Re: Proto-Uralic?

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.

>I have no particular ideas of my own about PU; I know too little
>to build my own opinion.  I have seen the "reconstruction" done by
>G. Decsy, but that is not worth the paper it is printed on.  He rejects
>the comparative method, instead "reconstructing" for each cognate
>set a minimal-change ancestral form *in isolation*, a "method" which
>obviously gives false readings, yielding a result where no result is
>to expect, namely in case of similar-looking non-cognates.
>The resulting forms are often homonyms that "evolved" into
>non-homonyms in the attested Uralic languages!
Yes, it appears that Decsy has little weight in Proto-Uralic studies.

>Decsy also confuses the historical linguistics term "proto-language"
>with the homonymous term in language origins studies, claims that
>Proto-Uralic had no more than the 400-something words he
>"reconstructed", and that the speakers of Proto-Uralic did not use
>names (an anthropological impossibility; and that even though
>he "reconstructs" a PU word for "name").
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 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.

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.

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.

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?

- Rob

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