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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Nostratic

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Nostratic
  • Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:02:39 +0100

On 18/04/2007 20:37, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
On 4/18/07, Peter Kirk wrote:

Yonah, you can't see this clearly in Latin because the fusion actually
took place much earlier. If you look back at reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European, see the examples I gave earlier, the
correspondences are much more clear. Despite what Uri wrote, that "this
is the realm of sheer speculation", this is in fact as clearly
demonstrated as anything can be from the remote past. This is how
language works, even if you have to look a bit beyond Latin 101 to see it.

Saenz-Badillos has this to say on Nostratic:

Yitzhak, thank you for this. But note that in the post you are replying to I did not mention Nostratic, only Proto-Indo-European, whose reconstruction is much more solidly based. Indeed I mentioned Nostratic only in a PS to my earlier post. What I wrote did not at all depend on anyone's Nostratic theories, only on the correspondences between carefully reconstructed proto-forms of various language families.

...
"Much more acceptable is the work of M.L. Mayer, who, without employing
the image of a family tree, examined the zones of contact between the two
language groups, drawing attention to Akkadian-Hittite and Ugaritic-Hittite
isoglosses, Semitic loanwords in Greek, and so on. We agree with his
conclusion that it is becoming ever more likely that in prehistoric times
groups of Indo-European and Semitic languages co-existed or at least
existed in close proximity to one another, and that perhaps, after
completion of the necessary investigations, it might be possible to speak
not of a 'mother language' (in the sense intended by Ascoli, Moller,
Pedersen, or Cuny), but of a range of isoglosses across the Indo-
European and Semitic languages."

Such things are indeed possible. But, as I think is widely recognised, morphological suffixes of the kind I have been looking at are about the least likely language features to be borrowed between languages even in close contact.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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