Re: languages of pre-I.E. Europe and onwards

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Njenfalgar <njenfalgar@...> wrote:
> 2009/1/23 R A Brown <ray@...>
>
>> David McCann wrote:
>>
>>> For me, the Etruscan mi "I" is a pretty good start towards classing it
>>> as Nostratic. Consider the probabilities. If the average language has 25
>>> consonants, any consonant should occur for "I" in about 6000 / 25 = 240
>>> languages, randomly distributed. The facts that m- and k- are absent
>>> from South America, and p- and r- are absent everywhere shows that the
>>> distribution is non-random, and hence significant.
>>>
>>
>> I see. So Swahili _mimi_ = "I, me" is a pretty good start to classifying it
>> as Nostratic?
>
>
> Add to this Vietnamese "*mình*". Sometimes I wonder whether the m sound in
> the words for "I" in so many languages do not have the same origin as the
> ones in "mama": something in the human anatomy/brain/learning process makes
> that this sound is connected with the self. It doesn't work for many other
> languages, however, though that could be due to language evolution and a
> less strong bond between m and self than between m and mother.
I've wondered the same thing.

Not entirely coincidentally, the Meghean root for "we, us" is _m-_.
Perhaps it was originally neutral wrt number.

--
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?