Tsimshianic from a Central Northwest areal perspective: I

Special Note: Out of 54 pages of the 560 page "Eurasian Linguistic Foundations" document, I have extracted data that is reaching 40 pages! I thought there might be pattern(s) that would clarify the movement of Indo-Europeans and their interaction with other linguistic groups. While the data all look like chaos, it is surprising how much of an affect the extinct Akkadian language (last spoken ~3,000 years ago!) has had in our European and Asian linguistic foundations. Hittite, a dead language since 1150 B.C., also plays a big part in the formation of our modern European and Asian languages. Akkadian is one of the oldest Semitic languages and Hittite is considered to be the oldest Indo-European language. It is clear that the patterns shown on Akkadain and Hittite will continue to dominate our search. Hoping to see patterns involving Georgian, Basque and Armenian, I broke them into separate linguistic "correspondences." As will be seen in Part I, "Eurasian Linguistic Foundations," Basque is highly influenced by Latin and corresponds with Slavic, English, et. al. Armenian is not as associated with Greek as linguists would have us believe and Georgian corresponds with Eurasian languages more than expected. However: This discussion, Part II of "Eurasian Linguistic Foundations," attempts to make sense out of the data base of linguistic patterns in Part I. Part II is a work in progress and will be updated and is expected to exceed 200 pages. Part I of this document consists of a data base showing correspondences among Indo-European, Akkadian, Basque, Georgian, Finnish-Uralic, Altaic, and Traditional Chinese, languages. We also include extinct languages, such as Etruscan, Lycian, Milyan (Mylian), Luvian, Tocharian and Hittite. The corresponding words in Part I did not emerge as I expected, and there are many anomalies that need to be addressed which will be presented in Part II of this work. The greatest anomaly involves Akkadian, an extinct and the oldest Semetic language. It is named after Akkad, a major center of the Mesopotamian civilization(s). It was spoken from the 3 rd millennium B.C. until its replacement by Old Aramic by the 8 th century B.C. The language was the lingua Franca of much of the Ancient Near East until the Bronze Age Collapse ~1180-1150 B.C., when major capitals were destroyed, such as Troy, and the Hittite capital, Hatussa. By the Hellenic period the Akkadian language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known cuneiform text in Akkadian dates from the 1 st century B.C. (See Wikipedia.org). Because of its central position, such as during the Assyrian Empire (2025-1522 B.C.), traders were no doubt coming from afar to exchange goods with the civilizations of the Near East. Some of the curious affiliations that need to be explained include the Basques (who are located in Iberia (Spain) and southwestern France). They were known as the Vascones by Rome. While the Basque language generally corresponds with Latin-based languages, that we color "red" in Part I, there are many peculiar correspondences with Akkadian. Another language, Finnish-Uralic, displays similar anomalous features relating to Akkadian. Any connection that these or other languages may have to Akkadian would have to be well before the 8 th century B.C. I recommend that an informative application of this data base Eurasian Linguistic Foundations-Discussion on anomalous patterns of cultural exchange.

2020

This paper demonstrates the existence of an underlying schwa (the ‘transitive vowel’) differentiating verb stems of different clause types in both Interior and Maritime Tsimshianic. Using novel data from fieldwork we clarify the distribution of ‘biargumental’ morphology and the ‘Inserted Vowel’ discussed in Sasama (2001), unifying a subset of both cases under a single analysis of the transitive vowel, and confirm the distribution of the transitive vowel suggested by Forbes (2018). We show that the transitive vowel is present if and only if ergative agreement takes place and is realized with the Series II agreement suffixes: in Independent-order clauses and object extraction. We review specific phonological and morphological processes that impact its realization in these contexts for both Interior and Maritime Tsimshianic, as well as processes that produce surface-identical vowels in contexts where it is not expected. The processes are generally similar but have some important differ...

Formally titled "Language Connections: Indo-European/Eurasian Words Linking Ancient Pastoralists." What is the original source of the Indo-European languages? This document/database shakes the concept of Proto-European. Were they nomads from the Urals who mixed with the Altaic peoples, including Chinese and then moved as the winds blew as it were across the Eurasian world? They shared too many words (often intermixed) to list here. "I, Mine, Me,"are shocking. These are basic pronouns that could not have been "borrowed," and there are many examples in this document that add to the notion that there was a strong mixing of the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans, Altaic peoples and Chinese. This document is presenting a language of the Eurasian herdsmen (pastoralists), indirectly through a process of elimination, as one analyzes the individual entries in this work. There are a lot of "steppe" correlations with Indo-European lexemes that compel a reevaluation of the concept of the Indo-European language group and its origins. The links between the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz and Mongols across the steppes of Asia with European lexemes demand a review of our linguistic knowledge. Complicating this issue are the extensive links of the Akkadian lexemes with the Indo-European words. Many may be written off as words absorbed into the Hittite language and passed on to the Germanic tribes. But this does not explain the Finnish-Uralic connections. Were they involved with the Shintasta people Indo-Iranians?, that somehow communicated cultural building, mining, and fortification practices between the Urals and Mesopotamia? In the transformation of languages, the words, milk, whey, and serum stand out in terms of potentially tracking the migration of pastoralist cultures. Note how pastoralist cultures should share the same terms interchangeably. Words included are from the Indo-European Table, including, in addition to the Indo-European, Finnish-Uralic, Baltic, Basque and Georgian languages, these Asian languages are included: Turkish, Gujarati, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Mongolian and Traditional Chinese. The Finnish-Uralic linguistic connections with Persian have been explained through the Sintashta (Persian) fortified towns in the Urals. The Sintashta interchange with the Finns may have involved transmission of metals and products. The Sintashta are also believed from their burials to have been one of the earliest chariot horsemen. The Finns have also many linguistic connections with Akkadian, the language of the Assyrians (in Iraq). They also have strong connections to Hittite.

2006

The publication of a book devoted to the history of verb morphology in the so-called Altaic (now relabelled 'Transeurasian') languages, i.e., Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic and optionally Korean and Japanese, constitutes an exciting prospect, especially for those who are interested in the debate about the ultimate nature (genealogical or areal) of the relationship of these languages. Discussions in the Altaic debate usually revolve around a couple of salient phonological features and a very restricted set of lexical items, and these are repeated over and over again, most often without advancing new arguments or ideas. Grammar-related issues are rarely tackled. In view of these circumstances, verb morphology might provide an ideal battlefield to bring into the picture innovative, original proposals. Moreover, due to some of the complexities involved, general linguists and typologists may find new areas of interest. Martine Robbeets's book (the author henceforth MR) is divided into nine chapters. The first two chapters lay out the main goals of the study (in a nutshell, to analyse shared etymologies and reconstructed grammaticalizations, 1 which might be used as evidence to build a case in favour of the genealogical relatedness of the Altaic languages) and methodology. There is a brief but well-balanced presentation of the languages involved and their history, geographic distribution and internal taxonomy (pp. 4–33). Description of basic concepts in historical linguistics follows (pp. 45–88). Special attention is paid to the opposition of inherited vs. borrowed (via code-copying), the pitfalls in which the researcher may fall while trying to identify one or the other and the procedures to avoid them. MR illustrates her explanations with examples from various languages of the world with reference to current literature on general and descriptive linguistics, historical linguistics and typology. MR's remarks on common misunderstandings about the comparative method (pp. 80–88) are generally correct. For instance, she is right when she dismisses claims that the comparative method is not universally applicable. Some authors consider evidence for the relatedness of the Altaic languages so elusive because, perhaps, it should not, or cannot, be addressed from a traditional viewpoint. Bisang (1998: 220) comments that for the Altaic languages " … the Indo-European concept of genetic relatedness may not be adequate ". The theoretical implications of such an assertion are enormous. The reality, however, is far simpler: languages are either related or unrelated. After the data has been analyzed, the linguist must confront both options and admit which one of the two possible scenarios (common inheritance or contact) explains the data best. For now, shared material between Transeurasian languages is undoubtedly better explained as the result of 1 The summary on p. 497 includes the development of negative participles and affixes from formerly independent verbs, a loan verb marker from a denominal verbalizer, the transference of actional markers from nominal to adjectival to verbal base, grammaticalizations of valence and voice (such as causative to passive, reflexive to anticausative or fientive to passive), direct insubordination and the development of temporal from aspectual distinctions and converbialization.

Possibili affinità linguistiche tra le lingue uralo­altaiche e il giapponese da Klaproth al XX secolo [Possible linguistic affinities between the Ural-Altaic languages and Japanese from Klaproth to the 20th century] in Spigolature orientali. Scritti in onore di Adolfo Tamburello per l’ottantesimo compleanno, a cura di Giovanni Borriello, Napoli: Orientalia Parthenopea Edizioni 2015, pp. 201-2017. The macro-Altaic hypothesis and Turanism on one hand and the effect of the foreign newspapers and publications together with the diffusion of Orientalism on the other have triggered the interest also in Hungary toward the Asiatic countries and in particular toward Japan. So from the 19th century among the Hungarian linguists we have some particularly involved in researches concerning the linguistic affinities between Hungarian and Japanese or – from a broader point of view – between the Uralic languages and Japanese. In this paper I provide an outline of these works.

The Slavic and Baltic languages are characterized by obvious similarities conjoined with significant irregularities in phonological correspondences, striking divergences in morphology, and deep differences in vocabulary. It is a real problem how to construct a narrative that accounts for their prehistorical relationships, as was recognized, among others, by Meillet (1908), ), Stang (1966. More recently, comparativists, whether Indo-Europeanists or specialists in Slavic or Baltic, have preferred to turn their backs on these complicated matters and concentrate on the regular correspondences, as anyone can see who opens one of the recent introductions to Indo-European linguistics.

"Sun’s (1993) magnificent A Historical-Comparative Study of the Tani (Mirish) Branch of Tibeto-Burman brought order to an area of the pan-Himalayan linguistic world that had been wracked by uncertainty at least since Konow and Grierson (2005 [1909]), primarily due to a lack of reliable data. In carving out the Tani subgroup of Tibeto-Burman, in establishing a provisional internal bifurcation into a Western and Eastern branch, and in developing around 500 provisionally-reconstructed Proto-Tani lexical roots and morphemes, Sun laid a solid framework against which all subsequent work in the area could be measured. Unfortunately, however, Sun continued to lack access to a wide range of reliable data from area languages at the time of his writing. Accordingly, his actual subgrouping criteria were limited to a small set of only four phonological innovations (supplemented by 25 lexical isoglosses), with the remainder of the known phonological innovations left to future research. In recent work, Post and Modi (2011) and Post (2013) have shown that intensive language contact in the Tani area has led to considerable “cross-branch” sharing of phonological features, as well as to massive lexical and grammatical borrowing and convergence. In both cases, the authors had the conservative goal of interpreting certain problematic outcomes in relation to the established background of Sun’s (1993) subgrouping proposal. However, more recent work on Tangam (Tani > Eastern?) has forced a wholesale re-examination of phonological innovations in the Tani area from an agnostic perspective, and preliminary results suggest that Sun’s subgrouping proposal may not in fact be tenable as a model of branching genetic descent. Instead, the best we may currently be able to do is to locate overlapping clusters of areally-shared innovations - mini-spread-zones of contact and convergence which, in their most radical construal, challenge the very concept of genetic linguistics."

Kafkasya Calışmaları - Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi / Journal of Caucasian Studies, 2020

The relationships among five Northwest Caucasian languages and Hattic were investigated. A list of 193 core vocabulary words was constructed and examined to find look-alike words. Data for Abhkaz, Abaza, Kabardian (East Circassian), Adyghe (West Circassian) and Ubykh drew on the work of Starostin, Chirikba and Kuipers. A subset list of 15 look-alike words for Hattic was constructed from Soysal (2003). These lists were formulated as character data for reconstructing the phylogenetic relationships of the languages. The phylogenetic relationships of these languages were investigated by a well-known method, Neighbor Joining, as implemented in PAUP* 4.0. Supporting and dissenting evidence from human genetic population studies and archeological evidence were discussed. This project has produced a provisional set of character data for the Northwest Caucasian languages and, to a limited extent, Hattic. Phylogenetic trees have been generated and displayed to show their general character and the types of differences obtained by alternate methods. This research is a basis for further inquiries into the development of the Caucasian languages. Moreover, it presents an example of the method for contrast queries application in studying the evolution of language families.

2017