ong & Alexand aig. Stefan G fovin: Review of Joseph H, Greenberg (2002) and of language contact. The contributors to this volume all demonstrate this combination of skill, and each contribution can be taken in its own right as a serious and stinmulating exercise in how to do historical detective work based on linguistic evidence. Reviewer's address Geoltrey LJ Haig Seminar lr Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft (SAVS) Universitit Kiel Olshausenste. 40 KIEL 2098 Germany Esra: baig@emai.uni-kie. de Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasatic language fam ily: Volume 2: Lexicon. By Joseph H. Greenberg. Stanford, Californi Stanford University Press, 2002. Pp. 216 Reviewed by Stefan Georg & Alexander Vovin (Bonn / University of Hawai'i) ‘Two years after the publication of the first volume (Greenberg 2000) of Joseph. H. Greenberg's (hereafter G) assessment of his “Eurasiatic” theory (which claims the ultimate genetic relationship of Indo-European, Uralic, “Altaic’, Korean, Japanese, Ainu, Nivkh/Gilyak, Chukchi-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo- Aleut), the second and last installment of this work appeared, posthumously. While Volume I dealt with grammar, ie. morphological evidence for the ex- istence of this putative phylum, Volume II, which is considerably smaller, presents lexical comparisons meant to strengthen G's point further. We have dealt with the first volume in Georg & Vovin 2003, and there we were unable to avoid a rather negative conclusion on both the likelihood of Eurasiatic as a valid language family and on the particular arguments advanced by G. At the same time we stressed that we do not think that every single comparative ob- servation found in this book is necessarily invalid and that, on the contrary, we do think that the investigation of “deeper” genetic relationships among the language families of Eurasia may indeed be a worthwhile undertaking, whichjus /Besprechungen 21 could potentially lead to solid and, thus, exciting results, ifnot for “Eurasiatic” (or “Nostratic”) as a whole, but certainly for some subsets ofthis grouping (as, e.g, for Uralic-cum-Eskimo-Aleut (Seefloth 2001) and the possible addition of Indo-European to such a phylum). However, we had to stress that, in order to convince the linguistic community at large, any such endeavor will have to adhere to rather strict principles and that consequently a potentially successful demonstration of this or a similar hypothesis will rather have to concentrate ‘on few, but exceptionally carefully examined comparisons, rather than on a long list of look-alike elements (muitum, nom multa). Here, we found G's ap- proach mostly wanting, both in terms of methodology and of his handling of the data. Many of the points made in our review article could easily be repeated for the second volume. Sutfice it to say that, again, G's approach to the com- parison of languages is antsToRICAL (ie., sacrificing the known and knowable internal history of elements in favor of external similarities) and regards ~ ex plicitly ~ the observation of regular phonological correspondences as of minor importance, attitudes we are unable to subscribe to. Given the widely shared assumption that systematic correspondences found in the morphological sys- tems of languages usually count much more than lexical similarities when it comes to demonstrating their relatedness, it may not be surprising that the present second volume appears to us as an anticlimax to the first one. Within the limited space of a short review it will be of course impossible to demonstrate the shortcomings of the lexical comparisons found in detail, so we will have to confine ourselves to a few points here. And, as with G's morpho- logical comparisons, we do not think that aLL of them are necessarily wrong: on the contrary, some etymological sets may indeed contain some items which are truly shared by at least a subset of the “Eurasiatic” set of languages: some of them may be the result of old and as yet undetected areal contacts, and, yes, some may even be the remnants of lost protolanguages. G states explicitly that many of his etymologies are not new, and that he relies on macrocomparative work done before him (especially on the works of V. Illch-Svitych and Bomhard & Kerns); in this book, the focus is on “lan- guages and families that have generally been excluded from the Nostratic fam- ily, namely, Etruscan, Ainu, Gilyak, Chukotian, and Eskimo-Aleut” (8), Etr- tuscan, however, surfaces only in two! (out of 437) etymological sets, BEFORE 1. And as we may note in passing, fora book with this ttl, the number of etymological sets involving Indo-European strikes us as ow at 230 out of 437,16. Stefan Georg & Alexander Vovin: Review of Joseph H. Greenberg (2002 **hant (#35) and ive **to (#174). The first of these sets (Indo-European cent) gives Etruscan handin ‘before’ This, however should rather be given ‘as ‘from before, since it contains the marker of the ablative, -@in, which of course would have to be removed before any external comparison. The sec- ond Etruscan word tur is indeed a verb meaning ‘to give, but the compari- son with words meaning ‘gift’ like Greek dg#fov or Old Slavic dara is ham- pered by the fact that the -r- here is not some obscure “root determinative’ but rather a fairly transparent heteroclitic nown-forming derivative (*-t/n-y (Old Slavic dard, Latin donum) from the verb *deHs, whereas in Etruscan there {sno reason to separate -1- from the root. ‘As one example for the methods employed we will have a closer look at ‘one etymological set, which is presented as especially important not only for Euarasiatic itself, butalso for putative external connections of this macrophylum with another one, namely G’s “Amerind” (Greenberg 1987). On p. 2 we learn that “[t]he Eurasiatic family is most closely related to the Amerind family’, and «(t)his is most strikingly shown by the root ma-n/ma-K/ma-r ‘hand, give, mea- sure’ (..). A very similar root is characteristic of Amerind languages, but is not found elsewhere to the best of my knowledge”. We will not dwell on the mer- its of the “Amerind” comparison here (which involves, ia., Algonquian *mi:- Shand’, Uto-Aztecan *ma: ‘hand? Quechuan *maki ‘hand’, and various words for ‘give’ etc, see the table on p. 3), but we should check whether the Eurasiatic etymology (#194) holds water. All “Enrasiatic” language families are present in this comparison except Etruscan and Eskimo-Aleut,and we will examine them one by one: Proro-INpo-EuROPEAN *ms-r, "mo-nos, *me-, *me-te- ‘to measure, *med ‘measure’, *mHr-/n-(th)- ‘hand’, This is a medley of very hetero- geneous [-E roots and words which are united by little more than the fact that they show an initial labial nasal. We have to distinguish, at least, L-E *med- (‘measure, accounting for forms like Gothie mit-an), *meHy ‘measure’ and the noun *meHstis, mHotéis, which seems to be derived from this root, but the laryngeal seems to pose a problem; this root ac counts for, ia. Albanian mat, Sanskrit mati- etc.) and *meHr-, mHnés, cone of the I-E words for ‘hand’ (cf. Greek apn, Latin manus, Albanian marr ‘I take’ ete.). G's remark “[t]hat the proto-Indo-European form is not an r/n-stem is shown by both internal and external evidence” is not clear to us, but maybe it is inevitable when distinct roots are forcibly united under the assumption that the meanings ‘measure’'give’/hand”Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen 217 are the “same” (the heteroclitic nature of *meHr- is, of course, beyond reasonable doubt). ‘The “external” evidence for the Eurasiatic pedigree of this semantically and formally vague pre-proto-root begins with: Unatic *miye- ‘give, sll (cf. Finnish myy- sell, Nenets mi ‘id?), and *mer3- ‘measure’ Both roots are taken from Rédei (1988.1:273, 275), G's main source for Urali, but the ever-cautious Réel does not fail to note serious difficulties with the second etymon (formal problems in Permic and the strong possibility that Hungarian mér- “to measure’ may just be a loan from Slavic, which, ifboth true, would cancel this Finno-Ugric ~ not Uralic - root completely). What we do not find in Rédei’s etymology is Nenets mana ‘finger’, which may have come in “handy” for G to add some more of the putative pre-proto-semantics to this root, There is no such word in Nenets to the best of our knowledge, but maybe G is think ing of mana ‘paw (of a bear or a wolf), fin (of seal); which does not look tremendously close to the Nenets verb for ‘give sell, and is in all probabil- ity a loan from Tungusic (sb). Yoxaciin min. take’ (Kolyma) does exist, but one should add the much better attested Tundra form men’ Giving’ and ‘taking’ are certainly re- {ated concepts, and in some languages they are etymologically connected as well, but we feel less convinced that this semantic latitude should be allowed in an attempt to convince skeptics of the existence of a genetic ‘grouping? Pxoro-Atratc *matie ‘paw, thigh’ and *miala ‘measure’ (cf. Starostin et al, 2003 *mitia and *miaia). The first of these etyma combines the Tun- gusic source for Nenets mana discussed above (Ewenki mana, etc.) and a very hypothetical Turkic *bA8, reconstructed on the basis of severely lo- calized late forms like Balkan-Turkish maja ‘palm, Uzbek pajpog ‘camel’ foot’ and the like. The second word is backed up by Manchu miyalin “a measure of capacity’ (and not one of length, as the putative connection with ‘hand, ‘span’ and the like would suggest). 2. Once reasonable doubl is removed, such comparisons may of course renter the picture this is the important difference between linguae quarunn affnitas est demonstata, and Finguae quarum affitas est demonstraela, which is violated in almost every macrocom pparativist work we are lamiliar withGeorg & Alexander Vovin: Review of Joseph H. Greenberg Konean: while Korean mal (MK mail) ‘measure for liquids and grains, 18,039 litres indeed exists, alleged Korean mat ‘amount, measur is alex ical ghost from Ramstedt (1949:140): there is only the MK bound noun imi (modern Korean mankhum) meaning to the extent of, worth of It remains unclear how this word would be connected with ‘hand’ Javanese: OJ masu ‘a measure, container for measuring grain’ is act ally originally used to refer to a square-shaped container used to measure irain, and not for the measure itself. Needless to say, square containers do not square well with ‘hand’ either. Within Japonic masw is attested ‘only in Central Japanese, and not in other branches. This fact strongly suggests that it isa loanword from the above-mentioned Korean word ‘The same can be said about the isolated Manchu word miyalin ‘measure above: since it is not present in other Tungusic languages, it may well be a loanword from Korean. Thus, even the alleged proto-“Altaic” provenance of this word (Starostin et al.2003:922) is questionable. [Anwu amoini ‘forearm is in all probability also a ghost word, because it is only attested in one source (Batchelor 1938:31), a dictionary that is plagued by non-existent words and forms. Ainu amunninfamunin ‘id? certainly does exist, but the modern -nn- cluster points to the recon- struction of prote-Ainu “amurnin ‘[forelarm (Vovin 1993:79). The word has a restricted distribution in Ainu, being limited only to the area of Southern Hokkaid6. Since reflexes of PA *tap ‘arm’ are much more ‘widespread in various and diverse Ainu dialects, it is highly likely that Ainu *amurnin represents a local Southern Hokaids innovation with no Eurasiatic provenance. In addition, this word looks like a compound in Anu (but its exact morphological composition is unclear). Inthe set Anu ‘moka ~ omeka ‘gift’ also cited by G, the second form does not exist: the only two forms attested are imeka in Yakumo and inmoka in other Ainu dialects, This word frequently refers not just to any gift, but rather to a gift of food leftovers that is given to a guest when he returns home. Any connection with ‘hand’ willbe very vague at best. Gunvax is represented by the verb imy- ‘give’ (where G is right that the initial i- may be a petrified object marker) and nouns like tun'-min’ ‘in ger’ (Which is attested in early sources only, cf. Grube 1892 furt-min and Pisudski 1992 — whose data were collected before WW1-twtimun). How- unlike the majority of other macrocomparativists, separates Korean and Japanese from Altaic proper, but keeps botl in EurasiaReviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen ‘ever, as all other sources on Gilyak make clear, tun’ alone is the word for “finger” and Sakhalin Gilyak mel does not mean ‘upper arm, but rather “shoulder blade. CrtuxoTian, finally, is represented by a root which is best given as “*manyat- ‘hand; which, however, resembles the putative pre-proto-form only in its first part. Having mentioned these details, problems and shortcomings, we feel that no point has been made regarding the historical reality of this ‘hand ete? etymon in a Eurasiatic protolanguage. However, it cannot be ruled out that some items from this plethora of vaguely similar words may indeed be ultimately related, and not merely fortuitous resemblances. But the theory as advanced and de- fended by G offers no possiblity to test it against any methodologically solid yardstick, Its weakest point is, obviously, semantics. While it is of course pos- sible that, in a given language, words for ‘hand” may be etymologically related to words for ‘give, ‘measure, ‘sell; ‘paw, ‘foot, ‘sole’ and so on, it can of course not be accepted that these meanings be treated as “the same” for the purposes of language comparison. G chose a set of three basic meanings for this “ety- mon’, but we could easily add to this list meanings such as ‘elbow, fingernail, knee, grasp, seize, let go, punch, stroke, scales, heavy’ and so on ad infinitum and inspect the welter of “Eurasiatic” languages in order to find (if only in the most remote sources and most severely localized dialects) words with the shape *mV-n, -k,-r conveying any one of these meanings. Who will doubt that we will ind “evidence” in abundance? We do not feel the need to scrutinize the “Amerindian” set given by G, since we have no doubts that the data given there are of the same quality. But, as in Georg & Vovin 2003, where we compiled a mock list of “Penutian cognates” to many of G's morphological comparanda to show that his method is unable to provide us with speciric and INDIVIDUAL-DEFINING evidence, We tried to take up the implicit challenge of G's dictum that this “root” does not exist else- where, Well, if we allow a certain laxness in outer shape and concentrate on the anatomical part of the meaning we think that the (prefixed) root *g-wan “hand, wrist’ comes close enough. This word is found in a significant subset of non-contiguous Sino-Tibetan languages (Old Chinese, Kuki-Naga, Himalay ishs Matisoff 1985:434). And one could possibly also mention Proto-Tai *mwi A2 ‘hand’ (Li 1977:75, 265) or even better Proto-Kadai *mja A ‘hand’ (Ostapi- rat 2000221). We will not, however, claim on this evidence that Sino-Tibetan20. Stefan Georg & Alexander Vovin: Review of Joseph H. Greenberg (2002) (or, for that matter, “Sino-Caucasian” or even “Dene-Caucasian”) and Kadai are “most closely related” to “Eurasiatic” and “Amerind”. Progress is possible in comparative linguistics and language classification, but here, as elsewhere, no shortcuts are available, only those which eventually lead into a cul-de-sac. References Batchelor, John. 1938, An Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary. Taye: hvanami Shoten, (Georg, Stefan & Alexander Vovin. 2003, “From Mass Comparison to Mess Comparison Diachronica 20:2.331-362 Greenberg, Joseph H. 1987, Language in the Americas, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000. bndo-Europeas and its Closest Relatives: The Furasiaic language family: Volume 1: Grammar. Stanford Stanford University Pres. Grube, Wihelm. 1892. Dr, Leop. x Schrencks Reisen und Forschungen int Amurlande. ‘Anang 2um I, Bande. Este Lieferung: Linguistsche Ergebnisse, 1: Gilikisches Worter- verzrichniss nets gram, Benwerkurigen. St Petersbueg. Li, Fang-Kuci, 1977, A Handbook of Comparative Tai. Honolulu: The University Press of Havel Matisott James A. 1985, "Out on a Limb: Arm, hand, and wing in Sino~Tibetan’ ‘of the Sino-Tibetas Area: The state ofthe art (= Pacific Lin by Graham Thurgood, James A. Matisott & David Bradley, 421-450, Canberra: The ‘Australian National University. ‘Ostapirat, Weera. 2000, "Proto-Krs' Linguistics ofthe Tibeto-Burman Avea 231.221 Disudski, Bronista, 1992. Sakhalin Nivhgu Glossary, prepared for print and edited by Aleksandr B. Ostrovskiy & Allred E. Majewicz. Steszew: International Institute of Ethnolinguistic and Oriental Stu Redei, Kitoly. 1988, Uralisces Etymologisces Worterbuch. Baral 1. Uralsce wnd fnnisch ugrische Schicht. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, loth, Uwe 2001. "Die Entstchung polypersonaler Paradigmen im Uralo-Sibirischen’ Zentnalasiatsche Studien 0163-191 wrostn, Sergei, Anna Dybo & Oleg Mudrak, 2003. Eiymolegical Dictionary ofthe Abie Languages. Leiden: Brill Vowin, Alexander. 1993. A Reconstruction of Provo-Ainu, Leiden E.}. Bri Reviewers’ addresses Stelan Georg Heerstrase 7 Bow D-53111 Germany E-mail: Georg-Bonnet-onlinede