Re: A China-Sumer connection

From: Miguel Carrasquer (mcv_at_wxs.nl)
Date: 03/09/05 

Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 11:30:35 GMT

On 8 Mar 2005 16:55:54 -0800, phippsmartin@hotmail.com
wrote:

>a.manansala@attbi.com wrote:
>> benlizross wrote:
>>
>> But
>> > this is the speculative edge, where you can find somebody to
>support
>> > almost any pairing of the known families of SE Asia.
>>
>> Not only SE Asia, but NE Asia. Sagart has also suggested
>> Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian. Benedict has Japanese-Austro-Tai. So,
>> Martin isn't really alone.
>
>Upon reflection, what probably makes me open to the idea of languages
>being related to each other is the fact that the first time I studied
>Chinese I was taught by a linguist who strongly suggested the idea of a
>proto-language when he described Indo-European languages as being
>"innovative" in the way that they use relative pronouns to introduce
>subordinate clauses

Within Indo-European, the use of a specialized relative
pronoun *yo- (Greek, Vedic) is indeed considered to be
innovative as compared to the use of the interrogative
pronoun *kWi-/*kWo- (Hittite, Germanic) to introduce
relative clauses.

>and refered to modern languages that appeared
>unrelated to any other known languages as "extremely rare" (in his
>words).

Most languages come in easily recognizable families. The
number of "isolates" is relatively small, but not "extremely
rare". It also depends on how you count: Basque is
generally counted as an isolate (a language not related to
any other known language), but it's also possible to view
Basque as a small language family (consisting of Western
Basque (Bizkaian, Alavan[extinct]), Central Basque
(Gipuzkoan/Lapurdian/High Navarrese/Low Navarrese/Euskara
Batua), Eastern Basque (Zuberoan/Roncalese[extinct]) and
Aquitanian[extinct]).

>He claimed, as you do, that Asian languages

"Asian languages" is not a scientific term.

>are strongly
>interrelated as refered (without giving examples) to similar vocabulary
>in languages throughout Central and Northern Asia and right across the
>Bering Strait to include Inuit.

Fortescue and others have recently argued that Uralic,
Chukchi-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut are probably related.
The theory still needs to be investigated further, but seems
plausible at first sight.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@wxs.nl

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