Paleo-European languages

[WeepingElf]

But seriously, I offer that example only as a cautionary tale that these kinds of chance resemblances are very likely, even when the phonetics and semantics match extremely well.

Be cautious with cautionary tales. While the wider ramifications of Dene-Caucasian may be wrong, Dene-Caucasian may be unprovable rather than wrong. (I assume that historical truth is well-defined, albeit often unknown.) One can use Mbabaram dog 'dog' as an example because it has a good Pama-Nyungan etymology which disproves any connection with the English word.

Well, it isn't impossible, but in the absence of convincing evidence that specific grouping of languages seems very unlikely.

The trouble I always have with Dene-Caucasian is remembering seeing Larry Trask's demolitions of some of the attempts to link Basque to it. And that seems to be part of a common pattern with a lot of these long range proposals: the people who actually know the languages in question don't believe them and see a lot of flaws in the claimed evidence.

Which is IMHO a good hint that in most of these cases, the evidence is flawed. Of course, some people are over-critical of such attempts - because so much nonsense has been published in this discipline that it has become an intellectual minefield.

[Talskubilos]

And if we wanna get really crazy with Wanderworter speculation, Ubykh wǝsʷá "copper, bronze" bears an uncanny resemblance to Proto-Athabaskan *wəšʷ "metal".

Looks Proto-Dene-Caucasian to me!

This is either a lookalike or a Wanderwort, so there's no case for a long-range grouping.

I think I mentioned Yeniseian *ŕɔŋ and Burushaski *-reŋ 'hand' correspond to North Caucasian *ʔræ:nttɬE and Sino-Tibetan *rŭk '6'.

[Zju]

And if we wanna get really crazy with Wanderworter speculation, Ubykh wǝsʷá "copper, bronze" bears an uncanny resemblance to Proto-Athabaskan *wəšʷ "metal".

Looks Proto-Dene-Caucasian to me!

This is either a lookalike or a Wanderwort, so there's no case for a long-range grouping.

I think I mentioned Yeniseian *ŕɔŋ and Burushaski *-reŋ 'hand' correspond to North Caucasian *ʔræ:nttɬE and Sino-Tibetan *rŭk '6'.

These correspond to each other by having a trill, yes.

[Talskubilos]

These correspond to each other by having a trill, yes.

FYI, North Caucasian lateral affricates are quite similar to PIE palatovelars in their behaviour. And the Sino-Tibetan numeral was probably borrowed through shepherding interchanges in Asian highlands.

[Richard W]

Looks Proto-Dene-Caucasian to me!

This is either a lookalike or a Wanderwort, so there's no case for a long-range grouping.

I didn't invent the concept!

[Nortaneous]

I think I mentioned Yeniseian *ŕɔŋ and Burushaski *-reŋ 'hand' correspond to North Caucasian *ʔræ:nttɬE and Sino-Tibetan *rŭk '6'.

From "hand" to "six"? (Then again, some of the "Ritual Tangut" numerals seem to be of Sino-Tibetan origin but shifted by one.) More importantly, nothing but the initial is a close match (PST allowed coda *-ŋ) and this disregards the preinitials - the actual PST form was probably something like *kVtruk, which is close to Proto-Rgyalrong *k.trok and reflected in e.g. Btsanlha Situ kətɽok, and slightly further afield Siyuewu Khroskyabs xtɕéɣ. (Proto-Khroskyabs *o > e in most dialects.)

(Is Situ the most conservative Sino-Tibetan language? Probably not, since it's unlikely to be very conservative within Rgyalrongic, lacking traits like uvulars and retracted vowels that seem like they ought to be reconstructed for the proto-language.)

[Talskubilos]

As to Berber *a-barid 'road', you've seen it traced to Arabic بريد at http://lughat.blogspot.com/2009/03/no-b ... rabic.html.

From another source I've got the protoform *ā-brid 'path, way'. This would destroy the connection with Arabic.

[Richard W]

As to Berber *a-barid 'road', you've seen it traced to Arabic بريد at http://lughat.blogspot.com/2009/03/no-b ... rabic.html.

From another source I've got the protoform *ā-brid 'path, way'. This would destroy the connection with Arabic.

Does you source account for the Tuareg form?

[Talskubilos]

Does you source account for the Tuareg form?

Which one?

[WeepingElf]

I am now leaning to the position that the "Old European Hydronymy" tells us nothing about Paleo-European languages because it is not even a thing at all. I have looked again at Krahe's list, and found that most of the names are quite obviously Celtic, and most of the rest accountable by known IE languages (Italic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) as well. These are just old names from the languages that were spoken where the names are found in the Iron Age, and they look quite much alike because these languages, all being IE, are related to each other.

This of course means that I need a new name for the "Bell Beaker language", as "Aquan" was based on the assumption that it was the language of the Old European Hydronymy. A possible new name would be "Campaniform"; another candidate I consider is "Old Western" or maybe in Greek "Paleohesperian".

[Talskubilos]

I am now leaning to the position that the "Old European Hydronymy" tells us nothing about Paleo-European languages because it is not even a thing at all. I have looked again at Krahe's list, and found that most of the names are quite obviously Celtic, and most of the rest accountable by known IE languages (Italic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) as well.

Really? I don't think so. I'm sure you adscribe things to Celtic which actually are not.

[Talskubilos]

As to Berber *a-barid 'road', you've seen it traced to Arabic بريد at http://lughat.blogspot.com/2009/03/no-b ... rabic.html.

From another source I've got the protoform *ā-brid 'path, way'. This would destroy the connection with Arabic.

I'd link both the Berber form and Hispano-Romance vereda 'path' (certainly not 'road') to IE *bhredh- 'to wade'.

[keenir]

This of course means that I need a new name for the "Bell Beaker language", as "Aquan" was based on the assumption that it was the language of the Old European Hydronymy. A possible new name would be "Campaniform"; another candidate I consider is "Old Western" or maybe in Greek "Paleohesperian".

at the risk of punning off a god's name, how about Bellian or Bellid ?

I am now leaning to the position that the "Old European Hydronymy" tells us nothing about Paleo-European languages because it is not even a thing at all. I have looked again at Krahe's list, and found that most of the names are quite obviously Celtic, and most of the rest accountable by known IE languages (Italic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) as well.

Really? I don't think so. I'm sure you adscribe things to Celtic which actually are not.

such as...??

[WeepingElf]

I am now leaning to the position that the "Old European Hydronymy" tells us nothing about Paleo-European languages because it is not even a thing at all. I have looked again at Krahe's list, and found that most of the names are quite obviously Celtic, and most of the rest accountable by known IE languages (Italic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) as well. These are just old names from the languages that were spoken where the names are found in the Iron Age, and they look quite much alike because these languages, all being IE, are related to each other.

This of course means that I need a new name for the "Bell Beaker language", as "Aquan" was based on the assumption that it was the language of the Old European Hydronymy. A possible new name would be "Campaniform"; another candidate I consider is "Old Western" or maybe in Greek "Paleohesperian".

And my search for substratum loanwords in western IE languages failed to find anything useful, too. Sure, there are quite a few words in western IE languages that lack cognates in eastern branches such as Greek or Indo-Iranian, but I found that they mostly show no structural features that betray loanwords. They are apparently just dialectal forms within the post-PIE dialect continuum, which may simply have been lost in the east. Nothing to get a handle on. Hence, I no longer even look for a new name for "Aquan"; the evidence is so flimsy that I now consider the hypothesis unwarranted, and decided to drop it. There is nothing we can say about the languages of the Bell Beaker people or the "R1b people"; it may have been related to IE, but it could just as well have been Vasconic (the Basques are heavily R1b!) or whatever. (This also gives me more freedom with my Hesperic conlang family; I can pretty much do what I like there .)

[Travis B.]

I am now leaning to the position that the "Old European Hydronymy" tells us nothing about Paleo-European languages because it is not even a thing at all. I have looked again at Krahe's list, and found that most of the names are quite obviously Celtic, and most of the rest accountable by known IE languages (Italic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) as well.

Really? I don't think so. I'm sure you adscribe things to Celtic which actually are not.

such as...??

North Caucasian, obviously, aside from some Wanderwörter from Dravidian, Sumerian, and Austro-asiatic.

[Talskubilos]

And my search for substratum loanwords in western IE languages failed to find anything useful, too. Sure, there are quite a few words in western IE languages that lack cognates in eastern branches such as Greek or Indo-Iranian, but I found that they mostly show no structural features that betray loanwords. They are apparently just dialectal forms within the post-PIE dialect continuum, which may simply have been lost in the east.

Any examples?

[Talskubilos]

North Caucasian, obviously, aside from some Wanderwörter from Dravidian, Sumerian, and Austro-asiatic.

The OEH has nothing to do with Wanderwörter.

[keenir]

And my search for substratum loanwords in western IE languages failed to find anything useful, too. Sure, there are quite a few words in western IE languages that lack cognates in eastern branches such as Greek or Indo-Iranian, but I found that they mostly show no structural features that betray loanwords. They are apparently just dialectal forms within the post-PIE dialect continuum, which may simply have been lost in the east.

Any examples?

well thats irony...I just asked you this

I am now leaning to the position that the "Old European Hydronymy" tells us nothing about Paleo-European languages because it is not even a thing at all. I have looked again at Krahe's list, and found that most of the names are quite obviously Celtic, and most of the rest accountable by known IE languages (Italic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) as well.

Really? I don't think so. I'm sure you adscribe things to Celtic which actually are not.

such as...??

...and you never answered.

and I'm not sure North Caucasian languages have ever been ascribed to Celtic (my apologies to the one person who did reply)

[Talskubilos]

well thats irony...I just asked you this...and you never answered.

My question was addressed to WeepingElf.

[WeepingElf]

And my search for substratum loanwords in western IE languages failed to find anything useful, too. Sure, there are quite a few words in western IE languages that lack cognates in eastern branches such as Greek or Indo-Iranian, but I found that they mostly show no structural features that betray loanwords. They are apparently just dialectal forms within the post-PIE dialect continuum, which may simply have been lost in the east.

Any examples?

There are plenty; here a few I found in Pokorny's dictionary:

*bhei- 'bee' (Gmc, Celt, Slav)
*dhreibh- 'to drive' (Gmc, Balt?)
*ghosti- 'stranger' (Gmc, It, Slav)
*lendh- 'loin' (Gmc, It, Slav)
*meldh- 'thunderbolt' (Gmc, Celt, Balt, Slav)

... and many others (the full list I have compiled, which I shall not post here, has 227 entries, but there are some which indeed look suspicious - unexplained *a-vocalism and other unusual shapes of the root; surely, something like *abon- 'monkey' is from some - unknown - non-IE language). We don't know whether they are from a western European substratum language, or just lost from the eastern IE branches, but there is nothing in them which points at a non-IE origin. Given the vast amount of synonyms found in Pokorny's dictionary, there probably was a lot of dialectal variation in Late PIE. Of course, as I know you, you'll find non-IE etymologies for all of them