strawberry, Jordan, Spanish Fork, Weber, Provo, Bear, etc.).

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Indo-European mailing list [mailto:Indo-European at xkl.com]On Behalf
Of David L. White
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 10:18
To: Indo-European at xkl.com
Subject: American River Names

[ moderator snip ]

        Thank you; my Spanish dictionary is rather bad.
        But before someone else brings up a few points on this, I might as
well do it myself...
        The prevalence of Spanish river names might be attributed to very
low poplation density of Indians in Texas, the idea being that the Spanish
explorers and presumed namers encountered rivers more often than natives
(likely enough, actually).   This probably has something to do with it, but
in East Texas (which might as well be Alabama, in more ways than one) the
population density was, as far as I know, not any lower than in SE America
generally.  The resident Caddoes (sp?) were mound-building famers of the
usual sort.  Yet Spanish river names occur there too.  Furthermore, the
names of tribes are (almost?) all native, indicating that the Spanish were
perfectly well able to find out what the native word for some thing or group
was and apply it when appropriate.  The name "Waco" (and "Hueco"?)  for
example, is from Tonkawa, and the Tonkawas were about as marginal as tribes
got.  Yet evidently some Europeans bothered to talk to them, rather than
regarding them as non-existent.  Moving westward, my impression is that the
valley of California was rather densely populated (by Amerindian standards),
yet the same phenomenon of (largely) Spanish river names occurs there.
        So though low population density probably is a factor, I doubt that
is can be considered decisive.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Apr  3 07:02:13 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 02:02:13 -0500
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <003701c0b874$5719ce40$7b6063d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.020213.0500.>

	I've seen it written that Waco comes from a Native American
language BUT I've seen the same thing said about patently Spanish names
such as Pedernales. Unless there is proof to the contrary, I'd say that
Waco is Tejano Spanish <hueco> "spring that pools up from the ground" <
standard Spanish "hole". There are plenty of names such as the redundant
"Hueco Tanks". OTOH Spanish speakers in Texas generally assume that Texas
is from Spanish <tejas> "tiles" because of the red soil but locally, it's
said that it from the name of a local Native American confederacy meaning
"friends".

>The name "Waco" (and "Hueco"?)  for
>example, is from Tonkawa, and the Tonkawas were about as marginal as tribes
>got.  Yet evidently some Europeans bothered to talk to them, rather than
>regarding them as non-existent.  Moving westward, my impression is that the
>valley of California was rather densely populated (by Amerindian standards),
>yet the same phenomenon of (largely) Spanish river names occurs there.
>        So though low population density probably is a factor, I doubt that
>is can be considered decisive.
>
>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr  3 04:00:38 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 00:00:38 EDT
Subject: Minoan is an IE language?/Sound Equivalence
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.000038.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/01 6:41:03 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
davius_sanctex at terra.es writes:

> I think the number of "possible" isolated languge in mediterranean area is

-- on the contrary.  The current situation -- where virtually every language
in the Mediterranean Basin is of the Indo-European, Semitic, or Uralic
families -- is the product of a radical, and comparatively recent linguistic
simplification.

(For example, the prevalence of Arabic in North Africa is the result of a
process only a little more than 1200 years old and one which only reached
completion in the last couple of centuries.)

It's highly probable that pre-Indo-European Europe had a linguistic situation
much like New Guinea or pre-Columbian North America, with hundreds of
distinct language families and many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of distinct
languages covering very small areas.

The linguistic landscape we see is a product of 'reformatting' in the late
Neolithic and subsequent periods.


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Tue Apr  3 04:35:54 2001
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 00:35:54 -0400
Subject: "neirt" versus "nert"
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.003554.0400.>

One can think of some degree of fortition for lenited /l/.  This is captured
in spellings such as English Donald, Ronald, Aberfeldy  for Scottish Gaelic
Domhnall, Raghnall, Obair Pheallaidh.

Robert Orr

>        I was thinking of the intitial case, and mis-remembering the rest.
>        By the way, I would like to know what a lenited /n/ (or /l/ or /r/)
>actually is, in terms the IPA would understand.  My guess, from various
>descriptions I have seen, is that the lenited forms are neutral, the
>unlenited forms palatalized or velarized, as appropriate.  (And that in the
>old days when there were four sounds the unlenited forms were long.)  But it
>is only a guess. Not much Irish spoken around here.

>Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Apr  3 07:41:14 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 09:41:14 +0200
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <F249nrHUmnG6vR2CkWk00012d8e@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.094114.0200.>

On Fri, 30 Mar 2001 07:37:10 -0000, "Gabor Sandi"
<g_sandi at hotmail.com> wrote:

>The main question, however, in my opinion is the original nature of the
>voiced aspirates in IE languages. When IE was introduced into the
>subcontinent, it would have had to have a set of stops corresponding to the
>Brugmannian set {bh dh gh gwh}, distinct from both {b d g gw} and {p t k kw}
>(forgetting about the palatals {k^ etc.} for now). Some linguists do not
>like to postulate this voiced aspirate set, mostly on typological grounds
>(absence or rarity of the corresponding voiceless set). The question is:
>what other reasonable reconstructions can we make? The main authorities on
>Greek (Sturtevant and Sihler are the ones I am most familiar with) all agree
>that Classical Greek phi, theta and chi represent the voiceless aspirates
>/ph th kh/, so simple devoicing of voiced aspirated stops can certainly
>account for them. Outside of India there is no evidence of aspiration
>elsewhere, but Italic /f f h/ can certainly be derived from the changes *bh
> > *ph > *f etc. Germanic, Celtic and Balto-Slavic all show lack of
>aspiration, easily explainable with the changes bh > b etc. (although
>Germanic did not merge the unaspirated and aspirated voiced stops, for it
>devoiced the unaspirated set first).

>To resume: if there were no voiced aspirates in PIE, then what? Voiced
>fricatives  (IPA beta, delta, gamma) are one possibility, but if there were
>no corresponding voiceless fricatives (IPA phi, theta, chi) at the same
>time, the same typological objections can be made as for {bh dh gh}. Other
>suggestions, rather outlandish in my opinion, have been made, but they all
>depend on postulated changes in later IE that are hard to justify (e.g. *b >
>*bh). So, in the end, Occam's razor leads us to keep the PIE set {bh dh gh
>gwh}.

>Any comments?

The main objection against /dh/ etc. is not their relative rarity in
the world's languages, but the fact that it's even rarer (or
impossible) to find them in a language that lacks voiceless aspirates
(/th/ etc.).  In the Brugmannian system, as well as in Sanskrit, such
voiceless aspirates did occur.  However, once the voiceless aspirates
were demoted to clusters of voiceless stop + laryngeal (*tH or *Ht),
the position of */dh/ etc. became precarious.  Gamkrelidze's version
of the "glottalic theory" combines this with the (near-)absence of the
PIE phoneme */b/, to arrive at *t = [t] ~ [th], *dh = [d] ~ [dh], *d =
[t'].  However, Gamkrelidze's proposals are untenable in a number of
respects (e.g., there is no trace of confusion between *t and *dh in
Latin or Greek, as one would have expected when *dh > /th/).  The only
reasonable solution that I see is that PIE had no voiced consonants at
all (as indeed suggested by two of the most archaic members Hittite
and Tocharian). That would make *dh [th], and *d [t] (or,
equivalently, *dh = [t] and *d = [t']: in a binary opposition, the
unaspirated member can become polarized to ejective or the
non-ejective member can become polarized to aspirated).  If so, then
*t must have been [tt] (and in Hittite is indeed spelled that way
medially), a fortis (geminate) stop, unaspirated and unglottalized.
The replacement of fortis/lenis by voiceless/voiced would have
resulted in an unstable system *t = [t], *dh = [d:] (murmured) and *d
= [`d] (preglottalized).  If, at the time, the clusters of
stop+laryngeal were already acquiring phonemic status (as in the
Indo-Iranian area), a four way system as found in Sanskrit could
become possible: [t(')] ~ [th] / [(')d] ~ [dh].  The three other
alternatives would be (1) to lose the distinction between murmured and
preglottalized in the voiced series (resulting in [t] ~ [d]), as in
the case of Balto-Slavic (although *d causes lengthening of the
preceding vowel, and *dh doesn't); (2) fortition of the aspirated
member, resulting in Greek/pre-Italic *t => [t], *dh => [th], *d =>
[d]; and (3) fortition of the unaspirated member, resulting in
Armenian/pre-Germanic *t => [th], *dh => [d], *d => [t(')].

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Tue Apr  3 20:33:24 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 23:33:24 +0300
Subject: Polonezkvy|
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.233324.0300.>

Some time back there were questions about the Polish village in Asiatic
Turkey. I have just obtained a well illustrated booklet by Lucyna
Antonowicz-Bauer entitled Poloezköyü : Adampol, published in 1992 by the
Touring and Automobile Association of Turkey in Istanbul.

According to this booklet the colony was established in 1842 by Prince
Adam Czartoryski (hence Adampol) on land owned by the Lazarite Order.
The Lazarites and the Prince shared the costs and the former expected
the Polish settlers, many of whom had been redeemed from Turkish
bondage, to labour on the land for poor rations. The early settlement
comprised 12 colonists, mainly soldiers who had fled the Russian army,
on five farms.

In short, the Poles became Turkish citizens living on Lazerite land
which was leased to the Prince. This arrangement, it is stated, afforded
the settlement French protection.

The colony received new waves of Polish colonists as one disaster
followed another in the 19th century.

According to the booklet (in which pages are not numbered and bits of
text have gone missing during the production) Polish marriages ensured
that children would be brought up speaking the Polish language, thus
"such Polish was often archaic". I can only assume that sufficient
Polish women came to join their menfolk for the Poish character to have
been maintained.

On the last page of text it says: "...though the eventual granting to
the settlers of the right to dispose of thier land caused the colony to
loose some of its Polishness. Some of the inhabitants sold their land
and left Adampol, while others became intergrated with their Turkish
surroundings". The date of the legal change is not given, but, from
another part of the text, it looks as though it could have been in or
soon after 1960 when the village was transformed from being an
agricultural settlement into a tourist attraction.

Rather strange circumstances that led to the foundation of this singular
colony of Poles on French owned land, the preservation of its Polish
character (including language and religion) and, in contrast to nearby
Greek villages, its incorporation into the Turkish Republic. It perhaps
provides little evidence that is helpful in terms of theory concerning
language survival in ancient times because it has to be set against the
wider events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Nevertheless, from the colour photographs the village appears to be a
delightful place.

Geoff

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr  3 05:00:10 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 01:00:10 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.010010.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/01 10:52:44 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
philjennings at juno.com writes:

> As he located the Anatolians in situ in Anatolia, he had no need

-- he never did explain why the extant Anatolian IE languages all look
intrusive.

Not to mention the fact that Renfrew never seems to have grasped the concept
of degrees of interrelatedness. (Eg., the fact that Greek is much closer to
Indo-Iranian than to the Anatolian group.)

His latest effort in the JIES is a maze of migrations, re-migrations, and
cross-migrations -- exactly the explanatory framework he tried to dispose of
in the first place!  It's like the cycles and epi-cycles of late Ptolemaic
astronomy, gasping and straining to maintain the heliocentric hypothesis.

In fact, Renfrew's basic problem in the context of IE origins was that he was
trying to solve a "problem" that didn't exist, except in his theoretical
assumptions -- he assumed that a massive linguistic shift _must_ have clear
archaeological traces, and _must_ involve some discernable (in the
archaeological record) techological trace.

Neither of these is true; hence the whole edifice built on them is fatally
flawed from the start.

The primary "technology" involved was probably in the "software", the
cultural framework itself -- including the language -- rather than in the
stones-and-bones stuff; and hence invisible from the archaeological
perspective.

One can see why archaeologists hate this; it means that their carefully
catalogued sequences of _in situ_ development may be meaningless, in terms of
things like langauge and ethnicity -- subject to random reformatting that
can't be archaeologically traced.

Cultural factors are what usually gives a group an advantage, after all.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr  3 03:41:34 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:41:34 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.224134.0500.>

> On 25 Mar 2001, David L. White wrote:

>> My point is that to speak of "plain" consonants existing in such a system is
>> in a sense non-sensical, because "plain" in effect means "as in a language
>> without secondary articulations", which in turn means "as in a language with
>> ordinary co-articulation", but a language with secondary articulations could
>> not possibly have ordinary coarticulations, since overriding ordinary
>> coarticlation for phonemic effect is what languages with secondary
>> articulations do.

> This indicates that we have encountered a terminological whirlpool.  In the
> phonological theory to which I most strongly subscribe, the term "plain"
> means simply "not having secondary articulations" when used to describe a
> sound in a language which has same.  It makes no reference to other languages
> or features to be found therein.

        I am not concerned with phonological theory (and running out of
energy, under the delusion that I am perhaps getting a life).  And if I have
adopted a phonological theory that does not allow negatives, it is news to
me.  "Not having secondary articulations" to my mind means "having normal
coarticulation".  By "normal" is meant what is most energetically efficient,
as in fronting velars to some (variable) extent before front vowels, doing a
bit of anticipatory rounding before round vowels, etc.  (The lips take a
while to get going, which is why u-umlaut in Norse has a longer leftward
range than i-umlaut.)
        But to back up a bit, and hopefully make matters clear, it is best
to consider the case of the labials.  Here, unlike in the case of velars and
dentals, it is clear that the primary place of articulation cannot in any
way be shifted, which simplifies life considerably.   Thus [i]-quality in
such cases can only be realized by putting the tongue in position for [i]
while making the labial in question, and leaving it there long enough for
some effect on adjacent vowels to be perceptible.  (An [i] gesture that was
somehow magically confined to the period the labial closure would not be
perceptible.)  Likewise with [u]-quality, though matters are complicated
somewhat by having to throw in a little extra labial something (in Russian I
have heard it called "lip-protrusion") to make the theoretical lip-rounding
perceptible.  (Otherwise, we would have merely a velarized labial.)  In
languages without secondary articulations, and therefore presumably with
"plain" labials, during the production of these the tongue assumes whatever
position is most convenient for associated (most often following) vowels.
This fact has even been used to develop a theory of how consonantal place is
heard, since the transition from a labial to any vowel is fairly rapid.  (It
is, I think I recall, slowest in the velars.)
    So the question is, in a language with palatalized, labio-velarized, and
"plain" consonants, what would a speaker's tongue be doing as the syllable
/pi/, with "plain /p/", was produced?  It would have to be doing something
other than anticipating [i] in the normal manner, or confusion with
palatalized /p/ would be inevitable.  Putting the tongue in the position for
[a] would result in the clearest contrast.  Or, to put it (yet) another way,
with labials secondary articulations can hardly be realized as anything
other than super-short diphthongs (rising or falling).  Thus /ap'i/ with
palatalized /p/ would have to sound something like [aip] (with super-short
[i]), or the palatalization would not be perceptible.  /ap/ with "plain" /p/
would sound like [ap], and /ip' with palatalized /p/ would sound like [ip].
But /ip/ with "plain /p/ would have to sound something like [iap].  And /pi/
with "plain" /p/ would have to sound something like [pai] (with rising
"diphthong"], otherwise normal anticipation of /i/ would make it sound like
/p'i/.
        I mean, we are deaing with a very small window here, outside of
which vowel-like sounds will inevitably be taken as vowels.  (This process
has happened repeatdly in Irish, where former secondary articulations have
become vowels, and vice versa.)  But the small window means that 1)
confusion is a danger, and 2) very few distinctions can be made.  Beyond a
point, what was meant to be palatalized /p/ before a vowel begins to sound
like /py/, and is likely to be re-analyzed as such, and after a vowel begins
to sound like /-ip/, which again is likely to be re-analyzed as such.  In
order for such systems to be preserved, the times involved have to be short,
and the distinctions made few.
        To sum up, for the labials at least, secondary articulations must be
realized as de facto super-short diphthongs, rising or falling, since no
displacemnt of place is possible.   Where [i]-quality and [u]-quality are
already in use, a third quality, and therefore a third type of diphthong,
would have to use [a].  Anything else, or normal coarticulation such as
occurs in languages without secondary articulations, would be too
confusable, given the severe constraints such systems necessarily operate
under.  It is not as if anything (abstractly conceivable) goes.
Phonological systems must be implemented, after all.  And all phonemes must
to some extent stay out of each other's way, or run the very real risk of
merger.  Even if Old Irish had a three-way contrast, most observers admit
(so it seems) that this was inherently unstable, for the reasons which have
been indicated, and there is no denying that whatever labio-velarized and
"plain" series may have existed merged, seemingly not too long after the
system was created in the first place.  (The fact that Old Irish had "real"
diphthongs surely did not help matters, as it would have reduced the
"window" for moraic consonants even further.)
        Anyway, that's my understanding.  It could be wrong.  The real
question, hopefully a fairly straightforward empirical one, is whether it is
a fact the Caucasian languages have systems with three-way contrasts.
Catford would be the one to go to, I think, but I am too lazy to do more
than give refs:

Catford, J.C.  1972.   "Labialization in Caucasian Languages,  with
Special Reference to Abkhaz"; in Proceedings of the Seventh
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by A. Rigault and     R.
Charbonneau.  Mouton:  the Hague; 679-82.
__________. 1977.  Fundamental Problems in Phonetics.  Indiana
University Press: Bloomington.
__________. 1977.  "Mountain of Tongues:  the Languages of the
Caucasus"; in Annual Review of Anthroplogy 6:  283-314.

        Nothing in the phonetics books I have available here describes any
such thing, and the silence, while not defeaning, is (to my mind)
suspicious, especially given the practical considerations note above, not to
mention the tendency of the exotic and extraordinary to attract notice.  But
I do not have Maddieson's "Patterns of Sounds".  Perhaps it is in there.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr  3 03:54:56 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:54:56 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.225456.0500.>

> At 04:35 PM 3/25/01 -0600, David L. White wrote:

>> My point is that to speak of "plain" consonants existing in such a system
>> is in a sense non-sensical, because "plain" in effect means "as in a
>> language without secondary articulations",

> In this context I would more likely read it as meaning "lacking overt
> co-articulations".

        What does that mean?  Co-articulations and secondary articulations
are in a sense opposites, and of the two it is secondary articulations that
are "overt", in the sense of always being phonemic, with one
interesing-to-bizarre exception (that I know of):  in Bangkok Thai,
velarization is used to signal "threatening voice" (since all things being
equal it makes the speaker sound bigger), but never distinguishes words.
Co-articulations, by contrast, are "covert", being below the threshold of
user-awareness, and are just the result of the phonetic implementation of a
given language on the interface (so to speak, sorry) between that language's
vowels and consonants.
        I hope most of what I would say in response to the rest of this
posting is said in my other response on the same subject.

Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Apr  3 17:17:53 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 19:17:53 +0200
Subject: FYI
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.191753.0200.>

I've uploaded a pair of .doc's (for now) to http://home.planet.nl/~mcv
on pre-Indo-European and pre-Basque phonological and morphological
reconstructions.  Sorry for the cross-post.  Comments welcome.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 02:04:28 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 21:04:28 -0500
Subject: Last Spoken Etruscan
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.210428.0500.>

> Sociolinguistic questions:

> -- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
> language?

        I have read that the Emperor Claudius was one of the last to speak
it, which would put it's death as a spoken language not far from the last
inscriptions, if I am remembering correctly.

Dr. David L. White


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Apr  5 18:55:06 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 19:55:06 +0100
Subject: Etruscan
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.195506.0100.>

> -- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
> language? ....> do any Roman writers mention written
> Etruscan in the form of manuscripts or such?

The emperor Claudius (ruled 41 - 54 AD) wrote a grammar of Etruscan, which
has not survived.   When they finally get round to digging up the Latin wing
of the library in Caesar's father-in-law's palace at Herculaneum, a copy of
it might be found - or at least we can dream of it...

Peter


From sarima at friesen.net  Thu Apr  5 02:57:20 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 19:57:20 -0700
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbd0$c79e35c0$4f2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.195720.0700.>

At 06:57 PM 4/2/01 -0500, you wrote:
>> If "Nueces" isn't shortened from "Rio de las Nueces", might it represent a
>> modified substratal name? ...)

>         It might.  But since pecan trees do, strangely enough, grow that far
>southwest (or almost that far:  I have seen them growing wild out in the
>middle of nowhere west of San Antonio, not too far from the Nueces) I would
>imagine that the name is related to this, especially since pecans are
>water-loving trees, which in a semi-arid environment would (probably) tend
>to grow near rivers.

As indeed they do.  Pecans are characteristic of certain watercourses in Texas.

>   On the other hand, I recall that most of what grows
>along the waterways I am thinking of(which cannot really be called rivers)
>is cypresses.

I think this may be a relatively recent change, due to overgrazing by
cattle.  But even if not, larger rivers often have vegetational zonation,
with different trees growing at different altitudes above the river
bed.  Either way, pecans are found mainly in bottomland.

>   But the Nueces is out of my zone.  (If I ever get out there
>again, I'll keep my eyes open and report back ...)  Considering that pecans
>are sometimes described as being native to "the Mississipi valley", the
>Nueces area might have been the first place Spanish explorers coming up from
>Mexico encountered them.

According to my "Trees of North America" pecans are native from about the
Mississippi westward into eastern Texas.  They exist only as cultivated
trees east of the Mississippi.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 03:09:21 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 22:09:21 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.220921.0500.>

> [DGK]
> Yes, phonetic naturalization of loanwords must be normal, otherwise
> languages which borrow extensively would accumulate hundreds of phonemes.
> My objection was to the claim that */trosy-/ would have evaded the general
> metathesis /sy/ > /ys/ (postulated by Dr. White to explain non-lengthening in
> Epic Greek genitives) because it was perceived as a foreign word,

        That is not what I meant to say.  Since at least some intervocalic
/s/ had been lost by the time of Mycenean, the (posited) change of /sy/ to
/is/ must have been before this, perhaps far back in the pre-Greek period,
whereas the borrowing of /trosia/, or whatever, was presumably (or at least
by hypothesis) later.  Perhaps there is some obscure (to me) evidence which
would rule this out.  If so, I beg to be enlightened.  In any event, my
claim is not that /trosia/ escaped by being foreign, which would indeed be
bizarre, but rather that it escaped by being later.

Dr. David L. White


From PolTexCW at aol.com  Thu Apr  5 04:32:20 2001
From: PolTexCW at aol.com (PolTexCW at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 00:32:20 EDT
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.003220.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/4/1 9:05:26 PM, dlwhite at texas.net writes:

<<  I think it was more than that.  But be that as it may, there could
have been what I call a "rolling assimilation", whereby the earlier
assmilees aid in assimilating the later assimilees.  For example, in America
a great many Germans have wound up "Anglicizing" (or Americanizing) more
recent immigrants.  (This is especially true in parts of Texas, where once
upon a time the predominant white population was German.  It used to be
assumed in San Antonio that anyone who was not a Mexican was a German.  Yes,
to some extent the Mexican were there first, but their assimilation, which
is what is relevant, was often later.  But I digress.) >>

This is raises an interesting point, albeit inadvertently, which is, I
believe,  quite relevant to any discussion of population movements in
antiquity.  That is, before the Mexican government solicited German and
American colonization in Texas there were few Mexicans in Texas outside of
San Antonio and a few other outposts. These colonies were encouraged because
while the Mexican government was nominally in control of the territory it was
in fact controlled - and populated  -  by the Comanche, Apache, Tonkawa and
other tribes, who - especially the Comanche - raided as far south as
Guatamala.  The colonies were desired as a buffer against these raids in the
hopes that they would allow the peaceful development of northern Mexico.  The
many toponyms in Texas of Spanish origin reflect not a widespread Mexican
population of the area but rather the works of the most punctilious Spanish
bureaucracy which the Mexican government inherited and which were handed down
to the government of Texas and later the United States in the form of maps,
land grants and other writings. There are relatively few toponyms of Indian
origin because the Comanche did not have a Department of Geographic Survey.
That is, the toponyms do not reflect either ethnographic or linguistic
dominance but rather bureaucratic efficiency.

Although this all occurred within the last two centuries and a plethora of
primary and secondary sources is readily available to substantiate these
matters, it is widely  assumed, even among historians who should know better,
that  Texas was "Mexican" - before the "Anglo" "Conquest", in the sense that
it was widely populated by bearers of "Mexican" culture and language. The
introduction of the significant component of the population of Texas of
Mexican origin was only made possible by the American, German, Polish and
other colonists which eliminated the threat of Indian depredations.

This should, perhaps, suggest a caveat when assigning ethnographic dominance
to a region, removed from us by two millennia, on the basis of received
toponymy.

John Biskupski


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Thu Apr  5 10:24:32 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 06:24:32 -0400
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbd0$c79e35c0$4f2863d1@texas.net>; from
 dlwhite@texas.net on Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 06:57:46PM -0500
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.062432.0400.>

On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 06:57:46PM -0500, David L. White wrote:
	. . .
>         Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of
> this aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
> generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
> understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become
> effectively depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.
> (Nothing fails like success:  the Romans created so many subtypes of
> themselves that they exterminated the main branch, with a little help from
> malarial swamps.)

The really bad depopulation of Rome was during the reconquest of Italy
by Belisarius, but the vernacular at this time should probably
still be called a late form of Vulgar Latin.

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From philjennings at juno.com  Thu Apr  5 22:23:56 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 17:23:56 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.172356.0500.>

I divide the claims in my former email on this topic into attested data,
hypotheses, and plausibilities.

Under attested data, I place everything from the Annals of Mursilis II,
minus the absolute identification of the Ahhiyawa with the Achaeans,
Millawanda with Miletos, and Apasas with Ephesus (implicit).  Also
included as attested data are the occupation of Lemnos by Pelasgians and
Tyrsennoi, with other Tyrsennoi settlements as noted by Herodotus and in
Etruria.

Hittite limitations at sea are also attested, as was Achaean dominance of
the Aegean and the Ionian seas during this period.

The Mycenaean trade route up the Adriatic may fall slightly short of the
best standards of attested data, but Baltic amber got to Greece somehow,
and this route is shown in McEverdy.

The identification of Uhhazitis's island retreat with Lemnos is sheer
hypothesis.  Islands closer to Arzawa are possible, but perhaps the
Achaeans already saw them as their own property, plus there were dangers
to proximity.  The extrapolation of 200,000 displaced persons captured by
Mursilis II during the Arzawa campaign is an hypothesis.  A Pelasgian
reworking of the proto-Etruscan name, prior to passing that reworked name
on to other languages, is an hypothesis.  The ta-prefix part of that
hypothesis is an absolute stab in the dark.  An implicit hypothesis is
that the first proto-Etruscans in Italy were at home on the eastward,
Adriatic side, and only gradually drew westward into classical Etruria.
Classic Etruria is beyond the point where the Mycenaeans could have done
much to help or benefit from the planting of a new nation, but that
depends on the status of the Italian island polities already in evidence
to the south; were they allies, colonies, rivals, or what?  There may
also
have been shorter-lived proto-Etruscan plantings on the north and east
shores of the Adriatic.

A continuation of the Arzawa-Hittite struggle by other means, once the
troops of Arzawa were repeatedly defeated, is a plausibility.  The
movement of escapees=refugees to Uhhazitis's island retreat is a
plausibility.  The overloading of the island retreat is a plausibility.
The deference to Mycenaean preferences in the location of further
settlements is a plausibility.  The superiority of refugees with a
national consciousness and traditions, to natives unfamiliar with these
ideas, is a plausibility.  The date-range of 1330-1180bce as optimal for
a
Tyrrhenian migration is a plausibility.  The stacking of so many
plausibilities on top of each other, reduces the chance of them all being
true to something less than a plausibility, and hence an hypothesis.

---

As if I haven't done enough along these lines: I wonder if the displacees
of Sudura, mentioned in the Annals, were from the city later known as
Sardis?  They may also have been the Sherdana associated with the Tursha
in their attack on Egypt.  If the Hittites under Mursilis II claimed
Sardis as a satellite polity, this would be intolerable to the Arzawans.
Look how close Sardis is to Ephesus, and how far from Hattusas.  It
becomes obvious that Mursilis II's program of "imperial recovery" is an
aggressive war of imperial expansion.  Sadly, I'm not in a position to
associate Attarimma with any entry from the Egyptian enemies list, nor to
identify the "cities" of Hu(wa)rsanassa and Attarimma with known later
classical sites.

However, the Sudura / Sardis / Sherdana hypothesis has a consequence in
case many Sherdana did go as some speculate to settle in Sardinia,
bringing high eastern technology, warlike defensive construction, and a
non-IE language.  If Sardinia was near enough for the Sudura to go there,
classical west-coast Etruria wouldn't have been too far for the
Tyrsennoi, and I need not assume a timid east-coast proto-Etruria.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sat Apr  7 23:44:43 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 23:44:43 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <SAT.7.APR.2001.234443.0000.>

David L. White (2 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Yes, but the Etruscans who slowly allowed themselves to be assimilated to the
>Romans were the bearers of an ancient high culture, quite respected (at one
>time).  Presumably any pre-Etruscan native population was not.

So your North Aegean Proto-Etruscan (NAPE) civilization was respected and
ancient, but below it is fairly small and heavily genericized. Now at least
we know what to look for in the North Aegean: a civilization small but
respected (like a wolverine?) and ancient but generic (like plain yogurt?).

>Well, I now have the unique(?) honor of having been accused both of
>being a migrationist and of being an anti-migrationist.  (Perhaps I am
>somewhere in the middle?)

Sorry about that. We nativists sometimes resort to crude stereotypes.

>  By "North Aegean" I intended a cover term
>embracing Thrace/Chalcide/Lemnos, in keeping with the accounts of the
>geographers which, using an ethnonym I forget and am too lazy to look up,
>seem to indicate a southward drift along those general lines.  I was hoping
>someone wise in the ways of the archeology of Thrace, which would be what is
>called for, might have something to say on this.  But a fairly small and
>heavily genericized (for lack of a better word) East Mediterranean culture
>might not leave much of a signature.

Then one wonders why this culture left such a prominent signature in such a
large part of Italy. How can any culture be so successful as a colonial
power, and such a nondescript failure at home?

>That Etruscan names were often taken up by non-Etruscan people is shown in a
>recent posting, where a word meaning "Etruscan" is used as part of an
>Etruscan-style name among people evidently not Etruscan, or there would have
>been little point in using such a name.

The example of Mamurke Tursikina comes from Clusium, in a peripheral zone
where we already know that both Umbrian and Etruscan were spoken. Someone
wealthy enough to hand out custom-made golden objects doesn't belong to the
lower class anyway.

>So I don't see that there is any contradiction here.  It is perfectly
>possible, even to be expected, that lower class Etruscans even if
>"originally" of different ethnicity, would have used Etruscan names, on
>funerary monuments as elsewhere, regardless of whether they might have been
>bilingual in Etruscan and some other language, or largely descended from
>folk who had been.

I should probably concede this point. Inscriptions prove that a particular
language _was_ used, not that others were _not_ used. It is conceivable that
non-Etruscan languages were still spoken in central Etruria, but not written
because no writing convention had been established for them. One could cite
the example of Native American cemeteries in the USA and Canada. The
exclusive use of written English doesn't mean the indigenous speech wasn't
or isn't extant.

If this is a valid parallel, one would expect a few non-Etruscan,
non-Italic, non-Greek proper names in the corpus, just as Native Americans
sometimes use Anglicized indigenous surnames. The problem is identifying
such names with our woefully incomplete knowledge of Etruscan vocabulary.
Many English surnames like "Holt" are based on obsolete words. Etruscan
gentilicia containing unrecognizable roots could be purely Etruscan, or for
all we know pre-Etruscan.

In any case, since it's _your_ theory of mysterious North Aegeans bringing
language and High Culture to Etruria, it's up to _you_ to find the
linguistic evidence. It's not up to me (or the rest of the nativist crowd)
to argue with hypothetical positions or unpresented data.

>Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of this
>aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
>generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
>understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become effectively
>depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.

Ever played "Telephone"? The notion that standard (Roman-Latian) Italian
comes from Tuscan sounds like the result of cumulative distortion through
successive oral transmission. If memory serves, Dante chose to compose
poetry in the Tuscan dialect (with the addition of some forms from northern
dialects) because the heavy stress and distinct stress-timing allowed
phonetic parallelism on the basis of polysyllabic homoioteleuton, or
"rhyming". Dante has been called "the father of Italian poetry" which is
subjective but not really "wrong", and also "the father of modern Italian"
which is nonsense. Not even Bill Clinton could "father" a language. Some
cavalier statement like that probably got mixed in with the facts about
Dante's writing.

Roman inhabitants may have dropped to a few thousands at times, but it is
unlikely that similar depopulation occurred throughout Latium, or that the
modern standard dialect was based on importation. This dialect is strongly
trochaic, as was Roman Latin on the basis of the meters preferred in
comedies and jingles (e.g. in Suet. Jul. 51). It is irrelevant here that
Plautus and Terence were not native Latin-speakers; they were writing for
Roman audiences, and if trochaic rhythm had sounded unnatural to Romans, the
plays would have failed.

DGK


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Mon Apr  9 02:55:08 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 02:55:08 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.025508.0000.>

philjennings at juno.com (30 Mar 2001) wrote:

>We can only speculate regarding the work that the Hursanassans, the
>Surudans, and the Attarimmans were made to do in captivity, but all these
>200,000 people must have been aware that some fraction of their number
>were still free on an Aegean island or islands.  Whether the vaunted
>freedom of this remnant galled the Hittites or not, there was nothing they
>could do about it.  Even when they forged occasional alliances with the
>Achaeans over the next 150 years (before the fall of Troy), the Achaeans
>lost nothing by maintaining their island relationship.  This is probably
>more true as they had not discommoded themselves in the first place by
>giving King Uhhazitis one of their own islands, but rather settled the
>Arzawan refugees on a Pelasgian island, such as Lemnos.  (The Pelasgians
>were too weak to protest at being forced to share.)

One of the problems with this picture is that classical sources don't place
Pelasgians on Lemnos at such an early date. In Homer, the inhabitants of
Lemnos are Sinties, and the epithet <agriopho:nous> (acc. pl.) tells us only
that their phonology was non-Greek, not necessarily non-IE. Strabo asserts
that the Sinties were Thracians. Pausanias says that the Pelasgians took
Lemnos from the Minyae, who were aristocratic refugees from revolution in
Boeotia. Neither group likely held the island more than a few decades, and
the Tyrrhenians had presumably already fled from Lemnos to Chalcidice
(perhaps driven out by the Minyae).

>A mixed group of refugees; Hursanassans, Surudans, Attarimmans, Arzawan
>royals, et cetera, living on part of an island like Lemnos, would not
>necessarily have imposed a group-name on themselves; but the Pelasgians,
>their neighbors, would have done so, ignoring precise distinctions.
>Pelasgians spoke an "Anatolian" language.  They would have recognized
>"-assos" as a geopolitical suffix, and dropped its inappropriate use,
>therefore the Hursanassans would have become Hursana(pl) or 'Rsana(pl).

What does your <'> signify? A glottal stop? A pharyngeal fricative? What
business do you have citing phonological and morphological changes in
Pelasgian? Can you give other examples of Pelasgian dropping initial
syllables and back-forming ethnonyms by removing suffixes?

Pelasgian loanwords are found from Persian to Sabine, and toponyms reached
up the Danube. The language (or family) was not restricted to Anatolia. It
was certainly not "Anatolian IE", so no particular affinity to Hittite et
al. should be assumed. Whether Pelasgian should be considered a branch of IE
at all is debatable. IMHO Pelasgian is non-IE, but probably related at the
super-family level. A possible cognate pair is Psg. *wrod- 'rose' ~ PIE
*H1reudh- 'red'.

>If the dominant language among the refugees was distinctive and
>incomprehensible, as it surely was, those who spoke as the Hursana did
>might have been called the "ta-'rsana(pl)."  The Greeks also needed a
>group name for these people, and might have turned "ta-'rsana(pl)" into
>"Tyrsennoi."  With time, the refugees themselves would have acceded to the
>need for a single name, minus the Pelasgian prefix: and pronounced their
>own way: eventually Ras'na.

What examples do you have of Greek turning /a-'/ (whatever that means) into
/u/? Why wouldn't it become the long vowel /a:/ or perhaps a long diphthong?

>Against this whole "Etruscan origins" story and all its props and
>gimmicks, lies the fact that no proto-Etruscan-like language has been
>preserved in the extensive Hittite archives, which generously cite
>diplomatic and liturgical passages in Hattic, Palaic, Luwian, Akkadian,
>and Hurrian.  However, as far as I know, the Hittites also ignored Achaean
>Greek, Minoan, and the Northwest Semite language of Canaan, and even
>Egyptian.

Lack of attested Proto-Etruscan isn't the trouble with your story. The
trouble is the bizarre maze of contortions which your ethnonyms must
navigate. Given sufficient ingenuity, a linguistic fabulist could snake the
sequence T-R-S or R-S-N from any part of the world into Etruria. That isn't
the point of doing historical linguistics.

DGK


From sarima at friesen.net  Thu Apr  5 02:47:06 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 19:47:06 -0700
Subject: Hittite and H4
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.194706.0700.>

At 02:46 PM 4/2/01 -0500, David L. White wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>         Dialect mixture is when words in one dialect have the form that is
>proper to another.  All or just about all dialects have it to some extent.

This brings up an issue I wonder about.

Outside of Anatolian, what evidence is there for a distinction between *H2
and *H4 in PIE?

Is it possible that the variation in the presence of an 'h' in Anatolian is
the result of extensive dialect mixture?

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu Apr  5 03:02:33 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 23:02:33 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.230233.0400.>

David L. White:

> I cannot
> off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
> problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
> spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
> pronounced as in another.  A great deal of dialect mixture went into the
> formation of the London Standard.  A possible example (I don't know, someone
> else out there probably does) might be things like "bead" versus "head",
> where some words are spelled as if they have long vowels when in fact the
> vowels have been shortened, or,  to put it from the other perspective, not
> all vowels that might be expected to have been shortened actually have
been.

One historical example I can think of.  In general, the prestige dialect of
southern British English has /af/ >/Af/, so that 'laugh' /laf/ became /lAf/
within relatively recent time.  However, even speakers of this dialect say
(or used to say) "telegraph" rather than "telegroph," because the word for
that particular invention was created in an area that lacked this change,
and exported to Britain, after the sound change was well on its way to being
fixed.  Of course, English spellings nowhere indicate that this change has
taken place, and its course was in fact relatively irregular; it gives rise
to more inconsistencies in English spelling in Britain than in the United
States.

--
Omnis castra vestra nobis esse.


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Thu Apr  5 10:10:45 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 06:10:45 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>; from
 dlwhite@texas.net on Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 02:46:29PM -0500
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.061045.0400.>

On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 02:46:29PM -0500, David L. White wrote:
	. . .
> dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)   I cannot
> off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
> problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
> spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
> pronounced as in another.  A great deal of dialect mixture went into the

One example would be pronunciation of the word "one" that has been
borrowed from a southern dialect (I forget which one) in which the
Middle English long "a" became [w@].

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu  Thu Apr  5 20:27:48 2001
From: tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Thomas McFadden)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 16:27:48 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.162748.0400.>

A standard example of dialect mixture in English is the short list of
words with initial v proper to southern dialects instead of the f
expected in the standard language, e.g. vixen (cf. fox) and
vat (cf. NHG fass).  Of course in these examples both spelling and
pronunciation are from the same dialect, so they don't cause the
orthographical complications you're talking about, but one could imagine a
similar situation where the standard language would keep one spelling
while taking over a different pronunciation.  Something like this
apparently happened with 'colonel', but here we aren't talking about forms
from different dialects of English, rather borrowings from different
romance dialects (or so I've heard).

>         Dialect mixture is when words in one dialect have the form that is
> proper to another.  All or just about all dialects have it to some extent.
> Italian, for example, has some cases of intervocalic voicing, though ths is
> not in general characteristic of (Standard) Italian.  (It occurs in the
> dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)   I cannot
> off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
> problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
> spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
> pronounced as in another.


From Tradux at cherry.com.au  Mon Apr  9 08:30:35 2001
From: Tradux at cherry.com.au (Chester Graham)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 18:30:35 +1000
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.183035.1000.>

>Italian, for example, has some cases of intervocalic voicing, though ths is
>not in general characteristic of (Standard) Italian. (It occurs in the
>dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)  I cannot
>off the top of my head think of any examples from English

  Would an example from English be the voicing of intervocalic /t/, in the
speech of many in the US, in words such as "butter"; as against the
voiceless /t/ in the speech of many in the UK?

  Sincerely
Chester Graham


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Thu Apr  5 10:15:50 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 06:15:50 -0400
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
In-Reply-To: <73.c5f5a3d.27fa34d4@aol.com>; from X99Lynx@aol.com on Mon,
 Apr 02, 2001 at 04:02:28PM -0400
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.061550.0400.>

On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 04:02:28PM -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
	. . .
> Peter might possibly just been called Peter, as Petra may have already become
> part of the Aramaic language, and this would appear consistent with the
> naming practices in the NT, even nicknames, not being translated.

Maybe, but we also see "Cephas" in the NT. For example:

    John 1:42, ... thou shalt be called Cephas, ...
    Corinthians 1:12 ... and I of Cephas; ...

etc.

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From douglas at nb.net  Thu Apr  5 04:49:14 2001
From: douglas at nb.net (Douglas G. Wilson)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 00:49:14 -0400
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <21119152.3195282623@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.004914.0400.>

>>... does Baeda equate to any modern name?

Yes, Bede, although it's not very common. Search the Web for "Bede Smith"
or "Bede Johnson" or "Bede Brown" or "Bede Karl Lackner" [a historian] or ....

Of course some of these "Bede"s may not be actually the same name as the
venerable one. But ...

I think the expression "Saint Bede" will tend to protect the name Bede from
extinction. Probably there is a St. Bede's day (even if unofficial), with
some persons named Bede born thereon? There are St. Bede's colleges in
India, Australia, New Zealand. San Beda College in the Philippines
celebrates its centennial this year. Surely a few proud alumni have named
sons "Bede" or some variant thereof?

The male name Bede appears in some of the "names for your baby" books, with
its old etymology and connection. Surely somebody selected it?

The name also exists as a surname, apparently traceable back to the Old
English given name -- apparently usually spelled "Beed" or "Beade" in
modern times.

-- Doug Wilson


From bmscott at stratos.net  Thu Apr  5 15:43:49 2001
From: bmscott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 11:43:49 -0400
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <21119152.3195282623@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.114349.0400.>

On Thursday, March 29, 2001 9:13 am -0800 Gordon Brown
<gordonbr at microsoft.com> wrote:

> DGK's posting reminds me of a question I've had for quite a while.
> In an article about Bede (Baeda), I saw a bibliographic reference
> that implied that the name Baeda might be somehow related to the
> name Peter. Is this possible?  In any case, does Baeda equate to
> any modern name?

Hilver Stro"m, _Old English Personal Names in Bede's History_
(Lund, 1939), says that the name occurs 'rather often' in OE, and not
just in reference to the famous historian.  The most common form
appears to be <Beda>.  He cautiously says that <Be:d-> is

    supposed to be connected with OE be:odan 'to bid, command'
    (pret. be:ad < *baud-) and to be formed by means of an i-suffix,
    the theme being *baudi-.

There is an OE name <Bedca> that also appears to contain the stem.
On this view the name would be related to Cont. Gmc. <Baudo> and
the like.  Ekwall apparently once suggested that the OE name might
instead be from Celtic *boudi- (cf. Gaul. <Baudius>, <Boudius> and
the well-known British <Bodicca>), which seems to figure in some
British place-names.  A connection with <Peter> seems improbable
on any account, and I don't think that there's a modern form.

Brian M. Scott


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Thu Apr  5 04:14:00 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 04:14:00 -0000
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.041400.0000.>

Steve Long (1 Apr 2001) wrote:

>"Saponification is... accomplished through reaction of a fat or fatty acid
>with an alkali.... soap was not invented for purposes of personal hygiene.
>Rather, it was invented early on to solve a problem with textiles: wool as it
>comes from the sheep is coated with a layer of grease that interferes with the
>application of dyes..."

>Basic early soap is a mixture of fats and alkali such as potash or lye.  "A
>soap-like material found in clay cylinders during the excavation of ancient
>Babylon is evidence that soapmaking was known as early as 2800 B.C.
>Inscriptions on the cylinders say that fats were boiled with ashes, which is a
>method of making soap,... Such materials were later used as hair styling
>aids." (All this is from the Kirk-Othmer Encycl of Chem. Technology or soap
>history sites on the web.)

These are important points. To properly etymologize "soap", it's necessary
to know what early "soap" was.

>In Latin, pertinent is <sebum /sevum>, tallow, suet, grease; <sebosus>, full
>of tallow or grease, tallowy, greasy, as both refer to the fatty ingredient of
>soap, although I am not sure when these words are first attested (Sebosus, a
>Roman surname, is mentioned by Cicero.)

The attested Latin forms are <se:bum>, <se:vum>, and <saevum>. The b/v
alternation suggests competing p-Italic and q-Italic forms derived from PIE
*gw (cf. Osc. <kumbened> = Lat. <convenit>). If so, the native Latin form is
probably <saevum>, with <se:bum> from Sabine (cf. Sab. <fe:dus> = Lat.
<haedus>) and <se:vum> a mixed form. The PIE root would be *saigw-.

"Soap" is from OE <sa:pe>, and the OHG cognate <seifa> points to a PGmc root
*saip-. Watkins considers this a variant of PGmc *sib- 'to pour out, sieve,
drip, trickle' to which he refers "sieve", OE <sife>. He regards Lat.
<se:bum> as "of obscure origin". OTOH Whitehall refers both "soap" and
<se:bum> to PIE *seib- 'to trickle, run out'.

In my opinion Watkins's arbitrary lumping of PGmc *sib-, *sip-, and *saip-
is unjustified and makes as little sense etymologically as it does
phonetically. Whitehall's *seib- doesn't yield the correct vowels; one would
expect OE *si:pe (or *sipe from zero-grade) and Lat. *si:bum (or *sibum).
Neither etymologist addresses <saevum/se:vum>.

The most plausible scenario has PIE *saigw- 'tallow, fat, grease, etc.'
undergoing "pre-Germanic" labialization to *saibw-, yielding PGmc *saip-. If
the pre-Germans learned the technology of soaking wool or hides in an
ash-tallow preparation from PIE-speakers, they might have borrowed the word
in this technical sense, and there is no need to force an etymology on the
basis of "trickling, dripping, resin, etc."

The alternative is (pre-)PIE oscillation of *bw/gw in parallel with the more
common labialized phonemes, but I confess I can't fully follow most of the
recent postings on the "*gwh in Gmc." thread. Things became horribly
complicated when three-way instabilities were introduced.

>In none of all this as far as I know is a "sieve" involved, the word
>referring to quite different processes, with no apparent relationship to
>soap.

Agreed. I see no basis for connecting "soap" with "sieve". The latter is
IMHO most plausibly referred to a pre-Germanic borrowing from a PIE noun
based on the zero-grade of *seikw- 'to filter, dry out'. Pre-Gmc.
labialization produced *sipw-, yielding PGmc *sif-. Meanwhile *seikw- itself
became PGmc *si:hw-, attested in OHG <si:han> 'to filter'.

DGK


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Apr  5 18:56:18 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 19:56:18 +0100
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.195618.0100.>

> Has anyone on this list studied the works of Saul Levin, "The Indo-European
> and Semitic Languages?"

Yes.

> He made many astute observations.

I agree that he made many observations.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun Apr  8 04:42:00 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 23:42:00 -0500
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <SAT.7.APR.2001.234200.0500.>

Dear Ernest and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Ernest P. Moyer" <epmoyer at netrax.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 4:23 AM

> I have a question:

> Has anyone on this list studied the works of Saul Levin, "The Indo-European
> and Semitic Languages?"  And so on.

> He made many astute observations.

> "The phonetic and morphological resemblances of H to G(reek) or S(anskrit)
> make H an aberrant Semitic language."

> "Knowing all too well the fascination that pre-history holds out to us, I
> have hitherto declined to draw from the correspondences between H and G and S
> any genetic inferences beyond the inescapable one that such correspondences
> could not have originated independently and without contact."

> In speaking of the remoteness of Arabic from IE connections, he remarks:

> "Arabic therefore affords little basis for a convincing comparison with the
> IE languages."

> And so on.

[PR]
Well, I have just completed another 30 pages or so of comments on Bomhard's
Nostratic dictionary at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/NostraticDictionary.htm

that show clearly that Arabic consonantal roots and IE roots can be
systematically related through regular correspondences.

Perhaps Levin should read that.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Apr  5 05:23:57 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 01:23:57 EDT
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.012357.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/4/01 11:19:52 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
mclasutt at brigham.net writes:

> In this environment, I think it's more of a question of conquerors'
> attitudes, technological superiority, and speed of conquest, than of any
> population density issue.

-- in the European conquest of the Western Hemisphere, epidemological factors
were dominant.  I very much doubt the advent of a new population group was
ever accompanied by a centuries-long population decline of the magnitude we
saw in the post-Columbian Americas.

Population density did matter in most of the Spanish Empire; note the number
of Nahuatl words in Mexican Spanish, as compared to the relative absence of
loan-words in, say, Argentina.


From bronto at pobox.com  Thu Apr  5 14:36:44 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 07:36:44 -0700
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.073644.0700.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:
> . . . Unless there is proof to the contrary, I'd say that Waco
> is Tejano Spanish <hueco> "spring that pools up from the ground"
> < standard Spanish "hole". There are plenty of names such as the
> redundant "Hueco Tanks". . . .

For whatever it's worth, George R Stewart <Concise Dictionary of American
Place-names> says

	HUECO  In American-Spanish it generally
	has the meaning `water hole, boggy
	place'; so HUECO, New Mexico.  In HUECO
	MOUNTAINS, Texas, it means `notched.'

	WACO  In Texas it is from the Indian
	tribal name, often spelled Hueco.  In
	the Southeast it arises from the Muskogean
	`heron'.
--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From douglas at nb.net  Thu Apr  5 06:07:12 2001
From: douglas at nb.net (Douglas G. Wilson)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 02:07:12 -0400
Subject: "Colorado"
In-Reply-To: <000901c0bbd9$6c630560$0b6763d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.020712.0400.>

>         I had always thought ... that "colorado" was cognate with
> "colored", and meant the same.

Of course it is (sort of), and it does (sort of). But of course Spanish
"colorado" = Latin "coloratus", which meant both "having color" and "having
red(dish)/brown(ish) color" in classical Latin, more or less as "colorado"
means both "having color" and "having red(dish) color" in modern Spanish,
within my limited understanding.

Why? Some linguist knows, but I don't. One possibility: "color" (unlike,
say, "tint", I think) has the sense of "skin color". E.g., Spanish "ponerse
colorado" = "to blush", English "to color" = "to blush", Latin "colorem
mutare" = "to blush" [according to the Perseus dictionary], Latin
"coloratus" = "tanned"/"having a healthy skin color" [as opposed to pallor,
I guess], English "color" = "ruddy complexion" [Random House], Spanish
"coloradote" = "ruddy" [complexion], French "coloré" = "ruddy"
[complexion], etc.

-- Doug Wilson


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Apr  5 02:23:42 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 21:23:42 -0500
Subject: "Colorado"
In-Reply-To: <000901c0bbd9$6c630560$0b6763d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.212342.0500.>

Colorado for "red" is universal in Spanish. You're right that in Austin, it
is a greenish color but, as I remember it is kind of ruddy-looking. It's
now "tamed" by dams, which may have caused it to change color by lessening
the amount of sediment BUT I don't pretend to be a geolist or hydrologist :>

>        I had always thought, knowing next to nothing of Spanish, that
>"colorado" was cognate with "colored", and meant the same.  Perhaps the
>meaning 'red' is recent?  Certainly the Colorado, if it is anything, is
>green, not red, though the Llano, a tributary, might perhaps be said to be
>pink due to granitic sand.  The general rule, from my observations, is that
>the Colorado and rivers SW of it are green (or if small enough clear) while
>the Brazos and rivers NE of it are muddy brown.  No red rivers around here,
>that I have seen ...

>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 15:34:58 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 10:34:58 -0500
Subject: Indian Names
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.103458.0500.>

> I've seen it written that Waco comes from a Native American
> language BUT I've seen the same thing said about patently Spanish names
> such as Pedernales. Unless there is proof to the contrary, I'd say that
> Waco is Tejano Spanish <hueco> "spring that pools up from the ground" <
> standard Spanish "hole".

        But are there any springs at Waco?  Not that I ever heard, though
probably there is a minor one or two, just enough to make this derivation
plausible.  The original meaning is supposed to have been something like
"meeting place" in Tonkawa, and upon examination I find that /wa-/ in
Tonkawa is an element meaning 'place' in some correlatives.  That would
mean, if there is any connection, that the English pronunciation would have
to be from spelling (unattested "Huaco" Anglicized as "Waco", then mangled),
but stranger things have happened.

> OTOH Spanish speakers in Texas generally assume that Texas
> is from Spanish <tejas> "tiles" because of the red soil but locally, it's
> said that it from the name of a local Native American confederacy meaning
> "friends".

        Red soil is not to my knowledge especially common in Texas.  The
only places I have seen it are very locally at Bastrop, where it is probably
related somehow the occurrence of the "lost" pines that grow in it, some
places in East Texas, and up around the Red River (and in Oklahoma).
Otherwise, one may find black soil, brown soil, white soil (often in East
Texas, where it is basically fine sand), more or less permanent mud, no soil
(but plenty of rocks)....
        The non-Spanish word /texas/ is supposed to be from a Caddo word
generally glossed as meaning  'friends', but perhaps meaning more what we
would call "allies", Latin "socios".   As far as I know, this etymology is
not considered controversial.
        Speaking of the Caddos, I cannot resist telling the tale of how
Europeans (I think Spanish) were amazed at how they could weep at will as
part of their greeting ritual.  In this connection, it is interesting that
the Norse cognate of English "greet" means 'weep', so perhaps somethig of
the sort was practiced among the ancient Germans.  And perhaps it is fairly
common.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 14:59:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 09:59:55 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.095955.0500.>

        Do the Munda languages have retroflex consonants?  That would surely
be convenient.
        A possible problem with all this is that when non-IE loan-words
start showing up in Sanskrit, they are (as far as I know) Dravidian.  My
impression is that, if there are Munda loan-words, they are few and far
between.
    Speaking of such matters, is there any convincing scenario for how the
retroflex series became phonemic in Sanksrit from internal causes alone?

Dr. David L. White


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Apr  6 20:49:15 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 15:49:15 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <FRI.6.APR.2001.154915.0500.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 2:41 AM
Subject: Re: Munda in Early NW India

<snip>

> The only
> reasonable solution that I see is that PIE had no voiced consonants at
> all (as indeed suggested by two of the most archaic members Hittite
> and Tocharian). That would make *dh [th], and *d [t] (or,
> equivalently, *dh = [t] and *d = [t']: in a binary opposition, the
> unaspirated member can become polarized to ejective or the
> non-ejective member can become polarized to aspirated).  If so, then
> *t must have been [tt] (and in Hittite is indeed spelled that way
> medially), a fortis (geminate) stop, unaspirated and unglottalized.
> The replacement of fortis/lenis by voiceless/voiced would have
> resulted in an unstable system *t = [t], *dh = [d:] (murmured) and *d
> = [`d] (preglottalized).  If, at the time, the clusters of
> stop+laryngeal were already acquiring phonemic status (as in the
> Indo-Iranian area), a four way system as found in Sanskrit could
> become possible: [t(')] ~ [th] / [(')d] ~ [dh].  The three other
> alternatives would be (1) to lose the distinction between murmured and
> preglottalized in the voiced series (resulting in [t] ~ [d]), as in
> the case of Balto-Slavic (although *d causes lengthening of the
> preceding vowel, and *dh doesn't); (2) fortition of the aspirated
> member, resulting in Greek/pre-Italic *t => [t], *dh => [th], *d =>
> [d]; and (3) fortition of the unaspirated member, resulting in
> Armenian/pre-Germanic *t => [th], *dh => [d], *d => [t(')].

[PR]
An alternative view might be that (agreeing with Miguel), Nostratic had only
voiceless obstruents but that they patterned as glottalized stop (*b),
aspirated stop (*p), glottalized affricate (*bh), aspirated affricate (*ph) -
typologically, few problems that I can see.

In view of the affricates in many derived IE languages, I am amazed that IEists
seem so unwilling to entertain the idea of affricates as a part of the earliest
system.

It seems to me that the fricative element of the affricates has become [h] so
that the distinction could be maintained in the glottalized series but was lost
in the aspirated series.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Apr  5 17:23:48 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 13:23:48 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.132348.EDT.>

Just to give philjennings at juno.com the benefit of hearing the other side of
the Chamber:

In a message dated 4/5/2001 2:39:22 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<<[Renfrew] never did explain why the extant Anatolian IE languages all look
intrusive.>>

Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....

In a message dated 4/5/2001 1:05:27 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<< It's highly probable that pre-Indo-European Europe had a linguistic
situation much like New Guinea or pre-Columbian North America, with hundreds of
distinct language families and many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of distinct
languages covering very small areas. >>

... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.  Every
one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.  Like Minoan, Pre-Pie
would be indigenous.  But, unlike Minoan, Pre-PIE would yield a great many
ancestors.

Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?

<<Not to mention the fact that Renfrew never seems to have grasped the concept
of degrees of interrelatedness. (Eg., the fact that Greek is much closer to
Indo-Iranian than to the Anatolian group.)>>

Those of us who think that Renfrew might basically be right would note that
in Ringe's phylogentic analysis, the Anatolian languages appear to be the
first branch off from *PIE.  This means that either the rest of *PIE (pre
German, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Celtic,...) left the Anatolians (i.e., in
Anatolia) OR the Anatolians left the rest of *PIE.  It's either one or the
other, but I've yet to hear the reason it has to be one and not the other.

As to the "degree of interrelatedness", the quantifiability of relatedness
has been discussed here before.  I am not aware of any system for achieving
quantifiable "degrees" that has found any consensus.  Ringe's IE tree, based
on a slim list of innovations, separates IE languages based on "degree" of
divergence from a reconstructed PIE.  Anatolian, by that measure, is first in
difference from all the rest of *PIE related languages.  And it is found in
Anatolia.  So,...

<<In fact, Renfrew's basic problem in the context of IE origins was that he was
trying to solve a "problem" that didn't exist,...>>

The problem that Renfrew originally addressed in L&A was the problem of the
2500BC date for the splitting-up of PIE being put forth at the time based on
out-of-date archaeology.  That date was not mainly based -- at that time --
on linguistic notions of degree of separations between languages.  It was
based on old perceptions of who was IE in the archaeological evidence.  The
problem was basically archaeological.

<<The primary "technology" involved was probably in the "software", the
cultural framework itself -- including the language -- rather than in the
stones-and-bones stuff; and hence invisible from the archaeological
perspective.>>

And, of course, without bones-and-stones, we would Linear B or Hittite would
also be invisible.  Nor would we have any notion of early horses and wheels
and chariots and all the other indicia that paleolinguistics uses to connect
language with prehistoric peoples and places.

A little background.  Those of us who think that language primarily spreads
ideas and know-how find in that a reason for people to start speaking a new
language, like English on the internet.  Speaking a common language is the
fastest way to exchange ideas and information and technical know-how and
carry on a mutually beneficial trade between people who once did not speak
the same language.

There's more and more evidence that the vast majority of Europeans at least
are descended from pre-mesolithic populations.  (I would bet that in Anatolia
we would find something similar.)  This would mean that most IE speakers in
Europe are descended from people who were there before IE arrived.  In terms
of economics and technology, by far the number one influx of ideas came later
with the Neolithic Revolution with its origins in Anatolia and the Near East.
 The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in innovation
in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical range, and the
archaeological dates are now indicating that it was the steppes that may have
gotten the headbanging.

On the basis of all that, Renfrew's BASIC idea would seem to be as valid as
any other.

<<One can see why archaeologists hate this; it means that their carefully
catalogued sequences of _in situ_ development may be meaningless, in terms of
things like language and ethnicity...>>

Most archaeologists don't give a darn.  They are media darlings and
fund-raising wunderkinds and with one stroke can rewrite history with
something like the Black Sea flood or L'Aux d'Meadows.  Renfrew should be
given some credit for attempting archaeological and linguistic conciliation,
even though the idea has not always been particularly welcome on either side.

<<Cultural factors are what usually gives a group an advantage, after all.>>

And adopting a language may allow a group to share an advantage - like
farming, animal husbandry or metallurgy or other technical knowledge.  And
when we see that advantage spread quickly, we might conclude that a new,
common language - like IE - made it possible.

Regards,
Steve Long


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Thu Apr  5 23:32:34 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 19:32:34 -0400
Subject: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.193234.0400.>

The editors of the LINGUIST List are working on adding Ethnologue-style classi-
fications of various extinct languages to their database of languages.  They
classify Carian as "Unknown, possibly IE" and Sidetic as "Unknown".

Have Shevoroshkin's decipherments of these two languages as Anatolian IE been
rejected by the profession?  Or should these classifications be updated to read
"IE, Anatolian"?

On another note:  Recently I ran across the term Sabellic as a cover for what I
was taught to think of as Umbrian.  The LINGUIST classification uses only the
term Umbrian.  Which is term more current?  Is Sabellic even used by anyone
other than the single author in whose work I encountered it?

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Apr  6 19:55:13 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 14:55:13 -0500
Subject: FYI
Message-ID: <FRI.6.APR.2001.145513.0500.>

Dear Miguel and IEists and Nostraticists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 12:17 PM

> I've uploaded a pair of .doc's (for now) to http://home.planet.nl/~mcv
> on pre-Indo-European and pre-Basque phonological and morphological
> reconstructions.  Sorry for the cross-post.  Comments welcome.

[PR]
I have just reviewed _Pre-Basque Phonology_, and consider it a most helpful
contribution to the subject.

I was wondering if you would mind if I included it at my website?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Apr  7 00:27:24 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 02:27:24 +0200
Subject: FYI
Message-ID: <SAT.7.APR.2001.022724.0200.>

Just an update: the articles at http://home.planet.nl/~mcv are now available in
HTML.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Apr  5 09:12:55 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 11:12:55 +0200
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <001101c0bbf0$0ac06520$542363d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.111255.0200.>

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:41:34 -0500, "David L. White"
<dlwhite at texas.net> wrote:

>        Anyway, that's my understanding.  It could be wrong.  The real
>question, hopefully a fairly straightforward empirical one, is whether it is
>a fact the Caucasian languages have systems with three-way contrasts.

They have, for instance Abkhaz.  There is no problem with
coarticulations, as Abkhaz does not have /i/ and /u/.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Apr  6 20:55:07 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 15:55:07 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.6.APR.2001.155507.0500.>

Dear David and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 10:41 PM

>> On 25 Mar 2001, David L. White wrote:

>>> My point is that to speak of "plain" consonants existing in such a system
>>> is in a sense non-sensical, because "plain" in effect means "as in a
>>> language without secondary articulations", which in turn means "as in a
>>> language with ordinary co-articulation", but a language with secondary
>>> articulations could not possibly have ordinary coarticulations, since
>>> overriding ordinary coarticlation for phonemic effect is what languages
>>> with secondary articulations do.

[PR]
I think something that is, if understood, fairly straightforward is being
overly elaborated.

To judge by Gaelic, a-colored vowels involved no movement of the lips;
e-colored vowels entailed a lip movement opposed to the tongue movement: the
lips were pulled back, and the tongue pushed forward.

O-colored vowels folllowed the same pattern in reverse: the lips were pushed
forward, and the tongue was pulled back.

If not true, is it, at least, not elegant?

By the way, I would assert its truthfulness.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Mon Apr  9 15:13:39 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 17:13:39 +0200
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.171339.0200.>

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:41:34 -0500, David l. White wrote:

>So the question is, in a language with palatalized, labio-velarized, and
>"plain" consonants, what would a speaker's tongue be doing as the syllable
>/pi/, with "plain /p/", was produced?  It would have to be doing something
>other than anticipating [i] in the normal manner, or confusion with
>palatalized /p/ would be inevitable.  Putting the tongue in the position for
>[a] would result in the clearest contrast.  Or, to put it (yet) another way,
>with labials secondary articulations can hardly be realized as anything other
>than super-short diphthongs (rising or falling).  Thus /ap'i/ with palatalized
>/p/ would have to sound something like [aip] (with super-short [i]), or the
>palatalization would not be perceptible.  /ap/ with "plain" /p/ would sound
>like [ap], and /ip' with palatalized /p/ would sound like [ip].  But /ip/ with
>"plain /p/ would have to sound something like [iap].  And /pi/ with "plain"
>/p/ would have to sound something like [pai] (with rising "diphthong"],
>otherwise normal anticipation of /i/ would make it sound like /p'i/.

There's another possibility: one can shift the vowels. You mentioned Russian
before in your post. Here, we have two series of consonants - a palatised
one and a non-palatised one, with vowels realised as different allophones
depending on the preceding consonant (and to some degree also depending on
the following consonant). After a palatised consonant, /i/ is realised as
something close to IPA /i/, while after non-palatised consonants it is
realised as `barred i'. Concerning palatalisation of labials in the auslaut
position, at least Russians are able to articulate it * after * the
consonant - it's something like a slight jotation <golub'> "pigeon" is
pronounced /go'lubj/. There is no glide between /u/ and /b'/, but /u/ is
fronted a bit.

But you are right to postulate that it is hard to maintain the distinction -
e.g., Polish has lost the palatal - non-palatal distinction of labials in
absolute auslaut, while maintaining it with labials in other positions.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From stevegus at aye.net  Tue Apr 10 00:47:53 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 20:47:53 -0400
Subject: Last Spoken Etruscan
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.204753.0400.>

David L. White wrote:

>         I have read that the Emperor Claudius was one of the last to speak
> it, which would put it's death as a spoken language not far from the last
> inscriptions, if I am remembering correctly.

I remember reading that the emperor Julian had somebody performing magical
rites for him in Etruscan.  Then again, I suspect that Julian's enterprise
was plagued by more than the usual assortment of grifters.

--
Ecce domina quae fidet omne micans aureum esse, et scalam in caelos emit.


From ERobert52 at aol.com  Tue Apr 10 06:49:20 2001
From: ERobert52 at aol.com (ERobert52 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 02:49:20 EDT
Subject: Last Spoken Etruscan
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.024920.EDT.>

In a message dated 10/04/01 01:38:08 GMT Daylight Time, dlwhite at texas.net
writes:

>> -- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
>> language?

>          I have read that the Emperor Claudius was one of the last to speak
>  it, which would put it's death as a spoken language not far from the last
>  inscriptions, if I am remembering correctly.

>  Dr. David L. White

I think he learned it from his second wife, who, it is said, was a native
speaker. According to Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan was still in use as a
liturgical language in 407 AD, when some priests were asked to say a few
words to prevent Rome being sacked by the Goths. This was unsuccessful, of
course, and there are no further records of Etruscan being spoken.

Ed. Robertson


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Tue Apr 10 10:39:33 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 06:39:33 -0400
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F302nHM3SOlbpH71yEX000003e3@hotmail.com>; from
 acnasvers@hotmail.com on Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 11:44:43PM -0000
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.063933.0400.>

On Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 11:44:43PM -0000, Douglas G Kilday wrote:
> Ever played "Telephone"? The notion that standard (Roman-Latian) Italian
> comes from Tuscan sounds like the result of cumulative distortion through
> successive oral transmission. If memory serves, Dante chose to compose
> poetry in the Tuscan dialect (with the addition of some forms from northern
> dialects) because the heavy stress and distinct stress-timing allowed
> phonetic parallelism on the basis of polysyllabic homoioteleuton, or
> "rhyming". Dante has been called "the father of Italian poetry" which is
> subjective but not really "wrong", and also "the father of modern Italian"
> which is nonsense. Not even Bill Clinton could "father" a language. Some
> cavalier statement like that probably got mixed in with the facts about
> Dante's writing.

There used to be other Italian literary standards. I recall that
there was a charming Franco-Italian that was used for some poetry in
the early Middle Ages. The use of a conservative Tuscan literary
standard was a conscious choice, and was also probably a reasonable
middle ground among all the different dialects in the peninsula.

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 23:51:49 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 18:51:49 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.185149.0500.>

> So your North Aegean Proto-Etruscan (NAPE) civilization was respected and
> ancient, but below it is fairly small and heavily genericized. Now at least
> we know what to look for in the North Aegean: a civilization small but
> respected (like a wolverine?) and ancient but generic (like plain yogurt?).

        Yes.  I believe both descriptions might be applied to the
civilization of Troy, and I see nothing inherently contradictory or comical
about this.  More to the point, any bearers of Eastern Mediterranean
civilization, however generic, would have been impressive to the people of
Italy before these began (with the Etruscans) to ascend to the same level.

>> But a fairly small and heavily genericized (for lack of a better word) East
>> Mediterranean culture might not leave much of a signature.

> Then one wonders why this culture left such a prominent signature in such a
> large part of Italy.

        Because they continued to develop new styles of pottery etc., as did
the Greeks, and were not so subject to nearby foreign cultures at their
level.  The small fish became bigger by moving to a smaller pond.

> How can any culture be so successful as a colonial
> power, and such a nondescript failure at home?

    I did not say they were a failure.  Colonization to the west was all the
rage in the Eastern Mediterranean (not counting Egypt).  (It seems that
everyone was anticipating the later advice to "Go west, young man".)  But a
fairly small bunch that went west, in part because their position in the
east was becoming precarious, would almost have to go in mass (over the long
run), or those left behind would be put in even more dire straits.
        There is evidence that the Trojans were a small bunch, in the fact
that their armies are described as being multi-lingual, whereas the Greeks
were pretty clearly multilingual.  (Now just where in the Iliad is that?)
Clearly they were not able to match the Greeks in putting fellow-speakers
(so to speak) in the field, and their forces were composed largely of the
tributary forces of other states, of other languages.   This does not
suggest that the native Trojans were ever a large group.  (Nor are they very
distinctive archeologically, as far as I know.)

> The example of Mamurke Tursikina comes from Clusium, in a peripheral zone
> where we already know that both Umbrian and Etruscan were spoken. Someone
> wealthy enough to hand out custom-made golden objects doesn't belong to the
> lower class anyway.

        I didn't say he was lower-class; I said he was living among
non-Etruscans, or his name does not make much sense.

> In any case, since it's _your_ theory of mysterious North Aegeans bringing
> language and High Culture to Etruria, it's up to _you_ to find the
> linguistic evidence. It's not up to me (or the rest of the nativist crowd)
> to argue with hypothetical positions or unpresented data.

        I am not exactly the only person to say that Etruscan civilization
did not arise semi-miraculously in Tuscany as a result of Greek and
Phonecian contacts that can only be shown to have been significant in
Campania.  Since a date of 1200 is too early for real Etruscans in Italy, I
would imagine that most migrationists must posit an interlude somewhere in
the northern Aegean, or not far from it.

>> Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of this
>> aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
>> generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
>> understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become
>> effectively depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.

> If memory serves, Dante chose to compose
> poetry in the Tuscan dialect (with the addition of some forms from northern
> dialects) because the heavy stress and distinct stress-timing allowed
> phonetic parallelism on the basis of polysyllabic homoioteleuton, or
> "rhyming". Dante has been called "the father of Italian poetry" which is
> subjective but not really "wrong", and also "the father of modern Italian"
> which is nonsense. Not even Bill Clinton could "father" a language. Some
> cavalier statement like that probably got mixed in with the facts about
> Dante's writing.

        That is the version I got, though I doubt oral transmision has
played a role.   More like over-simplification.

Dr. David L. White


From philjennings at juno.com  Wed Apr 11 23:21:47 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 18:21:47 -0500
Subject: Etruscans / Pelasgians
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.182147.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

On March 30th I wrote:

>>...lost nothing by maintaining their island relationship.  This is probably
>>more true as they had not discommoded themselves in the first place by giving
>>King Uhhazitis one of their own islands, but rather settled the Arzawan
>>refugees on a Pelasgian island, such as Lemnos.  (The Pelasgians were too
>>weak to protest at being forced to share.)

Douglas G. Kilday answered:

>One of the problems with this picture is that classical sources don't place
>Pelasgians on Lemnos at such an early date. In Homer, the inhabitants of
>Lemnos are Sinties, and the epithet <agriopho:nous> (acc. pl.) tells us only
>that their phonology was non-Greek, not necessarily non-IE. Strabo asserts
>that the Sinties were Thracians. Pausanias says that the Pelasgians took
>Lemnos from the Minyae, who were aristocratic refugees from revolution in
>Boeotia. Neither group likely held the island more than a few decades, and
>the Tyrrhenians had presumably already fled from Lemnos to Chalcidice (perhaps
>driven out by the Minyae).

Me:  Particular Pelasgians were exiled from Athens to Lemnos in post-Mycenaean
times.  Homer, of course, had his 8th century views. Rolling back to the 12th
or 13th century bce, "Pelasgian" was the default ethnicity of all inhabitants
of Greece who weren't Greek.  In this earlier time, it might be questionable to
put full-strength Thracians in Thrace proper, much less the north Aegean
islands.  Minus Thracians, and considering Illyrians unlikely, who lived in
these north islands?  If not Greeks, then either default and pre-historical
Pelasgians, or Carians and Leleges, who are usually figured to be Anatolians in
language.  (Or else, I should admit, a culture of proto-Etruscans, according to
another theory.)  I'm in favor of an Anatolian-flavored question-mark.  If the
Pelasgians don't have that flavor, I decline to insist that they ever lived so
far to the north.

I also wrote:

>>Pelasgians spoke an "Anatolian" language.  They would have recognized
>>"-assos" as a geopolitical suffix, and dropped its inappropriate use,
>>therefore the Hursanassans would have become Hursana(pl) or 'Rsana(pl).

Kilday answered:

>What does your <'> signify? A glottal stop? A pharyngeal fricative? What
>business do you have citing phonological and morphological changes in
>Pelasgian? Can you give other examples of Pelasgian dropping initial
>syllables and back-forming ethnonyms by removing suffixes?

>Pelasgian loanwords are found from Persian to Sabine, and toponyms reached up
>the Danube. The language (or family) was not restricted to Anatolia.  It was
>certainly not "Anatolian IE", so no particular affinity to Hittite et al.
>should be assumed. Whether Pelasgian should be considered a branch of IE at
>all is debatable. IMHO Pelasgian is non-IE, but probably related at the
>super-family level. A possible cognate pair is Psg. *wrod- 'rose' ~ PIE
>*H1reudh- 'red'.

My response to this is embarrassment.  My <'> was of all things, a Greek
aspirate, as if I couldn't have written "hr" instead of "'r", despite the
limitations of my character set.  The Hittite scribes, working with their
character set, wrote either (short) Hursanassa or (long) Huwarsanassa.  Given
their ad hoc methods, the short form may have represented "hr" as an initial
consonant and not as a syllable.  The long form, however, is my enemy, since it
pretty much insists on being at least one, if not two, syllables, terminating
in "r".  Here lies the basis for complaints about my back-forming ethnonyms by
removing suffixes.

Kilday goes on to say such interesting things about the Pelasgians, and greater
Pelasgia, that I want to know more.  Apparently the ur-Pelasgia *could* have
included the northern islands!  Does the super family that includes proto-
Pelasgian, also include proto-Etruscan and PIE/PIA (proto Indo-Anatolian)?
Where are the glossaries?  How does he reconsile the proto-Pelasgians seemingly
occupying the same territory as others give to the Anatolian branch of
Indo-Anatolian (the Balkans) prior to their migration into Asia Minor?  Of
course, others reconsile this by saying that the Pelasgians were a branch of
the expansionary Anatolians that took the right fork into Greece, rather than
the left fork into Turkey.

I look forward eagerly to a Pelasgian topic, and discussions equally as
warm as these about the Etruscans.

I also wrote:

>>If the dominant language among the refugees was distinctive and
>>incomprehensible, as it surely was, those who spoke as the Hursana did might
>>have been called the "ta-'rsana(pl)."  The Greeks also needed a group name
>>for these people, and might have turned "ta-'rsana(pl)" into "Tyrsennoi."
>>With time, the refugees themselves would have acceded to the need for a
>>single name, minus the Pelasgian prefix: and pronounced their own way:
>>eventually Ras'na.

Kilday answered:

>What examples do you have of Greek turning /a-'/ (whatever that means) into
>/u/? Why wouldn't it become the long vowel /a:/ or perhaps a long diphthong?

Me again:  The hyphen merely points out the prefix as such.  Given the known
"ty" of "Tyrsennoi", I'd happily work back to any "tV" that produces the wanted
result.  "Ta" may be Common Anatolian of an early date, but the myriad
Anatolian languages worked their distinct ways and forms.  Lycian, for example,
gives us "Termilae" turning "ta" into "ter".  I get to be very slippery here,
ascribing just the perfect prefix to an otherwise unknown and unrecorded
daughter language, possibly spoken on Lemnos and nowhere else.

I also wrote:

>>Against this whole "Etruscan origins" story and all its props and gimmicks,
>>lies the fact that no proto-Etruscan-like language has been preserved in the
>>extensive Hittite archives, which generously cite diplomatic and liturgical
>>passages in Hattic, Palaic, Luwian, Akkadian, and Hurrian.  However, as far
>>as I know, the Hittites also ignored Achaean Greek, Minoan, and the Northwest
>>Semite language of Canaan, and even Egyptian.

Kilday answered:

>Lack of attested Proto-Etruscan isn't the trouble with your story. The trouble
>is the bizarre maze of contortions which your ethnonyms must navigate. Given
>sufficient ingenuity, a linguistic fabulist could snake the sequence T-R-S or
>R-S-N from any part of the world into Etruria. That isn't the point of doing
>historical linguistics.

To this I have no answer.  I would project my T-prefix backward in time from
the known to the unknown, if only I knew the rules.  Apparently, "ta" doesn't
work here.  Does anything?  I suppose the safest assumption is that the
Lemnian-Anatolian-Pelasgian-indigenes said "ty" all along.

"All along" being the exact 18 minutes necessary until the right Greek came
ashore and picked up the word "Tyrsennoi."  Lemnos appears to have been the
Greyhound bus terminal waiting room of the ancient world, a new crew coming
ashore every time the fleet came in.  "Lemnian deeds" may be a creative
explanation for the frequent ethnic shifts.


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Tue Apr 10 02:28:51 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 22:28:51 -0400
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <001101c0bbf0$0ac06520$542363d1@texas.net> (dlwhite@texas.net)
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.222851.0400.>

On 2 Apr 2001, David L. White wrote:

> I am not concerned with phonological theory (and running out of energy, under
> the delusion that I am perhaps getting a life).

Ah.  Therein, I believe, lies our apparent problem.  I am very much concerned
with phonological theory, accepting that our reconstructions must as far as we
can possibly arrange it be phonologically acceptable.

> And if I have adopted a phonological theory that does not allow negatives, it
> is news to me.

My apologies.  I got carried away.

> "Not having secondary articulations" to my mind means "having normal
> coarticulation".  By "normal" is meant what is most energetically efficient,
> as in fronting velars to some (variable) extent before front vowels, doing a
> bit of anticipatory rounding before round vowels, etc.  (The lips take a
> while to get going, which is why u-umlaut in Norse has a longer leftward
> range than i-umlaut.)

Having read the remainder of your posting, it becomes clear to me that we are
speaking of two different level, the phonetic and the phonological.  Your
concerns are entirely valid at a phonetic level; at the level of phonology,
they appear to me to be moot, since no two languages have the same phonological
system, though all are subject ot the same phonetic processes and contraints.

In the languages in question (Abkhaz, Kabardian, Ubykh, Lehmann's earliest pre-
PIE), *there* *is* *no* phoneme /i/ or /u/ to trigger coarticulation of the
sort you have in mind.  Rather, the impoverished vowel system has a wide range
of allophonic variation triggered by the secondary articulations on neighbour-
ing obstruents.

And I think that such languages have little to say to the Old Irish situation,
now that we make that distinction.

								Rich Alderson


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 21:05:38 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 16:05:38 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.160538.0500.>

> [PR]
> I think something that is, if understood, fairly straightforward is being
> overly elaborated.

> To judge by Gaelic, a-colored vowels involved no movement of the lips;
> e-colored vowels entailed a lip movement opposed to the tongue movement:
> the lips were pulled back, and the tongue pushed forward.

> O-colored vowels folllowed the same pattern in reverse: the lips were
> pushed forward, and the tongue was pulled back.

        What sort of "Gaelic" is this?  I know of no modern forms of the
language that have a three-way contrast.  Perhaps "Old Irish" is what was
meant?
        And why speak of "e-colored" and "o-colored" consonants, when the
rest of the world calls these "i-colored" and "u-colored"?  Actually, there
is a good reason:  the window is so small that sounds more like [e] and [o]
than like [i] and [u] can wind up being produced.  Thurneysen does,
half-seriously, suggest "o-quality" in contrast with both "u-quality" and
"neutral quality", but as far as I know no one has gone for this.
        In any language with labials, the lips are not entirely free, but as
for tongue position, I believe it is the general rule that palatalization is
implemented by, or at least associated with, tongue convexing and
velarization by tongue concaving.  The point is that tongue position at
least, which in languages without secondary articulations is free to get
ready for the next vowel or linger a bit over the last, is in languages with
secondary articulations fixed by the nature of the consonants in question.
Perhaps I can simplify a bit by saying that even for "plain" consonants in a
system with three-way contrast, tongue position would still have to be
fixed, probably at something close to [a], and would not be free to vary in
the way it does in languages without secondary articulations.

        With regard to Russian, this language is a little unusual (according
to my understanding, which may as usual be flawed) in two ways.
        First, palatalization shows significant "rightward displacement",
which is to say that it comes closer to being like following [y] (English
value) than is ordinarily the case.  In Estonian, by contrast,
palatalization is of the "textbook" sort:  effectively simultaneous with
consonants, so that /..VC'/, especially where C is moraic, sounds like
[ViC].
        Second, the degree of velarization in "yeri" (henceforth "I"), is
more than would be predicted from velarization of a preceding consonant
alone, so that we must (or depending on theory might) conclude that /I/ is
an independent target, i.e. a phoneme, probably picked up from Uralic.  In
other words, as Russian was imposed on speakers of some sort of Uralic, in
which there was phonemic /I/, Russian /i/ after a velarized consonant was
mis-perceived as /I/, despite the fact that originally the velarized quality
must have been restricted to the first part of the vowel right after the
consonant.  I think something similar happened with the retroflex series in
Sanskrit, for as I hinted recently, it seems there is no good internal cause
for this to have become phonemic.  The "phonemicness" in both cases is, I
suggest, carried over from sub-strate.
        This may seem somewhat bizarre, or at least speculative, but
strangely enough the same sort of thing has been suggested for Japanese,
where it seems that teaching of English since WWII has succeeded so well
that English phonemic distinctions are evidently  being imported into
Japanese.  Thus it would seem that English has been acting as a de facto
super-strate language in Japan, through the miracle of modern language
teaching.

        In part, I have been attempting in all this to get a definitive
answer to the question of how many qualities Old Irish had.  For this
question, it does indeed make a difference, for phonetic viability, whether
a given language has two vowels, contrasted only by height, or five vowels
of the usual sort.  A three-way contrast would be much more dificult to
implement in Old Irish, and even believers are forced to admit that if it
ever existed it was fading out by the time Old Irish is attested, which in
turn is not long after the system is supposed to have been created.  What we
need really is evidence of contrast between either 1) "iu" and "io", or 2)
"eu" and "e".  For "/r/" we have this in the second case, "er" vs. "eur",
but when I gave up looking, I had not found any other examples.  Does anyone
out there have any?

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Apr 11 00:19:17 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:19:17 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.191917.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following quoted material is taken from Miguel Carrasquer Vidal's post
  dated 5 Apr 2001.
  --rma ]

>>        Anyway, that's my understanding.  It could be wrong.  The real
>> question, hopefully a fairly straightforward empirical one, is whether it
>> is a fact the Caucasian languages have systems with three-way contrasts.

> They have, for instance Abkhaz.  There is no problem with
> coarticulations, as Abkhaz does not have /i/ and /u/.

        Yes, but is that in a one-vowel analysis or the two-vowel analysis?

Dr. David L. White


From rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu  Tue Apr 10 13:53:11 2001
From: rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu (rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:53:11 -0400
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.095311.0400.>

David L. White wrote:

>Do the Munda languages have retroflex consonants?  That would surely
>be convenient.

Witzel's article "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan" [EJVS,
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501a.txt] notes that
"...Munda originally had no retroflexes (Pinnow 1959, except for D,
see Zide 1969: 414, 423)."  I haven't seen the references, but it may
be relevant that Munda is related to Vietnamese (does that have
retroflexes?)

>A possible problem with all this is that when non-IE loan-words start
>showing up in Sanskrit, they are (as far as I know) Dravidian.  My
>impression is that, if there are Munda loan-words, they are few and
>far between.

Witzel's article says the earliest stratum of the RV ("Level I") had
no Dravidian loan words at all, and many loans previously interpreted
as Dravidian are now regarded as ["para-"] Munda.  However the Munda
etymologies are by no means certain, and there is a "Language X" in
the background.

>Speaking of such matters, is there any convincing scenario for how
>the retroflex series became phonemic in Sanksrit from internal causes
>alone?

I've seen references that suggest H.H. Hock has made this argument.
[Hock H.H. "Pre-rgvedic convergence between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian:
A survey of the issues and controversies" in: Ideology and Status of
Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language,
ed. by J.Houben, Leiden, Brill 1996.]

-- Rohan.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Apr 11 00:12:02 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:12:02 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.191202.0500.>

        The Conventional Wisdom seems to be that the Munda languages are
recently intrusive from the east, having come in at about the same time as
Indic from the NW, and that they acquired their Indian characteristics as a
result of contacts there.
        That might seem like the end of the story, but I doubt that it is.
Phonemic murmur ("voiced aspiration"), though on vowels rather than
consonants, is fairly common in the larger family ("Austro-Asiatic"), and
re-analysis of this as being on consonants would not be at all difficult to
motivate.  In other words, this one Indian characteristic, phonemic murmur,
does occur in the family outside of India.
        Answering my own question, yes, retroflex consonants occur in at
least one member of the family, Santali (which also has voiced aspirates),
though I have not determined whether the words in question are native or
not.  Some of them are "basic" enough in meaning that borrowing does not on
the face of it seem likely, though of course what we need to do is check
Bengali and so on, and I have not done (and will not do) that.
        Overall, I must say that it does not seem at all likely that the
pre-Indic language of NW India was any form of Munda.  But I still suspect
that the preservation of voiced aspirates in Indic is the result of such
things having been present in indigenous languages when the "Aryans" came
in, though probably in a language family long extinct.  Such sounds are
difficult to acquire for those whose native language does not have them, and
we would expect loss to have occurred in Indic as everywhere else if
something else had not intervened.  In any event, from what I know, it seems
quite probable that the problem of deciphering the Indus valley script is
not solvable, as both Dravidian and Munda seem to be dead ends, and no other
possibilities are known.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Apr 10 12:46:30 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 08:46:30 EDT
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.084630.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/10/2001 3:15:02 AM, acnasvers at hotmail.com writes:

<< The most plausible scenario has PIE *saigw- 'tallow, fat, grease, etc.'
undergoing "pre-Germanic" labialization to *saibw-, yielding PGmc *saip-. If
the pre-Germans learned the technology of soaking wool or hides in an
ash-tallow preparation from PIE-speakers, they might have borrowed the word
in this technical sense, and there is no need to force an etymology on the
basis of "trickling, dripping, resin, etc." >>

In the alternative, PGmc *saip- would simply refer to "boiled down, rendered
down".  See, e.g., Latin, <sapa, -ae> (cf., Grk, hepso:, sunapso:, exepso:).
This would also help account for the mish-mash of etymologies ascribed to
"soup" and "sup" in English - a rendered broth - cf., Latin, <sapio> = "to
taste, to savor."

And it would functionally explain the meaning of "sap", OE, <saep> - tree
resin or sugar to be rendered by boiling down. (But cf. Grk, zo:pissa, zo:e
(boiled) + pissa (pitch).)

Soaking wool in an astringent soap is unnecessary and even damaging unless
the wool is to be dyed.  Other textiles, furs and leathers are dyed without
astringent soaping.   Dyeing wool in northern Europe might be a relatively
recent technical innovation.  (The making of candles would seem to be also.)
Even more recent might be the use of astringent soap to dye one's hair - the
most precise meaning of <sapon> as it was first described.  If we assume that
soap post-dated *PIE substantially, than soap would be a trade word,
circulating with the new technology.

The alternative explanation would be therefore that the technique of mixing
alkali and fat (carefully and correctly, if it touches the skin) created the
need, for the first time, to render down rancid animal parts on a commercial
basis. The language where this change in meaning in the sense of from boiling
to boiling rancid parts occurred seems to be Greek, <sepo:>, rancid (Gr
se:po:n, soap).  This word for the key process in the making of astringent
soap would have travelled with the finished product, which the northern
people (being barbarians) would not only apply to wool but also to their
hair! (Cf, Grk <oisupos>, by the 6th cent BC, the lanolin grease extracted
from wool, used and presumably sold for medicinal puposes.)

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 21:18:15 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 16:18:15 -0500
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.161815.0500.>

>> I cannot off the top of my head think of any examples from English

>   Would an example from English be the voicing of intervocalic /t/, in the
> speech of many in the US, in words such as "butter"; as against the
> voiceless /t/ in the speech of many in the UK?

        I meant examples of dialect mixture, not intervocalic voicing.
        But the answer is ... maybe, depending on what you mean.  The idea
that American English /t/ between vowels (the first one being stressed) is
pronounced as [d] is to some extent a British mis-hearing.  In speech that
is not too rushed, there is a difference in preceding vowel length between
things like "writer" and "rider" that helps (not always enough) to signal
the intended difference in (phonemic) voicing.  In any event, it is always
possible to slow down and say "I meant [whatver it was]", so that to regard
this as a case of neutralization, comparable to final devoicing (but in the
other direction) is not appropriate.  (As far as I know, no amount of
"citation speech" pronunciation will enable a German to say "tag" with [g]
instead of [k].)  Technically or phonetically, the sound is voiced, but in
terms of the phonemic signalling, it patterns like a voiceless sound, which
indicates that speakers are thinking of it as a voiceless sound and that the
voicing is, in a sense, accidental, the result of it being rather
inconvenient to stop voicing for such a very small interval.

Dr. David L. White


From crismoc at smart.ro  Wed Apr 11 10:32:10 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 13:32:10 +0300
Subject: Polonezkvy|
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.133210.0300.>

If my memory serves me, some earlier postings on this list, coming from
people living in Turkey, suggested that the Polish colony in Polonezkoy was
long extinct, or even that the whole thing was a mere legend. Just to
complete Geoffrey Summers'posting that points out to a different reality:
        Here's what I find in a Vatican-edited brochure called:"Recognizing
the Spiritual Bonds That Unite Us-Thirty Years of Christian-Muslim
Dialogue". One page is devoted to Pope John Paul II's visit to Turkey, in
the autumn of 1980. There's an "excerpt of an adress delivered, IN POLISH,
by Pope John Paul II, to the inhabitants of the Polish colony of
Polonezkoy/Adampol, 1980. In the text the Pope praises "this unique instance
of preservation of Polish language and culture over so many years, which, to
this day, is a living proof of the remarkable tolerance shown by Turkey and
the Turkish people at a time when Poland was partitioned and, elsewhere in
Europe, hatred and persecution were taking their toll off our forefathers'
lives and identity".
          So, just 20 years ago, the Polishness of that community was very
much alive!

God bless,

Cristian


From crismoc at smart.ro  Wed Apr 11 09:40:11 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:40:11 +0300
Subject: Getae as Goths
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.124011.0300.>

AFAIK, Herodot calls Getae "the bravest among Thracians", going on to list
some of their negative features in the very next paragraph. There is a
pretty common belief that the Getae and the Dacians defeated by Trajan were
the same people.Two things would be interesting in line of the postings on
this topic:
             a)What is the evidence supplied  for the Iranian origin of the
Getae (other than the 2-nd century AD confusion identifying all "Barbarian"
ihabitants of the Black Sea Coast (formerly called Getai by their Greek
neighbors in Histria, Messembria, Tomis etc. ) with the Scythi?
              b) What does Dio Cassius (a Greek writing in Greek about
Trajan's conquest of Dacia) call the defeated population in the original
text? "Getae" or something else? According to other hypothesis "Getae" was
the name used by Greeks, for what Romans called "Daci" (the latter name is
incidentally supposed to derive from IE *dhawo-s "strangler,wolf" as the
Dacians are depicted on Trajan's column in Rome as wearing wolf-head-shaped
adornments in battle).
                The solution to both points is beyond my bibliographical
reach at the moment, so I would appreciate any help.

God bless,

Cristian


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 03:12:10 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 22:12:10 -0500
Subject: Pecans
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.221210.0500.>

> Pecans are characteristic of certain watercourses in Texas.

        This is getting rather off topic, but what the hell, until the
moderator calls a halt ...
        The proper term has now occurred to me:  pecans (in Central Texas
anyway) are mostly flood-plain trees.  But I was just out in the wilds west
of San Antonio Saturday, keeping my eyes open, and I was rarely out of sight
of an isolated pecan or two.  They were quite easy to spot as they are just
now leafing out, being among the last to do so.  They were not in flood
plains.  They were in the open areas between the hills, probably because the
shade has the effect of lessening de facto aridity.  Be that as it may, they
were probably encountered in the flood plains of the Nueces by Spanish
explorers, or settlers.

>>   On the other hand, I recall that most of what grows
>> along the waterways I am thinking of (which cannot really be called
>> rivers) is cypresses.

> I think this may be a relatively recent change, due to overgrazing by
> cattle.

        Maybe, but I doubt it.  Some of those cypresses, out in what was
Indian country till after the Civil War, are so large that they must be
several hundred years old, unless cypresses are very fast growing.  They are
as large as oaks I have seen that are known to be about 500 years old.
Roughly, it takes two people to reach around them.

> According to my "Trees of North America" pecans are native from about the
> Mississippi westward into eastern Texas.  They exist only as cultivated
> trees east of the Mississippi.

        I have seen plenty of beech groves in eastern Texas (indeed I have
been in places where beeches were the only living things in sight), but no
pecan groves.  I would imagine that pecans are somewhat marginal there.  In
fact, I do not recall that I have ever seen one there.  Not that I doubt the
distributions maps:  what occurs in central Texas and regions east of Texas
would almost have to occur in eastern Texas.  But I think one could go a
long time without running into one there.
        It has been suggested that their range has spread due to planting by
the Amerindians.  Some of the flood-plain pecan forests or groves now in
existence may in part be descended from ancient orchards.  Eventual spread
up the waterways into new territories would be expected.

Dr. David L. White


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Apr 10 16:25:03 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 10:25:03 -0600
Subject: Indian Names
In-Reply-To: <001601c0bde6$05805c80$572363d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.102503.0600.>

My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only 100
years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the ground
above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright brick red
and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most distinctive
soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in general
characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent of surface
red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet properties
that make it memorable.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Indo-European mailing list [mailto:Indo-European at xkl.com]On Behalf
Of David L. White
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 9:35
To: Indo-European at xkl.com
Subject: Indian Names

[ moderator snip ]

> OTOH Spanish speakers in Texas generally assume that Texas
> is from Spanish <tejas> "tiles" because of the red soil but locally, it's
> said that it from the name of a local Native American confederacy meaning
> "friends".

        Red soil is not to my knowledge especially common in Texas.  The
only places I have seen it are very locally at Bastrop, where it is probably
related somehow the occurrence of the "lost" pines that grow in it, some
places in East Texas, and up around the Red River (and in Oklahoma).
Otherwise, one may find black soil, brown soil, white soil (often in East
Texas, where it is basically fine sand), more or less permanent mud, no soil
(but plenty of rocks)....

[ moderator snip ]


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Apr 10 09:21:56 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 04:21:56 -0500
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <7c.14044719.27fd5b6d@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.042156.0500.>

	Actually, Argentine Indian languages of the Tupi-Guarani family
were the source of a relatively large number of loanwords --although not as
many as from Nahuatl. Many are local words but others are universal. If you
add Runa and Atmara, spoken in a large area of NW Argentina, the number is
much larger. These areas were the densely populated areas during colonial
times.
	Colonial Argentina also had close commerical and political contacts
with Peru and Bolivia. It was under the Vice-Royalty of Lima and supplied
horses, mules, dried beef, tallow and hides for the Andean region.
	Massive immigration from Europe began well after independence and
while immigrants did contribute to Argentine Spanish, they also continued
to use the loanwords from indigenous languages.

>Population density did matter in most of the Spanish Empire; note the number
>of Nahuatl words in Mexican Spanish, as compared to the relative absence of
>loan-words in, say, Argentina.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From crismoc at smart.ro  Wed Apr 11 09:55:43 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:55:43 +0300
Subject: Colorado,Guadalupe etc.
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.125543.0300.>

          Just a wild guess, which, if there are any Spanish literary
historians among the list members, could be confirmed or not.

            Isn't it the case that "colorado" was used as a more "poetical"
synonym for "Rojo, bermejo etc., perhaps considered less elegant? Incidentally,
in the political history of various countries (not only Russia) we have the
more right-wing minded people grouping themselves in the "White Party" whereas
those at the left would be the "Red Party". Well, in Uruguay and Paraguay we
find "Pariido Blanco" vs. "Partido COLORADO". God bless,

Cristian

The address from which I am sending this message helps me to use my online time
effectively. However, please use only
	cristianmocanu at HOTMAIL.COM
when you are sending me a message. This would enable me to pick up your emails
wherever I am. Thank you!


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Apr 10 14:11:56 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 07:11:56 -0700
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <77.129aa0da.27fe0424@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.071156.0700.>

At 01:23 PM 4/5/01 -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>Just to give philjennings at juno.com the benefit of hearing the other side of
>the Chamber:

>In a message dated 4/5/2001 2:39:22 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
><<[Renfrew] never did explain why the extant Anatolian IE languages all look
>intrusive.>>

>Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....

What does this mean?  Languages do not appear out of nowhere - they develop
from other, similar languages.

>In a message dated 4/5/2001 1:05:27 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
><< It's highly probable that pre-Indo-European Europe had a linguistic
>situation much like New Guinea or pre-Columbian North America, with hundreds
>of distinct language families and many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
>distinct languages covering very small areas. >>

>... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.

The only way this situation can occur is great amounts language movement,
but with no language group gaining the upper hand.

>   Every
>one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
>would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.

Not really.  At least in New Guinea on can often determine some constraints
on the order of arrival of the various groups.  (For instance, the language
groups restricted to upland areas must be older than the one seen in
valleys, and groups with compact, more or less contiguous, areas must be
relatively recent).

In any case, at most one of the language groups in such an area can really
be said to be fully indigenous.  All others have to have been intrusive at
some point in time.

>Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
>intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
>language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?

My first guess would be Hattic. Or the aboriginal language could have
become extinct by the time of the Hittite Empire.

>There's more and more evidence that the vast majority of Europeans at least
>are descended from pre-mesolithic populations.  (I would bet that in Anatolia
>we would find something similar.)  This would mean that most IE speakers in
>Europe are descended from people who were there before IE arrived.  In terms
>of economics and technology, by far the number one influx of ideas came later
>with the Neolithic Revolution with its origins in Anatolia and the Near East.
>  The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in innovation
>in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical range,

Oh?  Horse riding, possibly wheeled vehicles (and later chariots for sure -
but that was after PIE split up) - these sound like innovation to me!

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Apr 10 18:43:18 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 13:43:18 -0500
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.134318.0500.>

Dear Steve and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 12:23 PM

<snip>

> And adopting a language may allow a group to share an advantage - like
> farming, animal husbandry or metallurgy or other technical knowledge.  And
> when we see that advantage spread quickly, we might conclude that a new,
> common language - like IE - made it possible.

[PCR]
I am picking up on your "new" idea.

To me, the likeliest scenario is that Caucasians, speaking a Caucasian language
with characteristics similar to Kabardian (reduced vowel inventory), came into
contact with speakers of a non-Semitic Afrasian language, adopted it (mangled
it, mostly); and that the northernmost group became Indo-Europeans, while the
southerners became Semites.

This scenario would explain why Semitic and IE are so close, share so many
characteristics, as opposed to the radical differences between these two and
the balance of Afrasian languages.

In a minor way history repeated itself in Egypt, where a non-Semitic Afrasian-
speaking group was invaded by Caucasian speakers, and mangled Afrasian in a
uniquely interesting way --- resulting in Egyptian.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Wed Apr 11 01:52:48 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 21:52:48 -0400
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <77.129aa0da.27fe0424@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.215248.0400.>

On 5 Apr 2001, Steve Long wrote:

> Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....

[ snip ]

> ... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.  Every
> one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
> would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.  Like Minoan, Pre-Pie
> would be indigenous.  But, unlike Minoan, Pre-PIE would yield a great many
> ancestors.

I'm sorry.  I can't make any of this parse.

The Anatolian languages (in the sense of IE languages spoken in Anatolia) are
by definition not an isolate, since they have known relatives (the rest of the
IE family).

I think by "pre-PIE" you mean "non-Anatolian IE in a view that has Anatolian
branching off first", but I'm not sure where you mean to make it indigenous,
and I certainly don't understand what you mean by "would yield a great many
ancestors".  "Descendants", perhaps?

> Those of us who think that Renfrew might basically be right would note that
> in Ringe's phylogentic analysis, the Anatolian languages appear to be the
> first branch off from *PIE.  This means that either the rest of *PIE (pre
> German, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Celtic,...) left the Anatolians (i.e., in
> Anatolia) OR the Anatolians left the rest of *PIE.  It's either one or the
> other, but I've yet to hear the reason it has to be one and not the other.

As was discussed at great length last year before the Greater Anatolia collo-
quium, the Ringe-Taylor-Warnow cladistic tree is fundamentally flawed in that
one of the characteristics used to generate it is equivalent to "Anatolian
branched off first".  So it is irrelevant to the question of when who left who.

								Rich Alderson


From bronto at pobox.com  Wed Apr 11 02:20:31 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:20:31 -0700
Subject: Sabell*
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.192031.0700.>

Rich Alderson wrote:
> On another note:  Recently I ran across the term Sabellic
> as a cover for what I was taught to think of as Umbrian. . . .
> Is Sabellic even used by anyone other than the single
> author in whose work I encountered it?

For whatever it's worth, L.R.Palmer <The Latin Language> (1954) says:
"In addition to Oscan and Umbrian we have some slight evidence of the
dialects of the lesser tribes of central Italy which are sometimes
conveniently grouped under the name `Sabellian'.  These include the
dialects of the Paeligni, the Parrucini, and the Vestini, all of which
closely resemble Oscan."

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 11 08:00:06 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:00:06 +0100
Subject: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
In-Reply-To: <200104052332.TAA19051@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.090006.0100.>

--On Thursday, April 5, 2001 7:32 pm -0400 Rich Alderson
<alderson+mail at panix.com> wrote:

> The editors of the LINGUIST List are working on adding Ethnologue-style
> classi- fications of various extinct languages to their database of
> languages.  They classify Carian as "Unknown, possibly IE" and Sidetic as
> "Unknown".

> Have Shevoroshkin's decipherments of these two languages as Anatolian IE
> been rejected by the profession?  Or should these classifications be
> updated to read "IE, Anatolian"?

According to all the reliable sources I have ever seen, Carian is so
sparsely recorded that no certain conclusions can be drawn about its
affiliations at all.  It is widely suspected of being IE, but no one is
sure about this.  A further assignment to Anatolian is highly speculative,
and based on nothing more than its geographical position and the evidence
of a few names.  As for Sidetic, this is even more sparsely recorded, and
nobody is eager to draw any conclusions at all.  So, yes; I don't think
Shevoroshkin's proposals command any great assent.

> On another note:  Recently I ran across the term Sabellic as a cover for
> what I was taught to think of as Umbrian.  The LINGUIST classification
> uses only the term Umbrian.  Which is term more current?  Is Sabellic
> even used by anyone other than the single author in whose work I
> encountered it?

The label 'Sabellian' (always in this form, in my experience) is a synonym
for 'Osco-Umbrian', and it denotes this particular branch of Italic --
though a few linguists use it more narrowly, to label a subgroup of
Osco-Umbrian.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From alfrizza at libero.it  Wed Apr 11 18:46:10 2001
From: alfrizza at libero.it (el_risa)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 20:46:10 +0200
Subject: R: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.204610.0200.>

> The editors of the LINGUIST List are working on adding Ethnologue-style
> classi-fications of various extinct languages to their database of languages.
> They classify Carian as "Unknown, possibly IE" and Sidetic as "Unknown".

> Have Shevoroshkin's decipherments of these two languages as Anatolian IE
> been rejected by the profession?

Not at all!
The latest studies are giving more and more positive evidences.
About Carian (I don't have much news about Sidetic or Pisidic, but thy are
still considered of the anatolian luwian group with cuneiform and
hierogliphic luwian, lycian and mylian) just see the works by Adiego-Lajara
(the last "decipherer"), Studia Carica, Barcellona 1993; or the
contributions in "La decifrazione del Cario, first internation symposioum,
may 1993, Roma", Roma 1994; or the 1998 volume of "Kadmos", n. 37, with the
papers of the "Colloquium caricum".

>From the contribution of Carruba (colloquium caricum) I give you those tables:

Noun:
Nom: 0 (zero) [other anatolian language, -s]

Acc.: -n [luwian -n]

Gen.: -s' (s with an acute accent) [hittite -as, IE *-os; but languages of
the luwian group generally form genetives with a derivational adjectival
suffix, as luw. -assi-, the declension agreeing with the noun modified]

Dat.: -o

The suffix -s-/-si- (luwian -assi-), -un (luwian -wanni-), -(a)d$- (d$=
"delta") (hittite -(a)nt-)

Demonstrative:
sas (Nom) san/snn (Acc.) (Luwian zas - zan)

Enclitic particle -xi (x= greek ch) (lydian -k, latin -que)

Alfredo P Rizza

A-šùr lugal
A-al-pa-ra-a-da-as
énsi a-šur.net


From info at wordsmith.org  Sat Apr 14 14:10:33 2001
From: info at wordsmith.org (Wordsmith . Org)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 10:10:33 -0400
Subject: Online Chat on History of English
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.101033.0400.>

Announcing online chat with Joseph Pickett, Executive Editor of the American
Heritage Dictionary on April 18, 2001 at 8 PM EDT (GMT -4). The topic of the
chat is "History of English." For more details or to join the chat, visit
http://wordsmith.org/chat

While you are there, read the transcripts of previous chats as well.


From spanta at freenet.uz  Thu Apr 12 04:53:16 2001
From: spanta at freenet.uz (Rustam Abdukamilov)
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:53:16 +0500
Subject: Avestan Conference at Uzbekistan
Message-ID: <THU.12.APR.2001.095316.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Replies to this message will go to the conference organizers rather than the
  Indo-European list.
  -- rma ]

Dear Sir/Madam,

It is the great honour to us to invite You to participate on

 The International Scientific Avesta Conference,
 Tashkent, Uzbekistan, September - November 2001
 Sponsored by Republic of Uzbekistan.

This Conference is arranged to follow up on the researches of the world
Avestology.

The aim is to promote knowledge and understanding of all aspects of
Avestan Civilization, and Mazdayasna and Zarathushtra Teaching from
the Gathas, the rest of the Avesta, the Darga Upayana - the continuation
of the Avesta Literature through the present, and Traditions as they have
evolved in the last four thousand years.
	
In the linguistic aspects, it is the investigations of the genesis and
evolution of the language from the Old Indo-European one to Avestan
Manuscripts' one.

In the archaeological aspects, it is the investigations of the Indo-
European Origin Home and Central Asia, Oxus and Yaxartes basins.

If You can participate to this Conference, please send Your consent
urgently to our both e-addresses:
armati at silg.org
spanta at freenet.uz
(because one of them can be out sometimes)

Then please send Your report's theme.

For more information, please contact with us.

 Warmest wishes

Rustam T. Abdukamilov,
Avestologist of Academy of Science of Republic of Uzbekistan,
Lecturer of the Avesta Language and the Gathas at
 the National University of Uzbekistan
 and at the Tashkent State Institute of the Oriental Studies,
Member of the Organizing Committee of the International Science
 Avesta Conference, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 2001.


From hans.alscher at noel.gv.at  Fri Apr 13 12:25:05 2001
From: hans.alscher at noel.gv.at (Mag. Hans-Joachim Alscher)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 14:25:05 +0200
Subject: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.142505.0200.>

Cf.  http://www.hist.unizh.ch/ag/Kleinasien/Graphics/bilingueframe.html ;

 "Zum Stand der Entzifferung des Karischen", in Colloquium Caricum. Akten der
Internationalen Tagung: "Die    karisch-griechische Bilingue von Kaunos"
(Feusisberg, CH: 31.-10.- 1.11.1997). Kadmos 37 (1998) 47-56. ;

Eichner, Heiner (H) Kleinere indogermanisch-anatolische Sprachen: Karisch,
Sidetisch,
Pisidisch (E) ... 2 st PS
at http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/curric/idg-ws95.html#Wien

Larry Trask schrieb:

[ moderator snip ]

> According to all the reliable sources I have ever seen, Carian is so
> sparsely recorded that no certain conclusions can be drawn about its
> affiliations at all.  It is widely suspected of being IE, but no one is
> sure about this.  A further assignment to Anatolian is highly speculative,
> and based on nothing more than its geographical position and the evidence
> of a few names.  As for Sidetic, this is even more sparsely recorded, and
> nobody is eager to draw any conclusions at all.  So, yes; I don't think
> Shevoroshkin's proposals command any great assent.

[ moderator snip ]

--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Mag. Hans-Joachim Alscher
Bibliotheksdirektor-Stellvertreter

Niederösterreichische Landesbibliothek
Franz-Schubert-Platz 3
A-3109 St. Pölten
Tel.: 0043 (0)2742 9005 12769
Fax : 0043 (0)2742 9005 13860
Email: mailto:hans.alscher at noel.gv.at
http://www.noe.gv.at/service/k/k3/landesbibliothek.htm


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 15:54:51 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:54:51 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.105451.0500.>

> Witzel's article says the earliest stratum of the RV ("Level I") had
> no Dravidian loan words at all, and many loans previously interpreted
> as Dravidian are now regarded as ["para-"] Munda.  However the Munda
> etymologies are by no means certain, and there is a "Language X" in
> the background.

        "Language X" is precisely the (unsolvable) problem.  I would guess
that it, or its relatives, lie behind the retention of voiced aspirates in
Indic and the appearance, by fortuitous reanalysis, of voiced aspirates in
Munda.  But this can never be more than a guess.
        Retroflexes are not part of the proto-AustroAsiatic sound system.
(Neither are voiced aspirates.)  I have never heard of them occurring in
Vietnamese, though I cannot swear that they do not.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri Apr 13 08:12:50 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 03:12:50 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <E14mya0-0005DQ-00@poseidon.shore.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.031250.0500.>

>David L. White wrote:

>>Do the Munda languages have retroflex consonants?  That would surely
>>be convenient.

>Witzel's article "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan" [EJVS,
>http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501a.txt] notes that
>"...Munda originally had no retroflexes (Pinnow 1959, except for D,
>see Zide 1969: 414, 423)."  I haven't seen the references, but it may
>be relevant that Munda is related to Vietnamese (does that have
>retroflexes?)

	Here are my notes from Encyclopedia Britannica vol XXII. I know
just about nothing about these languages, so don't take my word on any of
this. My apologies are any typos

	"Austroasiatic" 701-03

	Important as a linguistic substratum for all SE Asian languages
	12 branches separated c. 2000-1000 BC
	Paul Benedict proposed Austric, including Austro-Asiatic,
	Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao and Austronesian

	Munda has has extensive Indian influence in its phonology
	--polysyllablic without tones
	Vietnamese has extensive Chinese influence, monosyllabic tonal language
	3 main subfamilies: Munda, Nicobarese and Mon-Khmer, 12 branches
	General phonology: voiced/unvoiced consonants, some pre-glottalized
	in Mon-Khmer, vowel system can be very elaborate --Bru has 41 vowel
	phonemes; nasal vowels, vowel length usually phonemic
	Viet-Muong is the only branch with complex tone languages, probably
	due to outside influence
	Simple 2-tone contrast is most common
	"Creaky" vs "breathy" (normal) vowel register is common
	Munda has extremely complicated morphology with prefixes, infixes
	and suffixes
	Munda verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, negation, mood
	(intensitive, durative, repetitive), definiteness, location and
	agreement with object.
	Derivations include intransitive, causitive, reciprocal and
	reflexive forms
	Vietnamese has practically no morphology
	Nicobarese is the only non-Munda language without suffixes
	A few languages have enclitics. Infixes and prefixes are common,
onlu final vowel and consonant are untouched. More than 1 or 2 affixes is
rare in 1 root because roots are usually monosyllabic. The same prefix or
infix may have many functions --a nasal infix may turn verbs into nouns and
mass nouns into count nouns. Reduplicationmay indicate plurality in nouns
and repetition in verbs. many affixes are only found in fossilized form and
have often lost their meaning. There is a special "expressive" class.
	SVO, no "be" copula. Ergative expressed as intrumental complement
	of verb
	Munda syntax is like Dravidian and is now SOV
	Much borrowing from Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, etc. Taboo replacement
	of vocabulary common

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 15 18:59:45 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 19:59:45 +0100
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <SUN.15.APR.2001.195945.0100.>

>  is there any convincing scenario for how the
> retroflex series became phonemic in Sanksrit from internal causes alone?

The distribution of the retroflex series is severely limited in the older
language:
(a) after a lost vocalic /r/ (which can often be established from IE
evidence).
(b) rarely before a lost /r/
(c) practically never initially
(d) after retroflex /s/, or as a substitute for it or other stops in certain
situations.  (The aspirate retrofelx t.h occurs almost only here in the
older language)
(e) in loan words

The source appears to be a retroflexion after /r/, assisted by the presence
of retroflex articulations in loan words.  I am sure this is disputable, but
it does not seem on the face of it unlikely.

Peter


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Apr 17 04:41:14 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 04:41:14 -0000
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.044114.0000.>

Patrick C. Ryan (6 Apr 2001) wrote:

>An alternative view might be that (agreeing with Miguel), Nostratic had only
>voiceless obstruents but that they patterned as glottalized stop (*b),
>aspirated stop (*p), glottalized affricate (*bh), aspirated affricate (*ph) -
>typologically, few problems that I can see.

Not being a licensed typologist, I must ask how frequently one finds a
system with two series of affricates and no plain fricatives (or just one,
if /s/ was already hissing around in this view).

>In view of the affricates in many derived IE languages, I am amazed that
>IEists seem so unwilling to entertain the idea of affricates as a part of the
>earliest system.

The same goes for plain fricatives. For decades we've been told that PIE had
only /s/, with [s] and [z] as allophones. How realistic is this? A language
with an inventory of stops comparable to Sanskrit ought to have 3 or 4
distinct fricatives in addition to /h/.

This brings up another point. What are "laryngeals" supposed to be, if not
glottal fricatives? How realistic is a system with 4 or more distinct
(choke!) laryngeals and only one oral fricative? In "real life", [h] is
commonly the last stage in the life-cycle of an unvoiced fricative. It seems
the pileup of laryngeals in PIE owes more to the methodology of
reconstruction than to the actual habits of PIE-speakers. Unvoiced
fricatives not surviving as sibilants in attested IE are reconstructed in
their terminal state and given a numeral subscript.

Voiced fricatives, if there were any in PIE, presumably underwent rhotacism
or fortition. OTOH if the traditional (Brugmannian) voiced aspirates were
"really" voiced fricatives, the transition to voiced aspirates in Indic
could be viewed as systematic substrate-induced fortition, if the
Munda-substrate hypothesis is in the ballpark. Hellenic would require a
similar step, but here the substrate did not distinguish voicing in its
aspirate series, so nothing blocked the new aspirates from being devoiced
(which happens anyway to the "old" voiced aspirates in the traditional view
of Greek).

>It seems to me that the fricative element of the affricates has become [h] so
>that the distinction could be maintained in the glottalized series but was
>lost in the aspirated series.

Under this proposal, either the fricative element must detach itself from
the plosive element and move back toward the larynx, or [h] must arise as a
secondary articulation of the fricative element which supplants the primary
one. The former process would require some serious lingual acrobatics during
intermediate stages. The latter process is quite common with plain
fricatives and motivates my argument above. But affricates, at least in
Germanic, seem to follow the reverse behavior: a plain stop [p] becomes
aspirated to [ph], then affricated to [pf]. Of course, as a native
Germanic-speaker accustomed to heavy stress-accent and non-phonemic
aspiration, I may be over-generalizing the familiar.

DGK


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 16:04:24 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:04:24 -0500
Subject: Anatolian Branching
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.110424.0500.>

> As was discussed at great length last year before the Greater Anatolia collo-
> quium, the Ringe-Taylor-Warnow cladistic tree is fundamentally flawed in that
> one of the characteristics used to generate it is equivalent to "Anatolian
> branched off first".  So it is irrelevant to the question of when who left
> who.

        Is this really an assumption rather than a conclusion?  That would
indeed severely lessen the validity of the resulting tree.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Apr 14 05:15:22 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 01:15:22 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Ringe's Tree
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.011522.EDT.>

Rich Alderson also wrote:
<<As was discussed at great length last year before the Greater Anatolia
colloquium, the Ringe-Taylor-Warnow cladistic tree is fundamentally flawed in
that one of the characteristics used to generate it is equivalent to
"Anatolian branched off first".  So it is irrelevant to the question of when
who left who.>>

I believe the problem with Ringe's tree is that it used reconstructed *PIE as
an anchor, which would violate strict cladistic theory, which doesn't allow
reconstructions to be used to define trait identifications.  And that's
because the data would totally depend on the reconstruction and the tree
simply would reflect the reconstruction.   The tree therefore can in no way
"prove" the correctness of the reconstruction, since it assumed the
correctness of the reconstruction from the start.

I seem to remember one of your objections was the use of a particular
Anatolian language, as the individual Anatolian languages reflect different
innovations (e.g., dorsal obstruents).  This goes to whether the proper
innovations and languages were used to construct the tree.  Correct me if I'm
wrong.

However, if one let's all that go, Ringe's tree places Anatolian IE as the
first branch-off from *PIE as a matter of mathematical parsimony, which is a
matter of strict and logical "internal" consistency.  And I know of no more
rigorous attempt to scientifically quantify IE relatedness.

And of course IF "Anatolian IE" branched off first, it IS relevant where it
happened.  Along with who stayed and who moved away.

If all this happened in Anatolia, then possibly it was PIE-minus-Anatolian
that took to the road.  And Anatolian that stayed behind.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Apr 14 05:17:33 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 01:17:33 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.011733.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....
> ... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.  Every
> one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
> would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.  Like Minoan, Pre-Pie
> would be indigenous.  But, unlike Minoan, Pre-PIE would yield a great many
> ancestors.

In a message dated 4/13/2001 6:35:15 AM, alderson+mail at panix.com writes:
<<I'm sorry.  I can't make any of this parse.  The Anatolian languages (in
the sense of IE languages spoken in Anatolia) are by definition not an
isolate, since they have known relatives (the rest of the IE family).

I think by "pre-PIE" you mean "non-Anatolian IE in a view that has Anatolian
branching off first", but I'm not sure where you mean to make it indigenous,
and I certainly don't understand what you mean by "would yield a great many
ancestors".  "Descendants", perhaps? >>

Yes.  Thank you.  Bad case of cross-wiring.

As to the above, what I was hoping to say was... that if you assume the
analogy to New Guinea's "1000's of distinct languages" could be correct, then
PIE or Pre-PIE (take your choice) could have been one of those "distinct
languages" in Anatolia.

(On this list the term "isolate" has been used to refer to PIE, with regard
its apparent lack of evidence of sister or parent languages.  A search of the
archives will pull up a thread starting with Roz Frank's note of 31 Jan 2000
and a good number of replies re-quoting her statement, "PIE... was a
linguistic isolate..." without objection. Technically in the broad sense, of
course, PIE has relatives.  But it seems that every one pretty much knew what
Roz meant.)

AND, if PIE or Pre-PIE (take your choice) is assumed to have been one of
those distinct languages or "isolates", then it would be no surprise that
daughter Anatolian IE languages would appear to be isolated (if not
technically an "isolate") and dissimilar from its neighbors.

My original point was of course that, under those circumstances, there would
be plenty of good reason to expect Anatolian IE to "look intrusive", but not
actually be intrusive.

By "indigenous" I meant that Anatolian IE would not have arrived in Anatolia
in that form, but rather developed there from a previous IE ancestor.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 15 15:44:47 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 11:44:47 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <SUN.15.APR.2001.114447.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....>>

In a message dated 4/13/2001 5:35:25 AM, sarima at friesen.net writes:
<<What does this mean?  Languages do not appear out of nowhere - they develop
from other, similar languages. >>

I think I'd better stop using the word "isolate."

I also wrote:
<<Every one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small
areas" would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.>>

Stanley Friesen replied:
<<Not really.  At least in New Guinea on can often determine some constraints
on the order of arrival of the various groups.  (For instance, the language
groups restricted to upland areas must be older than the one seen in valleys,
and groups with compact, more or less contiguous, areas must be relatively
recent). In any case, at most one of the language groups in such an area can
really be said to be fully indigenous.  All others have to have been
intrusive at some point in time.>>

That's not my understanding of the situation with "aboriginal" languages in
New Guinea.  I believe that most of the languages yield no comparative
relatedness to neighboring languages and that the explanation is that the
highly local isolation of these languages dates back more than 10,000 years.
Do you have better information?

I wrote:
<<Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?>>

Stanley Friesen replied:
<<My first guess would be Hattic. Or the aboriginal language could have
become extinct by the time of the Hittite Empire.>>

But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?  And assuming an aboriginal
language begs the question, doesn't it?  Any other language you find in
Anatolia could have just as easily intruded on Anatolian.

I wrote:
<<The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in
innovation in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical
range,...>>

Stanley Friesen replied:
<<Oh?  Horse riding, possibly wheeled vehicles (and later chariots for sure -
but that was after PIE split up) - these sound like innovation to me!>>

I've asked the following question on three different archaeology lists. I've
asked it of members of the team that did the recent gene study on horses.
I've even sent Prof Anthony an unanswered e-mail.  Here are the questions:

<< How many other instances of tooth bit-wear, bits, cheek pieces, saddles or
any other evidence of HORSE RIDING have been found in Europe between the time
of the early finds in the Ukraine and the clear appearance of the bit after
circa 2000BC.

Have any horse teeth been found in Europe after 4000BC but before say 1500BC
and what percentage show the stated indicia of bit wear?>>

The only answers I've ever received all say none that anybody knows of.
Nothing.  Zip.  Plenty of bones.  Plenty of horse skulls.  But nothing else.

What's worse is then when I cited bit-wear on teeth at Derevika I got this
back: "Actually you gotta throw the Derevika horse [bit evidence] out.
Anthony and Brown (2000) Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian
steppes, ANTIQUITY, 75-86, has C14 dates from it...  The most recent dates on
it put it up around the 1st century BC.  As they note, it looks like it was a
pit deposit that had nothing to do with the Neolithic levels of the site."

So now there's not even evidence in the Ukraine.  So, as far as I can tell,
there's no evidence of "horse-riding" in all of Europe much before around
1500BC.  If it came from the Asian steppes at that late date, it wouldn't
seem to have much to do with the initial spread of IE languages.  And though
the new genetic studies have located geographic centers of domestication for
the cow, pig and goat, the horse seems to come from all over the place.  And
now they're finding even more true horse bones at Catal Huyuk.  So there's
not a lot left to connect early European steppe culture with early
horse-related innovations in the rest of Europe.

The wheel just plain seems to go the other way.  The Near East, Poland, the
Danube, then into the Ukraine.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Apr 14 14:25:43 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 10:25:43 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.102543.EDT.>

I wrote:
> And adopting a language may allow a group to share an advantage - like
> farming, animal husbandry or metallurgy or other technical knowledge.  And
> when we see that advantage spread quickly, we might conclude that a new,
> common language - like IE - made it possible.

In a message dated 4/13/2001 5:37:03 AM, proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

<<I am picking up on your "new" idea.>>

Hardly new.  Not at all mine.
BTW Mallory describes the same process himself in ISIE, in the last chapter
around where he says the key to the spread of IE is bi-lingualism, but he
doesn't apply it much in his book.

<<To me, the likeliest scenario is that Caucasians, speaking a Caucasian
language with characteristics similar to Kabardian (reduced vowel inventory),
came into contact with speakers of a non-Semitic Afrasian language, adopted it
(mangled it, mostly); and that the northernmost group became Indo-Europeans,
while the southerners became Semites.>>

Just a comment that the notion is that the flow of ideas and know-how both
motivates and is made possible by a change in language.  So the whole thing
sort of pivots on what new ideas and things language has made possible.

So is the scenario above it kind of helps to ask why the Caucasians would do
this and what it appears they got out of it.  If you buy the idea that the
majority of modern Europeans are descended from a European paleolithic
population (not saying that you should), then what could have motivated that
early language shift?  Or did they bring it with them in paleolithic times,
meaning that Pre-IE got there soon after the ice-age ended.

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 16:42:57 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:42:57 -0500
Subject: Pelasgians, Greek /ooi/
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.114257.0500.>

         As for the Pelasgians being a "right fork" of the IE-Anatlions who
passed into Greece, if their language had phonetically aspirated /t/s (and
presumably /p, k/), which is necessary to explain how Anatolian /t/ could
appear as Greek /th/, would we not find "Chorinthos", "Pharnassos", and even
(farther afield) "Tharthessos"?  To invoke aspiration merely to explain the
Greek /th/ for Anatolian /t/ (or even /d/), conveniently ignoring unwanted
side effects, is not acceptable.  What language in the world aspirates /t/
only after /n/?  None that I ever heard of.  In any event, the Pelasgians
seem to have been a rather suspiciously well-traveled lot, for Pelasgian
place-names appear from Spain to Iran, and up to the Danube.  Is it not
likely that some of the more marginal of these were merely modeled on true
Pelasgian place-names, rather than being true Pelasgian place-names?  We do
not conclude that Mongolia, Somalia, and Australia were Roman territory
merely because we find them designated by in effect fake Roman place-names.
        How does Greek /ooi/ develop? (By "oo" I mean omega.)  I have been
led to believe that /troiaa/ is from shortening of earlier /trooiaa/. but
/ooi/ does of course appear in Greek, notably in the M dative singular of
V-stems.  Likewise there are cases like /ooixeto/.  What rule accounts in a
principled manner for shortening in /troia/?  /troo-es/ etc. is a C-stem,
which begs the question of what the lost consonant was.  In other words of
this declensional type (as far as I know) the lost consonant is /w/, but
/troow-/ (or even troosw-) would seem to be otherwise unmotivated.  (Though
/sw/ in an original /trosw-/ with short /o/ would make later long /oo/
regular in an independently verifiable way.  And perhaps, since /s^/ often
has secondary labialization, /sw/ might be a way that this could be borrowed
into a language without /s^/.   But I digress, however interestingly, or
not.)   The obvious (to me) candidate for Lost Consonant here is /y/, but it
is less than blindingly ovbvious why /trooyes/ and so on should have
developed in a different way from /trooya/ (or /trooiaa/).  I await
enlghtenment.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Apr 14 09:04:15 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 04:04:15 -0500
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F805y4FypKsEgJXOxJa00001d3c@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.040415.0500.>

	Could you elaborate on that with more examples? Are you including
"Mediterranean" substrate found in both Greek and Italic?

>Pelasgian loanwords are found from Persian to Sabine, and toponyms reached
>up the Danube. The language (or family) was not restricted to Anatolia. It
>was certainly not "Anatolian IE", so no particular affinity to Hittite et
>al. should be assumed. Whether Pelasgian should be considered a branch of IE
>at all is debatable. IMHO Pelasgian is non-IE, but probably related at the
>super-family level. A possible cognate pair is Psg. *wrod- 'rose' ~ PIE
>*H1reudh- 'red'.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From philjennings at juno.com  Mon Apr 16 21:30:26 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 16:30:26 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <MON.16.APR.2001.163026.0500.>

My previous email on this topic was almost perversely unclear about
"Huwarsanassans."  Of course it's difficult to be other than unclear about
what Kilday terms "a bizarre maze of contortions."  I shall try again.

I assume an original root here, very like "Rasna" or "Rasenna," the
Etruscans' own name for themselves.

On this root, an IE language has worked two changes.  (1) Since the
initial "R" is unpronounceable, it becomes an aspirated "Hr."  (2) This
modified ethnonym is used to describe a city or geo-political entity,
which is given the suffix familiar to us as "-assos" in Greek.  The
place: Western Asia Minor.  The time, prior to 1330 bce.

The result is a city which, if it had kept the name to classical times,
might have been known as Rhasnassos.  The Hittites came to know it as
Hursanassa.  The Hittites called the people of this location
"Hursansassans."  Or "Huwarsanassans," but I'd rather not dwell on that,
since I can't explain the "wa".

This is as if people walking out of the movie "Gladiator," in talking
about the war against "Germania," began to talk about those stupid
"Germanians."  In other words, the Hittites couldn't have been too close
to or familiar with the people of Hursanassa.  At least, Mursilis II
wasn't.

However, the Rasenna did not carry the burden of this Hittite name with
them into Aegean exile (1330-1180 bce), so at this point, the next IE
people they encounter, get a fresh chance to mess up their name, minus the
"Hu" and the "-assa."  This next group imposes a "tV" prefix that becomes
"Ty-" in Greek.  We see other instances of this prefix along the Aegean
coast of Asia Minor, in the names "Troy" and "Termilae."  I speculate that
this prefix means something like "speakers of ___ language", on the basis
of a widespread Anatolian word "ta" that means "speak" or "talk."

The resultant Tyrsennoi become the Tursha of the sea peoples who attack
Egypt, and the Etruscans of Northern Italy.

In parallel with this national career, the Suruda, mentioned with the
Hursanassans in Mursilis II's Annals, may be associated with another city
that the Hittites want to conquer, Sardis.  Some escape as the
Hursanassans do, become the Sherdana of the sea peoples, and the
Sardinians of Sardinia.  I am a little smitten by this parallelism.  It's
as if each folkwandering theory isn't balanced enough to hold itself up, but
the two theories together support each other.  In most cases, a fanciful
theory plus a second fanciful theory make for extra weakness:  here
there's something almost like what the physicists call "beauty."

However, the Attarimmans, third part of the original gang of renegadoes
mentioned in the Annals of Mursilis II, apparently drop from view.


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Fri Apr 13 18:08:38 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 14:08:38 -0400
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <000301c0c233$fa031300$536263d1@texas.net> (dlwhite@texas.net)
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.140838.0400.>

On 10 Apr 2001, Dr. David L. White wrote:

[quoting Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

>> They have, for instance Abkhaz.  There is no problem with coarticulations,
>> as Abkhaz does not have /i/ and /u/.

> Yes, but is that in a one-vowel analysis or the two-vowel analysis?

There is no one-vowel analysis of Abkhaz; W. S. Allen analyzed the apparent
large number of vowels into a two-vowel system /+ a/ with large allophony based
on neighbouring obstruents with palatal, labial, or zero secondary coarticula-
tions.  Phonetic [i] and [u] are due to occurrence of /+/ next to a palatalized
bzw. labialized obstruent.

								Rich Alderson


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri Apr 13 09:03:47 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 04:03:47 -0500
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.040347.0500.>

	Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,
something else is happening as well that gives it a tap /-r-/ quality
	I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that there may be
some sort of hiatus before the second syllable of <writer>, <rider> in
English pronunciation that's not present in the US pronunciation
	Regarding the different vowel quality of <writer> and <rider> cited
in descriptions of US pronunication. Is this possibly a conscious reaction
to the spelling? In rapid speech the difference is either minimized or
eliminated.
	Other minimal pairs such as <bitter> and <bidder> are pronounced
exactly alike in US English--at least to my ear.
	Does this phenomenon exist anywhere in English outside of North
America and Northern Ireland?

>        But the answer is ... maybe, depending on what you mean.  The idea
>that American English /t/ between vowels (the first one being stressed) is
>pronounced as [d] is to some extent a British mis-hearing.  In speech that
>is not too rushed, there is a difference in preceding vowel length between
>things like "writer" and "rider" that helps (not always enough) to signal
>the intended difference in (phonemic) voicing.  In any event, it is always
>possible to slow down and say "I meant [whatver it was]", so that to regard
>this as a case of neutralization, comparable to final devoicing (but in the
>other direction) is not appropriate.  (As far as I know, no amount of
>"citation speech" pronunciation will enable a German to say "tag" with [g]
>instead of [k].)  Technically or phonetically, the sound is voiced, but in
>terms of the phonemic signalling, it patterns like a voiceless sound, which
>indicates that speakers are thinking of it as a voiceless sound and that the
>voicing is, in a sense, accidental, the result of it being rather
>inconvenient to stop voicing for such a very small interval.

>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 02:47:35 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 22:47:35 -0400
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
In-Reply-To: <002001c0c203$d42a3440$9b6063d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.224735.0400.>

At 16:18 10/04/01 -0500, you wrote:
>>> I cannot off the top of my head think of any examples from English

>>   Would an example from English be the voicing of intervocalic /t/, in the
>> speech of many in the US, in words such as "butter"; as against the
>> voiceless /t/ in the speech of many in the UK?

>        I meant examples of dialect mixture, not intervocalic voicing.
>        But the answer is ... maybe, depending on what you mean.  The idea
>that American English /t/ between vowels (the first one being stressed) is
>pronounced as [d] is to some extent a British mis-hearing.  In speech that
>is not too rushed, there is a difference in preceding vowel length between
>things like "writer" and "rider" that helps (not always enough) to signal
>the intended difference in (phonemic) voicing.  In any event, it is always
>possible to slow down and say "I meant [whatver it was]", so that to regard
>this as a case of neutralization, comparable to final devoicing (but in the
>other direction) is not appropriate.  (As far as I know, no amount of
>"citation speech" pronunciation will enable a German to say "tag" with [g]
>instead of [k].)  Technically or phonetically, the sound is voiced, but in
>terms of the phonemic signalling, it patterns like a voiceless sound, which
>indicates that speakers are thinking of it as a voiceless sound and that the
>voicing is, in a sense, accidental, the result of it being rather
>inconvenient to stop voicing for such a very small interval.

>Dr. David L. White

[Ed Selleslagh]
It may be another case of mis-hearing, but I (a non-native English speaker
very familiar with spoken Boston English) hear a difference between the t
(pseudo-d) of 'writer' and the d of 'rider': the d sounds more emphatic,
heavier to me. I don't hear the difference in vowel length.
I just submit this for what it's worth (1/2 cent?)
Ed.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Apr 15 21:40:29 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 21:40:29 -0000
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
Message-ID: <SUN.15.APR.2001.214029.0000.>

Steve Long (2 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Just a note.  James Joyce called "thou art Peter and upon this rock..." "a
>pun in the original Aramaic."

Getting linguistic information from novelists is like depending on Indiana
Jones for archaeological data.

>Whatever Joyce meant, there is a question among Biblical scholars which word
>Jesus used.  I see here "Along with petra, petros entered the Hebrew language:
>Petros was the father of a sage of the land of Israel, Rabbi Yose ben
>Petros..."  For a news story discussion, see
>http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/articles/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=1463.

This "news story discussion" is about as objective as Rush Limbaugh. The
essay, by one David Bivin, consists primarily of the ham-handed
rationalization of pre-formed religious viewpoints. I'll try to stick to the
linguistic issues. I have no particular religious axe to grind.

Evidently Jesus gave Simon the nickname <Ke:pha:> which is masculine and
presents no problem in Aramaic. In rabbinical Aramaic writings this lexeme,
written <kyp>, has a rather generic sense 'stone, rock' (count-noun) which
may be used for building, cooking, or throwing. This sense might well be
rendered in Greek by <petros> 'piece of rock; stone', which is found in
Maccabees. John is satisfied with this rendering (1:42): <su kle:the:se:i
Ke:pha:s ho herme:neuetai Petros> 'thou shalt be called Cephas, which is
interpreted Stone'. Matthew, however, has the peculiar statement (16:18) <su
ei Petros, kai epi taute:i te:i petra:i oikodome:so: mou te:n ekkle:sia:n>
'thou art Peter, and upon this crag I will construct my assembly'. The
discrepancy between <Petros> and <petra:> results from Greek grammar:
<petra:> is feminine and cannot serve as a man's name. The original Aramaic,
as reconstructed by Fitzmyer, had no discrepancy. Matthew was forced to use
<petra:> because <petros> did not reproduce the sense intended by Jesus. The
result looks like a pun in Greek, but in fact there was no pun intended, in
Aramaic or in Greek.

The reason <ke:pha:> must be rendered by <petra:>, pace John, is that Jesus
based the nickname not on current Aramaic usage, but on Hebrew. The lexeme
<ke:ph> occurs in the OT only in Jeremiah 4:29 <ba:?u: bhe!a:bhiym
w`bhakke:phiym !a:lu:> 'they will enter into the hidden places, and onto the
crags they will climb' and Job 30:6 <ba!`aru:c, n`cha:liym lis^ko:n cho:re:y
!a:pha:r w`khe:phiym> 'in the horror of clefts to dwell, (and in) holes of
the ground and crags'. By using this peculiar word found only in two dismal
contexts, Jesus likens Simon to a place of refuge to which Judaeans can flee
when their autonomous state collapses and things get really rotten. In both
instances the LXX uses <petra:> to translate <ke:ph>. There is no basis for
Bivin's contention that Simon is being compared to Abraham, or that any
connection with <c,u:r> 'stone, rock; divine epithet' is meant. Had this
been intended, Simon's nickname would be something other than <Ke:pha:>, and
there would be no reason for Matthew to employ <petra:>.

>Peter might possibly just been called Peter, as Petra may have already become
>part of the Aramaic language, and this would appear consistent with the naming
>practices in the NT, even nicknames, not being translated.

The appellative <petra:> might well have been borrowed into Aramaic as a
toponym or formant. But the only attestation I can find of this lexeme in
the on-line Jewish Palestinian Aramaic dictionary is <pyt'rws'ylynwn>
'rock-parsley' which is clearly from Late Greek <petroseli:non>. And if
"Peter" had actually been called <Pet'ros'> or whatever in Aramaic, why
would Paul refer to him as <Ke:pha:s> in two of his letters, and why would
John feel that any etymological note was necessary?

As for "Petros" being attested as a Jewish name at Qumran, or a rabbi's
father's name, this is not necessarily from Greek. It could represent the
Latin gentilicium Pe:trus; two of Bivin's citations from Qumran are the
Latin cognomina Magnus and Aquila. Pe:trus has nothing to do with Greek,
being a Latinization of the Etruscan gentilicium Pe:tru (from archaic
Penetru, as the praenomen Ve:l from archaic Venel). The Hispanic form of
Christian Latin seems to have confused Pe:trus with Petrus, as the name has
become Pedro, not *Piedro.

DGK


From karhu at umich.edu  Mon Apr 16 20:31:58 2001
From: karhu at umich.edu (Marc Pierce)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 16:31:58 -0400
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <21119152.3195282623@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <MON.16.APR.2001.163158.0400.>

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Larry Trask wrote:

> I know of no modern form.  The first name that popped into my head was that
> of Bid McPhee, the great 19th-century second baseman, who was voted into
> the Baseball Hall of Fame last year.  However, on checking, I find that his
> real name was John Alexander McPhee, and that 'Bid' was a shortening of
> 'Biddy', apparently a nickname conferred in those days on a player of
> diminutive stature (McPhee was small).

> Now, if someone will only tell me how the old-time third baseman Charles
> 'Piano Legs' Hickman acquired his nickname, I'll be a happy man.

> Larry Trask

According to "Baseball Nicknames" (p. 125): "Hickman was 5'8" and weighed
185 pounds.  He had thick legs like those of a piano."

Also, apropos "biddy," this is still reasonably common in some contexts,
e.g. youth basketball leagues are often called "biddy basketball."  Is
this perhaps a variant of "bitty"?

Marc Pierce


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 16:00:20 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:00:20 -0500
Subject: Indian Names
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.110020.0500.>

> My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only 100
> years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the ground
> above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright brick red
> and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most distinctive
> soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in general
> characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent of surface
> red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet properties
> that make it memorable.

> John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor, English
> Utah State University

            Well, I have seen soil maps of Texas, which appear to show
bewildering and difficult to describe diversity more than anything else.
And which do not necessarily mention color.  Maybe a field trip to the Map
Room is in order.  But I am lazy.  In any event, there is certainly a lot of
non-red soil around, and I find it difficult to imagine that the proposition
"The soil of Texas is (generally or universally) red" is true.

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 04:32:00 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 00:32:00 -0400
Subject: Indian Names
In-Reply-To: <MABBIJNNPBOFHEBNBMEHEEGNCKAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.003200.0400.>

[Ed Selleslagh]
I think you are referring to 'laterite', which is very common in tropical
rainforest, e.g. the Amazon and the Congo basins. Its origin seems to be
alluvial, but with most of its nutrients washed out: in fact it is almost
sterile, and tropical vegetation basically grows on top of it, rather than
in it, which is why deforested areas (which kills of the microbiological
life in the top layer by exposure to UV from the sun) grow back so slowly,
and why the farmland produced by deforestation is fertile for only a few
years (until the top layer has been stripped of the nutrients).
I'm speaking from experience in the Peruvian Amazon forest.
Maybe some geologist or agronomy expert can provide more precise data.

At 10:25 10/04/01 -0600, you wrote:

>My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only 100
>years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the ground
>above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright brick red
>and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most distinctive
>soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in general
>characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent of surface
>red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet properties
>that make it memorable.

>John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
>Associate Professor, English
>Utah State University

[ moderator snip ]


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 04:53:27 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 00:53:27 -0400
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <l0313032db6f87d7b3343@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.005327.0400.>

At 04:21 10/04/01 -0500, you wrote:
>If you add Runa and Atmara, spoken in a large area of NW Argentina, the
>number is much larger.

[Ed]
I guess you mean Runa Simi (litterally: Man('s) Language, which is the same
as Quechua, the Inca language, still spoken (at least among themselves) by
over 50% of the 28 million Peruvians) and Aymara, nowadays limited to SE
Peru (Lake Titicaca) and Bolivia and surroundings, but originally spoken as
far north as Cusco and Urubamba (Cusqueño Quechua still shows substratum
signs of Aymara: e.g. the rich variety of aspirated and velar plosives).
I've never met a Quechua or Aymara speaker who wasn't at least bilingual
(Quechua-Spanish; Aymara speakers in Puno are often trilingual
Aymara-Quechua-Spanish) - often with grammatical transpositions in Spanish.
Note that Aymara contains a large nimber of Quechua loanwords (maybe 40%),
due to Inca domination and the obsession of Spanish missionaries (and
others: my Quechua grammar was written by a French speaking Swiss monk
working in Lima as a Quechua teacher for missionaries)  with Quechua (If
you're a native, you're supposed to speak Quechua)

>These areas were the densely populated areas during colonialtimes.
>	Colonial Argentina also had close commerical and political contacts
>with Peru and Bolivia. It was under the Vice-Royalty of Lima and supplied
>horses, mules, dried beef, tallow and hides for the Andean region.
>	Massive immigration from Europe began well after independence and
>while immigrants did contribute to Argentine Spanish, they also continued
>to use the loanwords from indigenous languages.

[Ed]
e.g. the Italian tone and peculiar pronunciations of Porteño (Buenos Aires)
Spanish.

>>Population density did matter in most of the Spanish Empire; note the number
>>of Nahuatl words in Mexican Spanish, as compared to the relative absence of
>>loan-words in, say, Argentina.

>Rick Mc Callister

Ed. Selleslagh


From bronto at pobox.com  Sat Apr 14 03:32:54 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 20:32:54 -0700
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.203254.0700.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> Actually, Argentine Indian languages of the Tupi-Guarani family
> were the source of a relatively large number of loanwords --
> although not as many as from Nahuatl. Many are local words but
> others are universal.

Don't tease!

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 05:40:13 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 01:40:13 -0400
Subject: Colorado,Guadalupe etc.
In-Reply-To: <000701c0c2d1$3a30bd40$cd0469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.014013.0400.>

At 12:55 11/04/01 +0300, you wrote:

>Just a wild guess, which, if there are any Spanish literary historians among
>the list members, could be confirmed or not.

>Isn't it the case that "colorado" was used as a more "poetical" synonym for
>"Rojo, bermejo etc., perhaps considered less elegant? Incidentally, in the
>political history of various countries (not only Russia) we have the more
>right-wing minded people grouping themselves in the "White Party" whereas
>those at the left would be the "Red Party". Well, in Uruguay and Paraguay we
>find "Pariido Blanco" vs. "Partido COLORADO". God bless,

>Cristian

[Ed Selleslagh]
I'm not a specialist, but I would doubt 'colorado' is any more poetical
than the other words. 'Bermejo' might be.

BTW I'm still trying to understand the difference between a Río Tinto and a
Río Colorado. Maybe 'tinto' refers to the water color (like in 'vino tinto'
= red wine) and 'colorado' to the general aspect of the river bed (e.g. the
Grand Canyon)?

As to the Partido Colorado: I GUESS Partido Rojo would make it look like
Communist or so.

Ed.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri Apr 13 07:59:54 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 02:59:54 -0500
Subject: Pecans
In-Reply-To: <001301c0c16c$18f1c360$1e2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.025954.0500.>

To get this back on topic.

	It's pacana in Spanish and (I think) pacane in Cajun French
What Native American language is the source?

They're very common where I live, about 200 miles east of the MS river but
they may a relic of commercial planting. We gather about 50 pounds of them
every fall from maybe a half dozen varieties.

>> Pecans are characteristic of certain watercourses in Texas.

>        This is getting rather off topic, but what the hell, until the
>moderator calls a halt ...

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Apr 13 23:23:40 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:23:40 -0700
Subject: Pecans
In-Reply-To: <001301c0c16c$18f1c360$1e2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.162340.0700.>

At 10:12 PM 4/9/01 -0500, David L. White wrote:

>> I think this may be a relatively recent change, due to overgrazing by
>> cattle.

>         Maybe, but I doubt it.  Some of those cypresses, out in what was
>Indian country till after the Civil War, are so large that they must be
>several hundred years old, unless cypresses are very fast growing.

If these "cypresses" are in fact the tree I know as the Red Cedar, they are
indeed fast growing, as they are common "weeds" in old abandoned fields
throughout the midwest.  (The Arizona Cypress reaches Texes, but barely,
and only in the vicinity of the Rio Grande).

Linguistically, these names can be rather amusing: the Red Cedar is
actually a juniper!

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 17 17:30:51 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 12:30:51 -0500
Subject: Dr. White
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.123051.0500.>

        In order to meet a re-submission deadline, I am going to have to
vanish for a while, two weeks at the most.  So no, I have not (and hopefully
will not have) died.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Apr 17 09:45:21 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 04:45:21 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <001701c0c432$23df0080$cf2a63d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.044521.0500.>

	Isn't Vietnamese a real outlier among Austro-Asiatic?
	If so, then wouldn't Khmer and Austro-Asiatic languages from
Thailand and Burma be more relevant to any argument re: phonology?

>        "Language X" is precisely the (unsolvable) problem.  I would guess
>that it, or its relatives, lie behind the retention of voiced aspirates in
>Indic and the appearance, by fortuitous reanalysis, of voiced aspirates in
>Munda.  But this can never be more than a guess.
>        Retroflexes are not part of the proto-AustroAsiatic sound system.
>(Neither are voiced aspirates.)  I have never heard of them occurring in
>Vietnamese, though I cannot swear that they do not.

>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 18 14:02:33 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 09:02:33 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.090233.0500.>

Dear Douglas and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 11:41 PM

> Patrick C. Ryan (6 Apr 2001) wrote:

>> An alternative view might be that (agreeing with Miguel), Nostratic had only
>> voiceless obstruents but that they patterned as glottalized stop (*b),
>> aspirated stop (*p), glottalized affricate (*bh), aspirated affricate (*ph)
>> - typologically, few problems that I can see.

> Not being a licensed typologist, I must ask how frequently one finds a
> system with two series of affricates and no plain fricatives (or just one,
> if /s/ was already hissing around in this view).

[PCR]
Yes, it is unusual. But I can tell you what I think may help to explain it. I
believe that Nostratic fricatives ([w], [s], and [x]) came plain or aspirated
so that there was only one voiced fricative, namely [w].  Why this lack of
balance, I cannot say. A part of the answer may lie in the development of [ph]
into [f]. Semitic and IE had different outcomes from loss of aspiration in
fricatives; while Nostratic [hw] and [w] both became [w]; [sh] and [s] became
[s] and [z] in Semitic while they became simply [s] in IE. Both [x] and [xh]
were palatalized to [ç] in Semitic, and became [sh]; [x] became IE [gw]; [xh]
became IE [kw].

[PCRp]
>> In view of the affricates in many derived IE languages, I am amazed that
>> IEists seem so unwilling to entertain the idea of affricates as a part of
>> the earliest system.

[SL]
> The same goes for plain fricatives. For decades we've been told that PIE had
> only /s/, with [s] and [z] as allophones. How realistic is this? A language
> with an inventory of stops comparable to Sanskrit ought to have 3 or 4
> distinct fricatives in addition to /h/.

> This brings up another point. What are "laryngeals" supposed to be, if not
> glottal fricatives? How realistic is a system with 4 or more distinct
> (choke!) laryngeals and only one oral fricative?

[PCR]
Well, I believe that [w] should be regarded as a labial fricative, so there
would be two oral fricatives.

However, I also believe that there was only one 'laryngeal', that Nostratic
[h], [H], and [¿] fell together as IE [x] --- the reason Nostratic [x] and
[xh] had to be transformed in [gw] and [kw]. With Nostratic [?], I am not sure
whether it remained [?] in IE, was also transformed into [x], or just became
[0].

[ moderator snip ]

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 18 08:08:46 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 09:08:46 +0100
Subject: baseball nicknames
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.10.10104161629110.24840-100000@pacman.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.090846.0100.>

--On Monday, April 16, 2001 4:31 pm -0400 Marc Pierce <karhu at umich.edu>
wrote:

[on Bid McPhee and Piano Legs Hickman]

> According to "Baseball Nicknames" (p. 125): "Hickman was 5'8" and weighed
> 185 pounds.  He had thick legs like those of a piano."

Many, many thanks.  I've never seen this book, but I want it.  Guess I'll
put it on my birthday wish list.  Unfortunately, the south coast of England
is not the greatest place for finding baseball books, but Amazon.com has
reached even unto the English Riviera.

Apparently piano-like legs are not an asset for a third baseman.  I recall
that Hickman holds the season record for the worst fielding average of the
20th century: he once fielded under .900 for a season.  Harmon Killebrew
was a better third baseman.

> Also, apropos "biddy," this is still reasonably common in some contexts,
> e.g. youth basketball leagues are often called "biddy basketball."  Is
> this perhaps a variant of "bitty"?

Don't know, but it sounds possible.  I confess I've never heard 'biddy'
used this way, but my American English is woefully out of date.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From dsalmon at salmon.org  Thu Apr 19 17:11:47 2001
From: dsalmon at salmon.org (David Salmon)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:11:47 -0700
Subject: Biddy (was Peter)
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.101147.0700.>

According to Webster's and my recollection of my grandfather's Texas farm,
"biddy" is a name for a young hen or chicken, I suppose the female
equivalent of banty, as in banty rooster.  OED suggests it traces to Gaelic,
not bitty.  Back when people had chickens, it could have been a good
nickname for someone who was small.

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Pierce" <karhu at umich.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 1:31 PM

[ moderator snip ]

> Also, apropos "biddy," this is still reasonably common in some contexts,
> e.g. youth basketball leagues are often called "biddy basketball."  Is
> this perhaps a variant of "bitty"?


From crismoc at smart.ro  Thu Apr 19 10:13:05 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 13:13:05 +0300
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.131305.0300.>

FWIW, Peter's Aramaic name was actually Shimon Bar Yona, "Simon, son of
Jonah" ( BTW, not "John" as some English Bible translations, e.g. the
Jerusalem Bible, have). Ke:phas and Petros/Petrus were nicknames based on
Jesus' intention to call him that. Indeed, some Jews, both in Palestine and
the diaspora, did use "parallel" Greek names or Latin gentilicia, but those
were usually either at the service of Roman authorities, or even Roman
citizens like Paul (us) whose Jewish name was Shaul/Saul, and these people
would, more likely than not, speak Greek and/or Latin, besides Aramaic. I
strongly doubt that a simple fisherman from Galilee would have been in such
a situation. I assume that Ke:phas and Petros prevailed over Simon when
Peter went to Antioch and subsequently to Rome, because those Christian
communities would simply prefer to call him that. Indeed, his companions
prefer to call him Simon, even after the dialogue at Caesarea Philippi (see
Luke 24,34; Acts 15,14), just as "Paul" was "Saul" in Jerusalem ( Acts
8,1;9,1 etc.) and "Paul" elsewhere.

Cristian


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 01:36:42 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 21:36:42 EDT
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.213642.EDT.>

I think it might be productive if we were to avoid building mighty theories
on a couple of place-names and ethnonyms.  The fact of the matter is that
"Pelasgian" is a hypothesis, and that the pre-IE, pre-Greek linguistic
history of the Aegean lands is unrecoverable.

All we have are some common place-names in Greece and western Anatolia.
They're subject to multiple interpretation, and none of the interpretations
is falsifiable -- which is to say, they're all meaningless.

It's irritating, but entropy does destroy information.  We can do a great
deal with archaeology, and with comparative/historical linguistics, but
ultimately one runs out of evidence.

After that, it's all wheel-spinning.  We should avoid hubris and simply say
"we don't know, and failing new evidence, we never will".


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed Apr 18 03:55:23 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 22:55:23 -0500
Subject: Colorado
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.20010413195101.36eff5ec@online.be>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.225523.0500.>

>[Ed Selleslagh]
>I'm not a specialist, but I would doubt 'colorado' is any more poetical
>than the other words. 'Bermejo' might be.

>BTW I'm still trying to understand the difference between a Río Tinto and a
>Río Colorado. Maybe 'tinto' refers to the water color (like in 'vino tinto'
>= red wine) and 'colorado' to the general aspect of the river bed (e.g. the
>Grand Canyon)?

>As to the Partido Colorado: I GUESS Partido Rojo would make it look like
>Communist or so.

	There is a Partido Colorado in both Uruguay and Paraguay. They're
both main-stream parties rooted in 19th century Liberalism. Ideologically,
they correspond to the US Democratic Party, Blair's version of the Labour
Party and the German Free Democrats.
	The "Partido Rojo", of course, is the Communist Party. And the
(obsolete) US term "pinko", is "rojillo"
	I don't see <<colorado>> as a poetic term either. It very common
among peasants.
	<<Bermejo>> is archaic and associated with the language of El poema
del mi/o Cid and other medieval works. There is, however, a R/io Bermejo in
Argentina but it may be from Portuguese <<vermelho>>
	<<Tinto>> is used for "red wine" in wine-drinking countries but for
"black coffee" in several tropical countries. In Costa Rica people ask
guests "¿Le provoca un tinto?" when they drop in.
	I heard tinto "dark liquid", tinte "dye, tint" and tinta "ink"
often confused.
	In any case, I believe the name and color of the famous Ri/o Tinto
of Spain is due to mineral deposits in the water rather than mud --which is
characteristic of the many R/ios Colorados

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Apr 19 16:08:32 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:08:32 -0600
Subject: Indian Names
In-Reply-To: <001f01c0c432$f11b9720$cf2a63d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.100832.0600.>

[ moderator edited ]

>> [me] My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only
>> 100 years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the
>> ground above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright
>> brick red and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most
>> distinctive soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in
>> general characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent
>> of surface red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet
>> properties that make it memorable.

> [David White] Well, I have seen soil maps of Texas, which appear to show
> bewildering and difficult to describe diversity more than anything else.  And
> which do not necessarily mention color.  Maybe a field trip to the Map Room
> is in order.  But I am lazy.  In any event, there is certainly a lot of
> non-red soil around, and I find it difficult to imagine that the proposition
> "The soil of Texas is (generally or universally) red" is true.

I agree that the majority of soil in Texas is not red, but we're not dealing
with soil maps, but with people's visual perceptions.  I can't tell you what
the color of the soil was in my Los Angeles front yard when I lived there,
or in Wake Forest, North Carolina when I lived there or outside the barracks
at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  If I wasn't staring out my front window
right now, I couldn't even tell you the color of the soil in my yard today.
By saying "can't tell you the color", I mean that it's all "brown",
"dirt-colored".  There's nothing to distinguish it from the soil color of
anyplace else I've gardened in, walked on, slept on, etc.  Except for that
red clay of East Texas.  It's distinctive.  That's my point.  Forget the
soil maps.  Look on the ground and see what it looks like, how it feels
under the foot, what it looks like wet, and then see how long you remember
it and want to talk to someone else about it.  That's the experience of the
Spanish who named the Colorado River in Texas.  They weren't interested in
farming possibilities in Texas, but in finding gold and heathens.  Brown
dirt is brown dirt is brown dirt when you're looking for gold or souls to
save.  But that red clay.  You remember it.  Forever.  It doesn't take a lot
of it.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 18 13:06:06 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 14:06:06 +0100
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
In-Reply-To: <l0313033db6fc7170f5c5@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.140606.0100.>

--On Friday, April 13, 2001 4:03 am -0500 Rick Mc Callister
<rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>	 Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,
> something else is happening as well that gives it a tap /-r-/ quality

Yes; /t/ and /d/ are phonetic taps (US "flaps") in this position.  They are
similar, but not identical, to the tapped /r/ of Spanish.  Tapped /t/ is
not infrequently voiceless.

>	 I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that there may be
> some sort of hiatus before the second syllable of <writer>, <rider> in
> English pronunciation that's not present in the US pronunciation

No hiatus, as far as I can tell.  But both are usually phonetic plosives.
The articulation of the plosives is so deliberate, to my American ears,
that they sometimes sound to me like geminate plosives.  This is
particularly prominent in certain words, such as 'ready', which in English
mouths sounds to me like 'red-dy'.

>	 Regarding the different vowel quality of <writer> and <rider> cited
> in descriptions of US pronunication. Is this possibly a conscious reaction
> to the spelling?

I doubt it.

> In rapid speech the difference is either minimized or eliminated.

Not in my accent!  Of couse, I come from the far north of the US, and I
have a variety of Canadian Raising.  The difference in vowel quality
between 'writer' and 'rider' is large; it persists in all contexts; and it
is in fact phonemic in my accent.  For me, 'cider' and 'spider' have the
schwa-like nucleus, and these words do not rhyme with 'rider' -- not even
in very careful speech.

>	 Other minimal pairs such as <bitter> and <bidder> are pronounced
> exactly alike in US English--at least to my ear.

Phonetically, yes, though the underlying contrast remains and can be
recovered at will.  And they can be distinguished even in rapid speech by
the use of a voiceless tap in the first.

>	 Does this phenomenon exist anywhere in English outside of North
> America and Northern Ireland?

Yes.  Tapping of /t/ is reported for a variety of accents in England and in
Australia.  Some speakers in England even have taps in words like
'nineteen' and 'thirteen', where I can't possibly use a tap.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu  Wed Apr 18 13:36:54 2001
From: hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:36:54 -0500
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.083654.0500.>

The different vowel qualities in <writer>/<rider> are not found in all of US
English.  They're particularly characteristic of, but not exclusive to North
Central and Inland Northern US English, and, of course, Canadian English
especially in Ontario and the prairie provinces.  In some variants of these
dialects, like mine from pre-NCVS rural SE Michigan, the contrast is phonemic
in open syllables (high/Hi), before /nd/ (round (adj)/round (prep)) or (kind
(N)/kind(adj)), and before /d/ (hide (v)/hide (n)).  In each of those pairs,
the raised-onset diphthong is given first.  I suspect these examples answer the
question of whether spelling is involved.

Herb

>>> rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu 04/13/01 04:03AM >>>
	Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,
something else is happening as well that gives it a tap /-r-/ quality
	I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that there may be
some sort of hiatus before the second syllable of <writer>, <rider> in
English pronunciation that's not present in the US pronunciation
	Regarding the different vowel quality of <writer> and <rider> cited
in descriptions of US pronunication. Is this possibly a conscious reaction
to the spelling? In rapid speech the difference is either minimized or
eliminated.
	Other minimal pairs such as <bitter> and <bidder> are pronounced
exactly alike in US English--at least to my ear.
	Does this phenomenon exist anywhere in English outside of North
America and Northern Ireland?

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed Apr 18 07:56:04 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:56:04 +0100
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.085604.0100.>

> Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,

No, quite right.   There are not two, but three differences in English
between /t/ and /d/:
   voiceless  ~   voiced
   aspirated  ~  unaspirated
   tense    ~  lax  (I hope I've got those the right way round!)

Intervocalic /t/ can be voiced and unaspirated, but it remains tense,
whereas intervocalic /d/ is lax.   Thus some speakers report that they can
hear the difference.

NZ-speak also frequently has this intervocalic voiced /t/, so America and
Ireland are not linguistic isolates!

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 18 14:20:05 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 09:20:05 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.092005.0500.>

Dear David and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 4:05 PM

<snip>

[DLW]
> I think something similar happened with the retroflex series in
> Sanskrit, for as I hinted recently, it seems there is no good internal cause
> for this to have become phonemic.  The "phonemicness" in both cases is, I
> suggest, carried over from sub-strate.

<snip>

[PCR]
I would differ here. The problem for Old Indian was that Nostratic [a], [e],
and [o] all became [a]. Obviously, this entailed a substantial loss of semantic
integrity. Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped
disambiguate somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or
[e]; in exactly the same way, dorsals were palatalized before Nostratic [e] but
not [a] or [o]. These were small helps to keep original CaC, CeC, and CoC roots
separate.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr 17 23:18:23 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:18:23 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.191823.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:09:10 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> My original point was of course that, under those circumstances, there would
> be plenty of good reason to expect Anatolian IE to "look intrusive", but not
> actually be intrusive.

-- no.  The pattern of relationships between Anatolian and non-IE languages
in Anatolia is that which one would expect from an intrusive language.

Eg., the pattern of Hattic loan-word distribution in Hittite/Neshite; and
Hittite can be shown through the historical sources to have replaced Hattic
in a clear case of language succession.

What's more, the further you go back with the historical sources, the smaller
the area covered IE languages in Anatolia; the replacement of Urartian by
Armenian, for example, and of most of the Hurrian-speaking areas by
Indo-Iranian. (Or Semitic, further south.)

The historical data doesn't go all the way back, but what we do have
indicates that Anatolia in the early Bronze Age was largely non-Indo-European
speaking; and that historically attested IE languages came in from the west
and east via migration.

Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian were
indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for these,
and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with similar biota.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr 17 23:19:45 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:19:45 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.191945.EDT.>

Incidentally, PIE does show definite signs of very early relations with
proto-Finno-Ugrian, which is generally agreed to have been located in the
forest zone of the Ural mountains.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr 17 23:39:38 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:39:38 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.193938.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:37:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> <<The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in
> innovation in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical
> range,...>>

-- ideological/cultural innovation is the most important type, and it
leaves few traces.  It's irrecoverable, save of course through linguistic
reconstruction.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 00:04:55 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 20:04:55 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.200455.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:37:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?

-- doesn't fit the evidence.  Hattic influence on Hittite bears all the marks
of a classic substrate language; and one with a higher degree of
social/technological development than its successor, at that.

>    Any other language you find in Anatolia could have just as easily
> intruded on     Anatolian.

-- no.  There are usually fairly clear indications of the direction of
influence.  The vocabulary Hittite acquired from Hattic relates mainly to
"high culture" items; government, urban life, religious cult, etc.  (Words
for throne, lord, queen mother, libation, etc.)

But the area that later became the Hittite heartland had had urbanism for a
very, very long time.

To suppose that Anatolian was indigenous and Hattic intrusive, one would have
to postulate a series of migrations and counter-migrations involving the
Hittites first vacating the area, losing their vocabulary for these items,
and then coming back to territory occupied in the interim by the
Hattic-speakers and picking up a different vocabulary.

It's inherently implausible; the phrase "Rube Goldberg" comes to mind.

A simple succession of Hittite over Hattic explains all the observable data
with much greater parsimony.  The alternative is another "solution without a
problem".

Hattic also shows some relation to the North Caucasian languages, which is
exactly what one would expect, since it's geographically close to them.

>   So now there's not even evidence in the Ukraine.  So, as far as I can tell,
> there's no evidence of "horse-riding" in all of Europe much before around
> 1500BC.

-- this is ridiculous.  Apart from the fact that radiocarbon data from the
Dereivka horse (the skull, specifically) dates to around 3000 BCE, the
domestic horse is widespread in Beaker culture contexts in Europe, 2500 BCE
and earlier, and throughout the Eurasian steppe zone rather earlier than
that, with full-blown chariots before 2000 BCE.

The spread of the horse of  course involved both domesticated horses being
moved, and local wild horses being domesticated.

> The wheel just plain seems to go the other way.  The Near East, Poland, the
> Danube, then into the Ukraine.

-- the diffusion of the wheel is simply too rapid to determine where things
started.

Again, why keep trying to torture the evidence this way?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 00:24:07 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 20:24:07 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.202407.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:37:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> <<The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in
> innovation in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical
> range,...>

-- precisely this model of language spread can be shown to have happened with
respect to the Central Asia/Iran/Indian subcontinental spread of
Indo-Irainian in early historic times.  IE languages are definitely intrusive
throughout most of that area, and the earliest recorded examples -- Vedic
Sanskrit, Mittanian Indo-Aryan, and Avestan Iranian -- are so similar that
the diffusion from the original core area must have been quite recent, and
hence very swift; no more than a millenium before the composition of the
Vedas and the texts of the Mittanian records, both of which are commonly
dated to the last centuries of the 2nd millenium BCE.  The earliest Avestan
material is around the same time, roughly 11th century BCE.

That means the Indo-Iranian language spread definitely post-dates 2500 BCE,
and is possibly quite a bit later.  Note also that the spread of the
Indo-Iranian languages was _not_ accompanied by any massive or unambiguous
upheaval in the archaeological record.

If a language (and subsequently language family) which originated on the
steppe could spread over such a vast (and densely populated and
post-Neolithic) landscape so quickly in the 3rd-2nd millenium BCE, I see no
reason to find it implausible that the same thing happened in Europe rather
earlier.

And that in fact best fits the data observable when the European area first
'comes into view'.

So the Corded Ware and Bell-Beaker cultures, and their successors, would
represent the Indo-Europeanization of Europe and the Balkans.

This explanation takes care of all the primary (linguistic) and secondary
(archaeologica) data we have, and is admirably simple; it neatly puts PIE
back to roughly the Sredny Srog-Yamna level in the Ukraine and points east,
and leaves no more loose ends than the accidents of evidentiary preservation
require and account for.

The only objection to it is that it doesn't fit some people's conception of
how linguistic changes -should- happen, which frankly doesn't seem to be a
very serious obstacle.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 00:28:27 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 20:28:27 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.202827.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 6:01:29 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> Just a comment that the notion is that the flow of ideas and know-how both
> motivates and is made possible by a change in language.  So the whole thing
> sort of pivots on what new ideas and things language has made possible.

-- diffusion of technologies and concepts does _not_ require language
shifts.  Changes in language are due, historically, almost entirely to
demographic and "political" causes.

There is no reason to believe things were different in prehistory.


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Apr 18 02:33:54 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:33:54 -0700
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <78.135891fe.280b1bef@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.193354.0700.>

At 11:44 AM 4/15/01 -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>That's not my understanding of the situation with "aboriginal" languages in
>New Guinea.  I believe that most of the languages yield no comparative
>relatedness to neighboring languages and that the explanation is that the
>highly local isolation of these languages dates back more than 10,000 years.
>Do you have better information?

There are many language groups in New Guinea, and adjacent languages tend
to be from different groups.  But many, even most, of the languages are
demonstrably related to some other languages, either on New Guinea or
elsewhere.  There are even some Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken in parts
of New Guinea. In addition Foley recognizes 26 language families, ranging
in size from two languages to 21 languages.  And there is some suggestion
that there may be larger groupings such as East Papuan and West Papuan
(though these are less widely accepted).

Foley's book is actually quit interesting, as it discusses patterns of
language distribution, with different families in the valleys than in the
hills.

>I wrote:
><<Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
>intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
>language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?>>

>Stanley Friesen replied:
><<My first guess would be Hattic. Or the aboriginal language could have
>become extinct by the time of the Hittite Empire.>>

>But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?  And assuming an aboriginal
>language begs the question, doesn't it?  Any other language you find in
>Anatolia could have just as easily intruded on Anatolian.

Patterns matter.  The pattern of borrowing, and the distribution of the
various languages, at least *suggest* that Anatolian is intrusive.  Too
little is known of Hattic to tell if it falls in the intrusive pattern.

>Stanley Friesen replied:
><<Oh?  Horse riding, possibly wheeled vehicles (and later chariots for sure -
>but that was after PIE split up) - these sound like innovation to me!>>

>I've asked the following question on three different archaeology lists. I've
>asked it of members of the team that did the recent gene study on horses.
>I've even sent Prof Anthony an unanswered e-mail.  Here are the questions:

><< How many other instances of tooth bit-wear, bits, cheek pieces, saddles or
>any other evidence of HORSE RIDING have been found in Europe between the time
>of the early finds in the Ukraine and the clear appearance of the bit after
>circa 2000BC.

>Have any horse teeth been found in Europe after 4000BC but before say 1500BC
>and what percentage show the stated indicia of bit wear?>>

>The only answers I've ever received all say none that anybody knows of.
>Nothing.  Zip.  Plenty of bones.  Plenty of horse skulls.  But nothing else.

Forget bits - there is also evidence, in the form of changes in equine
anatomy, for domestication at time *preceding* 4000 BC.  Now it is
possible, even likely, that it was originally domesticated as a food
animal. However, its transition to a major sacrificial animal, especially
in association with prestige graves, suggests that by the time the Kurgan
cultures have emerged it had changed its status to something more
special.  The general treatment of the horse in ritual in all of the Kurgan
cultures gives it a central place in their value system.

Perhaps riding without a bit preceded use of the bit?

>The wheel just plain seems to go the other way.  The Near East, Poland, the
>Danube, then into the Ukraine.

The earliest wheel dates are difficult to make into a sequence, and are
ambiguous as well.  Wooden wheels will not survive readily unless used as
grave goods.  Thus we are unlikely to actually have the earliest wheels.

One can at least make a case for more or less independent invention in the
Near East and the Danube area - given the radically different construction
techniques used for making wheels in the two areas.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Wed Apr 18 05:20:42 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:20:42 +0300
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.082042.0300.>

If an archaeologist may comment:

Steve Long wrote

> But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?

I accept that we are not (yet?) able to associate archaeological
evidence with languages. However, with regard to Hattians, it might be
pointed out that the Early Bronze burials at Alaca Höyük (and elsewhere
in the central Pontus) have clear links with the Varna culture on the
Blak Sea in Bulgaria. The precise nature of those links and an exact
chronology is lacking, although there are many opinions. It would not be
implausible to suggest that the burials at Alaca represent Hattians,
since this is the very area, very close to Hattusa, that the Hittites
invaded.

I have often wondered if Hattic and the language(s) of the Gashga/Kashka
tribes were related. Am I correct in thinking that there is still no
evidence?

> What's worse is then when I cited bit-wear on teeth at Derevika I got this
> back: "Actually you gotta throw the Derevika horse [bit evidence] out.
> Anthony and Brown (2000) Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian
> steppes, ANTIQUITY, 75-86, has C14 dates from it...  The most recent dates on
> it put it up around the 1st century BC.  As they note, it looks like it was a
> pit deposit that had nothing to do with the Neolithic levels of the site."

> So now there's not even evidence in the Ukraine.

That would appear to be correct. It would seem that the arguments over
bit wear are settled, yes it was bit wear on the teeth. The one horse in
question is now dated to the Iron Age. If ever a horse had egg on its
face it was this one.

> now they're finding even more true horse bones at Catal Huyuk.  So there's
> not a lot left to connect early European steppe culture with early
> horse-related innovations in the rest of Europe.

These are wild horses, along with asses and onagers. They were hunted
for meat. Equids do appear on the Catal wall paintings, but none (yet
found) form the cental focus of a hunting scene. Wild horses were hunted
in central and easten Anatolia well into the chalcolithic period. They
then appear to have become extinct (I would suggest that the evidence is
somewhat scanty, but they must have become rare animals) and were
reintroduced fully domesticated.

Best wishes,

Geoff

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 18 13:25:28 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:25:28 -0500
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.082528.0500.>

Dear Steve and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 9:25 AM

<snip>

[PCRp]
> <<To me, the likeliest scenario is that Caucasians, speaking a Caucasian
> language with characteristics similar to Kabardian (reduced vowel inventory),
> came into contact with speakers of a non-Semitic Afrasian language, adopted
> it (mangled it, mostly); and that the northernmost group became
> Indo-Europeans, while the southerners became Semites.>>

[SL]
> Just a comment that the notion is that the flow of ideas and know-how both
> motivates and is made possible by a change in language.  So the whole thing
> sort of pivots on what new ideas and things language has made possible.

> So is the scenario above it kind of helps to ask why the Caucasians would do
> this and what it appears they got out of it.  If you buy the idea that the
> majority of modern Europeans are descended from a European paleolithic
> population (not saying that you should), then what could have motivated that
> early language shift?  Or did they bring it with them in paleolithic times,
> meaning that Pre-IE got there soon after the ice-age ended.

[PCR]
As for what motivated the Caucasians to adopt a mangled Afrasian, I believe the
explanation woudl be that they were a dominant minority, and it was easier for
them to learn the language of the majority.

The advantage to them is that they were able to 'herd' Afrasians (i.e.
'enslave' or at least 'enserf' them) into a work-force that allowed large
accumulations of surplus production. I believe it likely that the Caucasians,
in their northern mountain-vallleys, had been animal-herders primarily; and
easily adapted to 'herding' humans.

I further suppose that the wave of small-scale agriculturalists that spread
through Europe were speaking a non-IE language, descended from Afrasian, which
was superimposed on a earlier version of Afrasian spoken by the
hunter-gatherers that preceded them there.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 20 17:10:11 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 18:10:11 +0100
Subject: Greek from PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.181011.0100.>

Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
from PIE?

For the later Greek period I have Geoffrey Horrocks' book, and for Latin I
know Baldi's book and Meiser's, but I don't know of anything similar for PIE
to Greek.   Any helpers?

Peter


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 23 02:45:20 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 21:45:20 -0500
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <001701c0c432$23df0080$cf2a63d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <SUN.22.APR.2001.214520.0500.>

	April 2001 Natural History (pp. 30-38) has an interesting article
"Deaths of Languages" (for amateurs, at least) on Crimean Gothic (et alii)
by Jared Diamond.
	Diamond points out that the recorder's informant was a Greek
familiar with Crimean Gothic, which was spoken by Muslim subjects of
Turkey. The informant translated the etyma into Greek, which was translated
into Italian for the recorder, who was Flemish. The recorder translated the
etyma into Latin and used Dutch or German ortography for the etyma. A copy
of the material was later published in France. It's amazing the material
survived at all.
	Diamond lists the following etyma --with Diamond's observations

ada "egg" < Gmc. ajjaz; note /-jj-/ > /-d-/
apel "apple"
atha "8"
boga "bow"
bruder "brother"
cadariou "soldier" < Latin centurio
furdeitheien "40"
fyder "4"
fynf "5"
geen "to see"
goltz "gold"
handa "hand"
lachen "to laugh"
marzus "wedding" < ?
menus "meat" < Hungarian me/n-hu/s
nyne "9"
oeghene "eyes"
rinck "ring"
sada "100" < Iranian sad "100"
salt "salt"
schieten "to shoot"
schlipen "to sleep"
seuene "7"
siluir "silver"
sune "sun"
telich "foolish" < Turkish telyq
thiine "10"
thiinetria "13"
thiinetua "12"
treithyen "30"
tria "3"
tua "2"
tzo "thou"

	I'm surprised the list is so readily recognizable --almost too
recognizable! The citations I've seen from Ulfila's Gothic don't look that
close to English, German and Dutch. Did Diamond just leave out the truly
hard stuff?
	Any thoughts from Germanic scholars?

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Apr 21 11:03:30 2001
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 07:03:30 -0400
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.070330.0400.>

I am not sure if "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com> is for or
against *gh etc being affricates. But I will use his post to to hang my
questions on.

> [...] A language
> with an inventory of stops comparable to Sanskrit ought to have 3 or 4
> distinct fricatives in addition to /h/.

Does that mean that Sanskrit itself `should' have had 3 or 4 distinct
fricatives?  [Nor am I sure what distinct means: Sanskrit had voiceless
fricatives produced at various places, but these where all allophones of /s/.
There is the sound commonly transcribed h, but this is voiced and results from
(Brugmannian *gh', and less often from *dh. Then there are three sibilants.]

>[...] OTOH if the traditional (Brugmannian) voiced aspirates were
> "really" voiced fricatives, the transition to voiced aspirates in Indic
> could be viewed as systematic substrate-induced fortition, if the
> Munda-substrate hypothesis is in the ballpark.

How do we explain Germanic? Or for that matter, Iranian where *dh etc
became d etc (at least intervocalic)? And if substratum explanation is
in the ballpark, why did the aspirated series go to a voiced fricative?
[in Vedic, this already had happened with intervocalic *dh in verbal
endings such as mahe (< PI-Ir *madhai), as well as all intervocalic PI-Ir *jh
and this speads to all (intervocalic) voiced aspirates in MIA.]

Comparative IE work usually looks only at Sanskrit because looking at
MIA doesn't seem to be worth the trouble [but this is not sure: Turner's
CDIAL makes it easy locate the data, and there are words attested in
Prakrits which are not found in known Sanskrit lit, at least if we exclude
grammarians and lexicographers.] However, substratum explanations
cannot really do that: Why should the said substratum conveniently
disappear, leaving Prakrits to reverse the whole process?

Regards
Nath


From bronto at pobox.com  Mon Apr 23 07:42:39 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 00:42:39 -0700
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <MON.23.APR.2001.004239.0700.>

"David L. White" wrote:
> Retroflexes are not part of the proto-AustroAsiatic sound system.
> (Neither are voiced aspirates.)  I have never heard of them occurring
> in Vietnamese, though I cannot swear that they do not.

According to one of my references, the phoneme written <tr>
is a retroflex stop in southern Vietnamese (palatal in northern).

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Apr 21 11:15:41 2001
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 07:15:41 -0400
Subject: Retroflexion in IA (was Re: Munda in Early NW India)
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.071541.0400.>

"petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

> The distribution of the retroflex series is severely limited in the older
> language [...] (list deleted)

I am not sure how to understand `retroflex': Isn't that supposed to include
the retroflex sibilant (.s) and the nasal (.n) in addition to the non-nasal
stops? If so, here are the regular processes that led to them in Sanskrit:

ruki-s -> .s
n that follows r or .s, even with vowels, labials, y, v intervening -> .n
t/th that immediately follows .s -> .t/.th
s' (from PIE *k') +t(h) -> .s.t(h)
h from PIE gh' + t/dh -> .dh (with h -> zero, preceding vowel lengthened.)
ruki s + d/dh -> .d/.dh (with s -> zero, preceding vowel lengthened if not
long by position)

Only the last two have retroflexing environments that go to zero in
Sanskrit. However, they are rare in practive: the penultimate can occur
only with ani.t roots ending in *gh' (only a handful in Sans); the standard
examples of the last are isolated words such as ni:.da (< *ni-sd-o, nest)
and aorist 2nd pl mid, an infrequent category.

Other processes mentioned by Peter are irregular (may be dialect mixture,
may be prakritisms, ...). An oddbal is Fortunatov's law: l+t -> .t
[but there is RV galda] Its status seems to have gone back and forth.
I don't know where it stands now.

In Prakrits, -rt- sometimes becomes -.t.t- (and vocalic r+t can become
a/i/u+.t). But this is dialect dependent and it seems to vary within other
families as well. Similar developments seem to have occurred in Norwegian,
and this is why Hock (loc. cited by Oberoi) objects to attributing this to
`substratum'.

Turning now to substratum explanations:

See now T.A. Hall in Lingua 102 (1997) pp. 203-221: Contrast of
two laminal shibilants, one alveopalatal and one palato-alveolar (his terms),
is rare to non-existent and when sound changes lead to such a contrast,
a shift to a more stable system will follow. One common repair
mechanism is to make one sound apical. This is the explanation for IA
retroflex s.

It is interesting to see the evolution of the view on .s: Once upon a time,
it was considered to be limited to South Asia. Masica, "Genesis of a
linguistic area" lists only Chinese in addition. Hall makes gives a large
number of examples of .s vs 's like contrast, and deems it a `near-universal'.

Also, all the three sibilants fall together as s in MIA. If .s is due to
substratum influence, this is weird. The substratum induces a change, then
conveniently disappers allowing Prakrits (which one would to show more
substratum influence) to reverse the process.

Note also that -rt- becomes some sort of (apical) shibilant in (Late?)
Avestan: This suggests that -rt- was already retracted in PI-Ir and that the
development of -rt- to -.t.t- in MIA need not invoke the deux ex machina
of substratum influence.

----

Regarding phonemic status of retroflexes: First of all, note that s/'s/.s
contrast of Sanskrit is exactly parallel to h/s/s^ of Avestan. Nobody, to
my knowledge, worries whether Avestan has three phonemes here or
two. Why then should we worry about Sanskrit?

Secondly, I don't know how phonemes are defined in inflected languages:
Do we use inflected words or dictionary forms? Theory seems to dictate
the former, but people seem to use the latter to find contrasts. This is a
more serious problem in Sanskrit as the dictionary form is the stem, which
is, synchronically, a grammatical fiction, seldom uttered in actual speech.
An additional problem is sandhi: If two words are homophones in some
contexts due to sandhi, but not in all contexts, do they count for contrast?

Due to the fact that the conditioning environments for retroflexion do not
generally go to zero in Sanskrit, it is hard to find inherited contrasting
words.  If we add the accent, it gets even harder: For example, u:Dha's (masc.
nom sing of PPP of vah) and u:'dhas (udder, replacement for u:dhar/n, an r/n
heteroclitic) are not homophones if we count the accent.  But, if they are all
allophones, then .sa.tbhis (with six) and satbhis (from neut pres part of as <
*Hes) would be homophones! [BTW, note that Avestan has s^ for six, paralleling
.sa.t. So the word for six already identical to ruki-s in PI-Ir.] There is also
i.da:' vs ida:', but the etymology of i.da: is is obscure.

--

Just when I finished writing the above, I got the message in which
Pat Ryan wrote:

> [...] Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped disambiguate
> somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or [e];

Huh? You mean contrast of `Nostratic [o] vs Nostratic [a]/[e]' (whatever they
are) was preserved till the split of IA so the speakers could decide when to
change `apicals' to retroflex? Or do you mean PIE *o vs PIE *a/*e
(that is demonstrably false).

---

Regards
Nath


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Apr 21 08:11:56 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 09:11:56 +0100
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.091156.0100.>

>Old Indian ... *[a], [e], and [o] all became [a]. Obviously, this entailed a
>substantial loss of semantic integrity [in] ...... original CaC, CeC, and CoC
>roots

Trouble is, for the stage before Old Indian, CaC roots are very rare, and
CeC ~ CoC roots are morphologically conditioned alternatives.  Some writers
would only accept CeC roots , so for them your argument collapses.

Even if we do accept Cac, Cec and CoC roots, we have to admit the
distribution of them in PIE is far from equal, and so the likelihood of
ambiguity is small.   This would not be "a substantial loss of semantic
integrity".

Peter


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Fri Apr 20 20:15:34 2001
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 13:15:34 -0700
Subject: horses and bits
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010417190031.00c85da0@getmail.friesen.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.131534.0700.>

 Stanley Friesen writes,
>Forget bits - there is also evidence, in the form of changes in equine
>anatomy, for domestication at time *preceding* 4000 BC.  Now it is
>possible, even likely, that it was originally domesticated as a food
>animal. However, its transition to a major sacrificial animal, especially
>in association with prestige graves, suggests that by the time the Kurgan
>cultures have emerged it had changed its status to something more
>special.  The general treatment of the horse in ritual in all of the Kurgan
>cultures gives it a central place in their value system.

>Perhaps riding without a bit preceded use of the bit?

This is what I have been wondering. Didn't the Plains Indians ride horses
very well without using metal bits or stirrups? (The latter known to be a
later development in Eurasia, of course.) And if they did use leather
bridles, would that be enough to cause wear in the teeth?

Max Dashu


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Apr 20 22:02:16 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 18:02:16 EDT
Subject: Evidence of Horse Riding
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.180216.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/20/2001 1:34:26 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<< -- this is ridiculous.   Apart from the fact that radiocarbon data from the
Dereivka horse (the skull, specifically) dates to around 3000 BCE,... >>

As I pointed out, it appears the famous Dereivka skull (originally dated as
early as 3300BC) is now being dated to the first century BC.  I gave you a
citation that was sent to me which you have chosen to ignore:
"Actually you gotta throw the Derevika horse [bit evidence] out.  Anthony and
Brown (2000) Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian steppes,
ANTIQUITY, 75-86, has C14 dates from it...  The most recent dates on it put
it up around the 1st century BC.  As they note, it looks like it was a pit
deposit that had nothing to do with the Neolithic levels of the site."

<<Again, why keep trying to torture the evidence this way?>>

Respectfully, I believe you - if I am allowed to return the personal remark -
are the one disregarding the evidence.  If you note all my references were to
evidence of HORSE-RIDING in Europe and not horses.  The original post I was
responding to referred to HORSE-RIDING.

It has often been repeated that evidence of HORSE-RIDING has been shown in
bit-wear marks.  Mallory has often cited the Derevika skull and bit-wear as
his main evidence.  We on the other hand know that some "Corded Ware" folk
ate horses, and there is some evidence that they dealt in their skins and
horse-hair.  There is no evidence that they rode them or knew how to ride
them or could ride them at that stage of domestication.  Wild equines are
generally not easy to tame and difficult to ride, even when tame.

If you bother to read my original post with any care, you'll see that I
agreed with you that there is plenty of evidence of the horse in Europe, even
in Neolithic times around the Danube.  The problem is there is no evidence of
bit wear marks anywhere in Europe before @1500BC.  There IS evidence of bit
wear in Kazakhstan around 3000BC.  But, though there are a fair number of
horse skulls and teeth from Europe throughout the next millennium and a half,
none that I know of have ever shown bit wear marks.

The above cited report from Anthony-- which apparently says the Derevika
horse should be thrown out -- comes from the very person who first found the
bit wear evidence and the Kazakhstan evidence.  If you find it ridiculous,
you might want to express your disapproval to him.

Once one admits what the actual evidence is, there is no need to torture it.
It confesses to the truth of its own accord.

Regards,
Steve Long


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Fri Apr 20 12:50:32 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 15:50:32 +0300
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.155032.0300.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 4/17/01 5:09:10 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
> writes:

>> My original point was of course that, under those circumstances, there would
>> be plenty of good reason to expect Anatolian IE to "look intrusive", but not
>> actually be intrusive.

> -- no.  The pattern of relationships between Anatolian and non-IE languages
> in Anatolia is that which one would expect from an intrusive language.

> Eg., the pattern of Hattic loan-word distribution in Hittite/Neshite; and
> Hittite can be shown through the historical sources to have replaced Hattic
> in a clear case of language succession.

I am in no position to comment on the linguistics, but Nesha (Kanesh)
is  a long way from the presumed Hattic heartland (Hattusha). And
Kussara, if it is the east of Nesha (perhaps in the region of modern
Elbistan),  is ever more distant. Thus Anatolian Neshite could be
intrusive into Pontic Hattic.

Snip:

> Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
> animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian were
> indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for these,
> and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with similar
> biota.

There are no olives on the Central Anatolian Plateau, nor in are there
in Eastern Anatolia.

Best wishes,

Geoff
--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From philjennings at juno.com  Fri Apr 20 22:25:52 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:25:52 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.172552.0500.>

JoatSimeon said:

> I think it might be productive if we were to avoid building mighty theories
> on a couple of place-names and ethnonyms.  The fact of the matter is that
> "Pelasgian" is a hypothesis, and that the pre-IE, pre-Greek linguistic
> history of the Aegean lands is unrecoverable.

> All we have are some common place-names in Greece and western Anatolia.
> They're subject to multiple interpretation, and none of the interpretations
> is falsifiable -- which is to say, they're all meaningless.

> It's irritating, but entropy does destroy information.  We can do a great
> deal with archaeology, and with comparative/historical linguistics, but
> ultimately one runs out of evidence.

> After that, it's all wheel-spinning.  We should avoid hubris and simply say
> "we don't know, and failing new evidence, we never will".

My answer:

Thank you.  I am of course half-intoxicated by the loveliness of theories
that involve wars, exiles, and sweeping folk-migrations.
I will continue to provide a foster home for these ideas, but try to be
less noisy about them.

What I hope carries over from these speculations, is that proto-Etruscan
"Lydians" might have a place in the archives of the Hittite Empire, and
not so obscure a place at that.  Otherwise it's hard to face those who
argue that if the non-IE proto-Etruscans came from Western Asia Minor,
why is there no trace of them in their original homeland?

In regards the meaning of "meaning," we hard-nosed philosophers only
regard truth claims as meaningless if one loses all concept of how they
might be verified or falsified.  It is possible to conceive of evidence
for Etruscan migration claims, "Larth was here, invasion went wrong, meet
me in Fufluna," scratched on Egyptian rocks, for example.  Or evidence
for ancient space-gods.  Evidence AGAINST ancient space-gods is a harder
matter.  Generally the argument runs, "if we can explain everything
without ancient space-gods, we have no need for them.  Leave us alone."

There are a few things about the Etruscans, and the Sardinians, that
aren't entirely explained in the absence of migration theories.

As another aside, I see that "Common Anatolian," the mother language and
early daughter of PIE, has changed since I last looked at a glossary, and
the "talk" verb is now "*tro" with the "o" being a tiny little subscripty
sort of thing.  I report this as a general service, since I know how hard
it is to keep up with old unrecorded proto-languages.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sat Apr 21 20:23:30 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 20:23:30 -0000
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.202330.0000.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com (17 Apr 2001) wrote:

>I think it might be productive if we were to avoid building mighty theories
>on a couple of place-names and ethnonyms.  The fact of the matter is that
>"Pelasgian" is a hypothesis, and that the pre-IE, pre-Greek linguistic
>history of the Aegean lands is unrecoverable.

>All we have are some common place-names in Greece and western Anatolia.
>They're subject to multiple interpretation, and none of the interpretations
>is falsifiable -- which is to say, they're all meaningless.

"Indo-European" is also a hypothesis. All we have are some common lexemes in
a few of the world's languages. If the square-wheel sophistry of
"unfalsifiability" applies to Pelasgian, then it applies equally well to IE,
and everything posted on this list is meaningless.

>It's irritating, but entropy does destroy information.  We can do a great
>deal with archaeology, and with comparative/historical linguistics, but
>ultimately one runs out of evidence.

>After that, it's all wheel-spinning.  We should avoid hubris and simply say
>"we don't know, and failing new evidence, we never will".

Not knowing is usually not the product of "failing new evidence", but of
failing to look critically at existing evidence. The IE hypothesis wasn't
motivated by the "discovery" of Sanskrit, but by the critical analysis of
"familiar" languages.

Who has the hubris in this picture? The comparativist who recognizes the
potential of working with substratal material, or the reductionist who fears
monkey-wrenches being thrown into his super-simple model of the Neolithic in
Anatolia and Europe?

DGK


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Mon Apr 23 05:51:42 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 05:51:42 -0000
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
Message-ID: <MON.23.APR.2001.055142.0000.>

Rick Mc Callister (14 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Could you elaborate on that [Pelasgian substrate] with more examples? Are
>you including "Mediterranean" substrate found in both Greek and Italic?

Yes. Many of these are phytonyms whose discrepancy in form precludes direct
borrowing. Palmer cites Lat. citrus ~ Gk. kedros, li:lium ~ leirion, laurus
~ daphne:, vacci:nium ~ huakinthos, viola ~ (w)ion, rosa ~(w)rodon, menta ~
minthe:, and cupressus ~ kuparissos. The last two are sometimes assigned to
Latin borrowing from Greek (without plausible explanation of [e] < [i]) but
the Greek words are from substrate anyway. Lat. <rosa> has undergone
assibilation from *rodia, indicating that it came through Sabine (cf. basus
< badius, Clausus < Claudius). This agrees with Varro's testimony (de Agr.
III.1) that Sabine <teba> 'hill' is a Pelasgian loanword cognate with Gk.
<the:ba>, whose plural is the toponym The:bai 'Thebes' lit. 'hills'. The
same lexeme appears as Oscan *tifa (Tifata mons in Campania).

Lat. fi:cus ~ Gk. su:kon, though cited by Palmer (and Devoto) along with the
examples above, is probably from pre-Pelasgian substrate, since the other
examples do not involve such a severe vowel-shift. This lexeme may be a
relic of the pre-agricultural Mesolithic foraging economy.

Other Greek-Italic correspondences pointing to Pelasgian are Lat.
<pi:lentum> 'carriage, coach' ~ Gk. <peirins>, gen. -nthos 'wicker-basket
used on carriage' (for ending cf. Ti:ryns, gen. -nthos) and Lat. Na:r
(hydronym, mod. Nera) ~ Gk. Ne:reus orig. 'water-dweller'.

The South European Wanderwort for 'lead' probably started as a Pelasgian
term. Like <daphne:>, Gk. <molubdos> has several variants suggesting
borrowing from different substratal dialects. The original phonology is
disputed. I would guess *ml.ub- vel sim. with vocalic [l.] which resolved to
/ol/ in Greek. In the Italian dialect of Pelasgian I hypothesize reduction
of [l.] giving *mlub-, borrowed into Latin as <plumbum>. Similar
prenasalized labials in substratal words occur in <sa(m)bu:cus> 'elder-tree'
(cf. Dacian <seba> id.) and <simpuvium> 'sacrificial vessel' (cf. Gk.
<sipue:> 'flour-bin, meal-jar'). For initial Lat. pl- borrowed from ml- cf.
<place:re> 'to be pleasing' from Etr. <mlach> 'smooth, pretty, pleasing'. On
its way west, *mlub- must have undergone metathesis to *blum-, perhaps in
Ligurian. Old Basque lacked [m] and disfavored initial clusters, so this
would have become *belun, yielding Basque <berun> by well-attested
intervocalic [l] > [r].

At the superfamily level, the root above might be related to PIE *mel-
'soft', but this (like the *wrod- ~ *Hreudh- connection) is purely
speculative at this point.

DGK


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 22 02:04:19 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 22:04:19 EDT
Subject: Indian Names/Red Clay
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.220419.EDT.>

 [David White]  In any event, there is certainly a lot of non-red soil
around, and I find it difficult to imagine that the proposition "The soil of
Texas is (generally or universally) red" is true.

In a message dated 4/19/2001 9:11:29 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net writes:
<< But that red clay.  You remember it.  Forever.  It doesn't take a lot of
it. >>

Yes, I think what you are saying sounds true.  When the US military trains
you in orientation, the first thing you learn to look for is distinctive
landmarks.  I suspect if you were exploring Texas in the 1500-1600's, you
were not looking to sum up your locations in some grand manner.  That would
be done afterwards, back home, at the promotional meetings.  What you would
worry about is practical ways of figuring out where you have been and being
able to remember and recognize it so you can find your way back out.  In a
territory without distinctive landmarks, it's pretty easy to go round in
circles, especially on cloudy days.  The red clay you describe would have a
real milepost.

I would not bring up the old point that we should not expect precise color
names, even at these dates.  There's reason to believe that color conventions
were not anywhere as standardized as we now know them.  Red could be brown
and vice-versa, depending on who was talking.

Regards,
Steve Long


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Fri Apr 20 04:19:23 2001
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 21:19:23 -0700
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <000601c0c913$f10879c0$cd0469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.211923.0700.>

>FWIW, Peter's Aramaic name was actually Shimon Bar Yona, "Simon, son of
>Jonah" ( BTW, not "John" as some English Bible translations, e.g. the
>Jerusalem Bible, have). Ke:phas and Petros/Petrus were nicknames based on
>Jesus' intention to call him that. Indeed, some Jews, both in Palestine and
>the diaspora, did use "parallel" Greek names or Latin gentilicia, but those
>were usually either at the service of Roman authorities, or even Roman
>citizens like Paul (us) whose Jewish name was Shaul/Saul, and these people
>would, more likely than not, speak Greek and/or Latin, besides Aramaic. I
>strongly doubt that a simple fisherman from Galilee would have been in such
>a situation.

I dunno about that. Mack's book on the Book of Q states that Galilee was a
very heterogenous society, so much that it was called Galil ha-goyim (i.e.,
'of the nations'). With a strong Hellenistic presence. And Nazareth was
very close to the imperial center Sephoris. I personally don't think Yeshua
used "Petros" but the idea that he had some familiarity with Greek is not
really so outlandish.

Max Dashu


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Fri Apr 20 11:22:19 2001
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 12:22:19 +0100
Subject: Biddy (was Peter)
In-Reply-To: <002d01c0c8f4$97e02b00$0100a8c0@David>
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.122219.0100.>

This thread seems to be particularly anecdotal, so here goes.

Well (and 'infandum, regina, iubes renouare dolorem', as the pupil at
Westminster School is reputed to have replied to Elizabeth of England when
she visited the place and asked about a particularly whippy piece of wood
hanging on the wall), in my youth (1950's) our hens were 'biddies' - and I
was struck over the hand by the head teacher at my infants' school when I
gave that as the reply to where eggs come from), but this was in
Worcestershire, my/our use of the term at home was definitely Scots (or
north of Ireland), and the teacher was over-assertively from the north of
England (well, probably rural Yorkshire or Lancashire, so quite possibly
technically a midlander in terms of English English dialect) and she may
have presumed I was taking the mickey.

I had assumed the word was the same as 'Biddy' as a hypercoristic for
'Brid' or 'Bridget', though the links are not obvious.  I do not know if
the word is used in the north of England for poultry.

And is this thread a substitute for reading the works of SJ Gould, btw?

Some notable cricketers (eg Dr Grace) had substantial legs - and were
distincgtly on the large side too, as well as having heroic beards.

It may be that the overall aggregate of attributes is enough to deliver the
goods - after all, you are not going to be required to run more than about
60 yards (55 metres for those who have been dragged unwillingly into the
late 18th century from earlier eras) if you are batting.  So stamina and a
physique for running more than 110 yards/100 metres may not be needed.

Best wishes,

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>

At 6:11 pm +0100 19/4/01, David Salmon wrote:
>According to Webster's and my recollection of my grandfather's Texas farm,
>"biddy" is a name for a young hen or chicken, I suppose the female
>equivalent of banty, as in banty rooster.  OED suggests it traces to Gaelic,
>not bitty.  Back when people had chickens, it could have been a good
>nickname for someone who was small.

[ moderator snip ]


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 25 15:11:18 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 16:11:18 +0100
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.161118.0100.>

The standard position among linguists is that the languages we call 'IE'
are all descended, by various changes, from an unrecorded single common
ancestor, which we call 'PIE'.  That view was attacked early in the 20th
century by C. C. Uhlenbeck, by Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and by Antonio Tovar.
All of these denied that PIE had ever existed.  Instead, they maintained,
the IE languages came into existence as a result of extensive contact
between speakers of two -- or possibly three -- quite distinct earlier
languages.  The idea is that each branch of IE resulted from a somewhat
different mixture of elements from these two or three earlier languages,
and that therefore Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, and so forth, are all "mixed
languages" in origin, with no single ancestor.

I regard this view as perfectly crazy, but I'll be interested to hear any
comments on it.  In any case, I had thought it was dead and buried.

But I have recently discovered that a similar view is currently being
actively defended, not for IE as a whole, but for Celtic.  Almost all the
proponents appear to be archaeologists, though there is perhaps a Celticist
or two among them.

The idea this time is as follows.  A vanilla variety of Indo-European
spread across a huge area of Europe something like 7000 years ago, and then
stayed put.  Over a period of 4000 years or more, this vanilla IE
interacted with a variety of local non-IE languages, and the resulting
speech varieties interacted with one another.  As a result, a group of very
similar languages emerged separately in various parts of Europe.  And these
were the Celtic languages.  In other words, the Celtic languages arose by
'crystallization' out of what was originally a more diverse linguistic
position.  Accordingly, Proto-Celtic never existed, and the similarities
among the several Celtic languages result as much from convergence (from
interaction) as from common ancestry.

I also regard this view as perfectly crazy, but again I'll be glad to hear
any comments.

A version of this idea is warmly presented by the archaeologist Colin
Renfrew on pp. 244-247 of his 1987 book Archaeology and Language.  Renfrew
cites, in apparent support, the archaeologist Christopher Hawkes and the
Celticist M. Dillon.  A similar position is defended with some vigor by the
archaeologist Barry Cunliffe on pp. 294-297 of his new (2001) book Facing
the Ocean, where he suggests that Celtic, or at least what he calls
'Atlantic Celtic', arose as a trade language, a lingua franca.
I have corresponded with Professor Cunliffe, and he confirms that he holds
this view, which he ascribes also to the Celticist John Koch, whose
writings I have not seen.

For the life of me, I can't imagine how such a scenario can be taken
seriously in the face of the very well understood and highly regular
phonological and morphological prehistory of Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)
and of the individual Celtic languages.  Nor do I understand how a trade
language, or any sort of mixed language, could have retained so much of the
elaborate PIE morphology, while at the same time introducing such
picturesque novelties as the initial consonant mutations -- not to mention
the Old Irish verbal system.

Interestingly, the one person I have found who has dismissed this view as
wholly untenable, on purely linguistic grounds, is another archaeologist:
J. P. Mallory, in note 19 on p. 274 of his 1989 book In Search of the
Indo-Europeans -- and again, this time with a splendid linguistic example,
on p. 101 of J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams (1997), The Encyclopedia of
Indo-European Culture.  Mallory wholeheartedly endorses the view that
Proto-Celtic existed, and that it can hardly be dated earlier than about
1200 BC, given the great similarities among the earliest known Celtic
languages.

Any comments?  Anybody think this 'crystallization *in situ*' account of
Celtic origins is linguistically plausible?  I'm just flabbergasted.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From evenstar at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Apr 25 13:51:18 2001
From: evenstar at mail.utexas.edu (Shilpi Misty Bhadra)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 08:51:18 -0500
Subject: Greek from PIE
In-Reply-To: <001401c0c9bc$de362960$246b073e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.085118.0500.>

At 06:10 PM 4/20/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
>from PIE?

>For the later Greek period I have Geoffrey Horrocks' book, and for Latin I
>know Baldi's book and Meiser's, but I don't know of anything similar for PIE
>to Greek.   Any helpers?

>Peter

Dear Peter,
	Have you looked at the following:
1) Andrew Sihler - New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1995)
2) Carl Darling Buck - Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1933)
3) HelmutRix -  Historische Grammatik des Griechischen (1976). Buck does
not include treatment of laryngeals, but Sihler and Rix do.

Shilpi Misty Bhadra
University of Texas at Austin
Ancient History, Classics, and Humanities (focus: Indo-European Studies)
senior undergraduate
evenstar at mail.utexas.edu
512-320-0229 (ph)
512-476-3367 (fax)


From tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu  Wed Apr 25 21:14:52 2001
From: tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Thomas McFadden)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:14:52 -0400
Subject: Greek from PIE
In-Reply-To: <001401c0c9bc$de362960$246b073e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.171452.0400.>

Andrew Sihler's New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, OUP (1995)
is certainly very good for this.

On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, petegray wrote:

> Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
> from PIE?

> For the later Greek period I have Geoffrey Horrocks' book, and for Latin I
> know Baldi's book and Meiser's, but I don't know of anything similar for PIE
> to Greek.   Any helpers?


From stevegus at aye.net  Wed Apr 25 02:26:28 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 22:26:28 -0400
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.222628.0400.>

Rick McCallister wrote:

> I'm surprised the list is so readily recognizable --almost too
> recognizable! The citations I've seen from Ulfila's Gothic don't look that
> close to English, German and Dutch. Did Diamond just leave out the truly
> hard stuff?
> Any thoughts from Germanic scholars?

De Busbecq's account of Crimean Gothic is online at:

http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/germ/got/krimgot/krimg001.htm

I suspect that orthography makes all the difference.  Ulfilas' Gothic was
written in an alphabet he cobbled together himself, and what we usually read
of it is a Latin transliteration.  Some of Ulfilas' writing habits,
especially as they involved the digraphs /ai/ and /au/, are sources of
perennial controversy.

I suspect that De Busbecq shoehorned some of the Gothic he learned into
familiar speech and writing habits, and it's occasionally just as hard to
figure out what the sounds were behind what he preserved in his account.

--
What the world needs is another great war to kill off a generation of
overachievers.

Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu  Wed Apr 25 21:31:15 2001
From: tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Thomas McFadden)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:31:15 -0400
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <l03130359b70942ceeb0b@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.173115.0400.>

I think some items have been left off that are a little tough (at the
moment i can only think of gadeltha = pulchra), and there has been some
speculation that Busbecq, the Dutch guy who recorded the stuff, was
influenced a bit by the corresponding words in Dutch and German in the way
he wrote down what he heard, i.e. he made them look a little more like
Dutch and German than they really were.  i dont know enough to have an
opinion one way or the other on that speculation.  in any case, there's a
book by Stearns that goes through everything Busbecq
brought back in some detail and treats all the earlier literature on it as
well.  it's a small corpus, so every word gets discussed.

McDonald Stearns, Jr.
Crimean gothic: analysis and etymology of the corpus, Anma Libri 1978

also, i think the gloss for geen should be "to go".

> geen "to see"

> 	I'm surprised the list is so readily recognizable --almost too
> recognizable! The citations I've seen from Ulfila's Gothic don't look that
> close to English, German and Dutch. Did Diamond just leave out the truly
> hard stuff?
> 	Any thoughts from Germanic scholars?

> Rick Mc Callister
> W-1634
> Mississippi University for Women
> Columbus MS 39701


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Apr 25 02:15:29 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 21:15:29 -0500
Subject: Retroflexion in IA (was Re: Munda in Early NW India)
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.211529.0500.>

> Just when I finished writing the above, I got the message in which
> Pat Ryan wrote:

>> [...] Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped disambiguate
>> somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or [e];

> Huh? You mean contrast of `Nostratic [o] vs Nostratic [a]/[e]' (whatever they
> are) was preserved till the split of IA so the speakers could decide when to
> change `apicals' to retroflex? Or do you mean PIE *o vs PIE *a/*e (that is
> demonstrably false).

        Just a brief note before returning to pretending to be dead ...
        How is it, if dentals before or possibly after /o/ in PIE
(presumably Nostratic had to get through PIE in order to arrive at Sanskrit)
become retroflexes, that PIE /tod/, clearly the ancestor of Greek /to/ and
OE /thaet/ (among others) appears as Sanskrit /tat/?  Would not one or the
other (or perhaps both) of the dentals in question be expected to become
retroflexes?
        Back to dutiful slogging ...

Dr. David L. White


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 25 02:46:11 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 21:46:11 -0500
Subject: Retroflexion in IA (was Re: Munda in Early NW India)
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.214611.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Further discussion of the Nostratic issues brought up below should move to
  the Nostratic list.  Discussion of Indo-European specific issues can continue
  here.  -- rma ]

Dear Nath and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Vidhyanath Rao" <rao.3 at osu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 6:15 AM

<snip>

> Just when I finished writing the above, I got the message in which
> Pat Ryan wrote:

>> [...] Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped disambiguate
>> somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or [e];

> Huh? You mean contrast of `Nostratic [o] vs Nostratic [a]/[e]' (whatever they
> are) was preserved till the split of IA so the speakers could decide when to
> change `apicals' to retroflex? Or do you mean PIE *o vs PIE *a/*e
> (that is demonstrably false).

[PCR]
I have a feeling you may not agree but, at least, let me clarify what I meant.

Nostratic had three phonemic vowels: [e], [a], and [o].

When IE developed from it, during a transitional period, vowel-quality was
neutralized, and the semantic function of front and back vowels was supplied by
palatal and velar glides.

As triconsonantal roots were developed, the need for discriminating CyaC, CwaC,
and Cac semantically was ameliorated, and, in many cases the glides were
eliminated.

In some IE languages, former dorsal+y-glides became palatalized; in a few other
IE languages, apical+w-glides became retroflexed.

Regarding retroflexion, the four emphatics of Semitic (D,T,S,Z) are the result
of the same process; and Dravidian retroflexes are also, where original, the
result of the same process. Obviously, over time, some retroflexes originated
through proximity to other retroflexes or similarly articulated sounds.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed Apr 25 14:41:06 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 09:41:06 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <3AE3DCEF.7C5DF1D8@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.094106.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

>According to one of my references, the phoneme written <tr>
>is a retroflex stop in southern Vietnamese (palatal in northern).

>Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/

In Comrie, the article on Vietnamese shows 3 retroflex consonants: /r/,
/tr/ and (if I remember correctly) /s/

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From bronto at pobox.com  Thu Apr 26 15:53:42 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 08:53:42 -0700
Subject: semivowels
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.085342.0700.>

Thinking about vocalic /r/, I got to wondering:
do sequences like these occur in Sanskrit?
	rya, krya, #rya, rva, vya, vra

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 25 08:26:31 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 09:26:31 +0100
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
In-Reply-To: <F253g3nOpj53XaDFuXC0000909d@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.092631.0100.>

--On Saturday, April 21, 2001 8:23 pm +0000 Douglas G Kilday
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

[replying to Joat Simeon's criticisms of some ideas on pre-Greek languages]

> "Indo-European" is also a hypothesis.

I'm afraid I can't agree.  IE has long since ceased to be a mere
hypothesis, and it is now a well-articulated and well-founded theory,
supported by a massive abundance and variety of evidence.  It would be
difficult to think of another linguistic theory which is better supported
by evidence than this one.

> All we have are some common lexemes
> in a few of the world's languages.

Hardly.  We have, in fact, a vast and interlocking network of data --
lexical, phonological and morphological.  These data mesh together so
tightly that no explanation other than common origin can reasonably be
considered.  This is the farthest cry possible from the case of a few
seemingly shared lexemes in some languages.

> If the square-wheel sophistry of
> "unfalsifiability" applies to Pelasgian, then it applies equally well to
> IE, and everything posted on this list is meaningless.

No; I can't agree.  Joat's point, I think, is that the hypothesis he was
complaining about is in no way forced by the scanty data, but is instead
merely one of a possibly limitless number of conjectures that might be
conjured up to fit the data.  IE could not be more different: there simply
is no plausible alternative to the recognition of a PIE ancestor.

Curiously, this unassailable conclusion was in fact rejected by several
linguists in the first half of the 20th century: Uhlenbeck, Trubetzkoy and
Tovar.  So far as I can tell, their "mixed language" alternative was never
taken seriously and is now deservedly dead.  But I have recently been
astonished to learn that a version of it has been revived, not for IE but
for Celtic.  When I get some time, I'll post a message about that on this
list.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 25 13:55:45 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 14:55:45 +0100
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F281oUS2c1FpDK2QTH500009fb5@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.145545.0100.>

--On Monday, April 23, 2001 5:51 am +0000 Douglas G Kilday
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

> The South European Wanderwort for 'lead' probably started as a Pelasgian
> term. Like <daphne:>, Gk. <molubdos> has several variants suggesting
> borrowing from different substratal dialects. The original phonology is
> disputed. I would guess *ml.ub- vel sim. with vocalic [l.] which resolved
> to /ol/ in Greek. In the Italian dialect of Pelasgian I hypothesize
> reduction of [l.] giving *mlub-, borrowed into Latin as <plumbum>. Similar
> prenasalized labials in substratal words occur in <sa(m)bu:cus>
> 'elder-tree' (cf. Dacian <seba> id.) and <simpuvium> 'sacrificial vessel'
> (cf. Gk. <sipue:> 'flour-bin, meal-jar'). For initial Lat. pl- borrowed
> from ml- cf. <place:re> 'to be pleasing' from Etr. <mlach> 'smooth,
> pretty, pleasing'. On its way west, *mlub- must have undergone metathesis
> to *blum-, perhaps in Ligurian. Old Basque lacked [m] and disfavored
> initial clusters, so this would have become *belun, yielding Basque
> <berun> by well-attested intervocalic [l] > [r].

Right.  Let's talk about the Basque word.

The idea that Basque <berun> 'lead' is related to the Greek and Latin words
has been around a long time.  But it is far from being the only proposal on
the table.

To begin with, looking for Latin etymologies on the Tiber, we need not
appeal to a hypothetical Ligurian *<blum-> as a source.  If this sort of
origin is considered acceptable, then Gascon <ploum>, or a related Romance
form, will do as well -- and we *know* that Basque has borrowed lots of
words from Gascon and from other Romance neighbors.  Nor should we worry
about such a seemingly late borrowing.  The eastern dialects of Basque do
not have <berun> at all, but only <plomu>.  And some central and western
varieties have <plomo> alongside <berun>, or even in place of it.  Of
these, <plomu> is recorded from 1571, and <plomo> from 1562 -- very early
by Basque standards -- while <berun> is not recorded before about 1620,
though its first attestation occurs in a proverb.  And, for 'tin', *all*
varieties of Basque have only <eztainu> or a related form.  This is a
borrowing from Romance, since Latin <stannum> would not have produced this
result.

Moreover, a wholly native origin for <berun> is not out of the question.
First, note that the Bizkaian dialect in the west has <beraun>.  Now, the
reduction of /au/ to /u/ in a closed syllable is a commonplace phenomenon
in Basque, while the expansion of /u/ to /au/ is without parallel in any
position.  Moreover, Bizkaian happens to be the one dialect which preserves
vowel sequences better than any other.  Accordingly, Vasconists are
inclined to see western <beraun> as conservative, and the more widespread
<berun> as secondary, and the late Luis Michelena, the greatest etymologist
Basque has ever seen, espoused precisely this position.  But conservative
<beraun> does not appear to be helpful for the pan-European origin sketched
above.

Now, there are two proposals for a native origin.  One idea is that the
word is a derivative of <bera> 'soft', with an unidentifiable second
element -- and lead is, of course, a soft metal.  The other sees the word
as built on
*<bel> 'dark', again with an unidentifiable second element -- and lead is
also dark.  The item *<bel> is nowhere recorded as an independent word, but
its former existence is assured by its presence in a number of derivatives,
both as an initial and as a final element.

Now, the otherwise categorical medieval change of intervocalic */l/ to /r/
did not occur in the easternmost dialect, and so a form from this dialect
might help us to choose between earlier *<bel-> and earlier *<ber-> -- but,
as I remarked above, <berun> is not attested in the east, so no joy.

Nevertheless, many scholars have wanted to relate <berun> to the Greek and
Latin words in some way, though the proposals differ substantially in
detail.  Some people note that lead was known in the Near East much earlier
than in Europe, and so they want to see a Near Eastern word diffusing
westward across Europe together with the metal.  Others, however, observe
that Spain was the principal source of European lead in classical and late
pre-classical times, and so they want to see a word of Iberian origin as
diffusing eastward.

These proposals are too numerous and too complicated to repeat here -- and
they not infrequently involve even more far-flung words, such as German
<Blei> 'lead', Georgian <brp'eni> 'lead', Hebrew <bdi:l> 'lead', and a
reported Berber <buldun> 'tin'.  But, as an example of the western-origin
scenario, I might note that the Lusitanian town of Medubriga was so famous
for its lead mines that Pliny called its inhabitants <plumbarii> -- 'the
lead men'.  Some have seen the initial element <medu-> in this town name as
representing the stem of a local word for 'lead', and they have proposed
that Basque <berun> derives from the same source -- not unreasonably, since
variation between /d/ and /r/ between vowels is commonplace in Basque.

Finally, to Douglas Kilday's proposal that <berun> derives from a possibly
Ligurian word of the form *<blum->.  There are some serious phonological
problems with this.

First, as noted above, it seems likely that <beraun> is the more
conservative form of the Basque word -- not helpful.

Second, that /m/.  It is true that Pre-Basque had no */m/.  But, in early
borrowings from Celtic and Latin, an original /m/ was usually retained in
Basque, and not converted to */b/.  Of course, if the source /m/ was
word-final, then this could not have happened, since Basque has never
permitted word-final /m/.  In this case, we don't know what would have
happened to
/m/, since there are no parallels.  (Latin word-final /m/ always appears in
Basque as zero, but then final /m/ was probably already gone from popular
Latin speech, or at least reduced to nasalization of the preceding vowel.)

Third, the initial cluster */bl-/.  Pre-Basque didn't merely "disfavor"
initial clusters: it prohibited them absolutely.  In borrowed words,
initial clusters were invariably eliminated in one way or another, as
indeed were plosive-liquid clusters in all positions.

In borrowings from Latin, initial clusters were resolved as follows.  (Bear
in mind that Latin initial /b p f/ were all rendered as Pre-Basque */b/.)
If the cluster was /Cl-/, then the C was lost, and only the /l/ remained.
Examples: Latin <flammam> 'flame' > Basque <lama> 'flame'; Latin <plumam>
'feather' > Basque <luma> 'feather'; Latin <florem> 'flower' > Basque
<lore> 'flower'; Latin <planum> 'flat' > Pre-Basque *<lanu> > modern Basque
<lau> 'flat', by the regular medieval loss of intervocalic /n/; Latin
<placet> 'it is pleasing' > Basque <laket> 'pleasing'; Latin <plantatum>
'planted' > Basque <landatu> 'planted', with a regular Basque voicing.  The
sole certain exception known to me is Latin <cletam> 'rustic gate' >
Pre-Basque *<geleta> > modern <gereta> 'rustic gate'.  This is not helpful,
since we would expect a *<blum-> to be borrowed as something like *<luN->.

In contrast, with an initial /Cr-/ cluster, both consonants were retained,
but a vowel was inserted between them.  However, the inserted vowel was
*always* an echo of the following vowel.  Examples: Latin <granum> 'grain'
> Pre-Basque *<garanu> > modern <garau>, <garaun> by other changes; Latin
<frontem> 'forehead' > Basque <boronde> 'forehead', again with a regular
Basque voicing; and see the case of <gereta> above.

This strategy continued well into the Romance period.  For example, early
Romance *<frecato> 'rubbed' (replacing classical <frictum>; note Castilian
<fregado>) > Basque <berekatu> ~ <perekatu> ~ <ferekatu> 'rubbed,
caressed', 'annoyed'.

So, the phonology is not right for a "Ligurian" *<blum-> yielding Basque
<ber(a)un>.  Of course, if the borrowing was very early, then Basque might
have been employing different strategies at the time for resolving
impermissible clusters, but there is no evidence for such a thing, and only
special pleading is available.

In sum, then, Douglas Kilday's proposal is not impossible, but it faces
serious difficulties, and I cannot see that it should be preferred to any
one of the several other proposals on the table.  At least all of those
proposals but one must be wrong, and very likely they are all wrong.  We
cannot tell, because we lack adequate evidence.  This, I think, is what
Joat Simeon was talking about.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 25 05:42:22 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 01:42:22 EDT
Subject: horses and bits
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.014222.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/24/01 7:29:23 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
maxdashu at LanMinds.Com writes:

> And if they did use leather bridles, would that be enough to cause wear in
> the teeth?

-- no.  There are a number of types of harness which don't use a bit between
the teeth at all; essentially, they involve a loop around the nose.  That
would produce no wear marks on the teeth at all.

Also, of course, soft bits -- leather or rope -- while they still produce the
characteristic wear on the teeth, produce much less of it than hard metal


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 25 05:51:19 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 01:51:19 EDT
Subject: Evidence of Horse Riding
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.015119.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/24/01 8:00:15 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> If you note all my references were to evidence of HORSE-RIDING in Europe
> and not horses.

-- while many peoples who have kept horses for riding and traction also ate
them, milked the mares, etc., there are virtually no instances of people
keeping horses solely for food.  Outside the steppe zones, even secondary
uses of horses are rarely significant.

This is because horses are much harder to keep than cattle or sheep,
particularly in forest-zone, mixed-agriculture settings.  They have
comparatively delicate digestive systems and die easily, and are much more
difficult to herd than bovines because they're faster, more nimble, and
much more temperamental.

In other words, if horses are present in Europe, it is vanishingly unlikely
that they were being kept primarily as food animals.  They're just not
efficient as forage-to-food converters.

Horses are an expensive luxury.  They weren't even used much for


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 25 05:56:01 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 01:56:01 EDT
Subject: Evidence of Horse Riding
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.015601.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/24/01 8:00:15 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> It has often been repeated that evidence of HORSE-RIDING has been shown in

-- bit-wear marks are evidence of horse-riding (or traction), but absence of
bit-wear is not evidence of absence, to coin a phrase.

There are a number of ways to control horses; eg., American Indian horsemen
rarely used the bit.

The famous light cavalry of ancient Numidia (Hannibal's cavalry included many
Numidians) didn't use the bit, either, just a rawhide loop behind the
nostrils.

Many people I know who ride do so without bits on occasion.

In the ancient world, where there are domestic horses at all, you can assume
they're being used as riding animals or for pulling chariots or other fast,
luxury/military vehicles.

Horses are expensive to keep outside steppe habitats, and less productive
users of forage than cattle and sheep even there.  There's simply not much
profit unless you're using them for riding or pulling things.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed Apr 25 15:27:00 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 10:27:00 -0500
Subject: Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <3AE03098.659D@metu.edu.tr>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.102700.0500.>

	I read a recent article in either Natural History or National
Geographic (or some similar magazine) that olives were first cultivated in
present Syria.
	If so, one would expect a Semitic root for the word
	Yet, if I remember correctly, the origin of Latin oliua either from
or cognate to Greek elaia, elaion is unknown
	As far as I know, Semitic is the only recorded non-intrusive
language group in that specific area.
	Arabic has zayt "oil (of any kind)", zaytun "olive", whence Spanish
aceite, aceituna. I think the Hebrew forms are cognate.
	If olives are indeed from that area, any idea where the word may
have come from?

>[I think] JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
Snip:

>> Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
>> animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian
>> were indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for
>> these, and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with
>> similar biota.

>There are no olives on the Central Anatolian Plateau, nor in are there
>in Eastern Anatolia.

>Geoffrey SUMMERS
[snip]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From gordonbr at microsoft.com  Wed Apr 25 15:30:58 2001
From: gordonbr at microsoft.com (Gordon Brown)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 08:30:58 -0700
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.083058.0700.>

Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

> From: 	Max Dashu[SMTP:maxdashu at LanMinds.Com]
> Sent: 	Thursday, April 19, 2001 9:19 PM

> I dunno about that. Mack's book on the Book of Q states that Galilee
> was a very heterogenous society, so much that it was called Galil
> ha-goyim (i.e., 'of the nations'). With a strong Hellenistic presence.
> And Nazareth was very close to the imperial center Sephoris. I
> personally don't think Yeshua used "Petros" but the idea that he had
> some familiarity with Greek is not really so outlandish.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 25 03:31:12 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 22:31:12 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.223112.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Further discussion of the Nostratic issues should move to the Nostratic list.
  If there are IE-specific issues to be discussed, they can remain here.
  -- rma ]

Dear Peter and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 3:11 AM

>> Old Indian ... *[a], [e], and [o] all became [a]. Obviously, this entailed a
>> substantial loss of semantic integrity [in] ...... original CaC, CeC, and
>> CoC roots

> Trouble is, for the stage before Old Indian, CaC roots are very rare, and
> CeC ~ CoC roots are morphologically conditioned alternatives.  Some writers
> would only accept CeC roots , so for them your argument collapses.

[PCR]
My first comment would be that there are NO CaC roots in earliest IE, only
Ca:C, the result of CaHC.

Secondly, if, as I proposed in my answer to Nath, vowel-quality was neutralized
with the semantic load carried by them transferred to glides, the natural
neutral vowel is /a/ so my scenario would have all originally short-vowel roots
as CaC, from which roots the e-o-Ablaut developed.

[PG]
> Even if we do accept Cac, Cec and CoC roots, we have to admit the
> distribution of them in PIE is far from equal, and so the likelihood of
> ambiguity is small.   This would not be "a substantial loss of semantic
> integrity".

[PCR]
I have a feeling that you might wish to retract this opinion upon further
reflection. IE, as it has been reconstructed, is rife with purported homonyms.
What originally distinguished these homonyms were glides, and before that, in
Nostratic, different vowel-qualities.

The situation we have in IE already reflects a substantial loss of semantic
integrity, mitigated somewhat by different root-extensions.

As for a comparison of CaC, CeC, CoC roots in IE, it is impossible without
reconstructive precedents from Nostratic.

All roots with an unmodified vowel in IE are Ce/o/-C.

Roots with Ca:C, Ce:C, Co:C are all the result of an internal 'laryngeal', or,
in the very rare case, the effect of former aspiration. CaC roots are Ca:C
roots that have lost length.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Apr 27 05:49:12 2001
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 08:49:12 +0300
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
In-Reply-To: <136748061.3197203878@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.084912.0300.>

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Larry Trask wrote:

> The idea is that each branch of IE resulted from a somewhat different mixture
> of elements from these two or three earlier languages, and that therefore
> Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, and so forth, are all "mixed languages" in origin,
> with no single ancestor.

> I regard this view as perfectly crazy, but I'll be interested to hear any
> comments on it.  In any case, I had thought it was dead and buried.

> But I have recently discovered that a similar view is currently being
> actively defended, not for IE as a whole, but for Celtic.  Almost all the
> proponents appear to be archaeologists, though there is perhaps a Celticist
> or two among them.

This kind of idea seems to arise every once in a while in comparative
linguistics. The idea of Celtic as a mixed languages that arose from a
kind of lingua franca actually resembles very closely the linguistic
pseudoscience that has been advocated and actively publicized by certain
researchers in Finland and Estonia in the 90's (most notably Kalevi Wiik,
Kyösti Julku, Ago Künnap). This group has been dubbed as "the Anti-Uralic
school", and their new paradigm (which they characterize as "a
breakthrough in Uralistics" - even though a "breakdown" would be a more
appropriate description) can be summarized as follows:

- There was no uniform Proto-Uralic language, but instead a group of
unrelated languages which coalesced into a "Uralic lingua franca" (some
kind of pidgin or creole) some 10,000+ years ago. The speaking area of
this "lingua franca" would have been the whole periglacial zone from the
Urals to the Atlantic.

- There is no clear distinction between genetic inheritence and
contact-induced change (borrowing), and all languages are always mixed
languages. Such a starting point has led many of the members of the
Anti-Uralic school to extremely bizarre ideas, such as "Finnish is more
closely related to Swedish than it is to Mordvin", or that after Finland
served in the European Union, Finnish is increasingly rapidly becoming a
"Euro-language" and in the future linguists could reconstruct "Proto-Euro"
as the common parent language of Finnish, German, French etc.

These claims would of course deserve no attention from the scientific
community, were it not that Kalevi Wiik has actively publicized them in
the Finnish media, and also quite succesfully managed to market them as a
"linguistic breakthrough" to some archeologists, geneticists and
historians. Thus, in the recent years Uralists have been forced to mount
an attack against the "Anti-Uralists", and this may deceptivily look like
a serious scientific debate to non-linguists. I sure hope the situation
with Celtic isn't as bad.

Regards,
Ante Aikio


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Apr 27 17:08:03 2001
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (Gabor Sandi)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 17:08:03 -0000
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.170803.0000.>

This is an excellent topic to raise, Larry. I have also encountered the
"crystallization" idea in my readings (always from archaeologists) and for
the life of me I can't imagine what the term means in linguistic terms.

One example you have not mentioned is Bosch-Gimpera (1980): Les
Indo-Europiens - problhmes archiologiques. Crystallization is a big topic
with him, as a convenient process to back up his views of IE origins: it all
goes back to the mesolithic. Europe has pretty much always been IE according
to this view, it is thus unnecessary to look for migrations, let alone
conquest as an explanation for the widespread presence of the family on the
continent.

I think that the crux of the matter is the preconceived notion is that
migration / conquest is not a major feature of prehistory. The fact that the
linguistic map of Europe has been several times redone in historical times
through migration / conquest does not seem to be a useful argument in this
context: neolithic and bronze age peoples behaved differently from their
descendants according to anti-migrationists.

In my view we linguists are themselves to blame to a certain extent: we have
tied language too closely to ethnicity. We might be better off saying: look,
we don't really care about the process by which Europe became
Indo-Europeanized. But our evidence for PIE points at bronze-age speakers
for whom animal husbandry was much more important than cereal growing, and
who were familiar with horses and wheeled vehicles of some sort. You,
archaeologists, make of this information what you will, but we linguists are
not going into contortions to explain IE words for the horse, the wheel and
its parts, copper (or bronze), silver and gold through any means than simple
derivation from the PIE vocabulary.

The same kind of argument could be used for Proto-Celtic (PC). Rather than
try to identify some iron-age population as the PC speakers, why not use the
following working hypothesis:

(1) There was a language ancestral to Gaulish, Welsh, Irish etc, which was
derived from PIE, but which was not ancestral to, say, the Germanic, Italic
or Baltic languages we know.

(2) This PC language had undergone certain changes, so that the word for
'father' was *(h)atnr [I am not sure about the *h], the word for 'hundred'
*kNtom [N standing for a syllabic n], for 'I carry' they said *ber{ and for
a demonstrative they used *sindos, -b, -on. Etc. etc. for those aspects of
Celtic that we can take back to the hypothetical common language.

(3) Any language satisfying these criteria is by definition part of PC, any
language contradicting them is not.

(4) If someone does not believe in the existence of PC, than it is for
him/her to explain how the features listed in (2) could conceivably exist in
different languages.

If we put it like this, it would be just as difficult to deny the existence
of PC as it would be to deny the reality of, say, Schwitzerd|tch or
Australian English.

----------------

An interesting view of why some archaeologists (and linguists) seem to have
an almost gut-felt dislike of migrationist theories is on the ff. web site:

www.larecherche.fr/VIEW/308/03080401.html

With my best wishes,

Gabor Sandi
g_sandi at hotmail.com


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 29 07:34:04 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 03:34:04 EDT
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.033404.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/2001 3:32:36 PM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:
<< The standard position among linguists is that the languages we call 'IE'
are all descended, by various changes, from an unrecorded single common
ancestor, which we call 'PIE'.  That view was attacked early in the 20th
century by C. C. Uhlenbeck, by Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and by Antonio Tovar.
All of these denied that PIE had ever existed.  Instead, they maintained,
the IE languages came into existence as a result of extensive contact
between speakers of two -- or possibly three -- quite distinct earlier
languages....>>

<<I regard this view as perfectly crazy, but I'll be interested to hear any
comments on it.  In any case, I had thought it was dead and buried.>>

Oh, come now, Larry.  I challenge you to describe how the current outcome
would be different if you assumed there was no PIE and the known IE languages
arose out of convergence.  How would the situation be different?  What signs
should be present in specific languages that are absent now?  Would you
expect to find different classes of noun and verb morphology?  Would some
words be n-stems and others not?  Different words for fire, eat and horse,
perhaps?  What would tell you exactly that convergence had happened?  Or
would there really be any way to tell?

I don't think you'll be able to do this.  But I hope you won't avoid the
challenge and at least try.  Because unless you can describe a different
expected outcome, convergence becomes just as likely an explanation as a
single parent.

The comparative method doesn't allow for convergence.  It assumes there was
no convergence.  *PIE is a creation of the comparative method.  It may in
fact reflect historical fact.  I suspect it does.  But I don't believe you
have any way of proving that.

<<For the life of me, I can't imagine how such a scenario can be taken
seriously in the face of the very well understood and highly regular
phonological and morphological prehistory of Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)
and of the individual Celtic languages.  Nor do I understand how a trade
language, or any sort of mixed language, could have retained so much of the
elaborate PIE morphology, while at the same time introducing such
picturesque novelties as the initial consonant mutations -- not to mention
the Old Irish verbal system.>>

First of all, a "trade language" as the term is used by a Sheratt or a
Whittier, refers to how the language spread, not to its genetic
characteristic.  "Lingua franca" is a term often applied to "genetic"
languages, e.g., "North Sea" Germanic.

Secondly, what exactly would you look for, if Celtic was the result of some
kind of a convergence?  Would it be like Haitian Creole, where according to
Michel DeGraff at MIT, virtually all affixes have cognates in French affixes?
 Or rather would it be like English, where most affixes are of non-Germanic
origins?  What would you expect Celtic to look like if the convergence
hypothesis were correct?  Especially after 5000 years.

Is there an example of an IE language you can point to that shows what
convergence would be like after 5000 years? - And therefore shows why we can
be sure Celtic did not undergo convergence 5000 years ago?

Even if as you have said the whole idea of a language like Celtic is just a
"reification."

Finally, the "highly regular phonological and morphological prehistory of
Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)" is the only kind of prehistory the comparative
method would yield.  Of course, Celtic is going to show regular development
out of *PIE.  *PIE is nothing but a construct based on Celtic and other IE
languages.  It has no choice but to show regular developments and a
Proto-Celtic.  *PIE is nothing but Celtic (along with other languages)
reconstructed back to an assumed parent.

If you sincerely were looking for evidence of convergence, you mention the
obvious place to look, in such "picturesque novelties as the initial
consonant mutations -- not to mention the Old Irish verbal system."  It
wouldn't be in the consistencies that Celtic would show evidence of
convergence,  it would be in the "innovations."  But if we are dealing with
possibly hundreds of EXTINCT European languages, IE or otherwise, how would
you be able to identify other "genetic" influences?  Perhaps one of them had
initial consonant mutation.

Calling the idea of convergence "dead and buried" will I suspect at some time
in the future become nothing more than wishful thinking.  Calling such views
"crazy" is a little uncalled for.  I'm sure for example you wouldn't use
words like "crazy" to describe the views of Boas or Trubetzkoy on the
HistLing list.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 29 18:17:57 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 14:17:57 EDT
Subject: IE versus *PIE
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.141757.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/2001 9:32:40 PM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:

<< IE could not be more different: there simply is no plausible alternative
to the recognition of a PIE ancestor.

Curiously, this unassailable conclusion was in fact rejected by several
linguists in the first half of the 20th century: Uhlenbeck, Trubetzkoy and
Tovar.  So far as I can tell, their "mixed language" alternative was never
taken seriously and is now deservedly dead.  But I have recently been
astonished to learn that a version of it has been revived, not for IE but for
Celtic. >>

Once again, this is not scientifically justified.  Mr. Stirling rightly makes
the point of falsifiability.  As long as IE languages show any serious
commonality, there is going to be a genetic relationship shown and a
hypothetical ancestor will be reconstructible.  This does not and cannot
logically disprove the presence of other "genetic strains" in those languages.

I think Prof Trask is guilty here of the very reification which he himself
has noted before on this list.  Something like the idea that a language is a
single organism in which the parts must all descend from a single ancestor.
In fact there is nothing that prevents a community of speakers from adopting
lexical and structural elements from more than one group of earlier speakers.
 The assumption that there must be some kind of core retained from one
linguistic community or the other is nothing but an assumption.  Nothing
makes it necessary.

And just to be clear about terminology, the "relatedness" of historic and
documented IE languages CAN be asserted with a high degree of certainty.
Statistically the possibility of what these languages have in common
happening by accident is highly improbable.  But this is definitely not same
as saying that all those individual commonalities had to derive from a common
source.  There is nothing I have seen that makes it clear that those
individual commonalities could not have come from more than one unrelated
source or even distantly related sources.

(As far as what's dead and what's not, and as far as the opinion of the
linguistic community, I'd be happy to privately share with Prof Trask the
opinion of some eminent linguists who most definitely do not believe that PIE
can be plausibly recovered at all.)

That's not to say PIE didn't exist.  It's just to say that its existence is
no where as necessary as Prof Trask makes it out to be.  As a scientific
matter at least.  One's personal beliefs are another matter.

Regards,
Steve Long


From lehmann at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Apr 27 16:35:10 2001
From: lehmann at mail.utexas.edu (Winfred P. Lehmann)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:35:10 -0700
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.093510.0700.>

Dear Mr. McCallister

	It's surprising that the Crimean Gothic material should seem obscure.
It's been readily available, among other places, in Wilhelm Streitberg's
Gotisches Elementarbuch, Heidelberg: Winter, 1920, pp 280-82. In the past every
elementary student of Gothic would have had a copy.
	Diamond left out a few words.
	With best wishes,
W P Lehmann


From lehmann at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Apr 27 16:43:28 2001
From: lehmann at mail.utexas.edu (Winfred P. Lehmann)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:43:28 -0700
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.094328.0700.>

Dear Mr. McCallister
	I should have added to my previous message that there's an excellent
book on the subject. Crimean Gothic, by Macdonald Stearns, Jr. Saratoga, CA:
Anma Libri, 1978. 172 pp., with extensive bibliography.

W P Lehmann


From stevegus at aye.net  Fri Apr 27 00:56:10 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 20:56:10 -0400
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.205610.0400.>

Thomas McFadden wrote:

> I think some items have been left off that are a little tough (at the
> moment i can only think of gadeltha = pulchra), and there has been some
> speculation that Busbecq, the Dutch guy who recorded the stuff, was
> influenced a bit by the corresponding words in Dutch and German in the way
> he wrote down what he heard, i.e. he made them look a little more like
> Dutch and German than they really were.  i dont know enough to have an
> opinion one way or the other on that speculation.

What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem to have
contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you wouldn't necessarily
expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan
> schiete.  Of course the value of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference
here.

--
What the world needs is another great war to kill off a generation of
overachievers.


From edsel at glo.be  Fri Apr 27 16:13:31 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 18:13:31 +0200
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.181331.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas McFadden" <tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 11:31 PM

> I think some items have been left off that are a little tough (at the
> moment i can only think of gadeltha = pulchra), and there has been some
> speculation that Busbecq, the Dutch guy who recorded the stuff, was
> influenced a bit by the corresponding words in Dutch and German in the way
> he wrote down what he heard, i.e. he made them look a little more like
> Dutch and German than they really were.  i dont know enough to have an
> opinion one way or the other on that speculation.  in any case, there's a
> book by Stearns that goes through everything Busbecq
> brought back in some detail and treats all the earlier literature on it as
> well.  it's a small corpus, so every word gets discussed.

> McDonald Stearns, Jr.
> Crimean gothic: analysis and etymology of the corpus, Anma Libri 1978

> also, i think the gloss for geen should be "to go".

[Ed Selleslagh]

Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (= van Buisbeek), ºKomen 1522-+Rouen 1592, was
actually Flemish, from the presently Belgian border (France-Belgium) city of
Komen (Fr. Comines), nowadays predominantly French speaking, but with 'language
facilities' for the remaining Dutch speaking population [He lived before the
southern part of Flanders was annexed by France's Louis XIV]. Actually, he was
probably educated in French.

He also brought the tulip to the Low Countries.


From crismoc at smart.ro  Thu Apr 26 19:04:24 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 22:04:24 +0300
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.220424.0300.>

              The list of Crimean Gothic words is very interesting in many
respects. But I was intrigued by "menhus" "meat" for which Diamond invokes
Hung. "hus". Indeed, "hus" with accented "u", pronounced approx. "hoosh" is
Hungarian for  "meat". But what about "men"? Any hints? As far as my
knowledge of Hungarian goes (It is not my first language but I speak it, we
hear it in the streets etc. but I wouldn't know many archaisms) Hungarian it
is not.
              As for the rest of the etyma, they seem to be consistent with
the fact that a linguistic enclave is at the same time conservative and
innovative. We have numerals that seem to come directly from Ulfilas and
Turkic loanwords. But then again some look too much like Ulfilas'Gothic,
some others too "Hochdeutsch". Do we know anything about that informer and
how he came to know those etyma?
                             God bless,
                                Cristian


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr 26 22:32:51 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 17:32:51 -0500
Subject: Greek from PIE
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.173251.0500.>

> At 06:10 PM 4/20/01 +0100, you wrote:

>> Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
>> from PIE?

        Why is nobody mentioning Palmer's book on the subject?  Is it
considered discredited?  There is also Lejeune.

Dr. David L. White


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 27 15:47:46 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:47:46 +0100
Subject: semivowels
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.164746.0100.>

> Thinking about vocalic /r/, I got to wondering:
> do sequences like these occur in Sanskrit?
> rya, krya, #rya, rva, vya, vra

Yes.

R functions both as a vowel and as a consonant in Sanskrit.   The alphabet
treats the two as entirely distinct, as in the word kartrtvam (BG 5:14) -
the first is written as a consonant, the second as a vowel.   L also
functions as vowel, though much less commonly.  Both vowels have long forms,
although long vocalic l is exceedingly rare.

The sequences:  sthrya, lya, trya, krya, etc are all to be found.   I
couldn't find examples with a a vowel, but with other vowels, how about
these:
(a) One such place is the sandhi form of a word ending in -ri before a word
beginning a-.
       Compare aryudasina (BG 6:9) = ari+udasina.
       and internally:  paryupasate (BG4:25) = pari+upasate
(b) Another such place is the sandhi form of words in -s before a word
beginning y-.
    Compare muner yogam (BG6:3) = munes yogam.

Peter


From connolly at memphis.edu  Fri Apr 27 18:25:19 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 13:25:19 -0500
Subject: semivowels
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.132519.0500.>

Are these any worse than things like French _roi_ and _loi_?

Leo Connolly

Anton Sherwood wrote:

> Thinking about vocalic /r/, I got to wondering:
> do sequences like these occur in Sanskrit?
>         rya, krya, #rya, rva, vya, vra

> --
> Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Apr 27 13:36:23 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 06:36:23 -0700
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <004801c0cd38$2e8b07e0$fbf1fea9@patrickr>
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.063623.0700.>

>> Trouble is, for the stage before Old Indian, CaC roots are very rare, and
>> CeC ~ CoC roots are morphologically conditioned alternatives.  Some writers
>> would only accept CeC roots , so for them your argument collapses.

>[PCR]
>My first comment would be that there are NO CaC roots in earliest IE, only
>Ca:C, the result of CaHC.

>Secondly, if, as I proposed in my answer to Nath, vowel-quality was
>neutralized with the semantic load carried by them transferred to glides, the
>natural neutral vowel is /a/ so my scenario would have all originally
>short-vowel roots as CaC, from which roots the e-o-Ablaut developed.

This stage, to the extent it existed, predates PIE proper, since even the
oldest directly reconstructible stage has e~o-Ablaut.  Any pre-ablaut stage
is arrived at by internal reconstruction.

>[PCR]
>I have a feeling that you might wish to retract this opinion upon further
>reflection. IE, as it has been reconstructed, is rife with purported homonyms.
>What originally distinguished these homonyms were glides, and before that, in
>Nostratic, different vowel-qualities.

Why need they always be distinguished?  Real languages today have much
homonymy.

But even then, what I see in the PIE vocabulary is many homonymous *roots*,
but relative fewer homonymous *words*.  The main distinguishing factors
were differences in suffixes and stem formants - and occasionally infixes.

>All roots with an unmodified vowel in IE are Ce/o/-C.

>Roots with Ca:C, Ce:C, Co:C are all the result of an internal 'laryngeal', or,
>in the very rare case, the effect of former aspiration. CaC roots are Ca:C
>roots that have lost length.

Long vowels in PIE seem to also come from other sorts of compensatory
lengthening, such as degemmination of a following double consonant.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Apr 27 06:39:23 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 02:39:23 EDT
Subject: Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.023923.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/01 11:20:03 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

[ Moderator's note:
  Mr. Mc Callister was quoting Geoff Summers (and mistakenly attributing the
  quote to JoatSimeon, to whom it was a rejoinder).
  --rma ]

>> There are no olives on the Central Anatolian Plateau, nor in are there
>> in Eastern Anatolia.

-- the Hittite archives clearly show widespread olive cultivation in the
Bronze Age; according to Macqueen (THE HITTITES, revised edition, 1986, p.
96) "... peas, beans, onions, flax, figs, olives, grapes, apples and
possibly pears and pomegranates also were grown."  Olive groves and olive
oil are mentioned in Hittite contracts, wills, tax-registers, etc.

Note that while the cultivation of flax is very old in Anatolia, the Near
East, and the adjacent portions of the Balkans, the Greek word for linen is a
cognate of a form found in a group of West-Central European IE languages,
rather than from Anatolian.

(*linom: from which Old Irish (Lin), Welsh (Llin), Latin (linum), Old
Prussian (lynno), Lithuanian (linas), Old Church Slavonic (linenu), etc.  The
Germanic form could be a Latin loanword or just as easily from western PIE
via Proto-Germanic).

Incidentally, the wild biota know to the Hitties included lions, leopards
and gazelles; and elephants as close as northern Syria.  Lion were present
in Greece, the Balkans and some other parts of southern Europe well into
Bronze Age times.

PIE, one should note, does not have a securely attested word for lion, leopard,
tiger (present as far west as the Caucasus in the Neolithic-Bronze Age period),
or elephant.  The Greek term for lion may or may not be a semitic loan;
traditionally it's attributed to a Hebrew form, 'layis'.  There's a similar one
in Slavic.

If PIE derived from Anatolia, it would be extremely odd that Anatolian IE,
Armenian, Greek and Indic would all come up with different words for common
animals like this.  The Tocharian word for lion derives from a descriptive term
("bristly hair")

Likewise, PIE lacks a word for the fallow deer, common throughout southern
Europe, but has terms for 'elk' and 'red deer'.

And there are solidly PIE words for "fox", "bear", "lynx" and "wolf"

The logical conclusion would be that the IE languages were intrusive in
areas which had chamois, leopards, lions, tigers, elephants, fallow deer,
etc; and native to an area with bears, foxes, roe deer, lynx, and wolves.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 27 13:01:52 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 08:01:52 -0500
Subject: Lions and Tiger and Bears, Oh My
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.080152.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The material quoted is from JoatSimeon at aol.com, by way of a reply by Geoff
  Summers.
  --rma ]

>>> Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
>>> animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian
>>> were indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for
>>> these, and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with
>>> similar biota.

        Just a brief note:  Ancient Anatolia had not only lions, but tigers
(in the eastern part), and leopards.  (Not to mention the usual bears, and
wolves).  Yet it seems that the scariest animals the IEs knew were bears and
wolves.  But of course tabu deformation may be relevant in all this.

Dr. David L. White


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Fri Apr 27 06:16:47 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 06:16:47 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.061647.0000.>

David L. White (10 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Yes.  I believe both descriptions might be applied to the
>civilization of Troy, and I see nothing inherently contradictory or comical
>about this.  More to the point, any bearers of Eastern Mediterranean
>civilization, however generic, would have been impressive to the people of
>Italy before these began (with the Etruscans) to ascend to the same level.

Fine. I don't claim that an areally modest civilization can't colonize and
exert political control over a much larger region. But I'm afraid we may be
losing track of the linguistic issues. What started this whole thread was my
objection to the theory that the Etruscan _language_ came by sea from the
East, and the startlingly widespread willingness to misinterpret the Lemnian
inscriptions as evidence for this theory. If you think the Etruscan language
came from Troy or its North Aegean allies, you should present more than
hand-waving arguments about what High Culture can do.

>There is evidence that the Trojans were a small bunch, in the fact
>that their armies are described as being multi-lingual, whereas the Greeks
>were pretty clearly multilingual.  (Now just where in the Iliad is that?)
>Clearly they were not able to match the Greeks in putting fellow-speakers
>(so to speak) in the field, and their forces were composed largely of the
>tributary forces of other states, of other languages.   This does not
>suggest that the native Trojans were ever a large group.  (Nor are they
>very distinctive archeologically, as far as I know.)

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. If the native Trojans constituted
a small elite dominating a polyglot assortment of other peoples (which is
perfectly plausible per se, given the opportunity for acquiring great wealth
by controlling traffic on the Hellespont, and between Europe and Anatolia),
and they or their descendants set up shop in Etruria, one would expect the
linguistic result to be a Trojan superstrate in the native language, like
the Norman element in English or the Doric in Latin (poena, machina, etc.).
The language spoken in Etruria, viz. Etruscan, would remain non-Trojan (or
non-North Aegean) in its essential features.

OTOH the claim that Etruscan originated as a creole between Trojan and the
native speech, or as a Mischsprache based on tributary languages, can't be
taken seriously. Etruscan doesn't have the analytic structure of such forms
of speech. The case-system, participles, and fairly complex morphology of
enclitic demonstratives wouldn't have survived the process of creolization.

The bottom line is that whatever happened _politically_ in Etruria during
1200-700 BCE, the _linguistic_ community of Etruscan-speakers remained
intact. Claims that the entire community immigrated en masse from the East
run afoul of archaeology _and_ linguistics.

>I am not exactly the only person to say that Etruscan civilization
>did not arise semi-miraculously in Tuscany as a result of Greek and
>Phonecian contacts that can only be shown to have been significant in
>Campania.  Since a date of 1200 is too early for real Etruscans in Italy, I
>would imagine that most migrationists must posit an interlude somewhere in
>the northern Aegean, or not far from it.

By "real Etruscans" I presume you mean "bearers of Etruscan culture such as
one finds in a coffee-table book". I don't deny the migration of substantial
cultural elements from the NE Mediterranean to Etruria, without which the
coffee-table books would be vastly different. But again we're losing sight
of the linguistics.

To a limited extent we can peel back the cultural superstrate by looking at
the Etruscan pantheon, minus the obvious Hellenic figures (Aplu, Artumes,
etc.) and Etruscanized Olympians (Tin, Turan, etc.). We are left with such
deities as Aisu, Calu, Cautha, Cel, Leinth, Manth, Vanth, and Veltha. Their
names are evidently native Etruscan, and they were not (to any of our
knowledge) imported from the Aegean, the Troad, or greater Anatolia.

Having dismissed (correctly I hope) the Eastern sea-route, one can still ask
when and by which route the Etruscan-speaking community came to Etruria. I
can't answer this, but I think the best approach is a thorough analysis of
substratal material. The Tuscan hydronyms Albinia, Alma, Armenta, Arnus, and
Auser (with Albula = Tiberis) have been interpreted as "Old European" and
pre-Etruscan. This is difficult to assess: do these names actually contain
"Old European" elements, or are they Latinized Etruscan, or from some other
source?

Someone recently cast doubt on the whole program of using toponyms to deduce
anything, citing the obliteration of native names in Texas and elsewhere by
the Spanish bureaucracy. This sort of objection only applies when there is a
literate bureaucratic class. To our knowledge, literacy didn't reach Etruria
until ca. 700 BCE, so arguments from toponyms should have some validity. The
problem is the large volume of unedited medieval archival material.

DGK


From mcv at wxs.nl  Fri Apr 27 17:54:06 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 19:54:06 +0200
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <136475066.3197199345@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.195406.0200.>

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001 14:55:45 +0100, Larry Trask
<larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

>--On Monday, April 23, 2001 5:51 am +0000 Douglas G Kilday
><acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>> The South European Wanderwort for 'lead' probably started as a Pelasgian
>> term. Like <daphne:>, Gk. <molubdos> has several variants suggesting
>> borrowing from different substratal dialects.

The variants are: molubdos, bolubdos, molibos, molibdos, bolimos,
*bolibos.

>> The original phonology is
>> disputed. I would guess *ml.ub- vel sim. with vocalic [l.] which resolved
>> to /ol/ in Greek. In the Italian dialect of Pelasgian I hypothesize
>> reduction of [l.] giving *mlub-, borrowed into Latin as <plumbum>. Similar
>> prenasalized labials in substratal words occur in <sa(m)bu:cus>
>> 'elder-tree' (cf. Dacian <seba> id.) and <simpuvium> 'sacrificial vessel'
>> (cf. Gk. <sipue:> 'flour-bin, meal-jar'). For initial Lat. pl- borrowed
>> from ml- cf. <place:re> 'to be pleasing' from Etr. <mlach> 'smooth,
>> pretty, pleasing'. On its way west, *mlub- must have undergone metathesis
>> to *blum-, perhaps in Ligurian. Old Basque lacked [m] and disfavored
>> initial clusters, so this would have become *belun, yielding Basque
>> <berun> by well-attested intervocalic [l] > [r].

>Right.  Let's talk about the Basque word.

>The idea that Basque <berun> 'lead' is related to the Greek and Latin words
>has been around a long time.  But it is far from being the only proposal on
>the table.

>To begin with, looking for Latin etymologies on the Tiber, we need not
>appeal to a hypothetical Ligurian *<blum-> as a source.  If this sort of
>origin is considered acceptable, then Gascon <ploum>, or a related Romance
>form, will do as well -- and we *know* that Basque has borrowed lots of
>words from Gascon and from other Romance neighbors.  Nor should we worry
>about such a seemingly late borrowing.

Except, as you note below, that for a late borrowing we would expect a
result *burun (or *lun).

>The eastern dialects of Basque do
>not have <berun> at all, but only <plomu>.  And some central and western
>varieties have <plomo> alongside <berun>, or even in place of it.  Of
>these, <plomu> is recorded from 1571, and <plomo> from 1562 -- very early
>by Basque standards -- while <berun> is not recorded before about 1620,
>though its first attestation occurs in a proverb.  And, for 'tin', *all*
>varieties of Basque have only <eztainu> or a related form.  This is a
>borrowing from Romance, since Latin <stannum> would not have produced this
>result.

>Moreover, a wholly native origin for <berun> is not out of the question.
>First, note that the Bizkaian dialect in the west has <beraun>.  Now, the
>reduction of /au/ to /u/ in a closed syllable is a commonplace phenomenon
>in Basque, while the expansion of /u/ to /au/ is without parallel in any
>position.  Moreover, Bizkaian happens to be the one dialect which preserves
>vowel sequences better than any other.  Accordingly, Vasconists are
>inclined to see western <beraun> as conservative, and the more widespread
><berun> as secondary, and the late Luis Michelena, the greatest etymologist
>Basque has ever seen, espoused precisely this position.  But conservative
><beraun> does not appear to be helpful for the pan-European origin sketched
>above.

>Now, there are two proposals for a native origin.  One idea is that the word
>is a derivative of <bera> 'soft', with an unidentifiable second element -- and
>lead is, of course, a soft metal.  The other sees the word as built on *<bel>
>'dark', again with an unidentifiable second element -- and lead is also dark.

However, it is usually associated with the color blue (black = iron).

>The item *<bel> is nowhere recorded as an independent word, but
>its former existence is assured by its presence in a number of derivatives,
>both as an initial and as a final element.

>Now, the otherwise categorical medieval change of intervocalic */l/ to /r/
>did not occur in the easternmost dialect, and so a form from this dialect
>might help us to choose between earlier *<bel-> and earlier *<ber-> -- but,
>as I remarked above, <berun> is not attested in the east, so no joy.

>Nevertheless, many scholars have wanted to relate <berun> to the Greek and
>Latin words in some way, though the proposals differ substantially in
>detail.  Some people note that lead was known in the Near East much earlier
>than in Europe, and so they want to see a Near Eastern word diffusing
>westward across Europe together with the metal.  Others, however, observe
>that Spain was the principal source of European lead in classical and late
>pre-classical times, and so they want to see a word of Iberian origin as
>diffusing eastward.

In my view, the shape of the Greek words certainly suggest an Iberian
origin.  Ultimately, however, the words may have a (pre-)Celtic
origin.  Of the two Germanic words for "lead" *bli:wa- (Germ. <Blei>)
and *laud- (Eng. lead), the latter was borrowed from Celtic *loud- <
PIE *plou-d- "watery" [lead is also often associated with "water"],
while the former may represent PIE *bhle:wo- "blue(ish)" through
mediation of an unattested Celtic *bli:wo-.  The existence of
pre-Celtic dialects (i.e. IE dialects preserving *p-) on Iberian soil
is reasonably well-attested (they go under the name of "Lusitanian"),
so it's not unthinkable that the two words that are found in Germanic
were also both present near the sources of lead in the Iberian
Peninsula (in the shapes *bli:wo- and *ploudo-). Given the phontactics
of Iberian (roughly comparabale to Basque, i.e. no initial clusters,
near absence of /m/ and /p/, no diphthong /ou/), these words would in
the Iberian tongue have given something like *bilibo ~ *bolibo and
*bolomdo ~ *bolobdo, respectively, and would have tended to
contaminate each other and eventually merge (witness Greek molubdo-,
bolubdo-, bolibo-, molibo-, bolimo-).  Latin <plumbum> seems to derive
from a source closer to original pre-Celtic *ploudo-, but with some
amount of Iberian mediation to account for -mb- [*plombo- <
*plobdo-?].

IMHO, Basque *belaun almost certainly derives from the same source
(or, rather, sources).  The main problems are accounting for the /e/
in the first syllable (which does not echo the vowel of the second
syllable), and the source of final -n (*b at laum[o], *b at lamb[o],
*b at labd[o], *b at laud[o] ?).

>These proposals are too numerous and too complicated to repeat here -- and
>they not infrequently involve even more far-flung words, such as German
><Blei> 'lead', Georgian <brp'eni> 'lead', Hebrew <bdi:l> 'lead', and a
>reported Berber <buldun> 'tin'.  But, as an example of the western-origin
>scenario, I might note that the Lusitanian town of Medubriga was so famous
>for its lead mines that Pliny called its inhabitants <plumbarii> -- 'the
>lead men'.  Some have seen the initial element <medu-> in this town name as
>representing the stem of a local word for 'lead', and they have proposed
>that Basque <berun> derives from the same source -- not unreasonably, since
>variation between /d/ and /r/ between vowels is commonplace in Basque.

Interestingly, but probably coincidentally, the Slavic word for copper
is <me^dI> (et. unk.).

[ moderator snip ]

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From philjennings at juno.com  Sat Apr 28 02:10:09 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 21:10:09 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.211009.0500.>

A series of leading questions:

Is the -assos part of Parnassos, Halicarnassos, etc. thought to be from the
Pelasgian substrate?

Or is it from a different, later, Anatolian substrate?

Is the -assa of Tarhuntassa recognized to be the same suffix worked by
the Greeks into -assos?

Isn't Tarhuntassa securely located as a neighbor to Kizzuwatna?
(I envision this about as far east as the borders of southwest Asia
Minor can be stretched.  I have heard that Tarhuntassa = later Tarsus.)

How old a god is Tarhun(d/t)?  Could he possibly be pre-Anatolian (ie.
Pelasgian on the theory that Pelasgian <> Anatolian)?

But I think the answer must be no.  Tarhun(d/t) is as Anatolian as St.
Brigid is Irish.  In that case, did the founders of Tarhuntassa append
a foreign -assa suffix to give their city name "class?"  (I'm from
Minneapolis so I'm familiar with this practice.)

Rather than this, Is there not sufficient evidence here and elsewhere,
that the -assa suffix is Anatolian as well as Pelasgian?

Given the location of Tarhuntassa and its obvious Anatolian-ness, can't a
strong case be made for a bond between Anatolian and the substrate
everybody's talking about here?

I suspect Dr. White has given my "right-fork" theory of Anatolian-Pelasgian
connectedness a death-blow, but alas I am too elementary in my thinking
processes to understand what he meant by:

>As for the Pelasgians being a "right fork" of the IE-Anatolians who passed
>into Greece, if their language had phonetically aspirated /t/s (and presumably
>/p, k/), which is necessary to explain how Anatolian /t/ could appear as Greek
>/th/, would we not find "Chorinthos", "Pharnassos", and even (farther afield)
>"Tharthessos"? To invoke aspiration merely to explain the Greek /th/ for
>Anatolian /t/ (or even /d/), conveniently ignoring unwanted side effects, is
>not acceptable. What language in the world aspirates /t/ only after /n/? None
>that I ever heard of.

Apparently it is my burden to explain the Greek /th/ for Anatolian /t/ or
/d/, but I don't know why.  (And certainly I don't know how!)

Dr. White also explains the wide dispersion of -assos names (like Tartessos) as
possibly due to later Greek mediation.  It is in fact extreme to think of early
Pelasgians in Spain.  But the name Tarhuntassa came and went before the Greeks
came snooping very far into Asia Minor.  Some kind of pre-Greek dispersion
really did happen.

I am friendly to the idea of a dispersion of an originally unified linguistic
community into Italy, Greece and Asia Minor.  I can see why those focused on
Asia Minor might talk of Anatolians, and those focused on Greece might talk of
Pelasgians.  I'm sure the people directly involved would have been surprised to
hear themselves described by either term.

Anatolian is sometimes held to be so early that it is on sister-sister terms
with the entire remainder of IE.  Perhaps Pelasgian can have the distinct
qualities Kilday gives it, if it is acknowledged as a third sister, close
enough to Anatolian to be joined at the hip.  (Er, "joined at the assos?")


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Apr 27 06:45:27 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 02:45:27 EDT
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.024527.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/01 11:52:06 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
gordonbr at microsoft.com writes:

> Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
> languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

-- Undoubtedly Aramaic as his native tongue; it had replaced Hebrew as the
spoken language by that time.  He'd have learned some Hebrew for liturgical
purposes -- the two are very closely related, anyway.

Quite possibly he could speak Greek; there were important Greek-speaking
towns and cities throughout the region in the early 1st century, and Greek
was the lingua franca and administrative language of the area, and had been
since Alexander's conquests several hundred years before.  It would be more
likely for a Galilean to speak Greek than someone from the Judean hills, too.

A town-dwelling, literate Jew in Galilee in that period would be certain to
have Aramaic and Hebrew, and very likely to have some koine Greek.  A peasant
might well be an Aramaic monoglot.  A Jew from, say, Alexandria might have
Greek as his first language.

Latin is a much more remote possibility.  All educated Romans (Pontius
Pilate, for example) would be fully fluent in Greek and Greek would be the
usual language they'd use with someone whose native tongue was Aramaic.


From mc2499 at mclink.it  Fri Apr 27 07:12:17 2001
From: mc2499 at mclink.it (Ian Hutchesson)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:12:17 +0200
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.091217.0200.>

I don't think it is wise to treat literary works, such as the gospels, as
historical works and the make assumptions from there. We don't know when,
where, why, by whom, or for what the gospels were written. The first person to
cite surely from the gospels was Irenaeus (c.180 CE), though Justin Martyr
seems to have been acquainted with the texts (c.155). They are simply not
historically tenable sources. Therefore to go beyond an account which talks of
a character called Iesous to create a historical figure Yeshua is purely in the
realm of hypothesis.

As the gospels are written in Greek, although there are a few abracadabra
Aramaic phrases, it's extremely difficult to get past that Greek. People have
tried to invent Aramaic precusors for GMatt without gaining any substantial
following.

All three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek were in use in Judaea at the
time as attested by the Dead Sea finds -- Wadi Murabba'at and another site
supplied administrative texts in all three langauges. The Qumran Dead Sea
Scrolls are mainly in Hebrew with some Aramaic and very few Greek religious
texts.

----------------

[ Moderators note:
  The following is quoted from Gordon Brown, who in turn was quoting Max Dashu
  on Mack's book.
  --rma ]

> Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
> languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

>> I dunno about that. Mack's book on the Book of Q states that Galilee
>> was a very heterogenous society, so much that it was called Galil
>> ha-goyim (i.e., 'of the nations'). With a strong Hellenistic presence.
>> And Nazareth was very close to the imperial center Sephoris. I
>> personally don't think Yeshua used "Petros" but the idea that he had
>> some familiarity with Greek is not really so outlandish.

Incidentally, there is no archaeological evidence for the town of Nazareth
until a few centuries later. (I would probably argue that Nazareth is a
secondary addition to the tradition, with the earliest gospel, GMark, giving
Capernaum as Jesus' hometown.) There has been a fair bit of literature lately
dealing with the significance of the term "nazarenos/nazaraios" and the
connection between it and the town is not transparent -- one might expect
"nazarethenos" or similar rather than nazarenos.

And the story about Peter is also somewhat problematic. With one exception Paul
only knows Kephas (and it is only used once in the gospels, GJn 1:42). The
exception is a gloss in Galatians 2:6-7. At the same time one should note that
a text called the Epistle of the Apostles has a list of apostles which includes
both a Kephas and a Peter. Were they two different people conflated due to the
significance of the names, or was there only one person involved? The lack of
historical support for the texts involved makes it hard to decide.

Ian


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 27 15:55:44 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:55:44 +0100
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.165544.0100.>

>Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
>languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

Probably:
Aramaic (the local language), and enough Hebrew for the scriptures (which
were as much heard, as read by eye), and Greek and Latin for survival in
that trading and political climate.

What language did he speak to his followers?   Probably Aramaic.

There are polyglot areas in Europe today where many people will have some
degree of competence in several languages.   The situation back then was not
so unusual.  Consider a pious Jewish family in Flanders, where they may
speak Flemish in the home, use French at work, enjoy Hebrew in the
synagogue, and assist the tourists to part with their money in English.

Peter


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 02:28:54 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 21:28:54 -0500
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.212854.0500.>

> I have proposed that PIE *p appears as a voiceless bilabial fricative in one
> inscription in ancient northern Italy (from Prestino; see MSS 58, 1988).

        Just a not terribly significant note:  development from /p/ to /f/
(or perhaps a bilabial voiceless fricative) to /h/ is presupposed in the
common (though perhaps wrong?) etymology of the "Hercynian" forest as being
both Celtic and relatable to /perkun/.  In other words, it is not always
assumed that PIE /p/ in Celtic went straight to zero, though I am unaware of
it leaving any traces in Insular Celtic.

Dr. David L. White


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 03:08:12 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 23:08:12 EDT
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.230812.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/29/01 8:45:06 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

> I think that the crux of the matter is the preconceived notion is that
> migration / conquest is not a major feature of prehistory. The fact that the
> linguistic map of Europe has been several times redone in historical times
> through migration / conquest does not seem to be a useful argument in this
> context: neolithic and bronze age peoples behaved differently from their
> descendants according to anti-migrationists.

-- well, that _is_ the crux; and it's not just in Europe, either -- the
spread of, say, Chinese and Arabic are examples.

The idea that behavior suddenly changes radically when we can't look at it --
ie., when there are no written records -- is _ipso facto_ somewhat... ah...
suspect.  One immediately suspects that the "blank" surface of prehistory is
being used as a palimpest on which the ideological or methodological wishes
of the investigator are projected.

Explanatory parsimony would lead to the conclusion that the mechanisms of
historical (and hence linguistic) change are uniform, at least since the
beginning of the neolithic if not before.  The "same sort of thing" was
going on before written records as happened after their development, in
other words.

So to move a language, you have to move information, and before mass
literacy the only way to move information was to move the human heads which
contained it.

Even when people 'convert' to a new language, they have to learn it from
_somebody_; ie., native speakers.  Furthermore, there are more and less
likely was for this to happen; in a premodern context, small intrusive
minorities generally get absorbed by their linguistic surroundings rather
than vice versa, even if they're politically dominant. (Which is why this
conversation is not being conducted in Norman French.)  Learning a new
language is difficult for adults, and is seldom undertaken without very
strong motivation.

To linguistically assimilate another population (leaving aside immigration
into a different language zone), a majority is generally required -- not
necessarily a national or regional majority, but at least one within a
system of households; that way, individuals who are included in them _have_
to learn the new language for daily communication.

Likewise, languages turn into language families by physical expansion
followed by diverging dialect formation.  That's happened over and over
again in historical times -- Latin ==> Romance being the best-known example
but far from the only one.  There is, again, absolutely no reason to
believe that the diversification of PIE into the various IE languages was
different.

> In my view we linguists are themselves to blame to a certain extent: we have
> tied language too closely to ethnicity.

-- perhaps, but attempting to sever it completely is far more absurd.
Human beings have always considered language as a basic classificatory
category, although not of course the only one; for example, if I recall
correctly the Slavic word for "German" derives from a term meaning "mute"
or "tongue-tied".


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 03:22:55 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 23:22:55 EDT
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.232255.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/29/01 9:10:29 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> I challenge you to describe how the current outcome would be different if you
> assumed there was no PIE and the known IE languages arose out of convergence.

-- that's a classic case of trying to require that someone "prove the
negative".  The burden of proof is in the other direction.

> Because unless you can describe a different expected outcome, convergence
> becomes just as likely an explanation as a single parent.

-- not in the least.  The historical evidence indicates that the spread of a
single parent language and its divergence into dialects which then (given a
sufficient degree of separation) become distinct daughter-languages is the
overwhelmingly predominant source of language formation, on all continents
and at all times.

> The comparative method doesn't allow for convergence.  It assumes there was
> no convergence.

-- that's because there's no evidence of convergence on the required scale
anywhere in the evidence to which we have access.

Throughout the recorded history of the IE languages, they diverge.  There's
certainly plenty of intra-linguistic influence (lexical borrowings and so
forth) but any two languages of the IE group, for example French and English,
grow _more_ similar in structure the further back you go and _less_ similar
the further forward in time.  Compare verb forms or inflections Old English
and Latin, for instance, and then in English and modern French.

The only times you get real "convergence" is when one language (or, more
commonly, dialect) is undergoing language death, and in the special case of
creolized pidgins.

Assuming that -- surprise! -- as soon as there's no written evidence,
entirely different mechanisms of causation take over is exactly equivalent
to assuming that, because we can't go there and tell, oxygen and hydrogen
don't combine to form water in a galaxy ten billion light-years away.
However, uniformity is a basic presumption of all the sciences.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 04:18:39 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 23:18:39 -0500
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.231839.0500.>

        It looks like I am going to meet my deadline, so I can afford to
start re-indulging my vices, among which this list is chief ...
        Two words or expressions are being thrown around here in a way that
makes me a little uncomfortable.  The first is "lingua franca".  This has
(if we are not case-sensitive) three meanings:  1) a real language, "Lingua
Franca", which is (or was) a sort of Mediterranean Romance semi-creole, 2)
an international business or trade language characteristic of a certain
place/period, as for example Akkadian, and 3) something in the pidgin/creole
range.   Meanings 2 and 3, though they can overlap, do not necessarily do
so, and due to inherent ambiguity the expression "lingua franca" is probably
best avoided, as considerable confusion is likely to be sown.
           Second is "convergence".  I believe the impression some would
like to create is that when mutually unintelligible languages meet they can
converge or "mix" and form a new language, which can then mislead
circularly-reasoning linguists into wrongly imagining a proto-language.
Whether mixed languages occur is a good question, though there can be little
doubt that about 90% of proposals along those lines (often by quite
unsophisticated missionary linguists) have turned out to be wrong (for
examples of this sad syndrome, see the introductory chapter of Welmers
"African Language Structures").  But be that as it may, "convergence" is, I
believe, more properly used to describe the sort of situation detailed by
Gumperz and Wilson (as well as Emeneau?) in Kupwar India, where due to
extensive routine bilingualism the local versions of Marathi and Kannada
have undergone almost complete syntactic (and phonological?) convergence, to
the point where they are virtually the same language with different words.
(I have heard that the same might be said of Rumanian and Bulgarian.)  But
they have _not_ "mixed".  The lexicons (last I heard) are kept entirely
separate, and it is never at all problematic to determine which language
someone is speaking.  If this is the sort of situation that is supposed to
have led to "mixed" "lingua francas", and so to the "illusion" of
proto-Celtic, proto-Uralic and so on in the misty past, then it is surely a
good question why the result in the well-studied and not at all misty
present has been so utterly different.  I do not know, but I can guess:
mixed languages by and large belong to that semantic category that has been
called "fantasies of the ignorant".   There may be a few out there, but no
example I have seen is convincing.  The only ones I am aware of that are
even just-barely-possibly convincing involve cases of a language dying (e.g.
Anatolian Greek), which is not exactly the most promising way for a new
language family to get off the ground.

Dr. David L. White


From sarima at friesen.net  Mon Apr 30 04:22:04 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 21:22:04 -0700
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0104270802520.23423177-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.212204.0700.>

At 08:49 AM 4/27/01 +0300, Ante Aikio wrote:
>- There was no uniform Proto-Uralic language, but instead a group of
>unrelated languages which coalesced into a "Uralic lingua franca" (some
>kind of pidgin or creole) some 10,000+ years ago.

I think I see a fallacy in their reasoning right here.  At least I have
been lead to understand that pidgins and creoles are predominantly based on
a single parent language, and thus cannot really be termed
"mixtures".  Have I been mislead, or is this the case?

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Apr 30 11:00:11 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 13:00:11 +0200
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.130011.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2001 9:34 AM

[snip]
> If you sincerely were looking for evidence of convergence, you mention the
> obvious place to look, in such "picturesque novelties as the initial
> consonant mutations -- not to mention the Old Irish verbal system."  It
> wouldn't be in the consistencies that Celtic would show evidence of
> convergence,  it would be in the "innovations."  But if we are dealing with
> possibly hundreds of EXTINCT European languages, IE or otherwise, how would
> you be able to identify other "genetic" influences?  Perhaps one of them had
> initial consonant mutation.

[snip]
> Regards,
> Steve Long

[Ed Selleslagh]
Grammatically determined initial-consonant mutations (I think it's important to
be that explicit about it) occur in other, still existing, languages too: e.g.
(sub-saharan) Fulani ( or Peul). And some Bantu languages, like Tshiluba, use
initial consonant palatalization for diminutives (so does Basque) and all use
class-prefix modification (Actually, that may be the origin of the Peul
phenemena: I wonder if the Celtic equivalent might not have a somewhat similar
origin, e.g. the female form of the adjective).

Verbal systems can change quite a bit in 1000 years, let alone in thousands of
years; just look at what had already happened to Latin and Greek verb by the
10th or 11th century A.D. - I mean Byzantine (and later) Greek and the various
Latin languages.

I really would like to know other people's views on these matters.

Ed.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Mon Apr 30 14:19:16 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 15:19:16 +0100
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
In-Reply-To: <6e.a0fd8f2.281d1dec@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.151916.0100.>

Steve Long writes:

[on my description of the views of Trubetzkoy et al. on IE as "crazy"]

> Oh, come now, Larry.  I challenge you to describe how the current outcome
> would be different if you assumed there was no PIE and the known IE
> languages arose out of convergence.  How would the situation be
> different?  What signs should be present in specific languages that are
> absent now?  Would you expect to find different classes of noun and verb
> morphology?  Would some words be n-stems and others not?  Different words
> for fire, eat and horse, perhaps?  What would tell you exactly that
> convergence had happened?  Or would there really be any way to tell?

Yes; certainly.

If the IE languages had really arisen by some process of 'crystallization'
or language mixing, then we would *not* expect to find the tightly
interlocking patterns linking these languages that we do find.  Instead, we
would expect to find only shared elements and miscellaneous resemblances --
without pattern, without system, without rhyme or reason.  In other words,
we would expect to find something similar to what we see with Tlingit and
Eyak-Athabaskan: commonalities without system.  And that is precisely what
we do not find.

> I don't think you'll be able to do this.  But I hope you won't avoid the
> challenge and at least try.  Because unless you can describe a different
> expected outcome, convergence becomes just as likely an explanation as a
> single parent.

No; not at all.  The null hypothesis is this:

The IE languages are not descended by divergence from a single common
ancestor.

This null hypothesis is spectacularly falsified by the data, by the
extensive and elaborate systematic patterns linking all of the IE
languages.  A convergence scenario predicts nothing more than shared
elements and resemblances.  This is not what we find, and so the
convergence scenario is falsified.

> The comparative method doesn't allow for convergence.  It assumes there
> was no convergence.

This is far too strong.  The comparative method only *addresses*
divergence, sure.  But it is not inconsistent with convergence; it doesn't
deny convergence; and it certainly does not assume an absence of
convergence.
Convergence merely has to be handled outside the comparative method -- as
indeed it routinely is.

For example, Latin <lingua> 'tongue' fails to satisfy the usual IE
correspondences, and so it is regarded as a loan word from another Italic
language.

Take another example.  Martin Bernal, in 'Black Athena', argues that a
number of Greek words and names must have been taken from Semitic or
Egyptian, merely because they happen to resemble something in those
languages.  But Jasanoff and Nussbaum, in their devastating critique of
Bernal's linguistic efforts, dispose of this argument in a number of cases.
They do this by showing that the Greek items in question are *predicted by
rule*, to the last phonetic detail, by the comparative IE evidence.
Convergence predicts only resemblance, while the systematic correspondences
among the IE languages predict exact forms.

This argument from systematicity is what makes PIE valid.  The systematic
nature of the correspondences forces us to reject weaker conclusions, such
as all those involving no more than contact and convergence.

> *PIE is a creation of the comparative method.

No, it's not.  I'm afraid this is a fantasy.

The comparative method is not a piece of abracadabra which can be applied
to any arbitrary languages at all and still produce a "reconstruction".
The method can only be applied at all in one circumstance: when we find
systematic correspondences among languages.

It is a common misconception among non-linguists that comparative
linguistics deals in resemblances.  It does not.  The comparative method
deals in *patterns*, and only in patterns, and resemblances have nothing to
do with it.

If we find some languages linked by an extensive network of systematic
patterns, then we can apply the comparative method successfully and obtain
a reconstruction -- even if there are no resemblances at all.  In very
great contrast, if we find that certain languages exhibit numerous
resemblances, but no systematic patterns, then the comparative method
cannot be applied, and no reconstruction can be obtained.  This is the case
with Tlingit and Eyak-Athabaskan, for which no reconstruction is possible.

In short, the method can only be applied at all when the systematic
correspondences objectively exist, and not otherwise.

> It
> may in fact reflect historical fact.  I suspect it does.  But I don't
> believe you have any way of proving that.

Sure, I have: the cases in which reconstruction can be performed, and those
in which it cannot.  That's a pretty big difference.

[on my astonishment about some "convergence" views of Celtic]

> First of all, a "trade language" as the term is used by a Sheratt or a
> Whittier, refers to how the language spread, not to its genetic
> characteristic.  "Lingua franca" is a term often applied to "genetic"
> languages, e.g., "North Sea" Germanic.

I'm afraid I don't know these two writers.  But I don't recognize the
distinction made here, and I can't agree that a lingua franca has to be
recognizably a single genetic language.  See the definition in any standard
linguistic dictionary, such as Crystal or Matthews.  The original Lingua
Franca, in the Mediterranean, was, according to all standard sources, a
pidgin.

Anyway, Barry Cunliffe, who I quoted in particular, uses 'trade language'
and 'lingua franca' pretty much interchangeably in his book -- reasonably
enough, I think.  This is just about the only point on which I don't take
issue with him.

> Secondly, what exactly would you look for, if Celtic was the result of
> some kind of a convergence?  Would it be like Haitian Creole, where
> according to Michel DeGraff at MIT, virtually all affixes have cognates
> in French affixes? Or rather would it be like English, where most affixes
>  are of non-Germanic origins?  What would you expect Celtic to look like
> if the convergence hypothesis were correct?  Especially after 5000 years.

OK.  First of all, we now have a number of examples of *individual*
languages with non-genetic origins.  These are quite varied in their
structures, and I'm not sure that many solid generalizations can be drawn.

Second, I am not sure that Haitian Creole represents a particularly good
example of a non-genetic language, since it is so strongly based on French.

Third, and most importantly, we appear to have *no single example* of the
kind of thing that is being proposed here for Celtic: a *group* of distinct
and seemingly closely related languages which have come into existence
through convergence, without a single common ancestor.  Steve, can you cite
a convincing example of such a thing?  I can't, and I don't think there is
one.

Fourth, I have already explained what I think a "convergence" origin for
the Celtic languages ought to give us: a group of languages sharing common
elements and exhibiting a number of miscellaneous resemblances, but linked
by no systematic correspondences -- making reconstruction of a common
ancestor impossible.  But this is not what we find, not at all: instead, we
find numerous and detailed systematic correspondences, and we find no great
obstacles to reconstructing Proto-Celtic.  The convergence scenario is
therefore falsified.

> Is there an example of an IE language you can point to that shows what
> convergence would be like after 5000 years?

No.  I know of no substantially recorded IE language which cannot be
derived from PIE in the usual way.  As I remarked in an earlier posting, IE
languages are dreadful candidates for convergence origins -- even if some
other languages are excellent candidates.

> And therefore shows why we
> can be sure Celtic did not undergo convergence 5000 years ago?

This is not quite the proposal on the table.  The proposal of Renfrew,
Cunliffe and others is that the individual Celtic languages arose by
convergence from diverse origins over a period of 4000 years or more --
from about 5000 BC to around 1000 BC or later.

Of course, one might put forward a quite different proposal: that
Proto-Celtic arose by some convergence process, and then gave birth to the
individual Celtic languages in the familiar genetic way.  But this is not
the proposal on the table, and anyway the tables of systematic
correspondences linking Proto-Celtic both to PIE and to the daughter
languages are enough to falsify this view, too.

> Even if as you have said the whole idea of a language like Celtic is just
> a "reification."

Clarification: Celtic is not a language but a family.  The single language
in question is Proto-Celtic -- whose former existence I regard as proved on
the basis of the linguistic evidence.  Proto-Celtic is not a reification
dreamed up to satisfy somebody's ideology about how languages ought to
behave: it is a conclusion forced upon us by the evidence.

> Finally, the "highly regular phonological and morphological prehistory of
> Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)" is the only kind of prehistory the
> comparative method would yield.  Of course, Celtic is going to show
> regular development out of *PIE.  *PIE is nothing but a construct based
> on Celtic and other IE languages.  It has no choice but to show regular
> developments and a Proto-Celtic.  *PIE is nothing but Celtic (along with
> other languages) reconstructed back to an assumed parent.

Steve, I am appalled.  As I explained above, if a group of languages do not
have a single common ancestor, then the comparative method cannot find one.
The method cannot find correspondences where none exist, and it cannot
create a common ancestor where none exists.  This is fantasy.  Where are
you getting this stuff from?

If you doubt me, then let me return to my earlier example.  *Why* has no
one been able to apply the comparative method to Tlingit and
Eyak-Athabaskan, and *why* has it not been possible to reconstruct a common
ancestor -- in spite of the numerous and undoubted common elements in these
languages?  Answer, please.

> If you sincerely were looking for evidence of convergence, you mention the
> obvious place to look, in such "picturesque novelties as the initial
> consonant mutations -- not to mention the Old Irish verbal system."  It
> wouldn't be in the consistencies that Celtic would show evidence of
> convergence,  it would be in the "innovations."

Er -- what?  I'm afraid this makes no sense to me.

Innovations are the grist for the family-tree model of genetic descent.
Convergence stresses diffusion, not innovations.  Innovations are a problem
for convergence views, since, in the kind of case under discussion, these
views require practically every innovation to diffuse across the *entire*
area covered by the converging speech varieties -- and we know that
innovations do not normally do that.

> But if we are dealing
> with possibly hundreds of EXTINCT European languages, IE or otherwise,
> how would you be able to identify other "genetic" influences?  Perhaps
> one of them had initial consonant mutation.

There is no way on earth we can take into account any features of languages
which are extinct and unrecorded, and trying to do so constitutes
fantasyland stuff in most cases.

Anyway, there is absolutely no need to appeal to hypothetical substrate
languages to account for the Celtic mutations: within our standard view,
that the Celtic languages are descended by divergence from Proto-Celtic,
and that Proto-Celtic is descended by divergence from PIE, the Celtic
mutations can be *wholly* explained by appealing to the reconstructed
phonology.
Our explanation is entirely humdrum, and it is only the *later* development
of the mutations which makes them look mysterious.

> Calling the idea of convergence "dead and buried" will I suspect at some
> time in the future become nothing more than wishful thinking.

This is not what I said.  I expressly recognized that convergence is real.
What I denied was that IE languages, or Celtic languages, result from
convergence.

> Calling such views "crazy" is a little uncalled for.

Steve, I didn't call convergence ideas in general "crazy".  I only applied
this adjective to the convergence proposals made by Trubetzkoy and others
for IE, and to the convergence proposals made by Cunliffe and others for
Celtic.  Please try to quote me accurately.

> I'm sure for example you
> wouldn't use words like "crazy" to describe the views of Boas or
> Trubetzkoy on the HistLing list.

Oh, I wouldn't hesitate, if I thought the label was appropriate.  But
Trubetzkoy's view of IE is the only one of his views known to me that I
would describe as crazy, while I know of no views of Boas that I would
describe as crazy.  Boas was unusually sensible, and his views were often
ahead of his time.

In fact, I almost sent my original posting to HISTLING, but I finally
decided that the IE-list was more appropriate, since my query was about IE
languages specifically, and not about convergence models in general.

One final comment.  Steve apparently suspects that I oppose convergence
ideas in general.  But I don't.  If my earlier posting didn't make this
clear, let me quote part of the entry for 'convergence' in my recent
dictionary, coming after a brief mention of some long-recognized types of
convergence:

...Until recently, historical linguistics paid little attention to the
possibility of any further types of convergence, and divergence...was seen
as the primary phenomenon under investigation.  In the last few years,
however, convergence has begun to be taken far more seriously; the
examination of convergence phenomena is now seen as a major and growing
part of the field, and some linguists are suggesting that individual
languages can actually arise out of convergence...[I]t seems safe to say
that convergence will be a major theme in historical linguistics in the
years to come."

That clear enough?  I hope it's enough to show that I take convergence very
seriously indeed, and that I reject convergence accounts of IE and Celtic,
not out of ideology, but merely out of respect for the evidence.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 04:01:04 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 00:01:04 EDT
Subject: IE versus *PIE
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.000104.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/29/01 9:34:27 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> Once again, this is not scientifically justified.  Mr. Stirling rightly makes
> the point of falsifiability.  As long as IE languages show any serious
> commonality, there is going to be a genetic relationship shown and a
> hypothetical ancestor will be reconstructible.

-- true.

> logically disprove the presence of other "genetic strains" in those
> languages.

-- not true.

Claims that there are other "genetic strains" are not falsifiable. Therefore
they are worse than false; they're meaningless.

One can, on the other hand, point to a very strong probability of substantial
non-IE elements in the lexicon of Proto-Germanic.  This affects the _genetic_
relationship of Proto-Germanic to PIE not at all, once again.

> In fact there is nothing that prevents a community of speakers from adopting
> lexical and structural elements from more than one group of earlier speakers

-- which is true, but irrelevant.  English has a massive freight of lexical
items from Latin and the Romance languages; in total (though not in frequency
of use) almost as much as it derives from its Germanic parent.  And its
syntax bears very little resemblance to Proto-Germanic or to Old English.

This, however, affects the _genetic_ relationships involved not at all.
English is a Germanic language, and if we had no record of Old English, we
could reconstruct it (and the intervening stages) quite accurately from
cognate languages and the modern speech.

In fact, this is one of the reasons why reconstructive linguistics is
overwhelmingly persuasive; it has repeatedly _predicted_ results later
established experimentally.

Eg., when Linear B was shown to write an archaic form of Greek, the forms
were precisely those predicted by the reconstructive method.  The example of
the laryngeals predicted solely from IE languages in which they'd vanished,
and then found in the Anatolian IE languages, is another.

> The assumption that there must be some kind of core retained from one
> linguistic community or the other is nothing but an assumption.  Nothing
> makes it necessary.

-- nothing but the observable evidence, and the general assumption of uniform
causation.  If we're to believe that suddenly, when it can't be proven or
disproven, wholly different patterns of causation pop up like posies, then
all discussion becomes futile.

Radical epistemological scepticism is a wonderful way for undergraduates to
waste time.  It's rather tiresome in later life.

> And just to be clear about terminology, the "relatedness" of historic and
> documented IE languages CAN be asserted with a high degree of certainty.
> Statistically the possibility of what these languages have in common
> happening by accident is highly improbable.  But this is definitely not same
> as saying that all those individual commonalities had to derive from a common
> source.

-- it gets tiresome to say "for all practical purposes" all the time.  We go
with the hypothesis which most parsimoniously explains the observable facts,
which is falsifiable, and which has predictive power.

The theory that the IE languages descend from a common ancestral tongue in
the same manner in which, say, French and Spanish descend from Latin, fits
the above criteria better than any other hypothesis.  The fact that French
and Spanish contain lexical and structural influences from substratum
languages (and in the case of Spanish, have been quite strongly influenced by
Arabic) does absolutely nothing to change their genetic relationship to
Latin, or their status vs. a vs. each other.

Therefore it can be taken -- for all practical purposes, and failing new
evidence which falsifies it -- that the PIE hypothesis is "true".  Then we
can get on with studying how it functions.

It's as true as General Relativity; in fact, rather more so, because there
are fewer elements of the observable data set which it can't account for.

> There is nothing I have seen that makes it clear that those
> individual commonalities could not have come from more than one unrelated
> source or even distantly related sources.

-- that's roughly equivalent to saying there's no way to prove that the world
wasn't created yesterday, along with our memories.  That's why "proving a
negative" is a byword for rhetorical futility.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that if some proposition is not
completely and definitively proven, then it has no stronger ground than any
other hypothesis however outre and bizzare.  That's not the way things work.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Mon Apr 30 09:09:59 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:09:59 +0100
Subject: IE versus *PIE
In-Reply-To: <95.a1731a1.281db4d5@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.100959.0100.>

Steve Long writes:

[on Uhlenbeck, Trubetzkoy and Tovar's rejection of PIE and my rejection of
their views]

> Once again, this is not scientifically justified.  Mr. Stirling rightly
> makes the point of falsifiability.  As long as IE languages show any
> serious commonality, there is going to be a genetic relationship shown
> and a hypothetical ancestor will be reconstructible.

Oh, no -- at least, not if we require minimal standards in anything we
accept as a "reconstruction".  I can "reconstruct" a common ancestor for
English and Zulu if you'll allow me all the elbow room I want.  But I have
more exacting standards in mind -- standards which our reconstruction of
PIE undoubtedly meets.

> This does not and cannot logically disprove the presence of other "genetic
> strains" in those languages.

No one is claiming that every single element in an IE language must descend
directly from PIE.

> I think Prof Trask is guilty here of the very reification which he himself
> has noted before on this list.  Something like the idea that a language
> is a single organism in which the parts must all descend from a single
> ancestor.

No; certainly not.  Nobody would be mad enough to defend such a position,
and, as a native speaker of English, and one who has already used a number
of non-Germanic words in this reply, I am hardly well placed to be the
first such madman.

> In fact there is nothing that prevents a community of speakers
> from adopting lexical and structural elements from more than one group of
> earlier speakers.

Of course there is not, and probably every community of speakers does
precisely this.

> The assumption that there must be some kind of core
>  retained from one linguistic community or the other is nothing but an
> assumption.  Nothing makes it necessary.

Agreed, but not the point.  I am not maintaining that no mixed languages
can exist: that position has now been clearly falsified.  I am only
maintaining that the IE languages are not examples of mixed languages -- a
very different matter.

> And just to be clear about terminology, the "relatedness" of historic and
> documented IE languages CAN be asserted with a high degree of certainty.

I agree entirely, though I must make it clear that I understand
"relatedness" as meaning "common origin from a single ancestor", and not as
meaning something substantially vaguer than this.

> Statistically the possibility of what these languages have in common
> happening by accident is highly improbable.

Highly improbable, indeed.  The universe will never exist long enough to
allow anything comparable to the IE languages to come into existence by
chance.

> But this is definitely not same as saying that all those individual
> commonalities had to derive from a common source.

Yes, it is.

> There is nothing I have seen that makes it clear that
> those individual commonalities could not have come from more than one
> unrelated source or even distantly related sources.

I am flabbergasted.  What, in my view, makes this position untenable is the
*orderliness* of the connections among the IE languages.  We don't have
mere resemblances, and we don't merely have bags of resemblances.  Instead,
we have systematic patterns linking all these languages in a way which is
impossible to explain except by descent from a single common ancestor.

Consider a parallel from North America.  Athabaskan is a secure and
well-understood family.  Eyak shares a common origin with Athabaskan: this
was proved some years ago by Michael Krauss, who uncovered the systematic
correspondences linking the two.  So far, fine.

Now, Tlingit is commonly suspected of being related to Eyak-Athabaskan, and
it certainly shares a large number of features with EA.  However, in this
case, no orderly patterns can be found linking the two: all we have is a
large collection of similarities, enough to demonstrate some kind of
historical link, but no more.  And, because of the total absence of
systematic and orderly patterns linking the two, no Proto-Tlingit-EA can be
reconstructed -- according to our ordinary ideas of what a reconstruction
should look like, and contrary to Steve's earlier assertion.  Therefore, we
cannot prove that Tlingit is related to EA, in my sense of the term.

There are, of course, several possible explanations, and all have been
proposed:

(1) Tlingit is unrelated to EA, and the similarities result entirely from
long contact.

(2) Tlingit is a mixed language, resulting from the imposition of an EA
language on an unrelated substrate, with consequent and extensive mixing.

(3) Tlingit is an EA language with a highly unusual history.  In
particular, it broke up into a number of distinct regional varieties, but
some unusual event then caused these varieties to be re-combined --
effectively, koineized -- in an unsystematic manner.

All of these proposals are consistent with the observation that Tlingit
exhibits many similarities to EA but no systematic correspondences.  Any
one of them might be right, but we can't tell.  In any case, as things
stand, we cannot prove that Tlingit is related to EA -- in spite of the
abundant similarities -- and we cannot reconstruct a common ancestor.

The case of IE is wholly different: it does not resemble the case of
Tlingit and EA.

> (As far as what's dead and what's not, and as far as the opinion of the
> linguistic community, I'd be happy to privately share with Prof Trask the
> opinion of some eminent linguists who most definitely do not believe that
> PIE can be plausibly recovered at all.)

Sure; feel free.  I'll be happy to hear about this.  But the wording is
peculiar.  Are you, Steve, suggesting that some linguists believe that PIE
existed but that we cannot substantially recover it?  This is not at all
the position of the three men who I cited earlier and whose view I rejected
as untenable.

> That's not to say PIE didn't exist.  It's just to say that its existence
> is no where as necessary as Prof Trask makes it out to be.  As a
> scientific matter at least.  One's personal beliefs are another matter.

Sorry, Steve -- I can't agree with this for a moment.  The former existence
of PIE is a necessity forced upon us by the data.  The relationships among
the IE languages are just too orderly and systematic to result from
anything other than common origin from a single ancestor.  Other kinds of
origin could produce resemblances, but they could not produce the
systematic relations that we see.

Finally, a very general point on which I perhaps agree with Steve.  We know
it is possible for a language to descend from a single common ancestor in
the familiar way.  The IE languages are splendid examples.  And we know
-- now -- that it is possible for a language to descend from two (or
possibly more) ancestors.  Michif is a magnificent example.  And we also
know that it is possible for a language to descend from no ancestor at all.
Nicaraguan Sign Language is the clearest example I know of.

Given all this, we must be prepared to consider the possibility of all
kinds of intermediate cases.  One of the most interesting intermediate
cases is the Austronesian language Takia, which has borrowed the *entire*
grammar of the neighboring but unrelated Papuan language Waskia, so that
every Takia sentence is a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss of the corresponding
Waskia sentence -- while at the same time Takia has borrowed no morphemes
at all from Waskia.

Linguistic work in the last twenty years has demonstrated beyond dispute
that linguistic descent can be, and sometimes is, far more complicated than
our conventional family-tree model would suggest.  This is fascinating, and
I am confident that the next twenty years will turn up yet more surprises.
But it is out of order to conclude that the IE languages result from one or
another of these more colorful scenarios: the evidence is solidly against
this.  If things were otherwise, our predecessors would never have
succeeded in reconstructing PIE in the first place -- just as specialists
today cannot reconstruct a Proto-Tlingit-Eyak-Athabaskan, in spite of the
obvious commonalities.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From Oliver.Neukum at lrz.uni-muenchen.de  Mon Apr 30 06:58:56 2001
From: Oliver.Neukum at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Oliver Neukum)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 08:58:56 +0200
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <017101c0ceb4$da9978a0$34efffcc@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.085856.0200.>

> What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem
> to have contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you
> wouldn't necessarily expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas
> forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan > schiete.  Of course the value
> of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference here.

As he was Dutch an e could well signify length.

au > o:
iu > y: > i:

Not beyond reason.

	Regards
		Oliver Neukum


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Apr 30 10:05:40 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 12:05:40 +0200
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.120540.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Gustafson" <stevegus at aye.net>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 2:56 AM

> What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem to have
> contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you wouldn't necessarily
> expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan
> > schiete.  Of course the value of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference
> here.

[Ed Selleslagh]

In the old Dutch spelling (before modern times) the addition of an <-e> to a
vowel simply indicated that it's long; in modern Dutch, a double vowel is
written, except in the case of <i>, where the long version is still <ie> (ae,
ee, ie, ue instead of modern aa, ee, ie, uu).

So <oeghene> is pronounced  /o:[gamma]@n@ /


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 30 15:19:09 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:19:09 -0500
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <017101c0ceb4$da9978a0$34efffcc@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.101909.0500.>

	Diamond points out that "Classical" Gothic (my term, not his) is
not ancestral to Crimean Gothic and that Busbecq somewhat arbitrarily
called the language Gothic --although Diamond agrees that it was a form of
Gothic. Diamond does go into some of the details in his article.

>What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem to have
>contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you wouldn't necessarily
>expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan >
>schiete.  Of course the value of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference here.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 15:31:32 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 11:31:32 EDT
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.113132.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/30/2001 12:17:38 AM, edsel at glo.be writes:

<< Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (= van Buisbeek), ºKomen 1522-+Rouen 1592,was
actually Flemish, from the presently Belgian border (France-Belgium) city of
Komen (Fr. Comines), nowadays predominantly French speaking, but with 'language
facilities' for the remaining Dutch speaking population [He lived before the
southern part of Flanders was annexed by France's Louis XIV]. Actually, he was
probably educated in French.

He also brought the tulip to the Low Countries. >>

I take it he was the first.  Otherwise it would be coals to Newcastle.

As a sidebar, this is Nancy Tuleen's POV on Crimean Gothic as it appears on
the web:

"The Crimean Gothic attestations transcribed by the Flemish nobleman Busbecq
are fascinating for their historical value: that a small enclave of
Ostrogoths survived in the Crimea, nearly to the modern age, is truly
amazing. Linguistically, however, relatively little is to be gained from
Busbecq's transcription. Firstly, he was no linguist, and his orthography is
quite peculiar, showing corruption from his native Flemish as well as from
German; so too, his primary informant was not a native Gothic speaker, but
rather a Greek who claimed to be fluent in the language. In addition, we no
longer have Busbecq's original manuscript, but only a bad copy of a printed
edition, full of errors and confusion. In short, scholars have managed to
place this dialect into the Eastern Gothic family, showing as it does
remnants of nominative -s endings, however dubiously attested. As such,
Crimean Gothic does not tell us much about Wulfila's Gothic,..."

http://members.cts.com/crash/n/nthuleen/papers/755gothfinal.html


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Mon Apr 30 10:35:52 2001
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (Gabor Sandi)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:35:52 -0000
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.103552.0000.>

Hello, Cristian.

According to my Orszagh (i.e. the standard Hungarian-English dictionary),
Hungarian 'men' (with accute accented e) is a 'stallion'. This is not in my
own native Budapest vocabulary, but then I truly am a city boy, for whom all
horses are just 'lovak'. I am, however, familiar with the derivative 'menes'
(again with accent on the first e), which I thought meant a herd of horses,
or whatever the collective of horses is in English, but Orszagh claims that
it means a 'studfarm' (the closest Hungarian-French dictionary agrees with
my understanding, and says that it is a 'troupeau de chevaux')

So 'menhus' could mean 'horsemeat', although why wouldn't they just have
said 'lohus'?.

With my best wishes,

Gabor

[ moderator snip ]


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Mon Apr 30 13:23:46 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 07:23:46 -0600
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
In-Reply-To: <003601c0ce83$ecbe3560$c90469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.072346.0600.>

mén is 'stallion' in Hungarian, so ménhús would be 'horsemeat'.
ménhús follows Hungarian compounding rules and would be a perfectly
acceptable modern Hungarian form.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net

[ moderator snip ]


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 30 20:05:01 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 15:05:01 -0500
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
In-Reply-To: <003601c0ce83$ecbe3560$c90469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.150501.0500.>

	According to Diamond, the word for meat is from a Hungarian
compound word meaning "horse meat". I'm guessing the word was picked up c.
500-1000 CE when the Magyars were on their way to present day Hungary. On
the other hand, I imagine it's possible the compound was coined after <hus>
was borrowed from Hungarian. Diamond didn't give the particulars. I'm sure
a specialist on the list will know the details.

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From xavier.delamarre at free.fr  Mon Apr 30 10:51:02 2001
From: xavier.delamarre at free.fr (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 12:51:02 +0200
Subject: Greek from PIE
In-Reply-To: <001a01c0cea0$e472ec80$4a6263d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.125102.0200.>

le 27/04/01 0:32, David L. White à dlwhite at texas.net a écrit :

>> At 06:10 PM 4/20/01 +0100, you wrote:

>>> Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
>>> from PIE?

> Why is nobody mentioning Palmer's book on the subject?  Is it
> considered discredited?  There is also Lejeune.

> Dr. David L. White

    And why not Antoine Meillet's "Aperçu d'une histoire de langue grecque",
Paris 1935 ? (many reprints, German transl., possibly English but I am not
sure).

XD


From petegray at btinternet.com  Mon Apr 30 18:17:04 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 19:17:04 +0100
Subject: Greek from PIE
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.191704.0100.>

>         Why is nobody mentioning Palmer's book on the subject?

Palmer is far too brief, general, and vague.  Good for an overview, but not
for the details.

peter


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Mon Apr 30 11:32:27 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 14:32:27 +0300
Subject: Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.143227.0300.>

Olives and figs do not grow on the Anatolian Plateau, or at least they
do not produce edible fruit. Fig (but not olive so far as I know) trees
grow in Ankara (and London) but I have never seen an edible fig on one.
Olives could have come from Hittite controlled lands on the south coast
and N Syria, as could figs.  I am not sure about the Black Sea, perhaps
someone could help out, but today the main cash crops are tobacco, hazel
nuts and tea, with chestnut higher up. There is no evidence that the
climate was sufficiently warmer in the Late Bronze Age for either olive
or fig to have been a viable crop on the plateau. There is a false olive
(sometimes called a Russian olive) that is prolific here and which does
produce a dry and edible fruit (i.e. you don't die if you eat it),
although it is not to my taste and I have never seen it on sale. It
would not produce olive oil.

The other fruits in the list all grow around Hattusa.

A string of dried figs and burnt olives have been excavated at Kilesi
Tepe (south of Mut) by Prof. Nicholas Postgate.

Hittites kept lions, and there is an excavated Lion bone from the
Japanese excavations at Kaman Kalehöyük (pers. comm. from Prof. Omura).

I always assume that the Hittite and Neo-Hittite door lions were carved
from life, although the Phrygian ones from Gordion look more whimsical.

Best,

Geoff

[ moderator snip ]

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Mon Apr 30 11:42:14 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 14:42:14 +0300
Subject: Lions and Tiger and Bears, Oh My
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.144214.0300.>

David L. White wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>         Just a brief note:  Ancient Anatolia had not only lions, but tigers
> (in the eastern part), and leopards.  (Not to mention the usual bears, and
> wolves).  Yet it seems that the scariest animals the IEs knew were bears and
> wolves.  But of course tabu deformation may be relevant in all this.

> Dr. David L. White

In the Hittite Empire period at Hattusa we have the magnificent
sculptures of the Lion Gate, and at Yazilikaya the goddess Arinna stands
on a panther (or female lion?). The entrance to Chamber B at Yazilikaya
is protected by two demon bears carved in low relief, but they pale in
comparison with the power of the Lion Gate.

Best,

Geoff

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 21:34:14 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 16:34:14 -0500
Subject: Fallow Deer
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.163414.0500.>

> Likewise, PIE lacks a word for the fallow deer, common throughout southern
> Europe, but has terms for 'elk' and 'red deer'.

        Another kind of fallow deer, not terribly distinct, occurs along the
border between Iraq and Iran, or did until the war there.  (There were
reports of them being machinegunned and eaten by solidiers, notwithstanding
that they were considered endangered at the time.)  More to the point, my
encylopedia of mammals, though not distinguishing between the types, lists
fallow deer as occurring in "Asia Minor".
        It is not clear to me whether the gazelles known to the Hittites
were native to Anatolia or were encountered further south.  From what I know
of the goitered gazelle (sorry about the name, I didn't make it up), it
seems probable that it would have occured in ancient Anatolia, though I
cannot be certain.  (Ranges of Asian gazelles have in general shrunk.)  It
occurs near there today, and tolerates cold fairly well.
        Thus we at least one and possibly two cases where, if the PIEs began
in Anatolia and went directly from there to Greece and Iran, they
inexplicably lost a word for animals of a rather harmless sort that would
not ordinarily be expected to provoke tabu deformation.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 12:44:02 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 07:44:02 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.074402.0500.>

> What language in the world aspirates /t/ only after /n/? None
> that I ever heard of.

        Answering my own rhetorcal question,  I note that some African
languages do this thing which I had thought was impossible.  Furthermore,
reflection reveals that proto-Britonic almost certainly did this too,
resulting in the nasal mutations of /p-t-k/.  Nonetheless, the Hittite forms
show variants in /nd/, which suggests that their pronunciation was more like
modern English "seventy" with a /d/ in it, so my original assertion was
probably (in implication) correct.
        As for place-name formative being both Pelasgian and Anatolian,
there is nothing wrong with this.  Derivational suffixes are often borrowed
with words, as is seen in modern English "ize" from Greek and, more vaguely,
the idea that it is somehow (poetically?) appropriate for country names to
end in "ia".  If there were enough city names in /-nthos/ and /-ssos/ (I am
not sure about the /a/) around, people could well have gotten the idea that
there was some sort of appropriate and "high-class" city name suffix
involved, and applied it to their own cities, thus yielding things like
Tartessos.  (I have no idea what the frst part is.)

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 30 15:39:56 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:39:56 -0500
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F281oUS2c1FpDK2QTH500009fb5@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.103956.0500.>

	I've seen somewhere (in popular etymological books) that
	cypressus and kuparissos are from Semitic
	and are cognate to English gopher (wood) --which was used for
Noah's Ark (if I remember correctly),
	and also cognate to Cyprus "(is)land of conifers"
	--and indirectly copper (metal from Cyprus).

	It does sound a bit pat and the -ssos ending looks suspiciously
pre-Greek substrate rather than Semitic but I plead ignorance

	So, are cypressus and kuparissos from Semitic?
	If gopher (wood) derived from Hebrew or just a variant form derived
from cypressus or kuparissos?
	Is there a link between Cyprus and cypress?

	Or is this all someone's wishful thinking?

>Yes. Many of these are phytonyms whose discrepancy in form precludes direct
>borrowing. Palmer cites Lat. citrus ~ Gk. kedros, li:lium ~ leirion, laurus
>~ daphne:, vacci:nium ~ huakinthos, viola ~ (w)ion, rosa ~(w)rodon, menta ~
>minthe:, and cupressus ~ kuparissos. The last two are sometimes assigned to
>Latin borrowing from Greek (without plausible explanation of [e] < [i]) but
>the Greek words are from substrate anyway..

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From alexeyf at zoran.co.il  Mon Apr 30 11:54:44 2001
From: alexeyf at zoran.co.il (Alexey Fuchs)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 13:54:44 +0200
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter) [off-topic]
In-Reply-To: <002d01c0cf32$db4f5de0$8521073e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.135444.0200.>

> There are polyglot areas in Europe today where many people will have some
> degree of competence in several languages.   The situation back then was not
> so unusual.  Consider a pious Jewish family in Flanders, where they may
> speak Flemish in the home, use French at work, enjoy Hebrew in the
> synagogue, and assist the tourists to part with their money in English.

> Peter

	Please receive my apologies for an off-topic question, I just could not
figure out what you meant. How exactly would a contemporary European pious
Jewish family assist the tourists to part with their money?

							Sincerely, A.Fuchs

[ Moderator's note:
  If apologies are necessary, they are mine, for lack of sensitivity.  I am,
  after all, native to the US.

  My own reading of Mr. Gray's comments was that the hypothetical family in
  question would join their equally pious Lutheran and Catholic neighbours in
  assisting the tourists to part with their money, that being the goal of all
  tourists.

  Again, my apologies to any offended readers.
  -- rma ]


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Apr 30 11:29:37 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 13:29:37 +0200
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.132937.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 5:55 PM

> There are polyglot areas in Europe today where many people will have some
> degree of competence in several languages.   The situation back then was not
> so unusual.  Consider a pious Jewish family in Flanders, where they may
> speak Flemish in the home, use French at work, enjoy Hebrew in the
> synagogue, and assist the tourists to part with their money in English.

> Peter

[Ed Selleslagh]

In my home city of Antwerp, the situation would rather be like this:

French or Yiddish at home, depending on the subject or context; Dutch
(Flemish), Yiddish or English at work, depending on the business partners;
Hebrew at the synagogue; and they wouldn't be involved with tourists, except
when these visit the diamond/gold shops or workshops.

Some also speak German or an E. European mother tongue.

The Flemish people speak Dutch, almost everybody can speak English to some
degree, and many can maintain conversation in French, and help themselves in
German.

There are large Moroccan (often Berbers who can - or not - speak Arabic and/or
French, and some Dutch; the second generation speaks their parents' language
and Dutch) and Turkish minorities (they usually can speak relatively decent
Dutch), and many others (Albanians, Georgians and other Caucasians, Russians,
...who generally know enough English to get by). Not to speak of the Chinese,
Indians, Pakistani, N. and S. Americans etc...and lots of EU citizens (who are
not considered actual foreigners, by law).

Babel didn't disappear, it just moved around the world.

Ed.


From mcalamia at hotmail.com  Mon Apr  2 18:13:31 2001
From: mcalamia at hotmail.com (Maria Anna Calamia)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 14:13:31 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.141331.0400.>

Could you please define "dialect mixture"? How does this relate to Italian
having a structrue where the orthography is matched by its phonetic system?

Maria Anna Calamia
University of Toronto

>From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
>Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 15:52:58 -0600

>>> The main advantage Italian has, to simplify a bit, is that it did not go
>>> through the Great Vowel Shift.

>> That might be simplifying a bit too much

>         I admit I should have mentioned dialect mixture as a major
>contributor to the problem.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr  1 17:53:08 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 13:53:08 EDT
Subject: Minoan is an IE language?/Sound Equivalence
Message-ID: <SUN.1.APR.2001.135308.EDT.>

I wrote:
<< If the situation in English can be attributed in any way to imported words,

In a message dated 3/28/2001 9:44:03 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<<-- it's not the imported words, it's the changing sounds.  First,
one-to-one correspondences between sound and symbol have collapsed as
the language changed and the orthography didn't.  >>

Respectfully, this does not seem to account for the facts as given.  The
report said that there are in English "more than 1,100 ways that letters in
the written language are used to symbolize the 40 sounds in the spoken
language."

If true, this situation cannot be accounted for by mere sound changes and
conservative orthography, internal or even imported.

The mathematics are plain.  If all 40 sounds in English (today) all changed
not once or twice but five times, you should have no more than 200
orthographic equivalencies, counting the new and all the old ones coexisting
at the same time.

Presume English had even fifty or sixty sounds at any point, and each sound
had one and only one corresponding symbol.  If each and every one of those
sounds changed and each of those sounds were given a new symbol, the total of
all new symbols and old symbols could only be at most 120.

Let's say the total number of sounds EVER used in English, past and present,
amounted to 100.  Then EACH and EVERY sound would have to be represented by,
on the average, ten different ways of writing each of those sounds.  To reach
1,100, each of those 100 sounds would have to have changed at least 10
different times each, on the average.

I keep on writing "if true," because these are astonishing numbers,
especially when compared to the figure given in Italian: "the 33 sounds in
Italian are spelled with
only 25 letters or letter combinations."

There can be only a few explanations for this.  One is that English was
constantly shifting a small set of sounds and each of those sounds changed
many, many times.  The other is that English tried to accommodate new sounds
with new spellings, but that the sounds disappeared but the different
spellings were retained.

Awhile ago, I looked up the dozen different spellings of the word "condition"
in OED.  One of them, "condycyoun", I think implies that the early attempts
in spelling the word were meant to reflect the French word.  As the French
word became Anglified, its sounds transformed, <-cyoun> e.g. moving towards a
single syllable, but the orthography - stabilized in the 1600's - could not
quite give up all its heritage and that compromise is where it stands today.

Except in Mark Twain, of course, where a character quite properly spells the
word "cundishun."

Regards,
Steve Long


From Salinas17 at aol.com  Sun Apr  1 07:11:29 2001
From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 03:11:29 EDT
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <SUN.1.APR.2001.031129.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<....<anapsao:> is cited early for wipe up, clean out.>>

In a message dated 3/29/2001 2:58:35 AM, acnasvers at hotmail.com replied:
<< I see no connection between <psa-> and <sap->, but it is very tempting to
relate Gk. <psa:r> 'starling' to OE <st&r>, OHG <stara>, Lat. <sturnus> (from
PIE *stor-). Other than this I have no plausible comparanda for words with
initial "psi".>>

If I understand correctly, this approaches the issue as a matter of descent
from a common source in the proto-language.  But perhaps the question might
be, as far as "soap" goes, how <psa-> words would look if they were borrowed
into Germanic, sometime before 1AD.  Direct cognacy in this case might be
irrelevant.

"Soap" in the specific sense gives all appearances of being a relatively
recent innovation.  If the word were borrowed before the current era, there
is probably no special reason to think that signs of either Pelagasian
ancestry or native morphology would go with it.  The question might be merely
how the word was heard by the borrower and how he accommodated it within his
native phonology and morphology.  (Presuming that at this point in time
Germanic was not adopting Greek or Latin words in their "learned " form.)

Putting aside the <psa-> matter for the time being, the word "soap" in itself
has more to do with Greek, Latin and possibly Celtic than with any possible
semantic connection to a Proto-Germanic "sieve", to which it is supposed to
have cognacy according to Pokorny.

One of the earliest appearances of the word gives it as "a Gallic invention
(hair-dye) adopted by the Germans." (L-S Grk Dict)

This connection to "dye" is totally consistent with what we know about the
early development of what we call soap.  "Saponification is... accomplished
through reaction of a fat or fatty acid with an alkali.... soap was not
invented for purposes of personal hygiene.  Rather, it was invented early on
to solve a problem with textiles: wool as it comes from the sheep is coated
with a layer of grease that interferes with the application of dyes... In
some cases, the causticity of soap was itself a dyeing agent."

Basic early soap is a mixture of fats and alkali such as potash or lye.  "A
soap-like material found in clay cylinders during the excavation of ancient
Babylon is evidence that soapmaking was known as early as 2800 B.C.
Inscriptions on the cylinders say that fats were boiled with ashes, which is
a method of making soap,... Such materials were later used as hair styling
aids." (All this is from the Kirk-Othmer Encycl of Chem. Technology or soap
history sites on the web.)

Early soaps would have been highly caustic and capable of having strong
effects on anything they were applied to.  This is confirmed by Latin
references to "causticus" as "a kind of soap with which the Germans colored
their hair, Mart. 14, 26, 1."  (Lewis & Short).  This name from the Greek
<kaustikos>, burning, caustic, corrosive.

If we did not know this, we might think soap was just the modern Mr. Bubble
stuff.  But the origins of soap as a caustic treatment for wool or hides
gives us some better candidates for the origin of "soap."

In fact, <se:po:> which meant make rotten or corrupt or mortify, is also
attested as meaning to "soak hides" in the fifth century BC in Athens,
("dermata se:po:", Lidell-Scott).  And not surprisingly in Greek <sapon>,
soap, also appears as <se:po:n>.

As to the apparently incongruent presence of such ideas as "rotten" or
"rancid" with soap, this again is only due to an unfamiliarity with the early
soap-making process.  In fact, one of the main ingredients of most early
soaps would have been rendered animal fats, boiled down from rancid
leftovers.  An accurate description of such a product would be
<se:pe:/se:pon>.

In Latin, pertinent is <sebum /sevum>, tallow, suet, grease; <sebosus>, full
of tallow or grease, tallowy, greasy, as both refer to the fatty ingredient
of soap, although I am not sure when these words are first attested (Sebosus,
a Roman surname, is mentioned by Cicero.)

Also related perhaps in meaning is <apo/zeo:>: boil till the scum is thrown
off. (Cf., <exuper/zeo:>, boil over.)  Under these circumstances, one can
conceive of perhaps a co-occurence of <zeo:>, to boil, with the word for fat
<pion>.  <Zeo:> in the form <zei> makes its appearance for example in regard
to wine ("oinos zei").  And <zo:pissa>, the mixture of pitch and wax
"scrapped off from old ships", may have some association in meaning, if that
mixture was thereafter boiled.

The other ingredient in soap is ash, potash, lye, etc.  Along with <nitron>,
soda, we find the ash word <spodion>.  Thus, <Spodo-nitropoios> "maker of
soap from potash" (called dubious in L-S). Interestingly, we are also given
in Latin, ultimately from <spuo>, in the sense of froth, foam, boiling,
"spuma caustica, a pomade used by the Teutones for dyeing the hair red,...
called also spuma Batava,... nitri." (Lewis & Short)  Here, <spuma> seems
related to the caustic alkaline element in soap.

In none of all this as far as I know is a "sieve" involved, the word
referring to quite different processes, with no apparent relationship to soap.

In all of the above, the word "soap" seems to relate mainly to the
manufacturing process, rather than to end use of human bathing.  This brings
up again the Greek <psao:>, <pse:xis>, <psairo:>, <psapharos>, <anapsao:>,
etc., all words that can be related in meaning to one degree or another to
the gentler end use of soap as a cleaning, polishing or staining agent.
Compare <psao:> to <spao:>, in general meaning to draw-off, strip, suck in,
derive, tear away.  And in the form <spadizo:> "to strip off" as in stripping
hides ("spadixas to derma" Herodotus 5.25).

Regards,
Steve Long


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Mon Apr  2 18:53:51 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 14:53:51 -0400
Subject: [linguist@linguistlist.org: 12.921, Jobs: Classics,
 Ling: Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK]
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.145351.0400.>

Forwarded from the Linguist List.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Delivered-To: LINGUIST at listserv.linguistlist.org
Approved-By:  linguist at LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Date:         Mon, 2 Apr 2001 17:52:15 -0000
From: The LINGUIST Network <linguist at linguistlist.org>
Subject:      12.921, Jobs: Classics, Ling: Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK

LINGUIST List:  Vol-12-921. Mon Apr 2 2001. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 12.921, Jobs: Classics, Ling: Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK

[ snip ]

Date:  2 Apr 2001 11:40:28 -0000
From:  Dr G M King <secretary at classics.cam.ac.uk>
Subject:  Classical Philology & Ling: (Asst) Lecturer at U of Cambridge, UK

Rank of Job: Lecturer/Assistant Lecturer
Areas Required: Classical Philology and Linguistics
Other Desired Areas:
University or Organization: University of Cambridge
Department: Faculty of Classics
State or Province: Cambridge
Country: UK
Final Date of Application: 20 April 2001
Contact: Dr G M King secretary at classics.cam.ac.uk

Address for Applications:
Sidgwick Avenue
Cambridge
Cambs CB3 9DA
UK

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Faculty of Classics

Two posts in Classics (Philology and Linguistics)

University Lecturer or Assistant Lecturer:

Applications for this post (to start on 1 October 2001) are invited
from suitably qualified and experienced candidates. The Linguistics
and Philology section of the Faculty is responsible for teaching
descriptive linguistics of Greek and Latin for Part I of the Classical
Tripos, and the historical linguistics of the two languages and
comparative linguistics of the Indo-European languages for Part II, as
well as for supervising graduate students working in these fields.
The successful candidate will be required to take a full part in these
activities and to engage in research relevant to the teaching
programme.

Faculty Assistant Lecturer:

The Faculty is also seeking to fill from 1 October 2001 a two year
post to cover for a member of staff on research leave. The successful
candidate will be expected to contribute to the Faculty's
undergraduate teaching programmes in Classical philology and
linguistics and to assist with the running of the M Phil seminar.


Further information for either post may be obtained from the Secretary
of the Appointments Committee, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue,
Cambridge CB3 9DA (e-mail: secretary at classics.cam.ac.uk) or from the
Faculty website http://www.classics.cam.ac.uk.

Applications, including a detailed curriculum vitae and list of
publications, together with the names of two referees should be sent
to the above address not later than 20 April 2001.  Applicants'
referees should be asked to write directly to the Secretary to reach
the Faculty by the closing date.  There is no application form.
Applications from women and those in the early stages of their career
are particularly encouraged.  Candidates are asked to state whether
they wish to apply for one or both of the posts.

The pensionable scale of stipend for a Faculty Assistant Lecturer or
University Assistant Lecturer is GBP 17,755 - 23,256; and for a
University Lecturer GBP 21,435 - 33,058 per annum.

The University is committed to equality of opportunity.

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LINGUIST List: Vol-12-921
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From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr  2 19:46:29 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 14:46:29 -0500
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.144629.0500.>

> Could you please define "dialect mixture"? How does this relate to Italian
> having a structrue where the orthography is matched by its phonetic system?

> Maria Anna Calamia
> University of Toronto

        Dialect mixture is when words in one dialect have the form that is
proper to another.  All or just about all dialects have it to some extent.
Italian, for example, has some cases of intervocalic voicing, though ths is
not in general characteristic of (Standard) Italian.  (It occurs in the
dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)   I cannot
off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
pronounced as in another.  A great deal of dialect mixture went into the
formation of the London Standard.  A possible example (I don't know, someone
else out there probably does) might be things like "bead" versus "head",
where some words are spelled as if they have long vowels when in fact the
vowels have been shortened, or,  to put it from the other perspective, not
all vowels that might be expected to have been shortened actually have been.
        In any event, coming up with a series of rules that would correctly
predict the pronunciation of native (or pre-1500) words in English is a
problem, and probably the main one that derails children learning to read.
The Great Vowel Shift itself would not have created an unsolvable problem,
and it is perhaps more appropriate to say that it is the sub-cases that are
problematic.  For example, one could come up with a rule to say that "-ead"
is pronounced long after labials and nasals, which is at least a start (I
vaguely recall that there is no principled account of "ead"), but beyond a
point it becomes more efficient to simply memorize spellings, which is what
is traditionally done.  This disconnect seems to be what causes the greater
incidence of dislexia in English readers.  To what extent it is related to
dialect mixture (most of which in the present case amounts to differences of
dialectal opinion about matters related to the GVS) or sub-cases (again,
mostly related to the GVS) is not clear (to me).

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Apr  2 20:02:28 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 16:02:28 EDT
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.160228.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/2001 2:05:55 PM, gordonbr at microsoft.com writes:

<< > "Peter" is not Aramaic. It represents Greek <Petros>, lit. 'piece of
rock', given by John (1:42) as the translation of <Ke:pha:s>, the nickname
bestowed upon Simon by Jesus. >>

Just a note.  James Joyce called "thou art Peter and upon this rock..." "a
pun in the original Aramaic."  Whatever Joyce meant, there is a question
among Biblical scholars which word Jesus used.  I see here "Along with petra,
petros entered the Hebrew language: Petros was the father of a sage of the
land of Israel, Rabbi Yose ben Petros..."  For a news story discussion, see
http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/articles/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=1463.
Peter might possibly just been called Peter, as Petra may have already become
part of the Aramaic language, and this would appear consistent with the
naming practices in the NT, even nicknames, not being translated.

S. Long


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Apr  3 09:30:23 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 10:30:23 +0100
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <3FBE0C2659BC3B4EAB3536F20FA2503902B88D91@red-msg-02.redmond.corp.microsoft.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.103023.0100.>

--On Thursday, March 29, 2001 9:13 am -0800 Gordon Brown
<gordonbr at microsoft.com> wrote:

> DGK's posting reminds me of a question I've had for quite a while.  In
> an article about Bede (Baeda), I saw a bibliographic reference that
> implied that the name Baeda might be somehow related to the name Peter.
> Is this possible?  In any case, does Baeda equate to any modern name?

According to the only source I have handy, which is not wholly reliable,
Bede's name is a derivative of Old English <bedu> 'asking, prayer', and is
therefore related to modern 'bead' and 'bid'.

I know of no modern form.  The first name that popped into my head was that
of Bid McPhee, the great 19th-century second baseman, who was voted into
the Baseball Hall of Fame last year.  However, on checking, I find that his
real name was John Alexander McPhee, and that 'Bid' was a shortening of
'Biddy', apparently a nickname conferred in those days on a player of
diminutive stature (McPhee was small).

Now, if someone will only tell me how the old-time third baseman Charles
'Piano Legs' Hickman acquired his nickname, I'll be a happy man.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr  2 23:57:46 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 18:57:46 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.185746.0500.>

>> There are no valid generalizations, but abandonment of a language, once it
>> becomes seen as "the thing to do", can be quite rapid.

> Agreed. But we do have one thing to go on here, in contemplating the presumed
> replacement of pre-Etruscan, and that is the replacement of Etruscan itself
> by Latin in Etruria. If we reckon from the Roman conquest of Veii to the
> latest inscriptions at Volaterrae (ca. 50 CE) it took about 450 years for
> this to happen.

        Yes, but the Etruscans who slowly allowed themselves to be
assimilated to the Romans were the bearers of an ancient high culture, quite
respected (at one time).  Presumably any pre-Etruscan native population was
not.

> A few shiploads of refugees from Troy or its allies, arriving over a decade
> or two, simply don't cut the mustard in this picture, no matter how dazzling
> their High Culture might have been.

        I think it was more than that.  But be that as it may, there could
have been what I call a "rolling assimilation", whereby the earlier
assmilees aid in assimilating the later assimilees.  For example, in America
a great many Germans have wound up "Anglicizing" (or Americanizing) more
recent immigrants.  (This is especially true in parts of Texas, where once
upon a time the predominant white population was German.  It used to be
assumed in San Antonio that anyone who was not a Mexican was a German.  Yes,
to some extent the Mexican were there first, but their assimilation, which
is what is relevant, was often later.  But I digress.)

> As for mysterious North Aegeans, where exactly was their homeland? The island
> of Chryse, east of Lemnos, which sank into the sea according to Pausanias
> (VIII.33.4)?  (Migrationist doctrine, rigorously pursued, eventually leads us
> either _down_ to Atlantis and similar sunken lands or _up_ to von Daeniken's
> ancient astronauts.)

        Well, I now have the unique(?) honor of having been accused both of
being a migrationist and of being an anti-migrationist.  (Perhaps I am
somewhere in the middle?)  By "North Aegean" I intended a cover term
embracing Thrace/Chalcide/Lemnos, in keeping with the accounts of the
geographers which, using an ethnonym I forget and am too lazy to look up,
seem to indicate a southward drift along those general lines.  I was hoping
someone wise in the ways of the archeology of Thrace, which would be what is
called for, might have something to say on this.  But a fairly small and
heavily genericized (for lack of a better word) East Mediterranean culture
might not leave much of a signature.

> Most Etruscan funerary inscriptions (alas!) consist only of names, but the
> language is clearly Etruscan, with genitives of parents and possessives of
> spouses commonly found. Lower-class "monuments" in some cases are crudely
> marked ceramic tiles. The language is still Etruscan. Tiles and other
> markers are there to identify the deceased to the living, and there is no
> reason whatsoever to convert the deceased's actual name into a form
> unrecognized by the living.

        That Etruscan names were often taken up by non-Etruscan people is
shown in a recent posting, where a word meaning
"Etruscan" is used as part of an Etruscan-style name among people evidently
not Etruscan, or there would have been little point in using such a name.
So I don't see that there is any contradiction here.  It is perfectly
possible, even to be expected, that lower class Etruscans even if
"originally" of different ethnicity, would have used Etruscan names, on
funerary monuments as elsewhere, regardless of whether they might have been
bilingual in Etruscan and some other language, or largely descended from
folk who had been.

> Speaking of hinterlands, I've seen speculation that Etruscan might have
> persisted as a spoken language around Mt. Amiata (the most "remote" part of
> Etruria) for several centuries after its extinction in the cities. But since
> hillbillies seldom concern themselves with permanent written records, we'll
> probably never know.

        Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of
this aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become
effectively depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.
(Nothing fails like success:  the Romans created so many subtypes of
themselves that they exterminated the main branch, with a little help from
malarial swamps.)

> If "Nueces" isn't shortened from "Rio de las Nueces", might it represent a
> modified substratal name? ...)

        It might.  But since pecan trees do, strangely enough, grow that far
southwest (or almost that far:  I have seen them growing wild out in the
middle of nowhere west of San Antonio, not too far from the Nueces) I would
imagine that the name is related to this, especially since pecans are
water-loving trees, which in a semi-arid environment would (probably) tend
to grow near rivers.  On the other hand, I recall that most of what grows
along the waterways I am thinking of(which cannot really be called rivers)
is cypresses.  But the Nueces is out of my zone.  (If I ever get out there
again, I'll keep my eyes open and report back ...)  Considering that pecans
are sometimes described as being native to "the Mississipi valley", the
Nueces area might have been the first place Spanish explorers coming up from
Mexico encountered them.

Dr. David L. White


From ymeroz at earthlink.net  Tue Apr  3 06:10:06 2001
From: ymeroz at earthlink.net (Yoram Meroz)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 23:10:06 -0700
Subject: Etruscan
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.231006.0700.>

Sociolinguistic questions:

-- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
language? Did it go through a phase of being used as a written
language for more 'traditional' uses, while not spoken, much as Latin
was in later times?

-- Is there any indication of the uses of written Etruscan beyond
what has survived? For example, do any Roman writers mention written
Etruscan in the form of manuscripts or such?

Yoram


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Wed Apr  4 01:48:51 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 01:48:51 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.014851.0000.>

Stanley Friesen (29 Mar 2001) wrote:

>At 10:26 AM 3/25/01 Douglas G Kilday wrote [responding to Dr. White]:

>>Your proposal was /trosy-/ > /trohy-/ > /trooy-/ with later loss of /y/ when
>>not re-analyzable as suffixal. The first form, being foreign, evaded your
>>postulated metathesis, so no /troys-/.

>>I just don't like the necessity of invoking foreignness in order to evade one
>>sound-change, then insisting on "naturalization" in order to obey subsequent
>>changes.

[SF]
>Why, as far as I can see this happens all the time.  A borrowed word ceases to
>be perceived as foreign after a few generations, after which time it is
>subject to any *subsequent* (or even concurrent) sound changes in the
>borrowing language.  Consider for instance ME 'chief', borrowed from Medieval
>Norman French and then subjected to the Great Vowel Shift just like a native
>English word.

[DGK]
Yes, phonetic naturalization of loanwords must be normal, otherwise
languages which borrow extensively would accumulate hundreds of phonemes. My
objection was to the claim that */trosy-/ would have evaded the general
metathesis /sy/ > /ys/ (postulated by Dr. White to explain non-lengthening
in Epic Greek genitives) because it was perceived as a foreign word, and
_then_ would start behaving as a native Greek word, even though it contained
the sequence /sy/ which had just been metathesized to /ys/ in all native
Greek words! This is beyond coincidence; it requires a conspiracy by the
Demons of Phonetic Change to confuse moderns. Thank goodness for those
enlightened migrationists who know in their hearts that Trojans are
phonetically altered Tyrrhenians.

If this sort of thing had happened with 'chief', the pronunciation [c^yef]
vel sim. would have evaded the Great Vowel Shift because it was perceived as
French, all ME-speakers being acutely aware that French words are exempt
from English phonetic shifts. Only later would the "normal" pronunciation
[c^Ef] be acquired, which would rhyme with the more recent borrowing [s^Ef],
and there would be no [c^iyf]. If someone has examples of foreign words
which actually did evade the GVS this way, it would largely deflate my
objection to this stage of Dr. White's scenario.


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Apr  3 01:24:03 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 17:24:03 -0800
Subject: Getae as Goths
In-Reply-To: <002301c0b886$d1704c20$1a2363d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.172403.0800.>

At 01:30 PM 3/29/01 -0600, David L. White wrote:
>         Here is a somewhat wild, and probably worthless (or at least wrong)
>possibility:  could the name of the Getae be from umlaut of /got-thiuda/ or
>something of the sort?  Probably not:  all Germanic umlaut is supposed to be
>a lot more recent than that,

Also, I am not sure that umlaut would cross a double consonant like 't-th'.

>         By the way, how did the umlaut in "Goeteborg" (or is that "-burg")
>and "-goetland" get there?  Does it suggest an earlier form (at least in the
>north) with following /i/?

At least in combining forms, very likely.  In fact the 'e' in "Goeteborg"
probably goes back to an old 'i' (i.e. it was originally something like
Go:tiburg).

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Wed Apr  4 08:07:26 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 10:07:26 +0200
Subject: Getae as Goths
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.100726.0200.>

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:30:43 0600 David L. White wrote:

>Here is a somewhat wild, and probably worthless (or at least wrong)
>possibility: could the name of the Getae be from umlaut of /got-
>thiuda/ or something of the sort? Probably not: all Germanic umlaut is
>supposed to bea lot more recent than that, and the original Getae were
>pretty clearly Iranians, according to what I just read in "The Oxford
>Illustrated Prehistroy of Europe".

Others seem to put the Getae with the Thracians. Anyway, AFAIK the Getae are
first mentioned by Greek authors from the 5th century BC, so it seems pretty
unlikely to me that they are (or got their name from) speakers of a Gmc.
language - and one cannot assume umlaut that early.

>By the way, how did the umlaut in "Goeteborg" (or is that "-burg")and
>"-goetland" get there? Does it suggest an earlier form (at least in the
>north) with following /i/?

Not necessarily. /oe/ is the regular outcome of Gmc. /au/ in Swedish, with
/oe:/ being attested already in the Old Swedish period. So, *gauta- > to
/goet-/ would be a regular development. And, it's "-borg" in Swedish.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Apr  3 14:26:26 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 16:26:26 +0200
Subject: Gothic "au"
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.162626.0200.>

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 12:58:18 -0600 David L. White wrote:

>I am not too sure this is such a good idea.  The Greek/Hebrew names
>in Wright show that the basic rule is what I said it was (what a
>coincidence!):  long /oo/ comes across as "o", short /o/  as "au".

I don't think we are too much apart on this question. What I said is that
<au> and <o> denote two vowels of different quality, of which <o> probably
denoted a long, open /o:/ and <au> a closed /o/ (long or short) or /ou/.
AFAIK, at that time there was no distinction of vowel length in Greek any
more, and I'm not sure whether there was a quality distinction between the
sounds represented by <o mikron> and <o mega>. Traditionally, Greek short
/o/ was closed, and long /o/ was open, so what was said about the rendering
of the Greek "o" letters (Gothic <au> for <o mikron>, Gothic <o> for <o
mega> could have been triggered by the different qualities of the "o"s,
which would support my analysis - if there still was a quality distinction.

>  I suppose I can dredge up the Damned Thing and
>send to anyone who may be interested.

I am.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Apr  4 19:27:36 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 15:27:36 EDT
Subject: Goth-like Names
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.152736.EDT.>

<<Then there's the whole question of the initial "G".  There is a rather
large group of names that share the time and place with the Goths that might
even be considered as referring to the Goths if the loose orthography of the
time were also considered.  I have a folder full of examples of "c" and "g"
and "k" interchangeability that applies to a wide range of persons, peoples
and things, but never it seems to the Gothic name. >>

In a message dated 3/29/2001 12:26:01 AM, hwhatting at hotmail.com replied:
<< Going back to examples you quoted, we know, e.g., that the Chatti have
been sitting on the right bank of the Rhine for quite a time, and that the
name of the area of Hesse derives from their name, so we have a confirmation
that the name had to be pronounced /(c)hat-/ in Tacitus time, and that they
basically stayed there afterwards.

Now, we can of course say that they are identical with the Goths, that their
name just got mangled by intermediaries, and look for reasons why the Goths
"invented" a Scandinavian origin and forgot about their Hessian cousins. But
does this get us any further?>>

Once again, thanks for your patience.  I think I haven't been clear about
this.
My point is not that the Goths were "identical" with the Chatti, Chauci,
Cotti, Cotini, Codan(i), Cotensi, Quadi, Atta Cotti (3d Century invaders of
Roman Britain), Jutes, Geats, Getae, Gitae, -gatae, Chudi, Goe:tae, etc., nor
whether or not they were even distant cousins.  (Not any more than Bretons
and Britains, or American Indians and Asiatic Indians, or Vlakhs and Welsh
need to be.)

I'd like to return to the Chatti and their name later, but my point does not
go to the people but to the source of the various names which was used to
describe the Goths.  Recognizing that those initial consonants were often
interchangeable might suggest -- and I think does suggest -- that the Gothic
name(s) were not unique to this group.  Other people may have used the same
or related names across northern Europe.  The need for an ablaut explanation
might suggest the same thing -- that these names were all approximations of
each other rather than the constant renaming of one specific people.

<<But does this get us any further?>>

Yes, it appears to.  It opens up the meaning and source of the Gothic name to
more reasonable interpretations than something like "the ejaculates" which is
what some Scandinavian scholars are suggesting.  It allows us to consider the
source of those other names involving perhaps different IE or Germanic
speakers and see if there isn't a broader and deeper origin for the name Goth.

For example, it is very common for scholars on the subject to see the
"Butones" mentioned by Strabo (writing in the first part of the 1st Cent AD)
as a reference to the Goths.  Text are frequently "emendated" to replace the
B with a G.  This works happily with the notion of the Goths being a tribe
worth mentioning, supports Tacitus in connecting them with the Marcomanni and
places them somewhere out there, at least in the general direction of the
Vistula.

But making the Butones the Goths has a serious downside.  One of these is
that the tribe being described might well be the "Cotini".  These people,
whom Tacitus tells us spoke Celtic, were a significant factor in this region.
 Ptolemy places them thusly:
"the Corconti and the Lugi Buri up to the head of the Vistula river; and
below them first the Sidones, then the Cotini, then the Visburgii above the
Orcynius valley."  Tacitus tells us they should be embarrassed because they
pay tribute to neighboring tribes even though they are the ones who control
the IRON MINES.  (This becomes important because there is some evidence that
the Goth name may have something to do with forging, casting, iron and the
metal trade.)

Now, at the time Strabo was writing, the Marcomanni under Marobodus are the
main force north of the middle Danube and it is in this context that he
mentions his "Butones".  It is often reported (in Heather for example) that
this is evidence that the Goths, way up east of the Vistula, were part of the
Marcomanni's Danubian "alliance" of tribes.

But a closer read shows that this is not what Strabo wrote.   Strabo
statement of the relationship is a much stronger description of Marobodus'
dominance ("edunasteuse kai katekte:sato") - literally, to take power over
and possession of the "Butones". If these are the Goths, Strabo says they
were subdued and occupied by the Marcomanni.  On Ptolemy's map, the Gythones
are about 20 tribes, forty cities and 700 miles from Marobodum, where all
this is happening.  All this would suggest therefore that these are
references to the Cotini rather than the Goths.  (On the other hand, is all
this related to the old wives' tale Jordanes mentions of Gothic servitude to
Celtic folk?  Does this have anything to do with Tacitus' description of "a
youth named Cotwalda from among the Gotones" being supported by the Goths
against Marbodus?  Was Tacitus confusing Cotini and Gotoni?)

There are other tribes (including the Cotti of the Alps) that present similar
ambiguity in names if not in people.  And this confusion about names even
extended to Jordanes, as much as I think he tried to avoid it.

In naming the tribes of Scandinavia, Jordanes mentioned two groups that
deserves special attention.  He writes:

"Now in the island of Scandza, whereof I speak, there dwell many and divers
nations, though Ptolemaeus mentions the names of but seven of them....
Behind these are the Ahelmil, Finnaithae, Fervir and GAUTHIGOTH, a race of
men bold and quick to fight. Then come the Mixi, Evagre, and Otingis... And
there are beyond these the OSTROGOTHS, Raumarici, Aeragnaricii, and the most
gentle Finns, milder than all the inhabitants of Scandza." (from John
Vanderspoel's translation on the web).

Who are the Gautigoths - a name Jordanes never uses otherwise?  Recall that
this name is according to Jordanes in addition to Ptolemy's "Gutae".  What
this says, prima facia, is that Gauti, Goth and Gutae were not equivalent.  A
friendly interpretation can be made, but if we are going to apply any kind of
objective standard here, the plain interpretation is that these may be
similar names, but they are not the same name. Note that there are also
Ostrogoths in Scandinavia, up there with the Finns, but no Visigoths or just
plain original "Goths."

These names do not support a single, well-defined Gothic name, but instead a
good number of similar names for different people.

Where does this take us?  Well, a suggestion I have is that the Goths
acquired their name because of their association with a vital factor in the
economics and history of the region they were in.  I think there is some
linguistic support for this, some of it I've tried to suggest in past posts.
 (And it offers a better and more respectable origin than some of the ones
being offered these days.)  I'll try to clarify all this in the next post.

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr  3 00:59:29 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 19:59:29 -0500
Subject: "Colorado"
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.195929.0500.>

----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 9:26 AM
Subject: Re: "Guadalupe"

> BTW: Don't forget Austin's Colorado River
> I've also seen Spanish language maps with the Red River as "Ri/o
> Rojo" but I don't know if this was the original form or just a translation
> Which begs another question:
> Spanish rojo vs, colorado for "red"

        I had always thought, knowing next to nothing of Spanish, that
"colorado" was cognate with "colored", and meant the same.  Perhaps the
meaning 'red' is recent?  Certainly the Colorado, if it is anything, is
green, not red, though the Llano, a tributary, might perhaps be said to be
pink due to granitic sand.  The general rule, from my observations, is that
the Colorado and rivers SW of it are green (or if small enough clear) while
the Brazos and rivers NE of it are muddy brown.  No red rivers around here,
that I have seen ...

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Apr  5 04:31:34 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 00:31:34 -0400
Subject: "Guadalupe"
In-Reply-To: <l03130319b6e8f3853a58@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.003134.0400.>

At 09:26 29/03/01 -0500, you wrote:
>	Mozarabic, said to be from (seomthing like) Arabic wadi "valley" +
>Mozarabic lup, lupe < Latin lupus
>	Medina, of course, is Arabic for "town"
>	BTW: Don't forget Austin's Colorado River
>	I've also seen Spanish language maps with the Red River as "Ri/o
>Rojo" but I don't know if this was the original form or just a translation
>	Which begs another question:
>Spanish rojo vs, colorado for "red"
>	Why are some things <rojo> and other things <colorado>?
>	A chile is <rojo> if it's matured to that point. But a <chile
>colorado> is a specific type of chile. Which suggests that --at some
>level-- rojo is for anything that happens to be "red" but colorado for
>something that is "naturally red." But this isn't always the case. Any
>ideas?

>Rick Mc Callister

[Ed Selleslagh]
You might add that red wine is 'vino tinto', which makes this matter even
more curious.
BTW, your theory seems to be confirmed by a translation I saw in Per?: the
city of Pucallpa (on the Ucayali River) has a Quechua name (given by
missionaries, because the local native language is Chiama, an Amazonian
lg.) : Puka Allpa, translated as 'Tierra Colorada', not 'Tierra Roja' (Puka
= red, Allpa = earth, soil, ground).

Ed.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr  3 03:55:44 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 23:55:44 EDT
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.235544.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/01 6:18:50 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
dlwhite at texas.net writes:

> So though low population density probably is a factor, I doubt that
> is can be considered decisive.

-- using Spanish names for local features was a general policy in the Spanish
Empire, both at the governmental and local level.

English settlers in North America, by contrast, tended to use (with some
exceptions) local names, even though they made a much closer approach to
total elimination of the Indian population.


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Apr  3 15:13:03 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 09:13:03 -0600
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <003701c0b874$5719ce40$7b6063d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.091303.0600.>

As an Americanist, I'd better put in my 2 cents.  The Gulf Coast of the SE
U.S. was one of the most densely populated regions of North America
aboriginally, even more than California's central valley.  It was also quite
diverse linguistically, including known (and almost all unrelated) languages
such as Coahuilteco, Cotoname, Comecrudo, Karankawa, Tonkawa, Western
Atakapa, Eastern Atakapa, Caddo, Adai, Tunica, Natchez, and Chitimacha west
of the Mississippi Delta down to just beyond the mouth of the Rio Grande
(there are a couple others around the mouth of the Rio Grande, but I can't
remember them right now).  No one can tell how many other languages may have
been there, but were unrecorded before becoming extinct.  Unfortunately,
this area was also one of the first regions entered by Spanish and French
explorers carrying measles and smallpox along with them.  There was a
serious amount of depopulation surrounding this, but just as serious was the
Spanish attitude toward Indians in general during the 17th and 18th
centuries.  The Indians of this region were considered pagans, so that their
languages were heathen by nature.  There was some attempt among the Spanish
to write catechisms in the languages (thus our only records of Coahuilteco,
Cotoname, Comecrudo, and Aranama), but the attempt was piecemeal and most of
these languages went without any records whatsoever before the languages
were extinct due to disease, slavery, and the forced assimilation to
Spanish.  The languages of almost the entire northeastern quadrant of Mexico
are virtually unknown to us and are long extinct.  In this environment, I
think it's more of a question of conquerors' attitudes, technological
superiority, and speed of conquest, than of any population density issue.
Indians were generally destroyed rather than conquered in these areas.
This, combined with the prevaling religious attitudes, meant that native
names were not preserved along the Texas and Louisiana coastlines.  In West
Texas, to the contrary, the population density was always tiny, yet there
are no fewer Comanche names in that area than there are native names along
the Gulf Coast.  But overall, the native names throughout Texas (indeed,
throughout the United States) are not the names that the Natives applied to
a particular place (as, for example, "Danube" is the name the locals called
the river and later waves of people just kept calling it that), but Indian
words or names that whites thought were cool and applied to a new place
(e.g., "Quanah" and "Nocona", town names in northwest Texas that are not
Native place names, but Comanche names applied to white towns, in this case,
the names of "Quanah Parker" and his father "Peta Nocona", famous Comanche
war chiefs).  Here in Utah, there are only a handful of Native place names
that are actually pre-White retentions, and these are all in regions where
the Spanish were at the outer limits of their reach at the northern end of
the Old Spanish Trail in central and eastern Utah.  However, these names are
all mountain ranges and not rivers (Wahsatch, Oquirrh, Uintah, Mt.
Timpanogos).  The rivers all bear European names (Green, Colorado,
Duschesne, Strawberry, Jordan, Spanish Fork, Weber, Provo, Bear, etc.).

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Indo-European mailing list [mailto:Indo-European at xkl.com]On Behalf
Of David L. White
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 10:18
To: Indo-European at xkl.com
Subject: American River Names

[ moderator snip ]

        Thank you; my Spanish dictionary is rather bad.
        But before someone else brings up a few points on this, I might as
well do it myself...
        The prevalence of Spanish river names might be attributed to very
low poplation density of Indians in Texas, the idea being that the Spanish
explorers and presumed namers encountered rivers more often than natives
(likely enough, actually).   This probably has something to do with it, but
in East Texas (which might as well be Alabama, in more ways than one) the
population density was, as far as I know, not any lower than in SE America
generally.  The resident Caddoes (sp?) were mound-building famers of the
usual sort.  Yet Spanish river names occur there too.  Furthermore, the
names of tribes are (almost?) all native, indicating that the Spanish were
perfectly well able to find out what the native word for some thing or group
was and apply it when appropriate.  The name "Waco" (and "Hueco"?)  for
example, is from Tonkawa, and the Tonkawas were about as marginal as tribes
got.  Yet evidently some Europeans bothered to talk to them, rather than
regarding them as non-existent.  Moving westward, my impression is that the
valley of California was rather densely populated (by Amerindian standards),
yet the same phenomenon of (largely) Spanish river names occurs there.
        So though low population density probably is a factor, I doubt that
is can be considered decisive.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Apr  3 07:02:13 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 02:02:13 -0500
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <003701c0b874$5719ce40$7b6063d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.020213.0500.>

	I've seen it written that Waco comes from a Native American
language BUT I've seen the same thing said about patently Spanish names
such as Pedernales. Unless there is proof to the contrary, I'd say that
Waco is Tejano Spanish <hueco> "spring that pools up from the ground" <
standard Spanish "hole". There are plenty of names such as the redundant
"Hueco Tanks". OTOH Spanish speakers in Texas generally assume that Texas
is from Spanish <tejas> "tiles" because of the red soil but locally, it's
said that it from the name of a local Native American confederacy meaning
"friends".

>The name "Waco" (and "Hueco"?)  for
>example, is from Tonkawa, and the Tonkawas were about as marginal as tribes
>got.  Yet evidently some Europeans bothered to talk to them, rather than
>regarding them as non-existent.  Moving westward, my impression is that the
>valley of California was rather densely populated (by Amerindian standards),
>yet the same phenomenon of (largely) Spanish river names occurs there.
>        So though low population density probably is a factor, I doubt that
>is can be considered decisive.
>
>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr  3 04:00:38 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 00:00:38 EDT
Subject: Minoan is an IE language?/Sound Equivalence
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.000038.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/01 6:41:03 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
davius_sanctex at terra.es writes:

> I think the number of "possible" isolated languge in mediterranean area is

-- on the contrary.  The current situation -- where virtually every language
in the Mediterranean Basin is of the Indo-European, Semitic, or Uralic
families -- is the product of a radical, and comparatively recent linguistic
simplification.

(For example, the prevalence of Arabic in North Africa is the result of a
process only a little more than 1200 years old and one which only reached
completion in the last couple of centuries.)

It's highly probable that pre-Indo-European Europe had a linguistic situation
much like New Guinea or pre-Columbian North America, with hundreds of
distinct language families and many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of distinct
languages covering very small areas.

The linguistic landscape we see is a product of 'reformatting' in the late
Neolithic and subsequent periods.


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Tue Apr  3 04:35:54 2001
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 00:35:54 -0400
Subject: "neirt" versus "nert"
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.003554.0400.>

One can think of some degree of fortition for lenited /l/.  This is captured
in spellings such as English Donald, Ronald, Aberfeldy  for Scottish Gaelic
Domhnall, Raghnall, Obair Pheallaidh.

Robert Orr

>        I was thinking of the intitial case, and mis-remembering the rest.
>        By the way, I would like to know what a lenited /n/ (or /l/ or /r/)
>actually is, in terms the IPA would understand.  My guess, from various
>descriptions I have seen, is that the lenited forms are neutral, the
>unlenited forms palatalized or velarized, as appropriate.  (And that in the
>old days when there were four sounds the unlenited forms were long.)  But it
>is only a guess. Not much Irish spoken around here.

>Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Apr  3 07:41:14 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 09:41:14 +0200
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <F249nrHUmnG6vR2CkWk00012d8e@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.094114.0200.>

On Fri, 30 Mar 2001 07:37:10 -0000, "Gabor Sandi"
<g_sandi at hotmail.com> wrote:

>The main question, however, in my opinion is the original nature of the
>voiced aspirates in IE languages. When IE was introduced into the
>subcontinent, it would have had to have a set of stops corresponding to the
>Brugmannian set {bh dh gh gwh}, distinct from both {b d g gw} and {p t k kw}
>(forgetting about the palatals {k^ etc.} for now). Some linguists do not
>like to postulate this voiced aspirate set, mostly on typological grounds
>(absence or rarity of the corresponding voiceless set). The question is:
>what other reasonable reconstructions can we make? The main authorities on
>Greek (Sturtevant and Sihler are the ones I am most familiar with) all agree
>that Classical Greek phi, theta and chi represent the voiceless aspirates
>/ph th kh/, so simple devoicing of voiced aspirated stops can certainly
>account for them. Outside of India there is no evidence of aspiration
>elsewhere, but Italic /f f h/ can certainly be derived from the changes *bh
> > *ph > *f etc. Germanic, Celtic and Balto-Slavic all show lack of
>aspiration, easily explainable with the changes bh > b etc. (although
>Germanic did not merge the unaspirated and aspirated voiced stops, for it
>devoiced the unaspirated set first).

>To resume: if there were no voiced aspirates in PIE, then what? Voiced
>fricatives  (IPA beta, delta, gamma) are one possibility, but if there were
>no corresponding voiceless fricatives (IPA phi, theta, chi) at the same
>time, the same typological objections can be made as for {bh dh gh}. Other
>suggestions, rather outlandish in my opinion, have been made, but they all
>depend on postulated changes in later IE that are hard to justify (e.g. *b >
>*bh). So, in the end, Occam's razor leads us to keep the PIE set {bh dh gh
>gwh}.

>Any comments?

The main objection against /dh/ etc. is not their relative rarity in
the world's languages, but the fact that it's even rarer (or
impossible) to find them in a language that lacks voiceless aspirates
(/th/ etc.).  In the Brugmannian system, as well as in Sanskrit, such
voiceless aspirates did occur.  However, once the voiceless aspirates
were demoted to clusters of voiceless stop + laryngeal (*tH or *Ht),
the position of */dh/ etc. became precarious.  Gamkrelidze's version
of the "glottalic theory" combines this with the (near-)absence of the
PIE phoneme */b/, to arrive at *t = [t] ~ [th], *dh = [d] ~ [dh], *d =
[t'].  However, Gamkrelidze's proposals are untenable in a number of
respects (e.g., there is no trace of confusion between *t and *dh in
Latin or Greek, as one would have expected when *dh > /th/).  The only
reasonable solution that I see is that PIE had no voiced consonants at
all (as indeed suggested by two of the most archaic members Hittite
and Tocharian). That would make *dh [th], and *d [t] (or,
equivalently, *dh = [t] and *d = [t']: in a binary opposition, the
unaspirated member can become polarized to ejective or the
non-ejective member can become polarized to aspirated).  If so, then
*t must have been [tt] (and in Hittite is indeed spelled that way
medially), a fortis (geminate) stop, unaspirated and unglottalized.
The replacement of fortis/lenis by voiceless/voiced would have
resulted in an unstable system *t = [t], *dh = [d:] (murmured) and *d
= [`d] (preglottalized).  If, at the time, the clusters of
stop+laryngeal were already acquiring phonemic status (as in the
Indo-Iranian area), a four way system as found in Sanskrit could
become possible: [t(')] ~ [th] / [(')d] ~ [dh].  The three other
alternatives would be (1) to lose the distinction between murmured and
preglottalized in the voiced series (resulting in [t] ~ [d]), as in
the case of Balto-Slavic (although *d causes lengthening of the
preceding vowel, and *dh doesn't); (2) fortition of the aspirated
member, resulting in Greek/pre-Italic *t => [t], *dh => [th], *d =>
[d]; and (3) fortition of the unaspirated member, resulting in
Armenian/pre-Germanic *t => [th], *dh => [d], *d => [t(')].

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Tue Apr  3 20:33:24 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 23:33:24 +0300
Subject: Polonezkvy|
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.233324.0300.>

Some time back there were questions about the Polish village in Asiatic
Turkey. I have just obtained a well illustrated booklet by Lucyna
Antonowicz-Bauer entitled Poloezk?y? : Adampol, published in 1992 by the
Touring and Automobile Association of Turkey in Istanbul.

According to this booklet the colony was established in 1842 by Prince
Adam Czartoryski (hence Adampol) on land owned by the Lazarite Order.
The Lazarites and the Prince shared the costs and the former expected
the Polish settlers, many of whom had been redeemed from Turkish
bondage, to labour on the land for poor rations. The early settlement
comprised 12 colonists, mainly soldiers who had fled the Russian army,
on five farms.

In short, the Poles became Turkish citizens living on Lazerite land
which was leased to the Prince. This arrangement, it is stated, afforded
the settlement French protection.

The colony received new waves of Polish colonists as one disaster
followed another in the 19th century.

According to the booklet (in which pages are not numbered and bits of
text have gone missing during the production) Polish marriages ensured
that children would be brought up speaking the Polish language, thus
"such Polish was often archaic". I can only assume that sufficient
Polish women came to join their menfolk for the Poish character to have
been maintained.

On the last page of text it says: "...though the eventual granting to
the settlers of the right to dispose of thier land caused the colony to
loose some of its Polishness. Some of the inhabitants sold their land
and left Adampol, while others became intergrated with their Turkish
surroundings". The date of the legal change is not given, but, from
another part of the text, it looks as though it could have been in or
soon after 1960 when the village was transformed from being an
agricultural settlement into a tourist attraction.

Rather strange circumstances that led to the foundation of this singular
colony of Poles on French owned land, the preservation of its Polish
character (including language and religion) and, in contrast to nearby
Greek villages, its incorporation into the Turkish Republic. It perhaps
provides little evidence that is helpful in terms of theory concerning
language survival in ancient times because it has to be set against the
wider events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Nevertheless, from the colour photographs the village appears to be a
delightful place.

Geoff

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr  3 05:00:10 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 01:00:10 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.010010.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/2/01 10:52:44 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
philjennings at juno.com writes:

> As he located the Anatolians in situ in Anatolia, he had no need

-- he never did explain why the extant Anatolian IE languages all look
intrusive.

Not to mention the fact that Renfrew never seems to have grasped the concept
of degrees of interrelatedness. (Eg., the fact that Greek is much closer to
Indo-Iranian than to the Anatolian group.)

His latest effort in the JIES is a maze of migrations, re-migrations, and
cross-migrations -- exactly the explanatory framework he tried to dispose of
in the first place!  It's like the cycles and epi-cycles of late Ptolemaic
astronomy, gasping and straining to maintain the heliocentric hypothesis.

In fact, Renfrew's basic problem in the context of IE origins was that he was
trying to solve a "problem" that didn't exist, except in his theoretical
assumptions -- he assumed that a massive linguistic shift _must_ have clear
archaeological traces, and _must_ involve some discernable (in the
archaeological record) techological trace.

Neither of these is true; hence the whole edifice built on them is fatally
flawed from the start.

The primary "technology" involved was probably in the "software", the
cultural framework itself -- including the language -- rather than in the
stones-and-bones stuff; and hence invisible from the archaeological
perspective.

One can see why archaeologists hate this; it means that their carefully
catalogued sequences of _in situ_ development may be meaningless, in terms of
things like langauge and ethnicity -- subject to random reformatting that
can't be archaeologically traced.

Cultural factors are what usually gives a group an advantage, after all.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr  3 03:41:34 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:41:34 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.224134.0500.>

> On 25 Mar 2001, David L. White wrote:

>> My point is that to speak of "plain" consonants existing in such a system is
>> in a sense non-sensical, because "plain" in effect means "as in a language
>> without secondary articulations", which in turn means "as in a language with
>> ordinary co-articulation", but a language with secondary articulations could
>> not possibly have ordinary coarticulations, since overriding ordinary
>> coarticlation for phonemic effect is what languages with secondary
>> articulations do.

> This indicates that we have encountered a terminological whirlpool.  In the
> phonological theory to which I most strongly subscribe, the term "plain"
> means simply "not having secondary articulations" when used to describe a
> sound in a language which has same.  It makes no reference to other languages
> or features to be found therein.

        I am not concerned with phonological theory (and running out of
energy, under the delusion that I am perhaps getting a life).  And if I have
adopted a phonological theory that does not allow negatives, it is news to
me.  "Not having secondary articulations" to my mind means "having normal
coarticulation".  By "normal" is meant what is most energetically efficient,
as in fronting velars to some (variable) extent before front vowels, doing a
bit of anticipatory rounding before round vowels, etc.  (The lips take a
while to get going, which is why u-umlaut in Norse has a longer leftward
range than i-umlaut.)
        But to back up a bit, and hopefully make matters clear, it is best
to consider the case of the labials.  Here, unlike in the case of velars and
dentals, it is clear that the primary place of articulation cannot in any
way be shifted, which simplifies life considerably.   Thus [i]-quality in
such cases can only be realized by putting the tongue in position for [i]
while making the labial in question, and leaving it there long enough for
some effect on adjacent vowels to be perceptible.  (An [i] gesture that was
somehow magically confined to the period the labial closure would not be
perceptible.)  Likewise with [u]-quality, though matters are complicated
somewhat by having to throw in a little extra labial something (in Russian I
have heard it called "lip-protrusion") to make the theoretical lip-rounding
perceptible.  (Otherwise, we would have merely a velarized labial.)  In
languages without secondary articulations, and therefore presumably with
"plain" labials, during the production of these the tongue assumes whatever
position is most convenient for associated (most often following) vowels.
This fact has even been used to develop a theory of how consonantal place is
heard, since the transition from a labial to any vowel is fairly rapid.  (It
is, I think I recall, slowest in the velars.)
    So the question is, in a language with palatalized, labio-velarized, and
"plain" consonants, what would a speaker's tongue be doing as the syllable
/pi/, with "plain /p/", was produced?  It would have to be doing something
other than anticipating [i] in the normal manner, or confusion with
palatalized /p/ would be inevitable.  Putting the tongue in the position for
[a] would result in the clearest contrast.  Or, to put it (yet) another way,
with labials secondary articulations can hardly be realized as anything
other than super-short diphthongs (rising or falling).  Thus /ap'i/ with
palatalized /p/ would have to sound something like [aip] (with super-short
[i]), or the palatalization would not be perceptible.  /ap/ with "plain" /p/
would sound like [ap], and /ip' with palatalized /p/ would sound like [ip].
But /ip/ with "plain /p/ would have to sound something like [iap].  And /pi/
with "plain" /p/ would have to sound something like [pai] (with rising
"diphthong"], otherwise normal anticipation of /i/ would make it sound like
/p'i/.
        I mean, we are deaing with a very small window here, outside of
which vowel-like sounds will inevitably be taken as vowels.  (This process
has happened repeatdly in Irish, where former secondary articulations have
become vowels, and vice versa.)  But the small window means that 1)
confusion is a danger, and 2) very few distinctions can be made.  Beyond a
point, what was meant to be palatalized /p/ before a vowel begins to sound
like /py/, and is likely to be re-analyzed as such, and after a vowel begins
to sound like /-ip/, which again is likely to be re-analyzed as such.  In
order for such systems to be preserved, the times involved have to be short,
and the distinctions made few.
        To sum up, for the labials at least, secondary articulations must be
realized as de facto super-short diphthongs, rising or falling, since no
displacemnt of place is possible.   Where [i]-quality and [u]-quality are
already in use, a third quality, and therefore a third type of diphthong,
would have to use [a].  Anything else, or normal coarticulation such as
occurs in languages without secondary articulations, would be too
confusable, given the severe constraints such systems necessarily operate
under.  It is not as if anything (abstractly conceivable) goes.
Phonological systems must be implemented, after all.  And all phonemes must
to some extent stay out of each other's way, or run the very real risk of
merger.  Even if Old Irish had a three-way contrast, most observers admit
(so it seems) that this was inherently unstable, for the reasons which have
been indicated, and there is no denying that whatever labio-velarized and
"plain" series may have existed merged, seemingly not too long after the
system was created in the first place.  (The fact that Old Irish had "real"
diphthongs surely did not help matters, as it would have reduced the
"window" for moraic consonants even further.)
        Anyway, that's my understanding.  It could be wrong.  The real
question, hopefully a fairly straightforward empirical one, is whether it is
a fact the Caucasian languages have systems with three-way contrasts.
Catford would be the one to go to, I think, but I am too lazy to do more
than give refs:

Catford, J.C.  1972.   "Labialization in Caucasian Languages,  with
Special Reference to Abkhaz"; in Proceedings of the Seventh
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by A. Rigault and     R.
Charbonneau.  Mouton:  the Hague; 679-82.
__________. 1977.  Fundamental Problems in Phonetics.  Indiana
University Press: Bloomington.
__________. 1977.  "Mountain of Tongues:  the Languages of the
Caucasus"; in Annual Review of Anthroplogy 6:  283-314.

        Nothing in the phonetics books I have available here describes any
such thing, and the silence, while not defeaning, is (to my mind)
suspicious, especially given the practical considerations note above, not to
mention the tendency of the exotic and extraordinary to attract notice.  But
I do not have Maddieson's "Patterns of Sounds".  Perhaps it is in there.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr  3 03:54:56 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:54:56 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <MON.2.APR.2001.225456.0500.>

> At 04:35 PM 3/25/01 -0600, David L. White wrote:

>> My point is that to speak of "plain" consonants existing in such a system
>> is in a sense non-sensical, because "plain" in effect means "as in a
>> language without secondary articulations",

> In this context I would more likely read it as meaning "lacking overt
> co-articulations".

        What does that mean?  Co-articulations and secondary articulations
are in a sense opposites, and of the two it is secondary articulations that
are "overt", in the sense of always being phonemic, with one
interesing-to-bizarre exception (that I know of):  in Bangkok Thai,
velarization is used to signal "threatening voice" (since all things being
equal it makes the speaker sound bigger), but never distinguishes words.
Co-articulations, by contrast, are "covert", being below the threshold of
user-awareness, and are just the result of the phonetic implementation of a
given language on the interface (so to speak, sorry) between that language's
vowels and consonants.
        I hope most of what I would say in response to the rest of this
posting is said in my other response on the same subject.

Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Apr  3 17:17:53 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 19:17:53 +0200
Subject: FYI
Message-ID: <TUE.3.APR.2001.191753.0200.>

I've uploaded a pair of .doc's (for now) to http://home.planet.nl/~mcv
on pre-Indo-European and pre-Basque phonological and morphological
reconstructions.  Sorry for the cross-post.  Comments welcome.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 02:04:28 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 21:04:28 -0500
Subject: Last Spoken Etruscan
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.210428.0500.>

> Sociolinguistic questions:

> -- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
> language?

        I have read that the Emperor Claudius was one of the last to speak
it, which would put it's death as a spoken language not far from the last
inscriptions, if I am remembering correctly.

Dr. David L. White


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Apr  5 18:55:06 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 19:55:06 +0100
Subject: Etruscan
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.195506.0100.>

> -- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
> language? ....> do any Roman writers mention written
> Etruscan in the form of manuscripts or such?

The emperor Claudius (ruled 41 - 54 AD) wrote a grammar of Etruscan, which
has not survived.   When they finally get round to digging up the Latin wing
of the library in Caesar's father-in-law's palace at Herculaneum, a copy of
it might be found - or at least we can dream of it...

Peter


From sarima at friesen.net  Thu Apr  5 02:57:20 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 19:57:20 -0700
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbd0$c79e35c0$4f2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.195720.0700.>

At 06:57 PM 4/2/01 -0500, you wrote:
>> If "Nueces" isn't shortened from "Rio de las Nueces", might it represent a
>> modified substratal name? ...)

>         It might.  But since pecan trees do, strangely enough, grow that far
>southwest (or almost that far:  I have seen them growing wild out in the
>middle of nowhere west of San Antonio, not too far from the Nueces) I would
>imagine that the name is related to this, especially since pecans are
>water-loving trees, which in a semi-arid environment would (probably) tend
>to grow near rivers.

As indeed they do.  Pecans are characteristic of certain watercourses in Texas.

>   On the other hand, I recall that most of what grows
>along the waterways I am thinking of(which cannot really be called rivers)
>is cypresses.

I think this may be a relatively recent change, due to overgrazing by
cattle.  But even if not, larger rivers often have vegetational zonation,
with different trees growing at different altitudes above the river
bed.  Either way, pecans are found mainly in bottomland.

>   But the Nueces is out of my zone.  (If I ever get out there
>again, I'll keep my eyes open and report back ...)  Considering that pecans
>are sometimes described as being native to "the Mississipi valley", the
>Nueces area might have been the first place Spanish explorers coming up from
>Mexico encountered them.

According to my "Trees of North America" pecans are native from about the
Mississippi westward into eastern Texas.  They exist only as cultivated
trees east of the Mississippi.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 03:09:21 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 22:09:21 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.220921.0500.>

> [DGK]
> Yes, phonetic naturalization of loanwords must be normal, otherwise
> languages which borrow extensively would accumulate hundreds of phonemes.
> My objection was to the claim that */trosy-/ would have evaded the general
> metathesis /sy/ > /ys/ (postulated by Dr. White to explain non-lengthening in
> Epic Greek genitives) because it was perceived as a foreign word,

        That is not what I meant to say.  Since at least some intervocalic
/s/ had been lost by the time of Mycenean, the (posited) change of /sy/ to
/is/ must have been before this, perhaps far back in the pre-Greek period,
whereas the borrowing of /trosia/, or whatever, was presumably (or at least
by hypothesis) later.  Perhaps there is some obscure (to me) evidence which
would rule this out.  If so, I beg to be enlightened.  In any event, my
claim is not that /trosia/ escaped by being foreign, which would indeed be
bizarre, but rather that it escaped by being later.

Dr. David L. White


From PolTexCW at aol.com  Thu Apr  5 04:32:20 2001
From: PolTexCW at aol.com (PolTexCW at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 00:32:20 EDT
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.003220.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/4/1 9:05:26 PM, dlwhite at texas.net writes:

<<  I think it was more than that.  But be that as it may, there could
have been what I call a "rolling assimilation", whereby the earlier
assmilees aid in assimilating the later assimilees.  For example, in America
a great many Germans have wound up "Anglicizing" (or Americanizing) more
recent immigrants.  (This is especially true in parts of Texas, where once
upon a time the predominant white population was German.  It used to be
assumed in San Antonio that anyone who was not a Mexican was a German.  Yes,
to some extent the Mexican were there first, but their assimilation, which
is what is relevant, was often later.  But I digress.) >>

This is raises an interesting point, albeit inadvertently, which is, I
believe,  quite relevant to any discussion of population movements in
antiquity.  That is, before the Mexican government solicited German and
American colonization in Texas there were few Mexicans in Texas outside of
San Antonio and a few other outposts. These colonies were encouraged because
while the Mexican government was nominally in control of the territory it was
in fact controlled - and populated  -  by the Comanche, Apache, Tonkawa and
other tribes, who - especially the Comanche - raided as far south as
Guatamala.  The colonies were desired as a buffer against these raids in the
hopes that they would allow the peaceful development of northern Mexico.  The
many toponyms in Texas of Spanish origin reflect not a widespread Mexican
population of the area but rather the works of the most punctilious Spanish
bureaucracy which the Mexican government inherited and which were handed down
to the government of Texas and later the United States in the form of maps,
land grants and other writings. There are relatively few toponyms of Indian
origin because the Comanche did not have a Department of Geographic Survey.
That is, the toponyms do not reflect either ethnographic or linguistic
dominance but rather bureaucratic efficiency.

Although this all occurred within the last two centuries and a plethora of
primary and secondary sources is readily available to substantiate these
matters, it is widely  assumed, even among historians who should know better,
that  Texas was "Mexican" - before the "Anglo" "Conquest", in the sense that
it was widely populated by bearers of "Mexican" culture and language. The
introduction of the significant component of the population of Texas of
Mexican origin was only made possible by the American, German, Polish and
other colonists which eliminated the threat of Indian depredations.

This should, perhaps, suggest a caveat when assigning ethnographic dominance
to a region, removed from us by two millennia, on the basis of received
toponymy.

John Biskupski


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Thu Apr  5 10:24:32 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 06:24:32 -0400
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbd0$c79e35c0$4f2863d1@texas.net>; from
 dlwhite@texas.net on Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 06:57:46PM -0500
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.062432.0400.>

On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 06:57:46PM -0500, David L. White wrote:
	. . .
>         Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of
> this aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
> generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
> understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become
> effectively depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.
> (Nothing fails like success:  the Romans created so many subtypes of
> themselves that they exterminated the main branch, with a little help from
> malarial swamps.)

The really bad depopulation of Rome was during the reconquest of Italy
by Belisarius, but the vernacular at this time should probably
still be called a late form of Vulgar Latin.

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From philjennings at juno.com  Thu Apr  5 22:23:56 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 17:23:56 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.172356.0500.>

I divide the claims in my former email on this topic into attested data,
hypotheses, and plausibilities.

Under attested data, I place everything from the Annals of Mursilis II,
minus the absolute identification of the Ahhiyawa with the Achaeans,
Millawanda with Miletos, and Apasas with Ephesus (implicit).  Also
included as attested data are the occupation of Lemnos by Pelasgians and
Tyrsennoi, with other Tyrsennoi settlements as noted by Herodotus and in
Etruria.

Hittite limitations at sea are also attested, as was Achaean dominance of
the Aegean and the Ionian seas during this period.

The Mycenaean trade route up the Adriatic may fall slightly short of the
best standards of attested data, but Baltic amber got to Greece somehow,
and this route is shown in McEverdy.

The identification of Uhhazitis's island retreat with Lemnos is sheer
hypothesis.  Islands closer to Arzawa are possible, but perhaps the
Achaeans already saw them as their own property, plus there were dangers
to proximity.  The extrapolation of 200,000 displaced persons captured by
Mursilis II during the Arzawa campaign is an hypothesis.  A Pelasgian
reworking of the proto-Etruscan name, prior to passing that reworked name
on to other languages, is an hypothesis.  The ta-prefix part of that
hypothesis is an absolute stab in the dark.  An implicit hypothesis is
that the first proto-Etruscans in Italy were at home on the eastward,
Adriatic side, and only gradually drew westward into classical Etruria.
Classic Etruria is beyond the point where the Mycenaeans could have done
much to help or benefit from the planting of a new nation, but that
depends on the status of the Italian island polities already in evidence
to the south; were they allies, colonies, rivals, or what?  There may
also
have been shorter-lived proto-Etruscan plantings on the north and east
shores of the Adriatic.

A continuation of the Arzawa-Hittite struggle by other means, once the
troops of Arzawa were repeatedly defeated, is a plausibility.  The
movement of escapees=refugees to Uhhazitis's island retreat is a
plausibility.  The overloading of the island retreat is a plausibility.
The deference to Mycenaean preferences in the location of further
settlements is a plausibility.  The superiority of refugees with a
national consciousness and traditions, to natives unfamiliar with these
ideas, is a plausibility.  The date-range of 1330-1180bce as optimal for
a
Tyrrhenian migration is a plausibility.  The stacking of so many
plausibilities on top of each other, reduces the chance of them all being
true to something less than a plausibility, and hence an hypothesis.

---

As if I haven't done enough along these lines: I wonder if the displacees
of Sudura, mentioned in the Annals, were from the city later known as
Sardis?  They may also have been the Sherdana associated with the Tursha
in their attack on Egypt.  If the Hittites under Mursilis II claimed
Sardis as a satellite polity, this would be intolerable to the Arzawans.
Look how close Sardis is to Ephesus, and how far from Hattusas.  It
becomes obvious that Mursilis II's program of "imperial recovery" is an
aggressive war of imperial expansion.  Sadly, I'm not in a position to
associate Attarimma with any entry from the Egyptian enemies list, nor to
identify the "cities" of Hu(wa)rsanassa and Attarimma with known later
classical sites.

However, the Sudura / Sardis / Sherdana hypothesis has a consequence in
case many Sherdana did go as some speculate to settle in Sardinia,
bringing high eastern technology, warlike defensive construction, and a
non-IE language.  If Sardinia was near enough for the Sudura to go there,
classical west-coast Etruria wouldn't have been too far for the
Tyrsennoi, and I need not assume a timid east-coast proto-Etruria.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sat Apr  7 23:44:43 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 23:44:43 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <SAT.7.APR.2001.234443.0000.>

David L. White (2 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Yes, but the Etruscans who slowly allowed themselves to be assimilated to the
>Romans were the bearers of an ancient high culture, quite respected (at one
>time).  Presumably any pre-Etruscan native population was not.

So your North Aegean Proto-Etruscan (NAPE) civilization was respected and
ancient, but below it is fairly small and heavily genericized. Now at least
we know what to look for in the North Aegean: a civilization small but
respected (like a wolverine?) and ancient but generic (like plain yogurt?).

>Well, I now have the unique(?) honor of having been accused both of
>being a migrationist and of being an anti-migrationist.  (Perhaps I am
>somewhere in the middle?)

Sorry about that. We nativists sometimes resort to crude stereotypes.

>  By "North Aegean" I intended a cover term
>embracing Thrace/Chalcide/Lemnos, in keeping with the accounts of the
>geographers which, using an ethnonym I forget and am too lazy to look up,
>seem to indicate a southward drift along those general lines.  I was hoping
>someone wise in the ways of the archeology of Thrace, which would be what is
>called for, might have something to say on this.  But a fairly small and
>heavily genericized (for lack of a better word) East Mediterranean culture
>might not leave much of a signature.

Then one wonders why this culture left such a prominent signature in such a
large part of Italy. How can any culture be so successful as a colonial
power, and such a nondescript failure at home?

>That Etruscan names were often taken up by non-Etruscan people is shown in a
>recent posting, where a word meaning "Etruscan" is used as part of an
>Etruscan-style name among people evidently not Etruscan, or there would have
>been little point in using such a name.

The example of Mamurke Tursikina comes from Clusium, in a peripheral zone
where we already know that both Umbrian and Etruscan were spoken. Someone
wealthy enough to hand out custom-made golden objects doesn't belong to the
lower class anyway.

>So I don't see that there is any contradiction here.  It is perfectly
>possible, even to be expected, that lower class Etruscans even if
>"originally" of different ethnicity, would have used Etruscan names, on
>funerary monuments as elsewhere, regardless of whether they might have been
>bilingual in Etruscan and some other language, or largely descended from
>folk who had been.

I should probably concede this point. Inscriptions prove that a particular
language _was_ used, not that others were _not_ used. It is conceivable that
non-Etruscan languages were still spoken in central Etruria, but not written
because no writing convention had been established for them. One could cite
the example of Native American cemeteries in the USA and Canada. The
exclusive use of written English doesn't mean the indigenous speech wasn't
or isn't extant.

If this is a valid parallel, one would expect a few non-Etruscan,
non-Italic, non-Greek proper names in the corpus, just as Native Americans
sometimes use Anglicized indigenous surnames. The problem is identifying
such names with our woefully incomplete knowledge of Etruscan vocabulary.
Many English surnames like "Holt" are based on obsolete words. Etruscan
gentilicia containing unrecognizable roots could be purely Etruscan, or for
all we know pre-Etruscan.

In any case, since it's _your_ theory of mysterious North Aegeans bringing
language and High Culture to Etruria, it's up to _you_ to find the
linguistic evidence. It's not up to me (or the rest of the nativist crowd)
to argue with hypothetical positions or unpresented data.

>Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of this
>aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
>generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
>understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become effectively
>depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.

Ever played "Telephone"? The notion that standard (Roman-Latian) Italian
comes from Tuscan sounds like the result of cumulative distortion through
successive oral transmission. If memory serves, Dante chose to compose
poetry in the Tuscan dialect (with the addition of some forms from northern
dialects) because the heavy stress and distinct stress-timing allowed
phonetic parallelism on the basis of polysyllabic homoioteleuton, or
"rhyming". Dante has been called "the father of Italian poetry" which is
subjective but not really "wrong", and also "the father of modern Italian"
which is nonsense. Not even Bill Clinton could "father" a language. Some
cavalier statement like that probably got mixed in with the facts about
Dante's writing.

Roman inhabitants may have dropped to a few thousands at times, but it is
unlikely that similar depopulation occurred throughout Latium, or that the
modern standard dialect was based on importation. This dialect is strongly
trochaic, as was Roman Latin on the basis of the meters preferred in
comedies and jingles (e.g. in Suet. Jul. 51). It is irrelevant here that
Plautus and Terence were not native Latin-speakers; they were writing for
Roman audiences, and if trochaic rhythm had sounded unnatural to Romans, the
plays would have failed.

DGK


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Mon Apr  9 02:55:08 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 02:55:08 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.025508.0000.>

philjennings at juno.com (30 Mar 2001) wrote:

>We can only speculate regarding the work that the Hursanassans, the
>Surudans, and the Attarimmans were made to do in captivity, but all these
>200,000 people must have been aware that some fraction of their number
>were still free on an Aegean island or islands.  Whether the vaunted
>freedom of this remnant galled the Hittites or not, there was nothing they
>could do about it.  Even when they forged occasional alliances with the
>Achaeans over the next 150 years (before the fall of Troy), the Achaeans
>lost nothing by maintaining their island relationship.  This is probably
>more true as they had not discommoded themselves in the first place by
>giving King Uhhazitis one of their own islands, but rather settled the
>Arzawan refugees on a Pelasgian island, such as Lemnos.  (The Pelasgians
>were too weak to protest at being forced to share.)

One of the problems with this picture is that classical sources don't place
Pelasgians on Lemnos at such an early date. In Homer, the inhabitants of
Lemnos are Sinties, and the epithet <agriopho:nous> (acc. pl.) tells us only
that their phonology was non-Greek, not necessarily non-IE. Strabo asserts
that the Sinties were Thracians. Pausanias says that the Pelasgians took
Lemnos from the Minyae, who were aristocratic refugees from revolution in
Boeotia. Neither group likely held the island more than a few decades, and
the Tyrrhenians had presumably already fled from Lemnos to Chalcidice
(perhaps driven out by the Minyae).

>A mixed group of refugees; Hursanassans, Surudans, Attarimmans, Arzawan
>royals, et cetera, living on part of an island like Lemnos, would not
>necessarily have imposed a group-name on themselves; but the Pelasgians,
>their neighbors, would have done so, ignoring precise distinctions.
>Pelasgians spoke an "Anatolian" language.  They would have recognized
>"-assos" as a geopolitical suffix, and dropped its inappropriate use,
>therefore the Hursanassans would have become Hursana(pl) or 'Rsana(pl).

What does your <'> signify? A glottal stop? A pharyngeal fricative? What
business do you have citing phonological and morphological changes in
Pelasgian? Can you give other examples of Pelasgian dropping initial
syllables and back-forming ethnonyms by removing suffixes?

Pelasgian loanwords are found from Persian to Sabine, and toponyms reached
up the Danube. The language (or family) was not restricted to Anatolia. It
was certainly not "Anatolian IE", so no particular affinity to Hittite et
al. should be assumed. Whether Pelasgian should be considered a branch of IE
at all is debatable. IMHO Pelasgian is non-IE, but probably related at the
super-family level. A possible cognate pair is Psg. *wrod- 'rose' ~ PIE
*H1reudh- 'red'.

>If the dominant language among the refugees was distinctive and
>incomprehensible, as it surely was, those who spoke as the Hursana did
>might have been called the "ta-'rsana(pl)."  The Greeks also needed a
>group name for these people, and might have turned "ta-'rsana(pl)" into
>"Tyrsennoi."  With time, the refugees themselves would have acceded to the
>need for a single name, minus the Pelasgian prefix: and pronounced their
>own way: eventually Ras'na.

What examples do you have of Greek turning /a-'/ (whatever that means) into
/u/? Why wouldn't it become the long vowel /a:/ or perhaps a long diphthong?

>Against this whole "Etruscan origins" story and all its props and
>gimmicks, lies the fact that no proto-Etruscan-like language has been
>preserved in the extensive Hittite archives, which generously cite
>diplomatic and liturgical passages in Hattic, Palaic, Luwian, Akkadian,
>and Hurrian.  However, as far as I know, the Hittites also ignored Achaean
>Greek, Minoan, and the Northwest Semite language of Canaan, and even
>Egyptian.

Lack of attested Proto-Etruscan isn't the trouble with your story. The
trouble is the bizarre maze of contortions which your ethnonyms must
navigate. Given sufficient ingenuity, a linguistic fabulist could snake the
sequence T-R-S or R-S-N from any part of the world into Etruria. That isn't
the point of doing historical linguistics.

DGK


From sarima at friesen.net  Thu Apr  5 02:47:06 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 19:47:06 -0700
Subject: Hittite and H4
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.194706.0700.>

At 02:46 PM 4/2/01 -0500, David L. White wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>         Dialect mixture is when words in one dialect have the form that is
>proper to another.  All or just about all dialects have it to some extent.

This brings up an issue I wonder about.

Outside of Anatolian, what evidence is there for a distinction between *H2
and *H4 in PIE?

Is it possible that the variation in the presence of an 'h' in Anatolian is
the result of extensive dialect mixture?

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu Apr  5 03:02:33 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 23:02:33 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.230233.0400.>

David L. White:

> I cannot
> off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
> problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
> spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
> pronounced as in another.  A great deal of dialect mixture went into the
> formation of the London Standard.  A possible example (I don't know, someone
> else out there probably does) might be things like "bead" versus "head",
> where some words are spelled as if they have long vowels when in fact the
> vowels have been shortened, or,  to put it from the other perspective, not
> all vowels that might be expected to have been shortened actually have
been.

One historical example I can think of.  In general, the prestige dialect of
southern British English has /af/ >/Af/, so that 'laugh' /laf/ became /lAf/
within relatively recent time.  However, even speakers of this dialect say
(or used to say) "telegraph" rather than "telegroph," because the word for
that particular invention was created in an area that lacked this change,
and exported to Britain, after the sound change was well on its way to being
fixed.  Of course, English spellings nowhere indicate that this change has
taken place, and its course was in fact relatively irregular; it gives rise
to more inconsistencies in English spelling in Britain than in the United
States.

--
Omnis castra vestra nobis esse.


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Thu Apr  5 10:10:45 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 06:10:45 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>; from
 dlwhite@texas.net on Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 02:46:29PM -0500
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.061045.0400.>

On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 02:46:29PM -0500, David L. White wrote:
	. . .
> dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)   I cannot
> off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
> problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
> spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
> pronounced as in another.  A great deal of dialect mixture went into the

One example would be pronunciation of the word "one" that has been
borrowed from a southern dialect (I forget which one) in which the
Middle English long "a" became [w@].

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu  Thu Apr  5 20:27:48 2001
From: tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Thomas McFadden)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 16:27:48 -0400
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.162748.0400.>

A standard example of dialect mixture in English is the short list of
words with initial v proper to southern dialects instead of the f
expected in the standard language, e.g. vixen (cf. fox) and
vat (cf. NHG fass).  Of course in these examples both spelling and
pronunciation are from the same dialect, so they don't cause the
orthographical complications you're talking about, but one could imagine a
similar situation where the standard language would keep one spelling
while taking over a different pronunciation.  Something like this
apparently happened with 'colonel', but here we aren't talking about forms
from different dialects of English, rather borrowings from different
romance dialects (or so I've heard).

>         Dialect mixture is when words in one dialect have the form that is
> proper to another.  All or just about all dialects have it to some extent.
> Italian, for example, has some cases of intervocalic voicing, though ths is
> not in general characteristic of (Standard) Italian.  (It occurs in the
> dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)   I cannot
> off the top of my head think of any examples from English, and perhaps the
> problem is not significant after all, but it would arise if a word was
> spelled in a way appropriate to the pronunciation of one dialect, but
> pronounced as in another.


From Tradux at cherry.com.au  Mon Apr  9 08:30:35 2001
From: Tradux at cherry.com.au (Chester Graham)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 18:30:35 +1000
Subject: Italian as a "Pure" Language
In-Reply-To: <000d01c0bbad$ad38efe0$1b2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.183035.1000.>

>Italian, for example, has some cases of intervocalic voicing, though ths is
>not in general characteristic of (Standard) Italian. (It occurs in the
>dialects of the Po Valley, and French, Spanich, and Portugese.)  I cannot
>off the top of my head think of any examples from English

  Would an example from English be the voicing of intervocalic /t/, in the
speech of many in the US, in words such as "butter"; as against the
voiceless /t/ in the speech of many in the UK?

  Sincerely
Chester Graham


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Thu Apr  5 10:15:50 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 06:15:50 -0400
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
In-Reply-To: <73.c5f5a3d.27fa34d4@aol.com>; from X99Lynx@aol.com on Mon,
 Apr 02, 2001 at 04:02:28PM -0400
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.061550.0400.>

On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 04:02:28PM -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
	. . .
> Peter might possibly just been called Peter, as Petra may have already become
> part of the Aramaic language, and this would appear consistent with the
> naming practices in the NT, even nicknames, not being translated.

Maybe, but we also see "Cephas" in the NT. For example:

    John 1:42, ... thou shalt be called Cephas, ...
    Corinthians 1:12 ... and I of Cephas; ...

etc.

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From douglas at nb.net  Thu Apr  5 04:49:14 2001
From: douglas at nb.net (Douglas G. Wilson)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 00:49:14 -0400
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <21119152.3195282623@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.004914.0400.>

>>... does Baeda equate to any modern name?

Yes, Bede, although it's not very common. Search the Web for "Bede Smith"
or "Bede Johnson" or "Bede Brown" or "Bede Karl Lackner" [a historian] or ....

Of course some of these "Bede"s may not be actually the same name as the
venerable one. But ...

I think the expression "Saint Bede" will tend to protect the name Bede from
extinction. Probably there is a St. Bede's day (even if unofficial), with
some persons named Bede born thereon? There are St. Bede's colleges in
India, Australia, New Zealand. San Beda College in the Philippines
celebrates its centennial this year. Surely a few proud alumni have named
sons "Bede" or some variant thereof?

The male name Bede appears in some of the "names for your baby" books, with
its old etymology and connection. Surely somebody selected it?

The name also exists as a surname, apparently traceable back to the Old
English given name -- apparently usually spelled "Beed" or "Beade" in
modern times.

-- Doug Wilson


From bmscott at stratos.net  Thu Apr  5 15:43:49 2001
From: bmscott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 11:43:49 -0400
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <21119152.3195282623@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.114349.0400.>

On Thursday, March 29, 2001 9:13 am -0800 Gordon Brown
<gordonbr at microsoft.com> wrote:

> DGK's posting reminds me of a question I've had for quite a while.
> In an article about Bede (Baeda), I saw a bibliographic reference
> that implied that the name Baeda might be somehow related to the
> name Peter. Is this possible?  In any case, does Baeda equate to
> any modern name?

Hilver Stro"m, _Old English Personal Names in Bede's History_
(Lund, 1939), says that the name occurs 'rather often' in OE, and not
just in reference to the famous historian.  The most common form
appears to be <Beda>.  He cautiously says that <Be:d-> is

    supposed to be connected with OE be:odan 'to bid, command'
    (pret. be:ad < *baud-) and to be formed by means of an i-suffix,
    the theme being *baudi-.

There is an OE name <Bedca> that also appears to contain the stem.
On this view the name would be related to Cont. Gmc. <Baudo> and
the like.  Ekwall apparently once suggested that the OE name might
instead be from Celtic *boudi- (cf. Gaul. <Baudius>, <Boudius> and
the well-known British <Bodicca>), which seems to figure in some
British place-names.  A connection with <Peter> seems improbable
on any account, and I don't think that there's a modern form.

Brian M. Scott


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Thu Apr  5 04:14:00 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 04:14:00 -0000
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.041400.0000.>

Steve Long (1 Apr 2001) wrote:

>"Saponification is... accomplished through reaction of a fat or fatty acid
>with an alkali.... soap was not invented for purposes of personal hygiene.
>Rather, it was invented early on to solve a problem with textiles: wool as it
>comes from the sheep is coated with a layer of grease that interferes with the
>application of dyes..."

>Basic early soap is a mixture of fats and alkali such as potash or lye.  "A
>soap-like material found in clay cylinders during the excavation of ancient
>Babylon is evidence that soapmaking was known as early as 2800 B.C.
>Inscriptions on the cylinders say that fats were boiled with ashes, which is a
>method of making soap,... Such materials were later used as hair styling
>aids." (All this is from the Kirk-Othmer Encycl of Chem. Technology or soap
>history sites on the web.)

These are important points. To properly etymologize "soap", it's necessary
to know what early "soap" was.

>In Latin, pertinent is <sebum /sevum>, tallow, suet, grease; <sebosus>, full
>of tallow or grease, tallowy, greasy, as both refer to the fatty ingredient of
>soap, although I am not sure when these words are first attested (Sebosus, a
>Roman surname, is mentioned by Cicero.)

The attested Latin forms are <se:bum>, <se:vum>, and <saevum>. The b/v
alternation suggests competing p-Italic and q-Italic forms derived from PIE
*gw (cf. Osc. <kumbened> = Lat. <convenit>). If so, the native Latin form is
probably <saevum>, with <se:bum> from Sabine (cf. Sab. <fe:dus> = Lat.
<haedus>) and <se:vum> a mixed form. The PIE root would be *saigw-.

"Soap" is from OE <sa:pe>, and the OHG cognate <seifa> points to a PGmc root
*saip-. Watkins considers this a variant of PGmc *sib- 'to pour out, sieve,
drip, trickle' to which he refers "sieve", OE <sife>. He regards Lat.
<se:bum> as "of obscure origin". OTOH Whitehall refers both "soap" and
<se:bum> to PIE *seib- 'to trickle, run out'.

In my opinion Watkins's arbitrary lumping of PGmc *sib-, *sip-, and *saip-
is unjustified and makes as little sense etymologically as it does
phonetically. Whitehall's *seib- doesn't yield the correct vowels; one would
expect OE *si:pe (or *sipe from zero-grade) and Lat. *si:bum (or *sibum).
Neither etymologist addresses <saevum/se:vum>.

The most plausible scenario has PIE *saigw- 'tallow, fat, grease, etc.'
undergoing "pre-Germanic" labialization to *saibw-, yielding PGmc *saip-. If
the pre-Germans learned the technology of soaking wool or hides in an
ash-tallow preparation from PIE-speakers, they might have borrowed the word
in this technical sense, and there is no need to force an etymology on the
basis of "trickling, dripping, resin, etc."

The alternative is (pre-)PIE oscillation of *bw/gw in parallel with the more
common labialized phonemes, but I confess I can't fully follow most of the
recent postings on the "*gwh in Gmc." thread. Things became horribly
complicated when three-way instabilities were introduced.

>In none of all this as far as I know is a "sieve" involved, the word
>referring to quite different processes, with no apparent relationship to
>soap.

Agreed. I see no basis for connecting "soap" with "sieve". The latter is
IMHO most plausibly referred to a pre-Germanic borrowing from a PIE noun
based on the zero-grade of *seikw- 'to filter, dry out'. Pre-Gmc.
labialization produced *sipw-, yielding PGmc *sif-. Meanwhile *seikw- itself
became PGmc *si:hw-, attested in OHG <si:han> 'to filter'.

DGK


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Apr  5 18:56:18 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 19:56:18 +0100
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.195618.0100.>

> Has anyone on this list studied the works of Saul Levin, "The Indo-European
> and Semitic Languages?"

Yes.

> He made many astute observations.

I agree that he made many observations.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun Apr  8 04:42:00 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 23:42:00 -0500
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <SAT.7.APR.2001.234200.0500.>

Dear Ernest and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Ernest P. Moyer" <epmoyer at netrax.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 4:23 AM

> I have a question:

> Has anyone on this list studied the works of Saul Levin, "The Indo-European
> and Semitic Languages?"  And so on.

> He made many astute observations.

> "The phonetic and morphological resemblances of H to G(reek) or S(anskrit)
> make H an aberrant Semitic language."

> "Knowing all too well the fascination that pre-history holds out to us, I
> have hitherto declined to draw from the correspondences between H and G and S
> any genetic inferences beyond the inescapable one that such correspondences
> could not have originated independently and without contact."

> In speaking of the remoteness of Arabic from IE connections, he remarks:

> "Arabic therefore affords little basis for a convincing comparison with the
> IE languages."

> And so on.

[PR]
Well, I have just completed another 30 pages or so of comments on Bomhard's
Nostratic dictionary at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/NostraticDictionary.htm

that show clearly that Arabic consonantal roots and IE roots can be
systematically related through regular correspondences.

Perhaps Levin should read that.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Apr  5 05:23:57 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 01:23:57 EDT
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.012357.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/4/01 11:19:52 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
mclasutt at brigham.net writes:

> In this environment, I think it's more of a question of conquerors'
> attitudes, technological superiority, and speed of conquest, than of any
> population density issue.

-- in the European conquest of the Western Hemisphere, epidemological factors
were dominant.  I very much doubt the advent of a new population group was
ever accompanied by a centuries-long population decline of the magnitude we
saw in the post-Columbian Americas.

Population density did matter in most of the Spanish Empire; note the number
of Nahuatl words in Mexican Spanish, as compared to the relative absence of
loan-words in, say, Argentina.


From bronto at pobox.com  Thu Apr  5 14:36:44 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 07:36:44 -0700
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.073644.0700.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:
> . . . Unless there is proof to the contrary, I'd say that Waco
> is Tejano Spanish <hueco> "spring that pools up from the ground"
> < standard Spanish "hole". There are plenty of names such as the
> redundant "Hueco Tanks". . . .

For whatever it's worth, George R Stewart <Concise Dictionary of American
Place-names> says

	HUECO  In American-Spanish it generally
	has the meaning `water hole, boggy
	place'; so HUECO, New Mexico.  In HUECO
	MOUNTAINS, Texas, it means `notched.'

	WACO  In Texas it is from the Indian
	tribal name, often spelled Hueco.  In
	the Southeast it arises from the Muskogean
	`heron'.
--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From douglas at nb.net  Thu Apr  5 06:07:12 2001
From: douglas at nb.net (Douglas G. Wilson)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 02:07:12 -0400
Subject: "Colorado"
In-Reply-To: <000901c0bbd9$6c630560$0b6763d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.020712.0400.>

>         I had always thought ... that "colorado" was cognate with
> "colored", and meant the same.

Of course it is (sort of), and it does (sort of). But of course Spanish
"colorado" = Latin "coloratus", which meant both "having color" and "having
red(dish)/brown(ish) color" in classical Latin, more or less as "colorado"
means both "having color" and "having red(dish) color" in modern Spanish,
within my limited understanding.

Why? Some linguist knows, but I don't. One possibility: "color" (unlike,
say, "tint", I think) has the sense of "skin color". E.g., Spanish "ponerse
colorado" = "to blush", English "to color" = "to blush", Latin "colorem
mutare" = "to blush" [according to the Perseus dictionary], Latin
"coloratus" = "tanned"/"having a healthy skin color" [as opposed to pallor,
I guess], English "color" = "ruddy complexion" [Random House], Spanish
"coloradote" = "ruddy" [complexion], French "color?" = "ruddy"
[complexion], etc.

-- Doug Wilson


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Apr  5 02:23:42 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 21:23:42 -0500
Subject: "Colorado"
In-Reply-To: <000901c0bbd9$6c630560$0b6763d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.4.APR.2001.212342.0500.>

Colorado for "red" is universal in Spanish. You're right that in Austin, it
is a greenish color but, as I remember it is kind of ruddy-looking. It's
now "tamed" by dams, which may have caused it to change color by lessening
the amount of sediment BUT I don't pretend to be a geolist or hydrologist :>

>        I had always thought, knowing next to nothing of Spanish, that
>"colorado" was cognate with "colored", and meant the same.  Perhaps the
>meaning 'red' is recent?  Certainly the Colorado, if it is anything, is
>green, not red, though the Llano, a tributary, might perhaps be said to be
>pink due to granitic sand.  The general rule, from my observations, is that
>the Colorado and rivers SW of it are green (or if small enough clear) while
>the Brazos and rivers NE of it are muddy brown.  No red rivers around here,
>that I have seen ...

>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 15:34:58 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 10:34:58 -0500
Subject: Indian Names
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.103458.0500.>

> I've seen it written that Waco comes from a Native American
> language BUT I've seen the same thing said about patently Spanish names
> such as Pedernales. Unless there is proof to the contrary, I'd say that
> Waco is Tejano Spanish <hueco> "spring that pools up from the ground" <
> standard Spanish "hole".

        But are there any springs at Waco?  Not that I ever heard, though
probably there is a minor one or two, just enough to make this derivation
plausible.  The original meaning is supposed to have been something like
"meeting place" in Tonkawa, and upon examination I find that /wa-/ in
Tonkawa is an element meaning 'place' in some correlatives.  That would
mean, if there is any connection, that the English pronunciation would have
to be from spelling (unattested "Huaco" Anglicized as "Waco", then mangled),
but stranger things have happened.

> OTOH Spanish speakers in Texas generally assume that Texas
> is from Spanish <tejas> "tiles" because of the red soil but locally, it's
> said that it from the name of a local Native American confederacy meaning
> "friends".

        Red soil is not to my knowledge especially common in Texas.  The
only places I have seen it are very locally at Bastrop, where it is probably
related somehow the occurrence of the "lost" pines that grow in it, some
places in East Texas, and up around the Red River (and in Oklahoma).
Otherwise, one may find black soil, brown soil, white soil (often in East
Texas, where it is basically fine sand), more or less permanent mud, no soil
(but plenty of rocks)....
        The non-Spanish word /texas/ is supposed to be from a Caddo word
generally glossed as meaning  'friends', but perhaps meaning more what we
would call "allies", Latin "socios".   As far as I know, this etymology is
not considered controversial.
        Speaking of the Caddos, I cannot resist telling the tale of how
Europeans (I think Spanish) were amazed at how they could weep at will as
part of their greeting ritual.  In this connection, it is interesting that
the Norse cognate of English "greet" means 'weep', so perhaps somethig of
the sort was practiced among the ancient Germans.  And perhaps it is fairly
common.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr  5 14:59:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 09:59:55 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.095955.0500.>

        Do the Munda languages have retroflex consonants?  That would surely
be convenient.
        A possible problem with all this is that when non-IE loan-words
start showing up in Sanskrit, they are (as far as I know) Dravidian.  My
impression is that, if there are Munda loan-words, they are few and far
between.
    Speaking of such matters, is there any convincing scenario for how the
retroflex series became phonemic in Sanksrit from internal causes alone?

Dr. David L. White


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Apr  6 20:49:15 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 15:49:15 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <FRI.6.APR.2001.154915.0500.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 2:41 AM
Subject: Re: Munda in Early NW India

<snip>

> The only
> reasonable solution that I see is that PIE had no voiced consonants at
> all (as indeed suggested by two of the most archaic members Hittite
> and Tocharian). That would make *dh [th], and *d [t] (or,
> equivalently, *dh = [t] and *d = [t']: in a binary opposition, the
> unaspirated member can become polarized to ejective or the
> non-ejective member can become polarized to aspirated).  If so, then
> *t must have been [tt] (and in Hittite is indeed spelled that way
> medially), a fortis (geminate) stop, unaspirated and unglottalized.
> The replacement of fortis/lenis by voiceless/voiced would have
> resulted in an unstable system *t = [t], *dh = [d:] (murmured) and *d
> = [`d] (preglottalized).  If, at the time, the clusters of
> stop+laryngeal were already acquiring phonemic status (as in the
> Indo-Iranian area), a four way system as found in Sanskrit could
> become possible: [t(')] ~ [th] / [(')d] ~ [dh].  The three other
> alternatives would be (1) to lose the distinction between murmured and
> preglottalized in the voiced series (resulting in [t] ~ [d]), as in
> the case of Balto-Slavic (although *d causes lengthening of the
> preceding vowel, and *dh doesn't); (2) fortition of the aspirated
> member, resulting in Greek/pre-Italic *t => [t], *dh => [th], *d =>
> [d]; and (3) fortition of the unaspirated member, resulting in
> Armenian/pre-Germanic *t => [th], *dh => [d], *d => [t(')].

[PR]
An alternative view might be that (agreeing with Miguel), Nostratic had only
voiceless obstruents but that they patterned as glottalized stop (*b),
aspirated stop (*p), glottalized affricate (*bh), aspirated affricate (*ph) -
typologically, few problems that I can see.

In view of the affricates in many derived IE languages, I am amazed that IEists
seem so unwilling to entertain the idea of affricates as a part of the earliest
system.

It seems to me that the fricative element of the affricates has become [h] so
that the distinction could be maintained in the glottalized series but was lost
in the aspirated series.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Apr  5 17:23:48 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 13:23:48 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.132348.EDT.>

Just to give philjennings at juno.com the benefit of hearing the other side of
the Chamber:

In a message dated 4/5/2001 2:39:22 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<<[Renfrew] never did explain why the extant Anatolian IE languages all look
intrusive.>>

Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....

In a message dated 4/5/2001 1:05:27 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<< It's highly probable that pre-Indo-European Europe had a linguistic
situation much like New Guinea or pre-Columbian North America, with hundreds of
distinct language families and many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of distinct
languages covering very small areas. >>

... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.  Every
one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.  Like Minoan, Pre-Pie
would be indigenous.  But, unlike Minoan, Pre-PIE would yield a great many
ancestors.

Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?

<<Not to mention the fact that Renfrew never seems to have grasped the concept
of degrees of interrelatedness. (Eg., the fact that Greek is much closer to
Indo-Iranian than to the Anatolian group.)>>

Those of us who think that Renfrew might basically be right would note that
in Ringe's phylogentic analysis, the Anatolian languages appear to be the
first branch off from *PIE.  This means that either the rest of *PIE (pre
German, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Celtic,...) left the Anatolians (i.e., in
Anatolia) OR the Anatolians left the rest of *PIE.  It's either one or the
other, but I've yet to hear the reason it has to be one and not the other.

As to the "degree of interrelatedness", the quantifiability of relatedness
has been discussed here before.  I am not aware of any system for achieving
quantifiable "degrees" that has found any consensus.  Ringe's IE tree, based
on a slim list of innovations, separates IE languages based on "degree" of
divergence from a reconstructed PIE.  Anatolian, by that measure, is first in
difference from all the rest of *PIE related languages.  And it is found in
Anatolia.  So,...

<<In fact, Renfrew's basic problem in the context of IE origins was that he was
trying to solve a "problem" that didn't exist,...>>

The problem that Renfrew originally addressed in L&A was the problem of the
2500BC date for the splitting-up of PIE being put forth at the time based on
out-of-date archaeology.  That date was not mainly based -- at that time --
on linguistic notions of degree of separations between languages.  It was
based on old perceptions of who was IE in the archaeological evidence.  The
problem was basically archaeological.

<<The primary "technology" involved was probably in the "software", the
cultural framework itself -- including the language -- rather than in the
stones-and-bones stuff; and hence invisible from the archaeological
perspective.>>

And, of course, without bones-and-stones, we would Linear B or Hittite would
also be invisible.  Nor would we have any notion of early horses and wheels
and chariots and all the other indicia that paleolinguistics uses to connect
language with prehistoric peoples and places.

A little background.  Those of us who think that language primarily spreads
ideas and know-how find in that a reason for people to start speaking a new
language, like English on the internet.  Speaking a common language is the
fastest way to exchange ideas and information and technical know-how and
carry on a mutually beneficial trade between people who once did not speak
the same language.

There's more and more evidence that the vast majority of Europeans at least
are descended from pre-mesolithic populations.  (I would bet that in Anatolia
we would find something similar.)  This would mean that most IE speakers in
Europe are descended from people who were there before IE arrived.  In terms
of economics and technology, by far the number one influx of ideas came later
with the Neolithic Revolution with its origins in Anatolia and the Near East.
 The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in innovation
in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical range, and the
archaeological dates are now indicating that it was the steppes that may have
gotten the headbanging.

On the basis of all that, Renfrew's BASIC idea would seem to be as valid as
any other.

<<One can see why archaeologists hate this; it means that their carefully
catalogued sequences of _in situ_ development may be meaningless, in terms of
things like language and ethnicity...>>

Most archaeologists don't give a darn.  They are media darlings and
fund-raising wunderkinds and with one stroke can rewrite history with
something like the Black Sea flood or L'Aux d'Meadows.  Renfrew should be
given some credit for attempting archaeological and linguistic conciliation,
even though the idea has not always been particularly welcome on either side.

<<Cultural factors are what usually gives a group an advantage, after all.>>

And adopting a language may allow a group to share an advantage - like
farming, animal husbandry or metallurgy or other technical knowledge.  And
when we see that advantage spread quickly, we might conclude that a new,
common language - like IE - made it possible.

Regards,
Steve Long


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Thu Apr  5 23:32:34 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 19:32:34 -0400
Subject: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.193234.0400.>

The editors of the LINGUIST List are working on adding Ethnologue-style classi-
fications of various extinct languages to their database of languages.  They
classify Carian as "Unknown, possibly IE" and Sidetic as "Unknown".

Have Shevoroshkin's decipherments of these two languages as Anatolian IE been
rejected by the profession?  Or should these classifications be updated to read
"IE, Anatolian"?

On another note:  Recently I ran across the term Sabellic as a cover for what I
was taught to think of as Umbrian.  The LINGUIST classification uses only the
term Umbrian.  Which is term more current?  Is Sabellic even used by anyone
other than the single author in whose work I encountered it?

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Apr  6 19:55:13 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 14:55:13 -0500
Subject: FYI
Message-ID: <FRI.6.APR.2001.145513.0500.>

Dear Miguel and IEists and Nostraticists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 12:17 PM

> I've uploaded a pair of .doc's (for now) to http://home.planet.nl/~mcv
> on pre-Indo-European and pre-Basque phonological and morphological
> reconstructions.  Sorry for the cross-post.  Comments welcome.

[PR]
I have just reviewed _Pre-Basque Phonology_, and consider it a most helpful
contribution to the subject.

I was wondering if you would mind if I included it at my website?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Apr  7 00:27:24 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 02:27:24 +0200
Subject: FYI
Message-ID: <SAT.7.APR.2001.022724.0200.>

Just an update: the articles at http://home.planet.nl/~mcv are now available in
HTML.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Apr  5 09:12:55 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 11:12:55 +0200
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <001101c0bbf0$0ac06520$542363d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.5.APR.2001.111255.0200.>

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:41:34 -0500, "David L. White"
<dlwhite at texas.net> wrote:

>        Anyway, that's my understanding.  It could be wrong.  The real
>question, hopefully a fairly straightforward empirical one, is whether it is
>a fact the Caucasian languages have systems with three-way contrasts.

They have, for instance Abkhaz.  There is no problem with
coarticulations, as Abkhaz does not have /i/ and /u/.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Apr  6 20:55:07 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 15:55:07 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.6.APR.2001.155507.0500.>

Dear David and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 10:41 PM

>> On 25 Mar 2001, David L. White wrote:

>>> My point is that to speak of "plain" consonants existing in such a system
>>> is in a sense non-sensical, because "plain" in effect means "as in a
>>> language without secondary articulations", which in turn means "as in a
>>> language with ordinary co-articulation", but a language with secondary
>>> articulations could not possibly have ordinary coarticulations, since
>>> overriding ordinary coarticlation for phonemic effect is what languages
>>> with secondary articulations do.

[PR]
I think something that is, if understood, fairly straightforward is being
overly elaborated.

To judge by Gaelic, a-colored vowels involved no movement of the lips;
e-colored vowels entailed a lip movement opposed to the tongue movement: the
lips were pulled back, and the tongue pushed forward.

O-colored vowels folllowed the same pattern in reverse: the lips were pushed
forward, and the tongue was pulled back.

If not true, is it, at least, not elegant?

By the way, I would assert its truthfulness.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Mon Apr  9 15:13:39 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 17:13:39 +0200
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.171339.0200.>

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:41:34 -0500, David l. White wrote:

>So the question is, in a language with palatalized, labio-velarized, and
>"plain" consonants, what would a speaker's tongue be doing as the syllable
>/pi/, with "plain /p/", was produced?  It would have to be doing something
>other than anticipating [i] in the normal manner, or confusion with
>palatalized /p/ would be inevitable.  Putting the tongue in the position for
>[a] would result in the clearest contrast.  Or, to put it (yet) another way,
>with labials secondary articulations can hardly be realized as anything other
>than super-short diphthongs (rising or falling).  Thus /ap'i/ with palatalized
>/p/ would have to sound something like [aip] (with super-short [i]), or the
>palatalization would not be perceptible.  /ap/ with "plain" /p/ would sound
>like [ap], and /ip' with palatalized /p/ would sound like [ip].  But /ip/ with
>"plain /p/ would have to sound something like [iap].  And /pi/ with "plain"
>/p/ would have to sound something like [pai] (with rising "diphthong"],
>otherwise normal anticipation of /i/ would make it sound like /p'i/.

There's another possibility: one can shift the vowels. You mentioned Russian
before in your post. Here, we have two series of consonants - a palatised
one and a non-palatised one, with vowels realised as different allophones
depending on the preceding consonant (and to some degree also depending on
the following consonant). After a palatised consonant, /i/ is realised as
something close to IPA /i/, while after non-palatised consonants it is
realised as `barred i'. Concerning palatalisation of labials in the auslaut
position, at least Russians are able to articulate it * after * the
consonant - it's something like a slight jotation <golub'> "pigeon" is
pronounced /go'lubj/. There is no glide between /u/ and /b'/, but /u/ is
fronted a bit.

But you are right to postulate that it is hard to maintain the distinction -
e.g., Polish has lost the palatal - non-palatal distinction of labials in
absolute auslaut, while maintaining it with labials in other positions.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From stevegus at aye.net  Tue Apr 10 00:47:53 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 20:47:53 -0400
Subject: Last Spoken Etruscan
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.204753.0400.>

David L. White wrote:

>         I have read that the Emperor Claudius was one of the last to speak
> it, which would put it's death as a spoken language not far from the last
> inscriptions, if I am remembering correctly.

I remember reading that the emperor Julian had somebody performing magical
rites for him in Etruscan.  Then again, I suspect that Julian's enterprise
was plagued by more than the usual assortment of grifters.

--
Ecce domina quae fidet omne micans aureum esse, et scalam in caelos emit.


From ERobert52 at aol.com  Tue Apr 10 06:49:20 2001
From: ERobert52 at aol.com (ERobert52 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 02:49:20 EDT
Subject: Last Spoken Etruscan
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.024920.EDT.>

In a message dated 10/04/01 01:38:08 GMT Daylight Time, dlwhite at texas.net
writes:

>> -- Is there any evidence as to when Etruscan ceased to be a spoken
>> language?

>          I have read that the Emperor Claudius was one of the last to speak
>  it, which would put it's death as a spoken language not far from the last
>  inscriptions, if I am remembering correctly.

>  Dr. David L. White

I think he learned it from his second wife, who, it is said, was a native
speaker. According to Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan was still in use as a
liturgical language in 407 AD, when some priests were asked to say a few
words to prevent Rome being sacked by the Goths. This was unsuccessful, of
course, and there are no further records of Etruscan being spoken.

Ed. Robertson


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Tue Apr 10 10:39:33 2001
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 06:39:33 -0400
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F302nHM3SOlbpH71yEX000003e3@hotmail.com>; from
 acnasvers@hotmail.com on Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 11:44:43PM -0000
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.063933.0400.>

On Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 11:44:43PM -0000, Douglas G Kilday wrote:
> Ever played "Telephone"? The notion that standard (Roman-Latian) Italian
> comes from Tuscan sounds like the result of cumulative distortion through
> successive oral transmission. If memory serves, Dante chose to compose
> poetry in the Tuscan dialect (with the addition of some forms from northern
> dialects) because the heavy stress and distinct stress-timing allowed
> phonetic parallelism on the basis of polysyllabic homoioteleuton, or
> "rhyming". Dante has been called "the father of Italian poetry" which is
> subjective but not really "wrong", and also "the father of modern Italian"
> which is nonsense. Not even Bill Clinton could "father" a language. Some
> cavalier statement like that probably got mixed in with the facts about
> Dante's writing.

There used to be other Italian literary standards. I recall that
there was a charming Franco-Italian that was used for some poetry in
the early Middle Ages. The use of a conservative Tuscan literary
standard was a conscious choice, and was also probably a reasonable
middle ground among all the different dialects in the peninsula.

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 23:51:49 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 18:51:49 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.185149.0500.>

> So your North Aegean Proto-Etruscan (NAPE) civilization was respected and
> ancient, but below it is fairly small and heavily genericized. Now at least
> we know what to look for in the North Aegean: a civilization small but
> respected (like a wolverine?) and ancient but generic (like plain yogurt?).

        Yes.  I believe both descriptions might be applied to the
civilization of Troy, and I see nothing inherently contradictory or comical
about this.  More to the point, any bearers of Eastern Mediterranean
civilization, however generic, would have been impressive to the people of
Italy before these began (with the Etruscans) to ascend to the same level.

>> But a fairly small and heavily genericized (for lack of a better word) East
>> Mediterranean culture might not leave much of a signature.

> Then one wonders why this culture left such a prominent signature in such a
> large part of Italy.

        Because they continued to develop new styles of pottery etc., as did
the Greeks, and were not so subject to nearby foreign cultures at their
level.  The small fish became bigger by moving to a smaller pond.

> How can any culture be so successful as a colonial
> power, and such a nondescript failure at home?

    I did not say they were a failure.  Colonization to the west was all the
rage in the Eastern Mediterranean (not counting Egypt).  (It seems that
everyone was anticipating the later advice to "Go west, young man".)  But a
fairly small bunch that went west, in part because their position in the
east was becoming precarious, would almost have to go in mass (over the long
run), or those left behind would be put in even more dire straits.
        There is evidence that the Trojans were a small bunch, in the fact
that their armies are described as being multi-lingual, whereas the Greeks
were pretty clearly multilingual.  (Now just where in the Iliad is that?)
Clearly they were not able to match the Greeks in putting fellow-speakers
(so to speak) in the field, and their forces were composed largely of the
tributary forces of other states, of other languages.   This does not
suggest that the native Trojans were ever a large group.  (Nor are they very
distinctive archeologically, as far as I know.)

> The example of Mamurke Tursikina comes from Clusium, in a peripheral zone
> where we already know that both Umbrian and Etruscan were spoken. Someone
> wealthy enough to hand out custom-made golden objects doesn't belong to the
> lower class anyway.

        I didn't say he was lower-class; I said he was living among
non-Etruscans, or his name does not make much sense.

> In any case, since it's _your_ theory of mysterious North Aegeans bringing
> language and High Culture to Etruria, it's up to _you_ to find the
> linguistic evidence. It's not up to me (or the rest of the nativist crowd)
> to argue with hypothetical positions or unpresented data.

        I am not exactly the only person to say that Etruscan civilization
did not arise semi-miraculously in Tuscany as a result of Greek and
Phonecian contacts that can only be shown to have been significant in
Campania.  Since a date of 1200 is too early for real Etruscans in Italy, I
would imagine that most migrationists must posit an interlude somewhere in
the northern Aegean, or not far from it.

>> Speaking yet more of hinterlands, I would like to know the extent of this
>> aspiration thing in Italian, and why, if it is characteristic of Tuscan
>> generally, it is not in the standard language, which according to my
>> understanding is a recent derivative of Tuscan, Rome having become
>> effectively depopulated at at least one point during the Middle Ages.

> If memory serves, Dante chose to compose
> poetry in the Tuscan dialect (with the addition of some forms from northern
> dialects) because the heavy stress and distinct stress-timing allowed
> phonetic parallelism on the basis of polysyllabic homoioteleuton, or
> "rhyming". Dante has been called "the father of Italian poetry" which is
> subjective but not really "wrong", and also "the father of modern Italian"
> which is nonsense. Not even Bill Clinton could "father" a language. Some
> cavalier statement like that probably got mixed in with the facts about
> Dante's writing.

        That is the version I got, though I doubt oral transmision has
played a role.   More like over-simplification.

Dr. David L. White


From philjennings at juno.com  Wed Apr 11 23:21:47 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 18:21:47 -0500
Subject: Etruscans / Pelasgians
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.182147.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

On March 30th I wrote:

>>...lost nothing by maintaining their island relationship.  This is probably
>>more true as they had not discommoded themselves in the first place by giving
>>King Uhhazitis one of their own islands, but rather settled the Arzawan
>>refugees on a Pelasgian island, such as Lemnos.  (The Pelasgians were too
>>weak to protest at being forced to share.)

Douglas G. Kilday answered:

>One of the problems with this picture is that classical sources don't place
>Pelasgians on Lemnos at such an early date. In Homer, the inhabitants of
>Lemnos are Sinties, and the epithet <agriopho:nous> (acc. pl.) tells us only
>that their phonology was non-Greek, not necessarily non-IE. Strabo asserts
>that the Sinties were Thracians. Pausanias says that the Pelasgians took
>Lemnos from the Minyae, who were aristocratic refugees from revolution in
>Boeotia. Neither group likely held the island more than a few decades, and
>the Tyrrhenians had presumably already fled from Lemnos to Chalcidice (perhaps
>driven out by the Minyae).

Me:  Particular Pelasgians were exiled from Athens to Lemnos in post-Mycenaean
times.  Homer, of course, had his 8th century views. Rolling back to the 12th
or 13th century bce, "Pelasgian" was the default ethnicity of all inhabitants
of Greece who weren't Greek.  In this earlier time, it might be questionable to
put full-strength Thracians in Thrace proper, much less the north Aegean
islands.  Minus Thracians, and considering Illyrians unlikely, who lived in
these north islands?  If not Greeks, then either default and pre-historical
Pelasgians, or Carians and Leleges, who are usually figured to be Anatolians in
language.  (Or else, I should admit, a culture of proto-Etruscans, according to
another theory.)  I'm in favor of an Anatolian-flavored question-mark.  If the
Pelasgians don't have that flavor, I decline to insist that they ever lived so
far to the north.

I also wrote:

>>Pelasgians spoke an "Anatolian" language.  They would have recognized
>>"-assos" as a geopolitical suffix, and dropped its inappropriate use,
>>therefore the Hursanassans would have become Hursana(pl) or 'Rsana(pl).

Kilday answered:

>What does your <'> signify? A glottal stop? A pharyngeal fricative? What
>business do you have citing phonological and morphological changes in
>Pelasgian? Can you give other examples of Pelasgian dropping initial
>syllables and back-forming ethnonyms by removing suffixes?

>Pelasgian loanwords are found from Persian to Sabine, and toponyms reached up
>the Danube. The language (or family) was not restricted to Anatolia.  It was
>certainly not "Anatolian IE", so no particular affinity to Hittite et al.
>should be assumed. Whether Pelasgian should be considered a branch of IE at
>all is debatable. IMHO Pelasgian is non-IE, but probably related at the
>super-family level. A possible cognate pair is Psg. *wrod- 'rose' ~ PIE
>*H1reudh- 'red'.

My response to this is embarrassment.  My <'> was of all things, a Greek
aspirate, as if I couldn't have written "hr" instead of "'r", despite the
limitations of my character set.  The Hittite scribes, working with their
character set, wrote either (short) Hursanassa or (long) Huwarsanassa.  Given
their ad hoc methods, the short form may have represented "hr" as an initial
consonant and not as a syllable.  The long form, however, is my enemy, since it
pretty much insists on being at least one, if not two, syllables, terminating
in "r".  Here lies the basis for complaints about my back-forming ethnonyms by
removing suffixes.

Kilday goes on to say such interesting things about the Pelasgians, and greater
Pelasgia, that I want to know more.  Apparently the ur-Pelasgia *could* have
included the northern islands!  Does the super family that includes proto-
Pelasgian, also include proto-Etruscan and PIE/PIA (proto Indo-Anatolian)?
Where are the glossaries?  How does he reconsile the proto-Pelasgians seemingly
occupying the same territory as others give to the Anatolian branch of
Indo-Anatolian (the Balkans) prior to their migration into Asia Minor?  Of
course, others reconsile this by saying that the Pelasgians were a branch of
the expansionary Anatolians that took the right fork into Greece, rather than
the left fork into Turkey.

I look forward eagerly to a Pelasgian topic, and discussions equally as
warm as these about the Etruscans.

I also wrote:

>>If the dominant language among the refugees was distinctive and
>>incomprehensible, as it surely was, those who spoke as the Hursana did might
>>have been called the "ta-'rsana(pl)."  The Greeks also needed a group name
>>for these people, and might have turned "ta-'rsana(pl)" into "Tyrsennoi."
>>With time, the refugees themselves would have acceded to the need for a
>>single name, minus the Pelasgian prefix: and pronounced their own way:
>>eventually Ras'na.

Kilday answered:

>What examples do you have of Greek turning /a-'/ (whatever that means) into
>/u/? Why wouldn't it become the long vowel /a:/ or perhaps a long diphthong?

Me again:  The hyphen merely points out the prefix as such.  Given the known
"ty" of "Tyrsennoi", I'd happily work back to any "tV" that produces the wanted
result.  "Ta" may be Common Anatolian of an early date, but the myriad
Anatolian languages worked their distinct ways and forms.  Lycian, for example,
gives us "Termilae" turning "ta" into "ter".  I get to be very slippery here,
ascribing just the perfect prefix to an otherwise unknown and unrecorded
daughter language, possibly spoken on Lemnos and nowhere else.

I also wrote:

>>Against this whole "Etruscan origins" story and all its props and gimmicks,
>>lies the fact that no proto-Etruscan-like language has been preserved in the
>>extensive Hittite archives, which generously cite diplomatic and liturgical
>>passages in Hattic, Palaic, Luwian, Akkadian, and Hurrian.  However, as far
>>as I know, the Hittites also ignored Achaean Greek, Minoan, and the Northwest
>>Semite language of Canaan, and even Egyptian.

Kilday answered:

>Lack of attested Proto-Etruscan isn't the trouble with your story. The trouble
>is the bizarre maze of contortions which your ethnonyms must navigate. Given
>sufficient ingenuity, a linguistic fabulist could snake the sequence T-R-S or
>R-S-N from any part of the world into Etruria. That isn't the point of doing
>historical linguistics.

To this I have no answer.  I would project my T-prefix backward in time from
the known to the unknown, if only I knew the rules.  Apparently, "ta" doesn't
work here.  Does anything?  I suppose the safest assumption is that the
Lemnian-Anatolian-Pelasgian-indigenes said "ty" all along.

"All along" being the exact 18 minutes necessary until the right Greek came
ashore and picked up the word "Tyrsennoi."  Lemnos appears to have been the
Greyhound bus terminal waiting room of the ancient world, a new crew coming
ashore every time the fleet came in.  "Lemnian deeds" may be a creative
explanation for the frequent ethnic shifts.


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Tue Apr 10 02:28:51 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 22:28:51 -0400
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <001101c0bbf0$0ac06520$542363d1@texas.net> (dlwhite@texas.net)
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.222851.0400.>

On 2 Apr 2001, David L. White wrote:

> I am not concerned with phonological theory (and running out of energy, under
> the delusion that I am perhaps getting a life).

Ah.  Therein, I believe, lies our apparent problem.  I am very much concerned
with phonological theory, accepting that our reconstructions must as far as we
can possibly arrange it be phonologically acceptable.

> And if I have adopted a phonological theory that does not allow negatives, it
> is news to me.

My apologies.  I got carried away.

> "Not having secondary articulations" to my mind means "having normal
> coarticulation".  By "normal" is meant what is most energetically efficient,
> as in fronting velars to some (variable) extent before front vowels, doing a
> bit of anticipatory rounding before round vowels, etc.  (The lips take a
> while to get going, which is why u-umlaut in Norse has a longer leftward
> range than i-umlaut.)

Having read the remainder of your posting, it becomes clear to me that we are
speaking of two different level, the phonetic and the phonological.  Your
concerns are entirely valid at a phonetic level; at the level of phonology,
they appear to me to be moot, since no two languages have the same phonological
system, though all are subject ot the same phonetic processes and contraints.

In the languages in question (Abkhaz, Kabardian, Ubykh, Lehmann's earliest pre-
PIE), *there* *is* *no* phoneme /i/ or /u/ to trigger coarticulation of the
sort you have in mind.  Rather, the impoverished vowel system has a wide range
of allophonic variation triggered by the secondary articulations on neighbour-
ing obstruents.

And I think that such languages have little to say to the Old Irish situation,
now that we make that distinction.

								Rich Alderson


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 21:05:38 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 16:05:38 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.160538.0500.>

> [PR]
> I think something that is, if understood, fairly straightforward is being
> overly elaborated.

> To judge by Gaelic, a-colored vowels involved no movement of the lips;
> e-colored vowels entailed a lip movement opposed to the tongue movement:
> the lips were pulled back, and the tongue pushed forward.

> O-colored vowels folllowed the same pattern in reverse: the lips were
> pushed forward, and the tongue was pulled back.

        What sort of "Gaelic" is this?  I know of no modern forms of the
language that have a three-way contrast.  Perhaps "Old Irish" is what was
meant?
        And why speak of "e-colored" and "o-colored" consonants, when the
rest of the world calls these "i-colored" and "u-colored"?  Actually, there
is a good reason:  the window is so small that sounds more like [e] and [o]
than like [i] and [u] can wind up being produced.  Thurneysen does,
half-seriously, suggest "o-quality" in contrast with both "u-quality" and
"neutral quality", but as far as I know no one has gone for this.
        In any language with labials, the lips are not entirely free, but as
for tongue position, I believe it is the general rule that palatalization is
implemented by, or at least associated with, tongue convexing and
velarization by tongue concaving.  The point is that tongue position at
least, which in languages without secondary articulations is free to get
ready for the next vowel or linger a bit over the last, is in languages with
secondary articulations fixed by the nature of the consonants in question.
Perhaps I can simplify a bit by saying that even for "plain" consonants in a
system with three-way contrast, tongue position would still have to be
fixed, probably at something close to [a], and would not be free to vary in
the way it does in languages without secondary articulations.

        With regard to Russian, this language is a little unusual (according
to my understanding, which may as usual be flawed) in two ways.
        First, palatalization shows significant "rightward displacement",
which is to say that it comes closer to being like following [y] (English
value) than is ordinarily the case.  In Estonian, by contrast,
palatalization is of the "textbook" sort:  effectively simultaneous with
consonants, so that /..VC'/, especially where C is moraic, sounds like
[ViC].
        Second, the degree of velarization in "yeri" (henceforth "I"), is
more than would be predicted from velarization of a preceding consonant
alone, so that we must (or depending on theory might) conclude that /I/ is
an independent target, i.e. a phoneme, probably picked up from Uralic.  In
other words, as Russian was imposed on speakers of some sort of Uralic, in
which there was phonemic /I/, Russian /i/ after a velarized consonant was
mis-perceived as /I/, despite the fact that originally the velarized quality
must have been restricted to the first part of the vowel right after the
consonant.  I think something similar happened with the retroflex series in
Sanskrit, for as I hinted recently, it seems there is no good internal cause
for this to have become phonemic.  The "phonemicness" in both cases is, I
suggest, carried over from sub-strate.
        This may seem somewhat bizarre, or at least speculative, but
strangely enough the same sort of thing has been suggested for Japanese,
where it seems that teaching of English since WWII has succeeded so well
that English phonemic distinctions are evidently  being imported into
Japanese.  Thus it would seem that English has been acting as a de facto
super-strate language in Japan, through the miracle of modern language
teaching.

        In part, I have been attempting in all this to get a definitive
answer to the question of how many qualities Old Irish had.  For this
question, it does indeed make a difference, for phonetic viability, whether
a given language has two vowels, contrasted only by height, or five vowels
of the usual sort.  A three-way contrast would be much more dificult to
implement in Old Irish, and even believers are forced to admit that if it
ever existed it was fading out by the time Old Irish is attested, which in
turn is not long after the system is supposed to have been created.  What we
need really is evidence of contrast between either 1) "iu" and "io", or 2)
"eu" and "e".  For "/r/" we have this in the second case, "er" vs. "eur",
but when I gave up looking, I had not found any other examples.  Does anyone
out there have any?

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Apr 11 00:19:17 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:19:17 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.191917.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following quoted material is taken from Miguel Carrasquer Vidal's post
  dated 5 Apr 2001.
  --rma ]

>>        Anyway, that's my understanding.  It could be wrong.  The real
>> question, hopefully a fairly straightforward empirical one, is whether it
>> is a fact the Caucasian languages have systems with three-way contrasts.

> They have, for instance Abkhaz.  There is no problem with
> coarticulations, as Abkhaz does not have /i/ and /u/.

        Yes, but is that in a one-vowel analysis or the two-vowel analysis?

Dr. David L. White


From rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu  Tue Apr 10 13:53:11 2001
From: rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu (rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:53:11 -0400
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.095311.0400.>

David L. White wrote:

>Do the Munda languages have retroflex consonants?  That would surely
>be convenient.

Witzel's article "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan" [EJVS,
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501a.txt] notes that
"...Munda originally had no retroflexes (Pinnow 1959, except for D,
see Zide 1969: 414, 423)."  I haven't seen the references, but it may
be relevant that Munda is related to Vietnamese (does that have
retroflexes?)

>A possible problem with all this is that when non-IE loan-words start
>showing up in Sanskrit, they are (as far as I know) Dravidian.  My
>impression is that, if there are Munda loan-words, they are few and
>far between.

Witzel's article says the earliest stratum of the RV ("Level I") had
no Dravidian loan words at all, and many loans previously interpreted
as Dravidian are now regarded as ["para-"] Munda.  However the Munda
etymologies are by no means certain, and there is a "Language X" in
the background.

>Speaking of such matters, is there any convincing scenario for how
>the retroflex series became phonemic in Sanksrit from internal causes
>alone?

I've seen references that suggest H.H. Hock has made this argument.
[Hock H.H. "Pre-rgvedic convergence between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian:
A survey of the issues and controversies" in: Ideology and Status of
Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language,
ed. by J.Houben, Leiden, Brill 1996.]

-- Rohan.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Apr 11 00:12:02 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:12:02 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.191202.0500.>

        The Conventional Wisdom seems to be that the Munda languages are
recently intrusive from the east, having come in at about the same time as
Indic from the NW, and that they acquired their Indian characteristics as a
result of contacts there.
        That might seem like the end of the story, but I doubt that it is.
Phonemic murmur ("voiced aspiration"), though on vowels rather than
consonants, is fairly common in the larger family ("Austro-Asiatic"), and
re-analysis of this as being on consonants would not be at all difficult to
motivate.  In other words, this one Indian characteristic, phonemic murmur,
does occur in the family outside of India.
        Answering my own question, yes, retroflex consonants occur in at
least one member of the family, Santali (which also has voiced aspirates),
though I have not determined whether the words in question are native or
not.  Some of them are "basic" enough in meaning that borrowing does not on
the face of it seem likely, though of course what we need to do is check
Bengali and so on, and I have not done (and will not do) that.
        Overall, I must say that it does not seem at all likely that the
pre-Indic language of NW India was any form of Munda.  But I still suspect
that the preservation of voiced aspirates in Indic is the result of such
things having been present in indigenous languages when the "Aryans" came
in, though probably in a language family long extinct.  Such sounds are
difficult to acquire for those whose native language does not have them, and
we would expect loss to have occurred in Indic as everywhere else if
something else had not intervened.  In any event, from what I know, it seems
quite probable that the problem of deciphering the Indus valley script is
not solvable, as both Dravidian and Munda seem to be dead ends, and no other
possibilities are known.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Apr 10 12:46:30 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 08:46:30 EDT
Subject: Soap
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.084630.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/10/2001 3:15:02 AM, acnasvers at hotmail.com writes:

<< The most plausible scenario has PIE *saigw- 'tallow, fat, grease, etc.'
undergoing "pre-Germanic" labialization to *saibw-, yielding PGmc *saip-. If
the pre-Germans learned the technology of soaking wool or hides in an
ash-tallow preparation from PIE-speakers, they might have borrowed the word
in this technical sense, and there is no need to force an etymology on the
basis of "trickling, dripping, resin, etc." >>

In the alternative, PGmc *saip- would simply refer to "boiled down, rendered
down".  See, e.g., Latin, <sapa, -ae> (cf., Grk, hepso:, sunapso:, exepso:).
This would also help account for the mish-mash of etymologies ascribed to
"soup" and "sup" in English - a rendered broth - cf., Latin, <sapio> = "to
taste, to savor."

And it would functionally explain the meaning of "sap", OE, <saep> - tree
resin or sugar to be rendered by boiling down. (But cf. Grk, zo:pissa, zo:e
(boiled) + pissa (pitch).)

Soaking wool in an astringent soap is unnecessary and even damaging unless
the wool is to be dyed.  Other textiles, furs and leathers are dyed without
astringent soaping.   Dyeing wool in northern Europe might be a relatively
recent technical innovation.  (The making of candles would seem to be also.)
Even more recent might be the use of astringent soap to dye one's hair - the
most precise meaning of <sapon> as it was first described.  If we assume that
soap post-dated *PIE substantially, than soap would be a trade word,
circulating with the new technology.

The alternative explanation would be therefore that the technique of mixing
alkali and fat (carefully and correctly, if it touches the skin) created the
need, for the first time, to render down rancid animal parts on a commercial
basis. The language where this change in meaning in the sense of from boiling
to boiling rancid parts occurred seems to be Greek, <sepo:>, rancid (Gr
se:po:n, soap).  This word for the key process in the making of astringent
soap would have travelled with the finished product, which the northern
people (being barbarians) would not only apply to wool but also to their
hair! (Cf, Grk <oisupos>, by the 6th cent BC, the lanolin grease extracted
from wool, used and presumably sold for medicinal puposes.)

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 21:18:15 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 16:18:15 -0500
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.161815.0500.>

>> I cannot off the top of my head think of any examples from English

>   Would an example from English be the voicing of intervocalic /t/, in the
> speech of many in the US, in words such as "butter"; as against the
> voiceless /t/ in the speech of many in the UK?

        I meant examples of dialect mixture, not intervocalic voicing.
        But the answer is ... maybe, depending on what you mean.  The idea
that American English /t/ between vowels (the first one being stressed) is
pronounced as [d] is to some extent a British mis-hearing.  In speech that
is not too rushed, there is a difference in preceding vowel length between
things like "writer" and "rider" that helps (not always enough) to signal
the intended difference in (phonemic) voicing.  In any event, it is always
possible to slow down and say "I meant [whatver it was]", so that to regard
this as a case of neutralization, comparable to final devoicing (but in the
other direction) is not appropriate.  (As far as I know, no amount of
"citation speech" pronunciation will enable a German to say "tag" with [g]
instead of [k].)  Technically or phonetically, the sound is voiced, but in
terms of the phonemic signalling, it patterns like a voiceless sound, which
indicates that speakers are thinking of it as a voiceless sound and that the
voicing is, in a sense, accidental, the result of it being rather
inconvenient to stop voicing for such a very small interval.

Dr. David L. White


From crismoc at smart.ro  Wed Apr 11 10:32:10 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 13:32:10 +0300
Subject: Polonezkvy|
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.133210.0300.>

If my memory serves me, some earlier postings on this list, coming from
people living in Turkey, suggested that the Polish colony in Polonezkoy was
long extinct, or even that the whole thing was a mere legend. Just to
complete Geoffrey Summers'posting that points out to a different reality:
        Here's what I find in a Vatican-edited brochure called:"Recognizing
the Spiritual Bonds That Unite Us-Thirty Years of Christian-Muslim
Dialogue". One page is devoted to Pope John Paul II's visit to Turkey, in
the autumn of 1980. There's an "excerpt of an adress delivered, IN POLISH,
by Pope John Paul II, to the inhabitants of the Polish colony of
Polonezkoy/Adampol, 1980. In the text the Pope praises "this unique instance
of preservation of Polish language and culture over so many years, which, to
this day, is a living proof of the remarkable tolerance shown by Turkey and
the Turkish people at a time when Poland was partitioned and, elsewhere in
Europe, hatred and persecution were taking their toll off our forefathers'
lives and identity".
          So, just 20 years ago, the Polishness of that community was very
much alive!

God bless,

Cristian


From crismoc at smart.ro  Wed Apr 11 09:40:11 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:40:11 +0300
Subject: Getae as Goths
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.124011.0300.>

AFAIK, Herodot calls Getae "the bravest among Thracians", going on to list
some of their negative features in the very next paragraph. There is a
pretty common belief that the Getae and the Dacians defeated by Trajan were
the same people.Two things would be interesting in line of the postings on
this topic:
             a)What is the evidence supplied  for the Iranian origin of the
Getae (other than the 2-nd century AD confusion identifying all "Barbarian"
ihabitants of the Black Sea Coast (formerly called Getai by their Greek
neighbors in Histria, Messembria, Tomis etc. ) with the Scythi?
              b) What does Dio Cassius (a Greek writing in Greek about
Trajan's conquest of Dacia) call the defeated population in the original
text? "Getae" or something else? According to other hypothesis "Getae" was
the name used by Greeks, for what Romans called "Daci" (the latter name is
incidentally supposed to derive from IE *dhawo-s "strangler,wolf" as the
Dacians are depicted on Trajan's column in Rome as wearing wolf-head-shaped
adornments in battle).
                The solution to both points is beyond my bibliographical
reach at the moment, so I would appreciate any help.

God bless,

Cristian


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 10 03:12:10 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 22:12:10 -0500
Subject: Pecans
Message-ID: <MON.9.APR.2001.221210.0500.>

> Pecans are characteristic of certain watercourses in Texas.

        This is getting rather off topic, but what the hell, until the
moderator calls a halt ...
        The proper term has now occurred to me:  pecans (in Central Texas
anyway) are mostly flood-plain trees.  But I was just out in the wilds west
of San Antonio Saturday, keeping my eyes open, and I was rarely out of sight
of an isolated pecan or two.  They were quite easy to spot as they are just
now leafing out, being among the last to do so.  They were not in flood
plains.  They were in the open areas between the hills, probably because the
shade has the effect of lessening de facto aridity.  Be that as it may, they
were probably encountered in the flood plains of the Nueces by Spanish
explorers, or settlers.

>>   On the other hand, I recall that most of what grows
>> along the waterways I am thinking of (which cannot really be called
>> rivers) is cypresses.

> I think this may be a relatively recent change, due to overgrazing by
> cattle.

        Maybe, but I doubt it.  Some of those cypresses, out in what was
Indian country till after the Civil War, are so large that they must be
several hundred years old, unless cypresses are very fast growing.  They are
as large as oaks I have seen that are known to be about 500 years old.
Roughly, it takes two people to reach around them.

> According to my "Trees of North America" pecans are native from about the
> Mississippi westward into eastern Texas.  They exist only as cultivated
> trees east of the Mississippi.

        I have seen plenty of beech groves in eastern Texas (indeed I have
been in places where beeches were the only living things in sight), but no
pecan groves.  I would imagine that pecans are somewhat marginal there.  In
fact, I do not recall that I have ever seen one there.  Not that I doubt the
distributions maps:  what occurs in central Texas and regions east of Texas
would almost have to occur in eastern Texas.  But I think one could go a
long time without running into one there.
        It has been suggested that their range has spread due to planting by
the Amerindians.  Some of the flood-plain pecan forests or groves now in
existence may in part be descended from ancient orchards.  Eventual spread
up the waterways into new territories would be expected.

Dr. David L. White


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Apr 10 16:25:03 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 10:25:03 -0600
Subject: Indian Names
In-Reply-To: <001601c0bde6$05805c80$572363d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.102503.0600.>

My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only 100
years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the ground
above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright brick red
and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most distinctive
soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in general
characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent of surface
red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet properties
that make it memorable.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Indo-European mailing list [mailto:Indo-European at xkl.com]On Behalf
Of David L. White
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 9:35
To: Indo-European at xkl.com
Subject: Indian Names

[ moderator snip ]

> OTOH Spanish speakers in Texas generally assume that Texas
> is from Spanish <tejas> "tiles" because of the red soil but locally, it's
> said that it from the name of a local Native American confederacy meaning
> "friends".

        Red soil is not to my knowledge especially common in Texas.  The
only places I have seen it are very locally at Bastrop, where it is probably
related somehow the occurrence of the "lost" pines that grow in it, some
places in East Texas, and up around the Red River (and in Oklahoma).
Otherwise, one may find black soil, brown soil, white soil (often in East
Texas, where it is basically fine sand), more or less permanent mud, no soil
(but plenty of rocks)....

[ moderator snip ]


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Apr 10 09:21:56 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 04:21:56 -0500
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <7c.14044719.27fd5b6d@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.042156.0500.>

	Actually, Argentine Indian languages of the Tupi-Guarani family
were the source of a relatively large number of loanwords --although not as
many as from Nahuatl. Many are local words but others are universal. If you
add Runa and Atmara, spoken in a large area of NW Argentina, the number is
much larger. These areas were the densely populated areas during colonial
times.
	Colonial Argentina also had close commerical and political contacts
with Peru and Bolivia. It was under the Vice-Royalty of Lima and supplied
horses, mules, dried beef, tallow and hides for the Andean region.
	Massive immigration from Europe began well after independence and
while immigrants did contribute to Argentine Spanish, they also continued
to use the loanwords from indigenous languages.

>Population density did matter in most of the Spanish Empire; note the number
>of Nahuatl words in Mexican Spanish, as compared to the relative absence of
>loan-words in, say, Argentina.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From crismoc at smart.ro  Wed Apr 11 09:55:43 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:55:43 +0300
Subject: Colorado,Guadalupe etc.
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.125543.0300.>

          Just a wild guess, which, if there are any Spanish literary
historians among the list members, could be confirmed or not.

            Isn't it the case that "colorado" was used as a more "poetical"
synonym for "Rojo, bermejo etc., perhaps considered less elegant? Incidentally,
in the political history of various countries (not only Russia) we have the
more right-wing minded people grouping themselves in the "White Party" whereas
those at the left would be the "Red Party". Well, in Uruguay and Paraguay we
find "Pariido Blanco" vs. "Partido COLORADO". God bless,

Cristian

The address from which I am sending this message helps me to use my online time
effectively. However, please use only
	cristianmocanu at HOTMAIL.COM
when you are sending me a message. This would enable me to pick up your emails
wherever I am. Thank you!


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Apr 10 14:11:56 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 07:11:56 -0700
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <77.129aa0da.27fe0424@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.071156.0700.>

At 01:23 PM 4/5/01 -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>Just to give philjennings at juno.com the benefit of hearing the other side of
>the Chamber:

>In a message dated 4/5/2001 2:39:22 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
><<[Renfrew] never did explain why the extant Anatolian IE languages all look
>intrusive.>>

>Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....

What does this mean?  Languages do not appear out of nowhere - they develop
from other, similar languages.

>In a message dated 4/5/2001 1:05:27 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
><< It's highly probable that pre-Indo-European Europe had a linguistic
>situation much like New Guinea or pre-Columbian North America, with hundreds
>of distinct language families and many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
>distinct languages covering very small areas. >>

>... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.

The only way this situation can occur is great amounts language movement,
but with no language group gaining the upper hand.

>   Every
>one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
>would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.

Not really.  At least in New Guinea on can often determine some constraints
on the order of arrival of the various groups.  (For instance, the language
groups restricted to upland areas must be older than the one seen in
valleys, and groups with compact, more or less contiguous, areas must be
relatively recent).

In any case, at most one of the language groups in such an area can really
be said to be fully indigenous.  All others have to have been intrusive at
some point in time.

>Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
>intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
>language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?

My first guess would be Hattic. Or the aboriginal language could have
become extinct by the time of the Hittite Empire.

>There's more and more evidence that the vast majority of Europeans at least
>are descended from pre-mesolithic populations.  (I would bet that in Anatolia
>we would find something similar.)  This would mean that most IE speakers in
>Europe are descended from people who were there before IE arrived.  In terms
>of economics and technology, by far the number one influx of ideas came later
>with the Neolithic Revolution with its origins in Anatolia and the Near East.
>  The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in innovation
>in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical range,

Oh?  Horse riding, possibly wheeled vehicles (and later chariots for sure -
but that was after PIE split up) - these sound like innovation to me!

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Apr 10 18:43:18 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 13:43:18 -0500
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.134318.0500.>

Dear Steve and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 12:23 PM

<snip>

> And adopting a language may allow a group to share an advantage - like
> farming, animal husbandry or metallurgy or other technical knowledge.  And
> when we see that advantage spread quickly, we might conclude that a new,
> common language - like IE - made it possible.

[PCR]
I am picking up on your "new" idea.

To me, the likeliest scenario is that Caucasians, speaking a Caucasian language
with characteristics similar to Kabardian (reduced vowel inventory), came into
contact with speakers of a non-Semitic Afrasian language, adopted it (mangled
it, mostly); and that the northernmost group became Indo-Europeans, while the
southerners became Semites.

This scenario would explain why Semitic and IE are so close, share so many
characteristics, as opposed to the radical differences between these two and
the balance of Afrasian languages.

In a minor way history repeated itself in Egypt, where a non-Semitic Afrasian-
speaking group was invaded by Caucasian speakers, and mangled Afrasian in a
uniquely interesting way --- resulting in Egyptian.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Wed Apr 11 01:52:48 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 21:52:48 -0400
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <77.129aa0da.27fe0424@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.215248.0400.>

On 5 Apr 2001, Steve Long wrote:

> Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....

[ snip ]

> ... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.  Every
> one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
> would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.  Like Minoan, Pre-Pie
> would be indigenous.  But, unlike Minoan, Pre-PIE would yield a great many
> ancestors.

I'm sorry.  I can't make any of this parse.

The Anatolian languages (in the sense of IE languages spoken in Anatolia) are
by definition not an isolate, since they have known relatives (the rest of the
IE family).

I think by "pre-PIE" you mean "non-Anatolian IE in a view that has Anatolian
branching off first", but I'm not sure where you mean to make it indigenous,
and I certainly don't understand what you mean by "would yield a great many
ancestors".  "Descendants", perhaps?

> Those of us who think that Renfrew might basically be right would note that
> in Ringe's phylogentic analysis, the Anatolian languages appear to be the
> first branch off from *PIE.  This means that either the rest of *PIE (pre
> German, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Celtic,...) left the Anatolians (i.e., in
> Anatolia) OR the Anatolians left the rest of *PIE.  It's either one or the
> other, but I've yet to hear the reason it has to be one and not the other.

As was discussed at great length last year before the Greater Anatolia collo-
quium, the Ringe-Taylor-Warnow cladistic tree is fundamentally flawed in that
one of the characteristics used to generate it is equivalent to "Anatolian
branched off first".  So it is irrelevant to the question of when who left who.

								Rich Alderson


From bronto at pobox.com  Wed Apr 11 02:20:31 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:20:31 -0700
Subject: Sabell*
Message-ID: <TUE.10.APR.2001.192031.0700.>

Rich Alderson wrote:
> On another note:  Recently I ran across the term Sabellic
> as a cover for what I was taught to think of as Umbrian. . . .
> Is Sabellic even used by anyone other than the single
> author in whose work I encountered it?

For whatever it's worth, L.R.Palmer <The Latin Language> (1954) says:
"In addition to Oscan and Umbrian we have some slight evidence of the
dialects of the lesser tribes of central Italy which are sometimes
conveniently grouped under the name `Sabellian'.  These include the
dialects of the Paeligni, the Parrucini, and the Vestini, all of which
closely resemble Oscan."

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 11 08:00:06 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:00:06 +0100
Subject: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
In-Reply-To: <200104052332.TAA19051@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.090006.0100.>

--On Thursday, April 5, 2001 7:32 pm -0400 Rich Alderson
<alderson+mail at panix.com> wrote:

> The editors of the LINGUIST List are working on adding Ethnologue-style
> classi- fications of various extinct languages to their database of
> languages.  They classify Carian as "Unknown, possibly IE" and Sidetic as
> "Unknown".

> Have Shevoroshkin's decipherments of these two languages as Anatolian IE
> been rejected by the profession?  Or should these classifications be
> updated to read "IE, Anatolian"?

According to all the reliable sources I have ever seen, Carian is so
sparsely recorded that no certain conclusions can be drawn about its
affiliations at all.  It is widely suspected of being IE, but no one is
sure about this.  A further assignment to Anatolian is highly speculative,
and based on nothing more than its geographical position and the evidence
of a few names.  As for Sidetic, this is even more sparsely recorded, and
nobody is eager to draw any conclusions at all.  So, yes; I don't think
Shevoroshkin's proposals command any great assent.

> On another note:  Recently I ran across the term Sabellic as a cover for
> what I was taught to think of as Umbrian.  The LINGUIST classification
> uses only the term Umbrian.  Which is term more current?  Is Sabellic
> even used by anyone other than the single author in whose work I
> encountered it?

The label 'Sabellian' (always in this form, in my experience) is a synonym
for 'Osco-Umbrian', and it denotes this particular branch of Italic --
though a few linguists use it more narrowly, to label a subgroup of
Osco-Umbrian.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From alfrizza at libero.it  Wed Apr 11 18:46:10 2001
From: alfrizza at libero.it (el_risa)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 20:46:10 +0200
Subject: R: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
Message-ID: <WED.11.APR.2001.204610.0200.>

> The editors of the LINGUIST List are working on adding Ethnologue-style
> classi-fications of various extinct languages to their database of languages.
> They classify Carian as "Unknown, possibly IE" and Sidetic as "Unknown".

> Have Shevoroshkin's decipherments of these two languages as Anatolian IE
> been rejected by the profession?

Not at all!
The latest studies are giving more and more positive evidences.
About Carian (I don't have much news about Sidetic or Pisidic, but thy are
still considered of the anatolian luwian group with cuneiform and
hierogliphic luwian, lycian and mylian) just see the works by Adiego-Lajara
(the last "decipherer"), Studia Carica, Barcellona 1993; or the
contributions in "La decifrazione del Cario, first internation symposioum,
may 1993, Roma", Roma 1994; or the 1998 volume of "Kadmos", n. 37, with the
papers of the "Colloquium caricum".

>From the contribution of Carruba (colloquium caricum) I give you those tables:

Noun:
Nom: 0 (zero) [other anatolian language, -s]

Acc.: -n [luwian -n]

Gen.: -s' (s with an acute accent) [hittite -as, IE *-os; but languages of
the luwian group generally form genetives with a derivational adjectival
suffix, as luw. -assi-, the declension agreeing with the noun modified]

Dat.: -o

The suffix -s-/-si- (luwian -assi-), -un (luwian -wanni-), -(a)d$- (d$=
"delta") (hittite -(a)nt-)

Demonstrative:
sas (Nom) san/snn (Acc.) (Luwian zas - zan)

Enclitic particle -xi (x= greek ch) (lydian -k, latin -que)

Alfredo P Rizza

A-??r lugal
A-al-pa-ra-a-da-as
?nsi a-?ur.net


From info at wordsmith.org  Sat Apr 14 14:10:33 2001
From: info at wordsmith.org (Wordsmith . Org)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 10:10:33 -0400
Subject: Online Chat on History of English
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.101033.0400.>

Announcing online chat with Joseph Pickett, Executive Editor of the American
Heritage Dictionary on April 18, 2001 at 8 PM EDT (GMT -4). The topic of the
chat is "History of English." For more details or to join the chat, visit
http://wordsmith.org/chat

While you are there, read the transcripts of previous chats as well.


From spanta at freenet.uz  Thu Apr 12 04:53:16 2001
From: spanta at freenet.uz (Rustam Abdukamilov)
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:53:16 +0500
Subject: Avestan Conference at Uzbekistan
Message-ID: <THU.12.APR.2001.095316.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Replies to this message will go to the conference organizers rather than the
  Indo-European list.
  -- rma ]

Dear Sir/Madam,

It is the great honour to us to invite You to participate on

 The International Scientific Avesta Conference,
 Tashkent, Uzbekistan, September - November 2001
 Sponsored by Republic of Uzbekistan.

This Conference is arranged to follow up on the researches of the world
Avestology.

The aim is to promote knowledge and understanding of all aspects of
Avestan Civilization, and Mazdayasna and Zarathushtra Teaching from
the Gathas, the rest of the Avesta, the Darga Upayana - the continuation
of the Avesta Literature through the present, and Traditions as they have
evolved in the last four thousand years.
	
In the linguistic aspects, it is the investigations of the genesis and
evolution of the language from the Old Indo-European one to Avestan
Manuscripts' one.

In the archaeological aspects, it is the investigations of the Indo-
European Origin Home and Central Asia, Oxus and Yaxartes basins.

If You can participate to this Conference, please send Your consent
urgently to our both e-addresses:
armati at silg.org
spanta at freenet.uz
(because one of them can be out sometimes)

Then please send Your report's theme.

For more information, please contact with us.

 Warmest wishes

Rustam T. Abdukamilov,
Avestologist of Academy of Science of Republic of Uzbekistan,
Lecturer of the Avesta Language and the Gathas at
 the National University of Uzbekistan
 and at the Tashkent State Institute of the Oriental Studies,
Member of the Organizing Committee of the International Science
 Avesta Conference, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 2001.


From hans.alscher at noel.gv.at  Fri Apr 13 12:25:05 2001
From: hans.alscher at noel.gv.at (Mag. Hans-Joachim Alscher)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 14:25:05 +0200
Subject: Carian and Sidetic; Sabellic
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.142505.0200.>

Cf.  http://www.hist.unizh.ch/ag/Kleinasien/Graphics/bilingueframe.html ;

 "Zum Stand der Entzifferung des Karischen", in Colloquium Caricum. Akten der
Internationalen Tagung: "Die    karisch-griechische Bilingue von Kaunos"
(Feusisberg, CH: 31.-10.- 1.11.1997). Kadmos 37 (1998) 47-56. ;

Eichner, Heiner (H) Kleinere indogermanisch-anatolische Sprachen: Karisch,
Sidetisch,
Pisidisch (E) ... 2 st PS
at http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/curric/idg-ws95.html#Wien

Larry Trask schrieb:

[ moderator snip ]

> According to all the reliable sources I have ever seen, Carian is so
> sparsely recorded that no certain conclusions can be drawn about its
> affiliations at all.  It is widely suspected of being IE, but no one is
> sure about this.  A further assignment to Anatolian is highly speculative,
> and based on nothing more than its geographical position and the evidence
> of a few names.  As for Sidetic, this is even more sparsely recorded, and
> nobody is eager to draw any conclusions at all.  So, yes; I don't think
> Shevoroshkin's proposals command any great assent.

[ moderator snip ]

--
Mit freundlichen Gr??en,

Mag. Hans-Joachim Alscher
Bibliotheksdirektor-Stellvertreter

Nieder?sterreichische Landesbibliothek
Franz-Schubert-Platz 3
A-3109 St. P?lten
Tel.: 0043 (0)2742 9005 12769
Fax : 0043 (0)2742 9005 13860
Email: mailto:hans.alscher at noel.gv.at
http://www.noe.gv.at/service/k/k3/landesbibliothek.htm


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 15:54:51 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:54:51 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.105451.0500.>

> Witzel's article says the earliest stratum of the RV ("Level I") had
> no Dravidian loan words at all, and many loans previously interpreted
> as Dravidian are now regarded as ["para-"] Munda.  However the Munda
> etymologies are by no means certain, and there is a "Language X" in
> the background.

        "Language X" is precisely the (unsolvable) problem.  I would guess
that it, or its relatives, lie behind the retention of voiced aspirates in
Indic and the appearance, by fortuitous reanalysis, of voiced aspirates in
Munda.  But this can never be more than a guess.
        Retroflexes are not part of the proto-AustroAsiatic sound system.
(Neither are voiced aspirates.)  I have never heard of them occurring in
Vietnamese, though I cannot swear that they do not.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri Apr 13 08:12:50 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 03:12:50 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <E14mya0-0005DQ-00@poseidon.shore.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.031250.0500.>

>David L. White wrote:

>>Do the Munda languages have retroflex consonants?  That would surely
>>be convenient.

>Witzel's article "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan" [EJVS,
>http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501a.txt] notes that
>"...Munda originally had no retroflexes (Pinnow 1959, except for D,
>see Zide 1969: 414, 423)."  I haven't seen the references, but it may
>be relevant that Munda is related to Vietnamese (does that have
>retroflexes?)

	Here are my notes from Encyclopedia Britannica vol XXII. I know
just about nothing about these languages, so don't take my word on any of
this. My apologies are any typos

	"Austroasiatic" 701-03

	Important as a linguistic substratum for all SE Asian languages
	12 branches separated c. 2000-1000 BC
	Paul Benedict proposed Austric, including Austro-Asiatic,
	Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao and Austronesian

	Munda has has extensive Indian influence in its phonology
	--polysyllablic without tones
	Vietnamese has extensive Chinese influence, monosyllabic tonal language
	3 main subfamilies: Munda, Nicobarese and Mon-Khmer, 12 branches
	General phonology: voiced/unvoiced consonants, some pre-glottalized
	in Mon-Khmer, vowel system can be very elaborate --Bru has 41 vowel
	phonemes; nasal vowels, vowel length usually phonemic
	Viet-Muong is the only branch with complex tone languages, probably
	due to outside influence
	Simple 2-tone contrast is most common
	"Creaky" vs "breathy" (normal) vowel register is common
	Munda has extremely complicated morphology with prefixes, infixes
	and suffixes
	Munda verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, negation, mood
	(intensitive, durative, repetitive), definiteness, location and
	agreement with object.
	Derivations include intransitive, causitive, reciprocal and
	reflexive forms
	Vietnamese has practically no morphology
	Nicobarese is the only non-Munda language without suffixes
	A few languages have enclitics. Infixes and prefixes are common,
onlu final vowel and consonant are untouched. More than 1 or 2 affixes is
rare in 1 root because roots are usually monosyllabic. The same prefix or
infix may have many functions --a nasal infix may turn verbs into nouns and
mass nouns into count nouns. Reduplicationmay indicate plurality in nouns
and repetition in verbs. many affixes are only found in fossilized form and
have often lost their meaning. There is a special "expressive" class.
	SVO, no "be" copula. Ergative expressed as intrumental complement
	of verb
	Munda syntax is like Dravidian and is now SOV
	Much borrowing from Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, etc. Taboo replacement
	of vocabulary common

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 15 18:59:45 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 19:59:45 +0100
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <SUN.15.APR.2001.195945.0100.>

>  is there any convincing scenario for how the
> retroflex series became phonemic in Sanksrit from internal causes alone?

The distribution of the retroflex series is severely limited in the older
language:
(a) after a lost vocalic /r/ (which can often be established from IE
evidence).
(b) rarely before a lost /r/
(c) practically never initially
(d) after retroflex /s/, or as a substitute for it or other stops in certain
situations.  (The aspirate retrofelx t.h occurs almost only here in the
older language)
(e) in loan words

The source appears to be a retroflexion after /r/, assisted by the presence
of retroflex articulations in loan words.  I am sure this is disputable, but
it does not seem on the face of it unlikely.

Peter


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Apr 17 04:41:14 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 04:41:14 -0000
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.044114.0000.>

Patrick C. Ryan (6 Apr 2001) wrote:

>An alternative view might be that (agreeing with Miguel), Nostratic had only
>voiceless obstruents but that they patterned as glottalized stop (*b),
>aspirated stop (*p), glottalized affricate (*bh), aspirated affricate (*ph) -
>typologically, few problems that I can see.

Not being a licensed typologist, I must ask how frequently one finds a
system with two series of affricates and no plain fricatives (or just one,
if /s/ was already hissing around in this view).

>In view of the affricates in many derived IE languages, I am amazed that
>IEists seem so unwilling to entertain the idea of affricates as a part of the
>earliest system.

The same goes for plain fricatives. For decades we've been told that PIE had
only /s/, with [s] and [z] as allophones. How realistic is this? A language
with an inventory of stops comparable to Sanskrit ought to have 3 or 4
distinct fricatives in addition to /h/.

This brings up another point. What are "laryngeals" supposed to be, if not
glottal fricatives? How realistic is a system with 4 or more distinct
(choke!) laryngeals and only one oral fricative? In "real life", [h] is
commonly the last stage in the life-cycle of an unvoiced fricative. It seems
the pileup of laryngeals in PIE owes more to the methodology of
reconstruction than to the actual habits of PIE-speakers. Unvoiced
fricatives not surviving as sibilants in attested IE are reconstructed in
their terminal state and given a numeral subscript.

Voiced fricatives, if there were any in PIE, presumably underwent rhotacism
or fortition. OTOH if the traditional (Brugmannian) voiced aspirates were
"really" voiced fricatives, the transition to voiced aspirates in Indic
could be viewed as systematic substrate-induced fortition, if the
Munda-substrate hypothesis is in the ballpark. Hellenic would require a
similar step, but here the substrate did not distinguish voicing in its
aspirate series, so nothing blocked the new aspirates from being devoiced
(which happens anyway to the "old" voiced aspirates in the traditional view
of Greek).

>It seems to me that the fricative element of the affricates has become [h] so
>that the distinction could be maintained in the glottalized series but was
>lost in the aspirated series.

Under this proposal, either the fricative element must detach itself from
the plosive element and move back toward the larynx, or [h] must arise as a
secondary articulation of the fricative element which supplants the primary
one. The former process would require some serious lingual acrobatics during
intermediate stages. The latter process is quite common with plain
fricatives and motivates my argument above. But affricates, at least in
Germanic, seem to follow the reverse behavior: a plain stop [p] becomes
aspirated to [ph], then affricated to [pf]. Of course, as a native
Germanic-speaker accustomed to heavy stress-accent and non-phonemic
aspiration, I may be over-generalizing the familiar.

DGK


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 16:04:24 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:04:24 -0500
Subject: Anatolian Branching
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.110424.0500.>

> As was discussed at great length last year before the Greater Anatolia collo-
> quium, the Ringe-Taylor-Warnow cladistic tree is fundamentally flawed in that
> one of the characteristics used to generate it is equivalent to "Anatolian
> branched off first".  So it is irrelevant to the question of when who left
> who.

        Is this really an assumption rather than a conclusion?  That would
indeed severely lessen the validity of the resulting tree.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Apr 14 05:15:22 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 01:15:22 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Ringe's Tree
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.011522.EDT.>

Rich Alderson also wrote:
<<As was discussed at great length last year before the Greater Anatolia
colloquium, the Ringe-Taylor-Warnow cladistic tree is fundamentally flawed in
that one of the characteristics used to generate it is equivalent to
"Anatolian branched off first".  So it is irrelevant to the question of when
who left who.>>

I believe the problem with Ringe's tree is that it used reconstructed *PIE as
an anchor, which would violate strict cladistic theory, which doesn't allow
reconstructions to be used to define trait identifications.  And that's
because the data would totally depend on the reconstruction and the tree
simply would reflect the reconstruction.   The tree therefore can in no way
"prove" the correctness of the reconstruction, since it assumed the
correctness of the reconstruction from the start.

I seem to remember one of your objections was the use of a particular
Anatolian language, as the individual Anatolian languages reflect different
innovations (e.g., dorsal obstruents).  This goes to whether the proper
innovations and languages were used to construct the tree.  Correct me if I'm
wrong.

However, if one let's all that go, Ringe's tree places Anatolian IE as the
first branch-off from *PIE as a matter of mathematical parsimony, which is a
matter of strict and logical "internal" consistency.  And I know of no more
rigorous attempt to scientifically quantify IE relatedness.

And of course IF "Anatolian IE" branched off first, it IS relevant where it
happened.  Along with who stayed and who moved away.

If all this happened in Anatolia, then possibly it was PIE-minus-Anatolian
that took to the road.  And Anatolian that stayed behind.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Apr 14 05:17:33 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 01:17:33 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.011733.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....
> ... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.  Every
> one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
> would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.  Like Minoan, Pre-Pie
> would be indigenous.  But, unlike Minoan, Pre-PIE would yield a great many
> ancestors.

In a message dated 4/13/2001 6:35:15 AM, alderson+mail at panix.com writes:
<<I'm sorry.  I can't make any of this parse.  The Anatolian languages (in
the sense of IE languages spoken in Anatolia) are by definition not an
isolate, since they have known relatives (the rest of the IE family).

I think by "pre-PIE" you mean "non-Anatolian IE in a view that has Anatolian
branching off first", but I'm not sure where you mean to make it indigenous,
and I certainly don't understand what you mean by "would yield a great many
ancestors".  "Descendants", perhaps? >>

Yes.  Thank you.  Bad case of cross-wiring.

As to the above, what I was hoping to say was... that if you assume the
analogy to New Guinea's "1000's of distinct languages" could be correct, then
PIE or Pre-PIE (take your choice) could have been one of those "distinct
languages" in Anatolia.

(On this list the term "isolate" has been used to refer to PIE, with regard
its apparent lack of evidence of sister or parent languages.  A search of the
archives will pull up a thread starting with Roz Frank's note of 31 Jan 2000
and a good number of replies re-quoting her statement, "PIE... was a
linguistic isolate..." without objection. Technically in the broad sense, of
course, PIE has relatives.  But it seems that every one pretty much knew what
Roz meant.)

AND, if PIE or Pre-PIE (take your choice) is assumed to have been one of
those distinct languages or "isolates", then it would be no surprise that
daughter Anatolian IE languages would appear to be isolated (if not
technically an "isolate") and dissimilar from its neighbors.

My original point was of course that, under those circumstances, there would
be plenty of good reason to expect Anatolian IE to "look intrusive", but not
actually be intrusive.

By "indigenous" I meant that Anatolian IE would not have arrived in Anatolia
in that form, but rather developed there from a previous IE ancestor.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 15 15:44:47 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 11:44:47 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <SUN.15.APR.2001.114447.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....>>

In a message dated 4/13/2001 5:35:25 AM, sarima at friesen.net writes:
<<What does this mean?  Languages do not appear out of nowhere - they develop
from other, similar languages. >>

I think I'd better stop using the word "isolate."

I also wrote:
<<Every one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small
areas" would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.>>

Stanley Friesen replied:
<<Not really.  At least in New Guinea on can often determine some constraints
on the order of arrival of the various groups.  (For instance, the language
groups restricted to upland areas must be older than the one seen in valleys,
and groups with compact, more or less contiguous, areas must be relatively
recent). In any case, at most one of the language groups in such an area can
really be said to be fully indigenous.  All others have to have been
intrusive at some point in time.>>

That's not my understanding of the situation with "aboriginal" languages in
New Guinea.  I believe that most of the languages yield no comparative
relatedness to neighboring languages and that the explanation is that the
highly local isolation of these languages dates back more than 10,000 years.
Do you have better information?

I wrote:
<<Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?>>

Stanley Friesen replied:
<<My first guess would be Hattic. Or the aboriginal language could have
become extinct by the time of the Hittite Empire.>>

But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?  And assuming an aboriginal
language begs the question, doesn't it?  Any other language you find in
Anatolia could have just as easily intruded on Anatolian.

I wrote:
<<The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in
innovation in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical
range,...>>

Stanley Friesen replied:
<<Oh?  Horse riding, possibly wheeled vehicles (and later chariots for sure -
but that was after PIE split up) - these sound like innovation to me!>>

I've asked the following question on three different archaeology lists. I've
asked it of members of the team that did the recent gene study on horses.
I've even sent Prof Anthony an unanswered e-mail.  Here are the questions:

<< How many other instances of tooth bit-wear, bits, cheek pieces, saddles or
any other evidence of HORSE RIDING have been found in Europe between the time
of the early finds in the Ukraine and the clear appearance of the bit after
circa 2000BC.

Have any horse teeth been found in Europe after 4000BC but before say 1500BC
and what percentage show the stated indicia of bit wear?>>

The only answers I've ever received all say none that anybody knows of.
Nothing.  Zip.  Plenty of bones.  Plenty of horse skulls.  But nothing else.

What's worse is then when I cited bit-wear on teeth at Derevika I got this
back: "Actually you gotta throw the Derevika horse [bit evidence] out.
Anthony and Brown (2000) Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian
steppes, ANTIQUITY, 75-86, has C14 dates from it...  The most recent dates on
it put it up around the 1st century BC.  As they note, it looks like it was a
pit deposit that had nothing to do with the Neolithic levels of the site."

So now there's not even evidence in the Ukraine.  So, as far as I can tell,
there's no evidence of "horse-riding" in all of Europe much before around
1500BC.  If it came from the Asian steppes at that late date, it wouldn't
seem to have much to do with the initial spread of IE languages.  And though
the new genetic studies have located geographic centers of domestication for
the cow, pig and goat, the horse seems to come from all over the place.  And
now they're finding even more true horse bones at Catal Huyuk.  So there's
not a lot left to connect early European steppe culture with early
horse-related innovations in the rest of Europe.

The wheel just plain seems to go the other way.  The Near East, Poland, the
Danube, then into the Ukraine.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Apr 14 14:25:43 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 10:25:43 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.102543.EDT.>

I wrote:
> And adopting a language may allow a group to share an advantage - like
> farming, animal husbandry or metallurgy or other technical knowledge.  And
> when we see that advantage spread quickly, we might conclude that a new,
> common language - like IE - made it possible.

In a message dated 4/13/2001 5:37:03 AM, proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

<<I am picking up on your "new" idea.>>

Hardly new.  Not at all mine.
BTW Mallory describes the same process himself in ISIE, in the last chapter
around where he says the key to the spread of IE is bi-lingualism, but he
doesn't apply it much in his book.

<<To me, the likeliest scenario is that Caucasians, speaking a Caucasian
language with characteristics similar to Kabardian (reduced vowel inventory),
came into contact with speakers of a non-Semitic Afrasian language, adopted it
(mangled it, mostly); and that the northernmost group became Indo-Europeans,
while the southerners became Semites.>>

Just a comment that the notion is that the flow of ideas and know-how both
motivates and is made possible by a change in language.  So the whole thing
sort of pivots on what new ideas and things language has made possible.

So is the scenario above it kind of helps to ask why the Caucasians would do
this and what it appears they got out of it.  If you buy the idea that the
majority of modern Europeans are descended from a European paleolithic
population (not saying that you should), then what could have motivated that
early language shift?  Or did they bring it with them in paleolithic times,
meaning that Pre-IE got there soon after the ice-age ended.

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 16:42:57 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:42:57 -0500
Subject: Pelasgians, Greek /ooi/
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.114257.0500.>

         As for the Pelasgians being a "right fork" of the IE-Anatlions who
passed into Greece, if their language had phonetically aspirated /t/s (and
presumably /p, k/), which is necessary to explain how Anatolian /t/ could
appear as Greek /th/, would we not find "Chorinthos", "Pharnassos", and even
(farther afield) "Tharthessos"?  To invoke aspiration merely to explain the
Greek /th/ for Anatolian /t/ (or even /d/), conveniently ignoring unwanted
side effects, is not acceptable.  What language in the world aspirates /t/
only after /n/?  None that I ever heard of.  In any event, the Pelasgians
seem to have been a rather suspiciously well-traveled lot, for Pelasgian
place-names appear from Spain to Iran, and up to the Danube.  Is it not
likely that some of the more marginal of these were merely modeled on true
Pelasgian place-names, rather than being true Pelasgian place-names?  We do
not conclude that Mongolia, Somalia, and Australia were Roman territory
merely because we find them designated by in effect fake Roman place-names.
        How does Greek /ooi/ develop? (By "oo" I mean omega.)  I have been
led to believe that /troiaa/ is from shortening of earlier /trooiaa/. but
/ooi/ does of course appear in Greek, notably in the M dative singular of
V-stems.  Likewise there are cases like /ooixeto/.  What rule accounts in a
principled manner for shortening in /troia/?  /troo-es/ etc. is a C-stem,
which begs the question of what the lost consonant was.  In other words of
this declensional type (as far as I know) the lost consonant is /w/, but
/troow-/ (or even troosw-) would seem to be otherwise unmotivated.  (Though
/sw/ in an original /trosw-/ with short /o/ would make later long /oo/
regular in an independently verifiable way.  And perhaps, since /s^/ often
has secondary labialization, /sw/ might be a way that this could be borrowed
into a language without /s^/.   But I digress, however interestingly, or
not.)   The obvious (to me) candidate for Lost Consonant here is /y/, but it
is less than blindingly ovbvious why /trooyes/ and so on should have
developed in a different way from /trooya/ (or /trooiaa/).  I await
enlghtenment.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Apr 14 09:04:15 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 04:04:15 -0500
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F805y4FypKsEgJXOxJa00001d3c@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.14.APR.2001.040415.0500.>

	Could you elaborate on that with more examples? Are you including
"Mediterranean" substrate found in both Greek and Italic?

>Pelasgian loanwords are found from Persian to Sabine, and toponyms reached
>up the Danube. The language (or family) was not restricted to Anatolia. It
>was certainly not "Anatolian IE", so no particular affinity to Hittite et
>al. should be assumed. Whether Pelasgian should be considered a branch of IE
>at all is debatable. IMHO Pelasgian is non-IE, but probably related at the
>super-family level. A possible cognate pair is Psg. *wrod- 'rose' ~ PIE
>*H1reudh- 'red'.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From philjennings at juno.com  Mon Apr 16 21:30:26 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 16:30:26 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <MON.16.APR.2001.163026.0500.>

My previous email on this topic was almost perversely unclear about
"Huwarsanassans."  Of course it's difficult to be other than unclear about
what Kilday terms "a bizarre maze of contortions."  I shall try again.

I assume an original root here, very like "Rasna" or "Rasenna," the
Etruscans' own name for themselves.

On this root, an IE language has worked two changes.  (1) Since the
initial "R" is unpronounceable, it becomes an aspirated "Hr."  (2) This
modified ethnonym is used to describe a city or geo-political entity,
which is given the suffix familiar to us as "-assos" in Greek.  The
place: Western Asia Minor.  The time, prior to 1330 bce.

The result is a city which, if it had kept the name to classical times,
might have been known as Rhasnassos.  The Hittites came to know it as
Hursanassa.  The Hittites called the people of this location
"Hursansassans."  Or "Huwarsanassans," but I'd rather not dwell on that,
since I can't explain the "wa".

This is as if people walking out of the movie "Gladiator," in talking
about the war against "Germania," began to talk about those stupid
"Germanians."  In other words, the Hittites couldn't have been too close
to or familiar with the people of Hursanassa.  At least, Mursilis II
wasn't.

However, the Rasenna did not carry the burden of this Hittite name with
them into Aegean exile (1330-1180 bce), so at this point, the next IE
people they encounter, get a fresh chance to mess up their name, minus the
"Hu" and the "-assa."  This next group imposes a "tV" prefix that becomes
"Ty-" in Greek.  We see other instances of this prefix along the Aegean
coast of Asia Minor, in the names "Troy" and "Termilae."  I speculate that
this prefix means something like "speakers of ___ language", on the basis
of a widespread Anatolian word "ta" that means "speak" or "talk."

The resultant Tyrsennoi become the Tursha of the sea peoples who attack
Egypt, and the Etruscans of Northern Italy.

In parallel with this national career, the Suruda, mentioned with the
Hursanassans in Mursilis II's Annals, may be associated with another city
that the Hittites want to conquer, Sardis.  Some escape as the
Hursanassans do, become the Sherdana of the sea peoples, and the
Sardinians of Sardinia.  I am a little smitten by this parallelism.  It's
as if each folkwandering theory isn't balanced enough to hold itself up, but
the two theories together support each other.  In most cases, a fanciful
theory plus a second fanciful theory make for extra weakness:  here
there's something almost like what the physicists call "beauty."

However, the Attarimmans, third part of the original gang of renegadoes
mentioned in the Annals of Mursilis II, apparently drop from view.


From alderson+mail at panix.com  Fri Apr 13 18:08:38 2001
From: alderson+mail at panix.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 14:08:38 -0400
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <000301c0c233$fa031300$536263d1@texas.net> (dlwhite@texas.net)
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.140838.0400.>

On 10 Apr 2001, Dr. David L. White wrote:

[quoting Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

>> They have, for instance Abkhaz.  There is no problem with coarticulations,
>> as Abkhaz does not have /i/ and /u/.

> Yes, but is that in a one-vowel analysis or the two-vowel analysis?

There is no one-vowel analysis of Abkhaz; W. S. Allen analyzed the apparent
large number of vowels into a two-vowel system /+ a/ with large allophony based
on neighbouring obstruents with palatal, labial, or zero secondary coarticula-
tions.  Phonetic [i] and [u] are due to occurrence of /+/ next to a palatalized
bzw. labialized obstruent.

								Rich Alderson


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri Apr 13 09:03:47 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 04:03:47 -0500
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.040347.0500.>

	Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,
something else is happening as well that gives it a tap /-r-/ quality
	I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that there may be
some sort of hiatus before the second syllable of <writer>, <rider> in
English pronunciation that's not present in the US pronunciation
	Regarding the different vowel quality of <writer> and <rider> cited
in descriptions of US pronunication. Is this possibly a conscious reaction
to the spelling? In rapid speech the difference is either minimized or
eliminated.
	Other minimal pairs such as <bitter> and <bidder> are pronounced
exactly alike in US English--at least to my ear.
	Does this phenomenon exist anywhere in English outside of North
America and Northern Ireland?

>        But the answer is ... maybe, depending on what you mean.  The idea
>that American English /t/ between vowels (the first one being stressed) is
>pronounced as [d] is to some extent a British mis-hearing.  In speech that
>is not too rushed, there is a difference in preceding vowel length between
>things like "writer" and "rider" that helps (not always enough) to signal
>the intended difference in (phonemic) voicing.  In any event, it is always
>possible to slow down and say "I meant [whatver it was]", so that to regard
>this as a case of neutralization, comparable to final devoicing (but in the
>other direction) is not appropriate.  (As far as I know, no amount of
>"citation speech" pronunciation will enable a German to say "tag" with [g]
>instead of [k].)  Technically or phonetically, the sound is voiced, but in
>terms of the phonemic signalling, it patterns like a voiceless sound, which
>indicates that speakers are thinking of it as a voiceless sound and that the
>voicing is, in a sense, accidental, the result of it being rather
>inconvenient to stop voicing for such a very small interval.

>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 02:47:35 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 22:47:35 -0400
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
In-Reply-To: <002001c0c203$d42a3440$9b6063d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.224735.0400.>

At 16:18 10/04/01 -0500, you wrote:
>>> I cannot off the top of my head think of any examples from English

>>   Would an example from English be the voicing of intervocalic /t/, in the
>> speech of many in the US, in words such as "butter"; as against the
>> voiceless /t/ in the speech of many in the UK?

>        I meant examples of dialect mixture, not intervocalic voicing.
>        But the answer is ... maybe, depending on what you mean.  The idea
>that American English /t/ between vowels (the first one being stressed) is
>pronounced as [d] is to some extent a British mis-hearing.  In speech that
>is not too rushed, there is a difference in preceding vowel length between
>things like "writer" and "rider" that helps (not always enough) to signal
>the intended difference in (phonemic) voicing.  In any event, it is always
>possible to slow down and say "I meant [whatver it was]", so that to regard
>this as a case of neutralization, comparable to final devoicing (but in the
>other direction) is not appropriate.  (As far as I know, no amount of
>"citation speech" pronunciation will enable a German to say "tag" with [g]
>instead of [k].)  Technically or phonetically, the sound is voiced, but in
>terms of the phonemic signalling, it patterns like a voiceless sound, which
>indicates that speakers are thinking of it as a voiceless sound and that the
>voicing is, in a sense, accidental, the result of it being rather
>inconvenient to stop voicing for such a very small interval.

>Dr. David L. White

[Ed Selleslagh]
It may be another case of mis-hearing, but I (a non-native English speaker
very familiar with spoken Boston English) hear a difference between the t
(pseudo-d) of 'writer' and the d of 'rider': the d sounds more emphatic,
heavier to me. I don't hear the difference in vowel length.
I just submit this for what it's worth (1/2 cent?)
Ed.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Apr 15 21:40:29 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 21:40:29 -0000
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
Message-ID: <SUN.15.APR.2001.214029.0000.>

Steve Long (2 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Just a note.  James Joyce called "thou art Peter and upon this rock..." "a
>pun in the original Aramaic."

Getting linguistic information from novelists is like depending on Indiana
Jones for archaeological data.

>Whatever Joyce meant, there is a question among Biblical scholars which word
>Jesus used.  I see here "Along with petra, petros entered the Hebrew language:
>Petros was the father of a sage of the land of Israel, Rabbi Yose ben
>Petros..."  For a news story discussion, see
>http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/articles/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=1463.

This "news story discussion" is about as objective as Rush Limbaugh. The
essay, by one David Bivin, consists primarily of the ham-handed
rationalization of pre-formed religious viewpoints. I'll try to stick to the
linguistic issues. I have no particular religious axe to grind.

Evidently Jesus gave Simon the nickname <Ke:pha:> which is masculine and
presents no problem in Aramaic. In rabbinical Aramaic writings this lexeme,
written <kyp>, has a rather generic sense 'stone, rock' (count-noun) which
may be used for building, cooking, or throwing. This sense might well be
rendered in Greek by <petros> 'piece of rock; stone', which is found in
Maccabees. John is satisfied with this rendering (1:42): <su kle:the:se:i
Ke:pha:s ho herme:neuetai Petros> 'thou shalt be called Cephas, which is
interpreted Stone'. Matthew, however, has the peculiar statement (16:18) <su
ei Petros, kai epi taute:i te:i petra:i oikodome:so: mou te:n ekkle:sia:n>
'thou art Peter, and upon this crag I will construct my assembly'. The
discrepancy between <Petros> and <petra:> results from Greek grammar:
<petra:> is feminine and cannot serve as a man's name. The original Aramaic,
as reconstructed by Fitzmyer, had no discrepancy. Matthew was forced to use
<petra:> because <petros> did not reproduce the sense intended by Jesus. The
result looks like a pun in Greek, but in fact there was no pun intended, in
Aramaic or in Greek.

The reason <ke:pha:> must be rendered by <petra:>, pace John, is that Jesus
based the nickname not on current Aramaic usage, but on Hebrew. The lexeme
<ke:ph> occurs in the OT only in Jeremiah 4:29 <ba:?u: bhe!a:bhiym
w`bhakke:phiym !a:lu:> 'they will enter into the hidden places, and onto the
crags they will climb' and Job 30:6 <ba!`aru:c, n`cha:liym lis^ko:n cho:re:y
!a:pha:r w`khe:phiym> 'in the horror of clefts to dwell, (and in) holes of
the ground and crags'. By using this peculiar word found only in two dismal
contexts, Jesus likens Simon to a place of refuge to which Judaeans can flee
when their autonomous state collapses and things get really rotten. In both
instances the LXX uses <petra:> to translate <ke:ph>. There is no basis for
Bivin's contention that Simon is being compared to Abraham, or that any
connection with <c,u:r> 'stone, rock; divine epithet' is meant. Had this
been intended, Simon's nickname would be something other than <Ke:pha:>, and
there would be no reason for Matthew to employ <petra:>.

>Peter might possibly just been called Peter, as Petra may have already become
>part of the Aramaic language, and this would appear consistent with the naming
>practices in the NT, even nicknames, not being translated.

The appellative <petra:> might well have been borrowed into Aramaic as a
toponym or formant. But the only attestation I can find of this lexeme in
the on-line Jewish Palestinian Aramaic dictionary is <pyt'rws'ylynwn>
'rock-parsley' which is clearly from Late Greek <petroseli:non>. And if
"Peter" had actually been called <Pet'ros'> or whatever in Aramaic, why
would Paul refer to him as <Ke:pha:s> in two of his letters, and why would
John feel that any etymological note was necessary?

As for "Petros" being attested as a Jewish name at Qumran, or a rabbi's
father's name, this is not necessarily from Greek. It could represent the
Latin gentilicium Pe:trus; two of Bivin's citations from Qumran are the
Latin cognomina Magnus and Aquila. Pe:trus has nothing to do with Greek,
being a Latinization of the Etruscan gentilicium Pe:tru (from archaic
Penetru, as the praenomen Ve:l from archaic Venel). The Hispanic form of
Christian Latin seems to have confused Pe:trus with Petrus, as the name has
become Pedro, not *Piedro.

DGK


From karhu at umich.edu  Mon Apr 16 20:31:58 2001
From: karhu at umich.edu (Marc Pierce)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 16:31:58 -0400
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <21119152.3195282623@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <MON.16.APR.2001.163158.0400.>

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Larry Trask wrote:

> I know of no modern form.  The first name that popped into my head was that
> of Bid McPhee, the great 19th-century second baseman, who was voted into
> the Baseball Hall of Fame last year.  However, on checking, I find that his
> real name was John Alexander McPhee, and that 'Bid' was a shortening of
> 'Biddy', apparently a nickname conferred in those days on a player of
> diminutive stature (McPhee was small).

> Now, if someone will only tell me how the old-time third baseman Charles
> 'Piano Legs' Hickman acquired his nickname, I'll be a happy man.

> Larry Trask

According to "Baseball Nicknames" (p. 125): "Hickman was 5'8" and weighed
185 pounds.  He had thick legs like those of a piano."

Also, apropos "biddy," this is still reasonably common in some contexts,
e.g. youth basketball leagues are often called "biddy basketball."  Is
this perhaps a variant of "bitty"?

Marc Pierce


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 13 16:00:20 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:00:20 -0500
Subject: Indian Names
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.110020.0500.>

> My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only 100
> years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the ground
> above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright brick red
> and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most distinctive
> soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in general
> characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent of surface
> red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet properties
> that make it memorable.

> John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor, English
> Utah State University

            Well, I have seen soil maps of Texas, which appear to show
bewildering and difficult to describe diversity more than anything else.
And which do not necessarily mention color.  Maybe a field trip to the Map
Room is in order.  But I am lazy.  In any event, there is certainly a lot of
non-red soil around, and I find it difficult to imagine that the proposition
"The soil of Texas is (generally or universally) red" is true.

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 04:32:00 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 00:32:00 -0400
Subject: Indian Names
In-Reply-To: <MABBIJNNPBOFHEBNBMEHEEGNCKAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.003200.0400.>

[Ed Selleslagh]
I think you are referring to 'laterite', which is very common in tropical
rainforest, e.g. the Amazon and the Congo basins. Its origin seems to be
alluvial, but with most of its nutrients washed out: in fact it is almost
sterile, and tropical vegetation basically grows on top of it, rather than
in it, which is why deforested areas (which kills of the microbiological
life in the top layer by exposure to UV from the sun) grow back so slowly,
and why the farmland produced by deforestation is fertile for only a few
years (until the top layer has been stripped of the nutrients).
I'm speaking from experience in the Peruvian Amazon forest.
Maybe some geologist or agronomy expert can provide more precise data.

At 10:25 10/04/01 -0600, you wrote:

>My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only 100
>years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the ground
>above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright brick red
>and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most distinctive
>soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in general
>characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent of surface
>red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet properties
>that make it memorable.

>John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
>Associate Professor, English
>Utah State University

[ moderator snip ]


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 04:53:27 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 00:53:27 -0400
Subject: American River Names
In-Reply-To: <l0313032db6f87d7b3343@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.005327.0400.>

At 04:21 10/04/01 -0500, you wrote:
>If you add Runa and Atmara, spoken in a large area of NW Argentina, the
>number is much larger.

[Ed]
I guess you mean Runa Simi (litterally: Man('s) Language, which is the same
as Quechua, the Inca language, still spoken (at least among themselves) by
over 50% of the 28 million Peruvians) and Aymara, nowadays limited to SE
Peru (Lake Titicaca) and Bolivia and surroundings, but originally spoken as
far north as Cusco and Urubamba (Cusque?o Quechua still shows substratum
signs of Aymara: e.g. the rich variety of aspirated and velar plosives).
I've never met a Quechua or Aymara speaker who wasn't at least bilingual
(Quechua-Spanish; Aymara speakers in Puno are often trilingual
Aymara-Quechua-Spanish) - often with grammatical transpositions in Spanish.
Note that Aymara contains a large nimber of Quechua loanwords (maybe 40%),
due to Inca domination and the obsession of Spanish missionaries (and
others: my Quechua grammar was written by a French speaking Swiss monk
working in Lima as a Quechua teacher for missionaries)  with Quechua (If
you're a native, you're supposed to speak Quechua)

>These areas were the densely populated areas during colonialtimes.
>	Colonial Argentina also had close commerical and political contacts
>with Peru and Bolivia. It was under the Vice-Royalty of Lima and supplied
>horses, mules, dried beef, tallow and hides for the Andean region.
>	Massive immigration from Europe began well after independence and
>while immigrants did contribute to Argentine Spanish, they also continued
>to use the loanwords from indigenous languages.

[Ed]
e.g. the Italian tone and peculiar pronunciations of Porte?o (Buenos Aires)
Spanish.

>>Population density did matter in most of the Spanish Empire; note the number
>>of Nahuatl words in Mexican Spanish, as compared to the relative absence of
>>loan-words in, say, Argentina.

>Rick Mc Callister

Ed. Selleslagh


From bronto at pobox.com  Sat Apr 14 03:32:54 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 20:32:54 -0700
Subject: American River Names
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.203254.0700.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> Actually, Argentine Indian languages of the Tupi-Guarani family
> were the source of a relatively large number of loanwords --
> although not as many as from Nahuatl. Many are local words but
> others are universal.

Don't tease!

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Apr 18 05:40:13 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 01:40:13 -0400
Subject: Colorado,Guadalupe etc.
In-Reply-To: <000701c0c2d1$3a30bd40$cd0469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.014013.0400.>

At 12:55 11/04/01 +0300, you wrote:

>Just a wild guess, which, if there are any Spanish literary historians among
>the list members, could be confirmed or not.

>Isn't it the case that "colorado" was used as a more "poetical" synonym for
>"Rojo, bermejo etc., perhaps considered less elegant? Incidentally, in the
>political history of various countries (not only Russia) we have the more
>right-wing minded people grouping themselves in the "White Party" whereas
>those at the left would be the "Red Party". Well, in Uruguay and Paraguay we
>find "Pariido Blanco" vs. "Partido COLORADO". God bless,

>Cristian

[Ed Selleslagh]
I'm not a specialist, but I would doubt 'colorado' is any more poetical
than the other words. 'Bermejo' might be.

BTW I'm still trying to understand the difference between a R?o Tinto and a
R?o Colorado. Maybe 'tinto' refers to the water color (like in 'vino tinto'
= red wine) and 'colorado' to the general aspect of the river bed (e.g. the
Grand Canyon)?

As to the Partido Colorado: I GUESS Partido Rojo would make it look like
Communist or so.

Ed.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri Apr 13 07:59:54 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 02:59:54 -0500
Subject: Pecans
In-Reply-To: <001301c0c16c$18f1c360$1e2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.025954.0500.>

To get this back on topic.

	It's pacana in Spanish and (I think) pacane in Cajun French
What Native American language is the source?

They're very common where I live, about 200 miles east of the MS river but
they may a relic of commercial planting. We gather about 50 pounds of them
every fall from maybe a half dozen varieties.

>> Pecans are characteristic of certain watercourses in Texas.

>        This is getting rather off topic, but what the hell, until the
>moderator calls a halt ...

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Apr 13 23:23:40 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:23:40 -0700
Subject: Pecans
In-Reply-To: <001301c0c16c$18f1c360$1e2863d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.13.APR.2001.162340.0700.>

At 10:12 PM 4/9/01 -0500, David L. White wrote:

>> I think this may be a relatively recent change, due to overgrazing by
>> cattle.

>         Maybe, but I doubt it.  Some of those cypresses, out in what was
>Indian country till after the Civil War, are so large that they must be
>several hundred years old, unless cypresses are very fast growing.

If these "cypresses" are in fact the tree I know as the Red Cedar, they are
indeed fast growing, as they are common "weeds" in old abandoned fields
throughout the midwest.  (The Arizona Cypress reaches Texes, but barely,
and only in the vicinity of the Rio Grande).

Linguistically, these names can be rather amusing: the Red Cedar is
actually a juniper!

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Apr 17 17:30:51 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 12:30:51 -0500
Subject: Dr. White
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.123051.0500.>

        In order to meet a re-submission deadline, I am going to have to
vanish for a while, two weeks at the most.  So no, I have not (and hopefully
will not have) died.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Apr 17 09:45:21 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 04:45:21 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <001701c0c432$23df0080$cf2a63d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.044521.0500.>

	Isn't Vietnamese a real outlier among Austro-Asiatic?
	If so, then wouldn't Khmer and Austro-Asiatic languages from
Thailand and Burma be more relevant to any argument re: phonology?

>        "Language X" is precisely the (unsolvable) problem.  I would guess
>that it, or its relatives, lie behind the retention of voiced aspirates in
>Indic and the appearance, by fortuitous reanalysis, of voiced aspirates in
>Munda.  But this can never be more than a guess.
>        Retroflexes are not part of the proto-AustroAsiatic sound system.
>(Neither are voiced aspirates.)  I have never heard of them occurring in
>Vietnamese, though I cannot swear that they do not.

>Dr. David L. White

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 18 14:02:33 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 09:02:33 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.090233.0500.>

Dear Douglas and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 11:41 PM

> Patrick C. Ryan (6 Apr 2001) wrote:

>> An alternative view might be that (agreeing with Miguel), Nostratic had only
>> voiceless obstruents but that they patterned as glottalized stop (*b),
>> aspirated stop (*p), glottalized affricate (*bh), aspirated affricate (*ph)
>> - typologically, few problems that I can see.

> Not being a licensed typologist, I must ask how frequently one finds a
> system with two series of affricates and no plain fricatives (or just one,
> if /s/ was already hissing around in this view).

[PCR]
Yes, it is unusual. But I can tell you what I think may help to explain it. I
believe that Nostratic fricatives ([w], [s], and [x]) came plain or aspirated
so that there was only one voiced fricative, namely [w].  Why this lack of
balance, I cannot say. A part of the answer may lie in the development of [ph]
into [f]. Semitic and IE had different outcomes from loss of aspiration in
fricatives; while Nostratic [hw] and [w] both became [w]; [sh] and [s] became
[s] and [z] in Semitic while they became simply [s] in IE. Both [x] and [xh]
were palatalized to [?] in Semitic, and became [sh]; [x] became IE [gw]; [xh]
became IE [kw].

[PCRp]
>> In view of the affricates in many derived IE languages, I am amazed that
>> IEists seem so unwilling to entertain the idea of affricates as a part of
>> the earliest system.

[SL]
> The same goes for plain fricatives. For decades we've been told that PIE had
> only /s/, with [s] and [z] as allophones. How realistic is this? A language
> with an inventory of stops comparable to Sanskrit ought to have 3 or 4
> distinct fricatives in addition to /h/.

> This brings up another point. What are "laryngeals" supposed to be, if not
> glottal fricatives? How realistic is a system with 4 or more distinct
> (choke!) laryngeals and only one oral fricative?

[PCR]
Well, I believe that [w] should be regarded as a labial fricative, so there
would be two oral fricatives.

However, I also believe that there was only one 'laryngeal', that Nostratic
[h], [H], and [?] fell together as IE [x] --- the reason Nostratic [x] and
[xh] had to be transformed in [gw] and [kw]. With Nostratic [?], I am not sure
whether it remained [?] in IE, was also transformed into [x], or just became
[0].

[ moderator snip ]

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 18 08:08:46 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 09:08:46 +0100
Subject: baseball nicknames
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.10.10104161629110.24840-100000@pacman.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.090846.0100.>

--On Monday, April 16, 2001 4:31 pm -0400 Marc Pierce <karhu at umich.edu>
wrote:

[on Bid McPhee and Piano Legs Hickman]

> According to "Baseball Nicknames" (p. 125): "Hickman was 5'8" and weighed
> 185 pounds.  He had thick legs like those of a piano."

Many, many thanks.  I've never seen this book, but I want it.  Guess I'll
put it on my birthday wish list.  Unfortunately, the south coast of England
is not the greatest place for finding baseball books, but Amazon.com has
reached even unto the English Riviera.

Apparently piano-like legs are not an asset for a third baseman.  I recall
that Hickman holds the season record for the worst fielding average of the
20th century: he once fielded under .900 for a season.  Harmon Killebrew
was a better third baseman.

> Also, apropos "biddy," this is still reasonably common in some contexts,
> e.g. youth basketball leagues are often called "biddy basketball."  Is
> this perhaps a variant of "bitty"?

Don't know, but it sounds possible.  I confess I've never heard 'biddy'
used this way, but my American English is woefully out of date.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From dsalmon at salmon.org  Thu Apr 19 17:11:47 2001
From: dsalmon at salmon.org (David Salmon)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:11:47 -0700
Subject: Biddy (was Peter)
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.101147.0700.>

According to Webster's and my recollection of my grandfather's Texas farm,
"biddy" is a name for a young hen or chicken, I suppose the female
equivalent of banty, as in banty rooster.  OED suggests it traces to Gaelic,
not bitty.  Back when people had chickens, it could have been a good
nickname for someone who was small.

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Pierce" <karhu at umich.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 1:31 PM

[ moderator snip ]

> Also, apropos "biddy," this is still reasonably common in some contexts,
> e.g. youth basketball leagues are often called "biddy basketball."  Is
> this perhaps a variant of "bitty"?


From crismoc at smart.ro  Thu Apr 19 10:13:05 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 13:13:05 +0300
Subject: Peter (WAS: Italian as a "Pure" Language)
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.131305.0300.>

FWIW, Peter's Aramaic name was actually Shimon Bar Yona, "Simon, son of
Jonah" ( BTW, not "John" as some English Bible translations, e.g. the
Jerusalem Bible, have). Ke:phas and Petros/Petrus were nicknames based on
Jesus' intention to call him that. Indeed, some Jews, both in Palestine and
the diaspora, did use "parallel" Greek names or Latin gentilicia, but those
were usually either at the service of Roman authorities, or even Roman
citizens like Paul (us) whose Jewish name was Shaul/Saul, and these people
would, more likely than not, speak Greek and/or Latin, besides Aramaic. I
strongly doubt that a simple fisherman from Galilee would have been in such
a situation. I assume that Ke:phas and Petros prevailed over Simon when
Peter went to Antioch and subsequently to Rome, because those Christian
communities would simply prefer to call him that. Indeed, his companions
prefer to call him Simon, even after the dialogue at Caesarea Philippi (see
Luke 24,34; Acts 15,14), just as "Paul" was "Saul" in Jerusalem ( Acts
8,1;9,1 etc.) and "Paul" elsewhere.

Cristian


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 01:36:42 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 21:36:42 EDT
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.213642.EDT.>

I think it might be productive if we were to avoid building mighty theories
on a couple of place-names and ethnonyms.  The fact of the matter is that
"Pelasgian" is a hypothesis, and that the pre-IE, pre-Greek linguistic
history of the Aegean lands is unrecoverable.

All we have are some common place-names in Greece and western Anatolia.
They're subject to multiple interpretation, and none of the interpretations
is falsifiable -- which is to say, they're all meaningless.

It's irritating, but entropy does destroy information.  We can do a great
deal with archaeology, and with comparative/historical linguistics, but
ultimately one runs out of evidence.

After that, it's all wheel-spinning.  We should avoid hubris and simply say
"we don't know, and failing new evidence, we never will".


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed Apr 18 03:55:23 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 22:55:23 -0500
Subject: Colorado
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.20010413195101.36eff5ec@online.be>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.225523.0500.>

>[Ed Selleslagh]
>I'm not a specialist, but I would doubt 'colorado' is any more poetical
>than the other words. 'Bermejo' might be.

>BTW I'm still trying to understand the difference between a R?o Tinto and a
>R?o Colorado. Maybe 'tinto' refers to the water color (like in 'vino tinto'
>= red wine) and 'colorado' to the general aspect of the river bed (e.g. the
>Grand Canyon)?

>As to the Partido Colorado: I GUESS Partido Rojo would make it look like
>Communist or so.

	There is a Partido Colorado in both Uruguay and Paraguay. They're
both main-stream parties rooted in 19th century Liberalism. Ideologically,
they correspond to the US Democratic Party, Blair's version of the Labour
Party and the German Free Democrats.
	The "Partido Rojo", of course, is the Communist Party. And the
(obsolete) US term "pinko", is "rojillo"
	I don't see <<colorado>> as a poetic term either. It very common
among peasants.
	<<Bermejo>> is archaic and associated with the language of El poema
del mi/o Cid and other medieval works. There is, however, a R/io Bermejo in
Argentina but it may be from Portuguese <<vermelho>>
	<<Tinto>> is used for "red wine" in wine-drinking countries but for
"black coffee" in several tropical countries. In Costa Rica people ask
guests "?Le provoca un tinto?" when they drop in.
	I heard tinto "dark liquid", tinte "dye, tint" and tinta "ink"
often confused.
	In any case, I believe the name and color of the famous Ri/o Tinto
of Spain is due to mineral deposits in the water rather than mud --which is
characteristic of the many R/ios Colorados

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Apr 19 16:08:32 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:08:32 -0600
Subject: Indian Names
In-Reply-To: <001f01c0c432$f11b9720$cf2a63d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.100832.0600.>

[ moderator edited ]

>> [me] My "ancestral" home (remembering that, in America, "ancestral" is only
>> 100 years or so) is in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  The entire surface of the
>> ground above the river bottoms, which were sandy, was red clay.  Bright
>> brick red and as slick as a sheet of ice when it was wet.  It's the most
>> distinctive soil I've ever encountered anywhere, both in color and in
>> general characteristics.  Perhaps it's not so much an issue of the extent
>> of surface red clay in Texas, but its truly distinctive visibility and wet
>> properties that make it memorable.

> [David White] Well, I have seen soil maps of Texas, which appear to show
> bewildering and difficult to describe diversity more than anything else.  And
> which do not necessarily mention color.  Maybe a field trip to the Map Room
> is in order.  But I am lazy.  In any event, there is certainly a lot of
> non-red soil around, and I find it difficult to imagine that the proposition
> "The soil of Texas is (generally or universally) red" is true.

I agree that the majority of soil in Texas is not red, but we're not dealing
with soil maps, but with people's visual perceptions.  I can't tell you what
the color of the soil was in my Los Angeles front yard when I lived there,
or in Wake Forest, North Carolina when I lived there or outside the barracks
at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  If I wasn't staring out my front window
right now, I couldn't even tell you the color of the soil in my yard today.
By saying "can't tell you the color", I mean that it's all "brown",
"dirt-colored".  There's nothing to distinguish it from the soil color of
anyplace else I've gardened in, walked on, slept on, etc.  Except for that
red clay of East Texas.  It's distinctive.  That's my point.  Forget the
soil maps.  Look on the ground and see what it looks like, how it feels
under the foot, what it looks like wet, and then see how long you remember
it and want to talk to someone else about it.  That's the experience of the
Spanish who named the Colorado River in Texas.  They weren't interested in
farming possibilities in Texas, but in finding gold and heathens.  Brown
dirt is brown dirt is brown dirt when you're looking for gold or souls to
save.  But that red clay.  You remember it.  Forever.  It doesn't take a lot
of it.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 18 13:06:06 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 14:06:06 +0100
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
In-Reply-To: <l0313033db6fc7170f5c5@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.140606.0100.>

--On Friday, April 13, 2001 4:03 am -0500 Rick Mc Callister
<rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>	 Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,
> something else is happening as well that gives it a tap /-r-/ quality

Yes; /t/ and /d/ are phonetic taps (US "flaps") in this position.  They are
similar, but not identical, to the tapped /r/ of Spanish.  Tapped /t/ is
not infrequently voiceless.

>	 I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that there may be
> some sort of hiatus before the second syllable of <writer>, <rider> in
> English pronunciation that's not present in the US pronunciation

No hiatus, as far as I can tell.  But both are usually phonetic plosives.
The articulation of the plosives is so deliberate, to my American ears,
that they sometimes sound to me like geminate plosives.  This is
particularly prominent in certain words, such as 'ready', which in English
mouths sounds to me like 'red-dy'.

>	 Regarding the different vowel quality of <writer> and <rider> cited
> in descriptions of US pronunication. Is this possibly a conscious reaction
> to the spelling?

I doubt it.

> In rapid speech the difference is either minimized or eliminated.

Not in my accent!  Of couse, I come from the far north of the US, and I
have a variety of Canadian Raising.  The difference in vowel quality
between 'writer' and 'rider' is large; it persists in all contexts; and it
is in fact phonemic in my accent.  For me, 'cider' and 'spider' have the
schwa-like nucleus, and these words do not rhyme with 'rider' -- not even
in very careful speech.

>	 Other minimal pairs such as <bitter> and <bidder> are pronounced
> exactly alike in US English--at least to my ear.

Phonetically, yes, though the underlying contrast remains and can be
recovered at will.  And they can be distinguished even in rapid speech by
the use of a voiceless tap in the first.

>	 Does this phenomenon exist anywhere in English outside of North
> America and Northern Ireland?

Yes.  Tapping of /t/ is reported for a variety of accents in England and in
Australia.  Some speakers in England even have taps in words like
'nineteen' and 'thirteen', where I can't possibly use a tap.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu  Wed Apr 18 13:36:54 2001
From: hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:36:54 -0500
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.083654.0500.>

The different vowel qualities in <writer>/<rider> are not found in all of US
English.  They're particularly characteristic of, but not exclusive to North
Central and Inland Northern US English, and, of course, Canadian English
especially in Ontario and the prairie provinces.  In some variants of these
dialects, like mine from pre-NCVS rural SE Michigan, the contrast is phonemic
in open syllables (high/Hi), before /nd/ (round (adj)/round (prep)) or (kind
(N)/kind(adj)), and before /d/ (hide (v)/hide (n)).  In each of those pairs,
the raised-onset diphthong is given first.  I suspect these examples answer the
question of whether spelling is involved.

Herb

>>> rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu 04/13/01 04:03AM >>>
	Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,
something else is happening as well that gives it a tap /-r-/ quality
	I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that there may be
some sort of hiatus before the second syllable of <writer>, <rider> in
English pronunciation that's not present in the US pronunciation
	Regarding the different vowel quality of <writer> and <rider> cited
in descriptions of US pronunication. Is this possibly a conscious reaction
to the spelling? In rapid speech the difference is either minimized or
eliminated.
	Other minimal pairs such as <bitter> and <bidder> are pronounced
exactly alike in US English--at least to my ear.
	Does this phenomenon exist anywhere in English outside of North
America and Northern Ireland?

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed Apr 18 07:56:04 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:56:04 +0100
Subject: Intervocalic Voicing in English
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.085604.0100.>

> Intervocalic <-t-, -tt-> in US English is not just voiced,

No, quite right.   There are not two, but three differences in English
between /t/ and /d/:
   voiceless  ~   voiced
   aspirated  ~  unaspirated
   tense    ~  lax  (I hope I've got those the right way round!)

Intervocalic /t/ can be voiced and unaspirated, but it remains tense,
whereas intervocalic /d/ is lax.   Thus some speakers report that they can
hear the difference.

NZ-speak also frequently has this intervocalic voiced /t/, so America and
Ireland are not linguistic isolates!

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 18 14:20:05 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 09:20:05 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.092005.0500.>

Dear David and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 4:05 PM

<snip>

[DLW]
> I think something similar happened with the retroflex series in
> Sanskrit, for as I hinted recently, it seems there is no good internal cause
> for this to have become phonemic.  The "phonemicness" in both cases is, I
> suggest, carried over from sub-strate.

<snip>

[PCR]
I would differ here. The problem for Old Indian was that Nostratic [a], [e],
and [o] all became [a]. Obviously, this entailed a substantial loss of semantic
integrity. Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped
disambiguate somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or
[e]; in exactly the same way, dorsals were palatalized before Nostratic [e] but
not [a] or [o]. These were small helps to keep original CaC, CeC, and CoC roots
separate.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr 17 23:18:23 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:18:23 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.191823.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:09:10 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> My original point was of course that, under those circumstances, there would
> be plenty of good reason to expect Anatolian IE to "look intrusive", but not
> actually be intrusive.

-- no.  The pattern of relationships between Anatolian and non-IE languages
in Anatolia is that which one would expect from an intrusive language.

Eg., the pattern of Hattic loan-word distribution in Hittite/Neshite; and
Hittite can be shown through the historical sources to have replaced Hattic
in a clear case of language succession.

What's more, the further you go back with the historical sources, the smaller
the area covered IE languages in Anatolia; the replacement of Urartian by
Armenian, for example, and of most of the Hurrian-speaking areas by
Indo-Iranian. (Or Semitic, further south.)

The historical data doesn't go all the way back, but what we do have
indicates that Anatolia in the early Bronze Age was largely non-Indo-European
speaking; and that historically attested IE languages came in from the west
and east via migration.

Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian were
indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for these,
and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with similar biota.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr 17 23:19:45 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:19:45 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.191945.EDT.>

Incidentally, PIE does show definite signs of very early relations with
proto-Finno-Ugrian, which is generally agreed to have been located in the
forest zone of the Ural mountains.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Apr 17 23:39:38 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:39:38 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.193938.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:37:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> <<The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in
> innovation in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical
> range,...>>

-- ideological/cultural innovation is the most important type, and it
leaves few traces.  It's irrecoverable, save of course through linguistic
reconstruction.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 00:04:55 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 20:04:55 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.200455.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:37:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?

-- doesn't fit the evidence.  Hattic influence on Hittite bears all the marks
of a classic substrate language; and one with a higher degree of
social/technological development than its successor, at that.

>    Any other language you find in Anatolia could have just as easily
> intruded on     Anatolian.

-- no.  There are usually fairly clear indications of the direction of
influence.  The vocabulary Hittite acquired from Hattic relates mainly to
"high culture" items; government, urban life, religious cult, etc.  (Words
for throne, lord, queen mother, libation, etc.)

But the area that later became the Hittite heartland had had urbanism for a
very, very long time.

To suppose that Anatolian was indigenous and Hattic intrusive, one would have
to postulate a series of migrations and counter-migrations involving the
Hittites first vacating the area, losing their vocabulary for these items,
and then coming back to territory occupied in the interim by the
Hattic-speakers and picking up a different vocabulary.

It's inherently implausible; the phrase "Rube Goldberg" comes to mind.

A simple succession of Hittite over Hattic explains all the observable data
with much greater parsimony.  The alternative is another "solution without a
problem".

Hattic also shows some relation to the North Caucasian languages, which is
exactly what one would expect, since it's geographically close to them.

>   So now there's not even evidence in the Ukraine.  So, as far as I can tell,
> there's no evidence of "horse-riding" in all of Europe much before around
> 1500BC.

-- this is ridiculous.  Apart from the fact that radiocarbon data from the
Dereivka horse (the skull, specifically) dates to around 3000 BCE, the
domestic horse is widespread in Beaker culture contexts in Europe, 2500 BCE
and earlier, and throughout the Eurasian steppe zone rather earlier than
that, with full-blown chariots before 2000 BCE.

The spread of the horse of  course involved both domesticated horses being
moved, and local wild horses being domesticated.

> The wheel just plain seems to go the other way.  The Near East, Poland, the
> Danube, then into the Ukraine.

-- the diffusion of the wheel is simply too rapid to determine where things
started.

Again, why keep trying to torture the evidence this way?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 00:24:07 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 20:24:07 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.202407.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 5:37:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> <<The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in
> innovation in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical
> range,...>

-- precisely this model of language spread can be shown to have happened with
respect to the Central Asia/Iran/Indian subcontinental spread of
Indo-Irainian in early historic times.  IE languages are definitely intrusive
throughout most of that area, and the earliest recorded examples -- Vedic
Sanskrit, Mittanian Indo-Aryan, and Avestan Iranian -- are so similar that
the diffusion from the original core area must have been quite recent, and
hence very swift; no more than a millenium before the composition of the
Vedas and the texts of the Mittanian records, both of which are commonly
dated to the last centuries of the 2nd millenium BCE.  The earliest Avestan
material is around the same time, roughly 11th century BCE.

That means the Indo-Iranian language spread definitely post-dates 2500 BCE,
and is possibly quite a bit later.  Note also that the spread of the
Indo-Iranian languages was _not_ accompanied by any massive or unambiguous
upheaval in the archaeological record.

If a language (and subsequently language family) which originated on the
steppe could spread over such a vast (and densely populated and
post-Neolithic) landscape so quickly in the 3rd-2nd millenium BCE, I see no
reason to find it implausible that the same thing happened in Europe rather
earlier.

And that in fact best fits the data observable when the European area first
'comes into view'.

So the Corded Ware and Bell-Beaker cultures, and their successors, would
represent the Indo-Europeanization of Europe and the Balkans.

This explanation takes care of all the primary (linguistic) and secondary
(archaeologica) data we have, and is admirably simple; it neatly puts PIE
back to roughly the Sredny Srog-Yamna level in the Ukraine and points east,
and leaves no more loose ends than the accidents of evidentiary preservation
require and account for.

The only objection to it is that it doesn't fit some people's conception of
how linguistic changes -should- happen, which frankly doesn't seem to be a
very serious obstacle.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 18 00:28:27 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 20:28:27 EDT
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.202827.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/17/01 6:01:29 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> Just a comment that the notion is that the flow of ideas and know-how both
> motivates and is made possible by a change in language.  So the whole thing
> sort of pivots on what new ideas and things language has made possible.

-- diffusion of technologies and concepts does _not_ require language
shifts.  Changes in language are due, historically, almost entirely to
demographic and "political" causes.

There is no reason to believe things were different in prehistory.


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Apr 18 02:33:54 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:33:54 -0700
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <78.135891fe.280b1bef@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.17.APR.2001.193354.0700.>

At 11:44 AM 4/15/01 -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>That's not my understanding of the situation with "aboriginal" languages in
>New Guinea.  I believe that most of the languages yield no comparative
>relatedness to neighboring languages and that the explanation is that the
>highly local isolation of these languages dates back more than 10,000 years.
>Do you have better information?

There are many language groups in New Guinea, and adjacent languages tend
to be from different groups.  But many, even most, of the languages are
demonstrably related to some other languages, either on New Guinea or
elsewhere.  There are even some Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken in parts
of New Guinea. In addition Foley recognizes 26 language families, ranging
in size from two languages to 21 languages.  And there is some suggestion
that there may be larger groupings such as East Papuan and West Papuan
(though these are less widely accepted).

Foley's book is actually quit interesting, as it discusses patterns of
language distribution, with different families in the valleys than in the
hills.

>I wrote:
><<Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
>intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
>language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?>>

>Stanley Friesen replied:
><<My first guess would be Hattic. Or the aboriginal language could have
>become extinct by the time of the Hittite Empire.>>

>But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?  And assuming an aboriginal
>language begs the question, doesn't it?  Any other language you find in
>Anatolia could have just as easily intruded on Anatolian.

Patterns matter.  The pattern of borrowing, and the distribution of the
various languages, at least *suggest* that Anatolian is intrusive.  Too
little is known of Hattic to tell if it falls in the intrusive pattern.

>Stanley Friesen replied:
><<Oh?  Horse riding, possibly wheeled vehicles (and later chariots for sure -
>but that was after PIE split up) - these sound like innovation to me!>>

>I've asked the following question on three different archaeology lists. I've
>asked it of members of the team that did the recent gene study on horses.
>I've even sent Prof Anthony an unanswered e-mail.  Here are the questions:

><< How many other instances of tooth bit-wear, bits, cheek pieces, saddles or
>any other evidence of HORSE RIDING have been found in Europe between the time
>of the early finds in the Ukraine and the clear appearance of the bit after
>circa 2000BC.

>Have any horse teeth been found in Europe after 4000BC but before say 1500BC
>and what percentage show the stated indicia of bit wear?>>

>The only answers I've ever received all say none that anybody knows of.
>Nothing.  Zip.  Plenty of bones.  Plenty of horse skulls.  But nothing else.

Forget bits - there is also evidence, in the form of changes in equine
anatomy, for domestication at time *preceding* 4000 BC.  Now it is
possible, even likely, that it was originally domesticated as a food
animal. However, its transition to a major sacrificial animal, especially
in association with prestige graves, suggests that by the time the Kurgan
cultures have emerged it had changed its status to something more
special.  The general treatment of the horse in ritual in all of the Kurgan
cultures gives it a central place in their value system.

Perhaps riding without a bit preceded use of the bit?

>The wheel just plain seems to go the other way.  The Near East, Poland, the
>Danube, then into the Ukraine.

The earliest wheel dates are difficult to make into a sequence, and are
ambiguous as well.  Wooden wheels will not survive readily unless used as
grave goods.  Thus we are unlikely to actually have the earliest wheels.

One can at least make a case for more or less independent invention in the
Near East and the Danube area - given the radically different construction
techniques used for making wheels in the two areas.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Wed Apr 18 05:20:42 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:20:42 +0300
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.082042.0300.>

If an archaeologist may comment:

Steve Long wrote

> But again why couldn't Hattic be intrusive?

I accept that we are not (yet?) able to associate archaeological
evidence with languages. However, with regard to Hattians, it might be
pointed out that the Early Bronze burials at Alaca H?y?k (and elsewhere
in the central Pontus) have clear links with the Varna culture on the
Blak Sea in Bulgaria. The precise nature of those links and an exact
chronology is lacking, although there are many opinions. It would not be
implausible to suggest that the burials at Alaca represent Hattians,
since this is the very area, very close to Hattusa, that the Hittites
invaded.

I have often wondered if Hattic and the language(s) of the Gashga/Kashka
tribes were related. Am I correct in thinking that there is still no
evidence?

> What's worse is then when I cited bit-wear on teeth at Derevika I got this
> back: "Actually you gotta throw the Derevika horse [bit evidence] out.
> Anthony and Brown (2000) Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian
> steppes, ANTIQUITY, 75-86, has C14 dates from it...  The most recent dates on
> it put it up around the 1st century BC.  As they note, it looks like it was a
> pit deposit that had nothing to do with the Neolithic levels of the site."

> So now there's not even evidence in the Ukraine.

That would appear to be correct. It would seem that the arguments over
bit wear are settled, yes it was bit wear on the teeth. The one horse in
question is now dated to the Iron Age. If ever a horse had egg on its
face it was this one.

> now they're finding even more true horse bones at Catal Huyuk.  So there's
> not a lot left to connect early European steppe culture with early
> horse-related innovations in the rest of Europe.

These are wild horses, along with asses and onagers. They were hunted
for meat. Equids do appear on the Catal wall paintings, but none (yet
found) form the cental focus of a hunting scene. Wild horses were hunted
in central and easten Anatolia well into the chalcolithic period. They
then appear to have become extinct (I would suggest that the evidence is
somewhat scanty, but they must have become rare animals) and were
reintroduced fully domesticated.

Best wishes,

Geoff

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 18 13:25:28 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 08:25:28 -0500
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <WED.18.APR.2001.082528.0500.>

Dear Steve and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 9:25 AM

<snip>

[PCRp]
> <<To me, the likeliest scenario is that Caucasians, speaking a Caucasian
> language with characteristics similar to Kabardian (reduced vowel inventory),
> came into contact with speakers of a non-Semitic Afrasian language, adopted
> it (mangled it, mostly); and that the northernmost group became
> Indo-Europeans, while the southerners became Semites.>>

[SL]
> Just a comment that the notion is that the flow of ideas and know-how both
> motivates and is made possible by a change in language.  So the whole thing
> sort of pivots on what new ideas and things language has made possible.

> So is the scenario above it kind of helps to ask why the Caucasians would do
> this and what it appears they got out of it.  If you buy the idea that the
> majority of modern Europeans are descended from a European paleolithic
> population (not saying that you should), then what could have motivated that
> early language shift?  Or did they bring it with them in paleolithic times,
> meaning that Pre-IE got there soon after the ice-age ended.

[PCR]
As for what motivated the Caucasians to adopt a mangled Afrasian, I believe the
explanation woudl be that they were a dominant minority, and it was easier for
them to learn the language of the majority.

The advantage to them is that they were able to 'herd' Afrasians (i.e.
'enslave' or at least 'enserf' them) into a work-force that allowed large
accumulations of surplus production. I believe it likely that the Caucasians,
in their northern mountain-vallleys, had been animal-herders primarily; and
easily adapted to 'herding' humans.

I further suppose that the wave of small-scale agriculturalists that spread
through Europe were speaking a non-IE language, descended from Afrasian, which
was superimposed on a earlier version of Afrasian spoken by the
hunter-gatherers that preceded them there.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 20 17:10:11 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 18:10:11 +0100
Subject: Greek from PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.181011.0100.>

Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
from PIE?

For the later Greek period I have Geoffrey Horrocks' book, and for Latin I
know Baldi's book and Meiser's, but I don't know of anything similar for PIE
to Greek.   Any helpers?

Peter


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 23 02:45:20 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 21:45:20 -0500
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <001701c0c432$23df0080$cf2a63d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <SUN.22.APR.2001.214520.0500.>

	April 2001 Natural History (pp. 30-38) has an interesting article
"Deaths of Languages" (for amateurs, at least) on Crimean Gothic (et alii)
by Jared Diamond.
	Diamond points out that the recorder's informant was a Greek
familiar with Crimean Gothic, which was spoken by Muslim subjects of
Turkey. The informant translated the etyma into Greek, which was translated
into Italian for the recorder, who was Flemish. The recorder translated the
etyma into Latin and used Dutch or German ortography for the etyma. A copy
of the material was later published in France. It's amazing the material
survived at all.
	Diamond lists the following etyma --with Diamond's observations

ada "egg" < Gmc. ajjaz; note /-jj-/ > /-d-/
apel "apple"
atha "8"
boga "bow"
bruder "brother"
cadariou "soldier" < Latin centurio
furdeitheien "40"
fyder "4"
fynf "5"
geen "to see"
goltz "gold"
handa "hand"
lachen "to laugh"
marzus "wedding" < ?
menus "meat" < Hungarian me/n-hu/s
nyne "9"
oeghene "eyes"
rinck "ring"
sada "100" < Iranian sad "100"
salt "salt"
schieten "to shoot"
schlipen "to sleep"
seuene "7"
siluir "silver"
sune "sun"
telich "foolish" < Turkish telyq
thiine "10"
thiinetria "13"
thiinetua "12"
treithyen "30"
tria "3"
tua "2"
tzo "thou"

	I'm surprised the list is so readily recognizable --almost too
recognizable! The citations I've seen from Ulfila's Gothic don't look that
close to English, German and Dutch. Did Diamond just leave out the truly
hard stuff?
	Any thoughts from Germanic scholars?

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Apr 21 11:03:30 2001
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 07:03:30 -0400
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.070330.0400.>

I am not sure if "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com> is for or
against *gh etc being affricates. But I will use his post to to hang my
questions on.

> [...] A language
> with an inventory of stops comparable to Sanskrit ought to have 3 or 4
> distinct fricatives in addition to /h/.

Does that mean that Sanskrit itself `should' have had 3 or 4 distinct
fricatives?  [Nor am I sure what distinct means: Sanskrit had voiceless
fricatives produced at various places, but these where all allophones of /s/.
There is the sound commonly transcribed h, but this is voiced and results from
(Brugmannian *gh', and less often from *dh. Then there are three sibilants.]

>[...] OTOH if the traditional (Brugmannian) voiced aspirates were
> "really" voiced fricatives, the transition to voiced aspirates in Indic
> could be viewed as systematic substrate-induced fortition, if the
> Munda-substrate hypothesis is in the ballpark.

How do we explain Germanic? Or for that matter, Iranian where *dh etc
became d etc (at least intervocalic)? And if substratum explanation is
in the ballpark, why did the aspirated series go to a voiced fricative?
[in Vedic, this already had happened with intervocalic *dh in verbal
endings such as mahe (< PI-Ir *madhai), as well as all intervocalic PI-Ir *jh
and this speads to all (intervocalic) voiced aspirates in MIA.]

Comparative IE work usually looks only at Sanskrit because looking at
MIA doesn't seem to be worth the trouble [but this is not sure: Turner's
CDIAL makes it easy locate the data, and there are words attested in
Prakrits which are not found in known Sanskrit lit, at least if we exclude
grammarians and lexicographers.] However, substratum explanations
cannot really do that: Why should the said substratum conveniently
disappear, leaving Prakrits to reverse the whole process?

Regards
Nath


From bronto at pobox.com  Mon Apr 23 07:42:39 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 00:42:39 -0700
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
Message-ID: <MON.23.APR.2001.004239.0700.>

"David L. White" wrote:
> Retroflexes are not part of the proto-AustroAsiatic sound system.
> (Neither are voiced aspirates.)  I have never heard of them occurring
> in Vietnamese, though I cannot swear that they do not.

According to one of my references, the phoneme written <tr>
is a retroflex stop in southern Vietnamese (palatal in northern).

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Apr 21 11:15:41 2001
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 07:15:41 -0400
Subject: Retroflexion in IA (was Re: Munda in Early NW India)
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.071541.0400.>

"petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

> The distribution of the retroflex series is severely limited in the older
> language [...] (list deleted)

I am not sure how to understand `retroflex': Isn't that supposed to include
the retroflex sibilant (.s) and the nasal (.n) in addition to the non-nasal
stops? If so, here are the regular processes that led to them in Sanskrit:

ruki-s -> .s
n that follows r or .s, even with vowels, labials, y, v intervening -> .n
t/th that immediately follows .s -> .t/.th
s' (from PIE *k') +t(h) -> .s.t(h)
h from PIE gh' + t/dh -> .dh (with h -> zero, preceding vowel lengthened.)
ruki s + d/dh -> .d/.dh (with s -> zero, preceding vowel lengthened if not
long by position)

Only the last two have retroflexing environments that go to zero in
Sanskrit. However, they are rare in practive: the penultimate can occur
only with ani.t roots ending in *gh' (only a handful in Sans); the standard
examples of the last are isolated words such as ni:.da (< *ni-sd-o, nest)
and aorist 2nd pl mid, an infrequent category.

Other processes mentioned by Peter are irregular (may be dialect mixture,
may be prakritisms, ...). An oddbal is Fortunatov's law: l+t -> .t
[but there is RV galda] Its status seems to have gone back and forth.
I don't know where it stands now.

In Prakrits, -rt- sometimes becomes -.t.t- (and vocalic r+t can become
a/i/u+.t). But this is dialect dependent and it seems to vary within other
families as well. Similar developments seem to have occurred in Norwegian,
and this is why Hock (loc. cited by Oberoi) objects to attributing this to
`substratum'.

Turning now to substratum explanations:

See now T.A. Hall in Lingua 102 (1997) pp. 203-221: Contrast of
two laminal shibilants, one alveopalatal and one palato-alveolar (his terms),
is rare to non-existent and when sound changes lead to such a contrast,
a shift to a more stable system will follow. One common repair
mechanism is to make one sound apical. This is the explanation for IA
retroflex s.

It is interesting to see the evolution of the view on .s: Once upon a time,
it was considered to be limited to South Asia. Masica, "Genesis of a
linguistic area" lists only Chinese in addition. Hall makes gives a large
number of examples of .s vs 's like contrast, and deems it a `near-universal'.

Also, all the three sibilants fall together as s in MIA. If .s is due to
substratum influence, this is weird. The substratum induces a change, then
conveniently disappers allowing Prakrits (which one would to show more
substratum influence) to reverse the process.

Note also that -rt- becomes some sort of (apical) shibilant in (Late?)
Avestan: This suggests that -rt- was already retracted in PI-Ir and that the
development of -rt- to -.t.t- in MIA need not invoke the deux ex machina
of substratum influence.

----

Regarding phonemic status of retroflexes: First of all, note that s/'s/.s
contrast of Sanskrit is exactly parallel to h/s/s^ of Avestan. Nobody, to
my knowledge, worries whether Avestan has three phonemes here or
two. Why then should we worry about Sanskrit?

Secondly, I don't know how phonemes are defined in inflected languages:
Do we use inflected words or dictionary forms? Theory seems to dictate
the former, but people seem to use the latter to find contrasts. This is a
more serious problem in Sanskrit as the dictionary form is the stem, which
is, synchronically, a grammatical fiction, seldom uttered in actual speech.
An additional problem is sandhi: If two words are homophones in some
contexts due to sandhi, but not in all contexts, do they count for contrast?

Due to the fact that the conditioning environments for retroflexion do not
generally go to zero in Sanskrit, it is hard to find inherited contrasting
words.  If we add the accent, it gets even harder: For example, u:Dha's (masc.
nom sing of PPP of vah) and u:'dhas (udder, replacement for u:dhar/n, an r/n
heteroclitic) are not homophones if we count the accent.  But, if they are all
allophones, then .sa.tbhis (with six) and satbhis (from neut pres part of as <
*Hes) would be homophones! [BTW, note that Avestan has s^ for six, paralleling
.sa.t. So the word for six already identical to ruki-s in PI-Ir.] There is also
i.da:' vs ida:', but the etymology of i.da: is is obscure.

--

Just when I finished writing the above, I got the message in which
Pat Ryan wrote:

> [...] Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped disambiguate
> somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or [e];

Huh? You mean contrast of `Nostratic [o] vs Nostratic [a]/[e]' (whatever they
are) was preserved till the split of IA so the speakers could decide when to
change `apicals' to retroflex? Or do you mean PIE *o vs PIE *a/*e
(that is demonstrably false).

---

Regards
Nath


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Apr 21 08:11:56 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 09:11:56 +0100
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.091156.0100.>

>Old Indian ... *[a], [e], and [o] all became [a]. Obviously, this entailed a
>substantial loss of semantic integrity [in] ...... original CaC, CeC, and CoC
>roots

Trouble is, for the stage before Old Indian, CaC roots are very rare, and
CeC ~ CoC roots are morphologically conditioned alternatives.  Some writers
would only accept CeC roots , so for them your argument collapses.

Even if we do accept Cac, Cec and CoC roots, we have to admit the
distribution of them in PIE is far from equal, and so the likelihood of
ambiguity is small.   This would not be "a substantial loss of semantic
integrity".

Peter


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Fri Apr 20 20:15:34 2001
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 13:15:34 -0700
Subject: horses and bits
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010417190031.00c85da0@getmail.friesen.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.131534.0700.>

 Stanley Friesen writes,
>Forget bits - there is also evidence, in the form of changes in equine
>anatomy, for domestication at time *preceding* 4000 BC.  Now it is
>possible, even likely, that it was originally domesticated as a food
>animal. However, its transition to a major sacrificial animal, especially
>in association with prestige graves, suggests that by the time the Kurgan
>cultures have emerged it had changed its status to something more
>special.  The general treatment of the horse in ritual in all of the Kurgan
>cultures gives it a central place in their value system.

>Perhaps riding without a bit preceded use of the bit?

This is what I have been wondering. Didn't the Plains Indians ride horses
very well without using metal bits or stirrups? (The latter known to be a
later development in Eurasia, of course.) And if they did use leather
bridles, would that be enough to cause wear in the teeth?

Max Dashu


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Apr 20 22:02:16 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 18:02:16 EDT
Subject: Evidence of Horse Riding
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.180216.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/20/2001 1:34:26 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<< -- this is ridiculous.   Apart from the fact that radiocarbon data from the
Dereivka horse (the skull, specifically) dates to around 3000 BCE,... >>

As I pointed out, it appears the famous Dereivka skull (originally dated as
early as 3300BC) is now being dated to the first century BC.  I gave you a
citation that was sent to me which you have chosen to ignore:
"Actually you gotta throw the Derevika horse [bit evidence] out.  Anthony and
Brown (2000) Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian steppes,
ANTIQUITY, 75-86, has C14 dates from it...  The most recent dates on it put
it up around the 1st century BC.  As they note, it looks like it was a pit
deposit that had nothing to do with the Neolithic levels of the site."

<<Again, why keep trying to torture the evidence this way?>>

Respectfully, I believe you - if I am allowed to return the personal remark -
are the one disregarding the evidence.  If you note all my references were to
evidence of HORSE-RIDING in Europe and not horses.  The original post I was
responding to referred to HORSE-RIDING.

It has often been repeated that evidence of HORSE-RIDING has been shown in
bit-wear marks.  Mallory has often cited the Derevika skull and bit-wear as
his main evidence.  We on the other hand know that some "Corded Ware" folk
ate horses, and there is some evidence that they dealt in their skins and
horse-hair.  There is no evidence that they rode them or knew how to ride
them or could ride them at that stage of domestication.  Wild equines are
generally not easy to tame and difficult to ride, even when tame.

If you bother to read my original post with any care, you'll see that I
agreed with you that there is plenty of evidence of the horse in Europe, even
in Neolithic times around the Danube.  The problem is there is no evidence of
bit wear marks anywhere in Europe before @1500BC.  There IS evidence of bit
wear in Kazakhstan around 3000BC.  But, though there are a fair number of
horse skulls and teeth from Europe throughout the next millennium and a half,
none that I know of have ever shown bit wear marks.

The above cited report from Anthony-- which apparently says the Derevika
horse should be thrown out -- comes from the very person who first found the
bit wear evidence and the Kazakhstan evidence.  If you find it ridiculous,
you might want to express your disapproval to him.

Once one admits what the actual evidence is, there is no need to torture it.
It confesses to the truth of its own accord.

Regards,
Steve Long


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Fri Apr 20 12:50:32 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 15:50:32 +0300
Subject: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.155032.0300.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 4/17/01 5:09:10 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
> writes:

>> My original point was of course that, under those circumstances, there would
>> be plenty of good reason to expect Anatolian IE to "look intrusive", but not
>> actually be intrusive.

> -- no.  The pattern of relationships between Anatolian and non-IE languages
> in Anatolia is that which one would expect from an intrusive language.

> Eg., the pattern of Hattic loan-word distribution in Hittite/Neshite; and
> Hittite can be shown through the historical sources to have replaced Hattic
> in a clear case of language succession.

I am in no position to comment on the linguistics, but Nesha (Kanesh)
is  a long way from the presumed Hattic heartland (Hattusha). And
Kussara, if it is the east of Nesha (perhaps in the region of modern
Elbistan),  is ever more distant. Thus Anatolian Neshite could be
intrusive into Pontic Hattic.

Snip:

> Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
> animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian were
> indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for these,
> and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with similar
> biota.

There are no olives on the Central Anatolian Plateau, nor in are there
in Eastern Anatolia.

Best wishes,

Geoff
--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From philjennings at juno.com  Fri Apr 20 22:25:52 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:25:52 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.172552.0500.>

JoatSimeon said:

> I think it might be productive if we were to avoid building mighty theories
> on a couple of place-names and ethnonyms.  The fact of the matter is that
> "Pelasgian" is a hypothesis, and that the pre-IE, pre-Greek linguistic
> history of the Aegean lands is unrecoverable.

> All we have are some common place-names in Greece and western Anatolia.
> They're subject to multiple interpretation, and none of the interpretations
> is falsifiable -- which is to say, they're all meaningless.

> It's irritating, but entropy does destroy information.  We can do a great
> deal with archaeology, and with comparative/historical linguistics, but
> ultimately one runs out of evidence.

> After that, it's all wheel-spinning.  We should avoid hubris and simply say
> "we don't know, and failing new evidence, we never will".

My answer:

Thank you.  I am of course half-intoxicated by the loveliness of theories
that involve wars, exiles, and sweeping folk-migrations.
I will continue to provide a foster home for these ideas, but try to be
less noisy about them.

What I hope carries over from these speculations, is that proto-Etruscan
"Lydians" might have a place in the archives of the Hittite Empire, and
not so obscure a place at that.  Otherwise it's hard to face those who
argue that if the non-IE proto-Etruscans came from Western Asia Minor,
why is there no trace of them in their original homeland?

In regards the meaning of "meaning," we hard-nosed philosophers only
regard truth claims as meaningless if one loses all concept of how they
might be verified or falsified.  It is possible to conceive of evidence
for Etruscan migration claims, "Larth was here, invasion went wrong, meet
me in Fufluna," scratched on Egyptian rocks, for example.  Or evidence
for ancient space-gods.  Evidence AGAINST ancient space-gods is a harder
matter.  Generally the argument runs, "if we can explain everything
without ancient space-gods, we have no need for them.  Leave us alone."

There are a few things about the Etruscans, and the Sardinians, that
aren't entirely explained in the absence of migration theories.

As another aside, I see that "Common Anatolian," the mother language and
early daughter of PIE, has changed since I last looked at a glossary, and
the "talk" verb is now "*tro" with the "o" being a tiny little subscripty
sort of thing.  I report this as a general service, since I know how hard
it is to keep up with old unrecorded proto-languages.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sat Apr 21 20:23:30 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 20:23:30 -0000
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.202330.0000.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com (17 Apr 2001) wrote:

>I think it might be productive if we were to avoid building mighty theories
>on a couple of place-names and ethnonyms.  The fact of the matter is that
>"Pelasgian" is a hypothesis, and that the pre-IE, pre-Greek linguistic
>history of the Aegean lands is unrecoverable.

>All we have are some common place-names in Greece and western Anatolia.
>They're subject to multiple interpretation, and none of the interpretations
>is falsifiable -- which is to say, they're all meaningless.

"Indo-European" is also a hypothesis. All we have are some common lexemes in
a few of the world's languages. If the square-wheel sophistry of
"unfalsifiability" applies to Pelasgian, then it applies equally well to IE,
and everything posted on this list is meaningless.

>It's irritating, but entropy does destroy information.  We can do a great
>deal with archaeology, and with comparative/historical linguistics, but
>ultimately one runs out of evidence.

>After that, it's all wheel-spinning.  We should avoid hubris and simply say
>"we don't know, and failing new evidence, we never will".

Not knowing is usually not the product of "failing new evidence", but of
failing to look critically at existing evidence. The IE hypothesis wasn't
motivated by the "discovery" of Sanskrit, but by the critical analysis of
"familiar" languages.

Who has the hubris in this picture? The comparativist who recognizes the
potential of working with substratal material, or the reductionist who fears
monkey-wrenches being thrown into his super-simple model of the Neolithic in
Anatolia and Europe?

DGK


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Mon Apr 23 05:51:42 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 05:51:42 -0000
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
Message-ID: <MON.23.APR.2001.055142.0000.>

Rick Mc Callister (14 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Could you elaborate on that [Pelasgian substrate] with more examples? Are
>you including "Mediterranean" substrate found in both Greek and Italic?

Yes. Many of these are phytonyms whose discrepancy in form precludes direct
borrowing. Palmer cites Lat. citrus ~ Gk. kedros, li:lium ~ leirion, laurus
~ daphne:, vacci:nium ~ huakinthos, viola ~ (w)ion, rosa ~(w)rodon, menta ~
minthe:, and cupressus ~ kuparissos. The last two are sometimes assigned to
Latin borrowing from Greek (without plausible explanation of [e] < [i]) but
the Greek words are from substrate anyway. Lat. <rosa> has undergone
assibilation from *rodia, indicating that it came through Sabine (cf. basus
< badius, Clausus < Claudius). This agrees with Varro's testimony (de Agr.
III.1) that Sabine <teba> 'hill' is a Pelasgian loanword cognate with Gk.
<the:ba>, whose plural is the toponym The:bai 'Thebes' lit. 'hills'. The
same lexeme appears as Oscan *tifa (Tifata mons in Campania).

Lat. fi:cus ~ Gk. su:kon, though cited by Palmer (and Devoto) along with the
examples above, is probably from pre-Pelasgian substrate, since the other
examples do not involve such a severe vowel-shift. This lexeme may be a
relic of the pre-agricultural Mesolithic foraging economy.

Other Greek-Italic correspondences pointing to Pelasgian are Lat.
<pi:lentum> 'carriage, coach' ~ Gk. <peirins>, gen. -nthos 'wicker-basket
used on carriage' (for ending cf. Ti:ryns, gen. -nthos) and Lat. Na:r
(hydronym, mod. Nera) ~ Gk. Ne:reus orig. 'water-dweller'.

The South European Wanderwort for 'lead' probably started as a Pelasgian
term. Like <daphne:>, Gk. <molubdos> has several variants suggesting
borrowing from different substratal dialects. The original phonology is
disputed. I would guess *ml.ub- vel sim. with vocalic [l.] which resolved to
/ol/ in Greek. In the Italian dialect of Pelasgian I hypothesize reduction
of [l.] giving *mlub-, borrowed into Latin as <plumbum>. Similar
prenasalized labials in substratal words occur in <sa(m)bu:cus> 'elder-tree'
(cf. Dacian <seba> id.) and <simpuvium> 'sacrificial vessel' (cf. Gk.
<sipue:> 'flour-bin, meal-jar'). For initial Lat. pl- borrowed from ml- cf.
<place:re> 'to be pleasing' from Etr. <mlach> 'smooth, pretty, pleasing'. On
its way west, *mlub- must have undergone metathesis to *blum-, perhaps in
Ligurian. Old Basque lacked [m] and disfavored initial clusters, so this
would have become *belun, yielding Basque <berun> by well-attested
intervocalic [l] > [r].

At the superfamily level, the root above might be related to PIE *mel-
'soft', but this (like the *wrod- ~ *Hreudh- connection) is purely
speculative at this point.

DGK


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 22 02:04:19 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 22:04:19 EDT
Subject: Indian Names/Red Clay
Message-ID: <SAT.21.APR.2001.220419.EDT.>

 [David White]  In any event, there is certainly a lot of non-red soil
around, and I find it difficult to imagine that the proposition "The soil of
Texas is (generally or universally) red" is true.

In a message dated 4/19/2001 9:11:29 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net writes:
<< But that red clay.  You remember it.  Forever.  It doesn't take a lot of
it. >>

Yes, I think what you are saying sounds true.  When the US military trains
you in orientation, the first thing you learn to look for is distinctive
landmarks.  I suspect if you were exploring Texas in the 1500-1600's, you
were not looking to sum up your locations in some grand manner.  That would
be done afterwards, back home, at the promotional meetings.  What you would
worry about is practical ways of figuring out where you have been and being
able to remember and recognize it so you can find your way back out.  In a
territory without distinctive landmarks, it's pretty easy to go round in
circles, especially on cloudy days.  The red clay you describe would have a
real milepost.

I would not bring up the old point that we should not expect precise color
names, even at these dates.  There's reason to believe that color conventions
were not anywhere as standardized as we now know them.  Red could be brown
and vice-versa, depending on who was talking.

Regards,
Steve Long


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Fri Apr 20 04:19:23 2001
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 21:19:23 -0700
Subject: Peter
In-Reply-To: <000601c0c913$f10879c0$cd0469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <THU.19.APR.2001.211923.0700.>

>FWIW, Peter's Aramaic name was actually Shimon Bar Yona, "Simon, son of
>Jonah" ( BTW, not "John" as some English Bible translations, e.g. the
>Jerusalem Bible, have). Ke:phas and Petros/Petrus were nicknames based on
>Jesus' intention to call him that. Indeed, some Jews, both in Palestine and
>the diaspora, did use "parallel" Greek names or Latin gentilicia, but those
>were usually either at the service of Roman authorities, or even Roman
>citizens like Paul (us) whose Jewish name was Shaul/Saul, and these people
>would, more likely than not, speak Greek and/or Latin, besides Aramaic. I
>strongly doubt that a simple fisherman from Galilee would have been in such
>a situation.

I dunno about that. Mack's book on the Book of Q states that Galilee was a
very heterogenous society, so much that it was called Galil ha-goyim (i.e.,
'of the nations'). With a strong Hellenistic presence. And Nazareth was
very close to the imperial center Sephoris. I personally don't think Yeshua
used "Petros" but the idea that he had some familiarity with Greek is not
really so outlandish.

Max Dashu


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Fri Apr 20 11:22:19 2001
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 12:22:19 +0100
Subject: Biddy (was Peter)
In-Reply-To: <002d01c0c8f4$97e02b00$0100a8c0@David>
Message-ID: <FRI.20.APR.2001.122219.0100.>

This thread seems to be particularly anecdotal, so here goes.

Well (and 'infandum, regina, iubes renouare dolorem', as the pupil at
Westminster School is reputed to have replied to Elizabeth of England when
she visited the place and asked about a particularly whippy piece of wood
hanging on the wall), in my youth (1950's) our hens were 'biddies' - and I
was struck over the hand by the head teacher at my infants' school when I
gave that as the reply to where eggs come from), but this was in
Worcestershire, my/our use of the term at home was definitely Scots (or
north of Ireland), and the teacher was over-assertively from the north of
England (well, probably rural Yorkshire or Lancashire, so quite possibly
technically a midlander in terms of English English dialect) and she may
have presumed I was taking the mickey.

I had assumed the word was the same as 'Biddy' as a hypercoristic for
'Brid' or 'Bridget', though the links are not obvious.  I do not know if
the word is used in the north of England for poultry.

And is this thread a substitute for reading the works of SJ Gould, btw?

Some notable cricketers (eg Dr Grace) had substantial legs - and were
distincgtly on the large side too, as well as having heroic beards.

It may be that the overall aggregate of attributes is enough to deliver the
goods - after all, you are not going to be required to run more than about
60 yards (55 metres for those who have been dragged unwillingly into the
late 18th century from earlier eras) if you are batting.  So stamina and a
physique for running more than 110 yards/100 metres may not be needed.

Best wishes,

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>

At 6:11 pm +0100 19/4/01, David Salmon wrote:
>According to Webster's and my recollection of my grandfather's Texas farm,
>"biddy" is a name for a young hen or chicken, I suppose the female
>equivalent of banty, as in banty rooster.  OED suggests it traces to Gaelic,
>not bitty.  Back when people had chickens, it could have been a good
>nickname for someone who was small.

[ moderator snip ]


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 25 15:11:18 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 16:11:18 +0100
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.161118.0100.>

The standard position among linguists is that the languages we call 'IE'
are all descended, by various changes, from an unrecorded single common
ancestor, which we call 'PIE'.  That view was attacked early in the 20th
century by C. C. Uhlenbeck, by Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and by Antonio Tovar.
All of these denied that PIE had ever existed.  Instead, they maintained,
the IE languages came into existence as a result of extensive contact
between speakers of two -- or possibly three -- quite distinct earlier
languages.  The idea is that each branch of IE resulted from a somewhat
different mixture of elements from these two or three earlier languages,
and that therefore Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, and so forth, are all "mixed
languages" in origin, with no single ancestor.

I regard this view as perfectly crazy, but I'll be interested to hear any
comments on it.  In any case, I had thought it was dead and buried.

But I have recently discovered that a similar view is currently being
actively defended, not for IE as a whole, but for Celtic.  Almost all the
proponents appear to be archaeologists, though there is perhaps a Celticist
or two among them.

The idea this time is as follows.  A vanilla variety of Indo-European
spread across a huge area of Europe something like 7000 years ago, and then
stayed put.  Over a period of 4000 years or more, this vanilla IE
interacted with a variety of local non-IE languages, and the resulting
speech varieties interacted with one another.  As a result, a group of very
similar languages emerged separately in various parts of Europe.  And these
were the Celtic languages.  In other words, the Celtic languages arose by
'crystallization' out of what was originally a more diverse linguistic
position.  Accordingly, Proto-Celtic never existed, and the similarities
among the several Celtic languages result as much from convergence (from
interaction) as from common ancestry.

I also regard this view as perfectly crazy, but again I'll be glad to hear
any comments.

A version of this idea is warmly presented by the archaeologist Colin
Renfrew on pp. 244-247 of his 1987 book Archaeology and Language.  Renfrew
cites, in apparent support, the archaeologist Christopher Hawkes and the
Celticist M. Dillon.  A similar position is defended with some vigor by the
archaeologist Barry Cunliffe on pp. 294-297 of his new (2001) book Facing
the Ocean, where he suggests that Celtic, or at least what he calls
'Atlantic Celtic', arose as a trade language, a lingua franca.
I have corresponded with Professor Cunliffe, and he confirms that he holds
this view, which he ascribes also to the Celticist John Koch, whose
writings I have not seen.

For the life of me, I can't imagine how such a scenario can be taken
seriously in the face of the very well understood and highly regular
phonological and morphological prehistory of Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)
and of the individual Celtic languages.  Nor do I understand how a trade
language, or any sort of mixed language, could have retained so much of the
elaborate PIE morphology, while at the same time introducing such
picturesque novelties as the initial consonant mutations -- not to mention
the Old Irish verbal system.

Interestingly, the one person I have found who has dismissed this view as
wholly untenable, on purely linguistic grounds, is another archaeologist:
J. P. Mallory, in note 19 on p. 274 of his 1989 book In Search of the
Indo-Europeans -- and again, this time with a splendid linguistic example,
on p. 101 of J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams (1997), The Encyclopedia of
Indo-European Culture.  Mallory wholeheartedly endorses the view that
Proto-Celtic existed, and that it can hardly be dated earlier than about
1200 BC, given the great similarities among the earliest known Celtic
languages.

Any comments?  Anybody think this 'crystallization *in situ*' account of
Celtic origins is linguistically plausible?  I'm just flabbergasted.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From evenstar at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Apr 25 13:51:18 2001
From: evenstar at mail.utexas.edu (Shilpi Misty Bhadra)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 08:51:18 -0500
Subject: Greek from PIE
In-Reply-To: <001401c0c9bc$de362960$246b073e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.085118.0500.>

At 06:10 PM 4/20/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
>from PIE?

>For the later Greek period I have Geoffrey Horrocks' book, and for Latin I
>know Baldi's book and Meiser's, but I don't know of anything similar for PIE
>to Greek.   Any helpers?

>Peter

Dear Peter,
	Have you looked at the following:
1) Andrew Sihler - New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1995)
2) Carl Darling Buck - Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1933)
3) HelmutRix -  Historische Grammatik des Griechischen (1976). Buck does
not include treatment of laryngeals, but Sihler and Rix do.

Shilpi Misty Bhadra
University of Texas at Austin
Ancient History, Classics, and Humanities (focus: Indo-European Studies)
senior undergraduate
evenstar at mail.utexas.edu
512-320-0229 (ph)
512-476-3367 (fax)


From tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu  Wed Apr 25 21:14:52 2001
From: tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Thomas McFadden)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:14:52 -0400
Subject: Greek from PIE
In-Reply-To: <001401c0c9bc$de362960$246b073e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.171452.0400.>

Andrew Sihler's New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, OUP (1995)
is certainly very good for this.

On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, petegray wrote:

> Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
> from PIE?

> For the later Greek period I have Geoffrey Horrocks' book, and for Latin I
> know Baldi's book and Meiser's, but I don't know of anything similar for PIE
> to Greek.   Any helpers?


From stevegus at aye.net  Wed Apr 25 02:26:28 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 22:26:28 -0400
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.222628.0400.>

Rick McCallister wrote:

> I'm surprised the list is so readily recognizable --almost too
> recognizable! The citations I've seen from Ulfila's Gothic don't look that
> close to English, German and Dutch. Did Diamond just leave out the truly
> hard stuff?
> Any thoughts from Germanic scholars?

De Busbecq's account of Crimean Gothic is online at:

http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/germ/got/krimgot/krimg001.htm

I suspect that orthography makes all the difference.  Ulfilas' Gothic was
written in an alphabet he cobbled together himself, and what we usually read
of it is a Latin transliteration.  Some of Ulfilas' writing habits,
especially as they involved the digraphs /ai/ and /au/, are sources of
perennial controversy.

I suspect that De Busbecq shoehorned some of the Gothic he learned into
familiar speech and writing habits, and it's occasionally just as hard to
figure out what the sounds were behind what he preserved in his account.

--
What the world needs is another great war to kill off a generation of
overachievers.

Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu  Wed Apr 25 21:31:15 2001
From: tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Thomas McFadden)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:31:15 -0400
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <l03130359b70942ceeb0b@[209.147.211.21]>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.173115.0400.>

I think some items have been left off that are a little tough (at the
moment i can only think of gadeltha = pulchra), and there has been some
speculation that Busbecq, the Dutch guy who recorded the stuff, was
influenced a bit by the corresponding words in Dutch and German in the way
he wrote down what he heard, i.e. he made them look a little more like
Dutch and German than they really were.  i dont know enough to have an
opinion one way or the other on that speculation.  in any case, there's a
book by Stearns that goes through everything Busbecq
brought back in some detail and treats all the earlier literature on it as
well.  it's a small corpus, so every word gets discussed.

McDonald Stearns, Jr.
Crimean gothic: analysis and etymology of the corpus, Anma Libri 1978

also, i think the gloss for geen should be "to go".

> geen "to see"

> 	I'm surprised the list is so readily recognizable --almost too
> recognizable! The citations I've seen from Ulfila's Gothic don't look that
> close to English, German and Dutch. Did Diamond just leave out the truly
> hard stuff?
> 	Any thoughts from Germanic scholars?

> Rick Mc Callister
> W-1634
> Mississippi University for Women
> Columbus MS 39701


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Apr 25 02:15:29 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 21:15:29 -0500
Subject: Retroflexion in IA (was Re: Munda in Early NW India)
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.211529.0500.>

> Just when I finished writing the above, I got the message in which
> Pat Ryan wrote:

>> [...] Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped disambiguate
>> somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or [e];

> Huh? You mean contrast of `Nostratic [o] vs Nostratic [a]/[e]' (whatever they
> are) was preserved till the split of IA so the speakers could decide when to
> change `apicals' to retroflex? Or do you mean PIE *o vs PIE *a/*e (that is
> demonstrably false).

        Just a brief note before returning to pretending to be dead ...
        How is it, if dentals before or possibly after /o/ in PIE
(presumably Nostratic had to get through PIE in order to arrive at Sanskrit)
become retroflexes, that PIE /tod/, clearly the ancestor of Greek /to/ and
OE /thaet/ (among others) appears as Sanskrit /tat/?  Would not one or the
other (or perhaps both) of the dentals in question be expected to become
retroflexes?
        Back to dutiful slogging ...

Dr. David L. White


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 25 02:46:11 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 21:46:11 -0500
Subject: Retroflexion in IA (was Re: Munda in Early NW India)
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.214611.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Further discussion of the Nostratic issues brought up below should move to
  the Nostratic list.  Discussion of Indo-European specific issues can continue
  here.  -- rma ]

Dear Nath and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Vidhyanath Rao" <rao.3 at osu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 6:15 AM

<snip>

> Just when I finished writing the above, I got the message in which
> Pat Ryan wrote:

>> [...] Modifying some apicals to a retroflex articulation helped disambiguate
>> somewhat since they indicated a Nostratic root with [o] not [a] or [e];

> Huh? You mean contrast of `Nostratic [o] vs Nostratic [a]/[e]' (whatever they
> are) was preserved till the split of IA so the speakers could decide when to
> change `apicals' to retroflex? Or do you mean PIE *o vs PIE *a/*e
> (that is demonstrably false).

[PCR]
I have a feeling you may not agree but, at least, let me clarify what I meant.

Nostratic had three phonemic vowels: [e], [a], and [o].

When IE developed from it, during a transitional period, vowel-quality was
neutralized, and the semantic function of front and back vowels was supplied by
palatal and velar glides.

As triconsonantal roots were developed, the need for discriminating CyaC, CwaC,
and Cac semantically was ameliorated, and, in many cases the glides were
eliminated.

In some IE languages, former dorsal+y-glides became palatalized; in a few other
IE languages, apical+w-glides became retroflexed.

Regarding retroflexion, the four emphatics of Semitic (D,T,S,Z) are the result
of the same process; and Dravidian retroflexes are also, where original, the
result of the same process. Obviously, over time, some retroflexes originated
through proximity to other retroflexes or similarly articulated sounds.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed Apr 25 14:41:06 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 09:41:06 -0500
Subject: Munda in Early NW India
In-Reply-To: <3AE3DCEF.7C5DF1D8@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.094106.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

>According to one of my references, the phoneme written <tr>
>is a retroflex stop in southern Vietnamese (palatal in northern).

>Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/

In Comrie, the article on Vietnamese shows 3 retroflex consonants: /r/,
/tr/ and (if I remember correctly) /s/

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From bronto at pobox.com  Thu Apr 26 15:53:42 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 08:53:42 -0700
Subject: semivowels
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.085342.0700.>

Thinking about vocalic /r/, I got to wondering:
do sequences like these occur in Sanskrit?
	rya, krya, #rya, rva, vya, vra

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 25 08:26:31 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 09:26:31 +0100
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
In-Reply-To: <F253g3nOpj53XaDFuXC0000909d@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.092631.0100.>

--On Saturday, April 21, 2001 8:23 pm +0000 Douglas G Kilday
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

[replying to Joat Simeon's criticisms of some ideas on pre-Greek languages]

> "Indo-European" is also a hypothesis.

I'm afraid I can't agree.  IE has long since ceased to be a mere
hypothesis, and it is now a well-articulated and well-founded theory,
supported by a massive abundance and variety of evidence.  It would be
difficult to think of another linguistic theory which is better supported
by evidence than this one.

> All we have are some common lexemes
> in a few of the world's languages.

Hardly.  We have, in fact, a vast and interlocking network of data --
lexical, phonological and morphological.  These data mesh together so
tightly that no explanation other than common origin can reasonably be
considered.  This is the farthest cry possible from the case of a few
seemingly shared lexemes in some languages.

> If the square-wheel sophistry of
> "unfalsifiability" applies to Pelasgian, then it applies equally well to
> IE, and everything posted on this list is meaningless.

No; I can't agree.  Joat's point, I think, is that the hypothesis he was
complaining about is in no way forced by the scanty data, but is instead
merely one of a possibly limitless number of conjectures that might be
conjured up to fit the data.  IE could not be more different: there simply
is no plausible alternative to the recognition of a PIE ancestor.

Curiously, this unassailable conclusion was in fact rejected by several
linguists in the first half of the 20th century: Uhlenbeck, Trubetzkoy and
Tovar.  So far as I can tell, their "mixed language" alternative was never
taken seriously and is now deservedly dead.  But I have recently been
astonished to learn that a version of it has been revived, not for IE but
for Celtic.  When I get some time, I'll post a message about that on this
list.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Apr 25 13:55:45 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 14:55:45 +0100
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F281oUS2c1FpDK2QTH500009fb5@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.145545.0100.>

--On Monday, April 23, 2001 5:51 am +0000 Douglas G Kilday
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

> The South European Wanderwort for 'lead' probably started as a Pelasgian
> term. Like <daphne:>, Gk. <molubdos> has several variants suggesting
> borrowing from different substratal dialects. The original phonology is
> disputed. I would guess *ml.ub- vel sim. with vocalic [l.] which resolved
> to /ol/ in Greek. In the Italian dialect of Pelasgian I hypothesize
> reduction of [l.] giving *mlub-, borrowed into Latin as <plumbum>. Similar
> prenasalized labials in substratal words occur in <sa(m)bu:cus>
> 'elder-tree' (cf. Dacian <seba> id.) and <simpuvium> 'sacrificial vessel'
> (cf. Gk. <sipue:> 'flour-bin, meal-jar'). For initial Lat. pl- borrowed
> from ml- cf. <place:re> 'to be pleasing' from Etr. <mlach> 'smooth,
> pretty, pleasing'. On its way west, *mlub- must have undergone metathesis
> to *blum-, perhaps in Ligurian. Old Basque lacked [m] and disfavored
> initial clusters, so this would have become *belun, yielding Basque
> <berun> by well-attested intervocalic [l] > [r].

Right.  Let's talk about the Basque word.

The idea that Basque <berun> 'lead' is related to the Greek and Latin words
has been around a long time.  But it is far from being the only proposal on
the table.

To begin with, looking for Latin etymologies on the Tiber, we need not
appeal to a hypothetical Ligurian *<blum-> as a source.  If this sort of
origin is considered acceptable, then Gascon <ploum>, or a related Romance
form, will do as well -- and we *know* that Basque has borrowed lots of
words from Gascon and from other Romance neighbors.  Nor should we worry
about such a seemingly late borrowing.  The eastern dialects of Basque do
not have <berun> at all, but only <plomu>.  And some central and western
varieties have <plomo> alongside <berun>, or even in place of it.  Of
these, <plomu> is recorded from 1571, and <plomo> from 1562 -- very early
by Basque standards -- while <berun> is not recorded before about 1620,
though its first attestation occurs in a proverb.  And, for 'tin', *all*
varieties of Basque have only <eztainu> or a related form.  This is a
borrowing from Romance, since Latin <stannum> would not have produced this
result.

Moreover, a wholly native origin for <berun> is not out of the question.
First, note that the Bizkaian dialect in the west has <beraun>.  Now, the
reduction of /au/ to /u/ in a closed syllable is a commonplace phenomenon
in Basque, while the expansion of /u/ to /au/ is without parallel in any
position.  Moreover, Bizkaian happens to be the one dialect which preserves
vowel sequences better than any other.  Accordingly, Vasconists are
inclined to see western <beraun> as conservative, and the more widespread
<berun> as secondary, and the late Luis Michelena, the greatest etymologist
Basque has ever seen, espoused precisely this position.  But conservative
<beraun> does not appear to be helpful for the pan-European origin sketched
above.

Now, there are two proposals for a native origin.  One idea is that the
word is a derivative of <bera> 'soft', with an unidentifiable second
element -- and lead is, of course, a soft metal.  The other sees the word
as built on
*<bel> 'dark', again with an unidentifiable second element -- and lead is
also dark.  The item *<bel> is nowhere recorded as an independent word, but
its former existence is assured by its presence in a number of derivatives,
both as an initial and as a final element.

Now, the otherwise categorical medieval change of intervocalic */l/ to /r/
did not occur in the easternmost dialect, and so a form from this dialect
might help us to choose between earlier *<bel-> and earlier *<ber-> -- but,
as I remarked above, <berun> is not attested in the east, so no joy.

Nevertheless, many scholars have wanted to relate <berun> to the Greek and
Latin words in some way, though the proposals differ substantially in
detail.  Some people note that lead was known in the Near East much earlier
than in Europe, and so they want to see a Near Eastern word diffusing
westward across Europe together with the metal.  Others, however, observe
that Spain was the principal source of European lead in classical and late
pre-classical times, and so they want to see a word of Iberian origin as
diffusing eastward.

These proposals are too numerous and too complicated to repeat here -- and
they not infrequently involve even more far-flung words, such as German
<Blei> 'lead', Georgian <brp'eni> 'lead', Hebrew <bdi:l> 'lead', and a
reported Berber <buldun> 'tin'.  But, as an example of the western-origin
scenario, I might note that the Lusitanian town of Medubriga was so famous
for its lead mines that Pliny called its inhabitants <plumbarii> -- 'the
lead men'.  Some have seen the initial element <medu-> in this town name as
representing the stem of a local word for 'lead', and they have proposed
that Basque <berun> derives from the same source -- not unreasonably, since
variation between /d/ and /r/ between vowels is commonplace in Basque.

Finally, to Douglas Kilday's proposal that <berun> derives from a possibly
Ligurian word of the form *<blum->.  There are some serious phonological
problems with this.

First, as noted above, it seems likely that <beraun> is the more
conservative form of the Basque word -- not helpful.

Second, that /m/.  It is true that Pre-Basque had no */m/.  But, in early
borrowings from Celtic and Latin, an original /m/ was usually retained in
Basque, and not converted to */b/.  Of course, if the source /m/ was
word-final, then this could not have happened, since Basque has never
permitted word-final /m/.  In this case, we don't know what would have
happened to
/m/, since there are no parallels.  (Latin word-final /m/ always appears in
Basque as zero, but then final /m/ was probably already gone from popular
Latin speech, or at least reduced to nasalization of the preceding vowel.)

Third, the initial cluster */bl-/.  Pre-Basque didn't merely "disfavor"
initial clusters: it prohibited them absolutely.  In borrowed words,
initial clusters were invariably eliminated in one way or another, as
indeed were plosive-liquid clusters in all positions.

In borrowings from Latin, initial clusters were resolved as follows.  (Bear
in mind that Latin initial /b p f/ were all rendered as Pre-Basque */b/.)
If the cluster was /Cl-/, then the C was lost, and only the /l/ remained.
Examples: Latin <flammam> 'flame' > Basque <lama> 'flame'; Latin <plumam>
'feather' > Basque <luma> 'feather'; Latin <florem> 'flower' > Basque
<lore> 'flower'; Latin <planum> 'flat' > Pre-Basque *<lanu> > modern Basque
<lau> 'flat', by the regular medieval loss of intervocalic /n/; Latin
<placet> 'it is pleasing' > Basque <laket> 'pleasing'; Latin <plantatum>
'planted' > Basque <landatu> 'planted', with a regular Basque voicing.  The
sole certain exception known to me is Latin <cletam> 'rustic gate' >
Pre-Basque *<geleta> > modern <gereta> 'rustic gate'.  This is not helpful,
since we would expect a *<blum-> to be borrowed as something like *<luN->.

In contrast, with an initial /Cr-/ cluster, both consonants were retained,
but a vowel was inserted between them.  However, the inserted vowel was
*always* an echo of the following vowel.  Examples: Latin <granum> 'grain'
> Pre-Basque *<garanu> > modern <garau>, <garaun> by other changes; Latin
<frontem> 'forehead' > Basque <boronde> 'forehead', again with a regular
Basque voicing; and see the case of <gereta> above.

This strategy continued well into the Romance period.  For example, early
Romance *<frecato> 'rubbed' (replacing classical <frictum>; note Castilian
<fregado>) > Basque <berekatu> ~ <perekatu> ~ <ferekatu> 'rubbed,
caressed', 'annoyed'.

So, the phonology is not right for a "Ligurian" *<blum-> yielding Basque
<ber(a)un>.  Of course, if the borrowing was very early, then Basque might
have been employing different strategies at the time for resolving
impermissible clusters, but there is no evidence for such a thing, and only
special pleading is available.

In sum, then, Douglas Kilday's proposal is not impossible, but it faces
serious difficulties, and I cannot see that it should be preferred to any
one of the several other proposals on the table.  At least all of those
proposals but one must be wrong, and very likely they are all wrong.  We
cannot tell, because we lack adequate evidence.  This, I think, is what
Joat Simeon was talking about.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 25 05:42:22 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 01:42:22 EDT
Subject: horses and bits
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.014222.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/24/01 7:29:23 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
maxdashu at LanMinds.Com writes:

> And if they did use leather bridles, would that be enough to cause wear in
> the teeth?

-- no.  There are a number of types of harness which don't use a bit between
the teeth at all; essentially, they involve a loop around the nose.  That
would produce no wear marks on the teeth at all.

Also, of course, soft bits -- leather or rope -- while they still produce the
characteristic wear on the teeth, produce much less of it than hard metal


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 25 05:51:19 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 01:51:19 EDT
Subject: Evidence of Horse Riding
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.015119.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/24/01 8:00:15 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> If you note all my references were to evidence of HORSE-RIDING in Europe
> and not horses.

-- while many peoples who have kept horses for riding and traction also ate
them, milked the mares, etc., there are virtually no instances of people
keeping horses solely for food.  Outside the steppe zones, even secondary
uses of horses are rarely significant.

This is because horses are much harder to keep than cattle or sheep,
particularly in forest-zone, mixed-agriculture settings.  They have
comparatively delicate digestive systems and die easily, and are much more
difficult to herd than bovines because they're faster, more nimble, and
much more temperamental.

In other words, if horses are present in Europe, it is vanishingly unlikely
that they were being kept primarily as food animals.  They're just not
efficient as forage-to-food converters.

Horses are an expensive luxury.  They weren't even used much for


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Apr 25 05:56:01 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 01:56:01 EDT
Subject: Evidence of Horse Riding
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.015601.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/24/01 8:00:15 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> It has often been repeated that evidence of HORSE-RIDING has been shown in

-- bit-wear marks are evidence of horse-riding (or traction), but absence of
bit-wear is not evidence of absence, to coin a phrase.

There are a number of ways to control horses; eg., American Indian horsemen
rarely used the bit.

The famous light cavalry of ancient Numidia (Hannibal's cavalry included many
Numidians) didn't use the bit, either, just a rawhide loop behind the
nostrils.

Many people I know who ride do so without bits on occasion.

In the ancient world, where there are domestic horses at all, you can assume
they're being used as riding animals or for pulling chariots or other fast,
luxury/military vehicles.

Horses are expensive to keep outside steppe habitats, and less productive
users of forage than cattle and sheep even there.  There's simply not much
profit unless you're using them for riding or pulling things.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed Apr 25 15:27:00 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 10:27:00 -0500
Subject: Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
In-Reply-To: <3AE03098.659D@metu.edu.tr>
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.102700.0500.>

	I read a recent article in either Natural History or National
Geographic (or some similar magazine) that olives were first cultivated in
present Syria.
	If so, one would expect a Semitic root for the word
	Yet, if I remember correctly, the origin of Latin oliua either from
or cognate to Greek elaia, elaion is unknown
	As far as I know, Semitic is the only recorded non-intrusive
language group in that specific area.
	Arabic has zayt "oil (of any kind)", zaytun "olive", whence Spanish
aceite, aceituna. I think the Hebrew forms are cognate.
	If olives are indeed from that area, any idea where the word may
have come from?

>[I think] JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
Snip:

>> Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
>> animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian
>> were indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for
>> these, and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with
>> similar biota.

>There are no olives on the Central Anatolian Plateau, nor in are there
>in Eastern Anatolia.

>Geoffrey SUMMERS
[snip]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From gordonbr at microsoft.com  Wed Apr 25 15:30:58 2001
From: gordonbr at microsoft.com (Gordon Brown)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 08:30:58 -0700
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <WED.25.APR.2001.083058.0700.>

Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

> From: 	Max Dashu[SMTP:maxdashu at LanMinds.Com]
> Sent: 	Thursday, April 19, 2001 9:19 PM

> I dunno about that. Mack's book on the Book of Q states that Galilee
> was a very heterogenous society, so much that it was called Galil
> ha-goyim (i.e., 'of the nations'). With a strong Hellenistic presence.
> And Nazareth was very close to the imperial center Sephoris. I
> personally don't think Yeshua used "Petros" but the idea that he had
> some familiarity with Greek is not really so outlandish.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Apr 25 03:31:12 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 22:31:12 -0500
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.24.APR.2001.223112.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Further discussion of the Nostratic issues should move to the Nostratic list.
  If there are IE-specific issues to be discussed, they can remain here.
  -- rma ]

Dear Peter and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 3:11 AM

>> Old Indian ... *[a], [e], and [o] all became [a]. Obviously, this entailed a
>> substantial loss of semantic integrity [in] ...... original CaC, CeC, and
>> CoC roots

> Trouble is, for the stage before Old Indian, CaC roots are very rare, and
> CeC ~ CoC roots are morphologically conditioned alternatives.  Some writers
> would only accept CeC roots , so for them your argument collapses.

[PCR]
My first comment would be that there are NO CaC roots in earliest IE, only
Ca:C, the result of CaHC.

Secondly, if, as I proposed in my answer to Nath, vowel-quality was neutralized
with the semantic load carried by them transferred to glides, the natural
neutral vowel is /a/ so my scenario would have all originally short-vowel roots
as CaC, from which roots the e-o-Ablaut developed.

[PG]
> Even if we do accept Cac, Cec and CoC roots, we have to admit the
> distribution of them in PIE is far from equal, and so the likelihood of
> ambiguity is small.   This would not be "a substantial loss of semantic
> integrity".

[PCR]
I have a feeling that you might wish to retract this opinion upon further
reflection. IE, as it has been reconstructed, is rife with purported homonyms.
What originally distinguished these homonyms were glides, and before that, in
Nostratic, different vowel-qualities.

The situation we have in IE already reflects a substantial loss of semantic
integrity, mitigated somewhat by different root-extensions.

As for a comparison of CaC, CeC, CoC roots in IE, it is impossible without
reconstructive precedents from Nostratic.

All roots with an unmodified vowel in IE are Ce/o/-C.

Roots with Ca:C, Ce:C, Co:C are all the result of an internal 'laryngeal', or,
in the very rare case, the effect of former aspiration. CaC roots are Ca:C
roots that have lost length.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Apr 27 05:49:12 2001
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 08:49:12 +0300
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
In-Reply-To: <136748061.3197203878@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.084912.0300.>

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Larry Trask wrote:

> The idea is that each branch of IE resulted from a somewhat different mixture
> of elements from these two or three earlier languages, and that therefore
> Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, and so forth, are all "mixed languages" in origin,
> with no single ancestor.

> I regard this view as perfectly crazy, but I'll be interested to hear any
> comments on it.  In any case, I had thought it was dead and buried.

> But I have recently discovered that a similar view is currently being
> actively defended, not for IE as a whole, but for Celtic.  Almost all the
> proponents appear to be archaeologists, though there is perhaps a Celticist
> or two among them.

This kind of idea seems to arise every once in a while in comparative
linguistics. The idea of Celtic as a mixed languages that arose from a
kind of lingua franca actually resembles very closely the linguistic
pseudoscience that has been advocated and actively publicized by certain
researchers in Finland and Estonia in the 90's (most notably Kalevi Wiik,
Ky?sti Julku, Ago K?nnap). This group has been dubbed as "the Anti-Uralic
school", and their new paradigm (which they characterize as "a
breakthrough in Uralistics" - even though a "breakdown" would be a more
appropriate description) can be summarized as follows:

- There was no uniform Proto-Uralic language, but instead a group of
unrelated languages which coalesced into a "Uralic lingua franca" (some
kind of pidgin or creole) some 10,000+ years ago. The speaking area of
this "lingua franca" would have been the whole periglacial zone from the
Urals to the Atlantic.

- There is no clear distinction between genetic inheritence and
contact-induced change (borrowing), and all languages are always mixed
languages. Such a starting point has led many of the members of the
Anti-Uralic school to extremely bizarre ideas, such as "Finnish is more
closely related to Swedish than it is to Mordvin", or that after Finland
served in the European Union, Finnish is increasingly rapidly becoming a
"Euro-language" and in the future linguists could reconstruct "Proto-Euro"
as the common parent language of Finnish, German, French etc.

These claims would of course deserve no attention from the scientific
community, were it not that Kalevi Wiik has actively publicized them in
the Finnish media, and also quite succesfully managed to market them as a
"linguistic breakthrough" to some archeologists, geneticists and
historians. Thus, in the recent years Uralists have been forced to mount
an attack against the "Anti-Uralists", and this may deceptivily look like
a serious scientific debate to non-linguists. I sure hope the situation
with Celtic isn't as bad.

Regards,
Ante Aikio


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Apr 27 17:08:03 2001
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (Gabor Sandi)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 17:08:03 -0000
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.170803.0000.>

This is an excellent topic to raise, Larry. I have also encountered the
"crystallization" idea in my readings (always from archaeologists) and for
the life of me I can't imagine what the term means in linguistic terms.

One example you have not mentioned is Bosch-Gimpera (1980): Les
Indo-Europiens - problhmes archiologiques. Crystallization is a big topic
with him, as a convenient process to back up his views of IE origins: it all
goes back to the mesolithic. Europe has pretty much always been IE according
to this view, it is thus unnecessary to look for migrations, let alone
conquest as an explanation for the widespread presence of the family on the
continent.

I think that the crux of the matter is the preconceived notion is that
migration / conquest is not a major feature of prehistory. The fact that the
linguistic map of Europe has been several times redone in historical times
through migration / conquest does not seem to be a useful argument in this
context: neolithic and bronze age peoples behaved differently from their
descendants according to anti-migrationists.

In my view we linguists are themselves to blame to a certain extent: we have
tied language too closely to ethnicity. We might be better off saying: look,
we don't really care about the process by which Europe became
Indo-Europeanized. But our evidence for PIE points at bronze-age speakers
for whom animal husbandry was much more important than cereal growing, and
who were familiar with horses and wheeled vehicles of some sort. You,
archaeologists, make of this information what you will, but we linguists are
not going into contortions to explain IE words for the horse, the wheel and
its parts, copper (or bronze), silver and gold through any means than simple
derivation from the PIE vocabulary.

The same kind of argument could be used for Proto-Celtic (PC). Rather than
try to identify some iron-age population as the PC speakers, why not use the
following working hypothesis:

(1) There was a language ancestral to Gaulish, Welsh, Irish etc, which was
derived from PIE, but which was not ancestral to, say, the Germanic, Italic
or Baltic languages we know.

(2) This PC language had undergone certain changes, so that the word for
'father' was *(h)atnr [I am not sure about the *h], the word for 'hundred'
*kNtom [N standing for a syllabic n], for 'I carry' they said *ber{ and for
a demonstrative they used *sindos, -b, -on. Etc. etc. for those aspects of
Celtic that we can take back to the hypothetical common language.

(3) Any language satisfying these criteria is by definition part of PC, any
language contradicting them is not.

(4) If someone does not believe in the existence of PC, than it is for
him/her to explain how the features listed in (2) could conceivably exist in
different languages.

If we put it like this, it would be just as difficult to deny the existence
of PC as it would be to deny the reality of, say, Schwitzerd|tch or
Australian English.

----------------

An interesting view of why some archaeologists (and linguists) seem to have
an almost gut-felt dislike of migrationist theories is on the ff. web site:

www.larecherche.fr/VIEW/308/03080401.html

With my best wishes,

Gabor Sandi
g_sandi at hotmail.com


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 29 07:34:04 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 03:34:04 EDT
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.033404.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/2001 3:32:36 PM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:
<< The standard position among linguists is that the languages we call 'IE'
are all descended, by various changes, from an unrecorded single common
ancestor, which we call 'PIE'.  That view was attacked early in the 20th
century by C. C. Uhlenbeck, by Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and by Antonio Tovar.
All of these denied that PIE had ever existed.  Instead, they maintained,
the IE languages came into existence as a result of extensive contact
between speakers of two -- or possibly three -- quite distinct earlier
languages....>>

<<I regard this view as perfectly crazy, but I'll be interested to hear any
comments on it.  In any case, I had thought it was dead and buried.>>

Oh, come now, Larry.  I challenge you to describe how the current outcome
would be different if you assumed there was no PIE and the known IE languages
arose out of convergence.  How would the situation be different?  What signs
should be present in specific languages that are absent now?  Would you
expect to find different classes of noun and verb morphology?  Would some
words be n-stems and others not?  Different words for fire, eat and horse,
perhaps?  What would tell you exactly that convergence had happened?  Or
would there really be any way to tell?

I don't think you'll be able to do this.  But I hope you won't avoid the
challenge and at least try.  Because unless you can describe a different
expected outcome, convergence becomes just as likely an explanation as a
single parent.

The comparative method doesn't allow for convergence.  It assumes there was
no convergence.  *PIE is a creation of the comparative method.  It may in
fact reflect historical fact.  I suspect it does.  But I don't believe you
have any way of proving that.

<<For the life of me, I can't imagine how such a scenario can be taken
seriously in the face of the very well understood and highly regular
phonological and morphological prehistory of Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)
and of the individual Celtic languages.  Nor do I understand how a trade
language, or any sort of mixed language, could have retained so much of the
elaborate PIE morphology, while at the same time introducing such
picturesque novelties as the initial consonant mutations -- not to mention
the Old Irish verbal system.>>

First of all, a "trade language" as the term is used by a Sheratt or a
Whittier, refers to how the language spread, not to its genetic
characteristic.  "Lingua franca" is a term often applied to "genetic"
languages, e.g., "North Sea" Germanic.

Secondly, what exactly would you look for, if Celtic was the result of some
kind of a convergence?  Would it be like Haitian Creole, where according to
Michel DeGraff at MIT, virtually all affixes have cognates in French affixes?
 Or rather would it be like English, where most affixes are of non-Germanic
origins?  What would you expect Celtic to look like if the convergence
hypothesis were correct?  Especially after 5000 years.

Is there an example of an IE language you can point to that shows what
convergence would be like after 5000 years? - And therefore shows why we can
be sure Celtic did not undergo convergence 5000 years ago?

Even if as you have said the whole idea of a language like Celtic is just a
"reification."

Finally, the "highly regular phonological and morphological prehistory of
Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)" is the only kind of prehistory the comparative
method would yield.  Of course, Celtic is going to show regular development
out of *PIE.  *PIE is nothing but a construct based on Celtic and other IE
languages.  It has no choice but to show regular developments and a
Proto-Celtic.  *PIE is nothing but Celtic (along with other languages)
reconstructed back to an assumed parent.

If you sincerely were looking for evidence of convergence, you mention the
obvious place to look, in such "picturesque novelties as the initial
consonant mutations -- not to mention the Old Irish verbal system."  It
wouldn't be in the consistencies that Celtic would show evidence of
convergence,  it would be in the "innovations."  But if we are dealing with
possibly hundreds of EXTINCT European languages, IE or otherwise, how would
you be able to identify other "genetic" influences?  Perhaps one of them had
initial consonant mutation.

Calling the idea of convergence "dead and buried" will I suspect at some time
in the future become nothing more than wishful thinking.  Calling such views
"crazy" is a little uncalled for.  I'm sure for example you wouldn't use
words like "crazy" to describe the views of Boas or Trubetzkoy on the
HistLing list.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Apr 29 18:17:57 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 14:17:57 EDT
Subject: IE versus *PIE
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.141757.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/2001 9:32:40 PM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:

<< IE could not be more different: there simply is no plausible alternative
to the recognition of a PIE ancestor.

Curiously, this unassailable conclusion was in fact rejected by several
linguists in the first half of the 20th century: Uhlenbeck, Trubetzkoy and
Tovar.  So far as I can tell, their "mixed language" alternative was never
taken seriously and is now deservedly dead.  But I have recently been
astonished to learn that a version of it has been revived, not for IE but for
Celtic. >>

Once again, this is not scientifically justified.  Mr. Stirling rightly makes
the point of falsifiability.  As long as IE languages show any serious
commonality, there is going to be a genetic relationship shown and a
hypothetical ancestor will be reconstructible.  This does not and cannot
logically disprove the presence of other "genetic strains" in those languages.

I think Prof Trask is guilty here of the very reification which he himself
has noted before on this list.  Something like the idea that a language is a
single organism in which the parts must all descend from a single ancestor.
In fact there is nothing that prevents a community of speakers from adopting
lexical and structural elements from more than one group of earlier speakers.
 The assumption that there must be some kind of core retained from one
linguistic community or the other is nothing but an assumption.  Nothing
makes it necessary.

And just to be clear about terminology, the "relatedness" of historic and
documented IE languages CAN be asserted with a high degree of certainty.
Statistically the possibility of what these languages have in common
happening by accident is highly improbable.  But this is definitely not same
as saying that all those individual commonalities had to derive from a common
source.  There is nothing I have seen that makes it clear that those
individual commonalities could not have come from more than one unrelated
source or even distantly related sources.

(As far as what's dead and what's not, and as far as the opinion of the
linguistic community, I'd be happy to privately share with Prof Trask the
opinion of some eminent linguists who most definitely do not believe that PIE
can be plausibly recovered at all.)

That's not to say PIE didn't exist.  It's just to say that its existence is
no where as necessary as Prof Trask makes it out to be.  As a scientific
matter at least.  One's personal beliefs are another matter.

Regards,
Steve Long


From lehmann at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Apr 27 16:35:10 2001
From: lehmann at mail.utexas.edu (Winfred P. Lehmann)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:35:10 -0700
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.093510.0700.>

Dear Mr. McCallister

	It's surprising that the Crimean Gothic material should seem obscure.
It's been readily available, among other places, in Wilhelm Streitberg's
Gotisches Elementarbuch, Heidelberg: Winter, 1920, pp 280-82. In the past every
elementary student of Gothic would have had a copy.
	Diamond left out a few words.
	With best wishes,
W P Lehmann


From lehmann at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Apr 27 16:43:28 2001
From: lehmann at mail.utexas.edu (Winfred P. Lehmann)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:43:28 -0700
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.094328.0700.>

Dear Mr. McCallister
	I should have added to my previous message that there's an excellent
book on the subject. Crimean Gothic, by Macdonald Stearns, Jr. Saratoga, CA:
Anma Libri, 1978. 172 pp., with extensive bibliography.

W P Lehmann


From stevegus at aye.net  Fri Apr 27 00:56:10 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 20:56:10 -0400
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.205610.0400.>

Thomas McFadden wrote:

> I think some items have been left off that are a little tough (at the
> moment i can only think of gadeltha = pulchra), and there has been some
> speculation that Busbecq, the Dutch guy who recorded the stuff, was
> influenced a bit by the corresponding words in Dutch and German in the way
> he wrote down what he heard, i.e. he made them look a little more like
> Dutch and German than they really were.  i dont know enough to have an
> opinion one way or the other on that speculation.

What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem to have
contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you wouldn't necessarily
expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan
> schiete.  Of course the value of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference
here.

--
What the world needs is another great war to kill off a generation of
overachievers.


From edsel at glo.be  Fri Apr 27 16:13:31 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 18:13:31 +0200
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.181331.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas McFadden" <tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 11:31 PM

> I think some items have been left off that are a little tough (at the
> moment i can only think of gadeltha = pulchra), and there has been some
> speculation that Busbecq, the Dutch guy who recorded the stuff, was
> influenced a bit by the corresponding words in Dutch and German in the way
> he wrote down what he heard, i.e. he made them look a little more like
> Dutch and German than they really were.  i dont know enough to have an
> opinion one way or the other on that speculation.  in any case, there's a
> book by Stearns that goes through everything Busbecq
> brought back in some detail and treats all the earlier literature on it as
> well.  it's a small corpus, so every word gets discussed.

> McDonald Stearns, Jr.
> Crimean gothic: analysis and etymology of the corpus, Anma Libri 1978

> also, i think the gloss for geen should be "to go".

[Ed Selleslagh]

Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (= van Buisbeek), ?Komen 1522-+Rouen 1592, was
actually Flemish, from the presently Belgian border (France-Belgium) city of
Komen (Fr. Comines), nowadays predominantly French speaking, but with 'language
facilities' for the remaining Dutch speaking population [He lived before the
southern part of Flanders was annexed by France's Louis XIV]. Actually, he was
probably educated in French.

He also brought the tulip to the Low Countries.


From crismoc at smart.ro  Thu Apr 26 19:04:24 2001
From: crismoc at smart.ro (Cristian Mocanu)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 22:04:24 +0300
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.220424.0300.>

              The list of Crimean Gothic words is very interesting in many
respects. But I was intrigued by "menhus" "meat" for which Diamond invokes
Hung. "hus". Indeed, "hus" with accented "u", pronounced approx. "hoosh" is
Hungarian for  "meat". But what about "men"? Any hints? As far as my
knowledge of Hungarian goes (It is not my first language but I speak it, we
hear it in the streets etc. but I wouldn't know many archaisms) Hungarian it
is not.
              As for the rest of the etyma, they seem to be consistent with
the fact that a linguistic enclave is at the same time conservative and
innovative. We have numerals that seem to come directly from Ulfilas and
Turkic loanwords. But then again some look too much like Ulfilas'Gothic,
some others too "Hochdeutsch". Do we know anything about that informer and
how he came to know those etyma?
                             God bless,
                                Cristian


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Apr 26 22:32:51 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 17:32:51 -0500
Subject: Greek from PIE
Message-ID: <THU.26.APR.2001.173251.0500.>

> At 06:10 PM 4/20/01 +0100, you wrote:

>> Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
>> from PIE?

        Why is nobody mentioning Palmer's book on the subject?  Is it
considered discredited?  There is also Lejeune.

Dr. David L. White


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 27 15:47:46 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:47:46 +0100
Subject: semivowels
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.164746.0100.>

> Thinking about vocalic /r/, I got to wondering:
> do sequences like these occur in Sanskrit?
> rya, krya, #rya, rva, vya, vra

Yes.

R functions both as a vowel and as a consonant in Sanskrit.   The alphabet
treats the two as entirely distinct, as in the word kartrtvam (BG 5:14) -
the first is written as a consonant, the second as a vowel.   L also
functions as vowel, though much less commonly.  Both vowels have long forms,
although long vocalic l is exceedingly rare.

The sequences:  sthrya, lya, trya, krya, etc are all to be found.   I
couldn't find examples with a a vowel, but with other vowels, how about
these:
(a) One such place is the sandhi form of a word ending in -ri before a word
beginning a-.
       Compare aryudasina (BG 6:9) = ari+udasina.
       and internally:  paryupasate (BG4:25) = pari+upasate
(b) Another such place is the sandhi form of words in -s before a word
beginning y-.
    Compare muner yogam (BG6:3) = munes yogam.

Peter


From connolly at memphis.edu  Fri Apr 27 18:25:19 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 13:25:19 -0500
Subject: semivowels
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.132519.0500.>

Are these any worse than things like French _roi_ and _loi_?

Leo Connolly

Anton Sherwood wrote:

> Thinking about vocalic /r/, I got to wondering:
> do sequences like these occur in Sanskrit?
>         rya, krya, #rya, rva, vya, vra

> --
> Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Apr 27 13:36:23 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 06:36:23 -0700
Subject: Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE
In-Reply-To: <004801c0cd38$2e8b07e0$fbf1fea9@patrickr>
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.063623.0700.>

>> Trouble is, for the stage before Old Indian, CaC roots are very rare, and
>> CeC ~ CoC roots are morphologically conditioned alternatives.  Some writers
>> would only accept CeC roots , so for them your argument collapses.

>[PCR]
>My first comment would be that there are NO CaC roots in earliest IE, only
>Ca:C, the result of CaHC.

>Secondly, if, as I proposed in my answer to Nath, vowel-quality was
>neutralized with the semantic load carried by them transferred to glides, the
>natural neutral vowel is /a/ so my scenario would have all originally
>short-vowel roots as CaC, from which roots the e-o-Ablaut developed.

This stage, to the extent it existed, predates PIE proper, since even the
oldest directly reconstructible stage has e~o-Ablaut.  Any pre-ablaut stage
is arrived at by internal reconstruction.

>[PCR]
>I have a feeling that you might wish to retract this opinion upon further
>reflection. IE, as it has been reconstructed, is rife with purported homonyms.
>What originally distinguished these homonyms were glides, and before that, in
>Nostratic, different vowel-qualities.

Why need they always be distinguished?  Real languages today have much
homonymy.

But even then, what I see in the PIE vocabulary is many homonymous *roots*,
but relative fewer homonymous *words*.  The main distinguishing factors
were differences in suffixes and stem formants - and occasionally infixes.

>All roots with an unmodified vowel in IE are Ce/o/-C.

>Roots with Ca:C, Ce:C, Co:C are all the result of an internal 'laryngeal', or,
>in the very rare case, the effect of former aspiration. CaC roots are Ca:C
>roots that have lost length.

Long vowels in PIE seem to also come from other sorts of compensatory
lengthening, such as degemmination of a following double consonant.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Apr 27 06:39:23 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 02:39:23 EDT
Subject: Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.023923.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/01 11:20:03 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

[ Moderator's note:
  Mr. Mc Callister was quoting Geoff Summers (and mistakenly attributing the
  quote to JoatSimeon, to whom it was a rejoinder).
  --rma ]

>> There are no olives on the Central Anatolian Plateau, nor in are there
>> in Eastern Anatolia.

-- the Hittite archives clearly show widespread olive cultivation in the
Bronze Age; according to Macqueen (THE HITTITES, revised edition, 1986, p.
96) "... peas, beans, onions, flax, figs, olives, grapes, apples and
possibly pears and pomegranates also were grown."  Olive groves and olive
oil are mentioned in Hittite contracts, wills, tax-registers, etc.

Note that while the cultivation of flax is very old in Anatolia, the Near
East, and the adjacent portions of the Balkans, the Greek word for linen is a
cognate of a form found in a group of West-Central European IE languages,
rather than from Anatolian.

(*linom: from which Old Irish (Lin), Welsh (Llin), Latin (linum), Old
Prussian (lynno), Lithuanian (linas), Old Church Slavonic (linenu), etc.  The
Germanic form could be a Latin loanword or just as easily from western PIE
via Proto-Germanic).

Incidentally, the wild biota know to the Hitties included lions, leopards
and gazelles; and elephants as close as northern Syria.  Lion were present
in Greece, the Balkans and some other parts of southern Europe well into
Bronze Age times.

PIE, one should note, does not have a securely attested word for lion, leopard,
tiger (present as far west as the Caucasus in the Neolithic-Bronze Age period),
or elephant.  The Greek term for lion may or may not be a semitic loan;
traditionally it's attributed to a Hebrew form, 'layis'.  There's a similar one
in Slavic.

If PIE derived from Anatolia, it would be extremely odd that Anatolian IE,
Armenian, Greek and Indic would all come up with different words for common
animals like this.  The Tocharian word for lion derives from a descriptive term
("bristly hair")

Likewise, PIE lacks a word for the fallow deer, common throughout southern
Europe, but has terms for 'elk' and 'red deer'.

And there are solidly PIE words for "fox", "bear", "lynx" and "wolf"

The logical conclusion would be that the IE languages were intrusive in
areas which had chamois, leopards, lions, tigers, elephants, fallow deer,
etc; and native to an area with bears, foxes, roe deer, lynx, and wolves.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Fri Apr 27 13:01:52 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 08:01:52 -0500
Subject: Lions and Tiger and Bears, Oh My
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.080152.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The material quoted is from JoatSimeon at aol.com, by way of a reply by Geoff
  Summers.
  --rma ]

>>> Furthermore, PIE lacks vocabulary to describe common Anatolian plant and
>>> animal terms; olives and lions, just to take two examples.  If Anatolian
>>> were indigenous, one would expect to find it with a native vocabulary for
>>> these, and that vocabulary to be preserved in areas (eg., Greece) with
>>> similar biota.

        Just a brief note:  Ancient Anatolia had not only lions, but tigers
(in the eastern part), and leopards.  (Not to mention the usual bears, and
wolves).  Yet it seems that the scariest animals the IEs knew were bears and
wolves.  But of course tabu deformation may be relevant in all this.

Dr. David L. White


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Fri Apr 27 06:16:47 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 06:16:47 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.061647.0000.>

David L. White (10 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Yes.  I believe both descriptions might be applied to the
>civilization of Troy, and I see nothing inherently contradictory or comical
>about this.  More to the point, any bearers of Eastern Mediterranean
>civilization, however generic, would have been impressive to the people of
>Italy before these began (with the Etruscans) to ascend to the same level.

Fine. I don't claim that an areally modest civilization can't colonize and
exert political control over a much larger region. But I'm afraid we may be
losing track of the linguistic issues. What started this whole thread was my
objection to the theory that the Etruscan _language_ came by sea from the
East, and the startlingly widespread willingness to misinterpret the Lemnian
inscriptions as evidence for this theory. If you think the Etruscan language
came from Troy or its North Aegean allies, you should present more than
hand-waving arguments about what High Culture can do.

>There is evidence that the Trojans were a small bunch, in the fact
>that their armies are described as being multi-lingual, whereas the Greeks
>were pretty clearly multilingual.  (Now just where in the Iliad is that?)
>Clearly they were not able to match the Greeks in putting fellow-speakers
>(so to speak) in the field, and their forces were composed largely of the
>tributary forces of other states, of other languages.   This does not
>suggest that the native Trojans were ever a large group.  (Nor are they
>very distinctive archeologically, as far as I know.)

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. If the native Trojans constituted
a small elite dominating a polyglot assortment of other peoples (which is
perfectly plausible per se, given the opportunity for acquiring great wealth
by controlling traffic on the Hellespont, and between Europe and Anatolia),
and they or their descendants set up shop in Etruria, one would expect the
linguistic result to be a Trojan superstrate in the native language, like
the Norman element in English or the Doric in Latin (poena, machina, etc.).
The language spoken in Etruria, viz. Etruscan, would remain non-Trojan (or
non-North Aegean) in its essential features.

OTOH the claim that Etruscan originated as a creole between Trojan and the
native speech, or as a Mischsprache based on tributary languages, can't be
taken seriously. Etruscan doesn't have the analytic structure of such forms
of speech. The case-system, participles, and fairly complex morphology of
enclitic demonstratives wouldn't have survived the process of creolization.

The bottom line is that whatever happened _politically_ in Etruria during
1200-700 BCE, the _linguistic_ community of Etruscan-speakers remained
intact. Claims that the entire community immigrated en masse from the East
run afoul of archaeology _and_ linguistics.

>I am not exactly the only person to say that Etruscan civilization
>did not arise semi-miraculously in Tuscany as a result of Greek and
>Phonecian contacts that can only be shown to have been significant in
>Campania.  Since a date of 1200 is too early for real Etruscans in Italy, I
>would imagine that most migrationists must posit an interlude somewhere in
>the northern Aegean, or not far from it.

By "real Etruscans" I presume you mean "bearers of Etruscan culture such as
one finds in a coffee-table book". I don't deny the migration of substantial
cultural elements from the NE Mediterranean to Etruria, without which the
coffee-table books would be vastly different. But again we're losing sight
of the linguistics.

To a limited extent we can peel back the cultural superstrate by looking at
the Etruscan pantheon, minus the obvious Hellenic figures (Aplu, Artumes,
etc.) and Etruscanized Olympians (Tin, Turan, etc.). We are left with such
deities as Aisu, Calu, Cautha, Cel, Leinth, Manth, Vanth, and Veltha. Their
names are evidently native Etruscan, and they were not (to any of our
knowledge) imported from the Aegean, the Troad, or greater Anatolia.

Having dismissed (correctly I hope) the Eastern sea-route, one can still ask
when and by which route the Etruscan-speaking community came to Etruria. I
can't answer this, but I think the best approach is a thorough analysis of
substratal material. The Tuscan hydronyms Albinia, Alma, Armenta, Arnus, and
Auser (with Albula = Tiberis) have been interpreted as "Old European" and
pre-Etruscan. This is difficult to assess: do these names actually contain
"Old European" elements, or are they Latinized Etruscan, or from some other
source?

Someone recently cast doubt on the whole program of using toponyms to deduce
anything, citing the obliteration of native names in Texas and elsewhere by
the Spanish bureaucracy. This sort of objection only applies when there is a
literate bureaucratic class. To our knowledge, literacy didn't reach Etruria
until ca. 700 BCE, so arguments from toponyms should have some validity. The
problem is the large volume of unedited medieval archival material.

DGK


From mcv at wxs.nl  Fri Apr 27 17:54:06 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 19:54:06 +0200
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <136475066.3197199345@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.195406.0200.>

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001 14:55:45 +0100, Larry Trask
<larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

>--On Monday, April 23, 2001 5:51 am +0000 Douglas G Kilday
><acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>> The South European Wanderwort for 'lead' probably started as a Pelasgian
>> term. Like <daphne:>, Gk. <molubdos> has several variants suggesting
>> borrowing from different substratal dialects.

The variants are: molubdos, bolubdos, molibos, molibdos, bolimos,
*bolibos.

>> The original phonology is
>> disputed. I would guess *ml.ub- vel sim. with vocalic [l.] which resolved
>> to /ol/ in Greek. In the Italian dialect of Pelasgian I hypothesize
>> reduction of [l.] giving *mlub-, borrowed into Latin as <plumbum>. Similar
>> prenasalized labials in substratal words occur in <sa(m)bu:cus>
>> 'elder-tree' (cf. Dacian <seba> id.) and <simpuvium> 'sacrificial vessel'
>> (cf. Gk. <sipue:> 'flour-bin, meal-jar'). For initial Lat. pl- borrowed
>> from ml- cf. <place:re> 'to be pleasing' from Etr. <mlach> 'smooth,
>> pretty, pleasing'. On its way west, *mlub- must have undergone metathesis
>> to *blum-, perhaps in Ligurian. Old Basque lacked [m] and disfavored
>> initial clusters, so this would have become *belun, yielding Basque
>> <berun> by well-attested intervocalic [l] > [r].

>Right.  Let's talk about the Basque word.

>The idea that Basque <berun> 'lead' is related to the Greek and Latin words
>has been around a long time.  But it is far from being the only proposal on
>the table.

>To begin with, looking for Latin etymologies on the Tiber, we need not
>appeal to a hypothetical Ligurian *<blum-> as a source.  If this sort of
>origin is considered acceptable, then Gascon <ploum>, or a related Romance
>form, will do as well -- and we *know* that Basque has borrowed lots of
>words from Gascon and from other Romance neighbors.  Nor should we worry
>about such a seemingly late borrowing.

Except, as you note below, that for a late borrowing we would expect a
result *burun (or *lun).

>The eastern dialects of Basque do
>not have <berun> at all, but only <plomu>.  And some central and western
>varieties have <plomo> alongside <berun>, or even in place of it.  Of
>these, <plomu> is recorded from 1571, and <plomo> from 1562 -- very early
>by Basque standards -- while <berun> is not recorded before about 1620,
>though its first attestation occurs in a proverb.  And, for 'tin', *all*
>varieties of Basque have only <eztainu> or a related form.  This is a
>borrowing from Romance, since Latin <stannum> would not have produced this
>result.

>Moreover, a wholly native origin for <berun> is not out of the question.
>First, note that the Bizkaian dialect in the west has <beraun>.  Now, the
>reduction of /au/ to /u/ in a closed syllable is a commonplace phenomenon
>in Basque, while the expansion of /u/ to /au/ is without parallel in any
>position.  Moreover, Bizkaian happens to be the one dialect which preserves
>vowel sequences better than any other.  Accordingly, Vasconists are
>inclined to see western <beraun> as conservative, and the more widespread
><berun> as secondary, and the late Luis Michelena, the greatest etymologist
>Basque has ever seen, espoused precisely this position.  But conservative
><beraun> does not appear to be helpful for the pan-European origin sketched
>above.

>Now, there are two proposals for a native origin.  One idea is that the word
>is a derivative of <bera> 'soft', with an unidentifiable second element -- and
>lead is, of course, a soft metal.  The other sees the word as built on *<bel>
>'dark', again with an unidentifiable second element -- and lead is also dark.

However, it is usually associated with the color blue (black = iron).

>The item *<bel> is nowhere recorded as an independent word, but
>its former existence is assured by its presence in a number of derivatives,
>both as an initial and as a final element.

>Now, the otherwise categorical medieval change of intervocalic */l/ to /r/
>did not occur in the easternmost dialect, and so a form from this dialect
>might help us to choose between earlier *<bel-> and earlier *<ber-> -- but,
>as I remarked above, <berun> is not attested in the east, so no joy.

>Nevertheless, many scholars have wanted to relate <berun> to the Greek and
>Latin words in some way, though the proposals differ substantially in
>detail.  Some people note that lead was known in the Near East much earlier
>than in Europe, and so they want to see a Near Eastern word diffusing
>westward across Europe together with the metal.  Others, however, observe
>that Spain was the principal source of European lead in classical and late
>pre-classical times, and so they want to see a word of Iberian origin as
>diffusing eastward.

In my view, the shape of the Greek words certainly suggest an Iberian
origin.  Ultimately, however, the words may have a (pre-)Celtic
origin.  Of the two Germanic words for "lead" *bli:wa- (Germ. <Blei>)
and *laud- (Eng. lead), the latter was borrowed from Celtic *loud- <
PIE *plou-d- "watery" [lead is also often associated with "water"],
while the former may represent PIE *bhle:wo- "blue(ish)" through
mediation of an unattested Celtic *bli:wo-.  The existence of
pre-Celtic dialects (i.e. IE dialects preserving *p-) on Iberian soil
is reasonably well-attested (they go under the name of "Lusitanian"),
so it's not unthinkable that the two words that are found in Germanic
were also both present near the sources of lead in the Iberian
Peninsula (in the shapes *bli:wo- and *ploudo-). Given the phontactics
of Iberian (roughly comparabale to Basque, i.e. no initial clusters,
near absence of /m/ and /p/, no diphthong /ou/), these words would in
the Iberian tongue have given something like *bilibo ~ *bolibo and
*bolomdo ~ *bolobdo, respectively, and would have tended to
contaminate each other and eventually merge (witness Greek molubdo-,
bolubdo-, bolibo-, molibo-, bolimo-).  Latin <plumbum> seems to derive
from a source closer to original pre-Celtic *ploudo-, but with some
amount of Iberian mediation to account for -mb- [*plombo- <
*plobdo-?].

IMHO, Basque *belaun almost certainly derives from the same source
(or, rather, sources).  The main problems are accounting for the /e/
in the first syllable (which does not echo the vowel of the second
syllable), and the source of final -n (*b at laum[o], *b at lamb[o],
*b at labd[o], *b at laud[o] ?).

>These proposals are too numerous and too complicated to repeat here -- and
>they not infrequently involve even more far-flung words, such as German
><Blei> 'lead', Georgian <brp'eni> 'lead', Hebrew <bdi:l> 'lead', and a
>reported Berber <buldun> 'tin'.  But, as an example of the western-origin
>scenario, I might note that the Lusitanian town of Medubriga was so famous
>for its lead mines that Pliny called its inhabitants <plumbarii> -- 'the
>lead men'.  Some have seen the initial element <medu-> in this town name as
>representing the stem of a local word for 'lead', and they have proposed
>that Basque <berun> derives from the same source -- not unreasonably, since
>variation between /d/ and /r/ between vowels is commonplace in Basque.

Interestingly, but probably coincidentally, the Slavic word for copper
is <me^dI> (et. unk.).

[ moderator snip ]

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From philjennings at juno.com  Sat Apr 28 02:10:09 2001
From: philjennings at juno.com (philjennings at juno.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 21:10:09 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.211009.0500.>

A series of leading questions:

Is the -assos part of Parnassos, Halicarnassos, etc. thought to be from the
Pelasgian substrate?

Or is it from a different, later, Anatolian substrate?

Is the -assa of Tarhuntassa recognized to be the same suffix worked by
the Greeks into -assos?

Isn't Tarhuntassa securely located as a neighbor to Kizzuwatna?
(I envision this about as far east as the borders of southwest Asia
Minor can be stretched.  I have heard that Tarhuntassa = later Tarsus.)

How old a god is Tarhun(d/t)?  Could he possibly be pre-Anatolian (ie.
Pelasgian on the theory that Pelasgian <> Anatolian)?

But I think the answer must be no.  Tarhun(d/t) is as Anatolian as St.
Brigid is Irish.  In that case, did the founders of Tarhuntassa append
a foreign -assa suffix to give their city name "class?"  (I'm from
Minneapolis so I'm familiar with this practice.)

Rather than this, Is there not sufficient evidence here and elsewhere,
that the -assa suffix is Anatolian as well as Pelasgian?

Given the location of Tarhuntassa and its obvious Anatolian-ness, can't a
strong case be made for a bond between Anatolian and the substrate
everybody's talking about here?

I suspect Dr. White has given my "right-fork" theory of Anatolian-Pelasgian
connectedness a death-blow, but alas I am too elementary in my thinking
processes to understand what he meant by:

>As for the Pelasgians being a "right fork" of the IE-Anatolians who passed
>into Greece, if their language had phonetically aspirated /t/s (and presumably
>/p, k/), which is necessary to explain how Anatolian /t/ could appear as Greek
>/th/, would we not find "Chorinthos", "Pharnassos", and even (farther afield)
>"Tharthessos"? To invoke aspiration merely to explain the Greek /th/ for
>Anatolian /t/ (or even /d/), conveniently ignoring unwanted side effects, is
>not acceptable. What language in the world aspirates /t/ only after /n/? None
>that I ever heard of.

Apparently it is my burden to explain the Greek /th/ for Anatolian /t/ or
/d/, but I don't know why.  (And certainly I don't know how!)

Dr. White also explains the wide dispersion of -assos names (like Tartessos) as
possibly due to later Greek mediation.  It is in fact extreme to think of early
Pelasgians in Spain.  But the name Tarhuntassa came and went before the Greeks
came snooping very far into Asia Minor.  Some kind of pre-Greek dispersion
really did happen.

I am friendly to the idea of a dispersion of an originally unified linguistic
community into Italy, Greece and Asia Minor.  I can see why those focused on
Asia Minor might talk of Anatolians, and those focused on Greece might talk of
Pelasgians.  I'm sure the people directly involved would have been surprised to
hear themselves described by either term.

Anatolian is sometimes held to be so early that it is on sister-sister terms
with the entire remainder of IE.  Perhaps Pelasgian can have the distinct
qualities Kilday gives it, if it is acknowledged as a third sister, close
enough to Anatolian to be joined at the hip.  (Er, "joined at the assos?")


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Apr 27 06:45:27 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 02:45:27 EDT
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.024527.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/26/01 11:52:06 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
gordonbr at microsoft.com writes:

> Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
> languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

-- Undoubtedly Aramaic as his native tongue; it had replaced Hebrew as the
spoken language by that time.  He'd have learned some Hebrew for liturgical
purposes -- the two are very closely related, anyway.

Quite possibly he could speak Greek; there were important Greek-speaking
towns and cities throughout the region in the early 1st century, and Greek
was the lingua franca and administrative language of the area, and had been
since Alexander's conquests several hundred years before.  It would be more
likely for a Galilean to speak Greek than someone from the Judean hills, too.

A town-dwelling, literate Jew in Galilee in that period would be certain to
have Aramaic and Hebrew, and very likely to have some koine Greek.  A peasant
might well be an Aramaic monoglot.  A Jew from, say, Alexandria might have
Greek as his first language.

Latin is a much more remote possibility.  All educated Romans (Pontius
Pilate, for example) would be fully fluent in Greek and Greek would be the
usual language they'd use with someone whose native tongue was Aramaic.


From mc2499 at mclink.it  Fri Apr 27 07:12:17 2001
From: mc2499 at mclink.it (Ian Hutchesson)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:12:17 +0200
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.091217.0200.>

I don't think it is wise to treat literary works, such as the gospels, as
historical works and the make assumptions from there. We don't know when,
where, why, by whom, or for what the gospels were written. The first person to
cite surely from the gospels was Irenaeus (c.180 CE), though Justin Martyr
seems to have been acquainted with the texts (c.155). They are simply not
historically tenable sources. Therefore to go beyond an account which talks of
a character called Iesous to create a historical figure Yeshua is purely in the
realm of hypothesis.

As the gospels are written in Greek, although there are a few abracadabra
Aramaic phrases, it's extremely difficult to get past that Greek. People have
tried to invent Aramaic precusors for GMatt without gaining any substantial
following.

All three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek were in use in Judaea at the
time as attested by the Dead Sea finds -- Wadi Murabba'at and another site
supplied administrative texts in all three langauges. The Qumran Dead Sea
Scrolls are mainly in Hebrew with some Aramaic and very few Greek religious
texts.

----------------

[ Moderators note:
  The following is quoted from Gordon Brown, who in turn was quoting Max Dashu
  on Mack's book.
  --rma ]

> Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
> languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

>> I dunno about that. Mack's book on the Book of Q states that Galilee
>> was a very heterogenous society, so much that it was called Galil
>> ha-goyim (i.e., 'of the nations'). With a strong Hellenistic presence.
>> And Nazareth was very close to the imperial center Sephoris. I
>> personally don't think Yeshua used "Petros" but the idea that he had
>> some familiarity with Greek is not really so outlandish.

Incidentally, there is no archaeological evidence for the town of Nazareth
until a few centuries later. (I would probably argue that Nazareth is a
secondary addition to the tradition, with the earliest gospel, GMark, giving
Capernaum as Jesus' hometown.) There has been a fair bit of literature lately
dealing with the significance of the term "nazarenos/nazaraios" and the
connection between it and the town is not transparent -- one might expect
"nazarethenos" or similar rather than nazarenos.

And the story about Peter is also somewhat problematic. With one exception Paul
only knows Kephas (and it is only used once in the gospels, GJn 1:42). The
exception is a gloss in Galatians 2:6-7. At the same time one should note that
a text called the Epistle of the Apostles has a list of apostles which includes
both a Kephas and a Peter. Were they two different people conflated due to the
significance of the names, or was there only one person involved? The lack of
historical support for the texts involved makes it hard to decide.

Ian


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 27 15:55:44 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:55:44 +0100
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <FRI.27.APR.2001.165544.0100.>

>Reminds me of another thing I've wondered for quite a while.  What
>languages is it likely that Yeshua spoke?

Probably:
Aramaic (the local language), and enough Hebrew for the scriptures (which
were as much heard, as read by eye), and Greek and Latin for survival in
that trading and political climate.

What language did he speak to his followers?   Probably Aramaic.

There are polyglot areas in Europe today where many people will have some
degree of competence in several languages.   The situation back then was not
so unusual.  Consider a pious Jewish family in Flanders, where they may
speak Flemish in the home, use French at work, enjoy Hebrew in the
synagogue, and assist the tourists to part with their money in English.

Peter


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 02:28:54 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 21:28:54 -0500
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.212854.0500.>

> I have proposed that PIE *p appears as a voiceless bilabial fricative in one
> inscription in ancient northern Italy (from Prestino; see MSS 58, 1988).

        Just a not terribly significant note:  development from /p/ to /f/
(or perhaps a bilabial voiceless fricative) to /h/ is presupposed in the
common (though perhaps wrong?) etymology of the "Hercynian" forest as being
both Celtic and relatable to /perkun/.  In other words, it is not always
assumed that PIE /p/ in Celtic went straight to zero, though I am unaware of
it leaving any traces in Insular Celtic.

Dr. David L. White


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 03:08:12 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 23:08:12 EDT
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.230812.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/29/01 8:45:06 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

> I think that the crux of the matter is the preconceived notion is that
> migration / conquest is not a major feature of prehistory. The fact that the
> linguistic map of Europe has been several times redone in historical times
> through migration / conquest does not seem to be a useful argument in this
> context: neolithic and bronze age peoples behaved differently from their
> descendants according to anti-migrationists.

-- well, that _is_ the crux; and it's not just in Europe, either -- the
spread of, say, Chinese and Arabic are examples.

The idea that behavior suddenly changes radically when we can't look at it --
ie., when there are no written records -- is _ipso facto_ somewhat... ah...
suspect.  One immediately suspects that the "blank" surface of prehistory is
being used as a palimpest on which the ideological or methodological wishes
of the investigator are projected.

Explanatory parsimony would lead to the conclusion that the mechanisms of
historical (and hence linguistic) change are uniform, at least since the
beginning of the neolithic if not before.  The "same sort of thing" was
going on before written records as happened after their development, in
other words.

So to move a language, you have to move information, and before mass
literacy the only way to move information was to move the human heads which
contained it.

Even when people 'convert' to a new language, they have to learn it from
_somebody_; ie., native speakers.  Furthermore, there are more and less
likely was for this to happen; in a premodern context, small intrusive
minorities generally get absorbed by their linguistic surroundings rather
than vice versa, even if they're politically dominant. (Which is why this
conversation is not being conducted in Norman French.)  Learning a new
language is difficult for adults, and is seldom undertaken without very
strong motivation.

To linguistically assimilate another population (leaving aside immigration
into a different language zone), a majority is generally required -- not
necessarily a national or regional majority, but at least one within a
system of households; that way, individuals who are included in them _have_
to learn the new language for daily communication.

Likewise, languages turn into language families by physical expansion
followed by diverging dialect formation.  That's happened over and over
again in historical times -- Latin ==> Romance being the best-known example
but far from the only one.  There is, again, absolutely no reason to
believe that the diversification of PIE into the various IE languages was
different.

> In my view we linguists are themselves to blame to a certain extent: we have
> tied language too closely to ethnicity.

-- perhaps, but attempting to sever it completely is far more absurd.
Human beings have always considered language as a basic classificatory
category, although not of course the only one; for example, if I recall
correctly the Slavic word for "German" derives from a term meaning "mute"
or "tongue-tied".


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 03:22:55 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 23:22:55 EDT
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.232255.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/29/01 9:10:29 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> I challenge you to describe how the current outcome would be different if you
> assumed there was no PIE and the known IE languages arose out of convergence.

-- that's a classic case of trying to require that someone "prove the
negative".  The burden of proof is in the other direction.

> Because unless you can describe a different expected outcome, convergence
> becomes just as likely an explanation as a single parent.

-- not in the least.  The historical evidence indicates that the spread of a
single parent language and its divergence into dialects which then (given a
sufficient degree of separation) become distinct daughter-languages is the
overwhelmingly predominant source of language formation, on all continents
and at all times.

> The comparative method doesn't allow for convergence.  It assumes there was
> no convergence.

-- that's because there's no evidence of convergence on the required scale
anywhere in the evidence to which we have access.

Throughout the recorded history of the IE languages, they diverge.  There's
certainly plenty of intra-linguistic influence (lexical borrowings and so
forth) but any two languages of the IE group, for example French and English,
grow _more_ similar in structure the further back you go and _less_ similar
the further forward in time.  Compare verb forms or inflections Old English
and Latin, for instance, and then in English and modern French.

The only times you get real "convergence" is when one language (or, more
commonly, dialect) is undergoing language death, and in the special case of
creolized pidgins.

Assuming that -- surprise! -- as soon as there's no written evidence,
entirely different mechanisms of causation take over is exactly equivalent
to assuming that, because we can't go there and tell, oxygen and hydrogen
don't combine to form water in a galaxy ten billion light-years away.
However, uniformity is a basic presumption of all the sciences.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 04:18:39 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 23:18:39 -0500
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.231839.0500.>

        It looks like I am going to meet my deadline, so I can afford to
start re-indulging my vices, among which this list is chief ...
        Two words or expressions are being thrown around here in a way that
makes me a little uncomfortable.  The first is "lingua franca".  This has
(if we are not case-sensitive) three meanings:  1) a real language, "Lingua
Franca", which is (or was) a sort of Mediterranean Romance semi-creole, 2)
an international business or trade language characteristic of a certain
place/period, as for example Akkadian, and 3) something in the pidgin/creole
range.   Meanings 2 and 3, though they can overlap, do not necessarily do
so, and due to inherent ambiguity the expression "lingua franca" is probably
best avoided, as considerable confusion is likely to be sown.
           Second is "convergence".  I believe the impression some would
like to create is that when mutually unintelligible languages meet they can
converge or "mix" and form a new language, which can then mislead
circularly-reasoning linguists into wrongly imagining a proto-language.
Whether mixed languages occur is a good question, though there can be little
doubt that about 90% of proposals along those lines (often by quite
unsophisticated missionary linguists) have turned out to be wrong (for
examples of this sad syndrome, see the introductory chapter of Welmers
"African Language Structures").  But be that as it may, "convergence" is, I
believe, more properly used to describe the sort of situation detailed by
Gumperz and Wilson (as well as Emeneau?) in Kupwar India, where due to
extensive routine bilingualism the local versions of Marathi and Kannada
have undergone almost complete syntactic (and phonological?) convergence, to
the point where they are virtually the same language with different words.
(I have heard that the same might be said of Rumanian and Bulgarian.)  But
they have _not_ "mixed".  The lexicons (last I heard) are kept entirely
separate, and it is never at all problematic to determine which language
someone is speaking.  If this is the sort of situation that is supposed to
have led to "mixed" "lingua francas", and so to the "illusion" of
proto-Celtic, proto-Uralic and so on in the misty past, then it is surely a
good question why the result in the well-studied and not at all misty
present has been so utterly different.  I do not know, but I can guess:
mixed languages by and large belong to that semantic category that has been
called "fantasies of the ignorant".   There may be a few out there, but no
example I have seen is convincing.  The only ones I am aware of that are
even just-barely-possibly convincing involve cases of a language dying (e.g.
Anatolian Greek), which is not exactly the most promising way for a new
language family to get off the ground.

Dr. David L. White


From sarima at friesen.net  Mon Apr 30 04:22:04 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 21:22:04 -0700
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0104270802520.23423177-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <SUN.29.APR.2001.212204.0700.>

At 08:49 AM 4/27/01 +0300, Ante Aikio wrote:
>- There was no uniform Proto-Uralic language, but instead a group of
>unrelated languages which coalesced into a "Uralic lingua franca" (some
>kind of pidgin or creole) some 10,000+ years ago.

I think I see a fallacy in their reasoning right here.  At least I have
been lead to understand that pidgins and creoles are predominantly based on
a single parent language, and thus cannot really be termed
"mixtures".  Have I been mislead, or is this the case?

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Apr 30 11:00:11 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 13:00:11 +0200
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.130011.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2001 9:34 AM

[snip]
> If you sincerely were looking for evidence of convergence, you mention the
> obvious place to look, in such "picturesque novelties as the initial
> consonant mutations -- not to mention the Old Irish verbal system."  It
> wouldn't be in the consistencies that Celtic would show evidence of
> convergence,  it would be in the "innovations."  But if we are dealing with
> possibly hundreds of EXTINCT European languages, IE or otherwise, how would
> you be able to identify other "genetic" influences?  Perhaps one of them had
> initial consonant mutation.

[snip]
> Regards,
> Steve Long

[Ed Selleslagh]
Grammatically determined initial-consonant mutations (I think it's important to
be that explicit about it) occur in other, still existing, languages too: e.g.
(sub-saharan) Fulani ( or Peul). And some Bantu languages, like Tshiluba, use
initial consonant palatalization for diminutives (so does Basque) and all use
class-prefix modification (Actually, that may be the origin of the Peul
phenemena: I wonder if the Celtic equivalent might not have a somewhat similar
origin, e.g. the female form of the adjective).

Verbal systems can change quite a bit in 1000 years, let alone in thousands of
years; just look at what had already happened to Latin and Greek verb by the
10th or 11th century A.D. - I mean Byzantine (and later) Greek and the various
Latin languages.

I really would like to know other people's views on these matters.

Ed.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Mon Apr 30 14:19:16 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 15:19:16 +0100
Subject: No Proto-Celtic?
In-Reply-To: <6e.a0fd8f2.281d1dec@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.151916.0100.>

Steve Long writes:

[on my description of the views of Trubetzkoy et al. on IE as "crazy"]

> Oh, come now, Larry.  I challenge you to describe how the current outcome
> would be different if you assumed there was no PIE and the known IE
> languages arose out of convergence.  How would the situation be
> different?  What signs should be present in specific languages that are
> absent now?  Would you expect to find different classes of noun and verb
> morphology?  Would some words be n-stems and others not?  Different words
> for fire, eat and horse, perhaps?  What would tell you exactly that
> convergence had happened?  Or would there really be any way to tell?

Yes; certainly.

If the IE languages had really arisen by some process of 'crystallization'
or language mixing, then we would *not* expect to find the tightly
interlocking patterns linking these languages that we do find.  Instead, we
would expect to find only shared elements and miscellaneous resemblances --
without pattern, without system, without rhyme or reason.  In other words,
we would expect to find something similar to what we see with Tlingit and
Eyak-Athabaskan: commonalities without system.  And that is precisely what
we do not find.

> I don't think you'll be able to do this.  But I hope you won't avoid the
> challenge and at least try.  Because unless you can describe a different
> expected outcome, convergence becomes just as likely an explanation as a
> single parent.

No; not at all.  The null hypothesis is this:

The IE languages are not descended by divergence from a single common
ancestor.

This null hypothesis is spectacularly falsified by the data, by the
extensive and elaborate systematic patterns linking all of the IE
languages.  A convergence scenario predicts nothing more than shared
elements and resemblances.  This is not what we find, and so the
convergence scenario is falsified.

> The comparative method doesn't allow for convergence.  It assumes there
> was no convergence.

This is far too strong.  The comparative method only *addresses*
divergence, sure.  But it is not inconsistent with convergence; it doesn't
deny convergence; and it certainly does not assume an absence of
convergence.
Convergence merely has to be handled outside the comparative method -- as
indeed it routinely is.

For example, Latin <lingua> 'tongue' fails to satisfy the usual IE
correspondences, and so it is regarded as a loan word from another Italic
language.

Take another example.  Martin Bernal, in 'Black Athena', argues that a
number of Greek words and names must have been taken from Semitic or
Egyptian, merely because they happen to resemble something in those
languages.  But Jasanoff and Nussbaum, in their devastating critique of
Bernal's linguistic efforts, dispose of this argument in a number of cases.
They do this by showing that the Greek items in question are *predicted by
rule*, to the last phonetic detail, by the comparative IE evidence.
Convergence predicts only resemblance, while the systematic correspondences
among the IE languages predict exact forms.

This argument from systematicity is what makes PIE valid.  The systematic
nature of the correspondences forces us to reject weaker conclusions, such
as all those involving no more than contact and convergence.

> *PIE is a creation of the comparative method.

No, it's not.  I'm afraid this is a fantasy.

The comparative method is not a piece of abracadabra which can be applied
to any arbitrary languages at all and still produce a "reconstruction".
The method can only be applied at all in one circumstance: when we find
systematic correspondences among languages.

It is a common misconception among non-linguists that comparative
linguistics deals in resemblances.  It does not.  The comparative method
deals in *patterns*, and only in patterns, and resemblances have nothing to
do with it.

If we find some languages linked by an extensive network of systematic
patterns, then we can apply the comparative method successfully and obtain
a reconstruction -- even if there are no resemblances at all.  In very
great contrast, if we find that certain languages exhibit numerous
resemblances, but no systematic patterns, then the comparative method
cannot be applied, and no reconstruction can be obtained.  This is the case
with Tlingit and Eyak-Athabaskan, for which no reconstruction is possible.

In short, the method can only be applied at all when the systematic
correspondences objectively exist, and not otherwise.

> It
> may in fact reflect historical fact.  I suspect it does.  But I don't
> believe you have any way of proving that.

Sure, I have: the cases in which reconstruction can be performed, and those
in which it cannot.  That's a pretty big difference.

[on my astonishment about some "convergence" views of Celtic]

> First of all, a "trade language" as the term is used by a Sheratt or a
> Whittier, refers to how the language spread, not to its genetic
> characteristic.  "Lingua franca" is a term often applied to "genetic"
> languages, e.g., "North Sea" Germanic.

I'm afraid I don't know these two writers.  But I don't recognize the
distinction made here, and I can't agree that a lingua franca has to be
recognizably a single genetic language.  See the definition in any standard
linguistic dictionary, such as Crystal or Matthews.  The original Lingua
Franca, in the Mediterranean, was, according to all standard sources, a
pidgin.

Anyway, Barry Cunliffe, who I quoted in particular, uses 'trade language'
and 'lingua franca' pretty much interchangeably in his book -- reasonably
enough, I think.  This is just about the only point on which I don't take
issue with him.

> Secondly, what exactly would you look for, if Celtic was the result of
> some kind of a convergence?  Would it be like Haitian Creole, where
> according to Michel DeGraff at MIT, virtually all affixes have cognates
> in French affixes? Or rather would it be like English, where most affixes
>  are of non-Germanic origins?  What would you expect Celtic to look like
> if the convergence hypothesis were correct?  Especially after 5000 years.

OK.  First of all, we now have a number of examples of *individual*
languages with non-genetic origins.  These are quite varied in their
structures, and I'm not sure that many solid generalizations can be drawn.

Second, I am not sure that Haitian Creole represents a particularly good
example of a non-genetic language, since it is so strongly based on French.

Third, and most importantly, we appear to have *no single example* of the
kind of thing that is being proposed here for Celtic: a *group* of distinct
and seemingly closely related languages which have come into existence
through convergence, without a single common ancestor.  Steve, can you cite
a convincing example of such a thing?  I can't, and I don't think there is
one.

Fourth, I have already explained what I think a "convergence" origin for
the Celtic languages ought to give us: a group of languages sharing common
elements and exhibiting a number of miscellaneous resemblances, but linked
by no systematic correspondences -- making reconstruction of a common
ancestor impossible.  But this is not what we find, not at all: instead, we
find numerous and detailed systematic correspondences, and we find no great
obstacles to reconstructing Proto-Celtic.  The convergence scenario is
therefore falsified.

> Is there an example of an IE language you can point to that shows what
> convergence would be like after 5000 years?

No.  I know of no substantially recorded IE language which cannot be
derived from PIE in the usual way.  As I remarked in an earlier posting, IE
languages are dreadful candidates for convergence origins -- even if some
other languages are excellent candidates.

> And therefore shows why we
> can be sure Celtic did not undergo convergence 5000 years ago?

This is not quite the proposal on the table.  The proposal of Renfrew,
Cunliffe and others is that the individual Celtic languages arose by
convergence from diverse origins over a period of 4000 years or more --
from about 5000 BC to around 1000 BC or later.

Of course, one might put forward a quite different proposal: that
Proto-Celtic arose by some convergence process, and then gave birth to the
individual Celtic languages in the familiar genetic way.  But this is not
the proposal on the table, and anyway the tables of systematic
correspondences linking Proto-Celtic both to PIE and to the daughter
languages are enough to falsify this view, too.

> Even if as you have said the whole idea of a language like Celtic is just
> a "reification."

Clarification: Celtic is not a language but a family.  The single language
in question is Proto-Celtic -- whose former existence I regard as proved on
the basis of the linguistic evidence.  Proto-Celtic is not a reification
dreamed up to satisfy somebody's ideology about how languages ought to
behave: it is a conclusion forced upon us by the evidence.

> Finally, the "highly regular phonological and morphological prehistory of
> Proto-Celtic (vis-a-vis PIE)" is the only kind of prehistory the
> comparative method would yield.  Of course, Celtic is going to show
> regular development out of *PIE.  *PIE is nothing but a construct based
> on Celtic and other IE languages.  It has no choice but to show regular
> developments and a Proto-Celtic.  *PIE is nothing but Celtic (along with
> other languages) reconstructed back to an assumed parent.

Steve, I am appalled.  As I explained above, if a group of languages do not
have a single common ancestor, then the comparative method cannot find one.
The method cannot find correspondences where none exist, and it cannot
create a common ancestor where none exists.  This is fantasy.  Where are
you getting this stuff from?

If you doubt me, then let me return to my earlier example.  *Why* has no
one been able to apply the comparative method to Tlingit and
Eyak-Athabaskan, and *why* has it not been possible to reconstruct a common
ancestor -- in spite of the numerous and undoubted common elements in these
languages?  Answer, please.

> If you sincerely were looking for evidence of convergence, you mention the
> obvious place to look, in such "picturesque novelties as the initial
> consonant mutations -- not to mention the Old Irish verbal system."  It
> wouldn't be in the consistencies that Celtic would show evidence of
> convergence,  it would be in the "innovations."

Er -- what?  I'm afraid this makes no sense to me.

Innovations are the grist for the family-tree model of genetic descent.
Convergence stresses diffusion, not innovations.  Innovations are a problem
for convergence views, since, in the kind of case under discussion, these
views require practically every innovation to diffuse across the *entire*
area covered by the converging speech varieties -- and we know that
innovations do not normally do that.

> But if we are dealing
> with possibly hundreds of EXTINCT European languages, IE or otherwise,
> how would you be able to identify other "genetic" influences?  Perhaps
> one of them had initial consonant mutation.

There is no way on earth we can take into account any features of languages
which are extinct and unrecorded, and trying to do so constitutes
fantasyland stuff in most cases.

Anyway, there is absolutely no need to appeal to hypothetical substrate
languages to account for the Celtic mutations: within our standard view,
that the Celtic languages are descended by divergence from Proto-Celtic,
and that Proto-Celtic is descended by divergence from PIE, the Celtic
mutations can be *wholly* explained by appealing to the reconstructed
phonology.
Our explanation is entirely humdrum, and it is only the *later* development
of the mutations which makes them look mysterious.

> Calling the idea of convergence "dead and buried" will I suspect at some
> time in the future become nothing more than wishful thinking.

This is not what I said.  I expressly recognized that convergence is real.
What I denied was that IE languages, or Celtic languages, result from
convergence.

> Calling such views "crazy" is a little uncalled for.

Steve, I didn't call convergence ideas in general "crazy".  I only applied
this adjective to the convergence proposals made by Trubetzkoy and others
for IE, and to the convergence proposals made by Cunliffe and others for
Celtic.  Please try to quote me accurately.

> I'm sure for example you
> wouldn't use words like "crazy" to describe the views of Boas or
> Trubetzkoy on the HistLing list.

Oh, I wouldn't hesitate, if I thought the label was appropriate.  But
Trubetzkoy's view of IE is the only one of his views known to me that I
would describe as crazy, while I know of no views of Boas that I would
describe as crazy.  Boas was unusually sensible, and his views were often
ahead of his time.

In fact, I almost sent my original posting to HISTLING, but I finally
decided that the IE-list was more appropriate, since my query was about IE
languages specifically, and not about convergence models in general.

One final comment.  Steve apparently suspects that I oppose convergence
ideas in general.  But I don't.  If my earlier posting didn't make this
clear, let me quote part of the entry for 'convergence' in my recent
dictionary, coming after a brief mention of some long-recognized types of
convergence:

...Until recently, historical linguistics paid little attention to the
possibility of any further types of convergence, and divergence...was seen
as the primary phenomenon under investigation.  In the last few years,
however, convergence has begun to be taken far more seriously; the
examination of convergence phenomena is now seen as a major and growing
part of the field, and some linguists are suggesting that individual
languages can actually arise out of convergence...[I]t seems safe to say
that convergence will be a major theme in historical linguistics in the
years to come."

That clear enough?  I hope it's enough to show that I take convergence very
seriously indeed, and that I reject convergence accounts of IE and Celtic,
not out of ideology, but merely out of respect for the evidence.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 04:01:04 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 00:01:04 EDT
Subject: IE versus *PIE
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.000104.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/29/01 9:34:27 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> Once again, this is not scientifically justified.  Mr. Stirling rightly makes
> the point of falsifiability.  As long as IE languages show any serious
> commonality, there is going to be a genetic relationship shown and a
> hypothetical ancestor will be reconstructible.

-- true.

> logically disprove the presence of other "genetic strains" in those
> languages.

-- not true.

Claims that there are other "genetic strains" are not falsifiable. Therefore
they are worse than false; they're meaningless.

One can, on the other hand, point to a very strong probability of substantial
non-IE elements in the lexicon of Proto-Germanic.  This affects the _genetic_
relationship of Proto-Germanic to PIE not at all, once again.

> In fact there is nothing that prevents a community of speakers from adopting
> lexical and structural elements from more than one group of earlier speakers

-- which is true, but irrelevant.  English has a massive freight of lexical
items from Latin and the Romance languages; in total (though not in frequency
of use) almost as much as it derives from its Germanic parent.  And its
syntax bears very little resemblance to Proto-Germanic or to Old English.

This, however, affects the _genetic_ relationships involved not at all.
English is a Germanic language, and if we had no record of Old English, we
could reconstruct it (and the intervening stages) quite accurately from
cognate languages and the modern speech.

In fact, this is one of the reasons why reconstructive linguistics is
overwhelmingly persuasive; it has repeatedly _predicted_ results later
established experimentally.

Eg., when Linear B was shown to write an archaic form of Greek, the forms
were precisely those predicted by the reconstructive method.  The example of
the laryngeals predicted solely from IE languages in which they'd vanished,
and then found in the Anatolian IE languages, is another.

> The assumption that there must be some kind of core retained from one
> linguistic community or the other is nothing but an assumption.  Nothing
> makes it necessary.

-- nothing but the observable evidence, and the general assumption of uniform
causation.  If we're to believe that suddenly, when it can't be proven or
disproven, wholly different patterns of causation pop up like posies, then
all discussion becomes futile.

Radical epistemological scepticism is a wonderful way for undergraduates to
waste time.  It's rather tiresome in later life.

> And just to be clear about terminology, the "relatedness" of historic and
> documented IE languages CAN be asserted with a high degree of certainty.
> Statistically the possibility of what these languages have in common
> happening by accident is highly improbable.  But this is definitely not same
> as saying that all those individual commonalities had to derive from a common
> source.

-- it gets tiresome to say "for all practical purposes" all the time.  We go
with the hypothesis which most parsimoniously explains the observable facts,
which is falsifiable, and which has predictive power.

The theory that the IE languages descend from a common ancestral tongue in
the same manner in which, say, French and Spanish descend from Latin, fits
the above criteria better than any other hypothesis.  The fact that French
and Spanish contain lexical and structural influences from substratum
languages (and in the case of Spanish, have been quite strongly influenced by
Arabic) does absolutely nothing to change their genetic relationship to
Latin, or their status vs. a vs. each other.

Therefore it can be taken -- for all practical purposes, and failing new
evidence which falsifies it -- that the PIE hypothesis is "true".  Then we
can get on with studying how it functions.

It's as true as General Relativity; in fact, rather more so, because there
are fewer elements of the observable data set which it can't account for.

> There is nothing I have seen that makes it clear that those
> individual commonalities could not have come from more than one unrelated
> source or even distantly related sources.

-- that's roughly equivalent to saying there's no way to prove that the world
wasn't created yesterday, along with our memories.  That's why "proving a
negative" is a byword for rhetorical futility.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that if some proposition is not
completely and definitively proven, then it has no stronger ground than any
other hypothesis however outre and bizzare.  That's not the way things work.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Mon Apr 30 09:09:59 2001
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:09:59 +0100
Subject: IE versus *PIE
In-Reply-To: <95.a1731a1.281db4d5@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.100959.0100.>

Steve Long writes:

[on Uhlenbeck, Trubetzkoy and Tovar's rejection of PIE and my rejection of
their views]

> Once again, this is not scientifically justified.  Mr. Stirling rightly
> makes the point of falsifiability.  As long as IE languages show any
> serious commonality, there is going to be a genetic relationship shown
> and a hypothetical ancestor will be reconstructible.

Oh, no -- at least, not if we require minimal standards in anything we
accept as a "reconstruction".  I can "reconstruct" a common ancestor for
English and Zulu if you'll allow me all the elbow room I want.  But I have
more exacting standards in mind -- standards which our reconstruction of
PIE undoubtedly meets.

> This does not and cannot logically disprove the presence of other "genetic
> strains" in those languages.

No one is claiming that every single element in an IE language must descend
directly from PIE.

> I think Prof Trask is guilty here of the very reification which he himself
> has noted before on this list.  Something like the idea that a language
> is a single organism in which the parts must all descend from a single
> ancestor.

No; certainly not.  Nobody would be mad enough to defend such a position,
and, as a native speaker of English, and one who has already used a number
of non-Germanic words in this reply, I am hardly well placed to be the
first such madman.

> In fact there is nothing that prevents a community of speakers
> from adopting lexical and structural elements from more than one group of
> earlier speakers.

Of course there is not, and probably every community of speakers does
precisely this.

> The assumption that there must be some kind of core
>  retained from one linguistic community or the other is nothing but an
> assumption.  Nothing makes it necessary.

Agreed, but not the point.  I am not maintaining that no mixed languages
can exist: that position has now been clearly falsified.  I am only
maintaining that the IE languages are not examples of mixed languages -- a
very different matter.

> And just to be clear about terminology, the "relatedness" of historic and
> documented IE languages CAN be asserted with a high degree of certainty.

I agree entirely, though I must make it clear that I understand
"relatedness" as meaning "common origin from a single ancestor", and not as
meaning something substantially vaguer than this.

> Statistically the possibility of what these languages have in common
> happening by accident is highly improbable.

Highly improbable, indeed.  The universe will never exist long enough to
allow anything comparable to the IE languages to come into existence by
chance.

> But this is definitely not same as saying that all those individual
> commonalities had to derive from a common source.

Yes, it is.

> There is nothing I have seen that makes it clear that
> those individual commonalities could not have come from more than one
> unrelated source or even distantly related sources.

I am flabbergasted.  What, in my view, makes this position untenable is the
*orderliness* of the connections among the IE languages.  We don't have
mere resemblances, and we don't merely have bags of resemblances.  Instead,
we have systematic patterns linking all these languages in a way which is
impossible to explain except by descent from a single common ancestor.

Consider a parallel from North America.  Athabaskan is a secure and
well-understood family.  Eyak shares a common origin with Athabaskan: this
was proved some years ago by Michael Krauss, who uncovered the systematic
correspondences linking the two.  So far, fine.

Now, Tlingit is commonly suspected of being related to Eyak-Athabaskan, and
it certainly shares a large number of features with EA.  However, in this
case, no orderly patterns can be found linking the two: all we have is a
large collection of similarities, enough to demonstrate some kind of
historical link, but no more.  And, because of the total absence of
systematic and orderly patterns linking the two, no Proto-Tlingit-EA can be
reconstructed -- according to our ordinary ideas of what a reconstruction
should look like, and contrary to Steve's earlier assertion.  Therefore, we
cannot prove that Tlingit is related to EA, in my sense of the term.

There are, of course, several possible explanations, and all have been
proposed:

(1) Tlingit is unrelated to EA, and the similarities result entirely from
long contact.

(2) Tlingit is a mixed language, resulting from the imposition of an EA
language on an unrelated substrate, with consequent and extensive mixing.

(3) Tlingit is an EA language with a highly unusual history.  In
particular, it broke up into a number of distinct regional varieties, but
some unusual event then caused these varieties to be re-combined --
effectively, koineized -- in an unsystematic manner.

All of these proposals are consistent with the observation that Tlingit
exhibits many similarities to EA but no systematic correspondences.  Any
one of them might be right, but we can't tell.  In any case, as things
stand, we cannot prove that Tlingit is related to EA -- in spite of the
abundant similarities -- and we cannot reconstruct a common ancestor.

The case of IE is wholly different: it does not resemble the case of
Tlingit and EA.

> (As far as what's dead and what's not, and as far as the opinion of the
> linguistic community, I'd be happy to privately share with Prof Trask the
> opinion of some eminent linguists who most definitely do not believe that
> PIE can be plausibly recovered at all.)

Sure; feel free.  I'll be happy to hear about this.  But the wording is
peculiar.  Are you, Steve, suggesting that some linguists believe that PIE
existed but that we cannot substantially recover it?  This is not at all
the position of the three men who I cited earlier and whose view I rejected
as untenable.

> That's not to say PIE didn't exist.  It's just to say that its existence
> is no where as necessary as Prof Trask makes it out to be.  As a
> scientific matter at least.  One's personal beliefs are another matter.

Sorry, Steve -- I can't agree with this for a moment.  The former existence
of PIE is a necessity forced upon us by the data.  The relationships among
the IE languages are just too orderly and systematic to result from
anything other than common origin from a single ancestor.  Other kinds of
origin could produce resemblances, but they could not produce the
systematic relations that we see.

Finally, a very general point on which I perhaps agree with Steve.  We know
it is possible for a language to descend from a single common ancestor in
the familiar way.  The IE languages are splendid examples.  And we know
-- now -- that it is possible for a language to descend from two (or
possibly more) ancestors.  Michif is a magnificent example.  And we also
know that it is possible for a language to descend from no ancestor at all.
Nicaraguan Sign Language is the clearest example I know of.

Given all this, we must be prepared to consider the possibility of all
kinds of intermediate cases.  One of the most interesting intermediate
cases is the Austronesian language Takia, which has borrowed the *entire*
grammar of the neighboring but unrelated Papuan language Waskia, so that
every Takia sentence is a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss of the corresponding
Waskia sentence -- while at the same time Takia has borrowed no morphemes
at all from Waskia.

Linguistic work in the last twenty years has demonstrated beyond dispute
that linguistic descent can be, and sometimes is, far more complicated than
our conventional family-tree model would suggest.  This is fascinating, and
I am confident that the next twenty years will turn up yet more surprises.
But it is out of order to conclude that the IE languages result from one or
another of these more colorful scenarios: the evidence is solidly against
this.  If things were otherwise, our predecessors would never have
succeeded in reconstructing PIE in the first place -- just as specialists
today cannot reconstruct a Proto-Tlingit-Eyak-Athabaskan, in spite of the
obvious commonalities.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)


From Oliver.Neukum at lrz.uni-muenchen.de  Mon Apr 30 06:58:56 2001
From: Oliver.Neukum at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Oliver Neukum)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 08:58:56 +0200
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <017101c0ceb4$da9978a0$34efffcc@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.085856.0200.>

> What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem
> to have contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you
> wouldn't necessarily expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas
> forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan > schiete.  Of course the value
> of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference here.

As he was Dutch an e could well signify length.

au > o:
iu > y: > i:

Not beyond reason.

	Regards
		Oliver Neukum


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Apr 30 10:05:40 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 12:05:40 +0200
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.120540.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Gustafson" <stevegus at aye.net>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 2:56 AM

> What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem to have
> contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you wouldn't necessarily
> expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan
> > schiete.  Of course the value of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference
> here.

[Ed Selleslagh]

In the old Dutch spelling (before modern times) the addition of an <-e> to a
vowel simply indicated that it's long; in modern Dutch, a double vowel is
written, except in the case of <i>, where the long version is still <ie> (ae,
ee, ie, ue instead of modern aa, ee, ie, uu).

So <oeghene> is pronounced  /o:[gamma]@n@ /


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 30 15:19:09 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:19:09 -0500
Subject: Crimean Gothic
In-Reply-To: <017101c0ceb4$da9978a0$34efffcc@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.101909.0500.>

	Diamond points out that "Classical" Gothic (my term, not his) is
not ancestral to Crimean Gothic and that Busbecq somewhat arbitrarily
called the language Gothic --although Diamond agrees that it was a form of
Gothic. Diamond does go into some of the details in his article.

>What intrigues me most about the list is that Busbecq's Goths seem to have
>contracted a case of i-umlaut, and applied it where you wouldn't necessarily
>expect to see it from the attested Ulfilas forms: augona > oeghene; *skiutan >
>schiete.  Of course the value of Busbecq's 'oe' may make a difference here.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Apr 30 15:31:32 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 11:31:32 EDT
Subject: Crimean Gothic
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.113132.EDT.>

In a message dated 4/30/2001 12:17:38 AM, edsel at glo.be writes:

<< Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (= van Buisbeek), ?Komen 1522-+Rouen 1592,was
actually Flemish, from the presently Belgian border (France-Belgium) city of
Komen (Fr. Comines), nowadays predominantly French speaking, but with 'language
facilities' for the remaining Dutch speaking population [He lived before the
southern part of Flanders was annexed by France's Louis XIV]. Actually, he was
probably educated in French.

He also brought the tulip to the Low Countries. >>

I take it he was the first.  Otherwise it would be coals to Newcastle.

As a sidebar, this is Nancy Tuleen's POV on Crimean Gothic as it appears on
the web:

"The Crimean Gothic attestations transcribed by the Flemish nobleman Busbecq
are fascinating for their historical value: that a small enclave of
Ostrogoths survived in the Crimea, nearly to the modern age, is truly
amazing. Linguistically, however, relatively little is to be gained from
Busbecq's transcription. Firstly, he was no linguist, and his orthography is
quite peculiar, showing corruption from his native Flemish as well as from
German; so too, his primary informant was not a native Gothic speaker, but
rather a Greek who claimed to be fluent in the language. In addition, we no
longer have Busbecq's original manuscript, but only a bad copy of a printed
edition, full of errors and confusion. In short, scholars have managed to
place this dialect into the Eastern Gothic family, showing as it does
remnants of nominative -s endings, however dubiously attested. As such,
Crimean Gothic does not tell us much about Wulfila's Gothic,..."

http://members.cts.com/crash/n/nthuleen/papers/755gothfinal.html


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Mon Apr 30 10:35:52 2001
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (Gabor Sandi)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:35:52 -0000
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.103552.0000.>

Hello, Cristian.

According to my Orszagh (i.e. the standard Hungarian-English dictionary),
Hungarian 'men' (with accute accented e) is a 'stallion'. This is not in my
own native Budapest vocabulary, but then I truly am a city boy, for whom all
horses are just 'lovak'. I am, however, familiar with the derivative 'menes'
(again with accent on the first e), which I thought meant a herd of horses,
or whatever the collective of horses is in English, but Orszagh claims that
it means a 'studfarm' (the closest Hungarian-French dictionary agrees with
my understanding, and says that it is a 'troupeau de chevaux')

So 'menhus' could mean 'horsemeat', although why wouldn't they just have
said 'lohus'?.

With my best wishes,

Gabor

[ moderator snip ]


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Mon Apr 30 13:23:46 2001
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 07:23:46 -0600
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
In-Reply-To: <003601c0ce83$ecbe3560$c90469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.072346.0600.>

m?n is 'stallion' in Hungarian, so m?nh?s would be 'horsemeat'.
m?nh?s follows Hungarian compounding rules and would be a perfectly
acceptable modern Hungarian form.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
Utah State University

Program Director
USU On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (FAX)
mclasutt at brigham.net

[ moderator snip ]


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 30 20:05:01 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 15:05:01 -0500
Subject: "Men" ??? (was Crimean Gothic)
In-Reply-To: <003601c0ce83$ecbe3560$c90469c2@smart.ro>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.150501.0500.>

	According to Diamond, the word for meat is from a Hungarian
compound word meaning "horse meat". I'm guessing the word was picked up c.
500-1000 CE when the Magyars were on their way to present day Hungary. On
the other hand, I imagine it's possible the compound was coined after <hus>
was borrowed from Hungarian. Diamond didn't give the particulars. I'm sure
a specialist on the list will know the details.

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From xavier.delamarre at free.fr  Mon Apr 30 10:51:02 2001
From: xavier.delamarre at free.fr (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 12:51:02 +0200
Subject: Greek from PIE
In-Reply-To: <001a01c0cea0$e472ec80$4a6263d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.125102.0200.>

le 27/04/01 0:32, David L. White ? dlwhite at texas.net a ?crit?:

>> At 06:10 PM 4/20/01 +0100, you wrote:

>>> Does anyone know a good book describing in detail the development of Greek
>>> from PIE?

> Why is nobody mentioning Palmer's book on the subject?  Is it
> considered discredited?  There is also Lejeune.

> Dr. David L. White

    And why not Antoine Meillet's "Aper?u d'une histoire de langue grecque",
Paris 1935 ? (many reprints, German transl., possibly English but I am not
sure).

XD


From petegray at btinternet.com  Mon Apr 30 18:17:04 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 19:17:04 +0100
Subject: Greek from PIE
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.191704.0100.>

>         Why is nobody mentioning Palmer's book on the subject?

Palmer is far too brief, general, and vague.  Good for an overview, but not
for the details.

peter


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Mon Apr 30 11:32:27 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 14:32:27 +0300
Subject: Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.143227.0300.>

Olives and figs do not grow on the Anatolian Plateau, or at least they
do not produce edible fruit. Fig (but not olive so far as I know) trees
grow in Ankara (and London) but I have never seen an edible fig on one.
Olives could have come from Hittite controlled lands on the south coast
and N Syria, as could figs.  I am not sure about the Black Sea, perhaps
someone could help out, but today the main cash crops are tobacco, hazel
nuts and tea, with chestnut higher up. There is no evidence that the
climate was sufficiently warmer in the Late Bronze Age for either olive
or fig to have been a viable crop on the plateau. There is a false olive
(sometimes called a Russian olive) that is prolific here and which does
produce a dry and edible fruit (i.e. you don't die if you eat it),
although it is not to my taste and I have never seen it on sale. It
would not produce olive oil.

The other fruits in the list all grow around Hattusa.

A string of dried figs and burnt olives have been excavated at Kilesi
Tepe (south of Mut) by Prof. Nicholas Postgate.

Hittites kept lions, and there is an excavated Lion bone from the
Japanese excavations at Kaman Kaleh?y?k (pers. comm. from Prof. Omura).

I always assume that the Hittite and Neo-Hittite door lions were carved
from life, although the Phrygian ones from Gordion look more whimsical.

Best,

Geoff

[ moderator snip ]

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Mon Apr 30 11:42:14 2001
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 14:42:14 +0300
Subject: Lions and Tiger and Bears, Oh My
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.144214.0300.>

David L. White wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>         Just a brief note:  Ancient Anatolia had not only lions, but tigers
> (in the eastern part), and leopards.  (Not to mention the usual bears, and
> wolves).  Yet it seems that the scariest animals the IEs knew were bears and
> wolves.  But of course tabu deformation may be relevant in all this.

> Dr. David L. White

In the Hittite Empire period at Hattusa we have the magnificent
sculptures of the Lion Gate, and at Yazilikaya the goddess Arinna stands
on a panther (or female lion?). The entrance to Chamber B at Yazilikaya
is protected by two demon bears carved in low relief, but they pale in
comparison with the power of the Lion Gate.

Best,

Geoff

--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 21:34:14 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 16:34:14 -0500
Subject: Fallow Deer
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.163414.0500.>

> Likewise, PIE lacks a word for the fallow deer, common throughout southern
> Europe, but has terms for 'elk' and 'red deer'.

        Another kind of fallow deer, not terribly distinct, occurs along the
border between Iraq and Iran, or did until the war there.  (There were
reports of them being machinegunned and eaten by solidiers, notwithstanding
that they were considered endangered at the time.)  More to the point, my
encylopedia of mammals, though not distinguishing between the types, lists
fallow deer as occurring in "Asia Minor".
        It is not clear to me whether the gazelles known to the Hittites
were native to Anatolia or were encountered further south.  From what I know
of the goitered gazelle (sorry about the name, I didn't make it up), it
seems probable that it would have occured in ancient Anatolia, though I
cannot be certain.  (Ranges of Asian gazelles have in general shrunk.)  It
occurs near there today, and tolerates cold fairly well.
        Thus we at least one and possibly two cases where, if the PIEs began
in Anatolia and went directly from there to Greece and Iran, they
inexplicably lost a word for animals of a rather harmless sort that would
not ordinarily be expected to provoke tabu deformation.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Apr 30 12:44:02 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 07:44:02 -0500
Subject: Etruscan / Pelasgian
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.074402.0500.>

> What language in the world aspirates /t/ only after /n/? None
> that I ever heard of.

        Answering my own rhetorcal question,  I note that some African
languages do this thing which I had thought was impossible.  Furthermore,
reflection reveals that proto-Britonic almost certainly did this too,
resulting in the nasal mutations of /p-t-k/.  Nonetheless, the Hittite forms
show variants in /nd/, which suggests that their pronunciation was more like
modern English "seventy" with a /d/ in it, so my original assertion was
probably (in implication) correct.
        As for place-name formative being both Pelasgian and Anatolian,
there is nothing wrong with this.  Derivational suffixes are often borrowed
with words, as is seen in modern English "ize" from Greek and, more vaguely,
the idea that it is somehow (poetically?) appropriate for country names to
end in "ia".  If there were enough city names in /-nthos/ and /-ssos/ (I am
not sure about the /a/) around, people could well have gotten the idea that
there was some sort of appropriate and "high-class" city name suffix
involved, and applied it to their own cities, thus yielding things like
Tartessos.  (I have no idea what the frst part is.)

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Mon Apr 30 15:39:56 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:39:56 -0500
Subject: Pelasgian/was Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <F281oUS2c1FpDK2QTH500009fb5@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.103956.0500.>

	I've seen somewhere (in popular etymological books) that
	cypressus and kuparissos are from Semitic
	and are cognate to English gopher (wood) --which was used for
Noah's Ark (if I remember correctly),
	and also cognate to Cyprus "(is)land of conifers"
	--and indirectly copper (metal from Cyprus).

	It does sound a bit pat and the -ssos ending looks suspiciously
pre-Greek substrate rather than Semitic but I plead ignorance

	So, are cypressus and kuparissos from Semitic?
	If gopher (wood) derived from Hebrew or just a variant form derived
from cypressus or kuparissos?
	Is there a link between Cyprus and cypress?

	Or is this all someone's wishful thinking?

>Yes. Many of these are phytonyms whose discrepancy in form precludes direct
>borrowing. Palmer cites Lat. citrus ~ Gk. kedros, li:lium ~ leirion, laurus
>~ daphne:, vacci:nium ~ huakinthos, viola ~ (w)ion, rosa ~(w)rodon, menta ~
>minthe:, and cupressus ~ kuparissos. The last two are sometimes assigned to
>Latin borrowing from Greek (without plausible explanation of [e] < [i]) but
>the Greek words are from substrate anyway..

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From alexeyf at zoran.co.il  Mon Apr 30 11:54:44 2001
From: alexeyf at zoran.co.il (Alexey Fuchs)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 13:54:44 +0200
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter) [off-topic]
In-Reply-To: <002d01c0cf32$db4f5de0$8521073e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.135444.0200.>

> There are polyglot areas in Europe today where many people will have some
> degree of competence in several languages.   The situation back then was not
> so unusual.  Consider a pious Jewish family in Flanders, where they may
> speak Flemish in the home, use French at work, enjoy Hebrew in the
> synagogue, and assist the tourists to part with their money in English.

> Peter

	Please receive my apologies for an off-topic question, I just could not
figure out what you meant. How exactly would a contemporary European pious
Jewish family assist the tourists to part with their money?

							Sincerely, A.Fuchs

[ Moderator's note:
  If apologies are necessary, they are mine, for lack of sensitivity.  I am,
  after all, native to the US.

  My own reading of Mr. Gray's comments was that the hypothetical family in
  question would join their equally pious Lutheran and Catholic neighbours in
  assisting the tourists to part with their money, that being the goal of all
  tourists.

  Again, my apologies to any offended readers.
  -- rma ]


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Apr 30 11:29:37 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 13:29:37 +0200
Subject: Yeshua (WAS: Peter)
Message-ID: <MON.30.APR.2001.132937.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 5:55 PM

> There are polyglot areas in Europe today where many people will have some
> degree of competence in several languages.   The situation back then was not
> so unusual.  Consider a pious Jewish family in Flanders, where they may
> speak Flemish in the home, use French at work, enjoy Hebrew in the
> synagogue, and assist the tourists to part with their money in English.

> Peter

[Ed Selleslagh]

In my home city of Antwerp, the situation would rather be like this:

French or Yiddish at home, depending on the subject or context; Dutch
(Flemish), Yiddish or English at work, depending on the business partners;
Hebrew at the synagogue; and they wouldn't be involved with tourists, except
when these visit the diamond/gold shops or workshops.

Some also speak German or an E. European mother tongue.

The Flemish people speak Dutch, almost everybody can speak English to some
degree, and many can maintain conversation in French, and help themselves in
German.

There are large Moroccan (often Berbers who can - or not - speak Arabic and/or
French, and some Dutch; the second generation speaks their parents' language
and Dutch) and Turkish minorities (they usually can speak relatively decent
Dutch), and many others (Albanians, Georgians and other Caucasians, Russians,
...who generally know enough English to get by). Not to speak of the Chinese,
Indians, Pakistani, N. and S. Americans etc...and lots of EU citizens (who are
not considered actual foreigners, by law).

Babel didn't disappear, it just moved around the world.

Ed.