Re: my all-verb language

Joe wrote:

> Roger Mills wrote:
> >And dangerously close to Indonesian--  2-- dua, 4-- empat, 5-- lima !!
6--
> >enem,  and _siyam_ or something very much like it is one of the
> >reconstructed PAN forms for 'nine'.  In fact, just comparing the numbers,
we
> >might think that this language is also related to Kash............
> >
> Is the 'dua' an import from IE(Sanskrit, perhaps)?  It just looks
> somewhat - well, IE-ish(PIE *duwos, I believe).
It's one of the troublesome little bits of evidence that leads some people
to posit a relationship of some sort between AN and IE.
They also like to compare (AN "e" = schwa):
AN *telu 'three' IE *treyes or whatever
AN *(em)pat 'four' IE *kwetwor- etc.
AN *pitu 'seven' IE *septm- (but this is < Semitic, we're told!!)

"dua" in particular, if it were a Sanskrit loan, would be one of a tiny
handful of _possible_ Skt. loans in the Oceanic languages-- the other other
one I can think of might be Polynesian _mana_ 'magical/spiritual power (?)',
relatable to Skt. manah (?) 'mind' (or IE *men- ??).  But basically, the
idea of specifically Skt. loans in Oceania is considered impossible since by
the time Skt. influence reached island SE Asia, the ancestors of the
Melanesian/Polynesian languages were long gone, by at least 1000-1500 years.

Since these words are found in every branch of AN (Formosa, Indonesia/PI,
Oceanic) they have to be _very early_ borrowings (PIE > PAN), if not signs
of genetic relationship, which seems rather doubtful the further back you
go.  Not even the Nostratic people have included AN in Greater Nostratic,
though they seem willing to include almost everything else..... Indeed, so
far the two major families of SE Asia-- Austro-Asiatic (Mon-Khmer, Viet,
some langs. of India like Munda) and AN-- seem to stand apart from
everything, though there are movements afoot to relate them to each other
(including the Thai langs).