Indo-Aegean kinship terms

Coincidental to the previously mentioned *pR-reduction in Etruscan, I've long noticed that if the Etruscan word for 'brother' which is generally accepted to be ruva (nb. inscription TLE 232) were instead *pruva, it could relate nicely to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) equivalent *bʰráh₂ter-. Of course it's ample speculation but I'd like to explore a possible set of Indo-Aegean kinship terms because, for anyone really knows, there may be some gold in that river of speculation.

Remember that I reason that the Indo-European language family is quite distinct from the Aegean language family but that nonetheless an ultimate pre-Neolithic relationship exists between them. I estimate that these two families would have diverged at most 9000 years ago. To reconstruct Proto-Indo-Aegean accurately, we need to first to reconstruct pre-stages of both Indo-European and Aegean first. This is an unending series of refinements, to be sure.


Reconstructing Pre-Indo-European kinship terms

Internal reconstruction shows that PIE's kinship terms are mostly unanalysable save for their oft-employed kinship suffix *-h₂ter-. I sense that these kinship terms are largely preserved from prehistoric times but that their shared characteristic suffix has been added quite recently in PIE's development by false segmentation and subsequent analogy from the only truly analyzable term in this set, *ph₂tér- 'father; provider' (< *peh₂- 'to feed, provide' plus actor suffix *-tér-). If *ph₂tér- were a like replacement for a reduplicated nursery term, *pápa-, pre-existing in the language then *máh₂ter- could easily have been coined by analogy to replace earlier *máma-. In turn, our analysis of PIE *bʰráh₂ter- and *dʰugh₂ter- suggest that the inherited stems from the earliest recoverable period are *bʰrah₂- and *dʰug-. We should consider that they once existed in isolation without the suffix.

Thus, I choose to reconstruct earlier Mid Indo-European nominative case forms *baráhʷa-sa and *déug̰a-sa since Syncope operates in the earliest part of the Late IE period, resulting in *brāu-z and *deug̰-z . Note that at this stage, the feminine is indistinguishable from the masculine since both are just subsets of a common animate gender. Then we can see how original *brau- plus kinship suffix *-xter- could be mashed together as *brá-xter-, shaped in both vocalism and accent position by analogy with 'mother', while *deug̰- adopts the zerograde and accent placement seen in 'father' to result in *dug̰-xtér- (and then due to regressive spread of uvularity from *x: *duɢ-xtér-).

Brother to mother as daughter to father. They say blood is thicker than water afterall, so why not also their associated labels?


Reconstructing Aegean kinship terms

On to the Aegean family, Etruscan ruva 'brother' and seχ 'daughter' might temptingly be derived from Proto-Cyprian *pruwa and *sikʰ with little hyperbole, in turn from Aegean *parówa 'brother' and *síka 'daughter'. The aforementioned Etrusco-Rhaetic *pR-reduction would take care of the missing *p in the first term and Cyprian Syncope follows my currently prescribed rules. The avoidance of word-final vowel loss in *parówa is understandable when compared with the expected Cyprian result, **pruw, which proves to be an awkward shape even by the phonotactic rules of later Etruscan (ie. word-final *-uv is entirely unevidenced in Etruscan as far as I know). I have yet to confirm these two kinship terms in Minoan but I would expect they'd be identical to these Aegean protowords unless I've erred in my extrapolation.

The Proto-Aegean words for 'father' and 'mother' are based on stronger evidence. Minoan a-ta-i is attested consistently on multiple libation tables and I do believe it's referring to their great Mother Goddess. The father term, *ápa, was likely in Minoan vocabulary as well, at least if we are to analyse Hittite god Appaliunas in Aegean terms: *ápa 'father' (Etruscan apa) and *launa 'leonine; of lion(s)' (Etruscan lev 'lion, lioness'). So I feel pretty secure in suggesting Aegean *ápa 'father' and *átai 'mother'. This results in Proto-Cyprian *apa 'father' (resisting syncope as a nursery term) and *ati which spawns identical Etruscan terms.


Are there Indo-Aegean kinship terms here? What can we conclude?

If we indulge further and compare our internally reconstructed terms in both language groups, the Mid IE kinship package (*pápa- 'father', *baráhʷa- 'brother' and *déug̰a- 'daughter') start to bear strong similarities to the Aegean set (*ápa 'father', *parówa 'brother' and *síka 'daughter'). We might assume that 'mother' has been replaced in Aegean and that Pre-Aegean *d, having first become *t by systematic devoicing of all inherited stops, lenites to *s before a front vowel.

For now, there's little to conclude with certainty other than that a relationship between Indo-European and Aegean kinship terms is within a realm of plausibility. However, this mental exercise opens our minds to new possibilities to investigate. Can we find other examples of Aegean palatalization in other shared words? Why would the word for 'mother' be replaced in Aegean and where does *atai come from? If correct, are there social or cultural implications to this kinship replacement? Or is there a simpler explanation for these similarities?

As always, more information is needed and these further questions will help confirm or reject what are for now admittedly shallow hunches. Open brainstorming like this however is still a constructive process, even when all we have is hunches... especially when all we have is hunches.


UPDATES
(04 Nov 2010) I decided to add something to "[...] while *deug̰- adopts the zerograde and accent placement seen in 'father' to result in *dug̰-xtér-." In light of commenter input, I felt the need to elaborate that *dug̰-xtér- becomes *duɢ-xtér- by assimilation of the velar stop by uvular laryngeal *x. (See comments below.) In traditional notation, by this assimilation, an unevidenced palatal *ǵ is therefore avoided.

A modification of Indo-Aegean, plus some new grammatical ideas on Minoan

I like to explore new ideas and test them as always. One of my ever-evolving ideas is on the idea that Indo-European and Aegean are related to a common Proto-Indo-Aegean ancestor datable to 7000 BCE. Or so I've been thinking up to now but...


I decided to explore a radical new extrapolation that's got a grip on my mind recently. What would be the consequences to my theories if Proto-Indo-Aegean were dated to as much as a thousand years later in 6000 BCE? The first interesting thing about this fresh perspective is that 6000 BCE is just about the time before Proto-Semitic began to affect Mid IE (MIE) according to my currently defined chronology. Another interesting thing is that if we take for granted a more Balkans-positioned MIE vis-à-vis the later Ukraine-positioned PIE proper, then it begs the question: Where would this theoretical Proto-Aegean of mine be sitting at this time? The most obvious answer would be that it would lie somewhere to the west and/or south of the Balkans in the general area that it historically emerged (see graphic above). Yet my theory also positions Old IE (OIE) back in the northerly territory occupied by later Late IE such that the geographical path from OIE to MIE to PIE looks like a meandering vee that points towards the Aegean Sea (see graphic below). This isn't problematic since nothing says that languages have to spread progressively in only one direction over the course of time. However, this pattern, if taken as correct for the sake of argument, teases in me a further idea that Aegean would have been brought to Greece and/or Turkey by that very southerly movement that brought Mid IE into the same trading zone. It's as if to say that what I call "Old IE" circa 7000 BCE is to be revised as a still-evolving Indo-Aegean and the beginning of the Mid IE period should be called "Old IE" at 6000 BCE. It's as if the temporary spread of an early stage of PIE to the Balkans and the spread of a related Aegean branch perfectly coincide to warrant further pondering.


Given the general conceptual arguments in favour of this deviation from standard, I went towards examining all the morphological what-ifs with even more profound consequences. The unfortunate problem with Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic (and probably too with Eteo-Cypriot and Eteo-Cretan) is that no personal endings appear to be attached to verbs in these languages despite the fact that many features like the 1ps and its oblique form (mi and mini), demonstratives and the declensional system (ie. the demonstrative accusative, s-genitive, animate and inanimate plural endings) all find direct connections to PIE. If Aegean is related to PIE then something has happened to these endings and they've disappeared at some unknown point in time motivated perhaps by reasons that are lost in the mists of time.

I refuse to believe the answers aren't recoverable and I don't particularly like mist. I've been poring over Minoan texts recently and while very hesitant at first, I've been rethinking on the published but nonetheless speculative view by some that -SI and -TI are the 3ps and 3pp endings respectively. This is an obviously PIE-inspired interpretation and given the lack of success in translating Minoan with PIE values, we have reason to be skeptical.

Yet...

It's interesting to observe that if we stick by my values of the Libation Formula such that *una (U-NA) means 'libation' (cf. Etruscan un 'libation') with plural *unar (U-NA-RU), and *kan- in KA-NA-SI/KA-NA-TI is cognate with Etruscan cen- 'to bring', then not only do we have a perfectly sensible phrase "a libation was given"/"libations were given" that coincides with the fact that it's written on several Cretan libation tables, but if we take the variation KA-NA-TI in PK Za 11 to be correctly read and written on purpose by scribes to indicate a different inflection, then what we have here is a language with personal endings that apparently have not been completely lost! It would seem that -TI might indeed correlate with plural subjects while -SI would correlate with singular ones.

If we additionally corroborate this with CR (?) Zf 1 (an inscribed gold pin) where we find a perfectly Etruscoid sentence with the ubiquitous SOV word order and with intriguingly Indo-European-like verbal endings, A-MA-WA-SI KA-NI-JA-MI (*Amawasi kaniami 'I (ie. the pin itself) was brought for Amawa'^[1]), then we have a very exciting verbal system that might help crack the language: 1ps *-mi (cf. PIE *-mi), 3ps *-si (cf. PIE *-ti), and 3pp *-ãti (cf. PIE *-énti).

The reasons for this strange hodgepodge grammar, neither fully Etruscan nor fully PIE by any sensible definition, would then relate back to the modified chronology that I suggest above. Speculation? You bet. But worth a look, I think.


NOTES
^[1] Ego-focussed dedicatory inscriptions such as these were plentiful in later Etruria and were also found in the Greek and Faliscan languages as well. Read for example Pallottino, The Etruscans (1955), p.253 (see link) who testifies to the Faliscan inscription eco quto ... enotenosio ... 'I (am) the pitcher of ... Enotenus ...'.

Prehistoric isoglosses in Proto-Steppe

As you can see, I've been pondering on Proto-Steppe today. Many people refer to this early hypothetical language set most sensibly around 9,000 BCE as Indo-Uralic and it's called this because it's the common ancestor of both Proto-Uralic (PU) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) afterall. However I still prefer my own term Proto-Steppe a) because it's more descriptive of the likely region where it was spoken and b) because PIE and PU aren't the only language groups implicated in the grouping. I made this simple isogloss map to show at a glance how I would explain Proto-Steppe's development into the later proto-languages known and studied and it relates, as always, to the unpixelated view of the Wave Model of language change. Thus far, I've been satisfied with a 4-vowel system of *a, *i, *u and *ə, forming a pleasant V-shape when you graph it out on paper using the dimensions of height and backness. V-shaped vowel systems are quite common around the world as far as vowel systems go.

Now to explain the three isoglosses I have on display above. I've been getting the impression for a while that Indo-Aegean (IAeg) and Altaic-Gilyak (AG) must have remained particularly close after diffusion of the Proto-Steppe community because I can think of at least two sure features that they share with each other that couldn't have been inherited from the parent language. One is the wholesale softening of word-final *-t to *-s as seen in the changes on animate plural marker *-it (n.b. further erosion of word-final *-s causes in turn Proto-Altaic *-r₂) and the other is an occasional correspondence of *a in IAeg and AG with Boreal *u in certain key words. I attribute this curious development to an original mid-central schwa *ə which could sit equally in accented positions as well as unaccented ones.

Upon revisiting these ideas, I've just realized an interesting minimal triplet in Proto-Steppe that serves as a simple but effective argument to justify the necessity of at least four reconstructed vowels at this stage:

• *ta 'from'
• *tu 'you (sg.)'
• *tə 'that (near you)'

The first becomes the source of the Indo-European ablative *-ód and Uralic partitive *-ta. The PIE form originated by agglutinating the postposition to the nominal stem in IAeg (thus *-ata), followed by Penultimate Accent Shift in Old IE which took the fixed accent off the initial (*-áta), then Syncope (*-ád̰) and finally Vowel Shift, yielding PIE *-ód with regular rules. The second and last examples show a vital difference between them since *tu becomes *tʷa (> PIE *twe, n.b. vocalism secondarily affected by *me < Proto-Steppe *mi 'I') while *tə becomes IAeg *ta without labialization of the preceding stop (>PIE *to-). This is explained if there was an unrounded vowel distinct from both low central unrounded *a and high back rounded *u, namely the mid central unrounded schwa which fits so nicely into an otherwise common 3-vowel system. Forms that suggest to some long-range linguists the apparent existence of a proximal demonstrative **ti on the Proto-Steppe level^[1] are, I figure, caused by later analogical derivation out of inherited *tə since this proximal demonstrative is only evidenced in Boreal and AG while IAeg seems to preserve only *ta 'that' (> PIE *to- and Aegean *ta) with a distinct proximal counterpart *ka (> PIE *ḱo- and Aegean *ka). I take the IAeg evidence to show an original word *ka 'this' in Proto-Steppe since, if this is not so, the source of the IAeg form would remain much more obscure than that of Boreal and AG's *ti vis-a-vis the securely inherited deictic *tə. The Altaic forms with word-initial sibilant in place of expected *t- are surely caused by pre-Altaic palatalization before high front vowels as has also apparently occurred in its second person pronominal forms.

All these speculative ideas while interesting and worthy of discussion are however, of course, subject to some range of interpretation. Debate remains open.


NOTES
^[1] See, for example, page 2 of Frederik Kortlandt's article Indo-Uralic and Altaic [pdf].

Back to business: emphatic particles and verbal extensions

Now, returning to the safer topic of comparative linguistics, I still am trying to account for how my new solution concerning the prehistoric genesis of Proto-Indo-European's uvular sounds helps (or maybe hinders?) my attempts at trying to figure out the origins of the emphatic particle *[ǵ/g](ʰ)[e/o] which is thus far so hideously reconstructed by current Indo-Europeanists.

However, if we take the velar contained in the nominative first person singular pronoun, which appears to contain the fossilized remnants of the earliest form of the emphatic particle when the pronoun was first coined in the Late Period (ie. *h₁eǵoh₂, literally "(as for) my being here" from *h₁e "here" + *ǵe [emphatic] + *-oh₂ [old 1ps subjunctive]; parallel in development to the 1ps pronouns of Inuktitut uva-ŋa, Aleut ti-ŋ, and Proto-Semitic *an-āku), we are pointed to *ǵe as the most appropriate reconstruction. Any other forms of this particle would then have developed later after presumably being influenced by or merging with other existing words or particles with similar phonetics and meaning. In the earlier Mid IE (MIE) stage, we could then posit an emphatic particle *g̰a derived from Indo-Aegean *k’ə. From there, if comparable to Uralic emphatic *-ka attached to some pronominal stems^[1], we might finally reconstruct a Proto-Steppe emphatic particle *k’ə to account for both the Indo-European and Uralic forms. Can you all swallow that? Granted, this all remains tentative for now, but it's worth a shot.

Considering the differing velar stop in the emphatic particle, the verbal extension with uvular stop, seen in PIE verbs like *yeu-g- "to join" whose *g-less counterpart has identical semantics, must not be related afterall as I had previously assumed. Instead I'd like to suggest that it derives from a Mid IE aspectual marker *-ɢ̰a-, which originally might have conveyed a perfective sense. This implies earlier Indo-Aegean *-k’a- (thus Etruscan -ac- [perfective] as in tur-ac-e "was given") and relatable then to the Uralic perfective in *-ka. In this case, a Proto-Steppe perfective suffix *-k’a would be in order to explain the later forms.

That so far is my solution concerning that. Let's see if this idea sticks.


NOTES
^[1] Fortescue, Language Relations Across Bering Strait (1998), p.113 (see link) confirms Uralic emphatic *-ka.

Daydreaming about unattested Etruscan pronouns

Considering the pronominal system that I've ironed out lately for the Old IE stage, I figure that the previous Indo-Aegean stage shouldn't have been much different. So in that light, it's fun to ponder a little on all the Etruscan pronouns yet to be uncovered in future artefacts and what we might expect to find by working backwards from Indo-European. If you don't already know, the only pronouns that are known for certain in Etruscan are the 1st person singular, the 3rd person singular animate and the 3rd person singular inanimate pronouns.

Now, perhaps I should reiterate my position on Etruscan's relationship to Indo-European by stating that I emphatically *do not* believe that Etruscan or any of its tongues that I believe are part of a Proto-Aegean language family (Lemnian, Rhaetic, Eteo-Cypriot, Eteo-Cretan, and Minoan) are classifiable as Indo-European languages whatsoever. However, I do believe that there is an ultimate relationship between Proto-Aegean and Proto-Indo-European and that they had diverged from each other by around 7000 BCE. I also think that the relationship between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Aegean is much closer than the relationship between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic. If I'm correct, it's a productive topic for budding Nostraticists to delve into further.

So for idle kicks, here's my latest superficial attempt at fleshing out the Etruscan pronominal system:

	singular	plural
1st person	mi (nom.) mini (obl.)	*vi (nom.) *mer (obl.)
2nd person	*zu (nom.) *zini (obl.)	*ti (nom./obl)
3rd person animate	an	in
3rd person inanimate	in	in

Update of my "Diachrony of Pre-IE" document

Here is the updated document as promised for today. I've added a lot of things to it and it's already turning into a monster of a pdf. I've filled out the Indo-Aegean section a bit more and rearranged the order of a few things after pondering a bit more on that early stage. After writing the last post on gemination, I'm satisfied with my new rule that combines vocalic lengthening with this consonantal lengthening which appears to be triggered by the same (i.e. the reduction of former schwa to supershort schwa). Here's the pdf hosted on esnips.com:

DiachronyOfPreIE_2008Jul15

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The mess with early gemination that I've been previously speaking about has oddly enough led me down a new quest: Proto-Kartvelian (PK) loans. I previously used *ḱerd- "heart" as one of my MIE examples undergoing gemination and vowel lengthening. Yet it turns out that while it is often associated with PK *m̥-k’erd- "chest", I've never yet come across an accurate explanation as to how Proto-Indo-European (PIE) either acquired these loans or how they were given to Proto-Kartvelian. Where and when?? Then when I survey the PIE words that are purportedly shared with Proto-Kartvelian, I notice that they appear to be loaned most recently within the Late IE period. If that's true, I can't in good conscience ever use this item again when discussing Mid IE. I might speak more on this interesting issue later.

Updating my Pre-IE pdf (already!)

Considering that I made my aforementioned pdf of Pre-IE changes on the fly, it's expected that I have much work to do before I can be reasonably satisfied that all the errors are ironed out and that it properly reflects my current views. Odd as it may seem, all these ideas and theories were off the top of my head and boy oh boy, did I ever feel a great weight lifted off my half-shattered brain as I poured them into that file!

Here is the second version of my file. I know it's rather soon but it's necessary to fix some errors Besides, I get off on being obsessive-compulsive, LOL!

DiachronyOfPreIE_2008Jul02.pdf

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Now to explain the changes of my second draft of my Pre-IE theory. I recently remembered that the last time I had left the topic of Indo-Aegean Sibilantization, I had already renamed it Word-Final Lenition because word-final *-k may also have been reduced to a glottal stop at around the same time. Miguel Vidal had theorized something similar and I've come to grow fond of this spin on his ideas^[1].

I then rearranged the order of some changes in the Indo-Aegean section and added a very important sound change: Centralization. Centralization is the idea that an originally 3-dimensional vowel system was "centralized" and reduced to a 2-dimensional system. This new system that had developed would have had only a contrast in height between *a and *ə. This is also the point at which labialized stops first surface in the language. I suspect that this was an innovation spurred on by contact with an ancestral form of Proto-Abkhaz-Adyghe (aka Northwest Caucasian). This hypothesis is largely based on Allan Bomhard's theories on Nostratic and Pre-IE^[2] with a few notable twists and extra details which I've mentioned in the newest version of the pdf.

For Phoenix, I've added a few PIE examples (*wástu and *márḱos) to add support to the Labial Dissimilation Exception of Vowel Shift at the end of Late IE. Time will tell whether there are good objections against my hypothesis though.

I also corrected my error concerning "Root Aorists" in the Post-IE section since, based on the example I provided, obviously I meant to say "Thematic Aorist". Mea culpa. Thank you, Rob, for spotting that and asking questions. Verb forms like *likʷét "she left" and *widét "she knew" are now considered by Indo-Europeanists as a later innovation that can't be reconstructed for the Proto-IE stage.

NOTES
^[1] Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, "Re: [tied] Dissimilation of gW/kWVw to gVw/kVw", Cybalist (Yahoogroups) (Apr 19 2005) (see link). Here, he proposed that *-ku > *-kʷ > PIE *-h₃ while final *-ki > *-h₁. I feel that this is unnecessarily complex but that the idea of the dual ending evolving as *-ak > *-aʔ > PIE *-(i)h₁/*-e (via Laryngeal Vocalization) entoxicates me since it could potentially explain the relationship between PIE's dual on the one hand and Uralic *-k(V) & EA *-k on the other. Lenition already explains the connection between PIE *-es and Uralic plural marker in *-t.
^[2] Bomhard, Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996).

Diachrony of PIE

DiachronyOfPreIE.pdf

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The above link takes you to my new pdf detailing the changes that I've concluded thus far have taken place from as early as Proto-Indo-Aegean (c.9000 BCE) to Proto-Indo-European proper (c.4000 BCE), a span of approximately five thousand years. This is not a final product and I will be continuing to adapt and expand this pdf. The date of revision will be shown at the top of the file whenever I do update, however I will warn people when I do. (So don't worry, people! Glen will take care of everything! LOL!)

Hopefully now with this new file, I'll be understood a little better and people will be better able to follow along with my rants on Pre-IE and challenge any stubborn assumptions I have.

The net doesn't have to be an intellectual wasteland for Etruscan studies

All this networking and groupThink undermines clarity and logic. So far, the majority of discussion online is hijacked by perversely dim-witted discussions. On the topic of Etruscan, Google Groups gives us a typically worthless result. The highest-ranking link changes from day to day but a week back, the first thing that popped up in the search list was entitled Etymology of these Serbian words, followed by Basque and Etruscan, and in third place, Answer From Alan Wilson Reference Alphabet & Etruscan Decipherments. If I don't feel impelled to follow the "crowd", it's because the "crowd" is certifiably insane. In fact, one could argue that it's this follow-the-leader mentality that helps maintain perpetual global war. Extremism of all sorts is now in and subtlety of thought is going the way of the dodo bird as we network ourselves to extinction by denying ourselves the empowerment of individual reason.

Case in point, one of the few "in-depth" (I use the term loosely) conversations on the Etruscan language online has been in forums like Conlang hosted by Brown University. Ray Brown and Jörg Rhiemeier commented about Etruscan issues in 2005 while tripping over themselves with schadenfreude glee to "shame" me for questioning the status quo interpretation of Etruscan numerals (see link) using emotional rhetoric instead of hard facts. Here's an excerpt of the silliness I'm talking about:

Jörg Rhiemeier:
Yes. Actually, Glen Gordon gives a handful of further "cognate sets", but those don't look much better and many of them are based on controversial interpretations of Etruscan words.

Ray Brown:
Yes, it is surprising what one can do with controversial interpretations of Etruscan words - so much easier to prove connexions with them than with those troublesome certainties! I've been pestered for the last last two or three months by some guy who is convinced that Etruscan = Pelasgian = Albania {groan}

What's happening here is that these angry, narrow-minded people are confusing a bunch of very different topics together without having the mature subtlety of thought to properly address them in seriousness. Insecure pomp has replaced intellect. Here are the main topics that they've managed to misassociate together:

• 1) The purported "certainty" of Etruscan word huth = 'six'.
• 2) The possible relationship between Proto-Aegean (i.e. ancestor of Etruscan, Lemnian, etc.) and Proto-Indo-European.
• 3) Etruscan-Albanian crackpot theories

So let's try reasoning through this instead of bragging childishly about who should be placed on some arbitrary academic blacklist and who shouldn't.

1) The purported "certainty" of Etruscan word huth = 'six'

A good teacher will tell his students to question all that they read and skepticism must be tempered at all times by Logic, not through one's feelings, gut instinct, hatred, or preconceptions. There must also be some limit to skepticism to ever be able to absorb input properly. The naive in contrast will assume that whatever is considered status quo by a majority is automatically "certain" (a complete lack of skepticism altogether). This is the classic logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum. While the status quo certainly does appear to apply the value of 'six' rather than 'four' to huth, we cannot dismiss the value of critics because the only piece of "evidence" to give us any sense of "certainty" at all of this value are the Tuscania dice whose flaws in argumentation I've already written about. Since Etruscanist personalities such as Larissa Bonfante and Massimo Pallottino have written about these dice so overassertively while irresponsibly hiding important details, the layman is given the false impression that everything here has been solved and that there is no room for debate.

The fact remains that *not* all dice (whether Etruscan dice or classical dice in general) had opposing faces that added to seven. A significant number of dice had different configurations and this remains an inconvenient fact to this day. This very fact naturally undermines the supposed certainty of the "evidence" (or rather mere interpretation) of the Tuscania dice. The good Dr. Brinton way back in 1889 even went to the trouble of calculating the uncertainty that this represents and came to a significant result of more than 10%^[1]! This shows us that the only competent way of convincingly translating these numerals is not through mere interpretations of dice but through the careful study of all contexts in which these numerals are found in inscriptions. Sadly, Ray and Jörg didn't get that memo and mistake popularity for certainty.


2) The possible relationship between Proto-Aegean (i.e. ancestor of Etruscan, Lemnian, etc.) and Proto-Indo-European

While it's pretty certain that Etruscan, Lemnian and other related languages cannot be classified as Indo-European languages because of too many dissimilarities, it's not at all certain that a relationship can't exist further back in prehistory between the two groups. Certain similarities of morphemes with secure values in Etruscan such as mi 'I' and mini 'me' (PIE *me 'me' and *mene 'of me, mine'); the genitive -(a)s (PIE *-ós); the demonstratives ca 'this' and ta 'that' with respective accusative forms can and tan (PIE *ḱo- 'this' and *to- 'that' plus the accusative ending *-m); and postclitic -θi 'in' (PIE *-dʰi 'in') would make any rational person wonder. The similarities aren't just idle look-alikes of general vocabulary but instead seem to suggest that an entire grammatical system has been inherited from a common ancestor.

Naturally, the unresolved topic of Indo-European & Aegean relationship has no bearing on the proper translation of Etruscan itself. Long-range linguistics must strictly be kept out of any efforts in Etruscan translation. However, it's important to debate on these issues and not allow simplistic rhetoricians to stifle intelligent communication where no facts as yet make anything certain about these more long-range relationships.


3) Etruscan-Albanian crackpot theories

First off, the fact that I'm being associated with a silly position I've never had in my life is one of the lowest forms of debate known as the strawman fallacy. Naturally, Etruscan is not related to Albanian for so many historical reasons that it goes well beyond the limits of what I consider to be sensible debate. The fact that Ray feels the need to compare me to people with radically different views and methodologies is easier for him than understanding what I actually said which requires extra mental effort.

The world to me seems, as I say, split between extremes of thinking more and more each day. One split in popular cognition that I've noticed involves the attraction towards either dogmatic relativism (i.e. that anything can be right) or dogmatic skepticism (i.e. that everything must be wrong). Both deny the value of Logic in their own way, but the practitioner of the former lacks a sense of self (i.e. a connection with their internal world) and the practitioner of the latter lacks a sense of social belonging (i.e. the connection with the external world).

So among those that are infected by these two cognitive diseases, there may be little hope to bring them back to healthy mental balance. All that I can say to appeal to people's reason or what's left of it on the internet is that a "crackpot" if anything might be defined as an individual who insists on only one idea while constantly ignoring the facts that conclusively disprove it. Dogmatic skeptics however have great difficulty in sifting between those with fact-based, evolving theories and those with stubborn, rigid convictions who never address facts. Dogmatic skeptics are too busy finding fault in everything and everyone to pay attention to the fact that a theory is not the same thing as a conviction and that the only way to finally recognize the difference in others around them requires letting go of their anger towards everyone else's imperfections, whether real or imagined, and allowing themselves to see their own errors in judgment as well.


NOTES
^[1] Brinton, The Ethnologic Affinities of the Ancient Etruscans (Read before the American Philosophical Society, Oct. 18, 1889.) (see link). While I admit, Brinton's views of the Etruscan language are very misguided today, the fact that classical dice have different arrangements has never gone away and his criticisms on this issue remain valid.