Re: question - Turco-Japanese (a thought experiment for the group here)

Ray wrote:
> > (Armenian has long been associated with Caucasian languages,
>
> I think there can be no real doubt that Armenian is of IE origin - but it
> has clearly been influenced and indeed appears to have been subject to
> Iranian influence in early times.
I realized after I wrote that that it could be misleading, and it
appears I have mislead.  What I meant was that Armenian has been
in the Caucasus for such a long time that it has acquired a number
of features from its neighbors, particularly lexical items.  I did
not mean to suggest that Armenian was not an IE language! ;(  -sigh-

> The language is thought to be connected with the Thraco-Phrygian IE
> languages. The Georgian name for the Armenians is 'Samekhi' where _Sa-_ is
> a prefix;
It's actually <Somekhi>.  Sa- is indeed affixual (as in _Sa-kartvel-o_
'Georgia'), but I rather doubt that So- here is felt to be separate.
(Wish I were in Chicago with my Georgian grammars; then I could check it
now.)  One piece of evidence to that end is that <Somekhi> is one
of those words that ablauts with suffixation:  <Som(e)kh- 'Armenian'
+ -eti 'country of' = _Somkheti_ 'Armenia'.

> it is thought by some that -mekhi is derived from the name which
> appears in cuneiform records as 'Muski' - a people who reached the upper
> Euphrates at the beginning of 12th cent BCE.
Do you have a citation on that? This vaguely sounds like one of the
crazy things that Diakonoff was wont to say occasionally.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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