accusative and ergative languages

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 1999 2:41 PM

> Pat wrote:

>> The idea that vocabulary is irretrievably lost is jejeune.

Pat writes:

Undoubtedly, a comment loses some pungency when the key concept is
misspelled.

Peter wrote:

> The idea that it is not lost is equally jejune (if I may use the English
> spelling - I mean no offence).

Pat writes:

How could I possibly be offended seeing that the language of the list is
English? I acknowledge the mistake.

Peter wrote further:

> One of the problems in PIE is identifying which isolates are PIE and which
> are not, or, where there are similar words in two languages, which are
> inherited cognates, and which are loans (yes, I know there are techniques for
> this - but there are still big problems).

> Proto-proto- languages simply cannot be recovered with the same degree of
> certainty as languages nearer to our attested texts.

Pat writes:

Cannot disagree with a word above. But, based on the study I have made of
supposedly unrelated languages, I am simply amazed that so many CVC(V) roots
seem to be preserved more or less semantically intact in so many of them.

When the languages in question developed CVCVC roots, the picture changes
considerably. CVCVC roots apparently were developed after the major language
families separated so that that level we can either 1) notice retention of
the CVC core; 2) say that CVCVC was not preserved. Is the glass half full or
half empty?

Pat

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