Re: NATLANG:Proto-Pontic

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:27:39 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote:

>Well, I know both PIE and Proto-Uralic have accusative -m.  That's an
>interesting coincidence.  I would say that they are probably related,
though
>reconstructing a proto-language is out of the question.
Not all of the languages currently considered to have come from "Proto-
Uralic" have accusative -m, but mainly I'm talking about Hungarian, which
has always stood apart from the rest of the "Uralic" languages.  There is a
good book called The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics,
by Angela Marcantonio, which gives some very good reasons why there
probably was *never* a unified Proto-Uralic tongue, but rather a continuum
of dialects spread across a rather wide area.

While I don't think that PIE and Proto-Uralic are as closely related as the
latter with certain other languages (primarily the Altaic group), there are
some similarities between the two:

1. Accusative *-m (as you mentioned above); many scholars argue that the
Uralic accusative only marked a definite direct object, due to e.g. Finnish
definite object with genitive vs. indefinite object with partitive.
However, I think that such a distinction may have arisen later once the
partitive attained its current meaning (it was formerly an ablative; see
below).

2. PU ablative *-tA vs. PIE ablative *-d; in the Balto-Finnic languages,
this case became the partitive (the later ablative was *-l-tA via
exaptation).  Also cf. adverbial/ablative/instrumental cases in Altaic
languages.

3. PU and PIE 1st person pronominal base *m- (likely *me- for PIE and *mi-
for PU).  This also applies for Altaic languages (e.g. Turkish ben < *mi-n).

4. PU and PIE 2nd person pronominal base *t- (likely *te- for PIE and *ti-
for PU).  This also applies for Altaic languages (e.g. Turkish sen < *ti-n).

5. PU and PIE plural formant *-i (supposedly a pronominal plural in PIE at
first).

6. PU plural *-t and PIE plural *-es *might* be related (a possible sound
change where word-final *t became *ts and then *s in PIE -- cf. PIE 2sg.
verb ending *-s(i) vs. PU *-t).  The **t-formant (?) may have also been
present in Altaic as a pronominal plural -- e.g. Turkish biz, siz < *mi-t,
*ti-t.

7. PU and PIE demonstrative stem *t- followed by a low and/or rounded vowel.

8. PU and PIE demonstrative stem *s- (PIE *so vs. PU *sä).

9. PU and PIE formants *-j and *-w (followed by "thematic vowel" in PIE).

10. PU genitive and PIE adjectival formant (denoting quality or possession)
*-n (again followed by "thematic vowel" in PIE).

I can't think of any more right now, lol.  But that should give an idea of
how the two "proto-languages" could be related.  I agree that it would be
much more difficult to reconstruct an earlier, ancestral language to both
Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic.  As one can see above, the
similarities between PIE and PU only involve very basic formants, which
means that they must have separated long, long ago (assuming that they did
come from the same ancestral tongue).

- Rob