IE-Semitic connections

[Glen Gordon]

>Those and related problems do not exist if the earliest Semitic-IE
>contacts are assumed to have occurred in Europe.

Why must we assume anything in the first place?? The Pontic-Caspian
theory accounts for much and yet for some reason, still unspecified by
Miguel et al, we are throwing it away for something very conjectural and
unbased on the linguistic evidence. As far as I know and reason, Semitic
existing outside of the Middle East at the time we are working with here
is not accepted by most linguists and it seems that some have trouble
with Semitic ever reaching even the Black Sea shores let alone Europe!!

>In particular, you receive an elegant solution for Germanic and
>Etruscan (and Basque) showing t-less forms of the seven-word:
>independent borrowing of the t-less Semitic form.

But how does this truly nail a highly theoretical Germanic-Semitic
contact as European and not perhaps through Anatolian influence as it
passed by that region or even by a simple change of *-t- due to a
confusing string of consonants in *-ptm? If *p here is inaspirate due to
the following *t, it's not hard to reason why /p/ would become /b/ since
there isn't such an inaspirate/aspirate stop distinction in Germanic.
(or is there?). There are many possibilities.

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Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com

Kisses and Hugs
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