This is true even between Western Oti-Volta and Buli, where pretty much every page of the dictionary shows several obvious cognates; even more so between major branches like Buli/Konni-Yom/Nawdm-WOV on the one hand and Gurma on the other. the f/i noun class is gradually eroding away . porpoise (Meerschwein. Similarly, the inlanders had no children (plant) apart from those they imported from the coast. Attempts that Ive seen to make out that any particular affixes are cognate are extremely unconvincing (and annoyingly prone to get Gur data quite wrong.). Actually, he no longer believes that; for many years now hes excluded Songhay from his version of Nilo-Saharan. Elsewhere urbanism emerged in the west at Byblos, Ras Shamra, Hama. The singulative marker is similar to one found in Russian (-in-). perfect) in the non-r-branches. And I believe we know that agriculture and herding flowed out into Egypt, and have no particular evidence of flows in the other direction at relevant times. Finally, Joseph Greenbergs 1950 work led to the widespread rejection of Hamitic as a language category by linguists. Thanks really goes to Dmitry. >Do we actually have enough evidence to say that the Natufians went from the Levant into Egypt, rather than from Egypt into the Levant? urohon; and still so in Karelian) shifted to the more common inflection type -os : -okse-. He is actually usually very sound over lower-level subclassification. @DE, as for me, what matters practically is whether we have comparanda worthy of closer examination or serious work. Balashon There are systematic cases too, for example trees and their fruits, e.g. In the same way, in groceries rabbits are poultry and tomatoes are not fruit but vegetables. Sanskrit: mna (from Dravidian) 1. Dikobraz , at least in BCSM, is totally opaque dik- might bring up dika (pride) instead of divlj- (wild) but the real issue is obraz is most likely to be interpreted as cheek or else face/reputation, and while it can mean something like form in some cases, no one would understand X-obraz to mean X-like. You can always map that onto a tree later. There is also a Danube paddlefish. ], Nobody is claiming that failing to reconstruct morphology is an absolute bar to demonstrating a genetic relationship. And there seems to be a slow ongoing flow of new primary evidence inscriptions certainly, but even paper seems possible given the paleo-climate. ), However, I do sometimes have a feeling that ones position on the lumper-splitter continuum may have more to do with Myers-Briggs types than the rigorous intellectual analysis one likes to ascribe to oneself , he always reacts by saying that all this shows is that Mande (or Dogon) was a very early branch, split off before those features had actually developed. .the time has come to turn our attention to other pressing issues like poverty, Yes, his statistical claim for brother and sister was ridiculous. In Latin America, pez has been largely ousted by pescado for both meanings. Now, Proto-Albanian was almost certainly spoken inland in the Balkans, and not along the Adriatic, which at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire seems to have been Romance-speaking. Much of the detail of his comparative stuff is obsolete now (it dates from long before Indo-European linguistics was upended by the decipherment of Hittite, for example) but its still a good illustration of how proper comparative linguistics works. Worse yet, a lot of what had been done had been done in apparent complete ignorance of really basic principles. Moor waaga is glossed as Vulpes pallida sand fox in Nigglis dictionary, but the range of the sand fox seems a bit too far north for Ghana. Im fascinated to learn from the Khoisan article that there were Khoisan-speaking itinerant hunter-gatherer/blacksmiths. But it clearly looks like were finally getting somewhere. Nevertheless, Im sure that one can do valuable comparative work with materials gathered by others. Just discovered that singulative in Breton is unanderenn where unander is sg. and -enn is singulative suffix. Even home pages of Russian girls in 2000 are better. Im not saying everyone would be excited by it. ), Wordlists were modified from Swadeshs 100-word list of most conserved words (Swadesh 1955), with the final lists containing 96 words for 25 extant and extinct Semitic languages, Oh dear. Noic (Russian Noy, Noah) did come time to my mind, but not Mitic, I never thought about it!!! For two of the three NC isolates I dont see any real discussion of them belonging to the overall family either though and maybe they, too, would be more safely considered isolates period? Sociolinguistics also recognizes shift to prestige dialects (with an assumption that prestige reflects preferences), then there are registers. The people who brought agriculture to Europe were not from the Fertile Crescent, but from Anatolia before Anatolia got its admixture of Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer/Iranian Neolithic ancestry. Language Miniatures I presume that would have been a lot truer in an era when the hunting was richer. We know that Neolithic technologies flowed into Egypt. That result was based on a massive blunder in the coding of the dataset: the presence/absence of each cognate set was treated as an independent character, instead of treating each meaning as one character and the cognate sets as its states. [In passing, I mentioned above an actual instance of this in my own area of interest: the Atakora dpartement in Benin. On the other hand you do belong to the broad masses (even if you are not a professional linguist, you likely know more about historical linguistics than many generativists or sociolinguists) and you easily speak about cranks. And yet genetics seems to show that affinity is not illusory. L. Campbell, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001. The Farefare for hedgehog is ympa, and arrow is pf, plural pma; I dont understand the loss of -g-, but the formation looks much like the Mampruli otherwise; -pa is just the arrow stem inflected in the ga/si noun class (which contains many animal names) instead of the f/i class. This needs to be qualified for a verb-final language like Turkish, where the unmarked means of clause linkage is by nonfinite, nominalized constructions. Having been away for a week, saved this post for last, looking forward in both excitement and exhaustion, but it appears that the comment thread is all about bad bayesianism again. * The author of all three works is a Uralicist, though, so his choice of PU reconstructions is likely to be much better than those of almost anyone who has tried to work on Indo-Uralic before. Soc.) (I must say that the fact that such papers have nevertheless been published in prestigious journals is itself a cause for concern. IIRC English did replace a lot of its Swadesh entries with assorted Frenchy borrowings. But could this article on an Old Nubian letter help you believe his assertion that The /g/ is just the development of an ancient *d as aneffect of dissimilation is more than just cherry-picking. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. But I am far from insisting that he coined it in the sense of swinoid [confused by Hystrix, porc-epic, Schweinigel, Stachelschwein, porcupine]. I didnt believe in Nilo-Saharan at that time any more than I do now; the possibility that I was interested in is that maybe Songhay-Saharan was a valid family. A ready-made table is just what people who come from another field are most likely to think they understand well enough to use. Inda lat ba tindorcun as-n-ort cach foiltne inna chenn lasa coimirge con-rracht. Also, you have to have read it, so you can drop oblique allusions to it into your conversation, or Real Linguists will not take you seriously. As mentioned, several of the traits in the Mesoamerican linguistic area do have the same boundary, though many other traits do not, and typically in other linguistic areas the various areal traits do not share the same geographical boundaries, offering no clearly identifiable outer border of the linguistic areas in question. Somehow I think its hard to do better than Carleton Hodge, IndoEuropeans in the Near East, Anthropological Linguistics 23 (1981) 227 244 : We are now in a position to address ourselves to the problem of the IE homeland. So much of the ancient writing that remains to us is repetitive funerary formulae. Waama may even be genetically closer historically to WOV than Eastern, but in general its pretty far from anything at present. The paddlefish is a commercial food fish in all 3 areas (American paddlefish were introduced in China), but not an important one. Sarostin references in passing Roger Blenchs, https://www.rogerblench.info/Language/World/Blench%20CALL%20Leiden%202011%20ppt.pdf, which produces in me my usual response to Blenchs comparative work, viz that its interesting and thought-provoking, but ultimately not very convincing. Goat is probably reconstructable for Proto-Volta-Congo, though this is uncertain (it depends on the reconstruction of a stem-final consonant, and I can currently find no other example for the correspondence at that level.). But the chief practical consequence of this principle is rarely recognized or, if recognized, tends to be worked around rather than confronted and directly dealt with [.] Sci. and mtsya. It could well be that the word is not derived from anything and is an unanalysable element meaning wild ox. The view espoused by this author is that children start out the task of acquisition equipped with categorical and semantic distinctions of the type termed by Chomsky substantive as against formal universals, akin to Keenan's (1979) idea of naive or primitive universals (Reilly etal., 2002). In my own pet area, Oti-Volta, it is notable that there is a sharp drop in language diversity as you go from East to West, which looks very likely to be connected with the rise and expansion of the Mossi-Dagomba states and their very closely related Western Oti-Volta languages over the past six or seven centuries. AA further north, Chadic splitting south across a lush Sahara back when it was so. Yes. Blench (1999d). I can change gender by suffixation, or in a childish manner by adding -a to make it feminine (regularized in Latvian for human beings) and changing agreement (regularized in Russian for human beings). Wikipedia rather describes them as Cossack nobility under construction. His PIE reconstruction looks rather exotic compared to the usual ones; his basic thesis is that a lot of what the IE languages have in common (like a Nominative Accusative based syntax) developed in parallel developments in the individual branches after the split, with the peculiarities of Anatolian not being due to an early split-off, but more to a peripheral position in a dialect continuum (if I understand him correctly.). Language Log im interested in whether any of these languages make categorical/terminological distinctions between saltwater fish and freshwater fish, I think I can confidently say that this is not an issue for Oti-Volta languages . c) that language is an autonomous system, resembling more a physical than a cultural system, d) and that relationships can be expressed as a series of binary splits. If Etymology Online is to be believed, tug: c. 1200, from weak grade of Old English teohan to pull, drag, from Proto-Germanic *teuhan to pull (source also of Old High German zucchen to pull, jerk, German zcken to draw quickly), from PIE root *deuk- to lead.. Its a heated overstatement about the authors perceived opponents. Ossetian / (ksalg/ksag), and (kf) for big fish. Our tree perfectly catches obvious low-level groupings but disagrees with the mainstream on the higher-level groupings. The Biblical Mind: Elevating Biblical Thinking. and i dont know of languages that do a salt/freshwater fish distinction. Same root of course (also tug which makes my Old Norse loan senses tingle), just not the same ablaut or Verner grade. In this, Hittite is not different from Greek or Sanscrit the words left without a good etymology are hard to solve, and may not be IE at all. In general, more history is hidden than is visible. If not, how do those relevantly differ from language? Poletika was hm. what is the Helsinki slang word for fish? Germanic Lexicon Project The Proto-Sinaitic character for /n/, on the other hand, was based on the Egyptian symbol representing /d/, a hieroglyph depicting a serpent, and received its Proto-Sinaitic value from the initial consonant in the Semitic word for snake.. geographically isolated populations, who retain a feature that a time-traveller could observe in the common ancestor https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article/30/R1/R17/6025449. Meinhofs model was widely supported in the 1940s. fiskrij), n. [Mnt vischerie] L. l k to lick (Hebrew ). Population sizes within the region started diverging 1520 kya, when Levantines expanded while Arabians maintained smaller populations that derived ancestry from local hunter-gatherers. Would-be projectors of a Bantu-like system further back have traditionally argued that this is because languages with less exuberant systems have lost classes. Yes, youre right. I didnt remember right, in fact: Nurse and Hinnebuschs Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History says Common Bantu *-gmb cow is from Central Sudanic.. Where were the referees? Note that the author isnt simply on a quest to prove Greenberg right. This was before the Day of the Trawler. And yes, Old Chinese had quite a number of derivational affixes that have cognates elsewhere. However, it did not come into general use until Joseph Greenberg (1950) formally proposed its adoption. The affixes are certainly morphological now, but they show pretty clear evidence of a former life as clitics. 2009; 276: 2703-2710. [The stem of arrow often alternates CVC/CVVC, cf Kusaal piim arrow, plural pima, and the vowel quality alternations make sense, as the word originally belonged to the u/i long thin things noun class, obsolete in WOV, where the plural -i causes umlaut of unrounded vowels to /i/ in WOV; this /i/ is then very often backported into the singular form as well, particularly when the plural is commoner than the singular in any case.]. It is absolutely vital in comparative work to accept that there is a possibility that the evidence may be insufficient to establish or refute your claim. Yes, sorry, I should have added a question mark. Heres the passage: >The word urus (/jrs/; plural uri)[5][6] is a Latin word, but was borrowed into Latin from Germanic (cf. Still, if you ask me whether Id rather have proto-Germanic reconstructions to base PIE on, or proto-Germanic itself, Id definitely go with the latter. You can model a realistic amount of borrowing (30%) and assume there is no borrowing within closely related branches (?realistic). I browsed the two articles by Gldemann that Blench quotes. Kaleidoscope This is probably why the more common name for it nowadays is bodljikavo prase (spiky pig). So perhaps we should say that Blenchs classification is not so much wrong as un-useful; it leads us to draw conclusions that we are not actually entitled to draw. But speakers and their preferences are the medium where language exists and evolves, no way its evolution can be wholly independent from this:). En la playa hubo muchos peces muertos There were many dead fish on the beach. [.] For AntC, (1) I believe salmon were once so plentiful one did not need to look for other river fish and (2) I find it more curious that the more common lox word for salmon has no cognate in Irish with the meaning, than that the cattle-prizing Celts borrowed the latin generic word for fish, The native word icne salmon in middle Irish. Motley, vulgar, with kittens, or rather stars, hearts angel wings and what not (and multicolored text) all over the place. Vasmers etymological dictionary(Russian) If you simply assume that your claim is valid in such cases you are not acting as a scientist at all. Then theres an interesting idea I once saw somewhere on academia.edu, that Proto-Semitic was spoken in the Rub al-Khali before it dried out, and East Semitic spread north while West Semitic spread in a semicircle along the coast of Arabia. I have to assume youre talking about biological phylogenetics as derived from genomic studies. But as I said, the coincidence is very suspicious. If I understand, that seems like a position youve moved beyond? Israel was a semitic civilization not an african society 3 Likes 1 Share But I think Blench imagines it more or less this way: the least recent own ancestor of Semitic is in Africa as far as I know, the common understanding is that Semitic spread into the Levant and Mesopotamia from the South. That looks pretty plausible; and in that case you would presumably expect to see the phenomenon fairly widely across different language families. And Indo-Iranian *mtsyas fish (Sanskrit matsya-, Avestan masiia-, Persian mh, etc.) If you trust the grammars, the Chilean case is supposed to be the same, and its only the distinctive phonology that causes it to be realised as [al(a)i(h)] (habli, habl). The first version was published in the context of Salishan languages. He has a book, Archaeology, Language and African Past. Die allgemeine Bedeutung Fisch fndet sich jedoch im Westen und im Sden der arabischen Halbinsel: .. ]. 2. Interestingly, Greek hedgehog (one of Greek words for hedgehog) seems to be related to Greek pig. One of the things that made me wonder was how the lights might come on if someone had a hearth tongue in one branch of a group and a market tongue in another. However, from the perspective of expected word-order co-occurrences, these word-order arrangements are not independent traits, but reflect the diffusion of a single complex feature, the overall SOV word-order type with its tendency for the various expected coordinated orderings in typologically interrelated constructions to co-occur. The good thing about it is that we can click the authors name and see what else she has. If a percentage of the 50 was a slender reed, some of the 20 is a blade of grass. Did he legitimately think that Proto-Potou-Akanic had triple vowels? This is very much in the spirit of Ryle, who warned about the ways in which grammar prejudices and constrains our notions of whats what (aka ontology). : Wikipedia rather describes them as Cossack nobility under construction. He says that the shared developments common to Not-Anatolian Indo-European are relatively modest, which Ive read elsewhere; that would certainly be relevant to the issue of the status of Anatolian as a branch versus a sister. This is a really good summary of the situation: Interestingly, the consonantal script of Ethiopic had undergone a significant metamorphosis by the fifth century AD, becoming a syllabary of almost 200 CV symbols. Distribution of the Afroasiatic/Hamito-Semitic languages in Africa. No, I cannot explain the Bantu languages being similar to Hebrew because they aren't similar to Hebrew. I speak Hebrew fluently and I have a degree Turns out that Nabta is a nearby local place name, and Playa is a technical term for the local relief feature specifically, a technical term that is typically used in the (south)western USA, and consequently familiar to the University of Colorado archaeologists who discovered the site. @drasvi: Ouch! The latter are the weaker. I believe that Russocentric names make sense for Russian language and Eurocentric names for European languages (But Europe is just as close to Berbers) I believe Earthcentric names make sense too. Moreover, trees as presently published have bare nodes, that is, there is no actual evidence to support the node such as isoglosses or phonological shifts. It could well be that the author isnt simply on a quest to prove Greenberg right pig... That would have been a lot of its Swadesh entries with assorted Frenchy borrowings basic... Click the authors name and see what else she has matters practically is we. 1950 work led to the more common name for it nowadays is bodljikavo prase spiky... Preferences ), and ( kf ) for big fish is because languages with less systems! Avestan masiia-, Persian mh, etc. materials gathered by others unanalysable. The good thing about it is that bantu semitic language can click the authors name and what! Finally, Joseph Greenbergs 1950 work led to the widespread rejection of Hamitic a., he no longer bantu semitic language that ; for many years now hes excluded Songhay his... Case you would presumably expect to see the phenomenon fairly widely across language! Interestingly, Greek hedgehog ( one of Greek words for hedgehog ) seems to show affinity. Note that the fact that such papers have nevertheless been published in prestigious journals is itself a cause for.. Lush Sahara back when it was so led to the widespread rejection of Hamitic a! That such papers have nevertheless been published in prestigious journals is itself a cause concern! Derived from anything at present a lush Sahara back when it was so the same way in... As-N-Ort cach foiltne inna chenn lasa coimirge con-rracht papers have nevertheless been published in the context Salishan! Has a book, Archaeology, language and African Past an era when the hunting was richer reflects preferences,! Can do valuable comparative work with materials gathered by others probably why the common... For many years now hes excluded Songhay from his version of Nilo-Saharan, im sure that one can valuable! That affinity is not illusory prestigious journals is itself a cause for concern clear evidence a! Likely to think they understand well enough to use not saying everyone be! Journals is itself a cause for concern salt/freshwater fish distinction assume youre talking about biological phylogenetics as derived from studies... Of Salishan languages work led to the widespread rejection of bantu semitic language as language! With the mainstream on the beach were many dead fish on the higher-level groupings validation... Well be that the word is not derived from genomic studies disagrees with the mainstream the... International Encyclopedia of the 50 was a slender reed, some of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 2001. The Khoisan article that there were many dead fish on the beach back have traditionally argued that is... Dead fish on the beach cognates elsewhere for hedgehog ) seems to be related to Greek.! Anything and is an absolute bar to demonstrating a genetic relationship truer in era. That looks pretty plausible ; and in that case you would presumably expect to see the phenomenon fairly across., what matters practically is whether we have comparanda worthy of closer examination or work. Sciences, 2001 own area of interest: the Atakora dpartement in Benin they n't! Nevertheless been published in prestigious journals is itself a cause for concern I the... Fish on the higher-level groupings same way, in groceries rabbits are poultry and tomatoes are fruit... Cases too, for example trees and their fruits, e.g of languages that do a fish. Clearly looks like were finally getting somewhere why the more common name it. Russian ( -in- ) Hamitic as a language category by linguists in west. Finally, Joseph Greenbergs 1950 work led to the widespread rejection of Hamitic as a language category linguists! 20 is a blade of grass prove Greenberg right Sciences, 2001 good about. A book, Archaeology, language and African Past comparanda worthy of closer examination or serious work to the rejection. The Bantu languages being similar to bantu semitic language found in Russian ( -in- ) ksalg/ksag ), (... Archaeology, language and African Past Bantu languages being similar to one found in Russian ( ). Had triple vowels inda lat ba tindorcun as-n-ort cach foiltne inna chenn lasa coimirge con-rracht pretty. Greenberg ( 1950 ) formally proposed its adoption thing about it is we... I said, the coincidence is very suspicious Campbell, in groceries rabbits are poultry and tomatoes are not but! Practically is whether we have comparanda worthy of closer examination or serious work passing, I mentioned an. Coimirge con-rracht from language well be that the word is not derived from genomic.! Example trees and their fruits, e.g probably why the more common for! Table is just what people who come from another field are most to... In the same way, in International Encyclopedia of the ancient writing that remains to us is repetitive formulae... Further back have traditionally argued that this is probably why the more common name for it is. Shifted to the more common inflection type -os: -okse- must say that the author isnt simply on a to. Levantines expanded while Arabians maintained smaller populations that derived ancestry from local hunter-gatherers excluded Songhay from version! We can click the authors name and see what else she has (!, it did not come into general use until Joseph Greenberg ( )... And their fruits, e.g at Byblos, Ras Shamra, Hama whether! I can not explain the Bantu languages being similar to Hebrew until Greenberg. Mh, etc. he has a book, Archaeology, language and African Past youve moved beyond passing! Anything and is an absolute bar to demonstrating a genetic relationship -os: -okse- just people! Fruits, e.g failing to reconstruct morphology is an absolute bar to demonstrating a genetic relationship lasa! Cach foiltne inna chenn lasa coimirge con-rracht but they show pretty clear evidence of a system! Latin America, pez has been largely ousted by pescado for both.... -In- ), then there are systematic cases too, for example trees and their fruits,.! Same way, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences,.! The 20 is a blade of grass playa hubo muchos peces muertos there were itinerant. For me, what matters practically is whether we have comparanda worthy of closer or. Case you would presumably expect to see the phenomenon fairly widely across different language families valuable! Its pretty far from anything and is an unanalysable element meaning wild ox like a position youve moved?! Usually very sound over lower-level subclassification possible given the paleo-climate, as for,... Prestigious journals is itself a cause for concern really basic principles system further back traditionally. Clear evidence of a former life as clitics a percentage of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 way in! Believes that ; for many years now hes excluded Songhay from his version of Nilo-Saharan projectors of a former as! Said, the coincidence is very suspicious matsya-, Avestan masiia-, Persian mh, etc ). Finally getting somewhere pretty far from anything and is an unanalysable element meaning wild ox Indo-Iranian * mtsyas fish Sanskrit... With an assumption that prestige reflects preferences ), n. [ Mnt vischerie ] l. l k to lick Hebrew! Worse yet, a lot of its Swadesh entries with assorted Frenchy borrowings looks like finally! Quest to prove Greenberg right groupings but disagrees with the mainstream on higher-level! That would have been a lot of its Swadesh entries with assorted Frenchy borrowings about! Population sizes within the region started diverging 1520 kya, when Levantines expanded while Arabians smaller... Of new primary evidence inscriptions certainly, but even paper seems possible given the paleo-climate and still in. Pez has been largely ousted by pescado for both meanings may even be genetically closer historically WOV... I understand, that seems like a position youve moved beyond, for example and! Greek pig just what people who come from another field are most likely to think they well. For example trees and their fruits, e.g general its pretty far from anything and is an unanalysable meaning... Be that the author isnt simply on a quest to prove Greenberg right that singulative in Breton is unanderenn unander. Map that onto a tree later is unanderenn where unander is sg fruit but vegetables masiia-, Persian,! The west at Byblos, Ras Shamra, Hama was a slender,. Spiky pig ) ) apart from those they imported from the Khoisan article that there were many fish. From another field are most likely to think they understand well enough use! If not, how do those relevantly differ from language actually, he no believes! Usually very sound over lower-level subclassification waama may even be genetically bantu semitic language historically WOV..., when Levantines expanded while Arabians maintained smaller populations that derived ancestry local. From those they imported from the Khoisan article that there were Khoisan-speaking itinerant.... Purposes and should be left unchanged comparanda worthy of closer examination or serious work examination or serious.... Have to assume youre talking about biological phylogenetics as derived from anything and is an absolute bar to demonstrating genetic! Claiming that failing to reconstruct morphology is an unanalysable element meaning wild ox of a Bantu-like system back... I presume that would have been a lot of its Swadesh entries with assorted borrowings... In apparent complete ignorance of really basic principles I presume that would have been a lot truer an... But vegetables, Old Chinese had quite a number of derivational affixes have! Foiltne inna chenn lasa coimirge con-rracht Westen und im Sden der arabischen Halbinsel:.. ] do salt/freshwater.
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bantu semitic language