Talk:Europic

Europic and Afrasian

If the speakers of Europic were Neolithic farmers who came to Europe from the Near East, we should expect a close relationship between Europic and Afrasian (aka Afro-Asiatic), as implictly suggested by Vennemann, who proposed an "Atlantidic" (aka "Semitidic") substrate to explain some Germanic words of non-IE origin.

There's also the fact most Afrasian languages have a 3-vowel system like the one proposed for Europic, as the result of a collapse like the one proposed by Orel and Stolbova (1995), in which vowels e, o developed into i, u or the corresponding glides j, w. Then I assume the GVC was like this and not the way described by Jörg.

I agree with Jörg in the development from Europic to PIE, except in that Europic *a didn't developed into IE Ablaut vowel *e ~ *o in OEH and Indo-Iranian. So there's actually no need for a second vowel collapse. Also the reason why i, u didn't appear before resonants (in that case, the resonant shifted to the syllable onset) is that they were actually semivowels, so there's also no need for the RCL. Talskubilos 05:48, 17 July 2012 (PDT)

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There are also (rare) cases of alternation of type *e ~ *i and *o ~ *u. I would imagine the Pre-PIE system of a type:

High	i	ə ~ 0	u
Low	e	a	o

With a height opposition and a schwa being allophone of the zero grade. Then they merge: [e] with [ə] to *e and [a] with [o] to *o. How much probable would that be? MilyAMD 13:03, 16 July 2012 (PDT)

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@Talskubilos:

I cannot say you are wrong, but I don't consider Afroasiatic a likely candidate for the next closest kin of Europic.

@MilyAMD:

No. You'd get */i/ ~ */e/ and */u/ ~ */o/ "ablaut" alternations that aren't observed in PIE, at least not in the same function as the familiar */e/ ~ */o/ ablaut. These alternations are a myth spread by the late Joseph Greenberg, nothing else. He tried to connect IE ablaut to vowel harmony systems found in languages of eastern Siberia, but this is impossible, especially considering that IE ablaut is not a vowel harmony system of any kind (you'd expect all morphemes to be in the same grade if it was, which is not the case).

--WeepingElf 13:22, 16 July 2012 (PDT)

@WeepingElf:

I think you've got some pre-conceived ideas about the subject. Perhaps if you knew more about Afrasian, you'd change your opinion. Talskubilos 15:16, 16 July 2012 (PDT)

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@Talskubilos:

That's your opinion. --WeepingElf 06:10, 17 July 2012 (PDT)

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Which is based on actual data. You also might notice I changed somewhat my views since yesterday. Talskubilos 08:02, 17 July 2012 (PDT)

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So is mine. The difference is that yours is based exclusively on lexicon, which admits the hazard of being misled by loanword layers, while mine is based on morphology, especially matches between entire morphological paradigms, where loaning is unlikely. But it is just opinion vs. opinion, I have to admit. --WeepingElf 08:45, 17 July 2012 (PDT)