Re: peri-IE (was: Kentum/satem)

Raymond Brown wrote:
>At 5:06 pm +0000 29/4/02, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>[snip]
> >
> >And don't even try searching for "pelasgian".
>
>Ah, Pelasgian!  That brings back fond memories of my M.Litt, researches in
>the late 1970s and early 1980s   :)
>
>The Pelagian I knew was supposed to be an IE language, exhibiting similar
>consonant sound shifts as those found in the Germanic & Armenian languages,
>and spoken in the Aegean area _before_ the arrival of the Greeks.  The
>evidence upon which it was constructed was IMO very flimsy, but one had to
>admire the efforts of the theorists; their 'reconstructed language' was
>worthy of the best efforts of this list; fot IMO (and the opinion of many
>others) what they had produced was a conlang   :)
Well, Cyril Babaev has an article about Pelasgian on TIED:
http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article4.html

It seems quite sane-headed to me, but I'm of course IEist. Was it this
Georgiyev guy's work you were in contact with?

> >Apart from a TIED page I had
> >already seen, I got mostly weird New Age sites
>
>I can't imagine what the Pelasgian I knew can have to do with New Agers -
>looks as tho this might be a different Pelasgian!
I _think_ the connection was that since the Pelasgians lived in Greece
before the arrival of the patriarchal and scientific Greeks, they logically
must've been benign matriarchalists who possessed mystic wisdom from
beginning of time.

>
>[snip]
>
> >certain account ...), and a page "proving" that, since languages can't
>die
> >out, Turkish is the descendant of every supposedly dead language in the
>Near
> >East and neighbouring areas, including Pelasgian, Hettite, Akkadian,
> >Sumerian, Aksumite and quite a few more.
>
>Good grief!  What medication had its author been taking????
I wouldn't speculate about that.

                                                    Andreas

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