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new book on the spread of IE

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Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 6, 2008, 12:11:49 PM2/6/08
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A well-known archeologist has published a book that should be of
interest to many readers of sci.lang. Here's the publisher's blurb;
note the quote from Mallory. Perhaps this will stand as the twenty-
years-on revision of Mallory's archeological survey of the IE
languages.

*******

From <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8488.html>: [For Table of
Contents, go to <http://press.princeton.edu/TOCs/c8488.html>
==========================================

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
World
David W. Anthony
Cloth | 2007 | $35.00 / £19.95
566 pp. | 6 x 9 | 3 halftones. 86 line illus. 16 tables. 25 maps.

Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a
shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were
the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they
manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has
remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even
Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and
Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original
Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses
and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization.

Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of
language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central
Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of
Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox
wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian
steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication,
commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their
traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining,
warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in
an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his
fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth
reveals the origins of horseback riding.

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed
scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages
and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization
from the past.

David W. Anthony is professor of anthropology at Hartwick College. He
has conducted extensive archaeological fieldwork in Ukraine, Russia,
and Kazakhstan.

Review:
"In the age of Borat it may come as a surprise to learn that the
grasslands between Ukraine and Kazakhstan were once regarded as an
early crucible of civilisation. This idea is revisited in a major new
study by David Anthony."--Times Higher Education

Endorsements:

"If you want to learn about the early origins of English and related
languages, and of many of our familiar customs such as feasting on
holidays and exchanging gifts, this book provides a lively and richly
informed introduction. Along the way you will learn when and why
horses were domesticated, when people first rode horseback, and when
and why swift chariots changed the nature of warfare."--Peter S.
Wells, author of The Battle that Stopped Rome

"A very significant contribution to the field. This book attempts to
resolve the longstanding problem of Indo-European origins by providing
an examination of the most relevant linguistic issues and a thorough
review of the archaeological evidence. I know of no study of the
Indo-European homeland that competes with it."--J. P. Mallory, Queen's
University, Belfast

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 7, 2008, 10:04:59 AM2/7/08
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Has no one commented on this because it got lost in the last flood of
whatchamacallit?

Trond Engen

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Feb 7, 2008, 11:11:35 AM2/7/08
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Peter T. Daniels skreiv:

> Has no one commented on this because it got lost in the last flood of
> whatchamacallit?

Answering for myself, I haven't commented because it involves brain
activity and unusually large parts of my brain's processor time are
currently occupied by my day job. I have noted it, though. It looks
promising -- and not to expensive either -- so I'm certainly gonna get it.

>> The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
>> How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
>> World
>> David W. Anthony
>> Cloth | 2007 | $35.00 / £19.95
>> 566 pp. | 6 x 9 | 3 halftones. 86 line illus. 16 tables. 25 maps.

I may come back if someone feels like starting a discussion of the topic.

--
Trond Engen
- Don't own no horses, don't own no wheels,
Don't own no horses, don't own no wheels,
Competing with them Protos with ... my heels.

My wife met a horseman, I feel I'm gonna lose.
My wife is on a wagon trail, I know she's running loose.
I got the Proto-Proto-Indo-European blues.

Trond Engen

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Feb 7, 2008, 4:29:33 PM2/7/08
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Trond Engen skreiv:

>>> The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
>

> Don't own no horses, don't own no wheels,
> Don't own no horses, don't own no wheels,
> Competing with them Protos with ... my heels.
>
> My wife met a horseman, I feel I'm gonna lose.
> My wife is on a wagon trail, I know she's running loose.
> I got the Proto-Proto-Indo-European blues.

Version 2.0, polished on my way home:

Ain't got no horses, ain't got no wheels,
ain't got no wagon, ain't got no wheels.
Must keep up with them Protos on ... my heels.

Give your daughter a pony, my wife says to me,
And your son wants some wheels, my wife says to me,
My mother said ..., you could do better than a Pre-.

My woman met a horseman, I feel I'm gonna lose.
My woman's on a wagon, I know she's running loose.
I got the Pre-... Indo-European blues.

I hear them conjugating, I want her to decline.
He's giving her an infix, she'd better soon decline.
Her verbs are getting stronger ... every time.

When my daughter gets older, I know who she'll choose.
And when my son gets older, I know what tongue he'll choose.
Left in the Pre-... Indo-European blues.

--
Trond Engen
- looked around the roadcross but nobody would buy

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 7, 2008, 4:53:21 PM2/7/08
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That's a good one. There are places that publish this sort of thing.

lora...@cs.com

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Feb 7, 2008, 4:59:23 PM2/7/08
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> > University, Belfast-

Looks interesting but lists nothing particularly novel.
But archeology is always good.. much more exact than liguistic theory.


Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 7, 2008, 6:48:25 PM2/7/08
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You think nothing has been discovered over the past 20 years?

> But archeology is always good.. much more exact than liguistic theory.-

You've obviously never read any archeology.

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 8, 2008, 4:10:06 AM2/8/08
to
On Feb 7, 4:04 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Has no one commented on this because it got lost in the last flood of
> whatchamacallit?

You want a comment? Well then. Mallory praises the book
that claims to solve the riddle of where Indo-European
originated, while in his PIE handbook, written together
with Adams, published in Oxford 2006, he says the question
as to the origin of IE is open. Title of the relevant chapter:
Where do they place it now?

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 8, 2008, 8:12:54 AM2/8/08
to
On Feb 8, 4:10 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 7, 4:04 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Has no one commented on this because it got lost in the last flood of
> > whatchamacallit?
>
> You want a comment? Well then. Mallory praises the book
> that claims to solve the riddle of where Indo-European
> originated, while in his PIE handbook, written together
> with Adams, published in Oxford 2006, he says the question
> as to the origin of IE is open. Title of the relevant chapter:
> Where do they place it now?

You've read the book already????? Then please summarize Anthony's
"claim to solve the riddle." You certainly don't seem to have read the
quote from Mallory.

Or maybe you don't understand that a publisher's blurb rarely reflects
anything but a most sensationalized interpretation of its content?

> > > University, Belfast-

phog...@abo.fi

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Feb 8, 2008, 4:15:24 PM2/8/08
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On 6 helmi, 19:11, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> Until now their identity has
> remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even
> Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race.

This wording sounds a little unlucky: you could be left thinking that
"Nazis" are the ultimate experts, superior to linguists and
archaeologists.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 8, 2008, 11:05:19 PM2/8/08
to

So complain to Princeton University Press!

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 9, 2008, 3:10:26 AM2/9/08
to
On Feb 8, 2:12 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> You've read the book already????? Then please summarize Anthony's
> "claim to solve the riddle."

I haven't seen the book yet, but will read it when it arrives
in our library. For the time being I am happy with the result
of Anthony's work, and the praising words of Mallory (which
I well read). Anthony's opinion, solidified in field work, goes
along with my model of language evolvement in Eurasia.
First was the Ice Age language spoken by Homo sapiens
sapiens all over Eurasia, but with the main center in the
refuge of the Franco-Cantabrian space, where we find the
amazing cave art. Language mirrors life, and life is changed
by technology. Revolutionary changes arrived with the end
of the Ice Age, with early agriculture at the base of the
Karacadag near Göbekli Tepe in southeast Anatolia 10,000
years ago, and with the mining and melting of copper in the
Jordan valley and in Anatolia at the same time. This must
have led to a new level of language I'd like to call Japhetic,
reviving an obsolete term and using it more generally.
The next revolution occured with the casting of bronze,
about 6,000 years ago. Anatolia is rich in copper, while
tin is found in Central Asia, so we may well assume that
the first bronze was cast somewhere in the Eurasian
steppes, between Anatolia and Central Asia. Bronze
allowed to make bridles, bridles allowed to tame horses,
and the rest is well known. The new life forms following
this revolution resulted in the language called Indo-European.

The problem, in my opinion, is the lacking time depth of
Proto-Indo-European, and the hapless term proto. We
don't consider English Proto-Martian, and we don't call
primates proto-humans. We use proper names for each
distinct level. In terms of PIE we may call the Ice Age
language of Homo sapiens sapiens in Eurasia, from
42,000 BP onward, Early PIE. I prefer Magdalenian,
which denotes the fully developed Ice Age language.
The language of the early farmers and miners of copper
might be called Middle PIE. I prefer Japhetic (languages).
IE, finally, would have sprang from a variety of Late PIE.
The above model has the advantage of uniting the major
homeland theories of PIE and IE: Paleolithic origin of
PIE (several scholars), Anatolian/Neolithic origin of IE
(an early form of IE, or a precusor of IE) (Renfrew et al.),
classic steppe theory (Gimbutas, Anthony, et. al.).

Trond Engen

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Feb 9, 2008, 6:12:49 AM2/9/08
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phog...@abo.fi skreiv:

I read it the other way around, like "the good, the bad and the ugly".
"Linguists" is the default choice, "archaeologists" is the natural
extension and "Nazis seeking the roots ..." is the absurd extreme. Is
the "rule of three" considered to be part of IE tradition, BTW?

--
Trond Engen
- wouldn't put it exactly like this in the archaeology group

Trond Engen

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Feb 9, 2008, 6:38:29 AM2/9/08
to
Peter T. Daniels skreiv:

> A well-known archeologist has published a book that should be of
> interest to many readers of sci.lang. Here's the publisher's blurb;
> note the quote from Mallory. Perhaps this will stand as the twenty-
> years-on revision of Mallory's archeological survey of the IE
> languages.
>
> *******
>
> From <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8488.html>: [For Table of
> Contents, go to <http://press.princeton.edu/TOCs/c8488.html>
> ==========================================
>
> The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
> How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
> World
> David W. Anthony
> Cloth | 2007 | $35.00 / £19.95
> 566 pp. | 6 x 9 | 3 halftones. 86 line illus. 16 tables. 25 maps.
>

> [...]


>
> Review:
> "In the age of Borat it may come as a surprise to learn that the
> grasslands between Ukraine and Kazakhstan were once regarded as an
> early crucible of civilisation. This idea is revisited in a major new
> study by David Anthony."--Times Higher Education

Was it by any means "an early crucible of civilisation"? Civilisation(s)
started long before and without Indo-Europeans. My impression is rather
that at some points along the way they met. For some IE branches, and
depending on the definistion of 'civilisation', this didn't happen until
the dawn of the modern world.

> Endorsements:
>
> "If you want to learn about the early origins of English and related
> languages, and of many of our familiar customs such as feasting on
> holidays and exchanging gifts, this book provides a lively and richly
> informed introduction. Along the way you will learn when and why
> horses were domesticated, when people first rode horseback, and when
> and why swift chariots changed the nature of warfare."
> --Peter S. Wells, author of The Battle that Stopped Rome

Improved archaeological data should provide a more detailed
understanding of prehistory decade by decade. Are we returning to
sweeping military invasions? Hopefully rather a balance between
temporary military power and long-term cultural diffusion, in a
different blend for each time and place.

> "A very significant contribution to the field. This book attempts to
> resolve the longstanding problem of Indo-European origins by
> providing an examination of the most relevant linguistic issues and a
> thorough review of the archaeological evidence. I know of no study of
> the Indo-European homeland that competes with it."
> --J. P. Mallory, Queen's University, Belfast

Anthony seems to agree with Mallory on this. Mallory's own book, however
thorough, was indecisive and merely suggestive on many of the links
between different cultures. This was due to scarse archaeological
evidence for movements and diffusion, but hopefully the image is clearing.

--
Trond Engen
- waiting for the book

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 9, 2008, 8:05:44 AM2/9/08
to

Maybe that's because primates didn't evolve out of humans (or vice
versa).

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 9, 2008, 8:41:14 AM2/9/08
to
On Feb 9, 2:05 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Maybe that's because primates didn't evolve out of humans (or vice
> versa).

According to Anthony, the PIE speakers lived in Eurasian
steppes. Neither in France nor in Belgium nor in England.
Nevertheless, the languages spoken there are also called
PIE, North-West Proto-Indo-European.

The problem, as I said, is the lacking time depth of PIE,
and I propose again my model of three levels:

Early PIE --- Ice Age language of Homo sapiens sapiens
in Eurasia, center Franco-Cantabrian space, a refuge during
the Ice Age (according to modern genetics), Magdalenian
the fully developed form of that language

Middle PIE --- new level of language, achieved in southeast
Anatolia, as consequence of early agriculture and of mining
copper in the Jordan valley and in Anatolia, Japhetic level
of language (reviving an obsolete term)

Late PIE --- a variety of similar languages, one of them,
spoken in the steppes between Anatolia and Central Asia,
gave rise to IE, as a consequence of casting bronze
(copper from Anatolia, tin from Central Eurasia), making
bridles, taming horses, and so on. Anthony calls the steppe
people of Eurasia the true speakers of PIE. Speakers of
a late PIE, I must add, a variety of Late Proto-Indo-European

Christopher Ingham

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Feb 9, 2008, 11:09:14 AM2/9/08
to
Yet humans and primates do descend from a common stock of
proto-primates.

Christopher Ingham

Joachim Pense

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Feb 9, 2008, 3:31:20 PM2/9/08
to
Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Feb 9, 3:10 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
>> On Feb 8, 2:12 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The problem, in my opinion, is the lacking time depth of

>> Proto-Indo-European, and the hapless term proto. Wewikimedia


>> don't consider English Proto-Martian, and we don't call
>> primates proto-humans.
>
> Maybe that's because primates didn't evolve out of humans (or vice
> versa).
>

And that's because humans are primates, right?

Joachim


Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 9, 2008, 7:31:22 PM2/9/08
to
On Feb 9, 8:41 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 9, 2:05 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Maybe that's because primates didn't evolve out of humans (or vice
> > versa).
>
> According to Anthony, the PIE speakers lived in Eurasian
> steppes.

Ah, so by now you've read the book, and you know that he proposes a
certain solution?

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 9, 2008, 7:32:12 PM2/9/08
to

Was that really too difficult for Christopher to comprehend?

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 11, 2008, 5:34:23 AM2/11/08
to
On Feb 10, 1:31 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Ah, so by now you've read the book, and you know that he proposes a
> certain solution?

I know from Mallory and Adams that he favors the classic
steppe theory brought up by Maria Gimbutas, he wrote
a paper on this topic in 1991 (if memory serves), and
obviously he spent a lot of time doing fieldwork in order
to reconstruct that lost civilization, which, amazingly,
left so little in terms of artefacts, and so much in terms
of language. By the way, Petey, once you told me
that archaeology got nothing to do with linguistics,
meanwhile you recommend an archaeological / linguistic
publication. Even you can learn. Very pleased.

phog...@abo.fi

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Feb 11, 2008, 6:58:38 AM2/11/08
to

On second thought, I think I won't. Trond's comment led me to think
that the wording has a nicely Gogolesque, absurd ring to it.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 11, 2008, 7:36:06 AM2/11/08
to

So, Frannie, you know that Anthony has not revised his opinion in the
intervening years on the basis of his continued research?

Show me where I said that archeology has NOTHING TO DO WITH
linguistics?

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 11, 2008, 1:03:14 PM2/11/08
to
On Feb 11, 1:36 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> So, Frannie, you know that Anthony has not revised his opinion in the
> intervening years on the basis of his continued research?

Mallory and Adams on the one hand and the comment
on Anthony's book you forwarded on the other hand
are telling the same, so I can see that Anthony worked
a long time on the same subject and followed the same
ideas and tried to safely moore his assumptions via
field work, archaeological and linguistic field work.

> Show me where I said that archeology has NOTHING TO DO WITH
> linguistics?

You said it the other way round, Peterli, linguistics
has nothing to do with archaeology, some two years
ago, as I recall. You said my work has nothing to do
with reality, whereupon I replied that I base my
linguistic reconstructions on archaeology, on cave
art, Göbekli Tepe, and so on. Then you told me
that linguistics has nothing to do with archaeology.
I said, funny, but the many volumes on Indo-European
on the shelves of my library are full of archaeology.
Find that exchange yourself, in the archive of Google,
I don't have the time.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 11, 2008, 4:08:00 PM2/11/08
to

No, Franzl, show us where archeology has told us anything about the
language spoken by the community uncovered. (Other, of course, than by
finding inscriptions.)

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 12, 2008, 3:02:29 AM2/12/08
to
On Feb 11, 10:08 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> No, Franzl, show us where archeology has told us anything about the
> language spoken by the community uncovered. (Other, of course, than by
> finding inscriptions.)

Just like the inscription in the Brunel chamber of the Chauvet
cave, some 32,000 years old, a domino five with an additional
dot next to the upper right dot of the five-dot-sign, something
like this, all dots red:

O O O CA
O
O O PAS

The domino five means PAS for everywhere in a plain,
here, south and east of me, east and west of me, all in all
five places, preserved in Greek pas pan for all, every,
and in pente penta- for five; the CA means sky; together
we obtain PAS CA with about this meaning: may the
supreme leader of the lower Rhone valley roam the sky
in his next life as he roams the land in this life ... The
supreme leader, as bull man, is represented on a
stalactite in the rear hall of the Chauvet chamber,
covering the womb of a goddess with a giant vulva,
she is the goddess of the Milky Way, of the Summer
Triangle Deneb Vega Atair, and her name was PIS
NOS which became Latin Venus, Sanskrit vanas for
desire, and the god Vishnu, while the compound
PAS CA survived in several languages as word for
Easter ... Cave art is telling us a lot about the ideas
of the Ice Age people, and, I believe, also about their
language, then we have Göbekli Tepe at the begin
of agriculture and the Chalcolithic, as richly decorated
as Lascaux, speaking a visual language that has
direct links to language, I believe.

Harlan Messinger

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Feb 12, 2008, 8:03:40 AM2/12/08
to
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> On Feb 11, 10:08 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> No, Franzl, show us where archeology has told us anything about the
>> language spoken by the community uncovered. (Other, of course, than by
>> finding inscriptions.)
>
> Just like the inscription

Peter asked you to produce an example other than, of course, an
inscription, and you respond with an inscription. Bravo.

> in the Brunel chamber of the Chauvet
> cave, some 32,000 years old, a domino five with an additional
> dot next to the upper right dot of the five-dot-sign, something
> like this, all dots red:
>
> O O O CA
> O
> O O PAS
>
> The domino five means PAS for everywhere in a plain,
> here, south and east of me, east and west of me, all in all
> five places, preserved in Greek pas pan for all, every,
> and in pente penta- for five; the CA means sky; together
> we obtain PAS CA with about this meaning: may the
> supreme leader of the lower Rhone valley roam the sky
> in his next life as he roams the land in this life ...

And you make all of that up, and, presto, it magically becomes true?

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 12, 2008, 8:26:52 AM2/12/08
to
On Feb 12, 2:03 pm, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:

> Peter asked you to produce an example other than, of course, an
> inscription, and you respond with an inscription. Bravo.

Petey boy asked me for an example of archaeology
helping linguistics, insinuating that I won't be able
to mention one example. And he added in brackets
that of course he excludes the case of inscriptions,
in which archaeology helped linguistics a thousand
and one times. He still won't consider the possibility
that there are Paleolithic inscriptions preserved in
caves in the Franco-Cantabrian space, and that
paintings can also be language, a visual language.
So I had to remind him.

> And you make all of that up, and, presto, it magically becomes true?

Not presto, the first part about PAS CA two years
ago, with the help of Holly who identified my PAS
for everywhere in a plain (here, south and north
of me, east and west of me) with the domino five
in the Brunel chamber of Chauvet, and the second
part about PIS NOS for the personification of water
in motion, more precisely of CA LAK, the heavenly
counterpart of LAK, the river of the Underworld
KAL, is own to my recent reconstruction of the
Paleolithic sky, triggered by Mallory and Adams's
melancholy comment that the Proto-Indo-European
view of the heavens is beyond recovery. I had long
ago interpreted the goddess and the bull on the
stalactite of the rear hall of Chauvet as the goddess
of the Summer Triangle and the supreme leader
of the lower Rhone valley, but I lacked words for
the heavenly river and the goddess, now I got them.
Not presto and magically, but owing to years of
constant and patient work, even against all the
pressure in sci.lang.

Harlan Messinger

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Feb 12, 2008, 10:31:17 AM2/12/08
to
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> On Feb 12, 2:03 pm, Harlan Messinger
> <hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> Peter asked you to produce an example other than, of course, an
>> inscription, and you respond with an inscription. Bravo.
>
> Petey boy asked me for an example of archaeology
> helping linguistics, insinuating that I won't be able
> to mention one example. And he added in brackets
> that of course he excludes the case of inscriptions,
> in which archaeology helped linguistics a thousand
> and one times. He still won't consider the possibility
> that there are Paleolithic inscriptions preserved in
> caves in the Franco-Cantabrian space,

They aren't inscriptions just because you imagine that they are.

> and that
> paintings can also be language

They aren't one just because you imagine that they are.

, a visual language.
> So I had to remind him.

Remind him that you have an active imagination?

>> And you make all of that up, and, presto, it magically becomes true?
>
> Not presto, the first part about PAS CA two years
> ago, with the help of Holly who identified my PAS
> for everywhere in a plain (here, south and north
> of me, east and west of me) with the domino five
> in the Brunel chamber of Chauvet, and the second
> part about PIS NOS for the personification of water
> in motion, more precisely of CA LAK, the heavenly
> counterpart of LAK, the river of the Underworld
> KAL, is own to my recent reconstruction of the
> Paleolithic sky, triggered by Mallory and Adams's
> melancholy comment that the Proto-Indo-European
> view of the heavens is beyond recovery. I had long
> ago interpreted the goddess and the bull on the
> stalactite of the rear hall of Chauvet as the goddess
> of the Summer Triangle and the supreme leader
> of the lower Rhone valley, but I lacked words for
> the heavenly river and the goddess, now I got them.
> Not presto and magically, but owing to years of
> constant and patient work, even against all the
> pressure in sci.lang.

So you let your imagination take several years to crystallize. You still
haven't gone one step beyond "it's true because I say so".

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 13, 2008, 3:25:08 AM2/13/08
to
On Feb 12, 4:31 pm, Harlan Messinger

<hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> They aren't inscriptions just because you imagine that they are.

And what is your evidence that there are no Paleolithic
inscriptions in cave art?

> They aren't one just because you imagine that they are.

And what is your proof that visual language is no language?

> Remind him that you have an active imagination?

Understanding reality requires the most active imagination.

> So you let your imagination take several years to crystallize. You still
> haven't gone one step beyond "it's true because I say so".

I don't say "It's true," I say: it may be so, I have an idea,
let me follow this idea and look how far I get ... This,
you may know, is the usual procedure in the sciences.
And then I might remind you once again of Sir Karl
Popper who did not only ask for testable and falsifiable
but also for daring hypotheses - the more daring the better.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 13, 2008, 8:22:41 AM2/13/08
to
On Feb 13, 3:25 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 12, 4:31 pm, Harlan Messinger
>
> <hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > They aren't inscriptions just because you imagine that they are.
>
> And what is your evidence that there are no Paleolithic
> inscriptions in cave art?

None have ever been found.

> > They aren't one just because you imagine that they are.
>
> And what is your proof that visual language is no language?

The definition of "language."

> > Remind him that you have an active imagination?
>
> Understanding reality requires the most active imagination.
>
> > So you let your imagination take several years to crystallize. You still
> > haven't gone one step beyond "it's true because I say so".
>
> I don't say "It's true," I say: it may be so, I have an idea,
> let me follow this idea and look how far I get ... This,
> you may know, is the usual procedure in the sciences.
> And then I might remind you once again of Sir Karl
> Popper who did not only ask for testable and falsifiable
> but also for daring hypotheses - the more daring the better.

But if they're not testable/falsifiable, they're not science, no
matter how daring.

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 14, 2008, 3:04:18 AM2/14/08
to
On Feb 13, 2:22 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> None have ever been found.

Cave art in Europe and rock art in southern Africa are
known for many many abstract signs accompanying
the paintings. I claim that I can read some of them,
apart from PAS CA (explained before) tectiform signs,
which have, in my opinion, the phonetic value of DAI
meaning protected area, and lines and fields of black
or red dots, phonetic value SAI meaning life, existence.
Now prove that this can't be. If you can't falsify my
interpretations, or on the sole basis of being the pope
of sci.lang, then I am allowed to go on with my work.

> The definition of "language."

Very funny, you can neither give me a definition of
language, nor can you point out a flaw of my definition
of language from 1974/75, but you rule out visual
language from being language on account of the
definition of language you got not. Very funny indeed.
Please inform the NASA that their drawings on the
golden plaquette of Voyager II wont work, because
there is no visual language. They will crumble away
in shame, probably.

> But if they're not testable/falsifiable, they're not science, no
> matter how daring.

If with all your almighty sound laws you can't falsify
my numerous reconstructions, either the sound laws
aren't as good as you believe, or my reconstructions
are very good. By the way, you tried to make me
believe that the sound laws led to a clear and
unambiguous PIE vocabulary. Far from that, not
true at all, PIE varies greatly from author to author.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 14, 2008, 7:33:11 AM2/14/08
to
On Feb 14, 3:04 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 13, 2:22 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > None have ever been found.
>
> Cave art in Europe and rock art in southern Africa are
> known for many many abstract signs accompanying
> the paintings. I claim that I can read some of them,
> apart from PAS CA (explained before) tectiform signs,
> which have, in my opinion, the phonetic value of DAI
> meaning protected area, and lines and fields of black
> or red dots, phonetic value SAI meaning life, existence.
> Now prove that this can't be. If you can't falsify my
> interpretations, or on the sole basis of being the pope
> of sci.lang, then I am allowed to go on with my work.
>
> > The definition of "language."
>
> Very funny, you can neither give me a definition of
> language, nor can you point out a flaw of my definition
> of language from 1974/75,

What it describes (not defines) is not language, but all interaction
between every entity in the universe..

> but you rule out visual
> language from being language on account of the
> definition of language you got not. Very funny indeed.
> Please inform the NASA that their drawings on the
> golden plaquette of Voyager II wont work, because
> there is no visual language. They will crumble away
> in shame, probably.
>
> > But if they're not testable/falsifiable, they're not science, no
> > matter how daring.
>
> If with all your almighty sound laws you can't falsify
> my numerous reconstructions, either the sound laws
> aren't as good as you believe, or my reconstructions
> are very good. By the way, you tried to make me
> believe that the sound laws led to a clear and
> unambiguous PIE vocabulary. Far from that, not
> true at all, PIE varies greatly from author to author.

It's very sad that you can't understand what "Lautgesetz" means.

Or what "falsifiable" means.

phog...@abo.fi

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Feb 14, 2008, 9:29:50 AM2/14/08
to
On Feb 14, 10:04 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 13, 2:22 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > None have ever been found.
>
> Cave art in Europe and rock art in southern Africa are
> known for many many abstract signs accompanying
> the paintings. I claim that I can read some of them,
> apart from PAS CA

"Paska" is, incidentally, the Finnish word for "shit".

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 14, 2008, 10:33:48 AM2/14/08
to
On Feb 14, 1:33 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> What it describes (not defines) is not language, but all interaction
> between every entity in the universe..

How is that possible? I can only interact with entities
I can see or hear or feel or receive signals from.

> It's very sad that you can't understand what "Lautgesetz" means.

I learned Grimm's Lautgesetze a couple of years
before you. by the middle of the 1960s.

> Or what "falsifiable" means.

If the sound laws are scientific laws, and if you know
them, and if you know how to apply them, you can
falsify reconstructions if they are against those sound
laws. Otherwise the term law makes no sense.

Richard Herring

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Feb 14, 2008, 11:06:12 AM2/14/08
to
In message
<1b0448fd-1603-4fe8...@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
Franz Gnaedinger <fr...@bluemail.ch> writes

>On Feb 14, 1:33 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> What it describes (not defines) is not language, but all interaction
>> between every entity in the universe..
>
>How is that possible?

Trivially.

>I can only interact with entities
>I can see or hear or feel or receive signals from.

You never heard of the empty set?

--
Richard Herring

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 14, 2008, 2:38:52 PM2/14/08
to
On Feb 14, 10:33 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 14, 1:33 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> > What it describes (not defines) is not language, but all interaction
> > between every entity in the universe..
>
> How is that possible? I can only interact with entities
> I can see or hear or feel or receive signals from.

That's one of the many reasons why your "definition" isn't a useful
one. It is far, far, far too broad.

> > It's very sad that you can't understand what "Lautgesetz" means.
>
> I learned Grimm's Lautgesetze a couple of years
> before you. by the middle of the 1960s.

Grimm enunciated only a single "Law," and I don't know whether he
called it a "Lautgesetz."

Clearly, you did not understand what "Lautgesetz" means. It is the
label for an observed regularity of correspondence among a group of
daughter languages, from which an ancestral proto-form can be
reconstructed and from which the steps they can be supposed to have
undergone in turning into the attested forms can be posited.

> > Or what "falsifiable" means.
>
> If the sound laws are scientific laws, and if you know
> them, and if you know how to apply them, you can
> falsify reconstructions if they are against those sound
> laws. Otherwise the term law makes no sense.

A Lautgesetz is not a Law of Nature like Kepler's Law or Boyle's Law
etc. etc.

If it doesn't make sense to you, then you should get into your time
machine and visit Leipzig in the 1870s, when the terminology was being
developed, and let your objections be known.

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 15, 2008, 3:25:57 AM2/15/08
to
On Feb 14, 8:38 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> That's one of the many reasons why your "definition" isn't a useful
> one. It is far, far, far too broad.

It is very useful. The latest cry in biology is system biology,
in Switzerland www.systemsx.ch (if memory serves):
instead of taking further apart an organism, biologists wonder
and study how the parts work together, and, I say, language
plays a key role in these processes, language on every level.

> Grimm enunciated only a single "Law," and I don't know whether he
> called it a "Lautgesetz."
>
> Clearly, you did not understand what "Lautgesetz" means. It is the
> label for an observed regularity of correspondence among a group of
> daughter languages, from which an ancestral proto-form can be
> reconstructed and from which the steps they can be supposed to have
> undergone in turning into the attested forms can be posited.
>

> A Lautgesetz is not a Law of Nature like Kepler's Law or Boyle's Law
> etc. etc.

Either sound laws hold and are scientific laws and deserve
the term law, or they don't hold and are no scientific laws
and don't deserve the term law. Make up your mind.

> If it doesn't make sense to you, then you should get into your time
> machine and visit Leipzig in the 1870s, when the terminology was being
> developed, and let your objections be known.

Sound laws, in my opinion, are somewhat like a shadow
of the physiological conditions of the vocal tract, which is
why I don't apply sound laws in the first place, but go for
the real thing, namely the vocal tract, pronouncing a
Magdalenian word silently, over and over and over again,
while observing what happens. If I pronounce the word
or compound silently, not even whispering, no minimal
amount of air flowing along the vocal chords, the verbal
morphospace that keeps words in place losens its grip
on the words, and they begin to shift. My way of following
sound changes may be less accurate and precise in
a special case than the known sound laws, on the other
hand it covers a far greater period of time, and includes
all sound laws, the known ones and the ones that may
be discovered in the future. As in archaeology, where we
have the precise methods of dendrochronology and of
radio carbon dating, and then we have the less accurate
method of thermoluminescence which, on the other hand,
allows to date objects much older than 8,000 and 6,000
years, time depth of dendrochronology and C14 dating
respectively (numbers as I remember them).

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 15, 2008, 8:21:11 AM2/15/08
to
On Feb 15, 3:25 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 14, 8:38 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > That's one of the many reasons why your "definition" isn't a useful
> > one. It is far, far, far too broad.
>
> It is very useful. The latest cry in biology is system biology,
> in Switzerlandwww.systemsx.ch (if memory serves):

> instead of taking further apart an organism, biologists wonder
> and study how the parts work together, and, I say, language
> plays a key role in these processes, language on every level.

Q.E.D.

If you pervert the word "language" for that, then you need to invent a
new word for human language. What word will you invent for human
language?

Discussion of anything _but_ the latter is OT at sci.lang (whose name
cannot be changed to suit your fancy).

> > Grimm enunciated only a single "Law," and I don't know whether he
> > called it a "Lautgesetz."
>
> > Clearly, you did not understand what "Lautgesetz" means. It is the
> > label for an observed regularity of correspondence among a group of
> > daughter languages, from which an ancestral proto-form can be
> > reconstructed and from which the steps they can be supposed to have
> > undergone in turning into the attested forms can be posited.
>
> > A Lautgesetz is not a Law of Nature like Kepler's Law or Boyle's Law
> > etc. etc.
>
> Either  sound laws hold and are scientific laws and deserve
> the term law, or they don't hold and are no scientific laws
> and don't deserve the term law. Make up your mind.

It's not _my_ mind. It's more than a hundred years of history.

See Peter Giles, A Short Manual of Comparative Philology for Classical
Students (1901, readily available through google books), pp. 46-57,
for a short history of the field and a discussion of its "scientific"
nature. The formulation of the motto "Die Lautgesetze kennen keine
Ausnahme" was formulated by August Leskien in 1876; I cannot say when
the term itself was introduced.

> > If it doesn't make sense to you, then you should get into your time
> > machine and visit Leipzig in the 1870s, when the terminology was being
> > developed, and let your objections be known.
>
> Sound laws, in my opinion, are somewhat like a shadow

Why should your _opinion_, which is grounded in ignorance, be taken
into account at all?

> of the physiological conditions of the vocal tract, which is
> why I don't apply sound laws in the first place, but go for
> the real thing,

<...>

I hope you have all that crap stored in your computer somewhere so you
don't have to retype it every time.

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 15, 2008, 8:55:34 AM2/15/08
to
On Feb 15, 2:21 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Q.E.D.
>
> If you pervert the word "language" for that, then you need to invent a
> new word for human language. What word will you invent for human
> language?

Human word language, of course, as I said many times
before.

> Discussion of anything _but_ the latter is OT at sci.lang (whose name
> cannot be changed to suit your fancy).

Language is a basic phenomenon of life. Your behaving
toward language resembles someone who says: humans
and animals and plants are living beings, bacteria are
no living beings, calling them living beings is a perversion.
No, the other way round. Bacteria underwent lucky
symbioses, became eukariotic cells, and these, by and
by, aggregated to plants and animals.

> It's not _my_ mind. It's more than a hundred years of history.
>
> See Peter Giles, A Short Manual of Comparative Philology for Classical
> Students (1901, readily available through google books), pp. 46-57,
> for a short history of the field and a discussion of its "scientific"
> nature. The formulation of the motto "Die Lautgesetze kennen keine
> Ausnahme" was formulated by August Leskien in 1876; I cannot say when
> the term itself was introduced.

So the sound laws are laws. Well then, falsify my numerous
reconstructions on the basis of these laws.

> Why should your _opinion_, which is grounded in ignorance, be taken
> into account at all?

Because it leads somewhere? while your understanding of
language is getting people stuck in a cul-de-sac ?

> I hope you have all that crap stored in your computer somewhere so you
> don't have to retype it every time.

I retype it every time, it's a way of emulating evolution.

By the way: this morning I read a statement by a scientist
who said we have to fear not so much an asteroid on
collision course with our planet, but an attack of hostile
bacteria. Understanding the languages of the microbes
that created and maintain our biosphere is of vital
interest for our species.

ekk...@yahoo.com

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Feb 15, 2008, 10:34:37 AM2/15/08
to
On Feb 12, 5:03 am, Harlan Messinger

<hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> > On Feb 11, 10:08 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> No, Franzl, show us where archeology has told us anything about the
> >> language spoken by the community uncovered. (Other, of course, than by
> >> finding inscriptions.)
>
> > Just like the inscription
>
> Peter asked you to produce an example other than, of course, an
> inscription, and you respond with an inscription. Bravo.

Some interesting aspects of a language can be revealed/explained by
archeology, though.

Case in example. The arrival of voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/
to Chinese dialects is ubiqutous (this even happened in Vietnamese,
which is not exactly a Chinese dialect.) Out of the 7 or so major
Chinese dialectal groups, only one group (Souther Min/Hoklo) did not
develop a voiceless labio-dental fricative. Now, you may not find that
very odd. The slightly odd thing is, the labiodental ones are re-
imported and re-mapped to velar fricative /h/. (The bi-labial
sometimes is preserved in colloquial terms: e.g: [pue1] = to fly, but
[hui1 ki1] = flying machine = airplane.)

E.g.: Mandarin [fa3] = law, mapped to Southern Min [huat4] (Middle
Chinese would have been something like [phat], like the Vietnamese
writing.)

Also in Taiwan's Austronesian languages, there are in general no
voiceless labio-dental fricatives. (Once I saw the language name
Favorlang, I had some doubt, but then when I really looked at the
language, e.g: http://books.google.com/books?id=vPetKol1y50C, I was re-
assured. I think the initial F in Favorlang was simply a Dutch
invention.)

Now you may not find all that interesting. Until you take a look at
ancient skull remains of the people across the Taiwan strait. Many
skulls are missing the canines or lateral incisors: teeth removal (鑿齒,
see e.g: http://www.tailian.org.cn/taiwan/yuanyuandetail.asp?ID=22) is
common ritual for a variety of reasons (adulthood or marriage, in
particular.)

When you are missing some front upper teeth, you can't really make
the /f/ sound.

-- Ekki

ekk...@yahoo.com

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Feb 15, 2008, 11:33:08 AM2/15/08
to
On Feb 15, 7:34 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> E.g.: Mandarin [fa3] = law, mapped to Southern Min [huat4] (Middle
> Chinese would have been something like [phat], like the Vietnamese
> writing.)

Sorry, make this one [pháp].

-- Ekki

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 15, 2008, 1:31:27 PM2/15/08
to
On Feb 15, 10:34 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 12, 5:03 am, Harlan Messinger
>
> <hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> > > On Feb 11, 10:08 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > >> No, Franzl, show us where archeology has told us anything about the
> > >> language spoken by the community uncovered. (Other, of course, than by
> > >> finding inscriptions.)
>
> > > Just like the inscription
>
> > Peter asked you to produce an example other than, of course, an
> > inscription, and you respond with an inscription. Bravo.
>
> Some interesting aspects of a language can be revealed/explained by
> archeology, though.
>
> Case in example. The arrival of voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/
> to Chinese dialects is ubiqutous (this even happened in Vietnamese,
> which is not exactly a Chinese dialect.)

It isn't the least bit a Chinese dialect.

> Out of the 7 or so major
> Chinese dialectal groups, only one group (Souther Min/Hoklo) did not
> develop a voiceless labio-dental fricative. Now, you may not find that
> very odd. The slightly odd thing is, the labiodental ones are re-
> imported and re-mapped to velar fricative /h/. (The bi-labial
> sometimes is preserved in colloquial terms: e.g: [pue1] = to fly, but
> [hui1 ki1] = flying machine = airplane.)
>
> E.g.: Mandarin [fa3] = law, mapped to Southern Min [huat4] (Middle
> Chinese would have been something like [phat], like the Vietnamese
> writing.)
>
> Also in Taiwan's Austronesian languages, there are in general no
> voiceless labio-dental fricatives. (Once I saw the language name
> Favorlang, I had some doubt, but then when I really looked at the
> language, e.g:http://books.google.com/books?id=vPetKol1y50C, I was re-
> assured. I think the initial F in Favorlang was simply a Dutch
> invention.)
>
> Now you may not find all that interesting. Until you take a look at
> ancient skull remains of the people across the Taiwan strait. Many
> skulls are missing the canines or lateral incisors: teeth removal (鑿齒,
> see e.g:http://www.tailian.org.cn/taiwan/yuanyuandetail.asp?ID=22) is
> common ritual for a variety of reasons (adulthood or marriage, in
> particular.)
>
> When you are missing some front upper teeth, you can't really make
> the /f/ sound.

What do "canines or lateral incisors" have to do with [f]?

How does tooth removal in some individuals affect an entire language
family?

ekk...@yahoo.com

unread,
Feb 16, 2008, 12:00:39 AM2/16/08
to
On Feb 15, 10:31 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Feb 15, 10:34 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Case in example. The arrival of voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/
> > to Chinese dialects is ubiqutous (this even happened in Vietnamese,
> > which is not exactly a Chinese dialect.)
>
> It isn't the least bit a Chinese dialect.

I think I know more about Vietnamese and its relationship to Chinese
than you.

> > When you are missing some front upper teeth, you can't really make
> > the /f/ sound.
>
> What do "canines or lateral incisors" have to do with [f]?

Oh please.

> How does tooth removal in some individuals affect an entire language
> family?

It's not *some*. Not too long ago it was nearly universal in Taiwan's
aborigine groups. Same practice is observed all over Austronesian
civilization areas. Tooth extraction in Southeast Asia has already
been discussed more than half a century ago by people like Ling Shun-
Sheng (凌純聲).

-- Ekki

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 16, 2008, 9:09:12 AM2/16/08
to
On Feb 16, 12:00 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 15, 10:31 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 15, 10:34 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > Case in example. The arrival of voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/
> > > to Chinese dialects is ubiqutous (this even happened in Vietnamese,
> > > which is not exactly a Chinese dialect.)
>
> > It isn't the least bit a Chinese dialect.
>
> I think I know more about Vietnamese and its relationship to Chinese
> than you.

It is very, very obvious that you do not.

Vietnamese is, with not the slightest doubt or question, an
Austroasiatic language, belonging to the Mon-Khmer division. It has a
large number of Chinese loanwords.

> > > When you are missing some front upper teeth, you can't really make
> > > the /f/ sound.
>
> > What do "canines or lateral incisors" have to do with [f]?
>
> Oh please.

Maybe you don't know exactly which teeth are the "canines or lateral
incisors,"

Or maybe you don't know how an [f] is formed.

> > How does tooth removal in some individuals affect an entire language
> > family?
>
> It's not *some*. Not too long ago it was nearly universal in Taiwan's
> aborigine groups. Same practice is observed all over Austronesian
> civilization areas. Tooth extraction in Southeast Asia has already
> been discussed more than half a century ago by people like Ling Shun-
> Sheng (凌純聲).

Even if every tooth in the head of every speaker of an Austronesian-
speaker were extracted, what effect would that have on the utterly
unrelated Chinese languages?

What effect on _any_ language does _any_ physical characteristic of
its speakers, whether inborn or acquired, have? How does tooth-
extraction affect the neural organization of the human brain?

ekk...@yahoo.com

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Feb 16, 2008, 11:24:49 AM2/16/08
to
On Feb 16, 6:09 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Feb 16, 12:00 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > On Feb 15, 10:31 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 15, 10:34 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > Case in example. The arrival of voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/
> > > > to Chinese dialects is ubiqutous (this even happened in Vietnamese,
> > > > which is not exactly a Chinese dialect.)
>
> > > It isn't the least bit a Chinese dialect.
>
> > I think I know more about Vietnamese and its relationship to Chinese
> > than you.
>
> It is very, very obvious that you do not.
>
> Vietnamese is, with not the slightest doubt or question, an
> Austroasiatic language, belonging to the Mon-Khmer division. It has a
> large number of Chinese loanwords.

You obviously have not been following any of my postings on Vietnamese
and Mon-Khmer. Who has been talking more about Mon-Khmer here recently
in sci.lang if not me? Your stereotyping people is amazing.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/3ea88b36a314cdd6

You know zero Mon-Khmer language yet you want to lecture someone that
can speak a Mon-Khmer language.

As I said, I know more than you do in this area.

> Even if every tooth in the head of every speaker of an Austronesian-
> speaker were extracted, what effect would that have on the utterly
> unrelated Chinese languages?

Get your Chinese stereotype out of your mind. Southern Min has exactly
6 vowels, just like Austronesian. Again, I know more on this than you
do.

There is a cultural awakening in Mainland China. People are getting
more and more interested in finding out about themselves. Finding out
their true heritage. I'd say in mainland this is happening at the
college and graduate school level. In Taiwan it's already shifted down
to the elementary school level. A lot of past lies are now dwindling
at lightning-fast speed. And people like you are becoming outdated
fast enough.

-- Ekki

Brian M. Scott

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Feb 16, 2008, 12:54:45 PM2/16/08
to
On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:24:49 -0800 (PST), <ekk...@yahoo.com>
wrote in
<news:313feff1-b71e-4d81...@h11g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:

> On Feb 16, 6:09 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> On Feb 16, 12:00 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

>>> On Feb 15, 10:31 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

>>> > On Feb 15, 10:34 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

>>>>> Case in example. The arrival of voiceless labio-dental
>>>>> fricative /f/ to Chinese dialects is ubiqutous (this
>>>>> even happened in Vietnamese, which is not exactly a
>>>>> Chinese dialect.)

>>>> It isn't the least bit a Chinese dialect.

>>> I think I know more about Vietnamese and its
>>> relationship to Chinese than you.

>> It is very, very obvious that you do not.

>> Vietnamese is, with not the slightest doubt or question,
>> an Austroasiatic language, belonging to the Mon-Khmer
>> division. It has a large number of Chinese loanwords.

> You obviously have not been following any of my postings
> on Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer. Who has been talking more
> about Mon-Khmer here recently in sci.lang if not me? Your
> stereotyping people is amazing.

> http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/3ea88b36a314cdd6

This post has absolutely nothing to do with the (lack of)
genetic relationship between Vietnamese and Chinese. The
fact that you even bother to cite it in this connection is a
very good indication that Peter is right.

> You know zero Mon-Khmer language yet you want to lecture
> someone that can speak a Mon-Khmer language.

<sigh> Another idiot who confuses knowledge *of* a language
with knowledge *about* a language.

> As I said, I know more than you do in this area.

>> Even if every tooth in the head of every speaker of an
>> Austronesian- speaker were extracted, what effect would
>> that have on the utterly unrelated Chinese languages?

> Get your Chinese stereotype out of your mind. Southern Min
> has exactly 6 vowels, just like Austronesian.

This is a complete non sequitur. If you can't even carry on
a simple conversation, what you know or don't know is
irrelevant.

[...]

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 16, 2008, 12:55:47 PM2/16/08
to
On Feb 16, 11:24 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 16, 6:09 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Feb 16, 12:00 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > On Feb 15, 10:31 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > On Feb 15, 10:34 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > > Case in example. The arrival of voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/
> > > > > to Chinese dialects is ubiqutous (this even happened in Vietnamese,
> > > > > which is not exactly a Chinese dialect.)
>
> > > > It isn't the least bit a Chinese dialect.
>
> > > I think I know more about Vietnamese and its relationship to Chinese
> > > than you.
>
> > It is very, very obvious that you do not.
>
> > Vietnamese is, with not the slightest doubt or question, an
> > Austroasiatic language, belonging to the Mon-Khmer division. It has a
> > large number of Chinese loanwords.
>
> You obviously have not been following any of my postings on Vietnamese
> and Mon-Khmer. Who has been talking more about Mon-Khmer here recently
> in sci.lang if not me? Your stereotyping people is amazing.

Define "recently." Or have there been threads about Mon-Khmer that
have simply not appeared in my computer?

> http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/3ea88b36a314cdd6
>
> You know zero Mon-Khmer language yet you want to lecture someone that
> can speak a Mon-Khmer language.
>
> As I said, I know more than you do in this area.

Then why did you claim that Vietnamese is to some extent a Chinese
dialect?

Maybe it's linguistics you don't know.

> > Even if every tooth in the head of every speaker of an Austronesian-
> > speaker were extracted, what effect would that have on the utterly
> > unrelated Chinese languages?
>
> Get your Chinese stereotype out of your mind. Southern Min has exactly
> 6 vowels, just like Austronesian. Again, I know more on this than you
> do.

What do Austronesian-speakers have to do with Chinese?

You have shown no evidence of knowing anything about anything, so far.

> There is a cultural awakening in Mainland China. People are getting
> more and more interested in finding out about themselves. Finding out
> their true heritage. I'd say in mainland this is happening at the
> college and graduate school level. In Taiwan it's already shifted down
> to the elementary school level. A lot of past lies are now dwindling
> at lightning-fast speed. And people like you are becoming outdated
> fast enough.

"People like me"???

What are you, a Chinese chauvinist to join our pet Serbian
chauvinists?

benl...@ihug.co.nz

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Feb 16, 2008, 2:59:27 PM2/16/08
to

I guess it's about time we had a Chinese ethnomaniac telling us that
linguistics has got it all wrong, to go with our Indian, Slavic, Greek
and other specimens of the type.

Ross Clark

Trond Engen

unread,
Feb 16, 2008, 4:30:09 PM2/16/08
to
benl...@ihug.co.nz skreiv:

> I guess it's about time we had a Chinese ethnomaniac telling us that
> linguistics has got it all wrong, to go with our Indian, Slavic,
> Greek and other specimens of the type.

The fact that Peter, Brian and you read his posts the same way makes me
doubt my own reading capacity. But still:

First I read ekkilu's "Vietnamese, which is not exactly a Chinese
dialect" as a classic understatement, parallel to e.g. when making the
case for the Iraq war, describing a liberal politician supporting the
war as "not exactly a rightwing nutcase".

Then I read his "Your stereotyping people" (to Peter) as a reaction to
Peter's reaction upon the missed meaning of the understatement.
(Misunderstatement?)

Finally I read his "cultural awakening" as a hope for a renaissance for
Chinese minority cultures. His observations may be false, as may the
tooth fairy tale, but I didn't catch any Chinese ethnocentric
sympathies. If anything, I'd suspect them to be Pan-Austronesian.

But I'm far from being a native speaker of English and may well have got
it all wrong.

--
Trond Engen
- turning prosaic

Trond Engen

unread,
Feb 16, 2008, 8:24:36 PM2/16/08
to
Trond Engen skreiv:

>>> The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
>>> How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
>>> World
>>> David W. Anthony
>>> Cloth | 2007 | $35.00 / £19.95
>>> 566 pp. | 6 x 9 | 3 halftones. 86 line illus. 16 tables. 25 maps.
>
> It looks promising -- and not to expensive either -- so I'm certainly
> gonna get it.

I got it on Wednesday after placing my order on amazon.co.uk last
Saturday. It takes longer time for my business mail to reach a client.

I've read some 130 pages of it. So far he's merely been laying out his
project in broad lines with reference to later chapters. The book seems
well-written and thorough, but I'll have to see the tricky parts before
I know what to think.

--
Trond Engen
- let Yemu live!

ekk...@yahoo.com

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Feb 17, 2008, 12:40:05 PM2/17/08
to
On Feb 16, 1:30 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
> benli...@ihug.co.nz skreiv:

Precisely. Thanks. When I said it, I meant it like in:

"Bill Clinton, who is not exactly black".

Any person up to date in American politics would know what I mean, and
would append the following sentence on their own:

"Bill Clinton, who is not exactly black, nevertheless has been fondly
called the 'first black president'".

So, when I said:

"Vietnamese, which is not exactly a Chinese dialect"

any person who knows about Vietnamese linguistics would know what I
mean.

"Vietnamese, which is not exactly a Chinese dialect, nevertheless has
quite a few phonological developments that are parallel to Chinese,
like the upper-lower register split, the presence of the Chongniu
categories, the recent arrival of the voiceless labiodental fricative,
and perhaps even similar tonogenesis mechanism at an earlier stage.
The traditional view is that these changes were influenced by Chinese,
but it is worthwhile to think otherwise."

Anybody that has been follow my postings would know I have always been
looking from the South-to-North direction. If people know anything
about Dawenkou at all, they'd know how far north the pre-Austronesian-
(or Austric/Austro-Thai)-like civilization was once upon a time.
People tend to assume that China exported influences, without
realizing that more than half of China belonged to some very different
civilizations. The South was the land of a very different and rich
conglomerate of civilizations, which today is simply labeled as
"China".

> Finally I read his "cultural awakening" as a hope for a renaissance for
> Chinese minority cultures. His observations may be false, as may the
> tooth fairy tale, but I didn't catch any Chinese ethnocentric
> sympathies. If anything, I'd suspect them to be Pan-Austronesian.

The funny thing is I don't need any of the identity stuff. Identity is
poisonous. But in order for people to wake up from it, they need to
first find out the truth about themselves. It takes some time for
people to separate what's taught in school to what's reality. History
books serve so far only to brainwash people. The process of waking up
involves typically three steps: (1) to question one's current
identity, (2) to find out one's true heritage, (3) to find out that
heritage means nothing. Some people are hopelessly stuck at the very
first step.

> But I'm far from being a native speaker of English and may well have got
> it all wrong.

You got it all right. The native speakers simply were so full of
stereotypes that their minds could no longer work.

-- Ekki

ekk...@yahoo.com

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 12:54:04 PM2/17/08
to
On Feb 17, 9:40 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Anybody that has been follow my postings would know I have always been
> looking from the South-to-North direction. If people know anything
> about Dawenkou at all, they'd know how far north the pre-Austronesian-
> (or Austric/Austro-Thai)-like civilization was once upon a time.

Just in case people are wondering about the connection: Dawenkou sites
in Shandong already showed human skulls with teeth extraction. Anyway,
these are all well-known facts, repeating them here is boring.

-- Ekki

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 1:57:06 PM2/17/08
to
On Feb 17, 12:40 pm, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 16, 1:30 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:

> > First I read ekkilu's "Vietnamese, which is not exactly a Chinese
> > dialect" as a classic understatement, parallel to e.g. when making the
> > case for the Iraq war, describing a liberal politician supporting the
> > war as "not exactly a rightwing nutcase".
>
> Precisely. Thanks. When I said it, I meant it like in:
>
> "Bill Clinton, who is not exactly black".
>
> Any person up to date in American politics would know what I mean, and
> would append the following sentence on their own:

Any person who heard you utter that statement (if you were a native
speaker of English) would take it as an extremely sarcastic insult.

Thank you for comfirming that you hold the Vietnamese language in
contempt.

> "Bill Clinton, who is not exactly black, nevertheless has been fondly
> called the 'first black president'".

Do you have the _slightest_ idea who called him that, and when, and
why?

Are you not aware that the current US political situation has rendered
that fond epithet an extreme archaism?

> So, when I said:
>
> "Vietnamese, which is not exactly a Chinese dialect"
>
> any person who knows about Vietnamese linguistics would know what I
> mean.

Yes. That you exalt Chinese dialects and contemn Vietnamese.

> "Vietnamese, which is not exactly a Chinese dialect, nevertheless has
> quite a few phonological developments that are parallel to Chinese,
> like the upper-lower register split, the presence of the Chongniu
> categories, the recent arrival of the voiceless labiodental fricative,
> and perhaps even similar tonogenesis mechanism at an earlier stage.
> The traditional view is that these changes were influenced by Chinese,
> but it is worthwhile to think otherwise."

That list of typological properties applies to many languages in the
"linguistic area" (have you ever heard that term?) impinging on the
Sinophone area.

> Anybody that has been follow my postings would know I have always been
> looking from the South-to-North direction. If people know anything
> about Dawenkou at all, they'd know how far north the pre-Austronesian-
> (or Austric/Austro-Thai)-like civilization was once upon a time.
> People tend to assume that China exported influences, without
> realizing that more than half of China belonged to some very different
> civilizations. The South was the land of a very different and rich
> conglomerate of civilizations, which today is simply labeled as
> "China".

I repeat: If you have been making "postings" on that topic, they have
not been in any recent thread in sci.lang.

Moreover, it is completely illegitimate to label "civilizations" with
linguistic labels (especially hyper-speculative ones like "Austro-
Thau" or "Austric" that have no content anyway).

> > Finally I read his "cultural awakening" as a hope for a renaissance for
> > Chinese minority cultures. His observations may be false, as may the
> > tooth fairy tale, but I didn't catch any Chinese ethnocentric
> > sympathies. If anything, I'd suspect them to be Pan-Austronesian.
>
> The funny thing is I don't need any of the identity stuff. Identity is
> poisonous. But in order for people to wake up from it, they need to
> first find out the truth about themselves. It takes some time for
> people to separate what's taught in school to what's reality. History
> books serve so far only to brainwash people. The process of waking up
> involves typically three steps: (1) to question one's current
> identity, (2) to find out one's true heritage, (3) to find out that
> heritage means nothing. Some people are hopelessly stuck at the very
> first step.
>
> > But I'm far from being a native speaker of English and may well have got
> > it all wrong.
>
> You got it all right. The native speakers simply were so full of
> stereotypes that their minds could no longer work.

If you're so "pro-Austronesian" and not a Chinese chauvinist, howcome
you exalt the Taiwanese varieties of Chinese rather than the
indigenous, endangered Austronesian languages?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 1:58:19 PM2/17/08
to

The extracted teeth you named are irrelevant to the articulation of
[f]. and no physical alteration of a person's body can affect the
neural organization of their, or their offspring's, brains.

Reinhold (Rey) Aman

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 4:14:39 PM2/17/08
to
Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

[...]

> > "Bill Clinton, who is not exactly black, nevertheless has been
> > fondly called the 'first black president'".
>
> Do you have the _slightest_ idea who called him that, and when,
> and why?

That's totally *irrelevant* and a typical Petey Fog maneuver. (In 1998,
Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison called Clinton "the first Black
president." Wiki and Google are your friends.)



> Are you not aware that the current US political situation has
> rendered that fond epithet an extreme archaism?

Good Lord! Do YOU have the _slightest_ idea what an "extreme archaism"
is? That epithet may be an "extreme archaism" in surreal Petey-Land,
but not in the Real World.

Are YOU not aware that "Bill Clinton, America's 'first black president'"
is anything but an "extreme archaism"? On the contrary, that "fond"
epithet is very current and has been used frequently during the past few
weeks by respectable newspapers and magazines, in blogs, newsgroups, and
on websites. Google shows 1,660,000 hits, among them a very recent
*January 28, 2008* article at the "liberal" <www.salon.com> website.

Do try to keep up with the news and reality.

~~~ Reinhold (Rey) Aman ~~~

Richard Wordingham

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 6:55:35 PM2/17/08
to
<ekk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 16, 1:30 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
> > On Feb 17, 5:24 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

> >> Get your Chinese stereotype out of your mind. Southern Min has
> >> exactly 6 vowels, just like Austronesian. Again, I know more on this
> >> than you do.

I understood Proto-Austronesian to have 4 vowels.

>> But I'm far from being a native speaker of English and may well have got
>> it all wrong.

> You got it all right. The native speakers simply were so full of
> stereotypes that their minds could no longer work.

Well, this native speaker understood your meiosis. It's supposedly a form
of irony, and Americans are alleged not to understand irony.

Richard.

Richard Wordingham

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 7:30:03 PM2/17/08
to
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

> What effect on _any_ language does _any_ physical characteristic of
> its speakers, whether inborn or acquired, have? How does tooth-
> extraction affect the neural organization of the human brain?

So is the connection between the wearing of lip plugs and the lack of labial
consonants in Iroquoian languages untrue?

I've seen the lack of fricatives in Australian languages attributed to
yaws - I didn't understand the connection.

Richard.

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 7:47:12 PM2/17/08
to
On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:55:35 GMT, Richard Wordingham
<jrw...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in
<news:XP3uj.147$_65...@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net> in sci.lang:

> <ekk...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> On Feb 16, 1:30 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:

>>> On Feb 17, 5:24 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

>>>> Get your Chinese stereotype out of your mind. Southern Min has
>>>> exactly 6 vowels, just like Austronesian. Again, I know more on this
>>>> than you do.

> I understood Proto-Austronesian to have 4 vowels.

>>> But I'm far from being a native speaker of English and may well have got
>>> it all wrong.

>> You got it all right. The native speakers simply were so full of
>> stereotypes that their minds could no longer work.

> Well, this native speaker understood your meiosis.

I did originally; it was his responses to Peter that cast
doubt on that interpretation.

> It's supposedly a form of irony, and Americans are
> alleged not to understand irony.

One does get rather tired of that canard. And Ross isn't an
American anyway.

Brian

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 11:18:19 PM2/17/08
to
On Feb 17, 7:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > What effect on _any_ language does _any_ physical characteristic of
> > its speakers, whether inborn or acquired, have? How does tooth-
> > extraction affect the neural organization of the human brain?
>
> So is the connection between the wearing of lip plugs and the lack of labial
> consonants in Iroquoian languages untrue?

I've never heard of labrets in connection with Iroquois.

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Feb 17, 2008, 11:37:53 PM2/17/08
to
On Feb 18, 5:18 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 7:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > What effect on _any_ language does _any_ physical characteristic of
> > > its speakers, whether inborn or acquired, have? How does tooth-
> > > extraction affect the neural organization of the human brain?
>
> > So is the connection between the wearing of lip plugs and the lack of labial
> > consonants in Iroquoian languages untrue?
>
> I've never heard of labrets in connection with Iroquois.

I believe the claim has been made for the Northwest Coast, where there
is an area in which labret use and a dearth of labial consonants
coincide.

Ross Clark

John Atkinson

unread,
Feb 18, 2008, 5:30:59 AM2/18/08
to

<benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:3c061059-2bd7-4235...@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

Well, "coincide" is a bit of an exaggeration. Labret-wearing extended
over a much greater area in the NW and Arctic than non-labial languages.

Also, all the other areas where labrets have been worn for millennia
(much of Africa, Amazonia, Mesoamerica) have normal quotas of labial
consonants.

There's been at least two more-or-less serious projects to investigate
the effect of lip plates and lower-front-tooth extraction on speech in
the lower Omo valley (Moges Yigezu, Addis Ababa U, and Carolyn C
Madding, Cal State Long Beach).

Yigezu's abstract claims that "women cannot produce the bilabial and
dental consonants in their own language. Vowels are also affected, but
the presence of the lip-plate does not affect the tonal system." The
conclusion regarding bilabials and dentals seems considerably
exaggerated. There's no reason why a plate in the lower lip should
preclude a very bilabial-sounding consonant (labio-platal (?); clip
something to your lip and try it). And most dentals can be articulated
just fine without using the lower front teeth.

John.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 18, 2008, 8:29:17 AM2/18/08
to
On Feb 17, 11:37 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
wrote:

So the problem is more with RichardW's grasp of North American
geography ...

Richard Wordingham

unread,
Feb 18, 2008, 3:15:39 PM2/18/08
to
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 11:37 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> > I've never heard of labrets in connection with Iroquois.

> So the problem is more with RichardW's grasp of North American
geography ...

No, it's with putting more faith in books than in the Internet.

Richard.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 18, 2008, 4:32:54 PM2/18/08
to
On Feb 18, 3:15 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Really? What book claims that the Iroquois used labrets?

(Careful ... as a native New Yorker, I've been exposed to lore and
history about the Iroquois since my earliest visits to the American
Museum of Natural History, which we did every other month when the
Planetarium show changed, plus in school several times over.)

(You can drive up Route 17 to Ithaca (nearly), and presumably all the
way to Buffalo (nearly), and watch the local place names alternate
between Algonquian and Iroquois.)

John Atkinson

unread,
Feb 18, 2008, 9:32:01 PM2/18/08
to
"John Atkinson" <john...@bigpond.com> wrote ...
> <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote...

The Surmic languages of SW Ethiopia are indeed well supplied with
bilabial and dental phonemes. Yigezu's "Chai" is a dialect of the
Mursi language. Mursi has bilabials /b, B, m, w/ (no /p/), interdentals
/T, D/, apicals /t, d, z, s, n/ (D and z are allophones). The women of
the Mursi, Chai, and Tirma (to which perhaps could be added the Kichepo,
over the border in Sudan, though I suspect this may be just another name
for the Chai) are, AFAIK, the only Africans who still practice
megalabretifery.

http://www.mursi.org/pdf/turton-bender.pdf

John.

ekk...@yahoo.com

unread,
Feb 19, 2008, 11:43:01 AM2/19/08
to
On Feb 16, 11:59 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
wrote:

>
> I guess it's about time we had a Chinese ethnomaniac telling us that
> linguistics has got it all wrong, to go with our Indian, Slavic, Greek
> and other specimens of the type.
>
> Ross Clark

You mean Isidore Dyen is not a linguist?

-- Ekki

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Feb 19, 2008, 4:10:45 PM2/19/08
to

Which of your views does Isidore Dyen share?

Anyhow, it's not clear what your views are in the present discussion.
You claimed to have posted a lot about Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer, but
didn't explain what ideas you have about that. Apparently your
statement that Vietnamese was "not exactly a Chinese dialect" was
sarcasm or something. Then there was portentous talk about Chinese
people learning their "true history" instead of "lies". What's the
"true history"? What "lies"?

Ross Clark

ekk...@yahoo.com

unread,
Feb 19, 2008, 10:32:58 PM2/19/08
to

Here is a better one for this "extreme archaism":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzkJGJaR7bw

> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Are you not aware that the current US political situation has
> > rendered that fond epithet an extreme archaism?

-- Ekki

ekk...@yahoo.com

unread,
Feb 20, 2008, 12:38:18 PM2/20/08
to
On Feb 19, 1:10 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> On Feb 20, 5:43 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > On Feb 16, 11:59 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
> > wrote:
>
> > > I guess it's about time we had a Chinese ethnomaniac telling us that
> > > linguistics has got it all wrong, to go with our Indian, Slavic, Greek
> > > and other specimens of the type.
>
> > > Ross Clark
>
> > You mean Isidore Dyen is not a linguist?
>
> > -- Ekki
>
> Which of your views does Isidore Dyen share?

So why did you say "telling us that linguistics has got it all wrong"?

Isidore Dyen was the one that proposed 6 vowels for proto-
Austronesian.

> Anyhow, it's not clear what your views are in the present discussion.
> You claimed to have posted a lot about Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer, but
> didn't explain what ideas you have about that.

I am perhaps the first one in the world to discuss nasal continuation
of checked vowels in Mon-Khmer, a feature exclusive to Mon-Khmer
languages and not shared by Chinese dialects. That probably tells you
I know a bit what Mon-Khmer is about and that there is no danger of me
confusing Vietnamese as a dialect of Chinese.

So I don't appreciate people providing me with Wikipedia-level
information on Mon-Khmer and Austroasiatic.

> Apparently your
> statement that Vietnamese was "not exactly a Chinese dialect" was
> sarcasm or something. Then there was portentous talk about Chinese
> people learning their "true history" instead of "lies". What's the
> "true history"? What "lies"?

That's a whole can of worms. There are just too many to mention.

(1) China has a 5000-year history: I am not disputing the term "5000
years", which itself is controversial enough. It's the "history" part
that is problem. China is a country without a history for its people.
You think I am crazy, but it suffices to ask any average Joe (or
average Wang in this case) in China and they'll admit (a) they don't
know where they come from, (2) they don't know where their language/
dialect come from. Again, people may think I am crazy, but wait until
you hear the words of Su Binqi, the head of the archeological society
of China: "The mission of archeological study in China is to build the
history of China as a nation (國史)". What? for a country claiming 5000
years of history, why all of the sudden there is need to build
(notice, not "re-build") the whole history?

(2) That people of the South are mainly immigrants from the north:
total lie. Thank goodness there are DNA studies nowadays (not just one
study, but studies after studies), and they show that southerners are
often genetically closer to people in Thailand/Malaysia/Indonesia or
even Hawaii than to the northern Chinese.

(3) That southern dialects are the result of natural branching off of
the original common language due to geographic separation: total lie.
The truth is the southerners were speakers of other languages that
were forced to speak Chinese. The existence of several dialect groups
came about because there were several subtratum languages to start
with.

Some modern versions of the cultural oppression has been observed in
Taiwan until not too long ago. For instance:

(a) Suppression of any form of writing down the local Southern Min and
Hakka dialects (be them in Chinese characters or with romanized
writing). Police would harrass and confiscate dictionaries. (The New
York Times once upon a time had a report on this.)

(b) Harrassment to researchers for carrying out DNA studies: lawmakers
would attempt to bring charges to researchers, citing as excuse
privacy and compensations issues to aborigine groups. But the reality
was: some of the lawmakers wanted badly to introduce friction between
the aborigine people and the Hoklo/Hakka people, so that the
aborigines would vote against Hoklo/Hakka candidates. The typical lie
was: the Hoklo and Hakka people are just Chinese immigrants that came
over to took away your land. Now that repeated and detailed DNA
studies have been done, we know the reason behind the fear of these
lawmakers: 85% of the Hoklos/Hakkas have partial aborigine blood, and
statistically, at least 15% of the genetic material of the Hoklos/
Hakkas in Taiwan is from local aborigine ancestry. And the DNA of many
of those lawmakers had 0% local aborigine blood.

Of course these are old news nowadays. Academic persecution is a thing
of the past, school history books have been properly updated. But
hidding true history has been part of psyche of being a Chinese. As a
result, the for Chu language, despite the wealth of writing, so far
people have been able to reconstruct just about 5 non-sinitic words.
In other words, despite the repeated mentioning of Chu language as non-
Chinese, from Chinese written records it has been all but impossible
to recover any information about this language. And Chu is perhaps the
best recorded language from writings of poets like Qu Yuan. Forget
about all the other southern languages. So much hiding, so much
suppression, to the point that we arrive at today's situation, best
described by Su Binqi: "The mission of archeological study in China is
to build the history of China as a nation (國史)".

It's therefore heartwarming to see that so much research is happening
in mainland nowadays, for people to find out their own past. Let us
not forget what this thread was originally about: the original Indo-
European people. The same is true for Chinese: they have their
languages, and many of them would like to find out more about the
original speakers of the roots of their languages.

-- Ekki

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Feb 20, 2008, 4:17:39 PM2/20/08
to
On Feb 21, 6:38 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 19, 1:10 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 20, 5:43 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 16, 11:59 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
> > > wrote:
>
> > > > I guess it's about time we had a Chinese ethnomaniac telling us that
> > > > linguistics has got it all wrong, to go with our Indian, Slavic, Greek
> > > > and other specimens of the type.
>
> > > > Ross Clark
>
> > > You mean Isidore Dyen is not a linguist?
>
> > > -- Ekki
>
> > Which of your views does Isidore Dyen share?
>
> So why did you say "telling us that linguistics has got it all wrong"?

I took that from the tone of what you said about the "real truth" vs
"lies", and "people like you" (PTD) being a thing of the past. I admit
I was comparing you (probably unfairly) to the succession of Indians
we have had telling us that linguistics is all wrong about India and
that they are going to tell Indians the "real truth".

>
> Isidore Dyen was the one that proposed 6 vowels for proto-
> Austronesian.

Did he? I must check that out. I know he went through a period of over-
reconstruction through mechanical application of the comparative
method, resulting sometimes in very unlikely proto-language
phonologies. This might be about the same time that Elbert
reconstructed 7 vowels for Proto-Polynesian.
Meanwhile, just about everybody else agrees with Dempwolff that there
were 4.

Can't disagree with anything there.

Ross Clark

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 20, 2008, 6:00:37 PM2/20/08
to
On Feb 20, 12:38 pm, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

> It's therefore heartwarming to see that so much research is happening
> in mainland nowadays, for people to find out their own past. Let us
> not forget what this thread was originally about: the original Indo-
> European people. The same is true for Chinese: they have their
> languages, and many of them would like to find out more about the
> original speakers of the roots of their languages.

You clearly have a reading comprehension problem, and you are clearly
no linguist.

The original topic of the thread is a new book on the spread of Indo-
European LANGUAGES. There is not and never was such a thing as "Indo-
European people."

John Atkinson

unread,
Feb 20, 2008, 7:53:03 PM2/20/08
to

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote...

On Feb 20, 12:38 pm, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

> It's therefore heartwarming to see that so much research is happening
> in mainland nowadays, for people to find out their own past. Let us
> not forget what this thread was originally about: the original Indo-
> European people. The same is true for Chinese: they have their
> languages, and many of them would like to find out more about the
> original speakers of the roots of their languages.

> [...]

> The original topic of the thread is a new book on the spread of Indo-
> European LANGUAGES. There is not and never was such a thing as "Indo-
> European people."

Let's assume there was once a language which the linguists'
"Proto-Indo-European" is a pale approximation of(though, admittedly, not
everyone agrees that PIE isn't just a linguist's idealisation, and never
actually existed as a human language, which is maybe what you're getting
at (?)).

Then, like every other human language, it must have had a community of
speakers (at least two people). In recent times, the usual situation
among people not influenced by "civilisation" has been for each "tribe"
(numbering from a few hundred to some thousands) to be associated with
its own language. There's no reason to think this wasn't the case way
back then.

So, what would you call the tribe that spoke PIE before it split up into
"dialects", each spoken by a different tribe? OK, ekkilu could have
said "the group of people who spoke PIE as their tribal language". But
what's wrong with "the original IE people" as an alternative way of
saying exactly the same thing? What else could it possibly mean?

John.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 1:01:26 AM2/21/08
to
On Feb 20, 7:53 pm, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote...

At the very least, it assumes that "PIE" was in fact a language; as
you clearly explained it wasn't.

Do you speak of "the Romances," who occupy most of Europe from Iberia
to the Adriatic? "The Germanics" to the north?

John Atkinson

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 3:13:49 AM2/21/08
to

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote...

I did????

> Do you speak of "the Romances," who occupy most of Europe from Iberia
> to the Adriatic? "The Germanics" to the north?

I can't see anyone speaking of "the original Romance people", meaning
the tribe that lived at Rome some time in the first millenium BC and
spoke an early Latin. For some reason it just doesn't sound right -- I
might say "the original Latins" though. But if I heard "the original
Germanic people" I certainly would assume that the speaker was referring
to the tribe that lived somewhere in northern Germany or southern
Scandinavia some centuries earlier and spoke the specific language from
which all the so-called Germanic languages descend.

Yes, of course there are hidden assumptions in speaking like this.
Among others:
(1) that the "genetic family" model, that except in exceptional
circumstances each language has only one ancestor, works pretty well for
the Germanic languages (and also for IE).
(2) That it's not too sloppy to use the same word, "proto-Germanic" in
this case, for both the actual human language spoken by that tribe, and
also the reconstructed, very incomplete, "language" that is presented in
all the textbooks, and which most of the authors do intend to represent
the best they can do to reproduce the actual language as spoken.

John.

Franz Gnaedinger

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 4:40:49 AM2/21/08
to
On Feb 21, 1:53 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> Let's assume there was once a language which the linguists'
> "Proto-Indo-European" is a pale approximation of(though, admittedly, not
> everyone agrees that PIE isn't just a linguist's idealisation, and never
> actually existed as a human language, which is maybe what you're getting
> at (?)).
>
> Then, like every other human language, it must have had a community of
> speakers (at least two people). In recent times, the usual situation
> among people not influenced by "civilisation" has been for each "tribe"
> (numbering from a few hundred to some thousands) to be associated with
> its own language. There's no reason to think this wasn't the case way
> back then.

The problem of PIE is the lacking time depth, and a lot of
ambiguities, such as a missing definition of what sound laws
are. PIE rests on sound laws, and sound laws hold without
exceptions, or when there are exceptions there is a reason
for them that we can explain, but then again sound laws are
just observed regularities, not real laws like Kepler's laws
in astronomy, on the other hand linguists are experts on
language and should be able of coining proper terms, and
they go on using the term sound law, so they are laws ...
I had a long discussion on sound laws with Peter T. Daniels
in the thread "apes and language." Sound laws are laws
are no laws are laws are no laws are laws ... How can you
base PIE on such a shaky ground? The biggest problem,
in my opinion, is the lacking time depth of PIE, and so I
propose this solution:

Early PIE -- Ice Age language spoken in Eurasia,
from Northern Spain to Malta in Siberia, center in
the Franco-Cantabrian space

Middle PIE -- center Göbekli Tepe, begin of
agriculture at the base of the Karacadag some
10,000 years ago, first mining and melting of
copper in the Jordan valley and in Anatolia
at the same time

Late PIE -- spoken in the steppes between
Anatolia, rich in copper, and Central Asia,
rich in tin, giving way to IE with the casting
of bronze, with bridles and taming horses

Now let us have a look at Early PIE, which would have
reached its peak with Magdalenian. These were not
just tribes living in Eurasia, they were concentrated in
the Franco-Cantabrian space, and telling by the highly
evolved cave art, they formed a well organized early
society along the rivers, reflected in a common language.
Archaeology does have a say in paleo-linguistics.

ekk...@yahoo.com

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 11:38:27 AM2/21/08
to
On Feb 20, 3:00 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> The original topic of the thread is a new book on the spread of Indo-
> European LANGUAGES. There is not and never was such a thing as "Indo-
> European people."

"... The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
World"

You mean "riders" are not people. You mean "horse", "wheel" are just
linguistic terms that have nothing to do with people?

"... Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from
a
shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were
the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they
manage to spread it around the globe?"

You mean "who", "they", "speakers" are not people?

" Until now their identity has
remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even
Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and
Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original
Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses
and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization."

You mean "original speakers" are not people? You mean "their identity"
is not the identity of a people? You mean "domestication of horses,
use of the wheel" are not done by people?

If you are so unhappy with the word "people", make it "peoples", and
be happy.

I understand your point of view: to you, linguistics is the end. But
you have to understand that to other people, linguistics is just the
means, in the sense of the "holistic" four-field anthropology. Both
approaches are valid in their respective realms. But don't get all
surprised when people talk about archeology, genetics and
sociocultural aspects in conjunction with linguistics. You are
interested in languages only, that's fine. But other people are
interested in peoples. I always admire those creators of the four-
field approach. To really understand people, you can't just come in
from one single angle. From those archeologists that found the chipped-
pebble tools, to social-cultural researchers like Ling Shun-Sheng, to
linguists like Benedict/Schmidt/etc., and then finally culminating
with people like Cavalli-Sforza, you can see that they had to base
their knowledge on the findings from other fields, and there is a nice
sequence of development that arrives at the irrefutable DNA evidences.
But if you asked people like Ling Shun-Sheng (if they come back to
life), they would tell you: "But I already knew all that 60 years ago!
And I did not need any DNA!"

-- Ekki

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 12:22:00 PM2/21/08
to
On Feb 21, 11:38 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 20, 3:00 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > The original topic of the thread is a new book on the spread of Indo-
> > European LANGUAGES. There is not and never was such a thing as "Indo-
> > European people."
>
> "... The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
> How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
> World"
>
> You mean "riders" are not people. You mean "horse", "wheel" are just
> linguistic terms that have nothing to do with people?

The riders are people, and the ancestors of those words were people,
perhaps even people who spoke something of which PIE is a very rough
approximation. They were not, however, "Indo-European people."

> "... Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from
> a
> shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were
> the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they
> manage to spread it around the globe?"
>
> You mean "who", "they", "speakers" are not people?

They were members of a variety of speech-communities that used
languages that were similar in broad outline to reconstructed Proto-
Indo-European. We have no way of knowing what they called themselves,
and we certainly have no reason to believe that all the people who
spoke those languages believed themselves to be speaking the same
language, let alone to be the same people.

We need look no further than Serbs and Croats, who speak "the same"
language by any but political criteria, but who deny vehemently that
Serbian and Croatian are "the same" language.

(Your little corner of the world, where the Chinese insist that at
least eight different languages, not mutually comprehensible, are a
single language "Chinese," is unique.)

> " Until now their identity has
> remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even
> Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and
> Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original
> Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses
> and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization."
>
> You mean "original speakers" are not people? You mean "their identity"
> is not the identity of a people? You mean "domestication of horses,
> use of the wheel" are not done by people?

"Identity" here is the creation of a Public Relations advertising copy-
writer.

> If you are so unhappy with the word "people", make it "peoples", and
> be happy.

That would be an improvement, but "peoples" are not coterminous with
speech communities.

> I understand your point of view: to you, linguistics is the end. But
> you have to understand that to other people, linguistics is just the
> means, in the sense of the "holistic" four-field anthropology. Both
> approaches are valid in their respective realms. But don't get all
> surprised when people talk about archeology, genetics and
> sociocultural aspects in conjunction with linguistics. You are
> interested in languages only, that's fine. But other people are
> interested in peoples. I always admire those creators of the four-
> field approach. To really understand people, you can't just come in
> from one single angle. From those archeologists that found the chipped-
> pebble tools, to social-cultural researchers like Ling Shun-Sheng, to
> linguists like Benedict/Schmidt/etc., and then finally culminating
> with people like Cavalli-Sforza, you can see that they had to base
> their knowledge on the findings from other fields, and there is a nice
> sequence of development that arrives at the irrefutable DNA evidences.
> But if you asked people like Ling Shun-Sheng (if they come back to
> life), they would tell you: "But I already knew all that 60 years ago!
> And I did not need any DNA!"

Your name-dropping isn't very impressive. (Paul Benedict,
incidentally, was not a linguist, but an attorney; it took a linguist,
Jim Matisoff, to whip his materials into a shape that could be taken
seriously by the linguistic community. He usually connected
Austronesian roots with roots in other phyla by reconstructing forms
where the first part of the reconstruction yielded the An root and the
second part the root in another phylum. If you are referring to
Wilhelm Schmidt, he tried to make the most bizarre associations
between linguistic typology and cultural traits. Cavalli-Sforza fell
into bad company and came up with utterly worthless "correlations"
between genetic dendrograms and fallacious linguistic dendrograms.)

Herman Rubin

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 2:05:02 PM2/21/08
to
In article <646d38ad-b2f1-4139...@p43g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,

Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>On Feb 20, 7:53=A0pm, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote...
>> On Feb 20, 12:38 pm, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

<> < It's therefore heartwarming to see that so much research is happening
<> < in mainland nowadays, for people to find out their own past. Let us
<> < not forget what this thread was originally about: the original Indo-
<> < European people. The same is true for Chinese: they have their
<> < languages, and many of them would like to find out more about the
<> < original speakers of the roots of their languages.
<> < [...]
<> < The original topic of the thread is a new book on the spread of Indo-
<> < European LANGUAGES. There is not and never was such a thing as "Indo-
<> < European people."

>> Let's assume there was once a language which the linguists'
>> "Proto-Indo-European" is a pale approximation of(though, admittedly, not
>> everyone agrees that PIE isn't just a linguist's idealisation, and never
>> actually existed as a human language, which is maybe what you're getting
>> at (?)).

>> Then, like every other human language, it must have had a community of

>> speakers (at least two people). =A0In recent times, the usual situation


>> among people not influenced by "civilisation" has been for each "tribe"
>> (numbering from a few hundred to some thousands) to be associated with

>> its own language. =A0There's no reason to think this wasn't the case way
>> back then.

>> So, what would you call the tribe that spoke PIE before it split up into

>> "dialects", each spoken by a different tribe? =A0 OK, ekkilu could have
>> said "the group of people who spoke PIE as their tribal language". =A0But


>> what's wrong with "the original IE people" as an alternative way of

>> saying exactly the same thing? =A0What else could it possibly mean?

>At the very least, it assumes that "PIE" was in fact a language; as
>you clearly explained it wasn't.

>Do you speak of "the Romances," who occupy most of Europe from Iberia
>to the Adriatic? "The Germanics" to the north?

It is not unusual to speak of the Romance languages
or the Germanic languages. I have seen the terms
"Germanic people" and "Slavic people" and some other
associations of people with linguistic groups widely
used, including "Indo-European people". I agree
that this is a gross misuse.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

Trond Engen

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 2:40:10 PM2/21/08
to
Peter T. Daniels skreiv:

> On Feb 21, 11:38 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> On Feb 20, 3:00 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> The original topic of the thread is a new book on the spread of Indo-
>>> European LANGUAGES. There is not and never was such a thing as "Indo-
>>> European people."
>>
>> "... The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
>> How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
>> World"
>>
>> You mean "riders" are not people. You mean "horse", "wheel" are just
>> linguistic terms that have nothing to do with people?
>
> The riders are people, and the ancestors of those words were people,
> perhaps even people who spoke something of which PIE is a very rough
> approximation. They were not, however, "Indo-European people."
>
>> "... Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived
>> from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But
>> who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how
>> did they manage to spread it around the globe?"
>>
>> You mean "who", "they", "speakers" are not people?
>
> They were members of a variety of speech-communities that used
> languages that were similar in broad outline to reconstructed Proto-
> Indo-European. We have no way of knowing what they called themselves,
> and we certainly have no reason to believe that all the people who
> spoke those languages believed themselves to be speaking the same
> language, let alone to be the same people.

Being an actual reader of the book (or half of it, so far), I'll join in.

After the introductory chapters, Anthony leaves the linguistic
arguments, focusing mainly on his own field, archaeology. His case for
using archaeology to trace a language community is based on the
assumption, apparently rooted in ethnological studies, that, while "pots
are not people", a longevited, multi-feature (style, food, economy,
etc.) cultural barrier is also a linguistic one. He argues that all over
the world such borders are important for people living at them and
defining for their view of themselves -- the main defining criterion for
a people is its border to the Others. For more than two millennia, the
sharpest cultural border in Europe roughly followed the Dnester. With
that background, he does on several occasions revisit the linguistic
situation in the Pontic area.

So far, his theory seems to be (and now I may be stretching his words,
I'm not finished reading) that riding was invented in a culture at the
Middle/Lower Volga some time before 4000 BC. The reason is that for some
centuries to follow, the elite segment within the different steppe
cultures copied a culture, a lifestyle and a religion originating in
that area, and that this fact itself is a sign of increased mobility.
The linguistic situation before this new horse culture may have been
diverse, but the resulting situation was a language -- or a group of
dialects -- reaching from the Donau delta to the Ural. He does not say
that it was the language of the whole people. For all I know, it may
have been an elite or trade language used between members of several
language communities, not to become a major first language until later
migrations out of the area blended people into new communities. Neither
does he say that its speakers defined themselves as one people, but I'd
say that, based on his assumption of cultural self-consciousness, we're
very close.

Some more from my reading:

At the same time as the invention of equestrian transport, a colder
climate led to an ecological crisis both for the "Old European"
civilization around the Donau and for the steppe tribes. Herders,
however, took advantage and entered the lower Donau valley. He argues
that a pastoral society, with its increased social and economic mobility
and the social security of the patron/client relationship, might have
been preferable for many former villagers in a time of strain. This
early western offshoot were to become the speakers of Anatolian
languages. A few centuries later, an eastern offshoot established a
clone of the culture of the Volga in the faraway Altay Mountains. This
people were to become the Tocharians. Both migrations took place before
the first certain archaeological signs of equestrianism, but his opinion
is that both, and especially the Pre-Tocharian, must have been done and
scouted on horseback. The first proof of riding, bitmarks on horseteeth,
are from hunting camps in the West-Siberian steppe area a few centuries
after the Pre-Tocharian offshoot passed there.

Right now I'm following a wagon trail through the Caucasus. I don't know
exactly where it will lead me.

Not much of an answer to the post, maybe, but a step back to the book of
the subject line.

--
Trond Engen
- digesting heavily

Joachim Pense

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 4:35:23 PM2/21/08
to
Trond Engen wrote:

>
> So far, his theory seems to be (and now I may be stretching his words,
> I'm not finished reading) that riding was invented in a culture at the
> Middle/Lower Volga some time before 4000 BC. The reason is that for some
> centuries to follow, the elite segment within the different steppe
> cultures copied a culture, a lifestyle and a religion originating in
> that area, and that this fact itself is a sign of increased mobility.

I always took it for granted that the ancient IE cultures (like Mycenian
Greeks) didn't ride but had chariots. Am I confusing something here?

Joachim

Marc

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 4:40:57 PM2/21/08
to
On Feb 21, 10:38 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:

> I always admire those creators of the four-
> field approach.

The point of the approach is to raise the critical standard for
judgments, not lower it. Evidence doesn't need to support a hypothesis
in just one of the four fields. It has to stand up to scrutiny in *all
four* fields. A hypothesis supported by all fields except linguistics
is nevertheless 100% unsupported, not "75% supported."

It has to be right in all four fields to be right at all.

Marc

Trond Engen

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 6:48:20 PM2/21/08
to
Joachim Pense skreiv:

Well, chariots don't exclude riding. But as I said, I was halfway
through the book. This evening around 3700-3500 BC the wagon came to the
Don-Volga area, probably from south, and in a few centuries it
transformed the eastern steppe cultures into fully developed nomadism.
The new lifestyle led to a new wave of eastern cultural impulses
spreading westwards. Anthony associates the wagon culture of 3000-2500
BC with "late PIE". I'm yet to see a chariot, though. But the branching
out of the western groups are set to begin tomorrow. We'll see what they
bring with them.

--
Trond Engen
- swinging down

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 21, 2008, 7:40:19 PM2/21/08
to
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:48:20 +0100, Trond Engen
<tron...@engen.priv.no> wrote in
<news:s6-dnRJN9Z8...@telenor.com> in sci.lang:

[...]

> This evening around 3700-3500 BC

I knew that the nights were long up your way, but isn't that
a bit much?

[...]

Brian

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 21, 2008, 11:25:31 PM2/21/08
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On Feb 21, 2:40 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:

> Being an actual reader of the book (or half of it, so far), I'll join in.

Neither Borders, where I have a 30%-off coupon this weekend, nor the
entire New York Public Library has a copy.

> After the introductory chapters, Anthony leaves the linguistic
> arguments, focusing mainly on his own field, archaeology. His case for
> using archaeology to trace a language community is based on the
> assumption, apparently rooted in ethnological studies, that, while "pots
> are not people", a longevited, multi-feature (style, food, economy,
> etc.) cultural barrier is also a linguistic one. He argues that all over
> the world such borders are important for people living at them and
> defining for their view of themselves -- the main defining criterion for
> a people is its border to the Others. For more than two millennia, the
> sharpest cultural border in Europe roughly followed the Dnester. With
> that background, he does on several occasions revisit the linguistic
> situation in the Pontic area.

See the archeology articles in the Mair volume in the JIES Supp series
(which even Franz should know about), esp. on the BMAC complex.

> So far, his theory seems to be (and now I may be stretching his words,
> I'm not finished reading) that riding was invented in a culture at the
> Middle/Lower Volga some time before 4000 BC.

He argues -- quite alone, I think -- for the _very_ early invention of
horseback riding on the basis of a single equid tooth that seems to
show bit wear. (In the Mair vol.)

> The reason is that for some
> centuries to follow, the elite segment within the different steppe
> cultures copied a culture, a lifestyle and a religion originating in
> that area, and that this fact itself is a sign of increased mobility.
> The linguistic situation before this new horse culture may have been
> diverse, but the resulting situation was a language -- or a group of
> dialects -- reaching from the Donau delta to the Ural. He does not say
> that it was the language of the whole people. For all I know, it may
> have been an elite or trade language used between members of several
> language communities, not to become a major first language until later
> migrations out of the area blended people into new communities. Neither
> does he say that its speakers defined themselves as one people, but I'd
> say that, based on his assumption of cultural self-consciousness, we're
> very close.
>
> Some more from my reading:
>
> At the same time as the invention of equestrian transport, a colder
> climate led to an ecological crisis both for the "Old European"
> civilization around the Donau

[Eng.: Danube]

> and for the steppe tribes. Herders,
> however, took advantage and entered the lower Donau valley. He argues
> that a pastoral society, with its increased social and economic mobility
> and the social security of the patron/client relationship, might have
> been preferable for many former villagers in a time of strain. This
> early western offshoot were to become the speakers of Anatolian
> languages. A few centuries later, an eastern offshoot established a
> clone of the culture of the Volga in the faraway Altay Mountains. This
> people were to become the Tocharians. Both migrations took place before
> the first certain archaeological signs of equestrianism, but his opinion
> is that both, and especially the Pre-Tocharian, must have been done and
> scouted on horseback. The first proof of riding, bitmarks on horseteeth,
> are from hunting camps in the West-Siberian steppe area a few centuries
> after the Pre-Tocharian offshoot passed there.
>
> Right now I'm following a wagon trail through the Caucasus. I don't know
> exactly where it will lead me.
>
> Not much of an answer to the post, maybe, but a step back to the book of
> the subject line.
>
> --
> Trond Engen

> - digesting heavily-

Sounds pretty mainstream, except for the early horses.

Paul J Kriha

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Feb 22, 2008, 1:02:51 AM2/22/08
to
"Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message
news:68e70e58-f601-4846...@j28g2000hsj.googlegroups.com...

[...]

> Early PIE -- Ice Age language spoken in Eurasia,
> from Northern Spain to Malta in Siberia, center in
> the Franco-Cantabrian space
>
> Middle PIE -- center Göbekli Tepe, begin of
> agriculture at the base of the Karacadag some
> 10,000 years ago, first mining and melting of
> copper in the Jordan valley and in Anatolia
> at the same time
>
> Late PIE -- spoken in the steppes between
> Anatolia, rich in copper, and Central Asia,
> rich in tin, giving way to IE with the casting
> of bronze, with bridles and taming horses

That's great, really is, you know where and when were
these PIEs spoken. No doubt, you are going to tell us
real soon what are your proposed linquistic features
distinguishing between them. When somebody quotes
a reconstructed PIE word we need to be able to identify
which PIE era he is talking about.

pjk

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 22, 2008, 3:56:49 AM2/22/08
to
On Feb 22, 7:02 am, "Paul J Kriha" <paul.nospam.kr...@paradise.net.nz>
wrote:
> "Franz Gnaedinger" <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message

Of course. The Ice Age language used words of one or
two or three phonemes, and compounds that were not
yet connected, and a very rudimentary grammar, for
example the doubling of a word as imperative, or
wishing form, for example SAI means life, existence,
while the doubled form SAI SAI means: may it be so!
Middle PIE knows connected compounds and more
evolved and developed grammar, Late PIE polished
compounds, whose origins are often hard to guess at,
and a still more developed grammar. Sound laws are
no strict laws, in the sense of Kepler's laws, Peter T.
Daniels told me repeatedly, PIE reconstructions are
still lucky guesses, and the PIE vocabulary varies
greatly from author to author. Middle PIE is reconstructed
by Colin Renfrew and others, Late PIE goes along with
the classic steppe theory according to Maria Gimbutas,
Anthony, and others. Will this do for the moment?
Pas de quoi. You're welcome.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 22, 2008, 10:01:44 AM2/22/08
to

So, as recently as the Ice Age, the human brain had not yet
evolved????

How then, do you account for the obvious fact that Australians speak
languages indistinguishable in underlying structure from every other
human language, even though they were separated from the rest of
humanity millennia before "the Ice Age"?

> example the doubling of a word as imperative, or
> wishing form, for example SAI means life, existence,
> while the doubled form SAI SAI means: may it be so!
> Middle PIE knows connected compounds and more
> evolved and developed grammar, Late PIE polished
> compounds, whose origins are often hard to guess at,
> and a still more developed grammar. Sound laws are
> no strict laws, in the sense of Kepler's laws, Peter T.
> Daniels told me repeatedly, PIE reconstructions are
> still lucky guesses,

No. "Magdalenian" is guesses (whether they're "lucky" or not, there's
no way of knowing, as no "sound laws" connecting "Magdalenian" forms
with atteted forms have ever been offered).

PIE reconstructions are based on sometimes _hundreds_ of strictly
regular and systematic correspondences. (Which because of their
extreme regularity got dubbed "laws" -- though no one ever suggested
that they were _predictive_ like "laws of nature.")

> and the PIE vocabulary varies
> greatly from author to author.

Don't make up lies about "authors." If you are referring to something
in particular, produce it.

> Middle PIE is reconstructed
> by Colin Renfrew and others,

Bullshit. Colin Renfrew is an archeologist (who repeatedly admits that
some day he ought to study historical linguistics) who has never
"reconstructed" a language (or a word) in his life.

> Late PIE goes along with
> the classic steppe theory according to Maria Gimbutas,
> Anthony, and others. Will this do for the moment?

> Pas de quoi. You're welcome.-

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 22, 2008, 10:42:29 AM2/22/08
to
On Feb 22, 4:01 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> So, as recently as the Ice Age, the human brain had not yet
> evolved????

Of course it has. I postulate words of one and two phonemes
for the language of the dwellers of the Blombos cave in
South Africa, Middle Stone Age, 75,000 years ago. Only
that Ice Age in Eurasia was a big challenge that resulted
in new technology and therefore also in a new level of
language. Our brain does not so much give a prefixed
behavior but allows us to cope with challenges, and this
includes development of language.

> How then, do you account for the obvious fact that Australians speak
> languages indistinguishable in underlying structure from every other
> human language, even though they were separated from the rest of
> humanity millennia before "the Ice Age"?

The dwellers of the Blombos cave left South Africa
owing to a sudden and drastic temperature drop some
75,000 years ago. Their descendants populated Asia
Minor, Eurasia, Asia and Australia.

> No. "Magdalenian" is guesses (whether they're "lucky" or not, there's
> no way of knowing, as no "sound laws" connecting "Magdalenian" forms
> with atteted forms have ever been offered).
>
> PIE reconstructions are based on sometimes _hundreds_ of strictly
> regular and systematic correspondences. (Which because of their
> extreme regularity got dubbed "laws" -- though no one ever suggested
> that they were _predictive_ like "laws of nature.")

How do your strictly regular and systematic sound
correspondences account for the greatly varying PIE
vocabularies? they vary from author to author, not
only accross decades but also among scholars of
the same period of time.

> Don't make up lies about "authors." If you are referring to something
> in particular, produce it.

Pokorny *dhau for to strangle, throttle, origin of
Phrygian daos for wolf according to Krahe. Mallory
and Adams, in their PIE handbook, Oxford 2006,
give another word, and have nothing remotely
resembling *dhau, they give ten words for to tear,
none remotely close to "dhau. Just one example.
There are many more. For example words for sun,
big difference from author to author, for example
Mallory and Adams 2006 and Michael Janda 2006,
quite different (and, strange enough, Michael Janda
is left out by M and A, although he contributes
considerably to the reconstruction of the PIE view
of the heavens, which, according to M and A,
is largely beyond recovery).

> Bullshit. Colin Renfrew is an archeologist (who repeatedly admits that
> some day he ought to study historical linguistics) who has never
> "reconstructed" a language (or a word) in his life.

Colin Renfrew and others, Colin Renfrew et al.
Others have taken up his approach. Mallory and
Adams mention him as propagator and initiator
of an Anatolian PIE about 8,000 years old, and
they say that others follow him. He proposes
one of several homeland theories that are taken
seriously.

Peter T. Daniels

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Feb 22, 2008, 12:16:13 PM2/22/08
to
On Feb 22, 10:42 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> On Feb 22, 4:01 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > So, as recently as the Ice Age, the human brain had not yet
> > evolved????
>
> Of course it has. I postulate words of one and two phonemes
> for the language of the dwellers of the Blombos cave in
> South Africa, Middle Stone Age, 75,000 years ago. Only
> that Ice Age in Eurasia was a big challenge that resulted
> in new technology and therefore also in a new level of
> language. Our brain does not so much give a prefixed
> behavior but allows us to cope with challenges, and this
> includes development of language.

Please learn something about evolutionary anthropology (a fairly new
field; there's a Max Planck Institute for it).

> > How then, do you account for the obvious fact that Australians speak
> > languages indistinguishable in underlying structure from every other
> > human language, even though they were separated from the rest of
> > humanity millennia before "the Ice Age"?
>
> The dwellers of the Blombos cave left South Africa
> owing to a sudden and drastic temperature drop some
> 75,000 years ago. Their descendants populated Asia
> Minor, Eurasia, Asia and Australia.

So you weren't, actually, referring to "the Ice Age" when you said
"the Ice Age."

> > No. "Magdalenian" is guesses (whether they're "lucky" or not, there's
> > no way of knowing, as no "sound laws" connecting "Magdalenian" forms
> > with atteted forms have ever been offered).
>
> > PIE reconstructions are based on sometimes _hundreds_ of strictly
> > regular and systematic correspondences. (Which because of their
> > extreme regularity got dubbed "laws" -- though no one ever suggested
> > that they were _predictive_ like "laws of nature.")
>
> How do your strictly regular and systematic sound
> correspondences account for the greatly varying PIE
> vocabularies? they vary from author to author, not
> only accross decades but also among scholars of
> the same period of time.
>
> > Don't make up lies about "authors." If you are referring to something
> > in particular, produce it.
>
> Pokorny *dhau for to strangle, throttle, origin of
> Phrygian daos for wolf according to Krahe. Mallory
> and Adams, in their PIE handbook, Oxford 2006,
> give another word, and have nothing remotely
> resembling *dhau, they give ten words for to tear,
> none remotely close to "dhau. Just one example.

That is no example at all. You gave exactly one form, and you gave no
other form by anyone else; and why do you think you know _any_ word of
Phrygian?

> There are many more. For example words for sun,
> big difference from author to author, for example
> Mallory and Adams 2006 and Michael Janda 2006,
> quite different (and, strange enough, Michael Janda
> is left out by M and A, although he contributes
> considerably to the reconstruction of the PIE view
> of the heavens, which, according to M and A,
> is largely beyond recovery).

Yet you can't say what those "quite different" words are?

How could M & A cite an article written after their book was finished?

> > Bullshit. Colin Renfrew is an archeologist (who repeatedly admits that
> > some day he ought to study historical linguistics) who has never
> > "reconstructed" a language (or a word) in his life.
>
> Colin Renfrew and others, Colin Renfrew et al.
> Others have taken up his approach.

He has no "approach" to language or linguistics. He decided that he
can identify a pattern of settlement of Europe, and he decided that
that pattern corresponds to the arrival of Indo-European in Europe.
But the datings are completely incompatible.

> Mallory and
> Adams mention him as propagator and initiator
> of an Anatolian PIE about 8,000 years old, and

No, they don't.

> they say that others follow him. He proposes
> one of several homeland theories that are taken
> seriously.

Show us where Gamkrelidze & Ivanov base their work on Renfrew.

Who "takes seriously" Renfrew's proposal?

John Atkinson

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Feb 22, 2008, 8:05:58 PM2/22/08
to

"Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote...

> On Feb 22, 4:01 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> So, as recently as the Ice Age, the human brain had not yet
>> evolved????
>
> Of course it has. I postulate words of one and two phonemes
> for the language of the dwellers of the Blombos cave in
> South Africa, Middle Stone Age, 75,000 years ago. Only
> that Ice Age in Eurasia was a big challenge that resulted
> in new technology and therefore also in a new level of
> language.

Eh? The Australians certainly never went through that "ice age in
Eurasia". So how come, as Peter pointed out, that their languages are
just as "advanced" as ours?

Yes, the last ice age did happen in the southern hemisphere too, but
even at its height the area under ice in the whole of Australia was much
less than in Europe today. So it certainly wasn't a "big challenge"
here.

It seems to me that your "theory" that human language, the kind everyone
speaks today, evolved in Eurasia (and, in particular, southern France)
rather than, say, Africa, exhibits extreme Euro-chauvinism on your part
(some people might even call it "racism").

> Our brain does not so much give a prefixed
> behavior but allows us to cope with challenges, and this
> includes development of language.
>
>> How then, do you account for the obvious fact that Australians speak
>> languages indistinguishable in underlying structure from every other
>> human language, even though they were separated from the rest of
>> humanity millennia before "the Ice Age"?
>
> The dwellers of the Blombos cave left South Africa
> owing to a sudden and drastic temperature drop some
> 75,000 years ago. Their descendants populated Asia
> Minor, Eurasia, Asia and Australia.

Bullshit. All the inhabitants of Europe 75 000 BP were either
Neanderthals or Cromagnons. Cromagnons were physically and genetically
almost identical to modern Europeans. Neither East Asians and
Australians are could possibly be descended from them.

[...].

Taken seriously by some archeologists and geneticists, true, who (for
reasons completely independent of linguistics) want to believe that the
initial spread of farming across Europe was associated with the shift to
IE languages. No linguist who has studied the question believes that
this is more than the remotest of possibilities. The evidence from the
common IE vocabulary strongly suggests that the IE dispersion occurred
around 5500 BP, or a few centuries later. FWIW, this agrees with the
calculations of glottochronology. More convincingly, the informed
judgement of experienced linguists, based on their experience with other
language families, is that the differences between the three
earliest-attested IE languages (Hittite, Mycenaean Greek, Vedic) is
consistent with them becoming separated 1500-2000 years before.

So, "late" PIE existed 5500 years ago (with a standard deviation of
perhaps +/- 1000 years). Assuming a Gaussian distribution (!) this
means that the probability that the date was actually at least 8000 BP,
the date you quote, is 0.006. Like I said, the remotest of
possibilities. Actually, farming crossed from Anatolia to Europe a
thousand years before this, which reduces that probability to 0.0002
(one chance in a five thousand).

Bernard Comrie, in a paper in the proceedings of the 2002 conference
arranged by the archeologists Peter Bellwood and Colin Renfrew, presents
a devastating demolition of the association of IE with the first farmers
in Europe. This conference was organised to examine the
farming/language dispersal hypothesis all over the world, and all the
other speakers on Europe (all non-linguists, AFAICS) remained fervant
believers, apparently having slept through Comrie's talk.

John..

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 23, 2008, 3:12:56 AM2/23/08
to
On Feb 22, 6:16 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Please learn something about evolutionary anthropology (a fairly new
> field; there's a Max Planck Institute for it).

Maybe the Planck Institute may publish _my_ findings?

> So you weren't, actually, referring to "the Ice Age" when you said
> "the Ice Age."

Are you getting as bleak as my killrater Panu Petteri Höglund?
I said the descendants of the dwellers of the Blombos cave
left Africa for Asia Minor, and tribes spread from there to
Europa, Eurasia, Asia, Indonesia, and Australia. I even
reconstructed two words in the Blombos language: KA for
what is beyond our reach, also inside rock, in a well, or deep
inside ourselves, accessible only to a shaman or a shamaness
in a trance. This KA would then have become Magdalenian CA
for the sky. See my thread "Meaning and Philosophy of KA,"
a subthread of my Lascaux thread from 2005, also a page on
my website. KA would include the origin of life, seen inside
of rock both in southern Africa and in European cave art:
both in European caves and on rocks in southern Africa
you can see animals emerge from rock or disappear into
rock. A very basic assumption that has a very ancient
common origin. The other word is KU for woman. There is
a word gin for woman in one of the Australian languages,
reminding of Greek gynae. Strangely, kynos resembles
gynae, which I explain via the domestication of wolf puppies
by women a dozen millennia ago. Australian women must
have adopted dingo puppies and domesticated them, for
there are a lot of kyn-words for dog in Australian languages.
My claim: KU for woman in the language of the Blombos
people 75,000 years ago, or of the Pinnacle Point people
165,000 years ago, became GYN in the Ice Age, with the
lateral association KYN for a dog, also gin in language
of Australia, and the many kyn-words for dog, and gynae
in ancient Greek.

> That is no example at all. You gave exactly one form, and you gave no
> other form by anyone else; and why do you think you know _any_ word of
> Phrygian?

Pokorny gives *dhaunos 'wolf', from *dhau 'to strangle,
throttle', Mallory and Adams give *dhohaus (small a) 'wolf',
and no word for to strangle, throttle.

> Yet you can't say what those "quite different" words are?

I gave Michael Janda's explanations in my etymological
thread, and found another in Mallory and Adams. You can
look them up yourself. And it's damn difficult to render their
quasi-algebraic notations on the keyboards of the public
Web stations I use in my libraries. Look up the sources
I mentioned: Mallory and Adams in the Oxford PIE handbook
from 2006, Michael Janda in the Proceedings of the Seventeenth
Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, also from 2006,
if memory serves.

> He has no "approach" to language or linguistics. He decided that he
> can identify a pattern of settlement of Europe, and he decided that
> that pattern corresponds to the arrival of Indo-European in Europe.
> But the datings are completely incompatible.

Look up Mallory and Adams on the homeland problem.
They mention Renfrew and followers as propagators of
a PIE coming from Anatolia some 8,000 years ago.

> No, they don't.

Yes, they do, you don't have the book, emulator of
Panu Petteri Höglund, trying to get as bleak as he,
and, unfortunately, succeeding.

> Show us where Gamkrelidze & Ivanov base their work on Renfrew.

I don't know these.

> Who "takes seriously" Renfrew's proposal?

Look up Mallory and Adams. Only kooks are speaking
of books they don't know. And there are plenty kooks
on the academic side of the fence, Peter T. Daniels
aka Panu Petteri Höglund bleak mind personified.

Franz Gnaedinger

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Feb 23, 2008, 3:40:44 AM2/23/08
to
On Feb 23, 2:05 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> Eh?  The Australians certainly never went through that "ice age in
> Eurasia".  So how come, as Peter pointed out, that their languages are
> just as "advanced" as ours?

I never said the Australians went through the Ice Age,
I said we have common ancestors who lived in south Africa,
the Blombos cave people from 75,000 years ago, and the
Pinnacle Point poeple from 165,000 years ago. The eye
has been invented seventeen times in the course of
evolution, some eyes independently, other eyes have
deep homologies that bridge more than five-hundred
billion years (more than 500,000,000,000 years).
Biological homologies can last that long, so linguistical
homologies can also last for hundred thousand years
(100,000 years). Also Australians proceeded from hunting
and gathering to agriculture, a simpler form of farming
but still. And also they proceeded in the development
of language, but they did not polish off their compounds
in the same way as did the successors of the Ice Age
language in Eurasia, we still find long compounds with
a preference for doublings:

ballamballam 'butterfly'

menamenakarin 'roll'

pinpin 'push, put'

boomayamayamul 'wood lizard, responsible for
creating human babies'

bengero 'two' bengeroobengeroo 'four'

warkolala 'two' warkolatawarkolata 'four'

kulkulook 'fishing net'

Aragoodgeawonga means adolescent girl in one of the
Australian languages. Even Sanskrit, known for long
compounds, would have shortened such a word.

> Yes, the last ice age did happen in the southern hemisphere too, but
> even at its height the area under ice in the whole of Australia was much
> less than in Europe today.  So it certainly wasn't a "big challenge"
> here.

I don't speak of an Ice Age in the southern hemisphere.
The dwellers of the Blombos cave left for the north some
75,000 years ago, probably owing to a drastic temperature
drop. Why should they stay in a cold South Africa with
a warm continent on their front door, so to say? they just
could wander along the shore toward north, and so they did.

> It seems to me that your "theory" that human language, the kind everyone
> speaks today, evolved in Eurasia (and, in particular, southern France)
> rather than, say, Africa, exhibits extreme Euro-chauvinism on your part
> (some people might even call it "racism").

Not everyone, half the earth's population, and this language
evolved from the language spoken in South Africa, by the
dwellers of the Blombos cave some 75,000 years ago,
and by the dwellers of Pinnacle Point, some 165,000 years
ago. You are very good at always and deliberately miss
my point.

> Bullshit.  All the inhabitants of Europe 75 000 BP were either
> Neanderthals or Cromagnons.  Cromagnons were physically and genetically
> almost identical to modern Europeans.  Neither East Asians and
> Australians are could possibly be descended from them.

Another case of deliberately missing my point. South
Africans wandered northward, settled in Asia Minor,
and went from there to Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Indonesia
and Australia. The dwellers of the Blombos cave in
South Africa, 75,000 years ago, showed modern behavior,
Homo sapiens sapiens in Asia Minor showed modern
behavior as early as 100,000 years ago, long before
the CroMagnons who lived 40,000 years ago in Ice Age
Europe, and the dwellers of Pinnacle Point in South Africa
showed modern behavior 165,000 years ago. These are
new discoveries, nothing of it can be found in the schoolbooks
you have been taught by ages ago. If you are participating
in a scientific forum, you should inform yourself about such
discoveries. I am telling you about them all the time, but
you prefer not to listen. Peter T. Daniels calls me a liar,
you call my messages bullshit, Panu Petteri Höglund,
bleak mind personified, killrates them. Fine bunch you are.
And now you are even trying to turn me into a racist.

The problem of PIE is the lacking time depth, and the homeland
question is still vexing all of you, a clear indication of something
being basically wrong with the prevailing notion of PIE.

John Atkinson

unread,
Feb 23, 2008, 9:28:29 AM2/23/08
to

"Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote...

On Feb 23, 2:05 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> Eh? The Australians certainly never went through that "ice age in
>> Eurasia". So how come, as Peter pointed out, that their languages are
>> just as "advanced" as ours?

> I never said the Australians went through the Ice Age,
> I said we have common ancestors who lived in south Africa,
> the Blombos cave people from 75,000 years ago, and the
> Pinnacle Point poeple from 165,000 years ago.

You said the Blombos language consisted of words of one or two phonemes,
and that this evolved to a "new level" in (western) Eurasia under the
stimulus of the ice age there. Why did you erase what you said
previously and then say something completely different? Do you really
think you're fooling anyone?

[snip meaningless irrelevancy...]

> Australians proceeded from hunting
> and gathering to agriculture, a simpler form of farming
> but still. And also they proceeded in the development
> of language, but they did not polish off their compounds
> in the same way as did the successors of the Ice Age
> language in Eurasia, we still find long compounds with
> a preference for doublings:

> ballamballam 'butterfly'

> menamenakarin 'roll'

> pinpin 'push, put'

> boomayamayamul 'wood lizard, responsible for
> creating human babies'

> bengero 'two' bengeroobengeroo 'four'

> warkolala 'two' warkolatawarkolata 'four'

> kulkulook 'fishing net'

> Aragoodgeawonga means adolescent girl in one of the
> Australian languages. Even Sanskrit, known for long
> compounds, would have shortened such a word.

I notice that you don't say _which_ languages these are from. I could
quote you words five times this long from Tiwi, or passages from
languages where most of the words are one syllable, from Cape York.

Also, it's clear from the wierd spellings that most of the words you
quote here come ultimately from 19th century wordlists compiled by
people who knew stuff-all about the languages involved, and who were
probably no more than semi-literate in English too.

If you're going to talk about Australian languages, how about getting
your examples from more modern sources, written by real linguists who
know what they're about?

BTW, the proportion of reduplicated words in Australian languages is not
particularly high, about the same as the average for the world's
languages (and considerably less than some).

[...]

[...]

>>>[Your mention of the proposal that IE came from Anatolia 8000BP,
>>>erased by you]

I've no idea what you mean by "the lacking time depth", but the PIE
homeland question certainly doesn't vex me or anyone else I know. I'm
perfectly happy with the standard theory, that PIE was one of the
languages spoken by the folk of the Sredny Stog culture, who lived north
of the Black Sea between 6500 and 5500 BP. And that its dispersal into
dialects is associated with the Yamna culture, which existed spread out
east and west from there some thousands of km during the following
centuries. If this is so, the linguistic, cultural, and archeological
evidence are in excellent agreement.

Of course, it's quite possible that the homeland was somewhere else
completely, perhaps somewhere where no archeology has been done. As
someone once said, pots don't speak, so all we can say is that the
Sredny Stog theory isn't wrong, as far as current knowledge goes. But
until someone comes up with decent evidence for somewhere else, why
should I worry?

J.

John Atkinson

unread,
Feb 23, 2008, 9:44:52 AM2/23/08
to
"Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote...

> On Feb 22, 6:16 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
[...]

> Look up Mallory and Adams on the homeland problem.
> They mention Renfrew and followers as propagators of
> a PIE coming from Anatolia some 8,000 years ago.

[...]

> > Who "takes seriously" Renfrew's proposal?

> Look up Mallory and Adams. [...].

Of course Mallory and Adams mention Renfrew's theory! No doubt they
also mention the theory that the PIE homeland was at the north pole, and
also the Out Of India theory so beloved by you-know-who. I haven't got
the particular book you mention, but I do have Mallory's earlier book,
and also Mallory and Adams' later book. All are intended to be
comprehensive, so they mention all the theories that have ever had any
traction over the last century or so. In the case of Renfrew's theory,
they mention it only to disprove it.

J.

ekk...@yahoo.com

unread,
Feb 23, 2008, 10:05:43 AM2/23/08
to

- What some hold dearest (e.g: linguistics) is often also their sorest
point. Let me just cite an analogy. Once I went over to visit my
friends, a couple of young scientists. She was holding her baby of a
few months old, and was telling the baby: "whatever you do, when you
grow up, don't become a scientist." Now, that's what I would call
"early education."

- If a lawyer had to do the job of a linguist, then the question is
not what the lawyer did, but what the linguists did not do. Right?

- The linguists did not do their jobs, because there were not enough
linguists to start with. And there were not enough linguists because?
You got it, one needs to eat, one needs money for the milk. And young
people think about this before choosing a career. And some older
people tell their babies early on: "whatever you do, when you grow up,
don't become a scientist." So, don't be so critical of a lawyer doing
linguistics: he is helping out.

- Paul Benedict made more than just a handful of great discoveries,
and his greatest contribution was he documented them. Case in example:
he found out that "grandchild" and "nephew" shared a common term in
many languages in his "Austro-Thai" area. He did not know Chinese
dialects, so included none in his list. He also missed Vietnamese. But
guess what? That's also exactly the case in Hoklo/Southern Min, and
that's also the case in Vietnamese. Now, that cannot be just
coincidence, can it? That finding opens a question for the
sociocultural anthropologists, now. To be a great contributor to
humanity, you don't need to always get things right, you may not even
need to understand what you are doing. But when you leave a work done
for others to follow, you've done great already. So have Cavalli-
Sforza, Schmidt, Karlgren, etc. You may disagree with the specifics,
but they opened whole new fields. Regarding Cavalli-Sforza: today's
DNA studies in Taiwan has shut up a whole class of political lies, and
shifted the attitude of the whole population towards fact-based,
evidence-based thinking. All that affects people's lives very
directly.

- All that being said, the chase after personal glory is so illusory.
I'll put another parallel: some check-out cashiers whine because they
lost their jobs to self-check-out stands, which are becoming more and
more common in today's stores. But do these cashiers even think a
little bit? They were doing jobs of machines, to start with! Same
thing with a lot of scientific works. Us as the human race, we've
invested too much money to create academicians that have nothing
better to do than fighting each other for minor, irrelevant issues.
Some mathematicians may even feel like the kings of the world today
for discoveries that can be done by machines in the future. Down the
future, glories will die out, things will fade away. Machines can and
will take over a lot of works we hold dear. Us as the human race, do
we invest more in flesh-and-bone researchers? Or do we invest more in
machine-based technology? The pay-off of machine-based technology is
great, and tempting, because even with the primitive state of these
technologies, they are already helping out a lot. Suffices to mention
the automated cameras at each corner from the police department: they
are revenue generating.

-- Ekki

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 23, 2008, 11:23:33 AM2/23/08
to
On Feb 23, 10:05 am, ekk...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 21, 9:22 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> > Your name-dropping isn't very impressive. (Paul Benedict,
> > incidentally, was not a linguist, but an attorney; it took a linguist,
> > Jim Matisoff, to whip his materials into a shape that could be taken
> > seriously by the linguistic community. He usually connected
> > Austronesian roots with roots in other phyla by reconstructing forms
> > where the first part of the reconstruction yielded the An root and the
> > second part the root in another phylum. If you are referring to
> > Wilhelm Schmidt, he tried to make the most bizarre associations
> > between linguistic typology and cultural traits. Cavalli-Sforza fell
> > into bad company and came up with utterly worthless "correlations"
> > between genetic dendrograms and fallacious linguistic dendrograms.)
>
> - What some hold dearest (e.g: linguistics) is often also their sorest
> point. Let me just cite an analogy. Once I went over to visit my
> friends, a couple of young scientists. She was holding her baby of a
> few months old, and was telling the baby: "whatever you do, when you
> grow up, don't become a scientist." Now, that's what I would call
> "early education."
>
> - If a lawyer had to do the job of a linguist, then the question is
> not what the lawyer did, but what the linguists did not do. Right?

No linguist has been persuaded of the validity of the various
"Austric" proposals genetically connecting various SE Asia linguistic
phyla, of which Benedict's is just one.

> - The linguists did not do their jobs, because there were not enough
> linguists to start with. And there were not enough linguists because?
> You got it, one needs to eat, one needs money for the milk. And young
> people think about this before choosing a career. And some older
> people tell their babies early on: "whatever you do, when you grow up,
> don't become a scientist." So, don't be so critical of a lawyer doing
> linguistics: he is helping out.

He was a very nice man. He was not helping out. He was killed in a car
crash a few months after I met him, when he was in his early 80s.

> - Paul Benedict made more than just a handful of great discoveries,
> and his greatest contribution was he documented them. Case in example:
> he found out that "grandchild" and "nephew" shared a common term in
> many languages in his "Austro-Thai" area. He did not know Chinese
> dialects, so included none in his list. He also missed Vietnamese. But
> guess what? That's also exactly the case in Hoklo/Southern Min, and
> that's also the case in Vietnamese. Now, that cannot be just
> coincidence, can it?

Why not? If the various cultures are organized similarly, why
shouldn't they have similar kinship terminology?

There's a reason one of the common kinship types found worldwide is
called the "Omaha" system. Not because the Omaha Indians of North
America are somehow related to peoples around the world, but because
there are only so many ways that societies can be organized.

> That finding opens a question for the
> sociocultural anthropologists, now. To be a great contributor to
> humanity, you don't need to always get things right, you may not even
> need to understand what you are doing. But when you leave a work done
> for others to follow, you've done great already. So have Cavalli-
> Sforza, Schmidt, Karlgren, etc. You may disagree with the specifics,
> but they opened whole new fields. Regarding Cavalli-Sforza: today's
> DNA studies in Taiwan has shut up a whole class of political lies, and
> shifted the attitude of the whole population towards fact-based,
> evidence-based thinking. All that affects people's lives very
> directly.

There you go again. You choose not to reveal what "lies" you decry, so
we have no choice but to assume you are perpetuating some shameful
racist ideology having to do with Chinese claims on the island of
Formosa.

> - All that being said, the chase after personal glory is so illusory.
> I'll put another parallel: some check-out cashiers whine because they
> lost their jobs to self-check-out stands, which are becoming more and
> more common in today's stores. But do these cashiers even think a
> little bit? They were doing jobs of machines, to start with! Same
> thing with a lot of scientific works. Us as the human race, we've
> invested too much money to create academicians that have nothing
> better to do than fighting each other for minor, irrelevant issues.
> Some mathematicians may even feel like the kings of the world today
> for discoveries that can be done by machines in the future. Down the
> future, glories will die out, things will fade away. Machines can and
> will take over a lot of works we hold dear. Us as the human race, do
> we invest more in flesh-and-bone researchers? Or do we invest more in
> machine-based technology? The pay-off of machine-based technology is
> great, and tempting, because even with the primitive state of these
> technologies, they are already helping out a lot. Suffices to mention
> the automated cameras at each corner from the police department: they
> are revenue generating.

You're a pathetic paranoid, it seems. Or acclimated to your own
totalitarian culture?

lora...@cs.com

unread,
Feb 24, 2008, 1:21:53 AM2/24/08
to
On Feb 7, 3:48 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Feb 7, 4:59 pm, lorad...@cs.com wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 7, 7:04 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > Has no one commented on this because it got lost in the last flood of
> > > whatchamacallit?
>
> > > On Feb 6, 12:11 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > A well-known archeologist has published a book that should be of
> > > > interest to many readers of sci.lang. Here's the publisher's blurb;
> > > > note the quote from Mallory. Perhaps this will stand as the twenty-
> > > > years-on revision of Mallory's archeological survey of the IE
> > > > languages.
>
> > > > *******
>
> > > > From <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8488.html>: [For Table of
> > > > Contents, go to <http://press.princeton.edu/TOCs/c8488.html>
> > > > ==========================================

>
> > > > The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
> > > > How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern
> > > > World
> > > > David W. Anthony
> > > > Cloth | 2007 | $35.00 / £19.95
> > > > 566 pp. | 6 x 9 | 3 halftones. 86 line illus. 16 tables. 25 maps.

>
> > > > Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a
> > > > shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were
> > > > the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they
> > > > manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has

> > > > remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even
> > > > Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and
> > > > Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original
> > > > Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses
> > > > and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization.
>
> > > > Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of
> > > > language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central
> > > > Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of
> > > > Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox
> > > > wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian
> > > > steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication,
> > > > commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their
> > > > traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining,
> > > > warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in
> > > > an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his
> > > > fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth
> > > > reveals the origins of horseback riding.
>
> > > > The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed
> > > > scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages
> > > > and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization
> > > > from the past.
>
> > > > David W. Anthony is professor of anthropology at Hartwick College. He
> > > > has conducted extensive archaeological fieldwork in Ukraine, Russia,
> > > > and Kazakhstan.
>
> > > > Review:
> > > > "In the age of Borat it may come as a surprise to learn that the
> > > > grasslands between Ukraine and Kazakhstan were once regarded as an
> > > > early crucible of civilisation. This idea is revisited in a major new
> > > > study by David Anthony."--Times Higher Education
>
> > > > Endorsements:
>
> > > > "If you want to learn about the early origins of English and related
> > > > languages, and of many of our familiar customs such as feasting on
> > > > holidays and exchanging gifts, this book provides a lively and richly
> > > > informed introduction. Along the way you will learn when and why
> > > > horses were domesticated, when people first rode horseback, and when
> > > > and why swift chariots changed the nature of warfare."--Peter S.
> > > > Wells, author of The Battle that Stopped Rome
>
> > > > "A very significant contribution to the field. This book attempts to
> > > > resolve the longstanding problem of Indo-European origins by providing
> > > > an examination of the most relevant linguistic issues and a thorough
> > > > review of the archaeological evidence. I know of no study of the
> > > > Indo-European homeland that competes with it."--J. P. Mallory, Queen's
> > > > University, Belfast-
>
> > Looks interesting but lists nothing particularly novel.
>
> You think nothing has been discovered over the past 20 years?
>
> > But archeology is always good.. much more exact than liguistic theory.-
>
> You've obviously never read any archeology.

???
You really need to review the topics again...
Proper Archeology requires evidentiary stratified and quantified
physical evidence to arrive at conclusions...
but linguists here - in this very ng - use make-believe made-up
language (*PIE) to sagaciously blow bubbles !

Franz Gnaedinger

unread,
Feb 25, 2008, 2:43:16 AM2/25/08
to
On Feb 23, 3:28 pm, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> You said the Blombos language consisted of words of one or two phonemes,
> and that this evolved to a "new level" in (western) Eurasia under the
> stimulus of the ice age there.  Why did you erase what you said
> previously and then say something completely different?  Do you really
> think you're fooling anyone?

Does having a computer make you a better man than
your greatgrandfathers? biologically superior? member
of a higher race? Word language is a cultural achievement
on top of biological languages. Coining words of two
phonemes, which I postulate for South Africa in the Stone
Age (Pinnacle Point 165 000 BP, Blombos cave 75 000 BP)
is no lesser achievement than the subsequent and much
later expanding to three phonemes, which I postulate
for Europe and Eurasia in the Upper Paleolithic (Chauvet
32 000 BP, Dolni Vestonice 26 000 BP, Lascaux 18 000 BP).

> [snip meaningless irrelevancy...]

So the question of modern behaving in Homo sapiens
sapiens and the drastic backdating owing to recent
archaeological discoveries is meaningless for you.

> I notice that you don't say _which_ languages these are from.  I could
> quote you words five times this long from Tiwi, or passages from
> languages where most of the words are one syllable, from Cape York.
>
> Also, it's clear from the wierd spellings that most of the words you
> quote here come ultimately from 19th century wordlists compiled by
> people who knew stuff-all about the languages involved, and who were
> probably no more than semi-literate in English too.
>
> If you're going to talk about Australian languages, how about getting
> your examples from more modern sources, written by real linguists who
> know what they're about?
>
> BTW, the proportion of reduplicated words in Australian languages is not
> particularly high, about the same as the average for the world's
> languages (and considerably less than some).

KALYAKALYARARRA -- kinship term, from: Archaeology
and Linguistics, Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective,
edited by Patrick McConvell and Nicholas Evens, Oxford
University Press 1997.

KAKALKAKALARRINGU 'to become delirious, vague,
disoriented', from a dictionary of Pintupi/Luritja,
Australia 1972/77/92.

> I've no idea what you mean by "the lacking time depth", but the PIE
> homeland question certainly doesn't vex me or anyone else I know.  I'm
> perfectly happy with the standard theory, that PIE was one of the
> languages spoken by the folk of the Sredny Stog culture, who lived north
> of the Black Sea between 6500 and 5500 BP.  And that its dispersal into
> dialects is associated with the Yamna culture, which existed spread out
> east and west from there some thousands of km during the following
> centuries.  If this is so, the linguistic, cultural, and archeological
> evidence are in excellent agreement.
>
> Of course, it's quite possible that the homeland was somewhere else
> completely, perhaps somewhere where no archeology has been done.  As
> someone once said, pots don't speak, so all we can say is that the
> Sredny Stog theory isn't wrong, as far as current knowledge goes.  But
> until someone comes up with decent evidence for somewhere else, why
> should I worry?

I got Anthony's book on Saturday. The archaeological
section and bulk of the book is great, whereas the
linguistic introduction is meagre compared with Mallory
and Adams 2006. Anthony draws up a list of six PIE
problems and mentions time depth as the "third problem":
was PIE spoken in 2 000 BC in the Eurasian steppes?
or was it spoken in 8 000 BC in Anatolia? Anthony leaves
out a third possibility mentioned by Mallory and Adams:
was PIE spoken 40,000 years ago in Paleolithic Europe?
My answer: Yes. Early PIE was spoken in Europe and
Eurasia during the Ice Age, in the Upper Paleolithic,
Middle PIE was spoken in southeast Anatolia 10,000
years ago, and Late PIE was spoken in the Eurasian
steppes about 6,000 years ago.

Franz Gnaedinger

unread,
Feb 25, 2008, 2:58:00 AM2/25/08
to
On Feb 23, 3:44 pm, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> Of course Mallory and Adams mention Renfrew's theory!  No doubt they
> also mention the theory that the PIE homeland was at the north pole, and
> also the Out Of India theory so beloved by you-know-who.  I haven't got
> the particular book you mention, but I do have Mallory's earlier book,
> and also Mallory and Adams' later book.  All are intended to be
> comprehensive, so they mention all the theories that have ever had any
> traction over the last century or so.  In the case of Renfrew's theory,
> they mention it only to disprove it.

Now you make me wonder. You recommended Mallory
and Adams to me, so I got their Oxford Introduction to PIE,
2006, from my library, and then I ordered a copy in my
English bookstore. I thanked you several times for your
recommendation, as the book is great, affordable, and
a real boost for my work. Now you tell me you don't have
this book? And No to your north pole theory. They mention
three main theories about the origin of PIE: Paleolithic
Europe 40,000 years ago, Anatolia 10,000 (?) years ago
(Renfrew, Sherrat and Sherrat, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov,
Dolgopolsky, Drews, Zvelebil and Zrelebil), and the classic
step theory (Gimbutas, Anthony, et al.). Anthony, in his
"third problem," mentions only two possibilities: was PIE
spoken in 2 000 BCE in the Eurasian steppes? or in 8 000
BCE in Anatolia? He leaves out the possibility of a Paleolithic
origin of PIE, and neither does he mention the north pole or
south pole or moon or Mars as possible source of PIE, or
any comet for that matter, nor a lost civilization in deep sea.

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