Re: Proto-Uralic?

Rob Haden <magwich78@...> writes:

> On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 13:52:09 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg=20Rhiemeier?=
> <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>
> >Thank you!  Most of this I have already found elsewhere, but this
> >summary is very useful.
>
> Hey, anytime.
>
> > [my critique of Descy's "reconstruction"]
>
> That seems hardly realistic.  No language has ever gotten by on 400-
> something words.  Many PU-ists also think that PU borrowed a great many
> words from PIE, including such basic terms as 'water' (!).  I think that
> they are going in the wrong direction.  Instead, I would say that PIE and
> PU had many cognate roots, since I think they have a common origin.
I am also of the opinion that IE and Uralic are related.  There are simply
too many similarities in morphology (pronouns; accusative case in *-m; etc.)
to assume that these similarities are pure coincidence, especially
in light of the fact that the most likely original homelands
of both families are only a few hundred kilometers away from each other.

There has been a lexico-statistical study (I don't remember by whom,
I have the name somewhere in my notes at home) comparing Russian,
Finnish, Hungarian, Yurak and a few other languages.  According to
the results, Russian is almost as close to Finnish and Hungarian
as is Yurak; the distance between Russian and Finnish even seems
to be less than between Hungarian and Yurak, due to the
conservativism of Finnish.  However, lexico-statistical examinations
ought to be handled with care.

It also seems that Uralic is related to Eskimo-Aleut.  Knut Bergsland
wrote a paper about that in the 1960s (I have a copy at home),
and there was a discussion of this on the Nostratic mailing list
a few years ago.  The evidence seems quite convincing to me.

> >I have also seen pages where it is claimed that Proto-Uralic never
> >existed, but rather that Uralic was a convergence area.  Apparently,
> >the field is less developed than IE historical linguistics, which might
> >be due to (1) the lack of attested ancient languages (imagine how
> >difficult it would be to reconstruct PIE from the modern IE languages
> >alone), and (2) the much smaller number of scholars working on
> >Uralic.  Another problem one meets in exploring Uralic historical
> >linguistics
> >is that many of the materials available are written in Uralic languages ;-/
> >
> >Jörg.
>
> I know what you mean!  However, I think that #1 is at least partially
> offset by the fact that some Uralic languages (such as Finnish) are very
> conservative.
Yes, I have heard that.

> I've also heard that there was no real Proto-Uralic per se, or that Proto-
> Uralic was a pidgin or creole that resulted from other languages.  I don't
> think that I agree with that.  My main thesis in my reconstruction is that
> earliest Proto-Uralic was mostly or entirely an isolating language.
> By 'earliest' I mean 6,000 B.C. or earlier, LOL.
My own impression is also that Proto-Uralic had not quite as rich a
morphology as modern Uralic languages such as Finnish or Hungarian have,
though it wasn't exactly isolating.

> Although I've never read it (yet), I've heard that an excellent resource
> for Uralic studies is Denis Sinor's The Uralic Languages.  It's an
> anthology of essays on Uralic languages by various scholars of the field; I
> believe Sammallahti has at least one article in there ('Historical
> Phonology of the Uralic Languages,' I think it's called).  Hopefully it's
> all in English, too!  However, the price may be a little steep for you --
> $264 on Amazon.com.  But I plan to get it once I have the money for it.
Might be worth looking out for it, though I won't buy the book.
It is way too expensive for me.

> Can you tell me more about this Q language that you're making?  Which
> features does it share with PIE, and which ones with PU?
It is still very much under construction.  The language shares a number
of morphological elements with IE and partly also with Uralic.
Here is a short list of resemblances from the top of my head:

animate objective case *-m
dative/locative case *-i
1st person pronoun *m-
2nd person pronoun *th-
animate demonstrative *s-
inanimate demonstrative *th-
animate interrogative *cv- (/kw-/)
inanimate interrogative *m-

There are also a number of lexical roots that Q shares with IE.
My idea is that Q is related to IE, and that in turn to Uralic-Eskimo.

Q is an "active" language where intransitive subjects are marked like
transitive subjects if they are agents (as in "The boy runs"),
and like transitive objects if they are not (as in "The stone falls").
I call the two cases involved here "agentive" and "objective".
Only animate nouns have an agentive, and the objective is marked
with the suffix *-m.  Inanimate nouns have a zero-marked objective.
As you can see from the elements listed above, there is an
animate-inanimate suppletivism in the pronoun system
(the exception to this are the 1st and 2nd person pronouns,
which of course only have animate forms).

This "active" type is something that seems to have been present
in an earlier stage of PIE as well.  If you look at it from the right angle,
you can see the shards of it lying around just about anywhere
in the PIE grammar: the syncretism of nominate and accusative
in the neuter gender; the *s-/*t- suppletivism in demonstrative
pronouns; the active and stative conjugations (*-m, *-s, *-t
vs. *-h2e, *-th2e, *-e); the tendency of some of the older
IE languages to avoid neuter transitive subjects.

Jörg.

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