Re: Nostratic (was Re: Schwebeablaut (was Re: tolkien?))

Hallo!

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 04:07:00 -0500,
Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 18:33:24 +0100, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier
> <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>
> >Welcome back, Rob!
>
> Thank you! :)
>
> >If you ask me, Kartvelian seems more like being related to IE and
> >Uralic, i.e. "Northern Branch".
>
> While there are some features of Kartvelian that relate it to IE and
> Uralic, there are many that do not.  Kartvelian's situation is very
> obfuscated.
I think that Kartvelian is not as close to IE as is Uralic,
and some of the similarities between IE and Kartvelian
are due to contact.

>       Apparently Prehistoric Kartvelian was located more southerly,
> around the Black Sea coast of North-Eastern Turkey.
Possible.

>       This makes it more
> likely that it fell into contact with Semitic languages (if not AA before
> Semitic broke off).  Also, Hurrian-Urartian was big in the surrounding area.
>
> [examples of pronoun replacements]
>
> Clearly PIE *eg(h)ó(m) was an example of suppletion.
>
> >One theory I have is that PIE is a sister language of Uralic
> >on a substratum related to Kartvelian.  Kartvelian shows ablaut
> >patterns similar to those of IE, for instance.
>
> That's possible.  It works better if PIE's original speakers came from
> Anatolia.
No.  If PIE comes from Anatolia, one needs some *very* complex
migration patterns to explain the similarities between IE and Uralic.

>       I do not accept this theory, however.  Historical record shows
> an invasion of the Kurgan peoples from the eastern Ukraine into Europe and
> Asia.  This seems to me to be the likely origin of PIE.
Yes.  And the similarities between IE and Uralic point at an IE origin
north of the Black Sea, too, no matter whether the languages are
similar due to common origin or contact.

And the neolithic farmers of central Europe don't come from Anatolia.
They are the descendants of refugees from the Black Sea Flood.

> >And, if there is only one vowel besides /i/ and /u/, that vowel will
> >always be /a/ rather than /e/ (or /o/).  This is well established
> >by typological studies.
>
> I don't think that PIE had original /i/ and /u/.
I don't think that PIE had only one vowel phoneme.  The ablaut patterns
are as follows:

strong grade   weak grade

  á > e          a > @ > o/0
  í > ei         i > i
  ú > eu         u > u

The o-grade appeared where vowel deletion would have resulted
in an inadmissible consonant cluster; later it was paradigmatized
as a separate grade from the zero grade.

> >In PIE proper, it is pretty much lexicalized.  But I suspect that
> >in an earlier stage of the language, there was a penultimate accent.
> >So a two-syllable word was stressed on the first syllable, but with
> >a syllabic suffix the stress shifted to the second syllable.
> >"Free", i.e. phonemic accents tend to evolve from phonetic accents
> >when vowels are lost, obfuscating the original rules.
>
> This sounds reasonable to me.
>
> >Yes, I also suspect this.  Perhaps, PIE was even a tone language,
> >though I don't think so.  It is healthy to assume that some phonemic
> >distinctions or segments were lost.
>
> There has to be *some* origin for the Ablaut.  It didn't appear out of thin
> air.  I think it definitely is related to the accent (stress or tonal)
> scheme of earlier (or pre-) PIE.
I also think that it is (mainly) due to accent.  Accented vowels
became strong grade, unaccented vowels weak grade.

> >This is very well possible.  Languages tend to reduce unstressed
> >vowels.
>
> Right.
>
> >As long as we don't have evidence for ablaut in Uralic, it is more
> >reasonable to assume that IE and Uralic separated form each other
> >before PIE ablaut evolved.  And as there is no evidence of vowel
> >harmony in PIE, it must have evolved in Uralic after the split
> >(possibly through areal contact or substratum influence from Altaic).
> >Eskimo-Aleut, which seems to be related to Uralic (and probably more
> >closely than IE), has only /a i u/ and neither ablaut nor vowel
> >harmony.  So, I think that Proto-IE-Uralic-Eskimo had only /a i u/.
>
> More complex systems can come from simpler systems, but the reverse is also
> true.
True.  And not always the assumption of a simpler system is the
simpler explanation.

>      The problem is, we don't really know what is conservative in the
> sense of Nostratic.  It could be that the Nostratic hypothesis is flawed,
> and its component languages are more loosely related.  I think a more
> thorough analysis of glottochronology is necessary.
Yes.  The evidence is still very weak.

Greetings,

Jörg.