another correspondence: Haida q'- : Proto-Miwok *t.-

[Arnaud]

Le 13/08/2013 04:10, Geoffrey Caveney a écrit :

Hi Willem:
Thank you for the reply and the feedback.
As for the significant number of correspondences, please keep in mind 
that I am restricting my comparisons to reconstructed proto-levels of 
Miwok. Examining the entire comparative Miwok lexicon in Broadbent & 
Callaghan 1960, one finds only 6 forms with initial *t.- at any 
proto-level of Miwok: Proto-Miwok *t/t.yy... 'to rest', Proto-Eastern 
Miwok *t/t.isí:nay- 'ant', Proto-Sierra Miwok *t.oʔ-nge- 'to sit down', 
Proto-Sierra Miwok *t.o:/lkoš- 'ear', Proto-Sierra Miwok *t/t.uya:ng- 
'to jump', and Proto-Sierra Miwok *t/t.ay... 'blue jay'. So I think that 
to find 3 of these 6 forms corresponding to Haida forms with initial q'- 
is significant.
***

It's quite strange that there are so few words with initial *t in Miwok,
This would tend to show that these few words are loanwords and that *t 
is represented by something else in the Proto-Miwok of B-C (1960).

Besides this correspondence t / q' is counter-intuitive,
how come glottalization disappeared?
something like q' usually evolves into g or x or glottal stop.

A.
***


I do understand the importance of morphological comparisons, but I also 
think each proposal must be assessed on its own merits. Sometimes there 
will be more morphological comparisons and fewer lexical comparisons, 
but sometimes the reverse will be true. For example, which morphological 
comparisons could be the basis for demonstrating the genetic 
relationship of the Chinese languages to the Tibeto-Burman languages? It 
is hard to find any, because the morphology of the Chinese languages was 
so thoroughly restructured and hardly resembles Tibeto-Burman morphology 
at all. But there are very few historical linguists who reject the 
genetic relationship of Chinese and Tibeto-Burman in the Sino-Tibetan 
family, because the lexical comparisons are so convincing.
***
Actually Sino-Tibetan is rather a negative concept.
ST languages are what's left when all other languages have been proved 
to be better dealt with within another group.
This process of removal has been going on for two centuries now, it's 
probably still active.
Many words are the result of several waves of Chinese cultural diffusion 
and some of them bear witness to archaic Chinese phonetics.
Besides very few people are competent enough to handle these languages, 
so what most people "think" counts for nil.
Some morphological features of Old Chinese are embedded in the graphic 
system, but it's quite difficult to figure out what's going on.
A.