Re: Interesting pre-Greek article

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:30:00 +0100, R A Brown <ray@...>
wrote:
>
>Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>> On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:09:47 -0400, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
>>
>>>I've just started reading this: http://www.ieed.nl/ied/pdf/pre-greek.pdf
>>>
>>>which comes from: http://www.ieed.nl/index2.html
>>>
>>>compliments of the inimitable gLeN gordon of cybalist
>>>=========================================================================
>>
>> I could read only the first few pages, but I also noticed the reference
>> to R.A. Brown (1985 ?)
>
>The date is correct. It is the date that Hakkert of Amsterdam published
>my M.Litt. thesis under the title "Pre-Greek Speech on Crete" (ISBN
>90-256-0876-0)
>
>> I found the term "Pre-Greek" confusing, though. Some historical
>> linguists use "Pre-" for the result of Internal Reconstruction as
>> opposed to "Proto-", the result of the Comparative Method.
>
>What's the difference? Alto pre- must obviously be used this way by some
>historical linguists, it seems to me an odd use of pre- which should
>mean "before". Maybe as an alternative to the Greek "proto-" the German
>"ur-" could have been adopted?
I have a vague recollection that "ur-" *has* been used for something, maybe
that, although I haven't seen it recently, so I can't really say. I'll
leave it to the German speakers to comment on.

>>While I suspect "Pre-Greek" is already well-established,
>
>Quite a long time now.
>
>> wouldn't something like "Ante-Greek" have been better for a
>> non-ancestor of Greek?
>
>Trouble is 'ante' too often gets confused with 'anti' (except by
>Americans who pronounce the two prefixes differently).
I pronounce them the same, but I think there's no confusion within the
linguistic context, since Anti-Greek clearly looks political.

> I was using the term pre-Greek to mean simply "before Greek" some 30
> years ago. When did the use of pre- to mean "first early form derived
> from internal reconstruction" come into use?
I was under the impression that it was an old term, since internal
reconstruction has been around a while, but it could be a CyBaLiSt
neologism AFAIK.

Jeff

PS I don't have detailed comments or time to write them, but I like what
you did with Plan B and am glad to see that Lin is back on the web.

>
>--
>Ray
>==================================
>ray@carolandray.plus.com
>http://www.carolandray.plus.com
>==================================
>MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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