From: owner-ane@ (ANE Digest) To: ane-digest Subject: ANE Digest V1999 #50 Reply-To: Sender: owner-ane@ Errors-To: owner-ane@ Precedence: bulk ANE Digest Saturday, February 20 1999 Volume 1999 : Number 050 Re: ane understanding meroitic? Re: ane understanding meroitic? ane Maekawa's address Re: ane understanding meroitic? Re: ane eme-SAL ane emesal Re: ane eme-SAL ane Excav. Opportunity: TELL ES-SAFI/GATH ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT ane meroitic ane eme- sal Re: ane understanding meroitic? Re: ane understanding meroitic? ane meroitic, winters on tocharian Re: ane eme- sal Re: ane understanding meroitic? Re: ane understanding meroitic? RE: ane understanding meroitic? Re: ane understanding meroitic? ane Meaning of kaburu Re: ane Meaning of kaburu Re: ane understanding meroitic? RE: ane understanding meroitic? Re: ane understanding meroitic? Re: ane understanding meroitic? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 09:14:57 GMT From: mcv@wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? "Clyde A. Winters" wrote: >>[mcv:] >> So what has any of this to do with Tocharian? > >It means that I am using Tocharian/Tokharian/ Kushana to read Meroitic >inscriptions. Evasive, as expected. The wackier the claim, the more evidence is required to prevent being laughed off, and massive evidence is required to convince. The claim that Meroitic can be read as Tocharian is heap wacky. You offer zero evidence for it. Merely a bold assertion and handwaving to "your research". Well, based on my research and previous experience, I have one question to put to you: do you in fact know any Tocharian at all? ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv@wxs.nl Amsterdam ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 06:33:18 -0600 (CST) From: "Clyde A. Winters" Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > "Clyde A. Winters" wrote: > > >>[mcv:] > >> So what has any of this to do with Tocharian? > > > >It means that I am using Tocharian/Tokharian/ Kushana to read Meroitic > >inscriptions. > > Evasive, as expected. > > The wackier the claim, the more evidence is required to prevent > being laughed off, and massive evidence is required to convince. > The claim that Meroitic can be read as Tocharian is heap wacky. > You offer zero evidence for it. Merely a bold assertion and > handwaving to "your research". Well, based on my research and > previous experience, I have one question to put to you: do you > in fact know any Tocharian at all? > > > ======================= > Miguel Carrasquer Vidal > mcv@wxs.nl > Amsterdam > Yes, I know Kushana. Do you. Many people were surprised to discover that Hittite was an Indo-European language spoken in an area far distant from other IE languages. This made the Hittite hypothesis "wacky" when it was first proposed. Miguel please explain why we can not use Kushana to read Meroitic. You have not presented any evidence why Kushana can not be used to read Meroitic. C.A. Winters ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 16:33:26 +0000 From: Gabor Zolyomi Subject: ane Maekawa's address Dear Collegues, I wonder if someone happens to know the email-address of Kazuya Maekawa. I would be very grateful if she or he could send it to me off-list. Thank you in anticipation, Gabor Zolyomi ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 11:11:41 -0500 From: "Peter T. Daniels" Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? Clyde A. Winters wrote: > > The wackier the claim, the more evidence is required to prevent > > being laughed off, and massive evidence is required to convince. > > The claim that Meroitic can be read as Tocharian is heap wacky. > > You offer zero evidence for it. Merely a bold assertion and > > handwaving to "your research". Well, based on my research and > > previous experience, I have one question to put to you: do you > > in fact know any Tocharian at all? > Yes, I know Kushana. Do you. Many people were surprised to discover > that Hittite was an Indo-European language spoken in an area far > distant from other IE languages. This made the Hittite hypothesis "wacky" > when it was first proposed. Miguel please explain why we can not use > Kushana to read Meroitic. You have not presented any evidence why Kushana > can not be used to read Meroitic. You haven't presented any evidence that it can, to wit, a morpheme-by-morpheme comparison of Tocharian (please answer Miguel's original question: A or B?) with Meroitic. However, inasmuch as Tocharian is outside both the geographical and chronological purview of the Ancient Near East List, this would not seem to be an appropriate forum in which to consider the question. - -- Peter T. Daniels grammatim@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 18:06:02 +0100 (MET) From: Tomas.Marik@ff.cuni.cz Subject: Re: ane eme-SAL >Correct. No extra phoneme, we can just use *g~ to derive the >Emesal and Emegir forms. I must admit my hidden agenda at the >time was to support my contention that Sumerian /g~/ (pronounced >something like [Nw]?) derives from earlier *w, for which I think >I see some comparative evidence (dag~al "wide" ~ PS *t.awal, >maybe g~is^ "tree" ~ Akk. is.u or even dig~g~ir "god" ~ PIE >*diw-wir- "heaven-power[lightning]"). It has very little sense to say that there is NO *diw-wir- "heaven-power[lightning]" in Proto-Indoeuropean because: What the hell has Sumerian phonology to do with Proto-Semitic or Proto-Indoeuropean?! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 12:58:44 -0500 From: Brian Betty Subject: ane emesal On 2-18-99, AMR wrote: "Of course, this is all true. All I mean is that the Chukchee comparison is too facile. We need to find out what emesal was used for, and jump to conclusions based on comparisons with other lgs and cultures which I suspect the "jumpers" do not know all that well. And to me it seems rather clear that certain kinds of linguistic systems do appear in certain kinds of cultures more than in others. Fully developed male/female diglossia does not seem attested in any urbanized literatre culture. So, while of course I am not saying that emesal could NOT be a women's lg, the discovery that it was would be a rather major development in our understanding of lg and culture. No prejudice there surely." Agreed. As I pointed out in my post, I also think the comparison is not proven. But I still disagree. That certain kinds of linguistic systems appear in certain kinds of cultures is a misleading statement. Certainly, in the last 500y, the shape of modern linguistic systems in modern, super-huge cities has resulted in languages LESS marked by linguistic trends than in the past. Or have they? Perhaps it is just our experiences with European linguistics that have made this seem so. I suggest that languages in Africa and Asia in cities might prove your statement untrue; certainly in America significant linguistic differences can be found among speakers of English. They may not be the same kind of differences as found in Chukchi or emesal or whatever, but they still exist. I'm not discounting the role of culture here. Clearly, culture influences linguistic practice quite heavily. But that does not rule out (nor even prove today) that certain kinds of languages exist in certain cultures. I think it is simply a matter of historical accident, not predetermination. Besides, Sumerians lived in cities, and the question of femlangs aside, we know for sure there were linguistic differences of some sort. ;-) BB They call me Coffee 'cause I grind so fine. God was my co-pilot, but we crashed in the Andes and I had to eat him. Only 319 shopping days left before the end of the world. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 19:30:35 GMT From: mcv@wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Subject: Re: ane eme-SAL Tomas.Marik@ff.cuni.cz wrote: >>Correct. No extra phoneme, we can just use *g~ to derive the >>Emesal and Emegir forms. I must admit my hidden agenda at the >>time was to support my contention that Sumerian /g~/ (pronounced >>something like [Nw]?) derives from earlier *w, for which I think >>I see some comparative evidence (dag~al "wide" ~ PS *t.awal, >>maybe g~is^ "tree" ~ Akk. is.u or even dig~g~ir "god" ~ PIE >>*diw-wir- "heaven-power[lightning]"). > >It has very little sense to say that there is NO *diw-wir- >"heaven-power[lightning]" in Proto-Indoeuropean because: >What the hell has Sumerian phonology to do with Proto-Semitic or >Proto-Indoeuropean?! Well, that's the question. Sumerian and Proto-Semitic phonology have plenty to do with each other as far as borrowings are concerned, as well as for the evidence about early Semitic phonology that Sumerian provides and vice versa (especially the sibilant situation). But there is also evidence for borrowings between Semitic and IE (steer, star and seven), as well as between Sumerian and IE (urudu, gu(d)). Then there is the Nostratic theory, and the possibilty that Sumerian belongs there. Alan Bomhard published some tables of correspondences between IE, AA, Sumerian and others, where only *w was conspicuously missing, as well as Sum. /g~/. So is a correspondence like dag~al / *t.awal "wide" a borrowing, or does it reflect cognation at some deeper level? An interesting question, I think. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv@wxs.nl Amsterdam ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 14:49:41 -0600 From: "Charles E. Jones" Subject: ane Excav. Opportunity: TELL ES-SAFI/GATH ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT Forwarded on behalf of the undersigned, to whom responses and inquiries should be directed. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx EXCAVATION OPPORTUNITY IN ISRAEL TELL ES-SAFI/GATH ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT JULY 11-AUGUST 6, 1999 THE SITE Tell es-Safi (Hebrew Tel Tsafit) is a commanding mound located on the border between the Judean foothills (the Shephelah) and the coastal plain, approximately halfway between Jerusalem and Ashkelon. At about 100 acres in size, it is one of the largest and most important archaeological sites in Israel. Most scholars identify Tell es-Safi with Philistine Gath, known from the Bible as the home of Goliath and Achish. Archaeological surveys indicate that the site was inhabited pretty much continuously from the Chalcolithic period (5th millennium BCE) until 1948. THE PROJECT Since 1996 a team of archaeologists from the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies at Bar Ilan University, under the overall direction of Dr. Aren M. Maeir and assisted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been digging at Tell es-Safi. It promises to be one of the major archaeological undertakings of the next decade or two in Israel. Preliminary results have underlined the great importance of the site. Major finds from the first few seasons include the discoveries of a 9th century BCE destruction layer with extraordinarily rich remains and of a siege trench surrounding the site, whose date has yet to be determined. THE PROGRAM Beginning in the summer of 1999 York University of Toronto will join Bar Ilan University in offering a summer field school for students and volunteers. All able and willing people of university age or over are invited to join us for a unique and exciting experience uncovering the history and culture of the Holy Land. In addition to participating in all facets of the excavation process, participants will be provided with the opportunity to learn excavation techniques, to hear lectures about the archaeology of Israel, and to go on field trips to nearby sites of interest. North American students may earn 6 university credits through York. Students from the rest of the world may register for academic credit through Bar Ilan. Accommodations (including kosher food) will be provided at idyllic Kibbutz Kfar Menahem, a short drive from the site. For further information, please contact: In North America: Prof. Carl S. Ehrlich Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project Division of Humanities York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada Fax: 416-736-5460 Email: ehrlich@yorku.ca In the rest of the world: Dr. Aren M. Maeir Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan ISRAEL 52900 Fax: 972-3-5351233 Email: maeir@h2.hum.huji.ac.il - -------------------------------------------------------- Name: Prof. Carl S. Ehrlich Director of Undergraduate Studies Division of Humanities York University-Toronto E-mail: Carl S. Ehrlich Fax: 1-416-736-5460 Tel.: 1-416-736-2100 ext. 77021 - -------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 15:57:13 -0500 From: nyokabi@kingcon.com Subject: ane meroitic On Thurs Feb 18 Vincent DeCaen asked: >where exactly are we these days on understanding meroitic and its >genetic affiliation? be interesting to know of any progress. >some thoughts. >nick millet's number words wi (one) and tbo (two): kind'a suggestive >of proto-bantu, what say? I don't think I've seen his list, got a ref.? I have tbo/ two and wi/brother in a list by Behrens in SUGIA 3, 1981, which I think is taken from Meeks 1973 list in Meroitic Newsletter. If wi really is one, I'd look at Egyptian w'/ one; as for tbo English is pretty close: tw/bo... you could look at Zaghawa [Saharan] which has several Nile and Meroitic connections, maybe not genetically, but indicating contact: swe/ two... Closest thing I found is in a Trombetti article in Italian about numbers world wide: Lazo [Laz? one of Colchian langs] t'bu/ twins. My Laz Mingrelian etc list was not that inclusive, and even the numbers were missing, so if anyone wants to check? Behrens does suggest a vocalization tabu for Meroitic tbo. Proto Bantu? I think not. I would say moj-/mosh- one, and p/bil- two, the latter in Bantu usually nasalized mb-/mp-. indeed, looking at the king lists, kind'a look like swahili verbs: >anybody been looking farther afield? I don't think anyone has suggested it is a prefix language like Bantu. If they were there, they would be pretty obvious, unless the writing system didn't write them. I think they think it has verbal suffixes [Bantu only a few, uses prefixed subject and tense particles] and therefore most agree on Nilo-Saharan, a category so broad and really unknown, many languages dying out, that that doesn't really say much. As I have said before, the - -b/-p suffixes, one of the few grammatical thing we know for sure, are found in several major Central Sudanic langs and some stray other N-S langs, but also have been thought to go back to proto-Af-As in the form of ape- abe- awe, or -upa, -uwa, etc. There are also some in Khoisan, some in Caucasic, some over in the Himalayan langs, in Tibetan, etc. Clearly we need a Rosetta stone... re names: what are the likely verbal elements? on the basis of names >in general? be easy to run comparisons. e.g., if looking for give, >know, say, we'd get sets for niger-congo ba/de, n(y)a, ti/ta, and for >khoisan ma, sa, ka. so...., if we have a likely list, be easy, i >think to find the right family, after all, there aren't that many >major classes: 3 or 4 excluding afroasiatic. A survivor doesn't have to be in Africa. It could have left posterity in Africa, who then all went under to the Mandinga type languages during the medieval empires, or to Nilotic up in the swamps, to Beja in E desert, or to Nubian, then Arabic in the valley. Then a Meroitic migration might have gone out to the ANE and just survived in some pocket somewhere, and that might be the only surviving relative left. Or the language could have been intrusive into Africa, a pre-Semitic language of W.Arabia or the Levant or the Zagros or Elam hightailing it into Africa when they saw the writing on the wall...There's lots of legends like this, like the migration of the Meds from the Indus to become rulers of Aetherian Meroe, and then you find similar types of pottery and rock art,etc. The Indian archaeologists have been very interested in this connection and took part in Nubian salvage operations before everything went down into the abzu. in terms of typology, might think meroitic "q" should be /g/: just >thinking out loud. Or K, yes... unless there was an Agaw ruling stratum [rulers had a fish taboo, so we know they weren't the Ethiopian fisheaters, who were more likely to be Central Sudanics ] who imported their own status words, like qor/ ruler... -qo ("honorific suffix"). [N. Agaw supposed to have picked up q gutterals from Hebrew, acc to legends, modern folks probably say from Ge'ez]. Both of these often spelt with k in the literature anyway. Sorry I don't have anything more up to date, this has all been around since the 70's and 80's. E Adams ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 16:11:21 -0500 From: nyokabi@kingcon.com Subject: ane eme- sal A simple minded suggestion for why it was called Eme Sal which I am sure I am not the first to have suggested: Why can it not just be like the concept of Muttersprache? It was the language of our mothers, because our fathers were foreign migrants or conquerors who arrived in an all male cohort. The conquerors then garble up our language, dump the prefixes, mispronounce it, throw in their vocabulary for various masculine important matters, and leave our mother's words for matters domestic, maybe agricultural, etc. And matters religious. Which would explain the priesthood part: people also tend to preserve the priests, rituals, and gods of the autochthonous people, even if they kill off all the other men, only keeping enough women to take care of their own needs. Thus after the first generation there would be male children also fully conversant in their mother's language, but most would also have to learn the new dialect of the rulers [as Kramer used to call Eme-Gir, tongue of the prince]. Women tending to stay at home would have kept Eme-sal alive. When later Semitic migrants arrived also looking for wives, up in Wari-ki, or Uri-ki [Akkad] they borrow some Eme-sal too. But their own language survives because they are a homoglot advance wave of a tide of later waves of Semitic speakers, whereas the Gir speakers may have come in a polyglot migration from more distant starting points, with such different component languages that they all just adopted the local language, but adding some of their own vocabulary, then just generally "creolizing" it - modifying grammar and pronunciation, etc. If the local language was already written down, and their own intrusive languages had never been written, we have no way of knowing how long their own languages may have survived as purely oral languages, while they wrote in the one already being written... E. Adams PS It may be of some interest that two Sumerian words for woman, SAL and MUNUS are alive and well in Jamaica as names for the female organ. This is especially interesting if you consider that the logogram SAL was a triangle with a slit - i.e. it may have stood for various words for "woman," but it looked like you know what. Well you can laugh but you know that the Islamic writers said that the children of Nimrod migrated to Africa, then split into two streams, one heading west across the savannahs and the other heading south along the fringes of the plateau. Pre-"Sumerians"? PPS An interesting story is of relevance to the discussion of different types of "women's languages": There is a W Nilotic language called Bor on the borders of the W Sudan and the former C Af Republic [right where the famine is now at its worst in Bahr el Ghazal], where only the men still speak Bor. The women and children have adopted a neighboring Niger-Kongo language [NE or Adamawa branch, is it Bira?] because, as they answered when interviewed, "Bor is too hard to speak!" This in spite of the fact that the glottochronologists estimate a period something like 40,000 years of differentiation between the two language groups, whatever. They are like English and Chinese to each other. {I got this story from a field report on Archaeology in this area (AAR? somewhere, sometime in the last ten years, still in an unpacked box). This is clearly the key to the rapid spread of Bantu languages over 2/3 of the African continent: it was a language conquest, rather than a vast conquest of peoples. I suppose the same could be said for Semitic in the ANE, on up to the modern age, though the reasons were surely different! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 17:31:18 -0500 From: Brian Betty Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? On 2/19/99, cwinters@orion.it.luc.edu wrote: "Yes, I know Kushana. Do you. Many people were surprised to discover that Hittite was an Indo-European language spoken in an area far distant from other IE languages. This made the Hittite hypothesis "wacky" when it was first proposed. Miguel please explain why we can not use Kushana to read Meroitic. You have not presented any evidence why Kushana can not be used to read Meroitic." I still think you are AVOIDING the question Miguel asked: namely, what is your evidence? You can't seriously expect people to simply "nod and agree" when you make a highly questionable claim but give no examples or evidence. You haven't explained why you are saying Meroitic and Tokharian are related. You haven't given even ONE example of a word in Meroitic that resembles a word in Tokharian, nevermind shown systematic relationships. You just wrote a letter to ANE saying you did, then got defensive when you got slapped down. You yourself admit that your claims are wild; how do you expect people to react to you when you don't give any information! I would be happy to evaluate your research. I think people try hard to be fair to people's questions on ANE, even ones which are questionable. Yet you are reacting to this like it is a personal attack, and not letting anyone evaluate your claims. That is unfair. I've waited patiently through this catfight, but you still are, as Miguel wrote, "avoiding the question." So give some evidence already! BB They call me Coffee 'cause I grind so fine. God was my co-pilot, but we crashed in the Andes and I had to eat him. Only 319 shopping days left before the end of the world. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 17:22:15 -0600 (CST) From: "Clyde A. Winters" Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Peter T. Daniels wrote: > Clyde A. Winters wrote: > > > > The wackier the claim, the more evidence is required to prevent > > > being laughed off, and massive evidence is required to convince. > > > The claim that Meroitic can be read as Tocharian is heap wacky. > > > You offer zero evidence for it. Merely a bold assertion and > > > handwaving to "your research". Well, based on my research and > > > previous experience, I have one question to put to you: do you > > > in fact know any Tocharian at all? > > > Yes, I know Kushana. Do you. Many people were surprised to discover > > that Hittite was an Indo-European language spoken in an area far > > distant from other IE languages. This made the Hittite hypothesis "wacky" > > when it was first proposed. Miguel please explain why we can not use > > Kushana to read Meroitic. You have not presented any evidence why Kushana > > can not be used to read Meroitic. > > You haven't presented any evidence that it can, to wit, a > morpheme-by-morpheme comparison of Tocharian (please answer Miguel's > original question: A or B?) with Meroitic. I did answer his question, yes I know Tokharian. Now I would like to know why the cognate language of Meroitic can not be Tokharian. > However, inasmuch as Tocharian is outside both the geographical and > chronological purview of the Ancient Near East List, this would not seem > to be an appropriate forum in which to consider the question. > -- > Peter T. Daniels grammatim@worldnet.att.net > You are wrong in this matter. Since we will be discussing Meroitic it is in the preview of this list. C.A. Winters ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 18:56:51 -0500 (EST) From: Vincent DeCaen Subject: ane meroitic, winters on tocharian i would be the last to censor lateral thinking, clyde. if you have an analysis we could look at, as ascii or html or whatever, give us the details and that should end the thread. cheers. V - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Dr. Vincent DeCaen c/o Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations 4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor University of Toronto Toronto ON, CANADA, M5S 1A1 Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~decaen/hsei/ - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer. --Santayana ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 19:16:05 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Re: ane eme- sal Because of the fundamental fact I pointed out earlier that Emesal derives from Emegir, whereas your theory presupposed the reverse relationship. AMR On Fri, 19 Feb 1999 nyokabi@kingcon.com wrote: > A simple minded suggestion for why it was called Eme Sal which I am sure I > am not the first to have suggested: > > Why can it not just be like the concept of Muttersprache? It was the > language of our mothers, because our fathers were foreign migrants or > conquerors who arrived in an all male cohort. The conquerors then garble up > our language, dump the prefixes, mispronounce it, throw in their vocabulary > for various masculine important matters, and leave our mother's words for > matters domestic, maybe agricultural, etc. And matters religious. Which > would explain the priesthood part: people also tend to preserve the > priests, rituals, and gods of the autochthonous people, even if they kill > off all the other men, only keeping enough women to take care of their own > needs. Thus after the first generation there would be male children also > fully > conversant in their mother's language, but most would also have to learn > the new dialect of the rulers [as Kramer used to call Eme-Gir, tongue of > the prince]. Women tending to stay at home would have kept Eme-sal alive. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 19:24:27 -0500 From: "Peter T. Daniels" Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? Clyde A. Winters wrote: > > You haven't presented any evidence that it can, to wit, a > > morpheme-by-morpheme comparison of Tocharian (please answer Miguel's > > original question: A or B?) with Meroitic. > > I did answer his question, yes I know Tokharian. Now I would like to know > why the cognate language of Meroitic can not be Tokharian. No, you didn't answer whether you're referring to A or B. No one has yet said it *cannot* be. Since it seems a priori rather unlikely, though, it's up to you to provide some reason for us to consider that perhaps it might be. (See the guidelines for postings to ANE List.) > > However, inasmuch as Tocharian is outside both the geographical and > > chronological purview of the Ancient Near East List, this would not seem > > to be an appropriate forum in which to consider the question. > You are wrong in this matter. Since we will be discussing Meroitic it is > in the preview of this list. Purview? [Sorry about the duplicate copies last time -- I forgot to delete the duplicate cc:'s from the meshuggener Reply setup of the list.] - -- Peter T. Daniels grammatim@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 17:01:23 -0800 (PST) From: cuibono@socrates.berkeley.edu (c. a. hoffman) Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? i haven't been on this list the longest by any means, but for the past several years, and i'm surprised that, after all the times that mr. winters has spoken about meroitic etc., the folks engaged in this discussion (i mean the veterans here) do not know before they even reply what his response and reaction will be. and, if the latter is foreknown, then is there just a tad of amused badgering going on here? chris hoffman ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 21:24:44 -0500 From: "Liz Fried" Subject: RE: ane understanding meroitic? For all us lurkers, will someone please tell us (me) what you're talking about. What in h--- are all these languages??? Thanks, Liz Lisbeth S. Fried Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies New York University 51 Washington Sq. S. New York, NY 10012 lqf9256@is3.nyu.edu lizfried@umich.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 22:58:49 EST From: FucciXXV@aol.com Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? In a message dated 2/19/99 8:27:56 PM Central Standard Time, lizfried@umich.edu writes: > For all us lurkers, will someone please tell us (me) what you're talking > about. > What in h--- are all these languages??? If memory serves, Meroitic was a language from Nubia and the Tocharians were IE speakers with some sort of characteristic hut recently found to have been in Mongolia. Jim Thorn Chicago, IL ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 23:07:58 -0500 (EST) From: morsil@webtv.net Subject: ane Meaning of kaburu Dear Listmembers: Texts from Emar refer to a kaburu-payment. Does anyone perhaps have an idea what kaburu means? Thanks for your help. Best wishes, Morris Morris Silver Department of Economics City College of New York ANCIENT ECONOMIES I http://members.tripod.com/~sondmor/index.html ANCIENT ECONOMIES II http://www.angelfire.com/ms/ancecon/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 00:48:27 -0600 (CST) From: Giuseppe Del Monte Subject: Re: ane Meaning of kaburu At 23.07 19/02/99 -0500, "Morris Silver" wrote: >Dear Listmembers: > >Texts from Emar refer to a kaburu-payment. Does anyone perhaps have an >idea what kaburu means? > The term was discussed at length by Carlo Zaccagnini: Ceremonial Transfers of Real Estate at Emar and Elsewhere, in the Italian journal Vicino Oriente vol. 8/2, Rome 1992, pp. 33-48. According to him, "the Emar clause of the handing of the KuPuru of the real estate might be considered as the _functional_ equivalent of the GI$.GAN / bukanum clause of the III - early II millennium Mesopotamian contracts. Whatever the meaning of KuPuru--for which I have no satisfactory explanation at hand--their possession represents full (or preferential) title to real estate ownership, as concerns houses and other immovables--but not fields. Their transfer to third parties symbolically sanctions transfer of ownership" (p. 40). I don't know if someone else has discussed the term more recently. For the fans of etymological explanations I'll quote what Zaccagnini wrote on the matter: "It is my impression that any interpretation of this term--what matters more--of the standard clause in which it is used cannot be drawn from dubious and non-illuminating etymological hypotheses (K/G/Q-P/B-R; Akkadian/ West Semitic/Hurrian/etc.)" (p. 38f.). - -------------- Prof. Dr. Giuseppe del Monte Cattedra di Storia del Vicino Oriente antico Dpt. Scienze storiche del mondo antico Università di Pisa via Galvani 1 - I-56100 Pisa Fax 39-050-500668 - E-mail delmonte@lunet.it ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 01:08:40 -0600 (CST) From: "Clyde A. Winters" Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? On Fri, 19 Feb 1999 FucciXXV@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/19/99 8:27:56 PM Central Standard Time, > lizfried@umich.edu writes: > > > For all us lurkers, will someone please tell us (me) what you're talking > > about. > > What in h--- are all these languages??? > > If memory serves, Meroitic was a language from Nubia and the Tocharians were > IE speakers with some sort of characteristic hut recently found to have been > in Mongolia. > > Jim Thorn > Chicago, IL > Research is the foundation of good science or knowing in general. There are four methods of knowing. First, method of tenacity (one holds firmly to the truth, because "they know it" to be true); 2) method of authority the (method of established belief, i.e., the Bible or the "experts" say it, it is so); 3) method of intuition (the method where a proposition agrees with reason, but not necessarily with experience); and 4) the method of science ( the method of attaining knowledge which calls for self correction). Science is therefore the method of attaining knowledge. To support my proposition that Kushana (Tokharian) is the cognate language of Meroitic I use the scientific method which calls for hypothesis testing, not only supported by experimentation, but also that of alternative plausible hypotheses that, may place doubt on the original hypothesis. The aim of science is theory construction. A theory is a set interrelated constructs, propositions and definitions, that provide a systematic understanding of phenomena by outlining relations among a group of variables that explain and predict phenomena. Scientific inquiry involves issues of theory construction, control and experimentation. Scientific knowledge must rest on testing, rather than mere induction which can be defined as inferences of laws and generalizations, derived from observation. This falsity of logical possibility is evident in your rejection of the Kushana hypothesis. Karl Popper, in , rejects this form of logical validity based solely on inference and conjecture (pp.33-65). Popper maintains that confirmation in science, is arrived at through falsification. Therefore to confirm a theory in science one test the theory through regorous attempts at falsification. In falsification the research uses cultural, linguistic, anthropological and historical knowledge to invalidate a proposed theory. If a thory can not be falsified through a set of variables associated with an alternative theory it is confirmed. It can only be disconfirmed when new generalizations associated with the original theory fail to survive attempts at falsification. In short, science centers on theory construction and refutation. Your reason to reject my hypothesis is an "impression". This is "impression" has no logic behind it, it is nonfalsifiable and therefore nonscientific. The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India. Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language.The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who lived in the Meroitic empire, failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites. Classical writers maintained that the Kushites lived in Africa and Asia. This information was supported by the presence of similar toponyms, and ethnonyms in Asia and Africa. The recognition that there was abundant evidence of two Kushite empires confirmed the claims of the Classical literature that the Kushites lived in both Asia and Africa. The most surprising discovery during the study of the literature concerning Indian nations, was that a people called Kushana, had formerly ruled much of India and Central Asia. This was surprising because their ethnonym was almost identical to the ethnonym of the Meroites. Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the , Vol. 1, cliamed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, (p.45), 1950. Given the fact that the Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to to the Kushite civilization, lead to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been Kushana philosophers. The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to Indians in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the possible location of the cognate language of Meroitic. These references made it clear that there were two Kushes. As a falsificationist I had to attempt to falsify the Classical traditions before I could accept them as plausible hypotheses as a source for the Meroitic cognate language. A review of the history, and literature relating to Asia indicated that many placenames did in fact correspond fully to the name Kush in Africa. What was even more surprising was that their was a people who ruled India that shared the same ethnonym of the African Kushites: the Kushana. The recognition that there was abundant evidence of two Kushite empires confirmed the claims of the Classical lieterature that the Kushites lived in both Asia and Africa. Secondly, the fact that the Kushana ruled India confirmed the Classical literature that a large number of Meroite intellectuals who had come from India and and followed Indian philosophical traditions. Confirmation of the Gymnosophist hypothesis led to the development of two new hypothesis 1) the Gymnosophits if they came from India they would have maintained whatever literacy tradition they inherited from their Indian ancestors; and 2) the language of the Gymnosophists was probably the cognate language of the Meroites. To test this hypothesis I compared the Meroitic writing and Kharosthi scripts. This comparison proved that some of these signs were analogous. This was confirmation of the possible inheritance of of a Kushana writing tradition among the Meroites. I next attempted to falsify the hypothesis that the Kushana language was related to Meroitic. To do this I compared 1) agreed upon Meroitic terms; 2) the grammatical features proposed by Hintze, in ; and 3) a set of verbs proposed by A.M. Abdalla, to Kushana (Tokharian) terms. There are a few agreed upon Meroitic words which are not of Egyptian origin. These words include: Meroitic Tokharian kadke/ktke 'queen' katak 'master of the house' ato 'water' ap 'water' s 'race, man,male' sah 'man', se 'son' wide 'youth' wir 'youth' qor 'monarch,royal' oroce 'the grand king' parite 'agent' parwe 'first' apote 'envoy' ap 'father' It is obvious that apote and parite do not relate to Tokharian because these terms are Egyptian loan words adopted by the Meroites. But around 57% of the remaining terms show agreement. This made it highly probable that Meroitic and Tokharian were cognate languages. A comparison of the proposed grammatical features of Meroitic by Hintze (1979): Meroitic Tokharian/Tocharian/Kushana - -p pa, the imperfect affix - -ye y, used to denote intensity - -te te, demonstrative, locative suffix, 2nd per sing. pronoun - -to to, 'you - -o - -n n, used to make the future tense - -b indicate cognation between Meroitic and Tokharian affixes. Finally, Abdalla (Hintze, 1979)detected a number of common Meroitic verbs: Meroitic Tokharian khr Kar 'to have dignity' tkh tak 'to move' tk, tak 'to investigate, to set in motion' we wa= escort, e=give-> we 'to give escort' pl pal 'boast, to praise' do d=give + -o, used to form nouns->do 'donations' mde mde, open with force yi. ya=go + i=give-> yi 'to give leave' It was assumed that if Kushana was the cognate language of Meroitic, there may be verbs of similar construction in Kushana which agree with the verbs proposed by Abdalla , as you can see above there was agreement between Kushana and Meroitic verbs. This hypothesis was confirmed when I found the following cognate Kushana verbs. This cognition between Kushana and Meroitic led me to accept the possibility that the Meroitic verbs proposed by Abdalla might be interpreted as follows: khr = to have dignity tkh = to move tk = to set in motion, to investigate w-e = to give escort pl = to boast, to praise mde = open with force My inability to falsify the original two hypothesis based on the Classical literature, and three corollary hypothesis based on the first two, confirmed the Kushana hypothesis. Confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis has led me to claim full decipherment. Using the Kushana language I have deciphered many of the Meroitic inscriptions including the stelas of Tanyidamani. Below is the decipherment of line #9 of the Armina West Tablet: Meroitic tm de lo wite me -y to bear indeed solitary delight measure - intensity affix Tokharian tam lo wit me -y Translation: "To bear indeed solitary delights (without) measure". The hypothesis based on the Classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana Hypothesis. The predicting power of the original theory, matches the observed natural phenomena which was confirmed by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexical items and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified. The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic, is confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections were deducible from prediction. I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the statements of the Classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and toponymic evidence. I constructed five testable hypothesis in support of the Kushana theory, and it seems only fair that these five variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana Hypothesis. Failure to disconfirm this theorem, implies validity of my prediction. My confirmation of the above five variables: the presence of Kushites in Africa and Asia; the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe; cognate lexical items; cognate verbs and cognate grammatical features indicates systematic controlled, critical and emprical investigation of the question of Kushana representing the Meroitic cognate language. This validation of the Kushana Hypothesis deserves more than someone's "impression" to disconfirm this hypothesis. I am a falsificationist. I therefore will accept disconfirmation of the Kushana theory if it is falsified. Moreover, since Meroitic is not spoken today I expect modification of the vocabulary items I have already found, but I believe that if someone disputes the "Kushana Hypothesis" they should fully explain their reservations based on the method of attaining knowledge, not the methods of tenacity, authority and intuition, because these methods are incongruent with with control and experimentation. I therefore hope that when the Kushana Theory is disputed, that the people disputing this hypothesis present new generalizations that falsify the five variables of the Kushana Theory. Any alleged refutation which rest solely on deduction, personal impressions and hearsay, which are nonfalsifiable must expect summary rejected. Sources F. Hintze, Beltrage zur Meroitishen Grammatik, 3, Berlin, Akademie-Verlag. D. Adams, . (American Oriental series,71) 1988. A.J. van Windekens, , Vol.11. Louvain, 1941. __________________. , Vol.17, Louvain, 1944. __________________., Louvain,1976. Walter Petersen,"Tocharian pronominal declension". ,11 (1935) ,pp.196-206. G.S. Lane, "Problems of Tocharian Phonology", , 14 (1938), pp.20-38. D. Ringe, ,Vol. 1. (American Oriental series 80) 1996. C.A. Winters ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 01:16:40 -0600 (CST) From: "Clyde A. Winters" Subject: RE: ane understanding meroitic? On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Liz Fried wrote: > For all us lurkers, will someone please tell us (me) what you're talking > about. > What in h--- are all these languages??? > > Thanks, > Liz The speakers of the Tocharian/Tokharian languages called themselves Kushana. Linguist on the otherhand prefer to call the Tocharian or Tokharian. C.A. Winters > > Lisbeth S. Fried > Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies > New York University > 51 Washington Sq. S. > New York, NY 10012 > lqf9256@is3.nyu.edu > lizfried@umich.edu > > ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 01:18:24 -0600 (CST) From: "Clyde A. Winters" Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? On Fri, 19 Feb 1999 FucciXXV@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/19/99 8:27:56 PM Central Standard Time, > lizfried@umich.edu writes: > > > For all us lurkers, will someone please tell us (me) what you're talking > > about. > > What in h--- are all these languages??? > > If memory serves, Meroitic was a language from Nubia and the Tocharians were > IE speakers with some sort of characteristic hut recently found to have been > in Mongolia. > > Jim Thorn > Chicago, IL > There is no evidence that the Kushana people lived in Mongolia. C.A. Winters ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 09:32:30 +0200 From: "Rex H. McTyeire" Subject: Re: ane understanding meroitic? Liz Fried wrote: > > For all us lurkers, will someone please tell us (me) what you're talking > about. > What in h--- are all these languages??? > I Can't answer the question, Liz.....but it needed to be asked..thanks. Most of the linguistic tech stuff is beyond me, but the links relate to my interests, even given the list egos and personal bristling. It would help if all the respondent linguists accepted that: (1) all of us are not linguists, (2) we might still be interested, and (3) we would find much more value in the discussions with an occasional brief geographic and chronological reference. La Revedere: Rex H. McTyeire Bucharest, Romania rexbo@customers.digiro.net I like a man who grins when he fights. - Winston Churchill ------------------------------ End of ANE Digest V1999 #50 *************************** Back issues are available on the Oriental Institute World-Wide Web (WWW) site at: http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/OI_ANE.html