LL-L "Etymology" 2007.10.27 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  26 October 2007 - Volume 05
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Danette & John Howland <dan_how at msn.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.10.27 (01) [E]

Thanks, Sandy.

I have never heard of this kind of association between bishoprics and
cities. Interesting stuff. I wonder if this concept ever obtained in 18th
century America. I don't imagine the Anglican or Roman churches ever had
that much influence here.

In Alaska our use of "village" is also associated with politics. Because
Alaska native claims were regulated by a "settlement act" and not by
creating Indian reservations we have to search for another designation for
native lands. "Village" seems to fit even though vast tracts of land are
held by some native-owned corporations.

Peace be with you.

John Howland

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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.10.26 (08) [E]

Regarding "wonen" Ron says: Isn't it amazing how etymology whittles things
down to a relatively small number of root words?

Yes, and the other side of this coin is that if you start at a "root word"
and think of people living in a "primitive" society" and follow the new
derivations that generation after generation have derived from this root to
fit their more specialized society, that is also a special joy. Btw, I am
probably not amiss if the IE root of modern " zitten/to sit " is also
underlying settlement and site. Jacqueline

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology"
Beste Ron,

You wrote:
> Isn't it amazing how etymology whittles things down to a relatively
> small number of root words?

Indeed, that's what I like so much about it (makes me somewhat think of
math :-D ).

I once read that the history of most (if not all) Indo-European words
can be traced back to the primitive forestry industry (clearing woods,
setting up shelter, hunting and gathering). By the way, a relatively
large proportion of those words would stem from the act of throwing clay
(or other sticky soil) unto the wooden lattice that protected their
dwellings against  the natural elements.

OK, I digress, but can the Ural-Altaic language family also be explained
in terms of one common prehistoric activity? I guess "yes", if you could
go back long enough of course; but I merely wonder if there's already
enough evidence to describe that ancestral lifestyle.

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Jacqueline and Luc, I totally agree with what you said about the joys of
etymology. It may seem rather esoteric and "nerdy" to some people, but it
does tell us a lot about about our past, not least about the way our
ancestors perceived the world and what was important to them at different
stages and routes of humanity's journey.

Luc:
OK, I digress, but can the Ural-Altaic language family also be explained
in terms of one common prehistoric activity?

Wow! "Ural-Altaic"?! Some people still reject the Altaic hypothesis. The
Ural-Altaic hypothesis, which was en vogue in the early part of the 20th
century, was at one point deemed "debunked." Despite sometimes astonishing
morphological similarities and apparent remnants of a sound correspondence
system, some people vehemently resist any type of "unification" attempts,
even more so when it involves alleged Indo-European connections and older
researchers of European descent. (I guess you can imagine what happens when
unification hypotheses involve both Indo-European and African languages,
such as the Nostratic hypothesis that seeks to link Altaic, Uralic,
Indo-European, Semitic and Bantu, many including Kartvelian and Dravidian as
well, leave alone hypotheses that go way beyond that.)




The usual way people seek to debunk genealogical relationships is by
focusing on the spottiness of sound correspondence evidence (due to the fact
that such alleged relationships tend to take us into the distant past
clouded by layers of interference through contacts) to dismiss any
undeniable lexical cognates as loans. This is of course very easy to do in
the case of Eurasia and even Eurasia and Africa, since there has been a lot
of migration all over the place. In the case of Indo-European, Uralic and
Altaic it is even easier since their speaker populations have a very long
history of uninterrupted contacts. This is the case even more when it comes
to Uralic and Altaic, since their speakers have mingled for a long time and
have obviously exchanged technological and culture, with long-time intensive
contacts between Uralic and Turkic speakers in particular. Alternatively,
similarities tend to be brushed off as coincidental.

We need to bear in mind that, if language families and possibly all
languages of the world are indeed interrelated (an idea that doesn't go down
well in racist circles in particular), they must have parted ways at various
points in time, sometimes in so distant a past that it is virtually
impossible to "unearth" enough evidence to reconstruct correspondence
systems. Researchers of European descent have done somewhat better when it
comes to non-Eurasian languages, and that in the absence of ancient
documents in most cases. This is partly because research methodology was
more advanced by the time this began in earnest, perhaps because it did not
seem to involve European languages and thus did not "offend" anyone back
home. Early signs seem to point in the direction of DNA research lending
credence to some linguistic hypotheses and running counter to others. Here
we need to bear in mind that people have always mixed and sometimes entire
nations took on languages of other nations, just as we see it happen these
days.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

•

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