05 July 2014

Greek parthénos 'virgin, unmarried girl' (updated)

Goddess Britomartis
Greek parthénos 'virgin, unmarried girl' is an interesting word with no clear Indo-European etymology, although the German Indo-Europeanist Gert Klingenschmitt1 has proposed a derivation from *pr̥-sténos '(having) protunding breasts', a compound of *pr̥- 'before' and *sténos 'breast' (Avestan fštāna-) < IE *psten(o)- parallel to Avestan ərəduua-fšnī- 'having firm breasts'.

Despite being accepted by some specialists2, to me this proposal is phonetical and semantically implausible, so I regard this word as a kinship term with parallels in Old Prussian mārtin, mārtan 'bride', Lithuanian martì ‘bride, daughter-in-law’, Latvian mā̀rša 'brother's wife', Crimean Gothic marzus ‘wedding’, apparently a Wanderwort found in Eteocretan *marti-/*marpi- 'virgin/maiden' (cfr. the Goddess Britomartis 'Sweet Virgin/Maiden'), Etruscan marθ 'bride' (in papac marθc svlisva 'the wills of the grandfather and the bride')3, and ultimately related to East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) *bHaddɮi (~ -ǝ-) 'young (of animals)'4

In my opinion, this is the likely source of Sanskrit p̥thuka- 'calf, young of an animal', Armenian ortc 'young of cattle or deer' and Greek pórtis 'calf, young heifer', pórtaks 'calf'5, linked by Thomas Burrow6 to parthénosThe semantic shift from 'heifer' to 'virgin, unmarried girl' would be explained in the context of a pastoralist society like those of Kurgan people

Also related within IE would be Germanic *farzá-, *farzḗn, *fársō(n) 'bull, ox' and Slavic *porsъ 'bull'. In turn, the Caucasian word has cognates in Proto-Altaic *bāla 'child, young' and PIE *pelH- 'foal' (Greek pôlos 'foal', Armenian ul 'kid, young of deer or gazelle', Albanian pelë 'mare')7.
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1 G. Klingenschmitt (1974): 'Grieschisch παρθένος', in Antiquititae Indogermanicae. Gedenkschrift für Hermann Güntert, pp. 273-278. 
2 R.S.P. Beekes (2010): Etymological Dictionary of Greek, p. 1153. See also X. Delamarre (2008): Gauloises Ardasina, Titiluxsa, Uxesina, grec parthénos, avestique ərəduuafšnī-. Une dénomination indo-européenne de la jeune femme: 'celle qui ha les seins hauts'.
3 A. Morandi (1987): La tomba degli Scudi di Tarquinia [Contributo epigrafico per l'esegesi dei soggetti], in Mélanges d'École française de Rome. Antiquité, p. 104.
4 Diakonoff-Starostin link to this Hurrian pōra-(m)mi, Urartian porā 'slave'. See I. Diakonoff & S. Starostin (1986): Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language, §2.
5 Also related are Old Church Slavonic za-prъtъkъ 'wind egg', Czech s-pratek 'premature calf' (Pokorný).
6 T. Burrow (1955): The Sanskrit Language, p. 71. 
7 J. Mallory & D. Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE world, p. 192.

37 comments:

  1. Klingenschmitt's etymology is very problematic, but yours gives rise to even more problems. Since it refers vaguely to a "Pre-Greek" source (of which nothing concrete can be said), it's completely untestable. Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that the substratal word was something like *mart-, can you offer an answer to any of the following questions?
    (1) Why was the initial *m replaced with *p? (to say that it was "denasalised" is a descriptive, not an explanatory statement; and even so it's innacurate: it would have had to undergo devoicing as well).
    (2) Etruscan marθ 'bride' looks like a ghost form to me. Where does it come from and how did you establish its meaning?
    (3) Where does the suffix -eno- come from and what function does it play?
    (4) Why is the Greek word an o-stem?

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    1. Hi, Piotr.

      When I wrote the post I was short of time and so I left some gaps to be filled by a deeper research. Now I think p- is primary while m- is secondary and not the other way around. I've also added the context where it's attested the Etruscan word, although unfortunately I don't know the reference of the inscription. I can't answer to questions (3) and (4) at present.

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    2. I guess parthénos is a rethematization of an original *parth-en or *parth-an, a thematic noun in -n̩.

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  2. Perhaps it's from *prH2 (before) + *dhen (hand). The connection with "hand" being "hand in marriage" or "taking a woman into marriage". Marriage by abduction was very common (IIRC, it's what started the Trojan War according to legend).

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    1. Ha, ha, ha. This applies to the English verb to wed, which refers to the conduction of the bride to their new home, either by force or not. But *dhen-r- is actually 'palm of the hand', not properly 'hand' (there's also *dhon- 'flat lot, platform'), so it's unsuitable for the etymology.

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  3. Maybe it refers the the time before the dowry has greased the palms :)

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    1. I suppose you aren't referring to palm oil, as this should be trated in another post.

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  4. I did some research in into the other epithet of Britomartis, Diktynna, and found seeming NE Caucasian parallels for what it may have meant (that depends on if Eteocretan and, therefore, Tyrsenian/ Tyrrhenian is of Macro-/ Vasco-Caucasian origin). The Greeks gave it a folk etymology from a word of their language, diktya, meaning "hunting/ fishing net". Diktynna could mean something like “the good/ right and pleasant/ agreeable one”.

    The Diktynna epithet could be related to these words:

    Proto-North Caucasian: *=ĭnk_wV (/=ĭk_wVn; ~ ɨ̆)

    Meaning: right, good

    Proto-Nakh: *dik-/*dak-
    Proto-Avaro-Andian: *ʔinkʷV- / *kʷVnV-r-
    Proto-Tsezian: *=ɨgV (~-ǝ-)
    Proto-Dargwa: *d-uka
    Proto-Lezghian: *juk:ɨ-

    Notes: Reconstructed for the PEC level. Seems both semantically ("good" - "right" is a common correlation) and phonetically reliable. Cf. also Urart. gunǝ 'right (not left), true' (see Diakonoff-Starostin 1986, 32). The same root is probably represented in PEC *k_wVnV 'a conditional particle' > Ud. -gin, Khin. -k:ʷa, Lak. -kun, Tsez. -kin et al.

    Chechen form: taina
    English gloss: attractive, pleasant, nice, pretty; good, well-behaved (of child) (Johanna Nichols)

    taan - tou - taira – taina

    "Taina" comes from the verb "Ta(n)= to suit, to agree, to harmonize". The derivatives given are: "Taw (tow) = agreeing, Taira = suited, agreed, Tain = suitable, agreeable, togetherness"

    Also about *marθ- found in Eteocretan *marti- 'virgin/maiden', I think it is Tyrrhenian or Aegean (that word you hate). I think the word could have been transmitted via Raetic (Tyrrhenian) to Germanic and then to Baltic. Since it is only present within two branches of IE, Germanic and Baltic, it is a weak candidate for being of IE origin. There are no matching forms in the rest of IE also. We know Tyrrhenian had the word as it is attested. We know the Raetians had contact with the Germanic tribes. The Germanic speakers possibly borrowed the Runic alphabet from Raetic/ Etruscan. That is strong evidence of contact.

    Notice how the Germanic form matches well with the Etruscan form...Etruscan: marθ "bride", Germanic: *márθ-iō "bride". Germanic: /θ/, /þ/ would yield /t/ in Baltic > Baltic: *mar̃t-ī̂, -jā̂, -iā̃ f. "fiancee".


    Also, could Eteocretan *marti- be related to:

    Proto-North Caucasian: *biltV

    Meaning: wedding

    Proto-Avaro-Andian: *birti-n
    Proto-Lezghian: *mi(l)tV-

    Notes: An interesting Av.-And.-Lezg. isogloss. (Sergei Starostin)

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    1. Also about *marθ- found in Eteocretan *marti- 'virgin/maiden', I think it is Tyrrhenian or Aegean (that word you hate).
      Yes, that's right. But I don't "hate" the term "Aegean". Tyrrhenian is the group of Etrusco-Lemnian and Raethic, while Aegean would include Minoan/Eteocretan and Eteocypriot. We don't know the exact relationship these two, although it's likely either Aegean is a branch of Tyrrhenian or the other way around. The thing is the nasty GG first used Tyrrhenian for the whole assembly and later changed it to Aegean.

      Since it is only present within two branches of IE, Germanic and Baltic, it is a weak candidate for being of IE origin.
      Yes, but in Germanic it's very marginal, as it's only attested in Crimean Gothic.

      I think the word could have been transmitted via Raetic (Tyrrhenian) to Germanic and then to Baltic.
      I don't think so. The contact must have been much earlier and directly between Baltic and Tyrrhenian (see my post about Latin caesius).

      Notice how the Germanic form matches well with the Etruscan form...Etruscan: marθ "bride", Germanic: *márθ-iō "bride". Germanic: /θ/, /þ/ would yield /t/ in Baltic > Baltic: *mar̃t-ī̂, -jā̂, -iā̃ f. "fiancee".
      Not exactly. What we've got here is a voiceless aspirated stop [tH] which evolved to a fricative [θ] in Germanic. Etruscan θ is an ortographic device for [tH], not to be confused with the Germanic fricative.

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    2. Also saying "Georgiev's Pelasgian theory was roundly criticized and debunked" is being unfair to the Bulgarian linguist, who AFAIK was the first scholar to study systematically lexical strata in IE languages reflecting loanwords from other IE languages.

      By contrast, most IE-ists still stick to the monolythic classical model, under which everything is either inherited from "PIE" or isn't IE at all, as e.g. Beekes' "Pre-Greek".

      I hope I made myself clear enough.

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  5. Hola, Octavia!

    Yes, about the [θ] and [þ] (thorn)...which is which? The article I read says that the [þ] (Thorn) can have the same sound as /θ/ (voiceless) or /ð/ (voiced).

    The /tH/ sound has something to do with debuccalization of the voiceless fricative, correct? Making a sort of 'tah' sound rather than a voiceless fricative sound like /th/ and in 'thatch', correct?

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    1. I'm afraid IE-ists are very fond of what they call "tradition" (in that respect, they're more like members of a sect that actual scientists), so they use /þ/ to represent the Germanic fricative [θ] instead of the std IPA symbol, which is annoying for non-believers.

      Yes, [tH] (where H is actually superscripted) or [] is a voiceless aspirated stop like the one found in English top [t´ɒp].

      In my opinion, the classical "voiced aspirated" stops (modelled after Sanskrit) were originally plain voiced, although in a 3-series system could have been realized as lenis and then as voiced fricatives, which were further devoiced and fortified in pre-Proto-Greek and pre-Proto-Italic: > θ > (of course, in this model Grassmann's Law should be reformulated accordingly). This way, those words in Latin and Greek which don't follow these developments should be regarded as loanwords, e.g. Latin raudus vs. native ruber.

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    2. Even Greek ánthrôpos vs. andrós > *anr-ó-s, a 0-grade variant of anêr < *anér-s show this consonant shift, which I think could be attributed to a Tyrrhenian substrate (more on this in forthcominhg posts).

      Also "Pre-Greek"/Pelasgian had also voiceless aspirated stops (reflected as such in Greek), although of course their distribution is different from the one of native Greek lexicon and similar to the one of Armenian and Phrygian. This way, Pre-Greek ~ Greek t.

      In the classical PIE model the Armenian and Germanic stop system are considered to be the result of a "consonant shift", but the more economical explanation (consistent with the glottalic model and external data) is that this system is more conservative than the rest of IE languages (of course, this is anathema for the ortodox IE clergy).

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  6. Correction: "AS in 'thatch', correct?"

    I look forward to hearing more about those things you think can be attributed to Tyrrhenian substratal influences. Strangely, you don't think the Greek word for "olive" belongs there (though it very, very likely does).

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    1. From the evidence of words like this one, I deduce there was a contact relationship between Tyrrhenian and Pre-Greek IE languages such as the one posited by Georgiev. However, we can't say a word X originated in Tyrrhenian unless we know a)its etymology and b)the ultimate genetic affinity of Tyrrhenian with regard to its core lexicon.

      I've got the impression Tyrrhenian descends from some of the languages spoken in Neolithic Europe before what I call "Kurganization". That is, a series of language replacement processes by which the languages of the Steppe invaders superimposed upon the autochthonous ones. In my own multi-layer model of IE, it's theoretically possible to have Tyrrhenian as one of these submerged languages. However, there're lots of works to be done and I must concentrate on Basque and its external relationships.

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    2. Hmmm, interesting thoughts there. We do know Tyrrhenian is not IE. The numerals show that and much of what we do know about its core vocabulary shows that as well (based on Etruscan).

      Also, just to let you know, Biliana Mihaylova states, "Unfortunately, during the years the so called “Pelasgian theory” has been seriously discredited by the incontrollable extent of the etymological fantasy of its adherents."

      http://fachtagung.dk/abstracts/131.pdf

      http://fachtagung.dk/handouts/131.pdf

      http://fachtagung.dk/presentations/131.pdf

      Those are links to the abstract and different versions of her paper. They are from mid to late 2012. I think you will find them interesting if you are not knowledgeable of them already.

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    3. We do know Tyrrhenian is not IE. The numerals show that and much of what we do know about its core vocabulary shows that as well (based on Etruscan).
      Yes, that's right. In fact, I think Tyrrhenian would be in an intermediate position between Caucasian and Altaic in a hypothetical Eurasiatic phylum. Although it might sound paradoxical, Caucasian is less Vasco-Caucasian/Sino-Caucasian than e.g. Burushaski or Sino-Tibetan (current long-range groupings are all badly formulated).

      On the other hand, Tyrrhenian had contacts with the Thracian-Baltic group, as indicated by these and other loanwords, some of which show the characteristic delabialization of labiovelars in IE-satem languages, much unlike genuine Tyrrhenian lexicon.

      I see Mihaylova has revived some of Georgiev's etymologies, most of which can be attributed without much effort to Thracian, although others would be from Phrygian or possibly Macedonian. Of course, this doesn't mean ALL the Pre-Greek loanwords have this origin, as Georgiev and Windekens thought in their maximalist approach.

      On the other hand, Beekes' theory is even worse, because not only he doesn't identify those IE loanwords, but he also denies the connection with Tyrrhenian (Etruscan). For example, in the entry of his dictionary devoted to ksanthós, ksouthós 'yellow', he regards the comparison with Etruscan zam(a)thi 'gold' as "of little value".

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  7. I am not sure of the connection between "virgins/ maidens" and "calves/ cows/ bulls". Can you explain that. This seems like the kind of wide semantic net that Christopher Ehret gets criticized for. By the way, I strongly respect Mr. Ehret and his work. To many Afroasiaticists/ Afrasanists he is among the god's of African related linguistics (Afroasiatic/ Nilo-Saharan). Ugh, I hate the terms, Afrasan or Afrasian. I prefer Lisramic, which is composed of forms derived from the language family itself, but to avoid confusion I use Afroasiatic.

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    1. The Greek word is an example of a kinship term coined by a pastoralist society. Perhaps you'll be surprised to know Spanish chico 'boy' (which also exists as an adjective 'small') derives from a Neolithic Wanderwort whose meaning is 'goat' in several languages (Germanic, Kartvelian, Caucasian).

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  8. I will post this here instead of under the "olive" post where I had typed it.

    Hola, Octavia!

    That link is dead. The one about Kortland's review article.

    Octavia, could the differences be due to a prenasalized consonant ==> "mb"? I have not heard of any such consonant being a part of any language north of Africa in Western Eurasia though. Afroasiatic may have had a such consonant, but it is disputed and claimed to be the result of an "m" prefix.

    Guus Kroonen (2012) says that, "In recent years, Schrijver (2007; 2011) has collected evidence in favor of the claim that Pre-Greek was related to Hattic, a non-Indo-Euroepan language spoken in Anatolia in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BCE until it was ultimately marginalized by Hittite. Future research will have to reveal whether sufficient evidence can be gleaned in favor of this claim."

    This upsets my notion of Pre-Greek being Minoan-related. This is a good thing though.

    Guus Kroonen (2012) also reports, "Regarding the linguistic situation in “Old Europe”, it has already been mentioned earlier that the distribution of the a-prefix, i.e. its presence in both Greek, Italo-Celtic and Germanic, seems to be suggestive of a large, homogenous language stretching from Greece to Central or even Northern Europe (cf. Schrijver 2007)."

    If this is true, then what does this say about your "Pelasgian" theory? How does what you say fit into this, if this is true.

    According to Mr. Kroonen, "...the suffixes - īθ- and - īδ-, which are two different variants of -ινθ-. This suffix, which probably continues *-ĩd- with a nasalized vowel (it seems unlikely, at any rate, that the Greek variation of a theta with a delta presupposes a voiced aspirated stop), was already associated with the Pre-Greek substrate by Kretschmer (1896). It is known to occur in phonetically irregular words with semantic fields that are strongly associated with sedentary Mediterranean culture rather than with a pastoral Indo-European way of life."

    The closest Hattic word I could find was given by Alexei Kassian...-mul from haifenamul (haipinamul, haiwe[e_subscript]namul) ‘manhood, virility, courage’ he compares them to South Caucasian: *mōr[Ł]V ‘male’ > North(east) Caucasian: *mōrŁV ‘male (subst.)’ > Nakh: *mār ‘husband’, Dargwa: *marga ‘male’, Lezghian: *morƛ:ɨl/*uorƛ:ɨl ‘man; male; male child; brave man, hero’

    Ł = voiceless alveolar lateral fricative ⟨ɬ⟩
    ƛ = voiceless alveolar lateral affricate ⟨t͡ɬ⟩

    Those words in the North(east) and South Caucasian languages are rather close to the words of this post.

    So would the words be something like Pre-Greek (possible Hattic related language) *mar- + -ĩd- > Baltic: Old Prussian: mārtin, mārtan 'bride', Lithuanian: martì 'bride, daughter-in law', Latvian: mā̀rša 'brother's wife'; Germanic: Crimean Gothic: marzus 'wedding'; Tyrrhenian: *marth(i), Eteocretan: *marti- 'virgin/maiden' (cf. the Goddess name Britomartis 'Sweet Virgin/Maiden'), Etruscan: marθ 'bride'.

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    1. You can find here a copy of Kortland's book Studies in Germanic, Indo-European and Indo-Uralic, a compilation of articles including his review of Holzer's "Temematic".

      You might have noticed Kroonen, Schrijver and Beekes come from the University of Leiden, which is at present the leader headquarter of ortodox IE studies. For practical issues, I'd give Schrijver's claim the same credit that statements which say cancer can be cured with aspirines or sodium bicarbonate.

      On the other hand, the young Kroonen (a Lubotsky's pupil) has a rather flat and ortodox view in which IE speakers were invaders from the Caspian-Pontic Steppes whose languages were unrelated to the replaced Paleo-European ones. It's also no coincidence he mentioned the outdated (1896) Kretschmer and not e.g. the modern Georgiev or Holzer, as having (Paleo-)IE substrates in historical IE languages is something unthinkable to ortodox IE-ists like himself.

      Also your etymological proposal is inadequate both on semantic grounds (it doesn't account for the meaning 'virgin; maiden, bride') as well as phonetic ones (it fails to account for the initial labial stop in Greek parthénos).

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    2. Adyghe, you've got the bad habit of giving incomplete references when quoting other people, so I had to do a little Internet research on my own and found a copy of Schrijver's 2011 article La langue hattique et sa pertinence possible pour les contacts linguistiques préhistoriques en Europe occidentale.

      Although this article is only a sketch of a deeper (and also coauthored) work, he implictly acknowledges the existence of a Vasco-Caucasian substrate in Europe. In fact, he links the Hattic word for 'leopard' to Caucasian 'wolf' as I did!

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    3. Hola, Octavia!

      I am sorry, I forgot to add the link. I Apologize.

      The Guus Kroonen (2012)...http://www.academia.edu/2604857/An_Akkadian_loanword_in_Pre-Greek_on_the_etymology_of_Greek_and_garlic

      He was the one who quoted Schrijver. When I posted...I meant to give you the above link.

      Also that was not my etymology, it was one of several questions I asked you in my previous post. It was supposed to be anyway.

      I will respond to the rest later.

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    4. Hmm... As I already had read Kroonen's article, his allusions to Schrijver sounded familiar to me. The former's view is rather simplistic, not only as regarding "the coming of the Indo-Europeans" but also his assumption Akkadian must be the necessarily the source of the Greek word. As we say in Spanish (lit. translated into English), he held on a red-hot nail.

      As regarding pre-nasalized stops, I think there're plenty of examples in Pre-Greek and elsewhere, although not at word-initial.

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  9. Hola, Octavia!

    I was thinking about the semantics like Christopher Ehret I guess...I was thinking "husband" <> "bride" <> "marriage", but yes that was a question to you.

    As far as Pre-Greek being related to Hattic, I am intrigued. The bulk of the non-IE Pre-Greek substrate is clearly of one language. I would love to see his theory worked out further.

    I think you come down unnecessarily hard on some linguists like many have done about my idol Christopher Ehret. They cannot be wrong about everything.

    Aspirins and Cancer...https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/06/106821/aspirin-may-fight-cancer-slowing-dna-damage

    Thank you for the links by the way...they really helped.

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    1. Adyghe, I'm not "unnecessarily hard" with anyone. As you might already know, the academic world suffers of endogamy. Here we've got a junior scholar (Kroonen) quoting his senior from the same school/university (Schrijver). Meawhile, the work of other equally respectable scholars such as Georgiev, Furnée or Holzer goes ignored for the most part.

      As I said before, "Pre-Greek" substrate can't be a single language and much less a non-IE. In fact, there're both IE and non-IE substrate loanwords in Greek. Also Schrijver's theory implictly acknowledges the existence of a Vasco-Caucasian phylum.

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  10. Hola, Octavia!

    I did not mean that as an insult to you. Please do not interpret it as that. Just that, sometimes, you can be harsh. I know your feelings about "authorities" and I accept that.

    Even Beekes acknowledges the uniformity of the substrate. Mr. Kroonen whose article I linked here says it and even Schrijver. You will say they are all of the same school.

    There are IE or Para-IE language loans in Ancient Greek, but there is a substrate that is not IE and uniform this is accepted by nearly all who have studied it. I know that is argument from authority, but it is legitimate and not inconsequential.

    If Schrijver is correct and the substrate is related to Hattic, the Macro-Caucasian theory is indeed applicable as Hattic may be part of Macro-Caucasian.

    Also, have you seen this? We are discussing it on the "Tartessian" talk page.
    http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp239_indo_european_languages.pdf

    Also, an off-topic question, but I have no other way to ask you a question. PIE: *T + T, *"TT" (two dental stops) has an "s" between them "TsT" giving "st" in Greek. If the ancient Greeks encountered a language and a word within that language where a set of geminated coronal stops "tt" was present and the Greeks interpreted the sound of this set of geminated coronal stops as dental stops (As far as I know, Ancient Greek only had dental stops), would the geminated coronal stops surface as "st" in the Greek transliteration of that word? Please say, yes, hahahaha.

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    1. Adyghe, you'd better go to a good university library (or alternatively invest some bucks on second-hand book shops) and study the works of neglected scholars such as the ones I mentioned earlier. This way, you'll get yourself knowledgeable in the subject instead of being *misleaded* by those Leiden specialists.

      There's simply no way the pre-Greek substrate could come from a single as well as non-IE language. As I've shown in the my last posts, there're Greek words with parallel in other IE languages but whose sound correspondences are different from the ones which are considered part of the inherited lexicon (although this could be discussed). Some of them, e.g. parthénos, have a instead of o, while others, e.g. ródon, have o instead. This implies there're at least two different pre-Greek IE substrate languages. There're in addition many other words without clear IE counterparts, not to mention loanwords/Wanderwörter from Semitic and Kartvelian. This way of argumenting is called reductio ab absurdum, but apparently the lazy Beekes et al. prefer to label everything as "Pre-Greek" and not study them further.

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  11. Hola Octavia!

    I have papers from many of the authors you mentioned.

    Okay, I will defer on the Pre-Greek substrate for now.

    Also, If you did not know the answer to the Greek question...you should have just said so.

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    1. Adyghe, you must understand I don't have to answer all of your of questions, especially when they're off-topic. I just prefer to be silent.

      BTW, I've just bought a copy of the 2nd edition of Koch's book on Tartessian. I'm afraid he won't win a Nobel prize (in case it were one, of course).

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  12. Hola, Octavia!

    I do understand, Octavia. I think I found the answer, but to have someone else's confirmation or refutation would be a very great help. I have no other way to ask you such questions other than on your blog. I cannot ask GG, he hates me for some reason that I don't understand. I asked in a linguistics forum, no one even bothered to try to answer. I just wanted an answer, not to change the topic at hand. Ugh, linguists are so temperamental.

    About Koch's work on Tartessian...he is in the same sinking boat as C. Rilly. I linked you a paper with Eric Hamp's classification of the branches of IE. I though you might have found it interesting, I guess not.

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    1. Adyghe, I think you've got trouble in relating to other people. Apparently, you're unable to perceive those non-verbals signals which people trasmit alongside spoken (or written) words in order to express his/her mood, emotional needs and so on, and so you're unable to "sync" (to use a technical word) with your interlocutor.

      How could you pretend I answered your question (something which would require devoting my own time to investigate about it, for I'm not a linguistics encyclopaedia) when in the very same post you did something I *explicitly* told you not to do, which is argumenting by authority, and then laugh about it? There's a golden rule in human relationships that says if you want people to do things for you, in the first place you've got to be nice.

      As for GG, he hates you because he regards me as an "enemy", and as you're my friend, he applies you the transitive property "the friends of my enemies are also my enemies".

      Anything to say about my new posts?

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  13. Hola, Octavia!

    I actually do have Asperger's and that has a lot to do with it. I have been trying to train myself to read read people more carefully. My Asperger's causes me to not be aware of the feelings of others and not really care (no offense, just part of the condition), I am working very hard on that. I sincerely apologize to you. That is why, sometimes, I can come off very formal and cold or seemingly quite mean, that is not intended in most cases I assure you.

    I have downloaded some books and papers like you said...let me read them and I will have something to say about the other posts.

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  14. This is a short list.

    http://books.google.com/books?id=AAdwhOr0WU0C&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=Furn%C3%A9e+%2B+Pre-Greek&source=bl&ots=wyvNxD2nKX&sig=Z7WZ4TPlgWeQb-ihjqRVDnntRGk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P_sDU6PPJYuPkAfm4YGQBg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Furn%C3%A9e%20%2B%20Pre-Greek&f=false

    https://www.academia.edu/2545249/Prof._Nana_Shengelaia_2013._On_Decipherment_of_the_Phaistos_Disk_and_Linear_A_Inscriptions_in_Colchian_Language_by_Dr._Gia_Kvashilava_in_English_

    https://www.academia.edu/3253366/Kvashilava_Gia_2011._Decipherment_of_the_Inscriptions_of_Linear_A_and_Related_Scripts_in_the_Proto-Kartvelian-Colchian_Language_in_Georgian_and_English_

    There are others I already have in my IE and Near Eastern databases.

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    Replies
    1. Ok, but don't forget to read Fournée's 1979 work as well as Kortland's review of Holzer.

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