6.898, FYI: Pseudo-linguistics
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LINGUIST List: Vol-6-898. Tue Jun 27 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 242
Subject: 6.898, FYI: Pseudo-linguistics
Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
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1)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 12:57:31 +1000
From: j.guy at trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: ProtoWorld on sci.archaeology.mesoamerican
---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 12:57:31 +1000
From: j.guy at trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: ProtoWorld on sci.archaeology.mesoamerican
I have saved the following two articles on sci.archaeology.mesoamerican
They are typical of the sort of pseudo-linguistics that goes around.
I have argued earlier here that allowing for semantic shifts resulted
in an explosive growth of spurious resemblances (a colleague of mine
here who is into maths tells me that, with semantic shifts and
sound shifts, and n-ary comparisons, the function is an exponential
of an exponential. I have been trying to convince him to write an
article on it). Well, the author of the first article seems to have
gone the whole semantic-shift hog. He completely disregards meanings!
Should one cry, or laugh?
From: aedo at cih_ws66.NoSubdomain.NoDomain ()
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 07:46:42 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology.mesoamerican
Subject: SEMITIC ROOTS FOUND IN THE RUNA-SIMI LANGUAGE (QUECHUA)
SEMITIC ROOTS FOUND IN THE RUNA SIMI LANGUAGE (QUECHUA)
I am working in the comparison of Semitic languages with Quechua, Quechua is th
e
language of the inhabitants of the Andes, it is spoken in Peru, Ecuador,
Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. There are millions that still speak this
language. Through the reseach I would like to enhance the prestige of the
language and culture.
Qechua has been preserved orally for so many centuries, this because of the
great influence of great cultures that flourished in the Andes, and in the
times of the coming of the spaniards thanks to the catholic priests it has bee
n
transcrived into the roman alphabeth, much enhanced thanks to the Qechuists of
today, and kept alive thanks to the Quechua speaking population of South
America.
With the transliteration of Hebrew an approch of the closest of these two
languages can be set up. Most of the reseach deals with words, their
pronuntiation, and cognotation, it isn't just a mere comparison of words for
fun. There exist so many concidences that it would be sad not to consider the
matter. The nouns in a 90 per cent mean the same or are synonims.
For example the following words would give an introduction so that you could
consider if it is worth the pain:
Quechua (Que) Hebrew (Heb)
aqarwitu akarit
aqarwitu akrabon
atiy achir
eqo ibuv
erqe dirdek
erqe ieled
hawisqa machiHa
hit'iy Hitit
ichhu dichah
ikma alman
iphu ebekh
kurur galul
kururay galulah
llaki dag
llikay dog
luychu dichon
paqariy bekhor
phalluy balui
phutiy butsits
q'api q'api agavi
qatay Hatan
raphra evrah
t'aka dagan
t'illa dHilah
tapuy dabur
thapa dava
thinti digdeg
thupa dabar
tintaya dinden
tiyaq dirah
wachay pachah
wachu pachut
wachu pchutah
wakcha pachaH
waksi buati
warma almah
warma baalah
waru baruts
wayruru parur
wichana piseg
willka el
willka eloha
willka elohim
willka ilah
Considering these examples might shed light in the changes that have happened
in both languages since one separated from its main source. As you can see
the letter (Que) 't' becomes (Heb) 'd', (Que) 'w' turns (Heb) 'p' or 'b', (Que)
'r', (Heb) 'l', 'r', etc. These same facts happen to be in the well known
Semitic languages.
If you know that somethig similirar has been done, please let me know, because
I have been looking for books or papers on the subject and haven't find
anything.
At the same time I am open to any kind of commentaries. I am strongly persuaded
that this investigation will bring new enlightment to the matter of the origins
of the RUNA-SIMI language (QUECHUA). The spended time on the investigation has
brought its fruits, allowing me to gather a great amount of data that
reinforcesand gives credibility to this reseach. This information consists of
words compared with Hebrew, Assyrian and Coptic (Egiptian). I haven't done
anything yet in comparing the grammar and the structure of the language.
This reseach will be presented in a comparative dictionnary, to inform
semitists, as well as qechuists about these findings.
Fernando AEDO
fea at diogenes.hcuge.ch
From: turner at advtech.slc.unisysgsg.com (Scott Turner)
Date: 21 Jun 95 15:01:36 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology.mesoamerican
Subject: Re: SEMITIC ROOTS FOUND IN THE RUNA-SIMI LANGUAGE (QUECHUA)
This month, June, there was an article published in "Insights", the
newsletter of the Foundation for Acient Research & Mormon Studies
(F.A.R.M.S.), a report on research in progress in this same type of
language comparison. (There is no mention of copyrights on the
article, so I'm including it here in it's entirety.)
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INSIGHTS
An Ancient Window
The Newsletter of the Foundation for
Ancient Research & Mormon Studies
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART 2 (June 1995)
The Quiche Indian tradition of "Toltec" migrants from the Near
East reaching Mesoamerica (see "Insights", April 1995) may be of
interest in relation to new linguistic research reported by a senior
linguist at one of this country's most prestigious universities.
Copies of two papers outlining her findings have become available;
however she insists that their contents not be attributed to her until
they have been formally published.
Since more that two and a half years have passed without
publication, perhaps their substance deserves to be made public even
though the author must remain unnamed. The papers were delivered in
1992 at the Association of American Geographers' annual meeting in San
Diego and the Language Origins Society at Cambridge University. They
duplicate each other considerably; the following summary is an
amalgamation.
Her linguistic reconstruction shows that Afro-Asiatic
languages, in particular ancient Egyptian (and related Hebrew?), are
genetically close, and possibly ancestral, to geographically distant
languages in both the Old and New Worlds. In the Old World these
include Dravidian of southern India, Chinese, and Malayo-Polynesian,
and in the New World, Quechua (the language of the Incas) and Zoquean,
Mayan, Zapotec, and Mixtec in Mesoamerica. More specifically the
Mixe-Zoque languages of southern Mexico, which have been hypothesized
by other linguists to derive from the language spoken by the Olmec, as
well as the Mayan languages of Mexico and Central America, are closely
related to and probably descended from ancient Egyptian.
Another genetic relationship uncovered is between
Proto-Indo-European (the ancestor of most western European tongues)
and the Uto-Aztecan languages of North America, including Nahuatl
(Aztec) of Mexico. She has arrived at this picture using the
linguistic comparative method with reliance on regularity of sound
change and pattern congruence.
Quechua is closely related to the "Egyptoid" languages in
Mesoamerica, but it also contains an admixture of Semetic vocabulary
that seems to be Arabic. Various cultural parallels are correlated
with the language relationships hypothesized. For instance the Mayan
origin myth in the Quiche sacred book, the Popol Vuh, tells of four
great sages (Q'uq' kumatz, Tepev, Tzakol, Bitol) who arrived on the
sea coast and found nothing, so they created everything. The names of
these in Mayan she finds relate to Egyptian roots in both sounds and
meanings. A table of twenty cognate sets of words in Egyptian,
Mixe-Zoque, Mayan, and Quechua is included.
Some connections between Old and New World languages are so
close as to throw doubt on an exclusive scenario of ancient Bering
Strait crossings; hence migration theories will need revision. This
seems particularly true of Egyptian ties to the New World. The Olmec
and the Chavin culture of Peru appeared abruptly around 1500 B.C. At
this period Egypt was involved in an intense period of conquest and
organized rule abroad; oceanic voyages by Egyptian ships were clearly
possible then. A further example of an interesting parallel is a
Zoque myth that tells of the life and death of Homshuk, the maize god,
that bears much similarity to Egyptian tales of Osiris. Yet proof of
these assertions lies not in a few cultural parallels but in the
accuracy of the linguistic analysis, which is extensive, she says.
We can hardly wait for the full treatment!
(Based on research by John L. Sorenson.)
Submitted to sci.archaeology.mesoamerican by P. Scott Turner
turner at advtech.slc.unisysgsg.com
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