Re: new book on the spread of IE

On Mar 1, 2:34 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Maybe you had it with someone else. In a different newsgroup.

No, with you, thread on the Illyrian prefix an, messages from
Dec 29, 2007. You called my idea: Very pretty, and even more
pernicious than "Magdalenian" (or so, look it up via Google).

No, it did not. There is simply no alphabet in the entire history of
writing that fits those three criteria -- "first," 24 letters," and
"numerals." T. V. Gamkrelidze shows that any alphabet-based numeral
systems involve alphabets with multiples of 9 letters -- and the fact
that the Phoenician > Hebrew script is reduced from 27 to 22 letters
shows that the Canaanite script was _not_ used as numerals: if it had
been, when letters were disused, they would have been preserved solely
as numerals, as happened in Greek and, later, in Gothic.

The Ionic alphabet had 24 letters, and they served as numerals.
A later alphabet had more letters, then the Greeks returned to
24 letters. Look up my reply in the above thread, same day.

I don't know what those are, nor their dates, but no source on Greek
epigraphy lists them as "the very first Greek alphabet." "The very
first Greek alphabet" (unless you mean abecedary?) is found in
graffito-like inscriptions on pottery praising pretty boys. (Obviously
they were not the very earliest initial uses of the adapted Phoneician
script for writing Greek. Those ephemera have not survived, nor would
they be expected to.)

You know the clay copies that were found in a store room
in a palace in the Mesara plain, southern central Crete.
The originals were gold disks worn on the shoulders by
Eponymus Tiryns and his successors. An archaeological
excavation of downtown Tiryns will start in the year 2034,
and two years later a sensational find will be made: a pair
of gold disks, the Tiryns Disk, and the Elaia Disk. It will
be the sensation of the decade, and a posthumous triumph
for Derk Ohlenroth. (How do I know? my astrologer told me.)

The value of your opinion is well known.

As is the value of your opinion. Every book that includes
a chapter on early writing says that the first letter of our
alphabet originally represented the head of an ox. Every
book except your's, of course. You flatly deny visual
language, and inflict your pro-active ignoring on us.

Ah. It turns out you were spewing more bull*** anyway.

Whenever you have to take notice of an archaeological
find you use that word.

It is not my decision whether to create a new edition.

You could work anyway, for example publish a website.
But you prefer holding up the world in 1996, when you
published your book.

"Six different A's" is already nonsensical.

As I said, the pair of disks combine visual language
with word language, and the several signs for the same
phoneme serve visual purposes. An idea that never gets
into your head, since you a priori exclude visual language
from existing.

.