Scribd Logo
Încărcați

Bine ați venit la Scribd!

  • Rasmussen & Cavoto - Language and Prehistory (1999)

    Încărcat de

    Allan Bomhard
    41 vizualizări7 pagini
    Review of Joseph Greenberg's book "Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family" (vol. 1).

    Drepturi de autor

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Formate disponibile

    PDF sau citiți online pe Scribd

    Vi se pare util acest document?

    Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

    Raportați acest document
    Review of Joseph Greenberg's book "Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family" (vol. 1).

    Drepturi de autor:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Descărcați ca PDF sau citiți online pe Scribd
    Indicator pentru conținut neadecvat
    41 vizualizări7 pagini

    Rasmussen & Cavoto - Language and Prehistory (1999)

    Încărcat de

    Allan Bomhard
    Review of Joseph Greenberg's book "Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family" (vol. 1).

    Drepturi de autor:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Descărcați ca PDF sau citiți online pe Scribd
    Indicator pentru conținut neadecvat
    din 7
    Volume 20, Number 2 Fall 1999 C ARCHEOLOGY CONTENTS of this issue GP. Rice Dental Variation and Human History 1 (Reviw of Scot and Turner) 0. Ba-Yoser And You Shall Eat th Plants ofthe Feld 4 (Review of Damania, etal, eds) LE. Rasaessex Language and Prehistory 8 AND F. CavOTO (Review of Greenberg) MJ. O'BRIEN Commentary: The Futur of Eeolutionary Archaeology 1“ AND RL. LyMan RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW: FROM THE ARCHIVES P.Beuwoop (Cloniing te Limits 23 (Review of Irwin; Bahn and Flenley; Lee) A Bern Middle Pleistocene Behavior in the Dordogne 23 (Review of Rigaud, ed) P.A. CouNvaLx ‘The Goduin Archive 3 (Review of Mahaney, ed) DF. Dincavze “Monk's Caes and Shrt Memories 35 (Review of Neudorfe) RIL For Reconstracing Historie Subisence 38 (Review of Reitz and Scarry) DH. Keusy Writing at Teotibuacon a (Review of Langley, Berri, ed.) SJ. O1ses Feaunal Frauds and Other Ponned Hoaxes 45 (Review f Feder) DA.Ror ‘The Neopolacltie 48 (Review of Gamble) PH, West Archaolgy inthe Press 52 (Review of Prpuler and Soi-Popular Article’ Tie ARcusrovocxcat RECORD 58 Isnex To Vous 19-20 62 8 The REVIEW OF ARCHAEOLOGY Linguistics Language and Prehistory By Jens Elmegird Rasmussen and Fabrice Cavoto niversity of Copenhagen) {Indo-European and its Closest Relatives. Toe Eurastatic Lan- _Buage Family. vel | 2000) Joseph H. Greenberg. Stanford Uni Yersty Press, Sunford. x+ 317 Pp It will take up too much space to describe the creden- tials of Joseph Greenberg who has done pioneering clas- sificatory work on practically all of the world’s lan- ‘guages. Since no one can be an expert on all the many languages and language groups treated by Greenberg— although in the case of many he definitely is—Green- berg’s ceuvre is perhaps more than anything a grand scale test of the validity of the state of the art of all the ‘many fields and subfields on which his theories and con- clusions are based, Far from all relevant languages are equipped with ideal tools of study in the shape of clear and adequate grammars, etymological dictionaries and ceasy-tocconsult treatises of their phonological and gram- ‘matical history. A wellstudied linguistic subfield ought to be ready for the comparative handling to which Greenberg subjects them all; some are fully prepared for such an undertaking, others are currently just getting there, while some will perhaps not be "Greenberg-ipe” for quite some time. Born in 1915, Greenberg cannot wait for Utopia to materialize, but has wisely chosen to act now. One can only be grateful that he has taken up the challenge on a basis which he would undoubtedly himself have wished to be better in many parts. ‘A large-scale comparison comprising the Eurasiatic seg ment of “Nostratic” is by definition stil 2 pioneering work. The study of Nostratic, long since out ofits infan: cy, may be said to be now in its teens, strugeling with the question of which of two promising identities it will have when it finally grows up. Future will show whether etymologies deriving Indo-Buropean *D, *d, "g (with the variants “g and “g*) from Nostratic plain ‘p, "t, *® (ihus MlSvity€ and his followers) or those departing from slotalized ‘p, ‘t, “%’ (he position defended by Bomhard) will carry the day, or perhaps some reconcilia ton of the two schools will prove possible. Since there are numerous lexemes that do not involve the controver- sial parts of the phonological system, one will have to acknowledge that enough within the Nostratic relation- ship looks so sound thar it would be foolish not to follow the lead. ‘The methods used by Greenberg in his big compar- isons have been criticized on several occasions. The reviewers can only say, So what? Were Rask’s, Grimm's and Bopp’s methods any better when they did the ‘groundbreaking work that founded what has since been hallowed as the model for all comparative linguistics to follow? In many respects Greenberg's new book resem- bles Bopp's classic Conjugationssystem of 1816 which ‘to many is simply the birth certificate of Indo-European studies. Like Greenberg now, Bopp was not at all con- ‘cemed with sophisticated phonetic laws, but contented, himself with superficial similarity between the forms of | the languages he compared, And since the naked eye can see the underlying identity of the Ist, 2nd and 3rd plural Vol. 20, Number 2 endings of Persian barim, ‘i, and ‘ake’ and those of Gothic sokjam, soketp, sokjand ‘seek’ quoted by Bopp 1816:117 who does not even bother to mention the man- ifestly supporting endings of Greek and Latin, the Indo- European felationship was never in doubt. Likewise one may quote Finnish ipl -mme, 2pl tte along, with the basic personal markers “m, ts comesponding to Lat. ‘me, tse as defite proof that the comparison of Uralic ‘with Indo-European, regardless of the details of phonetic Correspondence rules, #8 based on more than. wishful thinking. The same markers tum up as Eskimo-Aleut “my, "cand the intervening Chukotian group also has /a/ ‘Ad for 1s and 2nd person. Is precisely the aim of Green berg’ new book to add the morphological suppor to the etymologies already suggested. As with Indo European this work. if successful, will be decisive, since, while per haps any specific lexematie unit can be borrowed from ane language to another, obvious correspondences in the material used. for purely. grammatical purposes are extremely unlikely to reflec anything other than straight forward relatedness, be. the situation that all the lan guages concemed are in effect simple descendants of @ Single ancestor. I is the firm impression of the reviewers thatthe only defensible conclusion i positive one ‘One of the most tenacious controversies pertaining £0 the idea of a Eurasatic subgroup within the Nostatic relationship concems the position, indeed the very exis tence, of Alsi. Here the testimony of comparative mor phology is surprisingly clear. In view of the existence of ist person marker /m/~ /b/ and a 2nd person // (whence in places /9,//, /8) in Turkic and Mongolian ‘which bring to mind TE “m, °s, pl “me, “te, combined ‘with, eg. Turkic interogatve /k/ for persons and. /m/ Tor things which are hard to separate from Hungarian Bf ‘who’, mf "what, there can hardly be any doubt that these languages do indeed belong to Nostratic. And ifthe ‘m/o alteration inthe Ist person marker covers Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic there ean be no serious doubt that they form a special branch within Nostractie. In GGreenbers’s words, “the chance of an iregular alterna tion bé/men arising independently three times 1s infin tesimal” (14). Note that tis will be no Tess true if the interchange is found to be regular after al ‘Geenberg's new book is thus net so much concerned with Indo-European which often plays only a minor par, 1s with its “Clovest Relatives", the basic topic being the Unity and delimitation of Buraslati. This is taken to con- Sist of Eiruscan, Indo-European, Urlic and. Yukaghir, Altaic with Korean and Japanese, Ainu, Gilyak, Chukot- fan, and Eskimo Aleut. The attention given to Etruscan is expectedly smal, andthe author hestates ast ts satus as either 2 separate branch of Eurasatic or a8 “a third ‘member of Indo-European, alongside of Anatolian and Indo-European proper” (23). Thus, the basic message of the frst chapter, “The Historical Background” (1-2), is that an Altae node is real, while the other branches are ‘separate units of the large Eurasiatic subgroup of Nostrat- iclof which the non-Eurasiatic members are Kartvlian, ‘Afvoasatic and ‘ElamoDravidian. Some hesitation is expressed conceming the position of Karwvelian which, judging by the taxonomic chart of Bomhard 1996:22, Seems to be more closely related to EA than the other Outside branches, so that tis in effect a matter of defint tion whether one wants to include itor not. The specific arguments are left forthe following chapters, the relative iy short “Some Aspects ofthe Comparative Phonology of Eurasatic™ (24460), and the majestic and central Chapter 3 "Grammatical Evidence for’ Burssiatic™ (61-240), An Fall 1999 ¢laborate appendix treats Ainu vowel alterations (241- 76), and a conclusion offers a survey "Classification of Eurasatic Languages" (27982), 0 which are added refer ‘ences and indices. ‘The phonological section is the weak part of the fortress Its main concems are alternations between stop and nasal and within the vowel system. “The nasal/non-nasl alternation of Eskimo-Aleut is ten tatively compared with similar phenomena in Ural and ‘Chukotian. Thus, for Uric, the 2nd person marker is in Ziryene and Ob-Ugric in some parts of the verbal sy= tem, but-d/t in others, and also Samoyed (Nganasan and Nenets) has 2sg -n in wordfinal position (alternating with medial -r-, conceivably from *+-). This is highly remi- Ascent of the Eskimo-Aleut nasallzation of word final stops (Alaskan WEsk. ann ‘man’ etg. nut, Alaskan Esk. aqum, erg. anutim), while the governing rule for CChulkchi isthe reverse, 70? ‘thee’: jena “in thee’. Emo- neously, the author interprets the original Eskimo situs. tion as one of nasalization in close juncture, which is indeed found in many dialects, but only as a shallow rule of sandhi (as the author describes at great length). It is plain that this is no firm bass for genetie conclusions. The section about TE wocalism is toally unacceptable to the reviewers. In the author's view altemations of height (/e, u/o are typical indications of earlier vowel harmony. Since such alternations can be cited from some of the other branches of EA, viz. Chukchi, Korean and Gilyak, and allegedly tic in well with the living vowel harmony of Unilic and Alaie, the author claims his broader perspective confirmed by the existence in indi vidual IE languages of some odd instances of vowel vara tion which he projects back beyond the IE protolan- guage all the way to a common Nostra vowel Sltemation, In each instance, a more “local” explanation is belitled as ad hoc or even reflecting fear to face the facts. To the reviewers, such weak spots in the phono- logical histories of the IE languages are still superior 10 statements that blatantly violate wellestablished rules as the author's suggestions mostly do, Infact, iis often not hhard to explain the troublesome forms as due to quite natural changes ofa more recent date, Thus, for OCS 1, Lith. #3 vs. Lat. ex (34f), it may be noted that Balto-Slavic “iis the antonym of *in (Lith. 9 and so may have taken ‘over its vowel by a commonplace analogy, much as Slav. ‘ve ‘in’ took that of “ud (> OCS vy ‘out’). Gk. W§ ‘night’, a8 opposed to Lat. nos etc. quite regular from "dks by “Cowgil's rule” (seen also in dv “nail” from *byndge*s). Gk. dal, loviarvs. Cova is a simple sponta. ncous assimilation, while OCS wera ‘yesterday":veter ‘evening’ and the altemate form Sutyre vs. Eetyre four are mere allegro reductions. The same may g0 for Gk ‘mioupes for normal réooapes ‘four’, but since the Gk. reflex of “schwa secundum” is /i/ (xitvnut ‘I expand’ from ‘pj-nd-bemD, one may derive all variants from an old paradigm “kérwores, loc. “ke ursi (he later with ‘ru:> Gk. -6). True, the theory of schwa secundum is ‘now generally abandoned” (36), but by mistake, for Schindler 1977 irefutably shows it to be the regular appearance of zero in the environment «TTR Ge, ‘between two inital plosive consonants followed by a nonsyllabie sonorant) An example like Sk. ras :Avest sarab “head” is pif, since both represent Indole “ras from older *kpHos, a (repaired) zero-grade variant of Gk. xépag, this being normal ablaut e/zero with no TE 1V iavolved, The same goes for Avest.-cina 'at all which is identical with Skt. cana, not an old alternant of it. San- skrt sima vs. sama is s0 Isolated that an adhoc explana: The REVIEW OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9 tion is called for: analogy with , cf *Dynérz > "bnér=, bY PIE Simpl Fed to “bynér, Gk. dvp "man’; 3) on its way t0 220, Unstressed “e passed through an olike stage, wherefore lengthening of unstressed “e- yields °<, cf. “suésor > Lat soror ‘sister; (4) the acrostatic (Narien”)ablaut &/6 is regular from underlyingly long root vowel, to which ‘one need add only rule of initial accent PIE stéy/stéy- of Ved. stdu‘i, mid, stdve from stu- ‘invoke’, prelE ‘siéus/stéue, the later alternant developed via “seu! > 10 The REVIEW OF ARCHAEOLOGY. ‘stéy., the “inidal accent rule” operating vacuous in other words because unstressed short vowels have already been lost, forms lke gen. "p2,trds ‘father's, 3p ‘prondntet “il and even da "eugbYoe Tour being in fact accented on thei fist full vowel); (6) additional lengthening of @ produced 3 (nom. “pédz > ‘pods “foot, probably via timoric /e:/ pronounced in two sy) lables {€-] one of which was unaccented and so became {o}, whereupon (€.0] was contracted to a long o-vowel; stems in clusters shortened the lengthened vowel of the nome. ef. "ndkets ‘night’ vs. (pbds. An account of these basi rules is given in Rasmussen 1978/99, ‘Special rules apply to certain varieties of IE /o/: (7) the “thematic vowel" (Le. a vowel in stemfinal position) alternates ¢/, the form being /o/ before a voiced seg- ‘ment, /e/ elsewhere, cf. verbal endings in “om, "4s, “2, ont, ot pronouns in “od, "of, and the telling common form of ipv. and voc. “e; the only exception is the nom.sg. in "0s which may be accounted for by assuming earlier voiced *z for the lengthening nom, marker as ‘opposed to voiceless" of the non-lengthening 2s8 mark. ef of verbs: (6) the d/zer0 of some reduplicated verbal Categories (eg. the perfect) must be simple disimilation, ‘ievedeor- being ultimately based on *krerdeer; () an “infxal 0 must be assumed for causatives, the wordtype toga and derivatives like Gk. répy7, the forms coming ‘out regular only in case an extra element "-Q- (a conso- ‘ant that changes to o after the working of the ablaut rules) is inserted into the root segment, cf. Rasmussen 1992 for arguments. Of this only the thematic vowel and the infixal-o- have any chance of turing up in extemal evidence. The 10 ‘may be ultimately identical, but that i for fuure analysis to decide. ‘As claimed by IitSvityé the overwhelming frequency of underlying /e/ inthe TE vocaliam must be due to merg fer of a more varied older picture preserved in Ural and Alaic. However, a yet unpublished study by Cavoto shows that Urllé and Altaie do not demand seven origi nal vowels, but share a system of four basic vowel phonemes, viz. a, d, w/o, /, and that the opposition « 2 dissolves when the forms are projected back into the Nostra provolanguage for which a threefold system ‘ah, u/o, Ve sufices, all variation being ascribable to the ‘Adjacent consonants ‘The central chapter 3 presents 72 grammatical items as evidence for EA. The trouble with grammatical mark- ts and pronominal stems is that they are very short and often of somewhat vague functional identity, this making the danger of fortuitous resemblances very great. Thus, some of the entries have litle oF no persuasive power, ‘while others make up small sets that seem hard to dis miss, ‘Unable to comment on all, we call attention to a num- ber of specific items which may be of general interest (he numbers are those of Greenberg's sections) ‘V2. Fistperson mvs. of Uralic with much the same Aisesbution as TE “mvs. “bp, ie. with m as a more active or engativelike marker as opposed to an inactive velar, the difference being restricted to the singular. Compars- by, Eskimo-Aleut has 19g * opposed 0 a labial in the dual and plural, athough the facts given are somewhat Inadequate in showing this: Thus, the Esk. ergative Tse sma is quoted as representing Ist person “sm, while the ‘Aleut form -min shows that the person marker is really ‘de, whence word-inal "9, so that Esk. -ma isin fact from older “mena, i. erpative marker *m-+ Isgy <*k + an ‘optional panicle not present in the Aleut form. Note also Vol. 20, Number 2 the difference in the 1p! possessive, inergative “put, ‘which is somehow from *-B-5 with a labial (< *m12) of 1st person + plural “8, hardened by general rule to stop “in ‘wordsfinal position, contrasted with the ergative counter- part “mita from ergative *m- + 1st pers. “B+ plural “t< £8, again with word-inal treatment before the particle 2 With fewer preceding consonants there is wordinternal treatment in the Isg inerg. possessive in Esk. -ba Aleut without the particle -1). The Esk-Al. Auslautgeseze Changing underiying stops into nasals, and spirants into stops, are all but given in Swadesh 1952:168 and have been discussed at some length in Rasmussen 1979 (curt cna they ae noe mentioned Inthe survey of Eaimo rules given in the introduction to Fortescue AD 198s, Altai sso as Ist person my, retained word internally as in Turk, -miz ‘our, and changed into ‘when wordinitial (Turk. béz “we'), except when the ‘word contains a second nasal, as “min ‘T (Uzbek men, Mod.Turk. analogical bin). We suggest this formulation as superior to the traditional explanation of b > m by assim- lation which the author rightly dismisses. 45. Second person t seems inescapable, but the alterna- tive $ looks more than anything like an original cond tioned variant. Thus, in IE, the variation 23g *s : 2pl “te and 2sg pronoun ‘tu, *te can be paralelied, ¢8, by “némos ‘reverence’ : *németo-s ‘holy’ and other cases of an interchange *@t/"s collected in Rasmussen. 1994, Likewise for Altai: if Mong. is derived from "1 (72), ‘one wonders why si of other Altaic languages cannot be 4 further development of the same. Surely Eskimo-Aleut 2pl poss. ci must contain a plural marker also; note that a derivation from *4-5 would make it parallel with 2du Esk. ‘ak, Al. -Otx from "47, the palatal character of Esk. *6 (reflected as (6), [2], (6] and () in individual dialects) makes the development to {¢) with an auxiliary Fvowel fully comprehensible, There thus seems to be no real ev dence for the author's Nostratic 2nd person *s 7. A pronoun base ge or ga is suggested to account for the IE pronoun ‘T'and the stem nuclei of pronouns like Chukchi 787/70" or Hung. en-gem/téged “Wthou' and Eskimo -miedn ‘L.. thee’. While the rest may look prom- ‘sing, an IE “eg(@2)om is supported only by Indoranian (Skt. abd), which has an extension ~am on many other pronouns also (Skt. fuim ‘thou’, aysdim “he’), the com. bined evidence leads rather to TE *(é@. The stem of the Esk-Al, personal pronouns is found to consist of a dental + velar cluster, perhaps /ty/, ef. for details Ras- rmussen 1987/99. This makes things far too complicated for a simple equation of ‘ef Jom with Kamassian Samoyed fgd-mt ‘Lam’ 89. A third-person pronoun /e and a demonstrative stem a/e are distinguished on quite shady grounds. If // ‘of IE enclitc “im, “id is a regular weakening of the “the- matic vowel” “e/-, the eform of the orthotone gen. *éxjo, dat. "ésmof in ho way separates it from the second ‘of the two items. As for the vocalism, there appears to be widespread crosslinguistic agreement on front vowels for near deixis as opposed to darker vowel in stems of more distant deixis, cf. Hung. ez/az ‘thisthat’, it/ott ‘here/there’. There is a very interesting, and possibly sig- nificant, resemblance between the Ainu detransitivizing prefix f and the Eskimo suffix quoted as + (its main var and) of same function; the Eskimo morpheme is found to be ultimately “+ in Rasmussen 1979:71 (thus also, per- hhaps independently, Fortescue & al. 1994:396), which offers no good support for its being in origin an agglutt nated object pronoun, 10. A demonstrative ku of unclear deixis (distant in Fall 1999 Gilyak, near in Altaic cum Japanese) is taken to underlie Hitt, kin, the acc.sg. of Ra ‘this': however, also apa ‘that’ has acc. apiin, the wform being in all probability simply’ a reduced form of the vowel influenced by the ‘old “m, cf, esp., the anaphoric stems ani- and uni. built ‘on two different forms of the acc.sg. of the endlitic-a NNo such rounding occurred in Luwian 2a, za-n which proves an IE palatal ike Lith, 3s (whose /i/ is from enelitic use); it should be noted that there is no Hiero- alyphic Lowian variant®., this being simply an antiquated reading for 2a. The Eskimo 3rd person suffixed pro- nouns quoted for the “participial mode” in-lu-m, tut, -lu-y6t are those of East Eskimo; the full picture indicates, PEsk. “yu, “Ak, “kA (thus sil in SW Alaska) with the special consonant gradation of original word-final clus- ters (Rasmussen 1979:33); it is not easy to define the orig inal identity of the elements of the series *-KX, “KX-7 *-KX-6 thus pointed to (metathesis of the pronoun stem /e¢P VER), but it is no evidence for an old vowel alter- ‘ation u/i 11, A demonstrative “t¥ seems inescapable and repre- sents a classical item in distant comparison. The nom sg. masc. "50, fem. “sab of the IE stem *te-/'to-is traditional ly assigned to’a different stem; however, given the IE alternation s/t, itis not inconceivable that *s0 is by dis similation from older *s0-s, and this in turn by assimila tion from regular “fos (thus Rasmussen 1994). Forms (with different vowels) are quoted from the entire Eurasi- atic area, Eskimo offering its only prefix, the anaphoric ta- (possibly really *taé) attached to deictic local expres sions, The reported “distance distinction” tu/to (fa) vs. tite (neat) again has a sound:-symbolic fee! to it. 12. The alleged demonstrative s, dispensable as such for IE, may be properly a reflexive. Its development into 4 3rd person pronoun in Uralic (Finn. han) is paralleled at least by the Greek enclitic anaphoric & (ws. orthotone reflexive €) and, for the possessive, by German sein and, French son Gilso Hitt. 3/3 ‘his, also the Latin accusativus cum infinitivo and the Eskimo use of the reflexive of the recurrent 3rd person open avenues for such a development. The Eskimo reflexive possessive in ‘i acts on a preceding stem lke a single consonant and so is underivingly c which with word-fial nasalization gave “71 and later “mi (Aleut -m); this Is proved by the ‘dual *20b (Aleut O¢x) from intervocalic *¢*y Rasmussen 1979:370. The full array k/m, fc vs. TE *b,/m.t, 8 const tutes incontrovertible proof of the Nostratic genetic rela- tionship in the classical Neogrammarian sense of the terms 1416. Dual in a velar occurs in many places, often accompanied by a plural marked by a dental. The com- bined weight is considerable, indeed in itself enough to prove the relationship to any unbiased observer. Thus, Uralic pl ris combined with a du. in -7in Vogul, and in ‘other velars in Ostyak and Samoyed, and the Ist and 2nd pl. of the verb end in “mek, “ek. This is remarkably Close to the picture of Chukchi which also has pl. with nouns and verbal endings -mdk, -tak. It is shockingly close, abo, to TE “me, “te which disagree with the plural marking of nouns in *s or *4 (both from *-8), but fully shyme with the dual type ‘pdytér-e ‘two fathers’. It would seem that in the verbal endings, which were properly “poy. “yey, Bm, “54-5 (ie. predicative agent noun with adequate number marking followed by enclitic pro- nouns with their own number markings, cf. Rasmussen 19872:100 [1999:267f), the redundant second number smarking was standardized using the form of the dual, This looks very much like a common innovation of TE, The REVIEW OF ARCHAEOLOGY i Unalic and Chukotian. The author's presentation is some- ‘what compromised by his suggestion that the Armenian pi. & (from IE *s) continues a dual sk. Mistaken 1s2so the assessment of the Sirenik Eskimo plural marker which is simply the word-inal development of “4; with regular vowel weakening a form like ‘pana- ‘spears’ yields ‘pand} > Sir. pangf this is no ~4 plural” (104) on a par with Lat. bi, bae, baec. A palatal shade of the plural ‘marker is further indicated by the Uralic 4/4 alternation Ginn. talo-, inessive talo-tssa ‘in the houses’), even if the niles are not congruent with those for IE *s/. 23. The case for an *absolutive k” is particularly weak. ‘The term is taken from Eskimo where an inflection ‘arnag ‘woman’, exgative *aknam, pl. “aknat gives the impression of a suffixed -q in the non-ergative Cabsolu- tive") form. However, the gemination caused on single ‘consonants, as *alug, *allum, “allut ‘footsole’, demands aan underlying stem ending in a uvular consonant, i.e. “arnak, *alus- (> PEsk. *q with normal word final treat- ment), also before possessive suffixes, 8. Chaplino aenaysi, aluy-st ‘your (pl.) woman, oar blade’ 1s opposed to pana-zi ‘your spear’. Due to simplification Of geminates in WEsk. and Aleut, the uvular has come to bbe widely perceived as a semantically empty suffix of ‘erratic occurrence. That there are noun-forming velars in Uralic, Turkic, Chukotian and Gilyak is not so impressive if the common function is as vague as that: And even if Finn, sade’ ‘rain’ (vb. sata), Altai taradk ‘a comb’ (vb. tara), Kamchadal Cirsug thief Gir ‘steal, Gilyak ‘asgavk ‘younger brother’ (asga- ‘be younger’), or some Of them, really do contain the same suffix, one woriders how it has come to be perceived by Greenberg as a petr- fied article. 724, The accusative in -m is one of the most striking resemblances between IE and Uralic. One will not like to dismiss it, and equally would one like to find a compara: ‘dum for the Esk-Al. ergative marker which is also °-mr It may be suggested that the two m-cases are genetically ‘identical, viz. an original genitive. Ifthe verbal stem is an ‘old agent noun, its object is only expected to be in the ‘genitive (ike Eng. ber lover meaning “the one who loves her), The reinterpretation of the genitival complement Of the agent noun as a direct object would then be a ‘most interesting innovation common to TE and Uralic, 40, The curious resemblance between the synonymous ‘Turkic 4f and Eskimo 413 ‘having ~, pointed out as coinci- dental by Menovitikov 1962:103, is expanded to include the possessive adjective of Lydian, eg. (mtr) manelid ‘that of Mane", and the Common Anatolian pronominal genitive in 1 as Hitt. ammiél ‘of me’. However, there can be little doubt that Lydian + is simply based on the Iat- ter, just like the Luwian poss. adj. in ~aSS4- is based on the gen. case-ending seen in Hit. (IE os). The origi nal locus of the genitive is probably precisely the 15g Pronoun: The IE possessive pronouns were derived by *vddhi" Gle., vowel insertion + thematicization) from the stems of the personal pronouns, eg. *tué ‘thee’ => “teués ‘thy’; with ‘me’, however, the original form “mué ‘was regularly simplified to *mé’so that, in this case, a “vpddhi" vowel had to be prefixed, the result being TE tems ‘my’; endingless forms of the possessive adjec- tives were used as genitive case-forms of the pronouns Gwith initial accent, i.e. probably substantivized), eg. *téye ‘of thee’; the corresponding 15g *éme apparently took over the initial °m- from other case-forms like *mé, this giving *méme of which the actually reconstructible PIE ‘méne (Avestan mana, OCS mene) must be a dissim- lated form. Hitt. ammél will be regular from *emele, an 12 The REVIEW OF ARCHAEOLOGY ‘obvious dissimilation of ‘emene, itself a blend of ‘emés and ‘méne. This, then, hardly reflects an old possessive morpheme, nor does *méne itself appear to contain an Old genitive -m, even if such a thing may be recoverable from. eg, Chuvash bi/minu ‘Vy’ and Kamchadal e/kien “~who/whose’ (n0. 25). 43. A passive participle in , wellknown from IE “to- (alternating with *n0), is found also in Uralic and, most clearly, Eskimo. The last distinguishes an active ptc, in ugh Bug (stem “tuk-P-dus) anda passive pic. in tagr-baq (stem “4an-/-bak- Greenlandic neri-oq ing’, nerfsaq ‘eaten’. In Rasmussen ms. arguments are given for identification of the active form with the TE actionnoun type in plain “+ (Skt. isubbjt- “carrying arrows’), and of the 3rd sg, possessive of the passive form with the TE passive pte. in “to, “birt. ‘Carried’ ‘meaning properly ‘belonging to the carrying one’. Ifthe active form in “tis retained as the 3sg finite verb, ‘object in ‘im may indeed be an old genitive (ef. ad 24. 44, Participle nt: The verbal derivative used in the ‘Vogul present periphrasis,e 8. miritant-em ‘lam going’ highly reminiscent of the IE active participle, prs. “bléronts ‘carrying’. However, itis hard to see what is ‘gained by analyzing the TE 3rd plural finite present in “ni as a neuter plural ofthe participle, just because this is -nti in Sanskrit; as the author notes, this is mostly equated with Gk. dépovta and derived from IE *n-d ‘True, the development of schwa to Skt. /i/ has been attacked by Burrow 1979, but if the arguments had been any good (and we are not aware of any), wouldn't the author have quoted one? 3. A conative sk is attempted for the IE inchoative present suffix *she/o- and a FennoUgric companion posited as “3, the latter being functionally most a fre {quentative, but also conative. It should of course not be Suppressed that the IE suffix i also mostly iterative, but that shade appears to adhere originally to the accompa: nying reduplication (Gk. StB4oxw ‘teach, ie, begin t0 ‘cach again and again, teach litle by tle; but reduplica- tion may disappear (as it has in the Hittite iterative sk- verbs). Given the general shortness of suffixes, the ‘Palatality of the FU sibilant and the IE velar attracts atten- tion and makes this equation look better than most. (6062. Interrogatives have kj, m. In IE and Uralic, the ‘J forms have become relative (EE “{6s ‘he who’, a most remarkable common innovation duly pointed out by the author 225), ‘Adding the existence of a fourth interrogative marker, viz. m (n0. 64), there is some possibility that the entire system of interrogatives has very deep roots combining it with that of other pronouns: Is it a pure coincidence that the Ist, 2nd and 3rd person markers are m/k, t/n, 3/¥, and the demonstrative stem nuclei may also be posited as m/k, i/n, s/V on a scale of falling proximity, and even the interrogatives exhibit m/le and n? Could it be that the persons were simply marked by morphemes indicating the degree of closeness to the speaker? And, finally, is it possible that the interrogatives are simply ddemonstratives used in questions, perhaps on an ade- uate tone, of the type “(and) this one?”, meaning “who she?” —7 What is the chance that the three sets would just happen to display, in full or in part, a variation employing the same alternants, albeit not by common. rules? [FC] ‘The final main chapter on Ainu vowel alternations is beyond the scope of this review. We only note that the author finds support for a “northern Asiatic connection” in the facts he has adduced, esp. the morphemes of dual Vol. 20, Number 2 k( and plural 1() which are presuasively characterized. as decisive and diagnostic. ‘A concluding chart summarizes the results as giving eight main subfamilies of Eurasiatic: Etruscan, 1E, Uralic- Yukaghir, Altaic, KoreanJapanese-Ainu, Gilyak, Chukot jan, and Eskimo-Aleut. Miller 1996 supplies very impres- sive additional arguments for the inclusion of Korean and Japanese into Altaic under a strict Neogrammarian con- ‘cept of genetic relationship. Thus. itis highly possible, indeed expected, that future research will simplify the taxonomic picture of this distant relationship which,

    S-ar putea să vă placă și