Marijn van Putten, BA
That's right after 3 years and a bit, I am now officially a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. Yay me, and yay for shameless self-promotion!
So I finished my final Bachelor Thesis with a score of 9/10, that is to say, pretty damn good. And therefore I shall treat you guys on this goodness, my thesis on the Consonant Gradation in the Indo-European Verb.
I am sure that it will lead to loads of discussion, because there is a lot to discuss, and even more is uncertain. But I am willing to discuss it all, it's an exciting subject. So enjoy!
[EDIT] Due to issues with rapidshare, I now uploaded my thesis to Mediafire (Thanks Tropylium!), please let me know if anyone runs into issues.
Comments
Being a Dutchman, I know a 9 is VERY good!
Congratulations!
As Glenny choose to block my comments in Paleoglot, you might be interested in reading my blog http://vasco-caucasian.blogspot.com
I'll add you to my blog roll and check it out soon.
Glen, I think it should be clear I respect people as long as they respect me, and you have treated me very badly in your own blog. One thing is that I don't agree with some of your theories and other is that you call me a "troll". It seems that is YOU who have "obsessive mania". If you behave on this way, it's no wonder you make so many enemies on the Internet.
People who has interest on my work (obviously, not you) can read my blog and post comments if they wish.
PS the guy you mentioned, Angus Huck (aka Balkiadin Balkibil and Farmer Tucker) is a REAL troll. He "translated" Iberian as a verbatim form of Basque, in despite of the evidence on the contrary. Fortunately, he has now disappeared of the Internet.
BTW, Glen, your allusion about "my theories about Etruscan-Basque" means you aren't acquainted with my work, so I encourage you to read my blog post http://vasco-caucasian.blogspot.com/2009/10/vasco-caucasian-hypothesis.html
Try to keep the linguistic debate flowing, try keeping attacking each other personally at a minimum. Obviously, contesting each others views is promoted here.
About the 'pig' issue I reached to the same idea before seeing Starostin's article, but nevertheless I quoted him as he was first.
Glen's "Indo-Aegean" (formerly "Indo-Tyrrhenian") is part of the "Steppe" (aka Eurasiatic) phylum. Although I agree this phylum does exist (with some variations on its actual shape), in my opinion native IE doesn't belongs to it.
I recognize a good deal of "Steppe" lexicon in IE, but I think this is mostly due to substrate borrowings. That is, the languages spoken in Europe during the Paleolithic/Mesolithic were predominantly from that phylum.
It might be ironical that a word spoken in one of these languages in the Neolithic, which Glen reconstructed as *kämes, it's the predecessor of Semitic *xam(i)ʃ- '5'. The Uralic cognate *käme-(ne) 'palm of the hand' suggests us this is a "Steppe" word (there're no other cognates in AA) whose original meaning was 'hand'.
A little essay on your blog to explain so-called class prefixes in Indo-European mostly based on 'comparative' evidence of a source which is still highly debatable rather than internal evidence isn't going to convince me or Glen that what you say is true.
Either strongly change your your way of argumentation to a more elaborate, internal proof-based method, or don't bother posting here.
There're two classes of PIE roots of similar or quite identical meaning but whose phonetics exhibit "curious" features like:
1) alternation between voiced aspirated and voiceless stops. This has been addressed by you as being the result of borrowing from a alloglottic source (Semitic?).
2) alternation between velar stops and laryngeals (see Cohen). In my opinion, this could be explained by fossilized class-prefixes.