Re: Interesting pre-Greek article

Jeffrey Jones wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:30:00 +0100, R A Brown <ray@...>
[snip]
>>
>>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,
So have I, which is why I suggested it.

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.
Paul Kretschmer, who was most certainly a German speaker and used the
term 'Indogermanisch' for what most of now call Indo-European,
distinguished between Urindogermanisch and Protindogermanish. The former
was used to mean what we call PIE, and the latter denoted a putative
ancestor of both Urindogermanisch and Rätotyrrhenisch
(Raeto-Tyrrhenian). From the latter, according to Kretschmer, was
derived Raetian, Etruscan, Tyrrhenian and Pelasgian.

In other words his Protindogermanish was an early fore-runner of
Nostratic  :)

[snip]
>>
>>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.
Quite so. Sadly I have come across overtly political slants in some
linguistic contexts. Nearly always by people who want to claim "My
language is older than yours, so my people have more right to be here
than yours." Pre- has always seem to me a preferable prefix as it is
less likely to be confused than ante-. But when we find pre- used in
similar contexts in different ways......

>
>>I was using the term pre-Greek to mean simply "before Greek" some 30
>>years ago.
And I should have said its usage with this meaning is older than that.
And after, if I see a title such as "The Pre-Greek Aegean" I would
expect to read about the Aegean region _before_ the Greeks settled
there. I would definitely not expect to read about early Greek
settlements in the Aegean based on internal reconstruction of evidence.
Why should linguistic use be different from archaeological use in this
respect? It just causes confusion.

>> 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.
Perhaps someone will enlighten us. Meantime, I've got rather used to
'pre' = "before".

> Jeff
>
> PS I don't have detailed comments or time to write them, but I like what
> you did with Plan B
Thanks.

>and am glad to see that Lin is back on the web.
So am I   :)

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

Replies