The words (suffer) and (sniff)
Steve Whittet
>>>>> >>Indeed, his arms also caused him to suffer.
>>>>> >>Ja, ermen-f ky diyu.n su sefa
>
>>>>Brian:
>>>>> English <suffer> is from a popular Latin word compounded from <sub>
>>>>> and <ferre> 'to bear'. If there were any relationship with an
>>>>> Egyptian <sefa>, it would be most curious that the <b> existed only in
>>>>> the intermediate Latin stage.
>
>Saida:
>>>>Nothing would surprise me.
[sf] (swell)
[sf](mercy)(gentleness)(suffer)
[sf3](be sluggish)
[sfn](affliction)suffering)
[srft](fever)
[sryt](sore throat)(cough)
[sfsf](break)
[sfh] (loosen)
[shn](swelling)
[ssr](lance with arrow)
[ssrr](lessen)
[sh3t](discharge)
[ssn](scent of lotus)
[sfn3](be drowsy)
[srf](rest)(relief)
[ssr][swsr](dry up)
[skr](scar)(wound)
>[more irrelevant Egyptian lexicon deleted, though I've kept one
>especially bizarre entry]
I put it back because to understand one Egyptian or for that matter
on English word it really helps to look at the related words.
In all of these [s] words the sense is that something is put
under the care of or entrusted to a scribe who protects it.
He protects records and property by keeping accounts. He
upholds the law by serving as sheriff, he tends the sick
and protects their bodies by acting as a healer, He
protects nations by acting as a diplomat, that's the
consonant meaning of the letter [s]
>
>>[ssn](scent of lotus)
As you compare the consonant meanings of the other letters
you can see how the addition of an [n] indicates either
a process or motion or something liquid and flowing.
a scent flowing to ones nostrils.
The addition of a k has the sense of (high). By metaphorical
analogy (higher principles, thoughts, remembrances, things
having to do with the higher functions of the mind, wisdom,
knowledge and skill) in the case of skr (scar) it implies
something to be remembered.
>
>>>In that case it seems that you have no rational basis for preferring
>>>one explanation to another and are telling stories for your own
>>>emotional satisfaction rather than doing science.
>>Get real Brian, how can you talk rationally about what words
>>may or may not have an etymological interest in Egyptian roots
>>without knowing what the full range of Egyptian roots are?
>
>I was arguing a point of methodology with Saida.
When will Brian quit dealing with how things *seem* to him
and start paying attention to what people are trying to tell
about an area which he admits he has no background.
> She probably understood what I was saying; you obviously did not,
>since your comment is a complete non sequitur.
How can a question be a non sequitor; (unproven statement)?
>(It's also incoherent: 'what words ... have an etymological
>interest in Egyptian roots' makes no sense at all.)
"interest" In the sense of "interested parties" to the process.
"etymological interest" (a stake in finding out their ancestory).
Before that I was making an observation on the utter
>implausibility of <sefa> --> <sub + ferre> --> <suffer> as an
>historical sequence; this observation doesn't require even knowing
>whether <sefa> *is* an Egyptian root.
The Egyptian roots
[sf] (swell)
[sf](mercy)(gentleness)(suffer the little children to come unto me)
[sf3](be sluggish)(under the weather) achy, stuffy, fever
and I can't breath; medicine)...(suffer)
[srft](fever)
[sryt](sore throat)(cough)
[sfsf](break)(as in a fever breaks)
[sfh] (loosen)(a congestion loosens)
along the lines of easing the suffering
[sfn](affliction)suffering)
suffer (to be in need of relief), sore,
satisfy, suffice, sufficient (to provide the relief)
(satisfaction)
the treatment of those who suffer includes both the careful diagnosis
[shn](swelling) (blockage of the flow)
[sh3t](discharge)(shit, blood, pus; come forth through the thing which
contains them)
and the skillful cures of a trained practicioner of the craft
ie; a scribe.(surgery)(surgeon)
[sfn](affliction)suffering)
[ssn](scent of lotus)
[sfn3](be drowsy)
[srf](rest)(relief)(surcease)
[ssr](lance with arrow)(scissor)
bringing as results
[ssrr](lessen)
[ssr][swsr](dry up)
[skr](scar)(wound)
>
>>>>> >>The scribe sniffed as if to smell him.
>>>>> >>Pa skhau shnep.nf er sens.n.f
>
>>>>Brian:
>>>>> The verb <sniff> is imitative and apparently not attested before the
>>>>> 14th c. I doubt that medieval Englishmen were borrowing Egyptian
>>>>> words.
>
>>[snf] (sniff)(make to breathe)
>
>And the connection with <shnep.nf> is what?
[sn] (smell)
[snf] (sniff)(make to breathe)
[snht] (snot)(phlegm)
>>>>"Attested" means not very much.
>
>>>That depends. Would I use the lack of an earlier attestation to
>>>conclude that the word didn't exist in the 13th c.? No. On the other
>>>hand, the lack of an Old English etymon is somewhat more suggestive.
>>>And the lack of Germanic cognates, especially old ones, is very good
>>>evidence that the word doesn't have a very long history.
>
>>Old English and Germanic etymologies really don't speak
>>to the issue of how the words got from Egyptian to Latin at all
>
>Quite true; that wasn't the point over which Saida and I were arguing.
Perhaps not, I know you like to argue over trivial pursuits,
but the issue of how the words got from Egyptian to Latin
should be the point on which the discussion should focus.
>
>>and one has to wonder why you keep bringing them up?
>
>If you understood the argument, you'd know why I brought them up here.
I never understand why people argue when they could work
together to learn something. I see you as a counterproductive
starter of arguments and Saida, who has the potential to teach
us something, being distracted from making her point by having
to deal with your [sh3t]
>Saida wants to claim that Eng. <sniff> is etymologically related to
>Egp. <snf>. If this were so, at some point the Egp. word would have
>had to be borrowed by some language from which English could have
>received it.
I agree it is unlikely to have been transmitted directly
but this is far from ruled out as a possibility. There was
mediterranean trade with Britain in the middle bronze age
some of it very likely involved merchant ships carrying scribes
to keep accounts and act as translators.
Words which came into English through Latin from Egyptian
probably came through into Latin through Phoenicia, Greece
or Carthage. Words which came into English through Germanic
from Egyptian probably came through into Germanic through
Phoenician, or Greek traders using the Black Sea to connect
to the rivers of Europe.
As a result you have three plausible routes of transmission
some of which almost certainly overlapped.
>Given the time depth at which such a borrowing would
>have had to take place, this is most plausibly a Common (West)
>Germanic ancestor of English.
How do you arrive at a time depth? The borrowing could have occured
first in the middle bronze age. Egyptian to Mycenean Greek. They
could have transmitted it into Europe c 2500 BC. c 1200 BC another
wave of slightly modified dialects comes along, with the Phoenicians.
Later after the Punic tin traders, in Roman times there is another wave.
All have similar forms of the same word. Over time they vary
depending on what new influences come along.
>Had such a borrowing occurred, one would expect to find the
>word (or rather, its cognates) in other West Germanic languages.
Perhaps, perhaps not. The word could be there in a disguised form
retaining only a part of the root word, perhaps only a single
consonant. Alternatively the word could have come into Britain
from mediterranean sources directly without having passed through
Germanic.
> One could also reasonably hope for some evidence
>in English before the 14th c.
Not necessarily. Written language does not always accurately
reflect spoken usage.
>The fact that no such evidence is found is itself evidence
>against the theory that the word was an early
>Germanic borrowing from Egyptian.
No, and no again. It simply is evidence that you are not
using a very good methodology. Arguments against your theory
include variations between written records and spoken languages,
its failure to consider direct mediterranean influence,
and the assumption of the negative position.
You should consider what you might say if you assumed
the positive position and tried to make the case and
then show where those initial assumptions are excluded.
>An alternative route from Egp. to
>Engl. would be via Latin, either directly or through, say, Old French;
>but there's no sign of the word there.
Of course there is , AF suffir, OF sofir, Latin suffere
all trace back to Egyptian
[sf] (swell)
[sf](mercy)(gentleness)(suffer the little children to come unto me)
[sf3](be sluggish)(under the weather) achy, stuffy, fever
and I can't breath; medicine)...(suffer)
[srft](fever)
[sryt](sore throat)(cough)
[sfsf](break)(as in a fever breaks)
[sfh] (loosen)(a congestion loosens)
along the lines of easing the suffering
[sfn](affliction)suffering)
suffer (to be in need of relief), sore,
satisfy, suffice, sufficient (to provide the relief)
(satisfaction)
>
>>The words in question go back at least to Latin roots, according
>>to any dictionary you may care to consult.
>
>Full citation? Once again I think that you haven't bothered to
>consult any dictionary.
see the previous post and above.
continued
>Brian M. Scott
steve
Brian M. Scott
On 27 Jan 1998 22:58:18 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>>>>>> >>Indeed, his arms also caused him to suffer.
>>>>>> >>Ja, ermen-f ky diyu.n su sefa
>>>>>Brian:
>>>>>> English <suffer> is from a popular Latin word compounded from <sub>
>>>>>> and <ferre> 'to bear'. If there were any relationship with an
>>>>>> Egyptian <sefa>, it would be most curious that the <b> existed only in
>>>>>> the intermediate Latin stage.
>>Saida:
>>>>>Nothing would surprise me.
>[shn](swelling)
>[ssn](scent of lotus)
>>[more irrelevant Egyptian lexicon deleted, though I've kept one
>>especially bizarre entry]
>I put it back because to understand one Egyptian or for that matter
>on English word it really helps to look at the related words.
As is obvious from the *two* that I kept this time, Steve has no more
idea of when two words are related in Egyptian than he has in English.
>In all of these [s] words the sense is that something is put
>under the care of or entrusted to a scribe who protects it.
>He protects records and property by keeping accounts. He
>upholds the law by serving as sheriff, he tends the sick
>and protects their bodies by acting as a healer, He
>protects nations by acting as a diplomat, that's the
>consonant meaning of the letter [s]
If anyone actually thinks that this makes the slightest sense, by all
means drop me a note.
=====
>>>>In that case it seems that you have no rational basis for preferring
>>>>one explanation to another and are telling stories for your own
>>>>emotional satisfaction rather than doing science.
>>>Get real Brian, how can you talk rationally about what words
>>>may or may not have an etymological interest in Egyptian roots
>>>without knowing what the full range of Egyptian roots are?
>>I was arguing a point of methodology with Saida.
>When will Brian quit dealing with how things *seem* to him
>and start paying attention to what people are trying to tell
>about an area which he admits he has no background.
You have no background in linguistics, yet another subject in which
you've demonstrated abject ignorance; when will you start paying
attention to those who do? Frankly, I don't think that you even
understood my comment to Saida at the head of this section. (You
*certainly* didn't understand 'it seems'!) It would be amusing to
have you try to explain it in your own words.
>> She probably understood what I was saying; you obviously did not,
>>since your comment is a complete non sequitur.
>How can a question be a non sequitor; (unproven statement)?
Sigh. Go look up 'non sequitur'; it doesn't mean 'unproven
statement', and a question can very easily be one.
>>(It's also incoherent: 'what words ... have an etymological
>>interest in Egyptian roots' makes no sense at all.)
>"interest" In the sense of "interested parties" to the process.
>"etymological interest" (a stake in finding out their ancestory).
You're attributing will and motive to words? How quaint.
>> Before that I was making an observation on the utter
>>implausibility of <sefa> --> <sub + ferre> --> <suffer> as an
>>historical sequence; this observation doesn't require even knowing
>>whether <sefa> *is* an Egyptian root.
>The Egyptian roots
[a large number of Egyptian words deleted, since they have no bearing
on the issue; Steve's failure to recognize this is damning]
=====
>>>>>> >>The scribe sniffed as if to smell him.
>>>>>> >>Pa skhau shnep.nf er sens.n.f
>>>>>Brian:
>>>>>> The verb <sniff> is imitative and apparently not attested before the
>>>>>> 14th c. I doubt that medieval Englishmen were borrowing Egyptian
>>>>>> words.
>>>[snf] (sniff)(make to breathe)
>>And the connection with <shnep.nf> is what?
>[sn] (smell)
>[snf] (sniff)(make to breathe)
>[snht] (snot)(phlegm)
You didn't answer the question. Saida offers <shnep.nf> as '[he]
sniffed'; you offer <snf>. What is the connection?
>>>>>"Attested" means not very much.
>>>>That depends. Would I use the lack of an earlier attestation to
>>>>conclude that the word didn't exist in the 13th c.? No. On the other
>>>>hand, the lack of an Old English etymon is somewhat more suggestive.
>>>>And the lack of Germanic cognates, especially old ones, is very good
>>>>evidence that the word doesn't have a very long history.
>>>Old English and Germanic etymologies really don't speak
>>>to the issue of how the words got from Egyptian to Latin at all
>>Quite true; that wasn't the point over which Saida and I were arguing.
>Perhaps not, I know you like to argue over trivial pursuits,
The point is far from trivial. If you don't see why, you're not
competent to discuss the question.
>but the issue of how the words got from Egyptian to Latin
>should be the point on which the discussion should focus.
Since the words *didn't* get to Latin from Egyptian, that would be
rather a waste of time, wouldn't it?
>>>and one has to wonder why you keep bringing them up?
>>If you understood the argument, you'd know why I brought them up here.
>I never understand why people argue when they could work
>together to learn something.
It is in reasoned argument that truth is to be found. I suspect that
you don't understand this, because you don't really understand what a
logical argument is. It's a waste of time pretending to carry on a
discussion with you, because no conceivable evidence could alter your
preconceived notions. When evidence against them is provided, you
have two responses. Very often you ignore it, subsequently even
denying that it's been offered; this has been your favorite approach
to me. Alternatively, as in the Tuxtla thread, you make a complete
ass of yourself by condescending to instruct experts in their own
fields -- all the while making ludicrous boners that are evident even
to the casual amateur. And since your beliefs are impervious to both
reason and evidence, it's obvious that you're not here to learn
anything. Perhaps you're here to win converts, though by now you must
have noticed that the knowledgeable folks either ignore you or point
out that you don't know what you're talking about. If you just want
to chat with people who already share your views, perhaps you should
create a mailing list for the purpose; then you could get the positive
re-inforcement without the arguments, and the rest of us might
actually learn something.
> I see you as a counterproductive
>starter of arguments and Saida, who has the potential to teach
>us something, being distracted from making her point by having
>to deal with your [sh3t]
Saida can, I feel sure, take care of herself. As for you,
incorrigible ignorance oughtn't to be paraded in public, even if the
exhibitionist *is* immune from embarrassment.
>>Saida wants to claim that Eng. <sniff> is etymologically related to
>>Egp. <snf>. If this were so, at some point the Egp. word would have
>>had to be borrowed by some language from which English could have
>>received it.
>>Given the time depth at which such a borrowing would
>>have had to take place, this is most plausibly a Common (West)
>>Germanic ancestor of English.
>How do you arrive at a time depth? The borrowing could have occured
>first in the middle bronze age. Egyptian to Mycenean Greek. They
>could have transmitted it into Europe c 2500 BC. c 1200 BC another
>wave of slightly modified dialects comes along, with the Phoenicians.
>Later after the Punic tin traders, in Roman times there is another wave.
All of these are old enough to ensure that a word reaching English via
one of these routes would also appear in other Germanic languages, so
you are in fact supporting my statement.
>>Had such a borrowing occurred, one would expect to find the
>>word (or rather, its cognates) in other West Germanic languages.
>Perhaps, perhaps not. The word could be there in a disguised form
>retaining only a part of the root word, perhaps only a single
>consonant.
Here speaks ignorance of the workings of linguistic change. Steve,
it's not my job to teach you Historical Linguistics 101 and the
regularity of sound changes; you're like a man trying to learn
differential equations without having heard of algebra.
> Alternatively the word could have come into Britain
>from mediterranean sources directly without having passed through
>Germanic.
Through what chain of languages?
>> One could also reasonably hope for some evidence
>>in English before the 14th c.
>Not necessarily. Written language does not always accurately
>reflect spoken usage.
This is true. That's why the absence of earlier attestations isn't
conclusive. In combination with all of the other evidence that I've
adduced, however, it's pretty damning.
>>The fact that no such evidence is found is itself evidence
>>against the theory that the word was an early
>>Germanic borrowing from Egyptian.
>No, and no again. It simply is evidence that you are not
>using a very good methodology. Arguments against your theory
>include variations between written records and spoken languages,
>its failure to consider direct mediterranean influence,
>and the assumption of the negative position.
Direct Mediterranean influence is extremely unlikely; if you think
that it's involved, the onus is on you to provide evidence for it.
I've already taken into account the inadequacy of the written record;
that's why I built my case primarily around the non-appearance of the
word in other Germanic languages. And I don't *assume* the negative
position; I have provided an argument for *adopting* it, which is
another matter altogether.
>>An alternative route from Egp. to
>>Engl. would be via Latin, either directly or through, say, Old French;
>>but there's no sign of the word there.
>Of course there is , AF suffir, OF sofir, Latin suffere
>all trace back to Egyptian
You're confused: the word that *I* was talking about was <sniff>, as
you can see by tracing back the discussion. Of course <suffer> comes
to English from Latin by way of Old French; I told you that some time
ago.
>>>The words in question go back at least to Latin roots, according
>>>to any dictionary you may care to consult.
>>Full citation? Once again I think that you haven't bothered to
>>consult any dictionary.
>see the previous post and above.
Completely irrelevant, since you're talking about the wrong word. You
claimed that <sniff> goes back to a Latin source; I want to know what
dictionary says that.
Brian M. Scott
Alan M Dunsmuir
In article <34cec958...@news.csuohio.edu>, "Brian M. Scott"
<sc...@math.csuohio.edu> writes
>> Alternatively the word could have come into Britain
>>from mediterranean sources directly without having passed through
>>Germanic.
>
>Through what chain of languages?
Through contact between the Cornish and the Phoenician tin-traders of
course <g>. Steve genuinely believes that the ancient trading-peoples
spread language around their foreign trade-contacts like the smallpox
virus.
Until you realise that this belief is innate to everything he writes
here, you will fail to touch base with him. Once you do realise this, of
course, you will also realise that it is a total waste of time talking
to him.
--
Alan M Dunsmuir
Brian M. Scott
Alan M Dunsmuir wrote:
> Steve genuinely believes that the ancient trading-peoples
> spread language around their foreign trade-contacts like the smallpox
> virus.
He also appears to believe that languages can be blended like whiskeys.
> Until you realise that this belief is innate to everything he writes
> here, you will fail to touch base with him. Once you do realise this, of
> course, you will also realise that it is a total waste of time talking
> to him.
Not quite: it stimulates *me* to brush up on various things from time to
time! (Gets the adrenalin flowing, too.)
Brian M. Scott
Tony Jebson
JoatSimeon wrote:
> English arose out of West Germanic dialects brought to England
> by migrants from Europe after about 400 AD, give or take a little.
> The closest Continental relative is Frisian, spoken in the
> northern Netherlands and northwestern Germany.
[snip]
Part of my "Learning Old English" pages is a section on origins,
complete with "family tree" and a discussion of loan words. See:
http://lonestar.texas.net/~jebbo/learn-as/origins.htm
--- Tony Jebson
JoatSimeon
Sigh. "Folk-entymology" rears its head, one of the characteristic errors of
amateurs.
The fact that words in two languages are similar in sound and meaning signifies
_nothing_ as to linguistic relationships between the two languages. It may be
sheer coincidence, or it may simply be that the word derives from a natural
sound (eg., cuckoo birds are called "kuku" in half a dozen languages... because
that's how their cry sounds.) You have to investigate and show _how_ the links
occurred before any connection can be accepted.
There's also a fairly simple technique, using sound-shifts, for telling whether
a word is a loan-word or a cognate.
Eg., in English we have "cowlike" and "bovine", meaning pretty much the same
thing.
Both "cow" and "bos" are derived from the same PIE word, roughly *gwous (my
machine isn't equipped to do diacrital marks and stuff).
However, it can be easily shown that "Bos" can't be English, because PIE
initial gw consistently becomes "k" in English.
So we know that "bos" has to be a loanword. From Latin; and you can tell
further that it's a loanword _in Latin_, from Oscan, because PIE gw ==> v in
Latin, so you'd get "vos". In Oscan the same transition becomes "bos", and for
some reason the early Latin-speakers borrowed their neighbor's word for cow.
Similarly, you can show that "beef" doesn't have a Germanic root, and equally
that it had to be borrowed, borrowed from a Romance language, specifically from
French, and borrowed in the early Medieval period. (If it had been borrowed
more recently, we'd pronounce it 'bif'.)
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
PS: on time-depth...
English arose out of West Germanic dialects brought to England by migrants from
Europe after about 400 AD, give or take a little. The closest Continental
relative is Frisian, spoken in the northern Netherlands and northwestern
Germany.
West Germanic arose out of a western dialect of Common or Proto-Germanic,
starting roughly about 0 AD or a little earlier. At that date, all the
Germanic tribes spoke mutually comprehensible languages.
Proto-Germanic developed from a generalized western Indo-European dialect group
sometime in the second millenium BC. At that time -- before about 1200 BC --
the dialects ancestral to Germanic, Celtic, Balto-Slavic and Italic were still
mutually comprehensible branches of the same language. (Greek, Hittite-Luwian
and Indo-Iranian were already quite distinct. Oddly, Tocharian wasn't, but
that's another story.)
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
PPS: the point of the time-depth being that if a word from, say, Egyptian, was
borrowed prior to, say, 1000 BC, then it would be common to the whole Germanic
range.
That doesn't mean it would be present in all contemporary Germanic languages;
it does mean that it would be attested in more than one.
Likewise, a word borrowed before 2000 BC would be common to several different
_families_ of IE languages. Much further back than that, and it would be
common to the whole group. PIE dates aren't much further back than 3000 BCE.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
And further, on how languages spread:
In a premodern setting (without mass literacy, recorded sound, etc) languages
cannot remain uniform over very large areas for long. Isogloss boundaries
form, innovations don't spread over the whole area of speakers, and eventually
dialect formation segues into language formation and you've got a bunch of
related languages -- a language family.
This is what happened to Latin, for instance, which started as a language
spoken in a very small area on the middle Tiber, and eventually spread over
most of Europe. It remained fairly uniform until the 4th century or so, but
then developed into the Romance languages we know -- French, Italian, Spanish,
Rumanian, Romansch, etc.
Ditto for Germanic, etc.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
Another note: languages are related _genetically_ (as the word is used in
linguistics). That is, they descend from common ancestors, etc. Hence Danish
and English are Germanic, all the Germanic languages together with Romance,
Greek, Hindi, etc. are Indo-European. They all trace back to a common language
spoken in a fairly small area about 6000 years ago. (Probably somewhere in
what's now the eastern Ukraine and northwestern Kazahkstan.)
Further back that this it's more or less impossible to go, because the
comparative method breaks down. Lexical turnover becomes too great.
There are speculative attempts to push it further back and unite the various
language families (Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, etc.) but that's very
airy-fairy, so far.
Mind you, you can show some minor details of language contact very far back.
Sino-Tibetan has a very early substratum of loanwords from Indo-European, for
instance; we know it's early because the words have undergone the
characteristic sound changes which separate those languages, and we can date
those by glottochronology.
-- S.M. Stirling
Steve Whittet
In article <19980201013...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>
>Both "cow" and "bos" are derived from the same PIE word, roughly *gwous (my
>machine isn't equipped to do diacrital marks and stuff).
[gw] (type of bull),
compare
[ghs] (gazelle)
>However, it can be easily shown that "Bos" can't be English, because PIE
>initial gw consistently becomes "k" in English.
[k3] (bull);literally [k3](high)[phallus][bull]
[k3w] (cow)(food)
the sense I get is that two concepts are combined
[ka] or high and [wnm] (eat) in [kaw] (high status food)(cowmeat)
[kab] (intestine) (meat tid bit or delicacy)(shish kabob)
[w'bt] (meat offering)
[wnm] (eat)
[wnm] (fattened ox)
[wrt] (sacred cow)
>
>So we know that "bos" has to be a loanword.
[bhs] (calf)(herdsman)(side of veal)(from the sound bah?)
compare
[bsk] (disembowl)(clean meat)(beef steak)(brisket)
> From Latin; and you can tell further that
>it's a loanword _in Latin_, from Oscan, because
>PIE gw ==> v in Latin, so you'd get "vos".
If the PIE is [gw] and the Egyptian word for bull is [gw]
doesn't that at least suggest further study is indicated?
> In Oscan the same transition becomes "bos", and for
>some reason the early Latin-speakers borrowed their
>neighbor's word for cow.
[bhs] Its the Egyptian word for (calf)
>Similarly, you can show that "beef" doesn't have a Germanic root,
>and equally that it had to be borrowed, borrowed from a Romance
>language, specifically from French, and borrowed in the early
>Medieval period. (If it had been borrowed more recently, we'd
>pronounce it 'bif'.)
Just a thought, but the Egyptians were among the first to
domesticate cattle. They venerated the bull and gave the Apis
bull the status of a god. Isn't it reasonable to consider that
the first name for something so basic might stick around for a
considerable period of time?
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Steve Whittet
In article <19980201013...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
This is an interesting point to place your finger. The time range is
c 1200-200 BC and the land area is bordering the Black Sea and the
rivers which flow to it.
By 1200 BC the use of boats to carry goods across seas and up
rivers has made good use of the Black Sea and its rivers to
connect the North Sea with The Euphrates with trading posts
at all the portage points passing through Germany and the
Netherlands.
Egypt reaches the Euphrates in the 18th Dynasty, with the campaign
of Thutmosis to make it official and bring the vassal states of the
Djadiand Upper Retnu into line. In the 18th Dynasty Egyptian was
spoken on the borders of the Mycenean, Hittite, Luwian lands of
Anatolia and the Black Sea. The Persian Gulf connecting The IVC
with what became Iran, the homeland of the Indo Iranian speakers,
was connected to the Euphratesat its lower end.
That makes Egyptian anong the most powerful political and cultural
languages in the region you name at the time you name.
Oddly, Tocharian wasn't, but
>that's another story.)
Its really not odd at all, consider the effect of the campaign
of Alexander on the languages spoken along his route of march.
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Alan M Dunsmuir
In article <6b240v$4...@fridge.shore.net>, Steve Whittet
<whi...@shore.net> writes
>Its really not odd at all, consider the effect of the campaign
>of Alexander on the languages spoken along his route of march.
Precisely what effect were you think of here, Steve?
I have a lovely null hypothesis for you to refute.
--
Alan M Dunsmuir
JoatSimeon
> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>So we know that "bos" has to be a loanword. [bhs] (calf)(herdsman)(side of
veal)(from the sound bah?)
>compare [bsk] (disembowl)(clean meat)(beef steak)(brisket)
-- all interesting, but linguistically irrelevant. The words in question are
all part of the _original_ PIE vocabulary, as attested by the multiple cognates
in successor-languages, and that puts them back into the fourth millenium BC
(minimum), the pre-dynastic period, and several thousand miles from any contact
with Egyptians. Their spread, the sound-changes which produced ultimate
versions like "cow", and so forth, are all well-attested, through 250 years of
progress in comparative philology.
My point being that there are well-recognized techniques for identifying
loan-words, and for finding out when they were borrowed and from who. It's
like the existance of atoms; short of taking a long series of college courses,
you just sort of have to take it on faith.
-- S.M. Stirling
Steve Whittet
In article <19980201203...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>
>> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>
>>So we know that "bos" has to be a loanword. [bhs] (calf)(herdsman)(side of
>veal)(from the sound bah?)
>>compare [bsk] (disembowl)(clean meat)(beef steak)(brisket)
>
>-- all interesting, but linguistically irrelevant.
>The words in question are all part of the _original_ PIE vocabulary,
> as attested by the multiple cognates in successor-languages, and
>that puts them back into the fourth millenium BC (minimum),
Your time line only went back to c 1200 BC
>the pre-dynastic period,
Even in the predynastic period the Egyptians had a language and
had domesticated cattle.
>and several thousand miles from any contact with Egyptians.
Even c 4000 BC the Egyptians were engaged in trade with some
very distant places; Mesopotamia, Syria, Lebanon and Anatoloia
among them.
>Their spread, the sound-changes which produced ultimate
>versions like "cow", and so forth, are all well-attested,
>through 250 years of progress in comparative philology.
I think you need to address the presence of cognate words
in Egyptian c 4000 BC and tell us why the words can't have
come from the Egyptian at that date.
>
>My point being that there are well-recognized techniques
>for identifying loan-words, and for finding out when they
>were borrowed and from who. It's like the existance of
>atoms; short of taking a long series of college courses,
>you just sort of have to take it on faith.
In the .sci groups people tend to prefer some facts.
I gave you [k3w],(bull) [gw] (bull)and [bhs](calf),
while that may equate in some peoples minds to
bull and more bull, I would hope you might offer
the equivalents from other early languages which
might be PIE candidates.
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Brian M. Scott
On 1 Feb 1998 15:07:55 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>In article <19980201013...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
>joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>>Both "cow" and "bos" are derived from the same PIE word, roughly *gwous (my
>>machine isn't equipped to do diacrital marks and stuff).
>[gw] (type of bull),
>compare
>[ghs] (gazelle)
At least <gazelle> has Afro-Asiatic ancestry, being apparently from
Arabic <ghasa:l>, so an Egyptian connection isn't altogether unlikely.
>>However, it can be easily shown that "Bos" can't be English, because PIE
>>initial gw consistently becomes "k" in English.
>>So we know that "bos" has to be a loanword.
>[bhs] (calf)(herdsman)(side of veal)(from the sound bah?)
>compare
>[bsk] (disembowl)(clean meat)(beef steak)(brisket)
It's already been pointed out why these are irrelevant, but I'm
curious as to which of the glosses are from your source(s), and which
are your own.
>> From Latin; and you can tell further that
>>it's a loanword _in Latin_, from Oscan, because
>>PIE gw ==> v in Latin, so you'd get "vos".
>If the PIE is [gw] and the Egyptian word for bull is [gw]
>doesn't that at least suggest further study is indicated?
The PIE isn't /gw/; it's */gwou-/ (nom. sing. */gwous/), where the <w>
is actually a superscript. (In other words, the combination <gw> here
represents a single labiovelar voiced stop, not the voiced velar stop
/g/ followed by /w/.) The cognate set includes Gk. <bou^s>, Lat.
dialectal <bo:s>, OIr. <bo:>, OE <cu:>, OHG <chuo>, Skt. <gaus>, Arm.
<kov> 'cow' and Slav. <gov-e,do> 'cattle' (Szemere'nyi, _Intro. to
Indo-Eur. Ling._, Oxford, 1996, pp.65, 182). This word has a PIE
history that must, given its wide dispersal in the PIE dialects, go
back some 5-6000 years.
Brian M. Scott
JoatSimeon
>whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
-- it's quite true that the Egyptians had domesticated cattle in 4000 BC; so
did every other agricultural people in the Near East, Europe, and most of Asia.
How does one prove a negative? Trying to claim that Proto-Indo-European needed
to go several thousand miles south to get a word for "cow" puts the burden of
proof on _you_.
_Every_ IE language has a word for "cattle" derived from "gwous"; in fact, when
Linear B was deciphered, the Mycenaean word for cow was found to be... gwous.
It's a striking example of the predictive power of the comparative method,
along with the Hittite laryngeals.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
PS: "cognate" does not mean "similar"; it means "descended from a common
ancestral term".
Brian has given the actual phonetic values of "gwous", so I'll simply direct
your attention to that.
Your basic problem is that you're trying to operate in a field where you simply
don't have the background. You can't effectively dispute linguistics without
_knowing_ some linguistics.
Eg., there's a dispute among Indo-Europeanists over whether Old Irish "ri"
(king) and Indo-Aryan "raja" (king) are related. To understand _why_ it's a
dispute requires some rather difficult technical knowledge. Laymen can no more
comment meaningfully than someone who hasn't done calculus can argue about
Newtonian celestial mechanics.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
'tis a pity that we aren't talking about some really interesting stuff.
Eg., in PIE the word for "to marry" was "wedh" (yup, source for our "wedding"
and "wedlock").
This word also meant "to carry away" or "carry off".
Tells ya' something, doesn't it? 8-).
-- S.M. Stirling
GKeyes6988
S.M. Stirling wrote:
.'tis a pity that we aren't talking about some really interesting stuff.
.Eg., in PIE the word for "to marry" was "wedh" (yup, source for our "wedding"
.and "wedlock").
.This word also meant "to carry away" or "carry off".
.Tells ya' something, doesn't it? 8-).
.-- S.M. Stirling
And "science" and "shit" are from the same root, something that never fails to
amuse my students, and which Po-Mo- grad students always feel has deep
significance.
-- Greg Keyes
Steve Whittet
In article <19980202084...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>
>'tis a pity that we aren't talking about some really interesting stuff.
>
"wedding"
In Egyptian there are words related to the process and its results
[wd nw] (offer)
[wd] (command)(govern)(control)(give orders)
[w3g] (religious festival)
[w3d] (fortunate man)(offering)(papyrus plant)(amulet)(green)(green stone)
[w3dw](sucess)(happyness)
[wd3](prospering and flourishing of affairs){live happily ever after}
[wtt] (beget)
or
[whd](be painful)(suffer)(endure)(be patient with)(forbearance)(pain)
[wd'](be parted)(he who is judged)
[wd't](judgement)(divorced woman)
related
[hbi](dance){hubby?} given with
[hyhnw](jubilate)
[hnw] (jubilation)
[hnms](friend)
[hmt] (woman) (wife)
and
[iwr] (concieve)
[bk3] (be pregnant)
[s3t](daughter)
(h3rt)(widow)
>
>This word also meant "to carry away" or "carry off".
[wd3](well being)(prosperity)
(go)(set out)(proceed)
>
>Tells ya' something, doesn't it? 8-).
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
JoatSimeon
>whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>Date: 2/1/98 8:23 AM Mountain
>Egypt reaches the Euphrates in the 18th Dynasty,
-- for about a generation.
>In the 18th Dynasty Egyptian was spoken on the borders of the Mycenean,
Hittite, Luwian lands...
-- no, it wasn't. Egypt held a temporary political sovereignty in some Semitic
and Hurrian-speaking areas that bordered other Semitic and Hurrian-speaking
areas that paid tribute to the Great King in Hattusas. The only people
speaking either Hittite or Egyptian in those areas were a thin scattering of
officials, diplomats and some passing soldiers and traders.
In point of fact, even when the Hittite Great King was corresponding with
Pharaoh, he didn't do it in Egyptian, or Hittite -- they wrote to each other in
Akkadian, which was the international language of diplomacy throughout the
Middle East in the 2nd millenium BC.
You're confusing the extent of Egyptian sovereignty, for a brief period, with
the extent of the area where the Egyptian _language_ was spoken.
>Its really not odd at all, consider the effect of the campaign of Alexander
on the languages spoken along his route of march.
-- well, since Alexander marched east in the 300's BC, and Tocharian was spoken
in the Tarim Basin from about 2000 BC, and in any case is not closely related
to Greek -- it's quite isolated from other IE languages, and insofar as it has
any demonstrable affinities they're with Celtic and Germanic -- I fail to see
what Alexander has to do with anything here.
Oh, and Alexander never did get over the Tien Shan; the farthest east he got
was Sogdiana, the Oxus valley.
-- S.M. Stirling
Brian M. Scott
On 2 Feb 1998 20:03:39 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
Steve, I have no hope that you'll give up making silly
Egyptian-English comparisons, but do you suppose that you could at
least forgo the ludicrous ones, like this one?
>[hbi](dance){hubby?}
<Hubby> is a pet form of <husband>, which is from late Old English
<hu:sbonda>, a compound of <hu:s> 'house' and <bonda>, with the sense
'a peasant holding his own house and land, a freeholder', whence by
extension 'master of a house'. It takes very little knowledge of the
language to recognize that <hubby> is far younger than <husband>.
Brian M. Scott
JoatSimeon
BTW, another example of how you sort out possible loanwords:
There's a PIE term for 'wheeled vehicle" -- several, in fact. One of them is
*kwekwlo. (Another is roughly *weghom, from which we get 'wagon', of course.
The *weghom was usually pulled by *uksan...)
At first glance, this bears some similarity to the Sumerian 'girgir', the
almost certainly borrowed proto-Semitic *galgal, and Kartevelian *grgar.
OTOH, when you analyize *kwekwlo, you find it stems from a PIE verbal root,
*kwel-, meaning "to twist, rotate".
Since the word for vehicle can be traced to a PIE verbal form, it's unlikely it
was borrowed.
-- S.M. Stirling
Steve Whittet
In article <19980202230...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>
>>whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>>Date: 2/1/98 8:23 AM Mountain
>
>>Egypt reaches the Euphrates in the 18th Dynasty,
>
>-- for about a generation.
>
>>In the 18th Dynasty Egyptian was spoken on the borders of the Mycenean,
>Hittite, Luwian lands...
>
>-- no, it wasn't. Egypt held a temporary political sovereignty in some
>Semitic and Hurrian-speaking areas that bordered other Semitic and
>Hurrian-speaking areas that paid tribute to the Great King in Hattusas.
Don't confuse military sovreignity with politics.
Their vassal states paid them tribute and looked to them for
protection even when they didn't have an army in the field.
>The only people speaking either Hittite or Egyptian in those
>areas were a thin scattering of officials, diplomats and some
> passing soldiers and traders.
The Egyptians made royal marriages and filled their harems with
the daughters of all with all of the states who wanted to do
business with them. This means that Egyptian was probably as
common a spoken language in Syria as English is in Saudi Arabia
where admittedly the signs advertising Pepsi spell it Bebsi, but
with little or no effect on sales.
>
>In point of fact, even when the Hittite Great King was
>corresponding with Pharaoh, he didn't do it in Egyptian,
>or Hittite -- they wrote to each other in Akkadian, which
>was the international language of diplomacy throughout the
>Middle East in the 2nd millenium BC.
The written language used was to some degree a factor of which
scribe was used.
>
>You're confusing the extent of Egyptian sovereignty,
>for a brief period, with the extent of the area where
>the Egyptian _language_ was spoken.
The Egyptians were a politically important faction in the region
from about the 3rd millenium onward. even during the Hyksos period
Egypt was involved in the djadi and upper retnu.
>
>>Its really not odd at all, consider the effect of the campaign
>> of Alexander on the languages spoken along his route of march.
>
>-- well, since Alexander marched east in the 300's BC, and
>Tocharian was spoken in the Tarim Basin from about 2000 BC,
>and in any case is not closely related to Greek -- it's quite
>isolated from other IE languages, and insofar as it has
>any demonstrable affinities they're with Celtic and Germanic --
>I fail to see what Alexander has to do with anything here.
"In Search of the Indo Europeans", JP Mallory,
Thames and Hudson, 1989
p 56
"Tocharian is attested in Chinese Turkestan from manuscripts
dating from the sixth to eight centuries AD"
"The language was named Tocharian after the historical Tokharoi
who were known to the Greeks to have emigrated from Turkestan
to Bactria in the second century BC"
"If we wish to suggest a date for the existence of a common
or Proto Tocharian language we might expect that it had been current
in the first millenium BC"
This is when Alexander brings hundreds of thousands of foreign
Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian
mercenary troops from Macedonia, Anatolia, all around the Black
and Caspian seas iraq and Iran marching east to the edges of the
Tarim basin.
>
>Oh, and Alexander never did get over the Tien Shan; the farthest
>east he gotwas Sogdiana, the Oxus valley.
Alexander and the main body of his troops marched through
Afghanistan, while his flanks extended to the Persian Gulf
and the Tarim basin.
Chinese silks first appeared in the west as early as 550 BC.
Following Alexander the Silk Road became a well traveled
trade route.
>
>
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Brian M. Scott
On 1 Feb 1998 23:47:44 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>joats...@aol.comĢ says...
[snip]
>>My point being that there are well-recognized techniques
>>for identifying loan-words, and for finding out when they
>>were borrowed and from who. It's like the existance of
>>atoms; short of taking a long series of college courses,
>>you just sort of have to take it on faith.
>In the .sci groups people tend to prefer some facts.
Then I guess they'll just have to study the subject.
>I gave you [k3w],(bull) [gw] (bull)and [bhs](calf),
>while that may equate in some peoples minds to
>bull and more bull, I would hope you might offer
>the equivalents from other early languages which
>might be PIE candidates.
In another post I dealt with part of this at length:
The PIE isn't /gw/; it's */gwou-/ (nom. sing. */gwous/), where the <w>
is actually a superscript. (In other words, the combination <gw> here
represents a single labiovelar voiced stop, not the voiced velar stop
/g/ followed by /w/.) The cognate set includes Gk. <bou^s>, Lat.
dialectal <bo:s>, OIr. <bo:>, OE <cu:>, OHG <chuo>, Skt. <gaus>, Arm.
<kov> 'cow' and Slav. <gov-e,do> 'cattle' (Szemere'nyi, _Intro. to
Indo-Eur. Ling._, Oxford, 1996, pp.65, 182). This word has a PIE
history that must, given its wide dispersal in the PIE dialects, go
back some 5-6000 years.
Note that this is the source of modern English <cow>, not <bull>.
Brian M. Scott
JoatSimeon
>sc...@math.csuohio.edu (Brian M. Scott)<BR>
>Date: 2/2/98 10:34 PM Mountain Standard Time<BR>
>>you just sort of have to take it on faith.<BR>
>In the .sci groups people tend to prefer some facts.
-- well, Brian gave it in more detail.
Short form; if you want the facts, then you have to acquire the skills; in
other words, go study the science of linguistics, and your questions will be
answered.
-- S.M. Stirling
Steve Whittet
In article <34d69a4a...@news.csuohio.edu>, sc...@math.csuohio.edu
says...>>joats...@aol.comà says...
>
>[snip]
>
>>>My point being that there are well-recognized techniques
>>>for identifying loan-words, and for finding out when they
>>>were borrowed and from who. It's like the existance of
>>>atoms; short of taking a long series of college courses,
>
>
>
>>I gave you [k3w],(bull) [gw] (bull)and [bhs](calf),
>>while that may equate in some peoples minds to
>>bull and more bull, I would hope you might offer
>>the equivalents from other early languages which
>>might be PIE candidates.
>
>In another post I dealt with part of this at length:
>
>The PIE isn't /gw/; it's */gwou-/ (nom. sing. */gwous/), where the <w>
>is actually a superscript. (In other words, the combination <gw> here
>represents a single labiovelar voiced stop, not the voiced velar stop
>/g/ followed by /w/.)
Egyptian [gw] is pronounced "gwou", the [w] is literaly a double u
including [u] [ou] [w] and [wou]
>The cognate set includes Gk. <bou^s>, Lat.
>dialectal <bo:s>, OIr. <bo:>, OE <cu:>, OHG <chuo>, Skt. <gaus>, Arm.
><kov> 'cow' and Slav. <gov-e,do> 'cattle' (Szemere'nyi, _Intro. to
>Indo-Eur. Ling._, Oxford, 1996, pp.65, 182). This word has a PIE
>history that must, given its wide dispersal in the PIE dialects, go
>back some 5-6000 years.
Cattle were first domesticated in Africa about 8,000 years BP
6,000 years BP is the Naquada culture when the herding and
veneration of cattle and bulls was at its height in Egypt.
>
>Note that this is the source of modern English <cow>, not <bull>.
I did note that, (based on my reading of the hieroglyphics as the
attributes of the bull) however Saida pointed out that she is aware
of its use to mean cow and [bhs] is genderless calf.
>
>Brian M. Scott
steve
Gisele
JoatSimeon wrote:
> 'tis a pity that we aren't talking about some really interesting stuff.
>
> Eg., in PIE the word for "to marry" was "wedh" (yup, source for our "wedding"
> and "wedlock").
>
> This word also meant "to carry away" or "carry off".
>
> Tells ya' something, doesn't it? 8-).
> -- S.M. Stirling
And the Sumerian word for 'marry' (tuku tuku) seems to have its origin in the
word 'tuku' which means 'have', 'possess', 'own', 'acquire' One might think that
'tuku' is similar to the word 'take' but some of the words for 'take' in Sumerian
are more like 'carry' - 'kar' and 'ri'. :-)
Gisele.
Gisele
JoatSimeon wrote:
But a person who has seen the Atlantean word claimed to represent 'king' (Rai) also
has no problem understanding this connection.
Gisele
JoatSimeon
>Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
>But a person who has seen the Atlantean word claimed to represent 'king' (Rai)
also has no problem understanding this connection..
-- oh, Jesus, Atlantis? Preserved in the flying saucers of the Gods, no
doubt...
-- S.M. Stirling
Gisele
JoatSimeon wrote:
You may have good reason to doubt its location but I don't think you have good
reason to doubt its existence unless one conclusion must lead to the other.
Personally, I think it is plausible source of all the Indo-European languages and
source of the Homo-sapiens that made an early entrance to Europe. Have any better
ideas?
Gisele
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On Wed, 04 Feb 1998 13:14:47 -0700, Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
wrote:
Yes.
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal ~ ~
Amsterdam _____________ ~ ~
m...@wxs.nl |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
Brian M. Scott
Gisele wrote:
> JoatSimeon wrote:
> >Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
> > >But a person who has seen the Atlantean word claimed to represent 'king' (Rai)
> > > also has no problem understanding this connection..
> > -- oh, Jesus, Atlantis? Preserved in the flying saucers of the Gods, no
> > doubt...
> You may have good reason to doubt its location but I don't think you have good
> reason to doubt its existence unless one conclusion must lead to the other.
I don't have any good reason to *believe* in its existence. (I'm
assuming that the Thera hypothesis doesn't fit your notion of
Atlantis.) Besides, in a sense one does lead to the other: it's hard to
see how you could make a good case for the existence of a place for
which you couldn't also specify a plausible general location.
> Personally, I think it is plausible source of all the Indo-European languages and
> source of the Homo-sapiens that made an early entrance to Europe. Have any better
> ideas?
Until you have a reasonable case for the existence of Atlantis and its
rough location, it's nonsense to call it a 'plausible' source of
anything.
The Kurgan hypothesis puts the PIE homeland in the South Russian
steppes. Not everyone accepts it by any means, but it remains the
leading hypothesis. Other proposals have been made, either on
linguistic or on archaeological grounds, but none of them is compatible
with any location that I've ever seen suggested for Atlantis. (And on
geological grounds it appears that none of those locations is compatible
with the imagined Atlantis anyway.)
Brian M. Scott
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On Wed, 04 Feb 1998 11:18:44 -0700, Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
wrote:
>And the Sumerian word for 'marry' (tuku tuku) seems to have its origin in the
>word 'tuku' which means 'have', 'possess', 'own', 'acquire'
Actually <tuku> alone means "to have" and "to marry", the latter
meaning sometimes made explicit by using <dam-s^e3 .. tuku> "have as a
wife". E.g.:
mu-lugal Nin.dub.sar dumu Ka10 dam-s^e3 ha-tuku bi2-in-dug4-ga
name-king Nin-dubsar daughter Ka wife-as will-have that-he-has-said
Nin.nam.ha.ni Ur.{d}Lama nam.erim2-am3
Ninnamhani Ur-Lama oath-is
"It is the oath of Ninnamhami and Ur-Lama that he has said: `By the
name of the king, I will marry Nin-dubsar, the daughter of Ka'".
TUKU-TUKU (reading unknown) is most likely a reduplicated verbal form,
used in Sumerian to represent either the durative/imperfective
("maru^" aspect) or a "plural verb" (plurality of transitive object or
intransitive subject).
Gisele
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Feb 1998 13:14:47 -0700, Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
> wrote:
>
> >JoatSimeon wrote:
> >
> >> >Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
> >>
> >> >But a person who has seen the Atlantean word claimed to represent 'king' (Rai)
> >> also has no problem understanding this connection..
> >>
> >> -- oh, Jesus, Atlantis? Preserved in the flying saucers of the Gods, no
> >> doubt...
> >>
> >
> >You may have good reason to doubt its location but I don't think you have good
> >reason to doubt its existence unless one conclusion must lead to the other.
> >Personally, I think it is plausible source of all the Indo-European languages and
> >source of the Homo-sapiens that made an early entrance to Europe. Have any better
> >ideas?
>
> Yes.
>
Well? Do you wish to share them?
Gisele
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On Wed, 04 Feb 1998 22:51:00 -0700, Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
wrote:
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 04 Feb 1998 13:14:47 -0700, Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >You may have good reason to doubt its [Atlantis'] location but I don't think you have good
>> >reason to doubt its existence unless one conclusion must lead to the other.
>> >Personally, I think it is plausible source of all the Indo-European languages and
>> >source of the Homo-sapiens that made an early entrance to Europe. Have any better
>> >ideas?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>
>Well? Do you wish to share them?
IE languages came from Anatolia, with a secondary spread from the
Pontic-Caspian region. Homo Sapiens came from Africa. Haddock, cod,
lobster, mackerel, menhaden, shrimp, shellfish, eels, hake, tuna,
and pilchard come from the Atlantic.
JoatSimeon
>(Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)<BR>
>Date: 5/4/98 6:15 PM Mountain
>IE languages came from Anatolia, with a secondary spread from the
Pontic-Caspian region. Homo Sapiens came from Africa.
-- agreed on that, except for the Anatolian bit. Even Renfrew is backtracking
on that one; there's too much counter-evidence.
-- S.M. Stirling
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On 5 Feb 1998 07:54:13 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>>(Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
>>Date: 5/4/98 6:15 PM Mountain
>
>>IE languages came from Anatolia, with a secondary spread from the
>Pontic-Caspian region. Homo Sapiens came from Africa.
>
>-- agreed on that, except for the Anatolian bit. Even Renfrew is backtracking
>on that one; there's too much counter-evidence.
There are plenty of arguments against Renfrew's hypothesis as
presented originally ("A & L, The Puzzle of IE Origins"). My views
are substantially different in the details. I'd love to hear about
your counter-evidence and discuss it.
Gisele
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Feb 1998 22:51:00 -0700, Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, 04 Feb 1998 13:14:47 -0700, Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >You may have good reason to doubt its [Atlantis'] location but I don't think you have good
> >> >reason to doubt its existence unless one conclusion must lead to the other.
> >> >Personally, I think it is plausible source of all the Indo-European languages and
> >> >source of the Homo-sapiens that made an early entrance to Europe. Have any better
> >> >ideas?
> >>
> >> Yes.
> >>
> >
> >Well? Do you wish to share them?
>
> IE languages came from Anatolia,
Near the mountains of Ararat?
> with a secondary spread from the
> Pontic-Caspian region. Homo Sapiens came from Africa.
From the Sahara region? That's pretty close to the 'Gades' (Cadiz) location mentioned by Plato.
> Haddock, cod,
> lobster, mackerel, menhaden, shrimp, shellfish, eels, hake, tuna,
> and pilchard come from the Atlantic.
You mean - from the Atlantis. Call the Greeks ignorant if you will, but they weren't half as
uncomfortable with the term 'Atlantis' as most are today. I think they traced a lot of their
roots to the daughters of the Atlantides.
If everything (language, traits, technology, etc.) can be adequately explained apart from this yet
unfound location, so be it! But I also have a hard time swallowing the idea that all Europeans
are Negroid but their language was created in Anatolia (If this is what you're implying).
Gisele
Kaare Albert Lie
On Thu, 05 Feb 1998 08:27:59 GMT, m...@wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
wrote:
>There are plenty of arguments against Renfrew's hypothesis as
>presented originally ("A & L, The Puzzle of IE Origins"). My views
>are substantially different in the details. I'd love to hear about
>your counter-evidence and discuss it.
And I would love to read more about how your views differ from
Renfrews. Could you please post something about this?
Best,
Kåre A. Lie
Things are not as they are seen, nor are they otherwise.
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>And I would love to read more about how your views differ from
>Renfrews. Could you please post something about this?
OK. What Renfrew basically proposes, is an agricultural "wave of
advance" that went:
1. from Anatolia [Anatolian,?Armenian] to Greece [Greek];
2. from Greece to the Balkans [Illyrian, etc.] and
3. to Italy [Italic];
4. from Italy to France and Spain [Celtic-2];
5. from the Balkans to Central [Celtic-1],
6. Northern [Germanic] and
7. Eastern Europe [Balto-Slavic] as well as
8. the Steppe zone [Indo-Iranian, ?Tocharian];
Renfrew also discusses an alternative origin for Indo-Iranian (from
Anatolia, sneaking past Mesopotamia into Iran and India, making the
IVC Indo-Aryan), but that's clearly unacceptable.
Equally unacceptable are steps 3. and 4. The early Western
Mediterranean Neolithic (Impressed and Cardial Ware cultures) may have
diffused from Greece [N.Africa may have been another source], but it
was mainly a diffusion of ideas, pottery, domestic animals and plants,
not so much people or languages. Iberian and Basque in Spain clearly
prove that this was not an IE speaking Neolithic.
The other steps I do accept as movements ("waves of advance") of
Proto-Indo-European peoples, although I do not equate them with the
language groups Renfrew assigns to them.
Step 1: Anatolia to Greece.
This can be dated to 7000 BC, Proto-Sesklo culture.
Step 2: Greece to the Balkans.
Shortly afterwards, Karanovo I culture -> Starc^evo [Yugoslavia],
Cris, [Romania], Ko"ro"s [Hungary]. The Bug-Dnestr culture on the
border of Balkans and steppe also belongs to this phase.
At this stage (7-6,000 BC) we cannot yet speak of an Indo-European
language. In view of the close linguistic ties between Indo-European
and Etruscan, and the fact that the Etruscans almost certainly
originated in the Aegean area (Lemnos stele), I would assign these
early farmers of W. Anatolia, Greece and the Balkans to a hypothetical
"Indo-Tyrrhenian" language family, ancestral to Tyrrhenian (Lemnian,
Etruscan, Rhaetic), Anatolian and Indo-European proper.
As the wave of advance reached the limits of the Mediterranean
climate, it stalled for something like a millennium. Around 5500 BC,
the next stage begins. In the Anatolia/Greece/Balkans area, this is
the start of the Vinc^a and similar cultures (the high point of what
Gimbutas refers to as "Old Europe"). In Hungary, an adaptation to
colder climes takes place, resulting in the Linear Ware (LBK)
expansion, into:
Step 5. Central Europe
Step 6. Northern Europe
Step 7. Eastern Europe
Linguistically, we can assign W. Anatolia and Greece to Tyrrhenian and
other [unknown] Para-Indo-European languages, while Indo-European
itself is now centered on the Balkans area (Vinc^a) and is just
beginning to spread out into the rest of Europe (LBK).
Step 8. A crucial problem is the Middle Neolithic in the Steppe zone.
At about the same time (5000 BC) as the LBK culture spreads out into
Germany and Poland, we have in the Ukraine the spread of the
Dniepr-Donets culture. J.P. Mallory ("In Search of the
Indo-Europeans", p. 191) says:
"The physical type, the extended supine burial position, the
continuity with the preceding macro-microlithic industry, and
similarities in ceramic decoration with the sub-Neolithic cultures of
the Forest Zone have all suggested a northerly origin within the
Ukraine, and the foremost authority on the culture, the Ukrainian
archaeologist Dmitry Telegin, assigns them to a broad cultural region
that spanned the Vistula in Poland southeast to the Dniepr. [..]
Conversely, we should also note that Alexander Formozov argues for an
essentially "southern" origin for the Dniepr-Donets culture that does
not relate it to more northerly sub-Neolithic cultures."
If Telegin is right, there is no problem linking the Dniepr-Donets
culture to the LBK and Tripolye linguistically, through the Narva,
Valdai and Comb-Pricked Ware cultures of Poland, and the language
spoken in the steppe zone by 5000 BC would be similar to the Triploye
and easterly LBK dialects. It might be interesting to note here some
apparent [lexical] similarities between Tocharian and Balto-Slavic.
Another interesting aspect in the period between roughly 5500 and 4500
BC, this time in Northern Europe, is the Ertebo/lle-Ellerbek culture
of S. Scandinavia and Denmark. The Ertebo/lle-Ellerbek people were
sub-Neolithic, i.e. they adopted pottery and other techniques from
their LBK southern neighbours, but did not take the crucial step of
shifting to agriculture. I may be hypothesized that they also kept
their own language, and didn't become assimilated linguistically by
the farmer population (IE in my view) until they merged into the later
Funnel-Neck Beaker culture (TRB), c. 4300 BC. It is interesting to
connect this fact with the apparently non-IE substrate that is found
in Germanic to a much larger degree than in Celtic, Italic or
Balto-Slavic.
By 4000 BC, three main dialect groups must have formed:
1. "Southern" (later Anatolian) in the Balkans (Late Vinc^a, Karanovo
V/VI),
2. "Western" (Bodrogkeresztur, Michelsberg [later Italo-Celtic?],
Western TRB [later Germanic]) and
3. "Eastern" (Tripolye [later Armeno-Greek?], Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk
[later Indo-Iranian?]).
The Baltic and C. Russian area (Eastern TRB) must have shown a mix of
"Western" and "Eastern" characteristics (later Balto-Slavic?), while
the Proto-Tocharians had started their migration east, which would
eventually lead to the Afanasievo culture c. 3000 BC, and eventually
their arrival in the Tarim basin.
After 3500 BC, the [economic?] collapse of the Balkan area provokes a
westerly expansion of the "Kurgan" people (Yama culture) of the steppe
zone, leading to the establishment of Greeks, Armenians and possibly
Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians, Phrygians etc. [their linguistic
position is hard to determine, given the little that is known about
their languages] in the Balkans, and eventually Greece [Mycenaeans
2200 BC?] and parts of Anatolia [Phrygians, Armenians]. At the same
time, the original population may have been in part assimilated, and
in part have been forced to flee to Greece and Anatolia. That would
explain the Anatolian linguistic substrate in Greece, and the
intrusive presence of the IE Anatolians (Hittites, Luwians, Palaians,
Arzawa-Lydians) in Anatolia. Given the linguistic similarities
between Albanian and Balto-Slavic, it is also possible that peoples
akin to the Balts and Slavs settled most of the Balkans area after the
first wave of [Armeno-Greek?] Kurgan steppe invaders. The scenario
would be similar to what happened in the Balkans after the breakdown
of Roman power and the incursions of Huns and Avars, from which the
Slavs profited most.
In other parts of Europe and Central Asia, this is also a time of
renewed IE expansion. In the Germanic/Balto-Slavic area, the TRB
culture gives way to the more hierarchically orgnaized Corded Ware
culture, and in Central Europe the Celtic and Italic peoples
(Bell-Beaker culture) must have started their gradual advance towards
the Atlantic and Mediterranean, at the expense of the non-IE Western
European "Megalithic" cultures. The "Kurgan" people of the Yama
culture had meanwhile established themselves in Central Asia, from
where Iran and India were reached in the second millennium BC.
C. 1200 BC there is another round of hostilities with the Phrygians
moving into Anatolia destroying the Hittite Empire, the Dorians moving
into Greece destroying the Mycenaean city-states, and driving a mixed
bunch of Mycenaean Greek, "Pelasgian", Etruscan and Anatolian "Sea
Peoples" unto Palestine [Philistines], Egypt and Italy [Etruscans].
The rest is history.
GKeyes6988
Gisele wrote:
<snip>
.If everything (language, traits, technology, etc.) can be adequately explained
apart .from this yet
.unfound location, so be it!
But of course, everything can't be explained to your satisfaction because to do
so it must also square with the testimony of of certain famous mystics, so i
wonder why you bother making this disingenuos remark.
But I also have a hard time swallowing the idea that all .Europeans
.are Negroid but their language was created in Anatolia (If this is what you're
.implying).
.Gisele
Can you really mean this? Modern English was "created" in England, but that
doesn't mean human beings evolved there. Wherever IE developed, it was from an
earlier language or languages. It wasn't "created", nor did it mysteriously
appear.
And let me get this straight -- you think a claim that H. sapiens is from
Africa means everyone is "negroid"? Have you ever bothered to read any
physical anthropology at all?
-- Greg Keyes
JoatSimeon
>iguel Carrasquer Vidal)<BR>
>Date: 5/4/98 7:23 PM Mountain Standard Time<BR>
>There are plenty of arguments against Renfrew's hypothesis as presented
originally ("A & L, The Puzzle of IE Origins"). My views are substantially
different in the details. I'd love to hear...
-- OK, tho' nothing startling:
a) IE languages are clearly intrusive in Anatolia in historic times. Eg.,
Hittite shows clear signs of 'peripheral conservatism', and has a massive
freight of Hattic (non-IE) loanwords.
The Hittites preserved Hattic as a learned and liturgical speech, so the
substratum influence is clearly attributable to it. The clear implication is
that Hittite moved into Anatolia and was superimposed on a Hattic-speaking
population.
Furthermore, there's no record at all of IE speakers east of the Hittites until
the Iron Age and later -- Urartu spoke a Caucasian-linked language related to
Hurrian, and the Armenians don't show up until much later.
b) The internal relationships of the IE languages. If PIE had spread from
Anatolia, one would expect a close relationship between Hittite-Luwian and
Greek, and a distant one between say, Greek and Sanskrit.
Quite the opposite is true; Greek is closely related to Sanskrit and distantly
related to Hittite-Luwian. In fact, it's more closely related to Latin or even
Lithuanian than to Hittite.
c) Nature of the PIE vocabulary. There are no common words for most of the
elementary Mediterranean flora and fauna; the base vocabulary indicates a north
temperate zone origin.
d) glottochronology and time-depth. The internal linguistic evidence indicates
that the IE languages didn't start diverging much until after 3000 BCE.
That's born out by the vocabulary again, which dates the PIE language to the
late Neolithic or the copper age; words for ox, plow, domestic horse, wheeled
vehicles, weaving, wool, dairy products, copper, etc.
Renfrew's "demic dispersal" would backdate PIE to ridiculously early times,
8000 BCE or more; that's far too early given the high degree of similarity of
the earliest recorded IE languages, and also before the 'secondary products
revolution' which is implied by the core vocabulary.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>m...@wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)<BR>
>Date: 2/5/98 7:08 AM Mountain Standard Time<B
-- well, that certainly avoids _some_ of the problems of Renfrew's hypothesis,
but it does so at the expense of introducing a lot of complications --
back-washes and multiple migrations.
The consensus view which Mallory and Mair advance is more elegantly simple,
IMHO; origins in the forest-steppe zone in the 5th millenium BC, beginnings of
dispersal in the 4th, attendant on the development of horse domestication and
wheeled vehicles.
Mair is preparing a new work tying the Tocharians into the IE homeland problem,
and Renfrew was rather impressed with it at the U. of Penn. conference.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
> (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)<BR>
>>Date: 2/5/98 7:08 AM Mountain
-- sorry, my previous reply didn't seem to post properly.
Your hypothesis does avoid some of the problems of Renfrew's, but it also
introduces some unnecessary complications -- back-migrations to Anatolia and so
forth.
IMHO the classic (and recently reinforced) thesis of a dispersal from a single
nuclear area in the south Urals/Ukraine zone has the virtues of parsimony,
accounts for the _linguistic_ data (which is why we think there was a PIE group
and that it dispersed, after all) and doesn't contradict the archaeological
record.
Also, I wasn't aware that Etruscan had even been decyphered, much less shown to
have any relationship to the IE group -- has there been a recent publication?
-- S.M. Stirling
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On 5 Feb 1998 18:31:10 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>-- well, that certainly avoids _some_ of the problems of Renfrew's hypothesis,
>but it does so at the expense of introducing a lot of complications --
>back-washes and multiple migrations.
There is one backwash (Balkan IEans returning to Anatolia), but you
would have that one in the "consensus view" as well. The only
difference is that in my scenario both the "hunter" (Kurgan-folk) and
the "hunted" (Balkan-people) are IE, while in the "consensus view"
only the invadors are IE, and no thought is given to where the Balkan
aboriginals went (if anywhere). Anyway, backwashes happen. Just
because these people had come from Anatolia four millennia earlier,
doesn't prove they didn't go back there. Sometimes, history is messy.
There are actually less migrations, and spread out over a much longer
period of time, in my model than in the "consensus" one. Moreover,
all the migrations I posit are historically attested or the
migration-paths have historical "postcedents".
In my model there is basically just a single migration from 7000-4000
BC, in two phases (Mediterranean farmers 7000, Temperate farmers
5500). There is ample archaeological and genetical proof for this
migration from Anatolia into Europe (Greece, Balkans, C./N./E. Europe,
Steppe) during the Neolithic. Starc^evo, Vinc^a, LBK, etc. Genetic
studies have shown that this is the single most important genetic
component in the population of Europe. After c. 4000 BC, all the
migrations I posit are exactly the same ones as in the "consensus"
model (except that the linguistically divergent Anatolians instead of
coming first from the steppe into the Balkans, together with the
Greeks and all the rest, and then from the Balkans into Anatolia, have
already been diversifying separate from the rest of IE in the Balkans,
and then move only into Anatolia).
>The consensus view which Mallory and Mair advance is more elegantly simple,
>IMHO; origins in the forest-steppe zone in the 5th millenium BC, beginnings of
>dispersal in the 4th, attendant on the development of horse domestication and
>wheeled vehicles.
The main problems with the "consensus" model are that there is no
archaeological evidence for Kurgan intrusions outside of the Balkans,
little genetic evidence for a "steppe" element outside of the Balkans
and Russia, and no historical precedent at all for nomadic incursions
from the steppe reaching any further than Germany (Attila) or
Hungary/Vienna (Avars, Mongols, Turks, Magyars, Bulgars, etc.), and no
precedent for them leaving any kind of linguistic trace outside of the
Balkans and the Hungarian steppe. Moreover, there is no linguistical
evidence for a common Pre-IE substrate in the lands settled by the
"Anatolian farmers": just three millennia of diversification before
being "absorbed" by the Kurgan people would still be recognizable as a
common language family yielding a common layer of toponyms and
substrate vocabulary all over Europe. There is no trace of it.
Therefore, the "common substrate" must be IE itself. Everywhere that
we know IEans arrived on the scene after the local population had
already entered the Neolithic (farming) stage, we have traces of the
original languages well into the historical period: Basques, Iberians
in the Western Mediterranean; Minoans, Etruscans, Pelasgians in the
Eastern Mediterranean; Elamites, Dravidians, Munda in Iran and India.
It is hard to believe that the original languages of the Neolithic,
relatively densely populated, Central, Northern and Eastern Europe
(3/4 of a continent) should have vanished without a trace. I don't
believe it.
Garry Williams
Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com> wrote:
>
>
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>
>> with a secondary spread from the
>> Pontic-Caspian region. Homo Sapiens came from Africa.
>
>From the Sahara region? That's pretty close to the 'Gades' (Cadiz) location mentioned by Plato.
He was probably thinking more along the lines of Eastern or Southern
Africa.
>> Haddock, cod,
>> lobster, mackerel, menhaden, shrimp, shellfish, eels, hake, tuna,
>> and pilchard come from the Atlantic.
>
>You mean - from the Atlantis. Call the Greeks ignorant if you will, but they weren't half as
>uncomfortable with the term 'Atlantis' as most are today. I think they traced a lot of their
>roots to the daughters of the Atlantides.
>
>If everything (language, traits, technology, etc.) can be adequately explained apart from this yet
>unfound location, so be it! But I also have a hard time swallowing the idea that all Europeans
>are Negroid but their language was created in Anatolia (If this is what you're implying).
I'm afraid I don't follow. What do you mean by "all Europeans are
Negroid but their language was created in Anatolia"?
>Gisele
>
>
--
Garry Williams
gdw...@earthlink.net or
gdw...@william.salzo.cary.nc.us
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On 5 Feb 1998 19:33:21 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>Also, I wasn't aware that Etruscan had even been decyphered, much less shown to
>have any relationship to the IE group -- has there been a recent publication?
We recently discussed this here on sci.archaeology. Look for the
thread "Arian invasions to Europe" and the names Perun and yours truly
[I'm the one defending the position that Etruscan is *not* IE].
Short summary of my position: much about Etruscan remains unclear.
What we *can* interpret shows that Etruscan is *not* Indo-European
[e.g. the numerals and kinship terms are unrelated, etc.], however it
does show that Etruscan (and the related Lemnian and Rhaetic) are
quite close to Indo-European, maybe especially to the Anatolian
branch.
Some examples:
Etruscan PIE
NOM -0 *-s, *-0
GEN *-si, -s *-s, *-sio (Luwian: -ssi-)
*-la, -l (Hittite: -l)
DAT/LOC -i *-i
ACC -n *-m
PLUR -r- *-es [unrelated]
Pronouns: mi "I" *eg^- [unrelated]
(acc. mini) *mene-
ta "this" *to-
ka "that" *ko-
Ptc.pr.act. -enth *-ent, *-ont
Ptc.pf.act. -tha *-to (pass.)
conj. "and" -c(h) *-kwe
"but" -m (Hitt. -ma)
"for, by" -pi *-bhi
There are a small number of possible lexical cognates, e.g. Etr.
$at(h)- "to set" (*sed-), tin- "day" and tivr "moon" (*deiw-), tmia
"building" (*dem-), hant(h)- "before" (*Hant-), lautn "free; family"
(*Hleudh-), $a "six" (*s^wek^s), semph "seven" (*septm), usil "sun"
(*sHwel-).
The best reference I know of is R.S.P. Beekes (of "IE Linguistics"
fame) and L.B. van der Meer "De Etrusken Spreken", 1991. It's in
Dutch, so that might be a problem.
Loren Petrich
In article <19980201013...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>So we know that "bos" has to be a loanword. From Latin; and you can tell
>further that it's a loanword _in Latin_, from Oscan, because PIE gw ==> v in
>Latin, so you'd get "vos". In Oscan the same transition becomes "bos", and for
>some reason the early Latin-speakers borrowed their neighbor's word for cow.
Perhaps because "vos" sounds too similar for their word for "you".
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
pet...@netcom.com And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
Loren Petrich
In article <19980203004...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>BTW, another example of how you sort out possible loanwords:
>
>There's a PIE term for 'wheeled vehicle" -- several, in fact. One of them is
>*kwekwlo. (Another is roughly *weghom, from which we get 'wagon', of course.
>The *weghom was usually pulled by *uksan...)
>At first glance, this bears some similarity to the Sumerian 'girgir', the
>almost certainly borrowed proto-Semitic *galgal, and Kartevelian *grgar.
>OTOH, when you analyize *kwekwlo, you find it stems from a PIE verbal root,
>*kwel-, meaning "to twist, rotate".
Which is sensible semantics -- a wheel is a kind of roller. No
grandiose Whittetian derivations needed :-)
>Since the word for vehicle can be traced to a PIE verbal form, it's unlikely it
>was borrowed.
Which means that the Sumerian, Semitic, and Kartvelian forms must
have been borrowed from early Indo-European, even if indirectly.
Loren Petrich
In article <6b5tdm$6...@fridge.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet <whi...@shore.net> wrote:
>"Tocharian is attested in Chinese Turkestan from manuscripts
>dating from the sixth to eight centuries AD"
>This is when Alexander brings hundreds of thousands of foreign
>Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian
>mercenary troops from Macedonia, Anatolia, all around the Black
>and Caspian seas iraq and Iran marching east to the edges of the
>Tarim basin.
Sheesh. Tocharian is *distinct* from all their languages.
Gisele
Garry Williams wrote:
> Gisele <gis...@elcocomp.com> wrote:
>
> >Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
> >
> >> with a secondary spread from the
> >> Pontic-Caspian region. Homo Sapiens came from Africa.
> >
> >From the Sahara region? That's pretty close to the 'Gades' (Cadiz) location mentioned by Plato.
>
> He was probably thinking more along the lines of Eastern or Southern
> Africa.
I haven't noticed too many old C14 dates obtained around Egypt. Any 30 or 40 thousand year old dates
in that vicinity would have certainly caught my attention.
> >> Haddock, cod,
> >> lobster, mackerel, menhaden, shrimp, shellfish, eels, hake, tuna,
> >> and pilchard come from the Atlantic.
> >
> >You mean - from the Atlantis. Call the Greeks ignorant if you will, but they weren't half as
> >uncomfortable with the term 'Atlantis' as most are today. I think they traced a lot of their
> >roots to the daughters of the Atlantides.
> >
> >If everything (language, traits, technology, etc.) can be adequately explained apart from this yet
> >unfound location, so be it! But I also have a hard time swallowing the idea that all Europeans
> >are Negroid but their language was created in Anatolia (If this is what you're implying).
>
> I'm afraid I don't follow. What do you mean by "all Europeans are
> Negroid but their language was created in Anatolia"?
>
The current thought seems to be that the Indo European language became the predominant language in the
Mediterranean in a wave subsequent to the homo-sapien occupation of Europe. I merely highlighted that
point. I would assume that the homo-sapiens that displaced the Neanderthals were already speaking a
specific language and therefore, do not readily see why the language is not connected with the physical
traits of these homo-sapiens. It is thought that language developed 100,000 years ago....
If the spread of the new language is deemed to be in the same manner as English has been spread
throughout North America or Australia; English was developed in a separate identifiable location and
the entrance of many people from that location was involved. Is a similar situation being suggested?
What's a plausible scenario?
How does one change the predominant language of a large area such as the Mediterranean? For years, in
western Canada, there's been a strong political movement to make all the occupants bi-lingual -
children are required to take French at school, all our products must be bilingual, Federal govenment
employees must be bi-lingual, etc. It's not happening. The French language is partially learned and
forgotten...
Gisele
Steve Whittet
In article <petrichE...@netcom.com>, pet...@netcom.comĢ says...
>
>In article <6b5tdm$6...@fridge.shore.net>,
>Steve Whittet <whi...@shore.net> wrote:
>
>>"Tocharian is attested in Chinese Turkestan from manuscripts
>>dating from the sixth to eight centuries AD"
>
>>This is when Alexander brings hundreds of thousands of foreign
>>Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian
>>mercenary troops from Macedonia, Anatolia, all around the Black
>
> Sheesh. Tocharian is *distinct* from all their languages.
Don't you remember last years advice to read
Mallory's "In Search of the Indo Europeans"?
page 58 speaking of the Tocharians he says"
"One of the most striking and disarming aspects of the Tocharian languages
is that their linguistic relationship with both their Indic and Iranian
neighbors seems to date from a very late period "
"For closer linguistic connections we must look to Europe where uniquely
similar items of vocabulary and grammar are shared with Baltic, Slavic,
Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian and other languages"
>Loren Petrich
steve
JoatSimeon
>pet...@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)<BR>
>Date: 2/6/98 4:32 AM Mountain
>Which means that the Sumerian, Semitic, and Kartvelian forms must have been
borrowed from early Indo-European, even if indirectly.
-- well, possibly. Or it may simply be a linguistic coincidence; they do
happen.
Who invented the wheel is a vexed question; myself, I'm inclined to posit
multiple indepenent origins -- it's a natural development of rollers, after
all.
It's fairly incontestible that the PIE-speakers domesticated the horse and
(after the recent discoveries in Kazahkstan) that they developed the light
spoke-wheeled chariot (no later than) the 21st century BCE.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>[quoting Mallory] For closer linguistic connections we must look to Europe
where uniquely similar items of vocabulary and grammar are shared with Baltic,
Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian and other languages
-- Steve, Steve... you still aren't getting that distinction between cognates
and loanwords, are you?
Languages are separate and distinct entitites. They don't flow together like
water, or spontaneously run uphill.
If you'll actually read the Mallory, you'll see that he states Tocharian
_retained_ PIE features which _evolved_ in Tocharian in a way _similar_ to some
of the western IE languages, and in a manner _different_ from that of the
eastern IE languages.
This is an interesting and significant linguistic feature (for more on the
Tarim Basin investigations, read the Journal of Indo-European Studies issue
fall '95) but it does not mean than Phyrgians and Celts were wandering around
Singkiang. It just means that Tocharian separated from the main body of
eastern Indo-European before the Indo-Iranian special features evolved
(sometime in the third millenium BCE).
Tocharian also shares features with Hittite, which has been an extinct language
since the second millenium BC and was never spoken anywhere but central
Anatolia.
It shares these features because they're _cognate_, that is, derived from the
same PIE roots.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Steve Whittet <whi...@shore.net> wrote:<BR
>>"Tocharian is attested in Chinese Turkestan from manuscripts dating from the
sixth to eight centuries AD" This is when Alexander brings hundreds of
thousands of foreign
Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic mercenaries...
-- actually, Alexander marched east in the 4th century BC -- you know, 300's?
About a thousand years earlier than the 700's AD?
Incidentally, the archaeological evidence shows that the Tocharians/Arsi had
been in the Tarim basin for a long, long time -- 2000 BC or thereabouts. 1400
years _before_ Alex, who as I mentioned never got to the Tarim.
Furthermore, where on earth did you get the idea of Baltic, Slavic and Germanic
mercenaries with Alexander?
Thracians, Illyrians and possibly Celts, yes. Germanics and Slavs and Balts,
no. It's uncertain whether the Greeks were even in indirect contact with the
Slavs, and they knew nothing of the Germanics and Balts.
-- S.M. Stirling
Brian M. Scott
Steve Whittet wrote:
> In article <petrichE...@netcom.com>, pet...@netcom.comĢ says...
> >Steve Whittet <whi...@shore.net> wrote:
> >>"Tocharian is attested in Chinese Turkestan from manuscripts
> >>dating from the sixth to eight centuries AD"
> >>This is when Alexander brings hundreds of thousands of foreign
> >>Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian
> >>mercenary troops from Macedonia, Anatolia, all around the Black
> >>and Caspian seas Iraq and Iran marching east to the edges of the
> >>Tarim basin.
> > Sheesh. Tocharian is *distinct* from all their languages.
> Don't you remember last years advice to read
> Mallory's "In Search of the Indo Europeans"?
> page 58 speaking of the Tocharians he says"
> "One of the most striking and disarming aspects of the Tocharian languages
> is that their linguistic relationship with both their Indic and Iranian
> neighbors seems to date from a very late period "
> "For closer linguistic connections we must look to Europe where uniquely
> similar items of vocabulary and grammar are shared with Baltic, Slavic,
> Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian and other languages"
The amazing thing is that Steve actually thinks that this contradicts
Loren's statement.
Brian M. Scott
Steve Whittet
In article <19980206190...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>
>>Steve Whittet <whi...@shore.net> wrote:<BR
>
>>>"Tocharian is attested in Chinese Turkestan from manuscripts dating from
the
>sixth to eight centuries AD" This is when Alexander brings hundreds of
>thousands of foreign
>
>-- actually, Alexander marched east in the 4th century BC -- you know,
300's?
>About a thousand years earlier than the 700's AD?
Read back up the thread. My original comments were snipped.
In full what I said was.
"In Search of the Indo Europeans", JP Mallory,
Thames and Hudson, 1989
p 56
"Tocharian is attested in Chinese Turkestan from manuscripts
dating from the sixth to eight centuries AD"
"The language was named Tocharian after the historical Tokharoi
who were known to the Greeks to have emigrated from Turkestan
to Bactria in the second century BC"
"If we wish to suggest a date for the existence of a common
or Proto Tocharian language we might expect that it had been current
*in the first millenium BC*"
This is when Alexander brings hundreds of thousands of foreign
Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian
mercenary troops from Macedonia, Anatolia, all around the Black
and Caspian seas Iraq and Iran marching east to the edges of the
Tarim basin.
The reference was to the first millenium BC
>
>Incidentally, the archaeological evidence shows that the
>Tocharians/Arsi had been in the Tarim basin for a long,
>long time -- 2000 BC or thereabouts. 1400 years _before_ Alex,
>who as I mentioned never got to the Tarim.
Go back and read Mallory more carefully. Question his conclusions
and independently check his archaeological speculations. There
is no evidence for any presence of Tocharian speakers, and the
evidence for people in the Tarim before the Tang is sketchy at best.
Mallory page 59
"Our knowledge of the Tocharians themselves is almost entirely founded on
Chinese documents which trace the initial encounters between Han China
and the barbarians of the western lands from 200 BC until the Tarim basin
became a Turkic-speaking region from about the eighth century AD."
>
>Furthermore, where on earth did you get the idea of Baltic, Slavic and
>Germanic mercenaries with Alexander?
I was reading in "Hannibal Enemy of Rome" by Leonard Cottrell
about Philip V of Macedon's alliance with Hannibal and began
to follow some of the mercenary arangements.
Any good introductory text on the historic movements of people
would do, but lets cite the "Times Atlas of World History"
look at the articles entitled "The diffusion of Hellenic Civilization"
and the Hellenistic World 336 to 30 BC pp 74-77 and "The Peoples
og Northern Europe p 84-85
The peoples of Central Europe were connected very early by rivers
like the Danube, Dneiper, Dneister, Don Rhine, Rhone and Po
Macedonia was well situated to take advantage of these trade
relations. Baltic amber came south. Metals from the Slavic
nations and secondary products from Germany came east. The
practice of tribes trading their young men to fight as
mercenaries for more powerful states in return for Greek
grain, oil or wine was not uncommon. The Phoenicians and
Greeks themselves became mercenaries to Egypt.
>
>Thracians, Illyrians and possibly Celts, yes.
>Germanics and Slavs and Balts, no.
The Slavs emerged from the Lusatian region to pass
through the Carpatheo Danubian lands of the Illyrians c 800 BC
By 200 BC The Celts had territories as far east as Anatolia.
Germaics were to the North and East of the Celts
By the Time of Philip and Alexander all of these peoples
were proximate to the wars of Macedonia.
It's uncertain whether the Greeks were even in indirect contact with the
>Slavs, and they knew nothing of the Germanics and Balts.
Thats simply ridiculous. Their trade in secondary products
like leather and metal work is well documented going back to
the beaker cultures.
>
>
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Steve Whittet
In article <19980206191...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>
>>whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>
>>[quoting Mallory] For closer linguistic connections we must look to Europe
>where uniquely similar items of vocabulary and grammar are shared with
>Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian and other languages
>
>-- Steve, Steve... you still aren't getting that distinction between
cognates
>and loanwords, are you?
>
>Languages are separate and distinct entitites. They don't flow together like
>water, or spontaneously run uphill.
>
>If you'll actually read the Mallory, you'll see that he states Tocharian
>_retained_ PIE features which _evolved_ in Tocharian in a way _similar_ to
some
>of the western IE languages, and in a manner _different_ from that of the
>eastern IE languages.
>
>This is an interesting and significant linguistic feature (for more on the
>Tarim Basin investigations, read the Journal of Indo-European Studies issue
>fall '95) but it does not mean than Phyrgians and Celts were wandering
around
>Singkiang. It just means that Tocharian separated from the main body of
>eastern Indo-European before the Indo-Iranian special features evolved
>(sometime in the third millenium BCE).
I really can't believe you seriously want to argue that Tocharian
dates to the third millenium BC. The only reason for that conjecture
is that it doesn't fit a theoretical model. The far simpler explanation
is that it was a modern conglomeration. That is what the facts show.
A large army of people speaking a full range of IE languages
marched from Macedonia across Anatolia into India at a time
just before the first recorded instances of Tocharian emerge.
The historical facts fit with the linguistic observations in
a parsimonious fashion.
>
>Tocharian also shares features with Hittite, which has been
>an extinct language since the second millenium BC and was
>never spoken anywhere but central Anatolia.
Central Anatolia is where Alexander picked up the bulk of his army.
>
>It shares these features because they're _cognate_, that is,
>derived from the same PIE roots.
What prevents Tocharian from being the result of a multi lingual
IE army marching and serving together for a number of years?
>
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Brian M. Scott
Steve Whittet wrote:
> In article <19980206190...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
> joats...@aol.comĚ says...
[snip]
> > It's uncertain whether the Greeks were even in indirect contact with the
> >Slavs, and they knew nothing of the Germanics and Balts.
> Thats simply ridiculous. Their trade in secondary products
> like leather and metal work is well documented going back to
> the beaker cultures.
I will leave commentary on the facts to those more familiar with them
and merely point out (yet again!) that long-distance trade does not
require that the cultures at opposite ends of the line have any
knowledge of each other.
Brian M. Scott
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On 6 Feb 1998 22:16:37 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>I really can't believe you seriously want to argue that Tocharian
>dates to the third millenium BC. The only reason for that conjecture
>is that it doesn't fit a theoretical model.
You mean that it _does_ fit a theoretical model. It fits the
theoretical model of an early (pre-Indo-Iranian) expansion of IE
speaking peoples eastwards into Central Asia.
>The far simpler explanation
>is that it was a modern conglomeration. That is what the facts show.
No they don't.
>A large army of people speaking a full range of IE languages
>marched from Macedonia across Anatolia into India at a time
>just before the first recorded instances of Tocharian emerge.
>The historical facts fit with the linguistic observations in
>a parsimonious fashion.
No they don't.
>What prevents Tocharian from being the result of a multi lingual
>IE army marching and serving together for a number of years?
"A multi lingual IE army" wouldn't have gotten as far as Byzantium,
let alone marched all the way to Bactria or the Tarim basin. For an
army to function properly, it is essential that people understand each
other. All the officers were Greek, and the bulk of the soldiers were
also Greek. Communications in Alexander's army were in Greek. End of
story.
Even if there were foreign mercenaries, they would have communicated
in broken Greek. If any kind of pidgin language would have emerged in
Alexander's army, unlikely though it is, it would have been pidgin
Greek. If some kind of "pan-IE pidgin" would have emerged in
Alexander's army, ridiculous though it is, the result still would not
have been anything like Tocharian. Tocharian is *not* a pidgin
language, it does *not* contain a happy-crazy mix ("conglomeration")
of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what have you.
Let me ask a rhetorical question. Have you studied, or even as much
as seen, a Tocharian text? Was it Tocharian A or B? :-) Let me ask
another rhetorical question: had you seen a Tocharian text, would you
be able to recognize any Baltic, Slavic or Greek elements in it? What
about Phrygian? :-)
Please explain, for instance, how a mix of Slavic, Armenian, Greek and
Germanic might have yielded the Tocharian numerals:
Toch Slav Arm Grk Gmc PIE
1. she *odi:nu mi hen- *ain- *oin-, *sem-
2. wi *duwa: erk'u duo *twai *duo:
3. trai *trije erek treis *thri: *treies
4. sytwer *chetu:re chork tettares *fidwor *kwetwores
5. pisy *penti hing pente *fimf *penkwe
6. shkas *shesti vec heks *sehs *s^wek^s
7. shukt *sedmi utn hepta *sebun *septm
8. okt *osmi ut okto: *ahto: *ok^to:
9. nyu *deventi inn ennea *niun *'newn
10. syak *desenti t'asn deka *tehun *dek^m
It certainly looks as if Tocharian is descended from PIE by following
its own special set of soundlaws, completely different from any of the
other IE languages. Rather than being a "modern conglomeration", all
the linguistic facts cry out that Tocharian is in fact a very ancient
offshoot of PIE, probably the most ancient of all after
Hittite/Anatolian.
Steve Whittet
In article <350b99c0....@news.wxs.nl>, m...@wxs.nlÔ says...
>
>On 6 Feb 1998 22:16:37 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>
>>I really can't believe you seriously want to argue that Tocharian
>>dates to the third millenium BC. The only reason for that conjecture
>>is that it doesn't fit a theoretical model.
>
>You mean that it _does_ fit a theoretical model. It fits the
>theoretical model of an early (pre-Indo-Iranian) expansion of IE
>speaking peoples eastwards into Central Asia.
It doesn't fit. There are enough holes in that theory to strain spaghetti.
Be more specific. Pre-Indo-Iranian is a vauge linguistic reference
Lets try and pin it down. What peoples from what sites speaking
what language moved to what other sites when, and how did this
result in Tocharian? We have discussed this before Miquel. There
is no evidence of an archaeological nature which supports a 3,000
year gap between the theoretical origins of this language and
the first recorded evidence of its existence.
>
>>The far simpler explanation
>>is that it was a modern conglomeration. That is what the facts show.
>
>No they don't.
>
>>A large army of people speaking a full range of IE languages
>>marched from Macedonia across Anatolia into India at a time
>>just before the first recorded instances of Tocharian emerge.
>>The historical facts fit with the linguistic observations in
>>a parsimonious fashion.
>
>No they don't.
>
>>What prevents Tocharian from being the result of a multi lingual
>>IE army marching and serving together for a number of years?
>
>"A multi lingual IE army" wouldn't have gotten as far as Byzantium,
>let alone marched all the way to Bactria or the Tarim basin. For an
>army to function properly, it is essential that people understand each
>other.
It is only essential that those giving orders are understood and
obeyed by their troops.
>All the officers were Greek, and the bulk of the soldiers were
>also Greek.
Alexanders army began with troops who were mostly of European
origins, but filled out its ranks with the soldiers of the armies
it defeated.
Communications in Alexander's army were in Greek.
The choice was join up and your life will be spared or be stubborn
about it and die. That isn't a difficult concept to communicate.
>End of story.
Not quite.
Every time Alexander fought a battle he had losses. When his
losses amounted to a substantial portion of his army he had
to deal with getting replacements. Three thousand miles from
home he couldn't very well hang around and wait for a year
or two until some replacements from home showed up.
>
>Even if there were foreign mercenaries, they would have communicated
>in broken Greek.
Have you ever read the story of Hanibal crossing the Alps? Do you
know how many different nations were represented by mercenaries
in the army he fielded? Greeks, Phoenicians and Punic Sea Peoples
like the Peleset and Shardana who served in the armies of Egypt
Numidian cavalry, Carthagineans, Iberians, Celts, Gauls and Germanics.
>If any kind of pidgin language would have emerged in Alexander's
>army, unlikely though it is, it would have been pidgin Greek.
Not necessarily. A pidgin might very well have developed in the ranks
with soldiers from different units bartering for each others equipment
or the spoils from a captured city.
If some kind of "pan-IE pidgin" would have emerged in
>Alexander's army, ridiculous though it is, the result still would not
>have been anything like Tocharian. Tocharian is *not* a pidgin
>language, it does *not* contain a happy-crazy mix ("conglomeration")
>of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what have you.
Mallory seems to think it does.
>
>Let me ask a rhetorical question. Have you studied, or even as much
>as seen, a Tocharian text? Was it Tocharian A or B? :-) Let me ask
>another rhetorical question: had you seen a Tocharian text, would you
>be able to recognize any Baltic, Slavic or Greek elements in it? What
>about Phrygian? :-)
:)
>
>Please explain, for instance, how a mix of Slavic, Armenian, Greek and
>Germanic might have yielded the Tocharian numerals:
>
> Toch Egypt Slav Arm Grk Gmc PIE
>1. she w *odi:nu mi hen- *ain- *oin-, *sem-
>2. wi snw *duwa: erk'u duo *twai *duo:
>3. trai hmt *trije erek treis *thri: *treies
>4. sytwer fdw *chetu:re chork tettares *fidwor *kwetwores
>5. pisy diw *penti hing pente *fimf *penkwe
>6. shkas sisw*shesti vec heks *sehs *s^wek^s
>7. shukt sfh*sedmi utn hepta *sebun *septm
>8. okt hmnw*osmi ut okto: *ahto: *ok^to:
>9. nyu psd *deventi inn ennea *niun *'newn
>10. syak mdw *desenti t'asn deka *tehun *dek^m
Just for the hell of it why not throw some Egyptian numerals into the mix.
[w][shu] (one) is pretty common as the unit, but [i] is also used
what it looks like is all these languages are counting fingers
then palms and hands. Fingers are [w] or [i] after you get to
five the units change using p or d for hand
[snw](second w) instead of {du wa}(two w)
[hmt](sum of three ones) or amount instead of {tri i}(three)fingers
[fdw]fourth w) compares to GMC {fidwor} kwet w
[diw](fifth w){penke w}
[sisw](sixth w){shesht i}(second set of w)
[sfhw](seventh w){sedm i}
[hmnw](sum of four twos){ok to}
[psd] (palm plus hand)(new hand)
[mdw] (two hands){dekm}
>
>It certainly looks as if Tocharian is descended from PIE by following
>its own special set of soundlaws, completely different from any of the
>other IE languages.
To me it looks like all of the above bear some resemblence.
particularly the [she]for one, Egyptian [w][shu]
>Rather than being a "modern conglomeration", all
>the linguistic facts cry out that Tocharian is in fact a very ancient
>offshoot of PIE, probably the most ancient of all after
>Hittite/Anatolian.
I respect you and your abilities as a linguist greatly Miguel
in every sense of the word but when it comes to Tocharian...
do I buy it?...Nope, not hardly.
>==
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
steve
JoatSimeon
> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>Date: 2/6/98 3:03 PM Mountain
Sigh. Steve, it ain't what you don't know that'll kill you, it's what you
think you know that ain't so.
>the evidence for people in the Tarim before the Tang [600's AD] is sketchy at
best...
For the time-depth of the Tocharians, I refer you to THE JOURNAL OF
INDO-EUROPEAN STUDIES, v. 23, nos. 3&4, Fall/Winter 1995.
Particularly Victor Mair's article, _Prehistoric Caucasoid Corpses of the Tarim
Basin_.
"The earliest settlers... appear to have entered the Tarim Basin from the north
and northwest before 1800 BCE..."
>The peoples of Central Europe were connected very early by rivers like the
Danube, Dneiper, Dneister, Don Rhine, Rhone and Po Macedonia was well situated
to take advantage of these trade relations.
-- this is true, but irrelevant. Ancient trade commonly passed from hand to
hand with multiple intermediaries.
Dates: Celts make contact with Alexander, 335 BC. This was a diplomatic
contact, and did not involve mercenary service.
Celts advance into Thrace, 281 BC. (56 years later) and thereafter attack areas
in Greece and Anatolia.
So yes, Celts were employed widely as mercenaries in the eastern Hellenistic
world... after Alexander's lifetime. (In Sicily and southern Italy, somewhat
earlier.)
The Germanics were isolated from the Mediterranean world by the Celts, who at
this time stretched all the way from Gaul across southern Germany (including
Bohemia until the 2nd century) and on into the Danube valley. The Germanics
began pressing southward in a body somewhat later, pressing the Celts before
them.
Above from THE CELTIC WORLD, ed. Miranda Green.
The first Germanics to come into contact with the Mediterranean world were the
Cimbri, who burst through Gaul and invaded Italy around 100 BC. (200 years
after Alexander.)
As for the Slavs:
"More plausibly, the Slavs, the _sclaveni_ of Byzantine sources, were... based
between the Dnestr and Dnepre in the east and the Vistula and Oder in the west
during the late fifth and earlier sixth centuries AD... Their movement westward
and southward was facilitated by the advance of Germanic peoples into the
Danube lands. Within a short time of their recognition in our written sources,
Slav settlers had entered Bohemia, passed from there down the Elbe valley,
extended north into Poland and eastern Germany, and south into the Balkans by
way of Bulgaria."
-- in other words, the Slavs weren't in contact with the Graeco-Roman peoples
at all until the fifth century AD, 800 years after Alexander's death.
This from THE OXFORD PREHISTORY OF EUROPE, ed. Barry Cunliffe.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>Date: 2/6/98 3:16 PM Mountain Standard Time<BR>
-- I'll refer you to the following messages for detail on Tocharian.
Let me simply and gently point out that languages don't result from
"conglomeration". Even a true pidgin, like Sierra Leonian "Krio", is
recognizably English with influences from the vocabulary and syntax of several
West African languages. Any linguist with a couple of weeks on his hands in
Freetown could independently prove this.
Nobody who's actually looked at Tocharian (there are actually two Tocharian
languages recorded, btw) would mistake it for a pidgin.
Incidentally, the Tocharians have a very distinctive material culture, which
shows no signs of intrusive development throughout the Bronze and early Iron
Age periods. We also have a full set of extremely well-preserved bodies, so we
even know what they wore and what they looked like (rather like Norwegians, as
it turns out.)
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>: whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>Date: 5/4/98 10:55 AM Mounta
>Tocharian is *not* a pidgin language, it does *not* contain a happy-crazy mix
("conglomeration") of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what have
you.
>Mallory seems to think it does.
-- no, he most certainly does not.
"...Tocharian's relation to the European languages offers some hope of a
solution. It weights the similarities shared between Tocharian, Celtic, Italic
and Hittite as essentially archaic features inherited from the
Proto-Indo-European language at a very early period. These grammatical features
were then replaced in later Proto-Indo-European by new forms that spread among
the ancestors of Greek, Armenian and Indo-Iranian, but not to what had then
become the outer periphery of the Proto-Indo-European continuu -- the ancestors
of Celtic and Italic on the west, Hittiteand possibly Phyrgian on the south,
and Tocharian on the east."
-- J.P. Mallory, IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS, p. 61.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>Date: 2/6/98 3:16 PM Mountain
>Tocharian also shares features with Hittite, which has been an extinct
language since the second millenium BC and was never spoken anywhere but
central Anatolia.
>Central Anatolia is where Alexander picked up the bulk of
his army.
-- you don't _read_ very well, do you? I just mentioned that Hittite had been
_extinct for nearly a thousand years_ when Alexander went through.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>Date: 2/6/98 3:16 PM Mountain Standard Time
>What prevents Tocharian from being the result of a multi lingualIE army
marching and serving together for a number of years?
-- well, the basic structure of the language, for starters.
Next, leaving aside that (which makes your hypothesis a rather obvious
absurdity to anyone who knows any linguistics) one of the notable features of
Tocharian is the _lack_ of influence from the Indo-Iranian languages.
Somehow Alexander managed to have a whole bunch of mercenaries wander off a
thousand miles further east than he ever got, and they didn't include any
Persians or Saka or Bactrians?
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
-- by the way, the settlers and paid-off mercenaries and so forth that
Alexander _did_ leave behind in Central Asia eventually founded a kingdom of
their own there.
This was the kingdom of Bactria, an offshoot of which overran most of
northwestern India for a time.
This kingdom's rulers all spoke Greek, along with many of the aristocracy and
town-dwellers among their subjects. (The bulk of the population spoke Iranian
and in India Prakrit tongues.)
Rather pure Greek, judging from inscriptions dug up in the ruins of Ai Khanoum,
a large Greek city on the northeastern frontier of the Bactrian kingdom.
No conglomerations or amalgams, just Greek.
-- S.M. Stirling
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On 7 Feb 1998 06:36:45 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>Be more specific. Pre-Indo-Iranian is a vauge linguistic reference
>Lets try and pin it down. What peoples from what sites speaking
>what language moved to what other sites when, and how did this
>result in Tocharian? We have discussed this before Miquel. There
>is no evidence of an archaeological nature which supports a 3,000
>year gap between the theoretical origins of this language and
>the first recorded evidence of its existence.
You have read Mallory. He clearly suggests the Afanasievo culture as
a possibility. Since we have discussed this before, and we don't want
to go through any of *that* again, that's A-f-a-n-a-s-i-e-v-o, dated
before 3,000 BC, located near Minusinsk Basin, Upper Yenisey
(Khakasskaja A.O) [90 E, 54 N] and in the Altai Mountains (Gorno-
Altajskaja A.O.) [86 E, 52 N].
Can we prove the Afanasievans spoke Tocharian? No, archaeology and
langauge don't mix that way. Do we know where they went after the
Afanasievo phase in the Altai, and do we know where they came from
before the Afansievo phase? Not really. This is not a part of the
world where extensive archaeological surveys have been done yet.
But the fact that the Tocharians were where they were and spoke the
language that they spoke is guarantee enough that if we find their
trail, it will be from the Ukraine or Russia leading east, roughly
through what is now Kazakhstan.
> If some kind of "pan-IE pidgin" would have emerged in
>>Alexander's army, ridiculous though it is, the result still would not
>>have been anything like Tocharian. Tocharian is *not* a pidgin
>>language, it does *not* contain a happy-crazy mix ("conglomeration")
>>of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what have you.
>
>Mallory seems to think it does.
No, you think Mallory thinks it does. Different thing.
Now I understand your reluctance to let this thing go. All that other
stuff about Egyptians and Phoenicians and Sea Peoples and Shang Olmecs
is all very nice, but it's all been said before. The notion that the
Tocharians are a runaway band of soldiers of Alexander's campaign is,
I believe, your own idea. Your Geisteskind. And it's not a bad idea
at all. The timing and the geography roughly fit. It makes sense,
provided, of course, that you don't know Tocharian.
But why drag Egyptian into it again? Just when we thought you were
defending a "Pan-IE pidgin", it's back to Egyptian again. Even if
your attempts at comparative Egypto-Indo-European linguistics weren't
so lame, it still wouldn't be very consistent.
>[w][shu] (one)
"One" is <w'w> */'wu33uw/, cf. Semitic *wHd. I don't know what the
[shu] is doing there, or what it means. Is that sh-w or s-h-w?
>is pretty common as the unit, but [i] is also used
>what it looks like is all these languages are counting fingers
>then palms and hands. Fingers are [w] or [i] after you get to
>five the units change using p or d for hand
No comment.
>[snw](second w) instead of {du wa}(two w)
<sn.wj> */si'nuwwaj/, cf. Sem *t_ny
>[hmt](sum of three ones) or amount instead of {tri i}(three)fingers
<xmtw> */'xamtaw/
If we expand Steve's recursive "etymology" of [hmt], we get: (sum of
(sum of (sum of (sum of (sum of (sum of ( .. INFINITY ... ) ones )
ones ) ones ) ones) ones ) ones ).
>[fdw]fourth w) compares to GMC {fidwor} kwet w
<jfdw> */jif'daw/, cf. Hausa <fud.u>
But Germanic *fidwor COMES FROM *kwetwor-, so it DOESN'T compare.
>[diw](fifth w){penke w} [is that supposed to explain anything?]
<djw> */'di:jaw/
>[sisw](sixth w){shesht i}(second set of w) [?]
<sjsw> */'sa?saw/, cf. Sem. *s^ds^
>[sfhw](seventh w){sedm i} [?]
<sfxw> */'safxaw/, cf. Sem. *s^b3
>[hmnw](sum of four twos){ok to}
<xmnw> */xa'ma:naw/, cf. Sem. *t_mny
It's not ok-to, it's okt-o:, it's not "sum of four twos", it's "two
fours". *ok^t- is "4", -o: is the dual ending.
>[psd] (palm plus hand)(new hand)
<psd_w> */pi'si:dZaw/, cf. Sem. *ts^3
>[mdw] (two hands){dekm} [puzzling]
<md_w> */mu:dZaw/, cf. Berber mraw
>To me it looks like all of the above bear some resemblence.
That's remarkable.
>particularly the [she]for one, Egyptian [w][shu]
Tocharian <she> comes from PIE *sem-. Egyptian <w'w> is not even
remotely similar.
Loren Petrich
In article <19980207081...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>Incidentally, the Tocharians have a very distinctive material culture, which
>shows no signs of intrusive development throughout the Bronze and early Iron
>Age periods. We also have a full set of extremely well-preserved bodies, so we
>even know what they wore and what they looked like (rather like Norwegians, as
>it turns out.)
I wonder how they compare to other European populations.
Steve Whittet
In article <19980207080...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>
>> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>>Date: 2/6/98 3:03 PM Mountain
>
>Sigh. Steve, it ain't what you don't know that'll kill you, it's what you
>think you know that ain't so.
>
>>the evidence for people in the Tarim before the Tang
>>[600's AD] is sketchy at best...
>
>For the time-depth of the Tocharians, I refer you to THE JOURNAL OF
>INDO-EUROPEAN STUDIES, v. 23, nos. 3&4, Fall/Winter 1995.
>
>Particularly Victor Mair's article, _Prehistoric Caucasoid
>Corpses of the Tarim Basin_.
>
>"The earliest settlers... appear to have entered the Tarim Basin
>from the north and northwest before 1800 BCE..."
Thank you for making my point. I doubt you could be more sketchy
You list no settlements, give no site descriptions, don't tell
us what culture in the north provided the source popyulation...
>
>>The peoples of Central Europe were connected very early
>>by rivers like the Danube, Dneiper, Dneister, Don Rhine,
>>Rhone and Po Macedonia was well situated to take advantage
>>of these trade relations.
>
>-- this is true, but irrelevant. Ancient trade commonly
>passed from hand to hand with multiple intermediaries.
I agree it did. Nevertheless when a call went out that Alexander
was raising an army the news traveled quickly along the rivers
and men followed them to him to join the expedition.
>
>Dates: Celts make contact with Alexander, 335 BC.
>This was a diplomatic contact, and did not involve
>mercenary service.
>
>Celts advance into Thrace, 281 BC. (56 years later)
>and thereafter attack areas in Greece and Anatolia.
Usually mass movements are preceded by scouts who make
the first contacts. The diplomats are followed by
businessmen, adventurers, and entrepeneurs, others
come on their own as mercenaries and it is on the basis
of their experiences that tribal decisions are made as
to whether to campaign as a tribe. 56 years is not a long
period for this process in Alexanders time.
>
>So yes, Celts were employed widely as mercenaries in
>the eastern Hellenistic world... after Alexander's lifetime.
>(In Sicily and southern Italy, somewhat earlier.)
And in Iberia, Grek and Phoenician mercenaries serve in Egypt
c 700-800 BC. in Carthage after c 500 BC mercenaries are
recruited from Scicily, Italy, Africa, Iberia, Gaul, Sardinia...
In Macedonia tributes in the form of slaves (slavs) are recieved
and mustered into the amies.
>
>The Germanics were isolated from the Mediterranean world
>by the Celts, who at this time stretched all the way
>from Gaul across southern Germany (including Bohemia
>until the 2nd century) and on into the Danube valley.
Thats where the rivers come into play. They allow a
culture upriver to communicate with a culture downriver
through the intervening territories controlled by a
third party which may or may not establish control
points of the rivers to tax or monitor the trade.
Baltic amber first reaches the mediterranean in the
Chalcolithic.
>The Germanics began pressing southward in a body somewhat later,
>pressing the Celts before them.
We aren't really talking about the movements of people
en masse, but rather the spheres of influence in which
their adventuresome youth might be expected to sign up
to go campaigning or what later is called Viking.
>
>Above from THE CELTIC WORLD, ed. Miranda Green.
>
>The first Germanics to come into contact with the
>Mediterranean world were the Cimbri, who burst through
>Gaul and invaded Italy around 100 BC. (200 years
>after Alexander.)
Yes, how much time depth does it take for a people
to establish a working familiarity with the resources
of an adjacent territory to the point where they are
willing to leave home en masse as a people to invade it?
What I think you will find is that modern migration theories
[Anthony] allow a few centuries for this process to build
up a head of steam.
>
>As for the Slavs:
>
>"More plausibly, the Slavs, the _sclaveni_ of Byzantine
>sources, were... based between the Dnestr and Dnepre in
>the east and the Vistula and Oder in the west
The Vistula and Oder are North of Macedonia, but the entire system
of rivers The Dneister, Dneiper, Don and Danube feed into the Black
Sea in the territory of the Thraceans. The Thraceans who were a big
part of Alexandrs army were in the same situation as Britain in WWII
They were the staging area from which he collected his troops and
prepared his campaign.
>during the late fifth and earlier sixth centuries AD...
>Their movement westward and southward was facilitated by
>the advance of Germanic peoples into the Danube lands.
These movements of peoples are part of a process which dates back
to the beaker culture. Look at the range of Balkan painted and
impressed ware cultures, c 6000-5000 BC. They are basically
contained south and west of the Carpathian mountains.
A millenia later Danubian linear incised pottery cultures
are found from the Seine to Anatolia in the period 5000 -4000 BC.
They are bordered on the east and north by funnel rim pottery
cultures and bowl cultures emerging c 4000-3000 BC on the Wesel,
Elbe, Oder and Vistula.
Now look at the metal working cemnters. c 4500-3500 BC they
include Slovakian, Transylvanian, West Balkan, East Balkan
and Anatolian centers roughly in the same places as the
Balkan painted and impressed ware. c 3500 -2500 BC advanced
Caucasian techniques turn up in Northern Italy, the south
of France, Iberia, and the Northern part of the Balkans
Carpathia and Slovakia. 2500-1500 BC there are three major
interconnected centers in Iberia, Cornwall and the Balkan
Carpathian region.
The Beaker network encompasses Atlantic Europe, Iberia,
the Rhine Rhone link to the south of France and the
mediterranean with a connection via the Po across
Northern Italy to the Adriatic and Macedonia.
Eastern influences are concentrated along the Black Sea
and its rivers controlled by Thrace.
Mesopotamian trade networks extend from Anatolia to the IVC
and south through Syria and Caanan to Egypt. They connect
to Europe via the Black Sea and the Aegean.
Now look at the language dispersals. Start with Anatolia,
the Hittites and Luwians connect Mesopotamia to The Greeks
and Thraceans across the Aegean and Black Sea
The Thracians connect to Indo-Iranian and Finno Ugarian
along the Dneiper, Dneister and Don off the Black Sea
The Macedonoians connect to the Illyrians along the Danube.
From the headwaters of the Danube they reach the Slavs
The Rhine carries them north and the Rhone south along
the border with the Celts in the Old Beaker network.
The people of the Baltic Germanic cultures in the territory
of the funnel rim pottery cultures bordering the Danubian
linear incised pottery and the metal working areas of the
Carpathians and Bohemia have been there for millenia in
contact with the people of the Danube.
>Within a short time of their recognition in our written
>sources, Slav settlers had entered Bohemia, passed from
>there down the Elbe valley, extended north into Poland
>and eastern Germany, and south into the Balkans by
>way of Bulgaria."
>
>-- in other words, the Slavs weren't in contact with the
>Graeco-Roman peoples at all until the fifth century AD,
>800 years after Alexander's death.
Don't confuse language groups and peoples. There were people
there who were later called Slavs in the Chalcolithic.
Archaeologists refer to them differently than linguists
by their assemblages of artifacts and the sites at which
they are found rather than by language. The fairly rapid
spread of language along rivers in association with metals
and trading networks is a more parsimonious explanation than
large scale migrations of peoples at a time when people rarely
went farther from home than they could walk except as in the
case of Alexander accompanying an army.
>
>This from THE OXFORD PREHISTORY OF EUROPE, ed. Barry Cunliffe.
>-- S.M. Stirling
I am pleased that you are a reader, perhaps by giving
some thought to the implications of your reading you
will be encouraged to read more.
steve
Steve Whittet
In article <34dd0e8d...@news.wxs.nl>, m...@wxs.nlÔ says...
>
>On 7 Feb 1998 06:36:45 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>
>>Be more specific. Pre-Indo-Iranian is a vauge linguistic reference
>>Lets try and pin it down. What peoples from what sites speaking
>>what language moved to what other sites when, and how did this
>>result in Tocharian? We have discussed this before Miquel. There
>>is no evidence of an archaeological nature which supports a 3,000
>>year gap between the theoretical origins of this language and
>>the first recorded evidence of its existence.
>
>a possibility. Since we have discussed this before, and we don't want
>to go through any of *that* again, that's A-f-a-n-a-s-i-e-v-o, dated
>before 3,000 BC, located near Minusinsk Basin, Upper Yenisey
>(Khakasskaja A.O) [90 E, 54 N] and in the Altai Mountains (Gorno-
>Altajskaja A.O.) [86 E, 52 N].
Yes, Miguel he does discuss them as a possibility.
Now how does he get this to fit with his statement that
"uniguely similar items of vocabulary and grammar are shared with
Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian?
He doesn't. He is hard pressed to explain the necessary 4000 km
migration. He says. "The archaeological evidence of the Tarim
basin is still too poorly known to permit us to test our
linguistic model archaeologically" p 61
He says "The Tocharians may have found their origins in the
eastern Andonovo or Afanaseivo cultures." p 62
In order to conect these three cultures the Andonovo on the Aral Sea
the Afanaseivo on the Yenisay north of the Tarim basin and the
Tocharian in the Tarim basin he sort of casually implies that
a mere 15 geographic degrees is as nothing and takes one group
of people clustered on a river within a seventy mile radius
and compares them to another group of people clustered in
a seventy mile radius on another river 1,000 miles away.
That he does this c 1400 BC when people rarely went
farther from home than they could walk is instructive.
The Aral Sea and the rivers leading south from it,
the Syr Dayra and the Amu Dayra were a part of the
route followed by Alexander. The Afanaseivo on the Yennisey
are separated from the Tarim basin by one of the worst deserts
on earth, the Gobi. The only route through it is along the Tarim
river flowing west to east not North to south. Alexander followed
this route down the Amu Dayra also called the river Oxus to Bactria
and then went on to Taxila at the headwaters of the Indus.
The headwaters of the Oxus flow west then north from the same
point in the Pamir mountains that the River Tarim flows east.
>
>Can we prove the Afanasievans spoke Tocharian? No, archaeology and
>langauge don't mix that way.
So why suggest there is a connection? The only reason I can
see is that he needs to deal with the time depth and he really
can't find a plausible connection.
>Do we know where they went after the
>Afanasievo phase in the Altai, and do we know where they came from
>before the Afansievo phase? Not really. This is not a part of the
>world where extensive archaeological surveys have been done yet.
I agree. So does Mallory.
>
>But the fact that the Tocharians were where they were and spoke the
>language that they spoke is guarantee enough that if we find their
>trail, it will be from the Ukraine or Russia leading east, roughly
>through what is now Kazakhstan.
Why isn't the mechanism of Alexanders Army, composed as it was
of IE speakers, following the route it followed and arriving
before there is any evidence of Tochrian as a language
exactly the 4000 km migration malloery requires?
>
>> If some kind of "pan-IE pidgin" would have emerged in
>>>Alexander's army, ridiculous though it is, the result still would not
>>>have been anything like Tocharian. Tocharian is *not* a pidgin
>>>language, it does *not* contain a happy-crazy mix ("conglomeration")
>>>of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what have you.
>>
>>Mallory seems to think it does.
>
>No, you think Mallory thinks it does. Different thing.
He says "uniguely similar items of vocabulary and grammar
are shared with Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic
and possibly Phrygian. How have I misunderstood him?
>
>Now I understand your reluctance to let this thing go. All that other
>stuff about Egyptians and Phoenicians and Sea Peoples and Shang Olmecs
>is all very nice, but it's all been said before. The notion that the
>Tocharians are a runaway band of soldiers of Alexander's campaign is,
>I believe, your own idea. Your Geisteskind. And it's not a bad idea
>at all. The timing and the geography roughly fit. It makes sense,
>provided, of course, that you don't know Tocharian.
Ok thats fair. I don't know the first thing about the
linguistics of Tocharian other than that its a centum language,
which some scholars thought might actually be Celtic,
has two major dialects A and B after the major towns where it
was discovered which are so makedly different they might be
two different languages with Tocharian A on its way to
becoming a dead language has similar adjectival suffixes
ith Slavic, a medio passive enfding in -r which had been
retained in latin Irish Hittite and Phrygian and cognate
words shared only with Greek.
It uses:
pacer pater father
macer mater mother
tkacer daughter
procer brother
ser sister
ku hound
yakwe equus horse
ko bos cow
suwo sus sow
>
>But why drag Egyptian into it again? Just when we thought you were
>defending a "Pan-IE pidgin", it's back to Egyptian again. Even if
>your attempts at comparative Egypto-Indo-European linguistics weren't
>so lame, it still wouldn't be very consistent.
I am just setting the groundwork for my version of a unified field theory:)
>
>>[w][shu] (one)
>
>"One" is <w'w> */'wu33uw/, cf. Semitic *wHd. I don't know what the
>[shu] is doing there, or what it means. Is that sh-w or s-h-w?
The chick hieroglyphic is used for the god of wind [shu]
and has the sound [shu] (double u) [w], [ou] or [u]
>
>>is pretty common as the unit, but [i] is also used
>>what it looks like is all these languages are counting fingers
>>then palms and hands. Fingers are [w] or [i] after you get to
>>five the units change using p or d for hand
>
>No comment.
>
>>[snw](second w) instead of {du wa}(two w)
><sn.wj> */si'nuwwaj/, cf. Sem *t_ny
>
>>[hmt](sum of three ones) or amount instead of {tri i}(three)fingers
><xmtw> */'xamtaw/
>If we expand Steve's recursive "etymology" of [hmt], we get: (sum of
>(sum of (sum of (sum of (sum of (sum of ( .. INFINITY ... ) ones )
>ones ) ones ) ones) ones ) ones ).
its the Egyptian word for sum or amount as well as the number three
and seems to have the sense of English few. Compare few Egyptian
[fw] three to [fdw](four)
>
>>[fdw]fourth w) compares to GMC {fidwor} kwet w
><jfdw> */jif'daw/, cf. Hausa <fud.u>
>But Germanic *fidwor COMES FROM *kwetwor-, so it DOESN'T compare.
but *kwetwor compares also; <kwet wor>, (fourth w)
>
>>[diw](fifth w){penke w} [is that supposed to explain anything?]
(fifth w) Egyptian [d] is a drawing of a hand or palm
so [diw] is a palm plus one finger, five fingers, one hand
><djw> */'di:jaw/
>
>
>>[sisw](sixth w){shesht i}(second set of w) [?]
><sjsw> */'sa?saw/, cf. Sem. *s^ds^
>
>>[sfhw](seventh w){sedm i} [?]
><sfxw> */'safxaw/, cf. Sem. *s^b3
>
>>[hmnw](sum of four twos){ok to}
><xmnw> */xa'ma:naw/, cf. Sem. *t_mny
>It's not ok-to, it's okt-o:, it's not "sum of four twos", it's "two
>fours". *ok^t- is "4", -o: is the dual ending.
In Egyptian its (sum [hm] of four twos) in IE (two fours)
>
>>[psd] (palm plus hand)(new hand)
><psd_w> */pi'si:dZaw/, cf. Sem. *ts^3
>
>>[mdw] (two hands){dekm} [puzzling]
><md_w> */mu:dZaw/, cf. Berber mraw
>
>>To me it looks like all of the above bear some resemblence.
>That's remarkable.
>
>>particularly the [she]for one, Egyptian [w][shu]
>Tocharian <she> comes from PIE *sem-. Egyptian <w'w> is not even
>remotely similar.
It isn't until you realise that Egyptian [w] is written using
Egyptian [shu] and the second [w] drops off very early, so its
just [shu]
Steve Whittet
In article <19980207082...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>
>>What prevents Tocharian from being the result of a multi lingualIE army
>marching and serving together for a number of years?
>
>-- well, the basic structure of the language, for starters.
>
>Next, leaving aside that (which makes your hypothesis a rather obvious
>absurdity to anyone who knows any linguistics) one of the notable features
of
>Tocharian is the _lack_ of influence from the Indo-Iranian languages.
Tocharian shows a lack of influence of Indo Iranian languages until very
late, after c 200 BC, not a total lack of influence.
>
> Somehow Alexander managed to have a whole bunch of mercenaries
>wander off a thousand miles further east than he ever got, and
>they didn't include any Persians or Saka or Bactrians?
Both the Amu Darya or Oxus and the Syr Darya flow into the Aral Sea
Alexander followed the Oxus to its headwaters in the Pamir Mountains
or Bactria where it and the Tamir river which flows through the Tarim
basin share a common source.
From the Oaxus Alexander continued south to the Indus where he built
ships to sail to the Gulf because he couldn't contact his but fleet
following in the Persian Gulf.
His Admirals sailed into the Bay of Bengal while his cavalry went as
far as the Tarim and the Ghanges.
>
>
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Steve Whittet
In article <19980207082...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
>language since the second millenium BC and was never spoken anywhere but
>central Anatolia.
>
>>Central Anatolia is where Alexander picked up the bulk of
>his army.
>
>-- you don't _read_ very well, do you? I just mentioned that Hittite had
been
>_extinct for nearly a thousand years_ when Alexander went through.
You seem to have missed that in addition to Hittite, Central Anatolia
was home to Phrygian with which Tocharian, Hittite, Latin and Irish
share features such as those to which you alluded, for example a
medio passive ending in -r.
>
>
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
Steve Whittet
In article <19980207082...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>
mix
>("conglomeration") of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what
have
>you.
>
>>Mallory seems to think it does.
>
>
>"...Tocharian's relation to the European languages offers some hope of a
>solution. It weights the similarities shared between Tocharian, Celtic,
Italic
>and Hittite as essentially archaic features inherited from the
>Proto-Indo-European language at a very early period. These grammatical
features
>were then replaced in later Proto-Indo-European by new forms that spread
among
>the ancestors of Greek, Armenian and Indo-Iranian, but not to what had then
>become the outer periphery of the Proto-Indo-European continuu -- the
ancestors
>of Celtic and Italic on the west, Hittiteand possibly Phyrgian on the south,
>and Tocharian on the east."
>
>-- J.P. Mallory, IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS, p. 61.
The linquistic relationshipwith both the Indic and Iranian
neighbors seems to date from a very late period and can
generally be attributed to the influence of Bhuddist
missionaries as they pressed eastward."
"For closer linguistic connections we must look to Europe
where *uniquely* similar items of vocabulary and grammar
are shared with Baltic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and
possibly Phrygian and other languages"
"the Tocharian words for hundred (A:kant, B kante) showed it
to be unequivocally a centum language"
"The Tocharian word for fish was the same as the Germanic,
Baltic and Slavic words for Salmon." p 58
>
>
>-- S.M. Stirling
steve
JoatSimeon
> whi...@shore.net (Steve
Steve, you're issuing a cloud of squid-ink again to obscure the essential
loopiness of your initial hypothesis. Population movements in the Balkans in
2500 BC have nothing, repeat nothing, to do with possible contacts between the
Macedonians and the Slavs or, God love us, the Balts.
>I doubt you could be more sketchyYou list no settlements, give no site
descriptions
OK, if you want to gum up the works and pretend this is a seminar,
"A summary of some of Han's more important findings is as follows:
1. Seventy kilometers west of the lake bed of Lop Nor along the Konch Darya...
excavations of 42 graves... The skulls are definitely Europoid
(dolichocephalic) and closely resemble the Proto-European pattern with some
Nordic features... The individuals in these graves were close to the Afanasievo
type (roughly third millenium; parallel with the late Proto-Indo-European
culture known as Yamna (c. 3500-2500) which has also been found in the steppes
of South Siberia and Kazakhstan... The occupants of these graves displayed
affinities with specimimens from the Andronovo horizon (roughly second
millenium BC... Subsequent readings together with additional types of evidence
-- including indications of bronze implements -- put the cluster of graves 3800
BP +- several centuries (they are calibrated at just over 4000 BP).
2. The Yambulak burial ground near Hami
3. From a site near Mongghol Kora (Zhousu) in the Tekes River valley of the
Tien Shan...
4. From the Sampul graveyard near Lop Nor on the southwestern edge of the
Taklamakan desert, 56 skuls dating to approximately 2200 BP...
5. On the outskirts of the ancient city of Loulan itself is another cemetary
dating to around 1900 BP...
-- and if you think I'm going to type this whole thing out for you, think
again. Go read it!
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Re: Tocharian was:re The words (suffer) and (sniff)<BR>
>From: pet...@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)<BR>
>I wonder how they compare to other European populations.<BR>
-- well, I'm eagerly awaiting the publication of the 1996 conference on the
Tarim Basin at the University of Pennsylvania.
The preliminary DNA studies and direct observations indicate that there were
always a mixture of types in the Tarim. The bulk of the pre-Uighur population
seesm to have resembled contemporary Central and Northern Europeans -- tall,
often fair-haired types. There were also Indo-Afghan elements, and over time a
gradually increasing East Asian element.
-- S.M. Stirling
Malcolm
In article <6bi24q$6...@fridge.shore.net>, Steve Whittet
<whi...@shore.net> writes
>>>Date: 2/6/98 3:03 PM Mountain
>there who were later called Slavs in the Chalcolithic.
>
period cover please?
>
>steve
Malcolm Elliott
--
mal...@castlebar.demon.co.uk
JoatSimeon
>Steve Whittet<BR>
whi...@shore.net> writes<BR>
Date: 2/6/98 3:03 PM Mountain<BR>
> There were people there who were later called Slavs in the Chalcolithic.
-- no, there weren't, Steve.
If we're talking about the Chalcolithic period -- fourth and third millenium BC
-- the ancestors of the Slavs, like the ancestors of everyone else, were
certainly around somewhere.
However, there were no Slavs, because Slavs are people who speak a Slavic
language and in 3000 BC there _weren't_ any Slav-speakers (or Celtic, Germanic,
Greek or Hittite speakers), just Proto-Indo-European speakers.
It's like saying there were "English" speakers around in Julius Caesar's
time... centuries before the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and so forth settled in
England.
-- S.M. Stirling
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On 7 Feb 1998 17:52:59 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>He says "The Tocharians may have found their origins in the
>eastern Andonovo
A-n-d-r-o-n-o-v-o
>or Afanaseivo cultures." p 62
A-f-a-n-a-s-i-e-v-o
>In order to conect these three cultures the Andonovo on the Aral Sea
>the Afanaseivo on the Yenisay
Y-e-n-i-s-e-y
>north of the Tarim basin and the
>Tocharian in the Tarim basin he sort of casually implies that
>a mere 15 geographic degrees is as nothing and takes one group
>of people clustered on a river within a seventy mile radius
>and compares them to another group of people clustered in
>a seventy mile radius on another river 1,000 miles away.
>That he does this c 1400 BC when people rarely went
>farther from home than they could walk is instructive.
You can walk quite a long way in a thousands years.
>The Afanaseivo on the Yennisey
>are separated from the Tarim basin by one of the worst deserts
>on earth, the Gobi.
Bullshit. You come down the Altai Mountains and you're in Dzungaria.
Then you cross the Tien Shan at Urumchi and you're in the Tarim Basin.
That's how the Turks did it! No need to go a 1000 km east into the
Gobi.
>>>Mallory seems to think it does.
>>
>>No, you think Mallory thinks it does. Different thing.
>
>He says "uniguely similar items of vocabulary and grammar
>are shared with Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic
>and possibly Phrygian. How have I misunderstood him?
Good question. How have you misunderstood him? Completely.
You have, in particular, misunderstood the word "shared".
What this means is that there is a number of Tocharian words and
grammatical features that can be traced back to Indo-European words
and grammatical features, and that some of the words and grammatical
features in Balto-Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic, *but not in
Indo-Iranian*, can be traced back to Indo-European.
Compare: "uniquely similar items of anatomy and physiology are shared
between Primates [Tocharian] and Insectivores [Balto-Slavic], Bats
[Armenian] and Rodents [Germanic], and not with Carnivores
[Indo-Iranian]". Does this mean that Primates are a "conglomerate" of
Insectivores, Bats and Rodents? Does this mean Primates fly or live
in sewers? No, it means that these orders share many primitive
Mammalian [Indo-European] characteristics, that have been lost [4
instead of 5 front claws] or replaced [teeth, gastro-intestinal tract]
in Carnivores.
Steve Whittet
In article <0UPtQhAl...@castlebar.demon.co.uk>,
mal...@castlebar.demon.co.uk says...
>>there who were later called Slavs in the Chalcolithic.
>>
>period cover please?
The Chalcolithic or copper age begins roughly 3500 BC-3000 BC
along with the rise of civilizations and improved techniques
in metal working. which takes us from the Naguada II period
into the Early Dynastic period in Egypt.
>>
>>steve
>
>Malcolm Elliott
steve
Brian M. Scott
On 7 Feb 1998 06:36:45 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>In article <350b99c0....@news.wxs.nl>, m...@wxs.nlÔ says...
[snip]
>>Even if there were foreign mercenaries, they would have communicated
>>in broken Greek.
>Have you ever read the story of Hanibal crossing the Alps? Do you
>know how many different nations were represented by mercenaries
>in the army he fielded? Greeks, Phoenicians and Punic Sea Peoples
>like the Peleset and Shardana who served in the armies of Egypt
>Numidian cavalry, Carthagineans, Iberians, Celts, Gauls and Germanics.
So?
>>If any kind of pidgin language would have emerged in Alexander's
>>army, unlikely though it is, it would have been pidgin Greek.
>Not necessarily. A pidgin might very well have developed in the ranks
>with soldiers from different units bartering for each others equipment
>or the spoils from a captured city.
The army began as a basically Greek-speaking army. Any early
additions would have had to learn at least some Greek. Greek would
have remained the common language and therefore the language that
later additions would have to learn. What's so hard to understand?
(And the circumstances weren't at all those in which pidgins arise.)
>>Let me ask a rhetorical question. Have you studied, or even as much
>>as seen, a Tocharian text? Was it Tocharian A or B? :-) Let me ask
>>another rhetorical question: had you seen a Tocharian text, would you
>>be able to recognize any Baltic, Slavic or Greek elements in it? What
>>about Phrygian? :-)
>>Please explain, for instance, how a mix of Slavic, Armenian, Greek and
>>Germanic might have yielded the Tocharian numerals:
>> Toch Egypt Slav Arm Grk Gmc PIE
>>1. she w *odi:nu mi hen- *ain- *oin-, *sem-
>>2. wi snw *duwa: erk'u duo *twai *duo:
>>3. trai hmt *trije erek treis *thri: *treies
>>4. sytwer fdw *chetu:re chork tettares *fidwor *kwetwores
>>5. pisy diw *penti hing pente *fimf *penkwe
>>6. shkas sisw*shesti vec heks *sehs *s^wek^s
>>7. shukt sfh*sedmi utn hepta *sebun *septm
>>8. okt hmnw*osmi ut okto: *ahto: *ok^to:
>>9. nyu psd *deventi inn ennea *niun *'newn
>>10. syak mdw *desenti t'asn deka *tehun *dek^m
>Just for the hell of it why not throw some Egyptian numerals into the mix.
[list deleted]
Apparently you didn't read very carefully, Steve: they're already
there in the second column.
>>It certainly looks as if Tocharian is descended from PIE by following
>>its own special set of soundlaws, completely different from any of the
>>other IE languages.
>To me it looks like all of the above bear some resemblence.
So <nyu> resembles <psd>, <syak> resembles <mdw>, and <pisy> resembles
<diw>? I suppose that Mary Lou Retton and Tara Lipinsky resemble Wilt
Chamberlain and Akebono, respectively.
Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
On 7 Feb 1998 18:09:36 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
[context snipped; response was a non sequitur]
>You seem to have missed that in addition to Hittite, Central Anatolia
>was home to Phrygian with which Tocharian, Hittite, Latin and Irish
>share features such as those to which you alluded, for example a
>medio passive ending in -r.
Polly want a cracker?
Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
On 7 Feb 1998 16:29:14 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
[snips]
>In article <19980207080...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>joats...@aol.comĚ says...
>>> whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>>>Date: 2/6/98 3:03 PM Mountain
>>Sigh. Steve, it ain't what you don't know that'll kill you, it's what you
>>think you know that ain't so.
>>>the evidence for people in the Tarim before the Tang
>>>[600's AD] is sketchy at best...
>>For the time-depth of the Tocharians, I refer you to THE JOURNAL OF
>>INDO-EUROPEAN STUDIES, v. 23, nos. 3&4, Fall/Winter 1995.
>>Particularly Victor Mair's article, _Prehistoric Caucasoid
>>Corpses of the Tarim Basin_.
>>"The earliest settlers... appear to have entered the Tarim Basin
>>from the north and northwest before 1800 BCE..."
>Thank you for making my point. I doubt you could be more sketchy
>You list no settlements, give no site descriptions, don't tell
>us what culture in the north provided the source popyulation...
He told you exactly where to find the information.
>>Dates: Celts make contact with Alexander, 335 BC.
>>This was a diplomatic contact, and did not involve
>>mercenary service.
>>Celts advance into Thrace, 281 BC. (56 years later)
>>and thereafter attack areas in Greece and Anatolia.
>Usually mass movements are preceded by scouts who make
>the first contacts. The diplomats are followed by
>businessmen, adventurers, and entrepeneurs, others
>come on their own as mercenaries
This description strikes me as more than a little anachronistic.
> and it is on the basis
>of their experiences that tribal decisions are made as
>to whether to campaign as a tribe. 56 years is not a long
>period for this process in Alexanders time.
A tribe would have gone through a few sets of decision-makers in 56
years.
>>The Germanics were isolated from the Mediterranean world
>>by the Celts, who at this time stretched all the way
>>from Gaul across southern Germany (including Bohemia
>>until the 2nd century) and on into the Danube valley.
>Thats where the rivers come into play. They allow a
>culture upriver to communicate with a culture downriver
>through the intervening territories controlled by a
>third party which may or may not establish control
>points of the rivers to tax or monitor the trade.
Anachronistic. Also, what rivers? C.300 BCE the Germanic tribes
weren't anywhere near the Danube, for instance.
>Baltic amber first reaches the mediterranean in the
>Chalcolithic.
Here we go again. Steve, how many times do we have to remind you that
this kind of trade was carried on through long series of
intermediaries?
>>The Germanics began pressing southward in a body somewhat later,
>>pressing the Celts before them.
>We aren't really talking about the movements of people
>en masse, but rather the spheres of influence in which
>their adventuresome youth might be expected to sign up
>to go campaigning or what later is called Viking.
Anachronistic.
>>The first Germanics to come into contact with the
>>Mediterranean world were the Cimbri, who burst through
>>Gaul and invaded Italy around 100 BC. (200 years
>>after Alexander.)
>Yes, how much time depth does it take for a people
>to establish a working familiarity with the resources
>of an adjacent territory to the point where they are
>willing to leave home en masse as a people to invade it?
That depends on what's pushing them (other tribes, overpopulation,
etc.).
> The fairly rapid
>spread of language along rivers in association with metals
>and trading networks is a more parsimonious explanation than
>large scale migrations of peoples
Except that large-scale migrations of peoples are reasonably well
attested, while 'fairly rapid spread of language along rivers in
association with metals and trading networks' is not, to the best of
my knowledge.
>I am pleased that you are a reader, perhaps by giving
>some thought to the implications of your reading you
>will be encouraged to read more.
You *are* an insulting bloke when you try.
Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
On 7 Feb 1998 17:52:59 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>In article <34dd0e8d...@news.wxs.nl>, m...@wxs.nlÔ says...
>>On 7 Feb 1998 06:36:45 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>>>Be more specific. Pre-Indo-Iranian is a vauge linguistic reference
>>>Lets try and pin it down. What peoples from what sites speaking
>>>what language moved to what other sites when, and how did this
>>>result in Tocharian? We have discussed this before Miquel. There
>>>is no evidence of an archaeological nature which supports a 3,000
>>>year gap between the theoretical origins of this language and
>>>the first recorded evidence of its existence.
>>You have read Mallory. He clearly suggests the Afanasievo culture as
>>a possibility. Since we have discussed this before, and we don't want
>>to go through any of *that* again, that's A-f-a-n-a-s-i-e-v-o, dated
>>before 3,000 BC, located near Minusinsk Basin, Upper Yenisey
>>(Khakasskaja A.O) [90 E, 54 N] and in the Altai Mountains (Gorno-
>>Altajskaja A.O.) [86 E, 52 N].
>Yes, Miguel he does discuss them as a possibility.
>Now how does he get this to fit with his statement that
>"uniguely similar items of vocabulary and grammar are shared with
>Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic and possibly Phrygian?
>He doesn't.
Nonsense: these elements are readily explicable as remnants of ancient
PIE features. See Mikael Thompson's comments, quoted by me elsewhere
in this thread.
> He is hard pressed to explain the necessary 4000 km
>migration. He says. "The archaeological evidence of the Tarim
>basin is still too poorly known to permit us to test our
>linguistic model archaeologically" p 61
Indeed. This means that the archaeological data neither support nor
refute the linguistic model.
>>Can we prove the Afanasievans spoke Tocharian? No, archaeology and
>>langauge don't mix that way.
It is in fact well known that language is independent of both culture
and genetic background.
>So why suggest there is a connection?
Because the Tokharians certainly didn't spontaneously generate, and
this hypothesis is at least not inconsistent with the data. It
remains merely a hypothesis, of course. As we all agree, the
archaelogical evidence is skimpy.
[snip]
>>But the fact that the Tocharians were where they were and spoke the
>>language that they spoke is guarantee enough that if we find their
>>trail, it will be from the Ukraine or Russia leading east, roughly
>>through what is now Kazakhstan.
>Why isn't the mechanism of Alexanders Army, composed as it was
>of IE speakers, following the route it followed and arriving
>before there is any evidence of Tochrian as a language
>exactly the 4000 km migration malloery requires?
For one reason, the IE languages represented in Alexander's army
couldn't possibly have given rise to Tokharian, which is distinctively
different from all of them.
>>> If some kind of "pan-IE pidgin" would have emerged in
>>>>Alexander's army, ridiculous though it is, the result still would not
>>>>have been anything like Tocharian. Tocharian is *not* a pidgin
>>>>language, it does *not* contain a happy-crazy mix ("conglomeration")
>>>>of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what have you.
>>>Mallory seems to think it does.
>>No, you think Mallory thinks it does. Different thing.
>He says "uniguely similar items of vocabulary and grammar
>are shared with Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Germanic
>and possibly Phrygian. How have I misunderstood him?
Apparently. He is saying that Tokharian shares certain features with
these language families, not that it is somehow a mixture of them.
The Germanic languages share uniquely similar items of vocabulary, but
none of them is a mixture of the others; they simply have common
ancestry.
[snip]
>>>[fdw]fourth w) compares to GMC {fidwor} kwet w
>><jfdw> */jif'daw/, cf. Hausa <fud.u>
>>But Germanic *fidwor COMES FROM *kwetwor-, so it DOESN'T compare.
>but *kwetwor compares also; <kwet wor>, (fourth w)
Except that PIE 'fourth' was *k^wtur-o-, where the notion of
ordinality is carried by the -o- formative and the zero grade first
syllable. This became IE *k^wtur(i)yo- and late- and post-IE
*k^weturto-, *k^wetwrto- (according to Szemere'nyi). The point is
that there is no IE *kwet 'fourth'.
Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
On 7 Feb 1998 18:17:06 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>In article <19980207082...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>>>: whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet)<BR>
>>>Date: 5/4/98 10:55 AM Mounta
>>>Tocharian is *not* a pidgin language, it does *not* contain a happy-crazy
>mix
>>("conglomeration") of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Phrygian and what
>have
>>you.
>>>Mallory seems to think it does.
>>-- no, he most certainly does not.
Apparently Steve thinks that this implies a particularly close
relationship between Tokharian and the Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic
subfamilies. But as Mallory points out in the quoted passage, the
similarities are merely instances of peripheral conservatism.
A couple of very recent posts in sci.lang explain the matter well.
<begin quoted matter>
From: Mikael Thompson <mith...@indiana.edu>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.tibet,sci.lang
Subject: Re: The Tocharians ala Celts
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 1998 20:50:02 -0500
<skipping to the relevant part>
And as for similarities between Tocharian and the Celtic language,
those consist of shared *retentions* from proto-Indo-European. They
tell *nothing* about later developments. Both are centum languages,
which means that they retained such sounds as k and g where other
languages changed them to ch, s, sh, or similar sounds. That doesn't
mean they constitute a subfamily of Indo-European--that is, that they
branched off later than the other languages--since all it does mean is
that the languages which DID change k, g, etc., changed those sounds
after THEY broke off from the other Indo-European. In fact, it
doesn't even mean THAT--it means that the "satem" langauges were in
close enough contact that changes from one of the languages spread to
some (but not all) of the others. (The changes in k, g, etc., didn't
happen in one stage, nor were the various changes shared by all the
languages. That means that the "satem" languages [an outdated term--a
precise term would be RUKI languages, but that would take us very far
afield] were already distinct enough as to be at least highly
divergent dialects, and probably separate languages, and fairly widely
separated.) In other words, the other languages, like Tocharian and
Celtic, were those spoken outside the region where the RUKI languages
(Indo-Iranian, Slavic, etc.) were spoken, but that would mean most of
the Eurasian continent! Moreover, Tocharian is a very distinctive set
of languages, and although I'm not an expert in Tocharian or Celtic by
any means, I certainly know that there are no strong similarities
between them *not shared by other Indo-European languages* that would
point to later contacts between them.
<end first post; begin second>
From: alde...@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: The Tocharians ala Celts
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 00:29:30 GMT
<skipping to the meat>
Actually, there is more than one feature shared among Anatolian,
Tokharian, Italic, and Celtic. Besides the irrelevant "centum" thing
(if we had no texts from the ancient languages, modern *Romance* would
be considered "satem"), a very important one is the passive verb
endings in *-r, so important that we no longer hold it diagnostic of
an Italo-Celtic unity. It is even found, as we now know, in Sanskrit,
where it was reanalyzed as a 3rd plural perfect marker.
As we now know, languages on the periphery of a linguistic family
(with respect to a central innovating community) often retain
conservative features that are lost in the center; this does not mean
that the retaining groups should be treated as a unity. In this case,
the central group is Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Balto-Slavic; the
other languages simply did not share in a number of innovations that
these did.
<end quoted matter>
Brian M. Scott
Anthony West
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (m...@wxs.nl) wrote:
: On 5 Feb 1998 19:33:21 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
: >Also, I wasn't aware that Etruscan had even been decyphered, much less shown to
: >have any relationship to the IE group -- has there been a recent publication?
: Short summary of my position: much about Etruscan remains unclear.
: What we *can* interpret shows that Etruscan is *not* Indo-European
: [e.g. the numerals and kinship terms are unrelated, etc.], however it
: does show that Etruscan (and the related Lemnian and Rhaetic) are
: quite close to Indo-European, maybe especially to the Anatolian
: branch.
[snips]
Consider also Hurrian, another Anatolian language which is
clearly not IE but is rather IE-like in some formal structure
with suffixing nominal cases including widespread nominative
/-S/.
Other mountainous regions which, like Anatolia, were early
centers of agricultural diffusion (e.g., the Mesoamerican and
Papuan highlands) show a dazzling range of linguistic
diversity, with distantly related and unrelated families
sprinkled across adjoining valleys. One can imagine an
Anatolia 5000 yrs BP, where the neolithic had already been
going strong for 6000 yrs, with similar diversity. There is
room for an Ur-IE Stock, including IE proper and related
families, alongside an Ur-Hattic Stock, an Ur-Semitic Stock,
an Ur-Caucasian stock or two....
-Tony West aaw...@critpath.org
Philadelphia
Anthony West
JoatSimeon (joats...@aol.com) wrote:
: >iguel Carrasquer Vidal)<BR>
: >Date: 5/4/98 7:23 PM Mountain Standard Time<BR>
: >There are plenty of arguments against Renfrew's hypothesis as presented
: originally ("A & L, The Puzzle of IE Origins"). My views are substantially
: different in the details. I'd love to hear...
: -- OK, tho' nothing startling:
: a) IE languages are clearly intrusive in Anatolia in historic times. Eg.,
: Hittite shows clear signs of 'peripheral conservatism', and has a massive
: freight of Hattic (non-IE) loanwords.
: The Hittites preserved Hattic as a learned and liturgical speech, so the
: substratum influence is clearly attributable to it. The clear implication is
: that Hittite moved into Anatolia and was superimposed on a Hattic-speaking
: population.
[snips]
The implication is that Hittites were intrusive into Hattus,
where it was imposed on a Hattic-speaking population. But the
current evidence has them intruding from Kanesh, a mere 150
km to the SE (not exactly on the main road from the Ukraine
to Bogazkoy.
-Tony West aaw...@critpath.org
Philadelphia
JoatSimeon
>aaw...@netnews.CritPath.Org (Anthony West)<BR>
>Other mountainous regions which, like Anatolia, were early centers of
agricultural diffusion (e.g., the Mesoamerican and Papuan highlands) show a
dazzling range of linguistic diversity, with distantly related and unrelated
families sprinkled across adjoining valleys.
-- true but not, I think, relevant to the IE homeland problem. The fact of the
matter is that at the time of our first records, every IE language in Anatolia
is quite clearly intrusive, and contains unmistakable evidence of influence by
non-IE substrate languages. (Eg., Hittite and Hattic.) None of them were
native to the area, therefore.
It seems rather odd that IE would be so successful outside Anatolia and so
unsuccessful within it, if this was the point of origin.
Furthermore, the time-depth makes it plain that we cannot speak meaningfully of
PIE much further back than the fourth millenium BC. The extant early
languages -- even including Hittite and Luwian -- simply haven't undergone
enough change to allow for an earlier date of separation. Eg., the extreme
similarities between Mycenaean Greek and Vedic Sanskrit. (Ishiram manas and
hieron menos as poetic tags meaning "mighty and powerful", for instance.)
If there is a "Proto-Indo-European Homeland", it must be where the PIE-speakers
were _between 4000 and 3000 BCE_.
IMHO, all the evidence would indicate that _at that time_ they were in the
Eurasian steppe zone on either side of the Urals and not in Anatolia, the
Balkans, or eastern Europe.
-- S.M. Stirling
Akan Ifriqiya
sc...@math.csuohio.edu says...
>
>On 1 Feb 1998 15:07:55 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>>joats...@aol.comĢ says...
>>>Both "cow" and "bos" are derived from the same PIE word, roughly *gwous
(my
>>>machine isn't equipped to do diacrital marks and stuff).
>
>>[gw] (type of bull),
>>compare
>>[ghs] (gazelle)
>
>At least <gazelle> has Afro-Asiatic ancestry, being apparently from
>Arabic <ghasa:l>, so an Egyptian connection isn't altogether unlikely.
A small side note:
Gazelle is indeed from arabic: ghazala meaning doe or the gazelle in
gneral. [root: ghain za' lam: verbal form is related to amorous activities.
Apparently the ancient arabes were much taken with the gazelle's eyes.
Ramira Naka
Loren Petrich
In article <34dce92b...@news.csuohio.edu>,
Brian M. Scott <sc...@math.csuohio.edu> wrote:
>On 7 Feb 1998 06:36:45 GMT, whi...@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>>In article <350b99c0....@news.wxs.nl>, m...@wxs.nlÔ says...
>>> Toch Egypt Slav Arm Grk Gmc PIE
>>>1. she w *odi:nu mi hen- *ain- *oin-, *sem-
>>>2. wi snw *duwa: erk'u duo *twai *duo:
>>>3. trai hmt *trije erek treis *thri: *treies
>>>4. sytwer fdw *chetu:re chork tettares *fidwor *kwetwores
>>>5. pisy diw *penti hing pente *fimf *penkwe
>>>6. shkas sisw*shesti vec heks *sehs *s^wek^s
>>>7. shukt sfh*sedmi utn hepta *sebun *septm
>>>8. okt hmnw*osmi ut okto: *ahto: *ok^to:
>>>9. nyu psd *deventi inn ennea *niun *'newn
>>>10. syak mdw *desenti t'asn deka *tehun *dek^m
>>Just for the hell of it why not throw some Egyptian numerals into the mix.
>Apparently you didn't read very carefully, Steve: they're already
>there in the second column.
And it's not too difficult to see that the IE languages have
recognizably related words for numbers -- and that the Egyptian words are
unrelated, except for perhaps "6" and "7".
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On 8 Feb 1998 06:32:21 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>-- true but not, I think, relevant to the IE homeland problem. The fact of the
>matter is that at the time of our first records, every IE language in Anatolia
>is quite clearly intrusive, and contains unmistakable evidence of influence by
>non-IE substrate languages. (Eg., Hittite and Hattic.) None of them were
>native to the area, therefore.
So little is known about Hattic, that it's hard to say whether much of
it is present in Hittite. I certainly have never seen any mention of
Hattic influence on Luwian. Looking at the possible NW-Caucasian
affiliation of Hattic (V.V.Ivanov, in "Drevnjaja Anatolija", 1985) and
at the situation on the map before the Hittite advance from Kanesh to
Hatussas, it is rather the Hatti who appear to be intrusive, wedged in
between the Palaians to the north and the Luwians/Nesites to the
south, maybe coming from the same general area east whence the nomadic
Kaska in later days raided the Hittite Empire.
The crucial issue is how we interpret the many features that
distinguish Hittite and the other Anatolian languages from the rest of
Indo-European, in both grammar and lexicon. Take for instance the
fact that Hittite has no feminine gender, only common (m/f) and
neuter. The traditional explanation has been that Hittite, under the
influence of Anatolian substrates, lost all traces of the IE feminine.
Increasingly, the alternative viewpoint has been gaining ground,
namely that Hittite represents the original state (animate/inanimate
gender opposition), and that a feminine gender category was a later
innovation, that emerged after Anatolian had become separated from the
main body of IE. The same applies to other features, like the Hittite
verbal system, which is quite unlike the Graeco-Sanskrit verbal system
that had been reconstructed for PIE. If we simply assume that the
original verbal system was much like the Hittite one (with separate
active -mi and stative -hi verbs, with a simple distinction beweeen
past and present, etc.), that immediately explains many things about
the Germanic verbal system, that can now be seen as conservative,
instead of as a radically impoverished Graeco-Sanskrit system.
>Furthermore, the time-depth makes it plain that we cannot speak meaningfully of
>PIE much further back than the fourth millenium BC. The extant early
>languages -- even including Hittite and Luwian -- simply haven't undergone
>enough change to allow for an earlier date of separation. Eg., the extreme
>similarities between Mycenaean Greek and Vedic Sanskrit. (Ishiram manas and
>hieron menos as poetic tags meaning "mighty and powerful", for instance.)
Greek and Sanskrit are very close indeed. I don't believe in
glottochronology, but as a rough estimate a 3rd or 4th millennium date
for the separation of Greek and Indo-Iranian seems reasonable, barring
exceptional circumstances. And it is only logical that the place of
separation should be somewhere in the Russian/Ukrainian steppe, which
connects the Balkans and Greece on the one hand with Central Asia,
India and Iran on the other.
Hittite and Luwian is a different matter. The reinterpretation of the
Hittite data that I mentioned above has important consequences for the
time depth. When Hittite was considered a run-of-the-mill IE language
that rapidly lost large parts of its IE heritage under the influence
of the aboriginal populations of Anatolia, it would have been possible
to trace Hittite back to the same date and place as Greek and
Sanskrit. But that position becomes untenable once we see that
Hittite in many respects represents the most archaic stage of IE, and
that a long time of separation is required for non-Anatolian IE (or at
least Indo-Greek) to acquire the innovations that separate it from
Anatolian (creation of the feminine gender, the dual, the aorist,
reinterpretation of the past tense of the -hi conjugation as the
perfect, creation of the optative and subjunctive moods, restructuring
of the middle voice, creation of new kinship terminology, significant
changes in the lexicon, etc.). I don't believe in glottochronology,
but one or two millennia between the separation of Hittite and the
separation of Greek and Indo-Iranian seems reasonable.
>If there is a "Proto-Indo-European Homeland", it must be where the PIE-speakers
>were _between 4000 and 3000 BCE_.
As I have argued, I would see that as the date of an "Indo-Greek"
homeland. The separation between Anatolian and the rest might very
well fit the 5500 date for the expansion of farming peoples out of the
Balkans into temperate Europe and the steppe lands.
JoatSimeon
>l (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)<BR>
>Date: 2/8/98 2:29 AM Mo
>So little is known about Hattic, that it's hard to say whether much of it is
present in Hittite.
-- that's a bit of an exaggeration. Hattic can be read; it's preserved as a
liturgical language in Hittite archives; and the massive freight of loanwords
and syntax in Hittite is also clear.
The nature of the loanwords is also indicative -- virtually all the vocabulary
for things like towns, legal terminology, etc. The linguistic ancestors of the
Hittites picked up their 'civilized' words from the Hattic-speakers, and also
preserved it as a language to speak to the local deities.
>That Hittite represents the original state (animate/inanimate<BR>
gender opposition), and that a feminine gender category was a later innovation,
that emerged after Anatolian had become separated from the main body of IE.
-- well, the 'peripheral conservatism' features of Hittite are not a new
discovery; it's been obvious since it was decyphered that it had very archaic
features.
The usual explanation -- that the language ancestral to Hittite split off from
PIE earlier than any of the others and lost contact with them as its speakers
moved southeast through the Balkans -- seems perfectly reasonable and equally,
the most parsimonious. The Old Assyrian _karum_ texts dating to the late 3rd
and early 2nd millenium show a mostly Hattic and other non-IE population in
central and east-central Anatolia, so that provides a _terminus_; if IE
speakers were present there at that time, why didn't they show up in the (very
extensive) texts? Instead there are a very thin scattering of IE names,
growing somewhat more numerous as time goes by.
> that immediately explains many things about the Germanic verbal system, that
can now be seen as conservative...
-- Germanic _is_ conservative in some respects -- peripheral conservatism
again. It was the northwesternmost of the IE languages. (Or, for that matter,
take a look at Hittite-Luwian "watar"... 8-)). However, Germanic isn't nearly
as eccentric as Hittite-Luwian; Gothic shows that the inflectional system was
much closer to the IE norm.
Both Hittite and proto-Germanic were isolated from the main 'core' areas of the
IE languages, where unity persisted longest and innovations were made before
the final breakup; Greek, Armenian, Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic.
>I don't believe in glottochronology, but as a rough estimate a 3rd or 4th
millennium date for the separation of Greek and Indo-Iranian seems reasonable,
-- well, nobody claims glottochronology is an exact science, but it does
provide a rough guide.
>once we see that Hittite in many respects represents the most archaic stage of
IE...
-- no, it's quite logical. The language separated earliest from the main stem
would retain the most archaic features, just as, in a far less extreme case,
American English retains features lost in British English.
>well fit the 5500 date for the expansion of farming peoples out of the Balkans
into temperate Europe and the steppe lands...
The earliest movement of farmers out of Anatolia into Europe dates to _7000
BCE_. They were in northwest Europe by 4000 BCE.
This would have to be the earliest IE movement, in your thesis (and Renfrew's)
and it's the big kicker -- far too early.
Moreover, note that Hittite _does_ share the PIE vocabulary for basic
late-neolithic technology (plow, wheel, yoke, horse, etc.).
Either it was out of contact from the other IE languages at an early (5000 BC+)
date in its development, or not. If it were, it wouldn't share this
vocabulary; if it wasn't... well.
Cavalli-Sforza's genetic work shows an early Neolithic movement of population
into Europe; and another around 3000 BC from the Pontic-Caspian area.
The simplest explanation is that the earlier movement brought agriculture, and
probably a language/language-family, but that this wasn't IE. Probably the
language that left a thick scatter of non-IE placenames in Greece and western
Anatolia, and loanwords in Greek. (Corinthos, hyacinthos, Halicarnassos, etc.)
The later movement was the IE-speakers.
-- S.M. Stirling
Anthony West
JoatSimeon (joats...@aol.com) wrote:
: >aaw...@netnews.CritPath.Org (Anthony West)<BR>
: >Other mountainous regions which, like Anatolia, were early centers of
: agricultural diffusion (e.g., the Mesoamerican and Papuan highlands) show a
: dazzling range of linguistic diversity, with distantly related and unrelated
: families sprinkled across adjoining valleys.
: -- true but not, I think, relevant to the IE homeland problem. The fact
: of the
: matter is that at the time of our first records, every IE language in Anatolia
: is quite clearly intrusive, and contains unmistakable evidence of influence by
: non-IE substrate languages. (Eg., Hittite and Hattic.) None of them were
: native to the area, therefore.
: It seems rather odd that IE would be so successful outside Anatolia and so
: unsuccessful within it, if this was the point of origin.
An argument in favor of an Anatolian ancestry for IE is that this
area is demonstrably a breeding ground for language families.
The mountains of eastern Anatolia and their skirts were the focus
of the Middle Eastern neolithic, 9000BCE. By 2000 there is either
historic or contemporary evidence of 10 language families that
were spoken in a zone ranging from the latitude of Tehran to that
of Istanbul, from N of the caucasus to S of the Zagros, an area
of 1.3 million sq. km. They are: NE Caucasic, NW Caucasic, S
Caucasic, Hattic, Hurric, Elamic, Sumerian, Semitic, IE,
"Tyrrhenian."
Other families doubtless existed which have disappeared without a
trace. Some of the survivors are surely connected at a more
ancient level (stock/phylum) but only the NE/NW Caucasian link is
widely accepted. Some of these families may have been intrusive
but the main flow of culture and population was out from this
center.
10 families is a lot of language diversity for this area. The
neolithic eastern US, with an area of 2.6 million sq.km., shows
only 9: Algonkian, Iroquoian, Siouan, Catawba, Muskogean,
Timucuan, Yuchi, Tunica, Natchez. Conditions were ripe in
Anatolia for deep linguistic separation, and also for the spread
of many families into adjacent regions.
Modern "mesolithic" zones, by contrast (Australia, northern
Eurasia, southern Africa, northern N America) show much more
interrelation of language communities. (Only western N America
may break this rule.) The inference is that a shift from
hunting-gathering to food-raising tends to trigger language
diversity in the core area. Vast neolithic or early-metal
linguistic homogeneity (as in Bantu Africa) suggests a late
expansion from a core into a mesolithic frontier.
-Tony West aaw...@critpath.org
Philadelphia
Clyde A. Winters
Andrew and Susan Sherratt (1988:585), have argued that
convergence through a process of creolization may have been an
important feature of language change in ancient times as a result
of inter-regional trade.
The Proto-Indo-European family is based upon surviving
languages and historical literature. Andrew and Susan Sherratt
(1988:584), have suggested that this linguistic entity, Indo-
European, may be valid for a relatively late point in time. Given
the evidence of Hittite, this view in general has little support
but, in relation to Tocharian on the otherhand, this hypothesis
has considerable merit.
V.I. Georgiev (1981) has suggested that the common original
homeland of the Tocharians was a region extending between the
Denieper river and the Urals, near Finno-Ugrians. This hypothesis
is founded on the fact that Tocharian shares many phonological,
word formational and lexical features with the Balto-Slavic
languages. Georgiev (1981:297) believes that there probably
existed a Finno-Ugrian substratum in Tocharian.
Mallory (1989:263) has suggested that the Afanasievo culture
of the steppes may be the ancestor culture of the Tocharian
speakers. He believes that the geographical separation of the
Afanasievo culture from his proposed Pontic-Caspian homeland for
the IE speakers, would explain the failure of TOCHARIAN to
reflect the series of linguistic innovations experienced by the
Indo-Iranians (Mallory 1989:226).
The Chinese historical literature, on the otherhand,
indicates that the Tocharian speakers were called Kushana or Yueh
chih and originated in China. Winters (1990) has argued that
their ancestral culture was the Qijia culture of western China.
Winters (1985b, 1986b, 1988c, 1990) has argued that the Yueh
people were Dravidians speakers. Lacouperie (1887:123) was sure
that the Yueh people came from the West.
Although Tocharian is accepted as an IE language there is
disturbing linguistic evidence that makes it difficult to
properly place Tocharian in the IE family. A large part of the
vocabulary of Tocharian detailed etymology. There is considerable
influence on Tocharian from Sanskrit and Iranian due to Buddhism.
Tocharian also shares many phonological and word formational and
lexical correspondences with Balto-Slavic languages.
J.Van Windekens (1976) has compared Tocharian and IE
vocabularies and established the following Tocharian isoglosses,
ranked as follows: 1) Germanic, 2) Greek, 3) Indic, 4-5) Baltic
and Iranian, 6) Latin, 7) Slavic, 8) Celtic, 9) Anatolian, 10)
Armenian and 11) Albanian. D.Q. Adams (1984) established a
different rank order 1) Germanic, 2) Greek, 3) Baltic, 4) Indic,
5) Slavic, 6-8) Latin, Celtic, Iranian, 9) Albanian, 10)
Anatolian and 11) Armenian.
Tocharian shares many ancient features with Hittite in noun
morphology. For example, Tocharian A e-, B ai- 'to give' :
Hittite pai- < pa-ai-; Tocharian A ya- 'to do': Hittite iia-;
Tocharian A tkam, B kem 'earth': Hittite tekan.
In relation to Sanskrit and Greek, Tocharian has preserved
the mediopassive voice and the presence of both subjunctive and
optative mood. The most important evidence of Tocharian relations
within the IE family are the Greek and Tocharian cognates:
Tocharian A ¤kat, B ¤akte 'God'; A nat„k 'lord', nasi 'lady';
Greek wanakt 'King', *wanakya queen' .
Schmidt (1990) has argued that many of the innovations in
Tocharian may be the result of substratum influences of non-IE
languages. Winters (1988a, 1989, 1991) has argued that there is a
Dravidian substratum to Tocharian.
The Dravidian ( mainly Tamil) and Tocharian languages also
possess structural and grammatical analogy. Dravidian and
Tocharian share the plural ending element -lu and -u, e.g.,
Telugu magadu 'man, husband', (pl.) magalu 'men'; Tocharian wast
'house', (pl.) wastu 'house".
It is interesting to note that Dravidians and Tocharians
share many terms for animals, e.g., Dravidian ku-na 'dog',
Tocharian ku 'dog'; and Dravidian kode 'cow', Tocharian ko 'cow'.
There are five different IE roots for horse. This multiplicity of
IE roots for horse makes these terms inconclusive for the IE
proto-lexicon. This is interesting because the Dravidian term for
horse is iyuli, this is analogous to Tocharian yuk (Winters
1988,1991).
> The Tocharian lexicon has also been influenced by Tibetan,
Chinese and Uighur (Blazek 1988; Winters 1991). The Sino-Tibetan
influence is evident in certain key terms, e.g., Tocharian B
plewe 'boat, Gurung plava 'boat', Archaic Chinese plyog and
ancient Chinese plyow 'boat'; these terms for boat corresponds
with Tamil patavu 'boat'; Tocharian A kuryur, B karyar
'business', purchase', B kary 'to buy', Tibetan-Burmic *kroy , in
Burmic KrwŠ 'debt', Kochin khoi 'borrow or lend'; and Tocharian A
and B par 'bring, take', IE *bher 'bring', Tibeto-Burmic *p-, in
*par 'trade, buy, sell' and Kannanda bar 'bring'.
> The Dravidian and Altaic substratums in Tocharian supports
the hypothesis of Andrew and Susan Sherratt (1988) that Tocharian
was a trade language. This would also agree with Chinese evidence
that the Tocharians migrated into Central Asia from the east, not
the northwest.
If Tocharian was a trade language , this would explain the
evidence that Tocharian is not a centum language and its
illustration of a clear dual contrast in reflexes of the
gutturals. This hypothesis also offers an explanation of the
great time depth indicated for the separation of Tocharian from
Proto-IE.
Central Asia has long been characterized by the habitation
of this area by diverse groups. Thus its history is manifested by
the infilling of central Asia by various nomadic groups in search
of conquest and/or colonization made this part of Asia a centre
of pluralistic societies. Given Central Asia's situation as a
centre of linguistic fragmentation made the development of a
lingua franca advantageous for inter-tribal relations.
A down the line pattern of conquest and settlement by
successive non-indigenous populations in Central Asia probably
led to extensive bilingualism in central Asia. These bilingual
speakers handled trade between the various Central Asian
populations, and their trading partners in neighboring countries.
The speakers of IE and Altaic languages settled Central Asia at
different times. The Kingdom of Bactria was garrisoned by 30,000
Greek mercenaries. In Bactria there grew a distinctive Greek
culture. This culture existed for over 100 years.
The Greeks ruled Bactria after the conquest of the region by
Alexander. The dominant population in the area at this time was
probably Dravidian speaking.
Bactria was a strong point of Alexander's empire. It later
became a part of the Seleucid empire.
The Seleucid administration was staffed by Greeks. In 245
B.C. with the decline of the Seleucid empire, the Bactrian Greeks
established an independent kingdom.
By 183 B.C., the Greeks conquered India. As a result they
ruled an area from Bactria to the Upper Ganges river.
Bactria was ruled directly by the Greeks. This
administration contrasted sharply with that of Greek rule in
India. In India, the Greeks tried to encourage cooperation
between Indians and Greeks, and printed bilingual coinage.
Greek methods of administration encouraged the decline of
Dravidian among the urban Bactrians. The elite dominance model
may explain the decline of Dravidian, in central Asia.
The elite dominance model implies the arrival of a small
militarily effective population into a new territory, speaking a
new language, that successfully subjugates and dominates the
existing population. We usually can assume in such a situation as
this that the spoken language in this area is replaced by another
language brought into the region by a new population from a
different region.
Application of this model to explain the
decline of Dravidian as a lingua franca in central Asia probably
corresponds to the Greek conquest and colonization of Bactria.
In 130 B.C., Slavic speaking Saka nomads attacked the
Greeks. Tashkend, Ferganah and Kashgar were occupied by the Saka.
The Saka forced the Greeks out of Bactria and Tokharestan.
The Kushana first occupied Transoxiana about 160 B.C., and
established themselves in Oxus Valley (Bagchi 1955:8). The
Kushana/Tocharians later drove the Haumavorka Saka, from Bactria
and founded the Kushana dynasty which lasted until the 3rd
century A.D.
The large corpus of non-IE words in Tocharian discussed by
Blazek (1988) and Winters (1988a, 1990, 1991) is congruent with
the hypothesis that IE elements in Tocharian, especially Greek
(and Slavic) were loanwords into Tocharian after the Greek
conquest of Bactria. This borrowing pattern is consistent with
the spread of the Greek language into Bactria by a small
politically dominant minority of Greek settlers into a far larger
and previously long-established non-IE speaking majority
population.
The Greco-Bactrians were probably bilingual . Bilingualism
can be induced through two methods 1) state coercion or 2) its
ability to offer advantages to two or more populations in
contact. The latter method of change usually accounts for
bilingualism--people use the new language to obtain better access
to status, security, ritual or goods. The Greek emphasis on
direct methods of political control in Bactria forced many non-
Greeks to become bilingual due to its advantage as a tool for
greater upward mobility during Greek rule.
The Greek colonization of Bactria, made the Greek language a
link language between the non-IE languages spoken in Central Asia
three thousand years ago, after many generations of bilingualism
led to an interlanguage phenomena that became a permanent feature
of the literate speech community in this region. We can define
the institutionalization of an interlanguage as language
recombination, i.e., the mixing of the vocabulary and structures
of the substratum language (Dravidian) and the superstratum
language (Greek and later Slavic speaking Saka people) to form a
new mixed language: Tocharian.
The "elite dominance model" hypothesis would have two basic
consequences in relation to Tocharian linguistics. First, it
would account for the correspondence in grammar (especially
agglutination) and vocabulary between Dravidian and Tocharian on
the one hand, and Tocharian and Indo-European on the other.
Secondly, the settlement of the Saka in Bactria after the Greeks,
would explain the great topological similarity between Tocharian
and Balto-Slavic. The evidence of Saka and Greek conquest of
Bactria/ Central Asia confirms the Sherratt (1988) hypothesis
that Tocharian may be a trade language, and offers a plausible
solution to the "Tocharian Problem".
REFERENCES
Adams, D.Q. 1984. The Position of Tocharian among the other Indo-
European Languages. Journal of the American Oriental
Society 104: 395-402.
___________. 1995. Mummies. The Journal of Indo-European Studies
23 (3&4): 399-413.
Bagchi, P.C. 1955. India and Central Asia. Calcutta: National
Council of Education.
Blazelc, Vaclav. 1988. Tocharian Linguistics during the last 25
years. Archiv Orientalni 56:76-81.
Bonfante, G. 1987. The relative position of the Indo-European
languages. Journal of Indo-European Studies 15 (1&2): 77-80.
Brentjes, B. 1983. On Proto-Elamite Iran. Current Anthropology
24(2): 240-241.
Chang, K.C. 1987. The Archaeology of ancient China. Yale
University Press.
Ehret,C. 1988. Language change and the Material Correlates of
Language and Ethnic shift. Antiquity 62: 564-74.
Elfenbein, J. 1987. A periplus of the Brahui Problem. Studia
Iranica 16: 215-233.
Emeneau, M. and T. Burrow. 1962. Dravidian Borrowing from Indo
Aryan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fairservis, W.A. 1975. The Roots of Ancient India. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
_______________.1986. The Harappan civilization according to its
writing: A model for decipherment of the script. Tamil
Civilization: 103-110.
_______________.1987. Cattle and the Harappa chiefdom of the
Indus Valley. Expedition 28 (2):43-50.
Francefort, Henri-Paul. 1987a. La civilisation de l'Indus aux
rives de l'Oxus. Archaeologia (December): 44-55.
_____________. 1987b. Aux frontieres de la civilisation de
l'Indus. Dossiers Histoire et Archeologie no. 122: 77-79.
Georgiev, V.I. 1981. Introduction to the history of the Indo-
European Languages. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Gupta, S.P. 1979. Archaeology of Soviet Central Asia and the
Indian Borderland. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp. Volume II.
ISDL. 1983. Report on the Dravidian Languages. International
Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 12(1): 227.
Lacouperie, Terrien de. 1887. The languages of China before the
Chinese. Paris.
_____________.1889. Origin from Babylon and Elam in the early
Chinese Civilization: A summary of the proof. Babylonian
and Oriental Record 3(5): 97-110.
Mahadevan,I. 1986. Dravidian models of decipherment the Indus
Script: A case study. Tamil Civilization 4(3&4): 133-143.
Mallory, J.P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Manges, K. 1966. Altaic-Dravidian Relationship. The International
Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies. Kuala Lampur.
Maricq, A. 1958. La Grande inscription de Kaniska et L' eteo-
Tokharien l'ancienne langue de la Bactriane.Journal
Asiatique 246: 345-439.
McAlpin,D.W. 1981. Proto-Elamo Dravidian: The Evidence and its
Implications. Philadelphia: Trans. of American Philosophical
Society 71, Part 3.
Parpola, A. 1986. The Indus Scripts: A challenging Puzzle.
World Archaeology 17 (3): 399-419.
Pulleyblank, E.G. 1995, Why Tocharians? The Journal of Indo-
European Linguistics 23 (3&4): 415-430.
Renfrew, C. 1987. Archaeology and Language.London: Jonathan Cape.
Ringe, D.A. 1990. Evidence for the position of Tocharian in the
Indo-European family ?. Die Sprache34: 59-123.
__________.1995. Tocharian in Xinjiang: The Linguistic Evidence.
The Journal of Indo-European Linguistics 23 (3&4): 439-444.
Rosen, Lissie von. 1988. Lapis Luzuli in Geological context and
in Ancient Written Sources. Partille: Paul Astroms Forlag.
Schmidt, K.H. 1990. The Postulated Pre-Indo-European Substrates
in Insular Celtic and Tocharian. In When Worlds Collide: The
Indo-Europeans and Pre-Indo-Europeans, (Ed.) by T.L. Makey
and J. A. C. Greppin (pp. 180-202). Karoma Publishers, Inc.
Sherratt, Andrew and Susan. 1988. Archaeology of Indo-European:
An Alternative View. Antiquity 62: 584-595.
Vacek, J. 1978. The problem of the Genetic relationship of the
Mongolian and Dravidian languages. Archiv Orientalni 46:
141-151.
__________.1983. Dravido-Altaic: The Mongolian and Dravidian
Verbal bases. Journal of Tamil Studies 23: 1-17.
___________.1987. The Dravido-Altaic Relationship. Archiv
Orientalni 55: 134-149.
Van Windekens, A. J. 1976. Le Tokharien confront‚ avec les autres
langues indo-europ‚enes. Louvain. Volume I.
Wang, P. 1995. Tokharian words in Altaic Regnal Titles. Central
Asiatic Journal 39: 165-207.
Winters, C.A. 1984. The Inspiration of the Harappan Talismanic
Seals. Tamil Civilization 2(1): 1-8.
____________.1984b. The Indus Valley Writing is Proto-Dravidian.
Journal of Tamil Studies 25: 50-64.
___________.1985a. The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians, Manding
and Sumerians. Tamil Civilization 3(1): 1-9.
____________.1985b. The Far Eastern Origin of the Tamils.
Journal of Tamil Studies 27: 65-92.
_____________.1986a. The Dravidian origin of the mountain and
water toponyms in Central Asia. Journal of Central Asia
9(2): 141-145.
_____________.1986b. Dravidian settlements in Ancient Polynesia.
India Past and Present 3(2): 225-241.
______________.1987. The Harappan Script. Journal of Tamil
Studies 30: 89-111.
______________.1988a. The Dravidian and Manding Substratum in
Tokharian. Central Asiatic Journal 32 (1&2): 131-141.
______________.1988b. Common African and Dravidian Place Name
Elements. South Asian Anthropologist 9 (1): 32-36.
_______________.1988c. The Proto-Dravidians in Central Asia.
Journal of Tamil Studies 31: 73-76.
______________.1989. Review on Dr. Asko Parpola's "The Coming of
the Aryans". International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics
18 (2): 98-127.
______________. 1990. The Dravido-Harappan Colonization of
Central Asia. Central Asiatic Journal 34 (1-2): 120-144.
______________.1991. Linguistic Evidence for Dravidian influence
on Trade and Animal Domestication in Central and East Asia.
International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 20(2): 91-
102.
C.A. Winters
Vidhyanath Rao
JoatSimeon wrote in message
<19980205182...@ladder02.news.aol.com>...
>Quite the opposite is true; Greek is closely related to Sanskrit and
>distantly related to Hittite-Luwian. In fact, it's more closely related
>to Latin or even Lithuanian than to Hittite.
Just how closely is Greek related to Sanskrit, and why is that true?
I started talking about this with Miguel Vidal in the IE list, but did not
continue. but someone (Rasmussen?) claimed that only common things
between Greek and Sanskrit are all IE, and cannot prove any special
relationship.
I still don't have time to explain this in full, but I will give a short
synopsis of why I do not agree that Greek and Vedic verb systems
show any close similarities.
First of all, the impression given in Whitney's grammar and others based
on the same idea originate in certain prejudices of the 19th century. The
attempt to pigeonhole Vedic forms into moods of present, aorist and
perfect pay no attention to syntactical use and come from the prejudice
that the Indian grammatical tradition is unreliable and inferior to the
Greek. Since this is well known to specialists (see for example, Staal's
Readings in Sanskrit Grammarians; there is another reference in IF,
in the late 70's/early 80's, titled ``19th c. European attitudes on
the Indian grammatical tradition'' or something like that)
I will not go into this further. However, the result of fitting Vedc forms
into the Greek categoreis by fiat without paing attention to syntactic
issues cannot prove similarity.
First of all, the so-called pluperfect and the `moods' of the perfect are
misclassified. Forms were assigned to the perfect simply because the
reduplicative vowel was a (< PIE e) or because there were already
other present and `aorist' stems. Syntactical use belies this
classification. As is well known, the pluperfect is often syntactically
indistinguishable from the `imperfect' and sometimes from the
aorist. In such cases, the form ought to be classified as a reduplicated
`imperfect'/aorist. As Thieme observed long ago, it is a pluperfect
only if the present is a morphological perfect as in abibhet/bibhaaya.
Otherwise, it is pointless to call it a pluperfect.
The presence of e reduplication in Hittite only strengthens the objection.
The so-called moods of the perfect have nothing in common with the
perfect.
The distinction between the `present' and `aorist' systems in Vedic works
very differently from Greek. One sustained attempt, by Gonda, to discover
Greek-like aspectual differences ends with the conclusion that (1) the
difference is often imperceptible and completely absent (! leading
Szeremenyi to remark that an aspect that is often absent is no aspect
at all) (2) the distinction between aorist and present is not fully formed
in Rgveda. The attempt to distinguish between present and aorist often
leads to questionable analysis, like assigning maahi/maasva to aorist
even though a present maati occurs in prakrits and is indicated by Panini
(handled by ignoring prakirts, and implying that Panini was a liar or was
incompetent. Gonda, who gave up and admitted that maahi/maasva is
indistinghiable in meaning or usage from present imperatives, implied
that maati was a grammarian's fancy, ignoring the Prakirt maa"i). Then
there is the fact that optatives and imperatives show remarkable gaps in
distribution (virtually none in sigmatic aorist, and the forms that do occur
have precative s or thematic a, like thematic s-presents; few optatives in
nasal stems).
The reduplicated aorist, which becomes connected to the causative in both
Greek and Middle Vedic, does not do so in the Avesta nor is this settled
in the RV. The reanalysis of the `pluperfect' greatly strengthens this.
So what we have here is the oddity that in IE languages, some forms are
now iterative/durative, now causative. Parallel evolution cannot prove
relation.
And of course, the so-called imperfect of Sanskrit is the ultimate in
mislabeling. It never has an `imperfect' meaning as in Latin. At best,
we can say that it sometimes is like the `imperfective aorists' found
in Bulgarian etc. But often it simply refers to a completed past, most
notably, `ahan', an aoristic verb in meaning.
So the RV verb system has a present, a past, a tenseless form (the
`injunctive'), an optative, and an imperative. Only subjunctive and past
indicatives have a present vs aorist; but even here it is not clear that
sigmatic aorist + root/thematic `aorists' are coordinated and are opposed
to root presen' + nasal present etc. Presents of some stems do not occur,
even though it is not always clear if this due to aktionsart/aspect issues
or
due to limited selection (cf maati) of texts that have survived. There is no
systemic oppostion between an `imperfective' present and `perfective'
aorist. Different aktionsarts that are imperfective can be expressed by the
same stem or by different stems (see hanti vs jighnati, bharati vs bibharti
vs
bariibharti). It is hard to resist the conclusion, as has been proposed by
some, that present stem formants in RV should be considered as
derivational and not inflectional.
Now what is left of the similarity between the Greek and Vedic verb systems?
RV shows a stage that is intermediate between Hittite and Greek, and in
middle vedic and early post vedic, Sanskrit will evolve very differently
from Greek.
Unless we can show how a Greek-like system can evolve into the system of
Panini's Bhaa.saa, there is even less reason to claim similarities between
Greek and Vedic verb systems. [No contemporary Sanskritist I know will
defend the view that Panini's Bhaa.saa is imaginary, or that Panini was a
liar or was incompetent.]
JoatSimeon
>cwi...@orion.it.luc.edu (Clyde A. Winters)<BR>
Oh, Christ, here we go again. Living proof that it's possible for someone to
read books and not understand a word, and worse, not even _suspect_ that
they're not understanding it.
>The Chinese historical literature, on the other hand, indicates that the
Tocharian speakers were called Kushana or Yueh
-- called that _by the Chinese_. They called the English "the red-haired South
Sea barbarians".
The people we know as Tocharians called themselves "Arsi", judging from their
own documents.
>and originated in China.
-- no, the Chinese docuements say that these peoples were _present_ in what is
_now_ western China, but was at that time usually beyond the area of Han
control.
>Although Tocharian is accepted as an IE language there is disturbing
linguistic evidence that makes it difficult to properly place Tocharian in the
IE family.
-- this is an outright falsehood or complete misunderstanding. Nobody has ever
doubted that Tocharian is Indo-European. It's utterly unambiguous from the
basic vocabulary, numerals, body parts and family relationships. None of which
are loanwords.
>The Greeks ruled Bactria after the conquest of the region by Alexander. The
dominant population in the area at this time was probably Dravidian speaking.
-- where did you dig up this piece of nonsense? Bactria was Indo-Iranian
speaking, as is attested by textual evidence from long before Alexander.
> Greek methods of administration encouraged the decline of Dravidian among the
urban Bactrians
-- there is absolutely no evidence that Dravidian was ever spoken in Central
Asia. The closest Dravidian language is Brahui, in westen Pakistan, and that's
a relict.
> In 130 B.C., Slavic speaking Saka nomads attacked the Greeks.
-- Oh, Dyaush Pitar help us, what are you smoking? The Saka were IRANIAN
SPEAKERS. You know, as in Indo-Iranian languages. Slavic? Where on earth did
you get that one?
> is congruent with the hypothesis that IE elements in Tocharian, especially
Greek (and Slavic) were loanwords into Tocharian after the Greek conquest of
Bactria.
-- <glyph of beating head on desk.> Look, the IE vocabulary of Tocharian is
quite basic, covering all the usual suspects -- numbers, family relationships,
etc.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>aw...@netnews.CritPath.Org
> Vast neolithic or early-metallinguistic homogeneity (as in Bantu Africa)
suggests a late expansion from a core into a mesolithic frontier.-
-- or just from a core into a frontier, mesolithic or not. This is the core
weakness of Renfrew's objection to the classic theory of IE migrations; he
assumes that it requires some sort of demic upheaval to spread a language into
a populated zone. The historical evidence contradicts this.
Eg., the vast and rapid spread of Turkic languages in the first millenium AD
over areas previously IE in character. For another example, Chinese expanded
over most of its present territory long, long after the areas in question
acquired a crop-raising economy and dense populations. Old English obliterated
Brythonic Celtic over the whole of lowland England in barely a century, despite
what recent research has shown to be a fairly dense local population;
late-Roman Britain probably had more people than the country did in 1066.
The early record of the IE languages suggests a very rapid and quite recent
spread over most of the historically attested territory. eg., Mycenaean Greek
is so similar to Sanskrit that they couldn't possibly have been separated by
much more than a thousand years; even some of their poetic 'tags' were
identical. But they were -- to put it mildly -- in very different places
geographically by 1200 BCE!
Anatolia -- or more strictly the Caucasus -- has a lot of distinct languages
because it's split up into a lot of valleys, and travel is difficult.
The Eurasian steppe zone, OTOH, has historically been rather uniform, because
it's an area of flat terrain and relatively easy movement - characteristically,
languages spread over it very rapidly. I see no difficulty with PIE doing
this, particularly since its speakers were associated with the domestication of
the horse.
(For an analogue, look at the upheaval the introduction of the horse caused in
the grasslands of N. America.)
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Vidhyanath Rao"
>Just how closely is Greek related to Sanskrit, and why is that true?
-- we're talking of Mycenaean Greek here, a much more archaic language than the
Classical form, and spoken about the same time as the 1600-1200 BCE dates
usually assigned to Vedic Sanskrit.
Certainly they're not the _same_ language, but they show clear signs of common,
and quite recent descent, in both grammatical form and vocabulary.
Many lexical items are identical -- "nu" for "now", for instance; as in, to
take a sentence at random, "indrasya nu viryani pra vocam".
Where you also get a Latin/Sanskrit correspondence in 'pra vocam'/'pro voco",
'I call forth'.
(Of course, there are a lot of Latin parallels in this context: Sanskrit
agnis/ /agnim/agnibhyas with Latin ignis/ignem/ignibus)
Naturally the languages become less alike as they develop; still, the
correspondences remain quite startling at times. I quoted a sentence earlier;
unfortunately I don't have the Greek on hand right now, but I'll try to dig it
up. In the meantime:
Sanskrit: Devas adadat datas; Devas dat dhanas.
Latin: Deus dedit dentes; Deus dabit panem.
-- S.M. Stirling