(no subject)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>HubeyH at Mail.Montclair.edu (H. Mark Hubey)

>Semitic is formed from the mixture of Hamitic (African branch) moving up from
>the East Coast of Africa to the Arabian peninsula

-- well, no, actually.  Semitic and Hamitic are both descendants of a proto-
language.   Languages change in and of themselves, you know, even the most
conservative of them.  It's inherent.

>Africa was drying up and the people had to leave.

-- I'm not an anti-migrationist as such, but this is getting ridiculous,
positively 19th-century.

>No, this is basically Gamkrelidze &Ivanov scenario.

-- yeah, and it's a standing violation of Occam's Razor.  Don't multiply
hypotheses uncessarily.

>There was a large-scale and long-term disturbance due to environmental
>catastrophe stretching over millenia.

-- population groups don't need environmental disturbances to motivate them to
move.  They do it all the time in response to their _social_ environment --
eg., economic opportunities, military/political upheavals, etc.

>Some Thracian speakers cross over the Bosphorus

-- define "Thracian".  This is primarily a geographical term.

>They are also in the region where we see IE, AA, Caucasian, and maybe proto-
>Altay-Uralic too.

-- you've been looking at too many large-scale maps.

>The large river that flowed thru Arabia had to be fed from melting glaciers
>from the Caucasus mountain range.

-- this is geographically incoherent.

[ Moderator's comment:
  We can now consider this discussion closed.  Thank you.
  --rma ]