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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Word Count in Proto-Afroasiatic, was Sanskrit: etc.
In-Reply-To: seagoat@primenet.com's message of 6 Dec 1996 01:06:06 -0700
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Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 22:38:05 GMT
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In article <seagoat.729.037CBA5E@primenet.com> seagoat@primenet.com
(John A. Halloran) writes:

>Here is what Ehret says, "Reconstructed Afroasiatic roots normally appear in
>either of two forms in the tabulations of this chapter: (a) in the case of
>verb stems, as *-CVC(C)-, *-VC-, or *-CV-, with the initial and terminal
>hyphens indicating the points of attachment of conjugational and derivational
>affixes; and (b) as *CVC(C)- or sometimes *VC- or *C- in nominals, where the
>hyphen denotes the point of attachment of the PAA suffixed terminal
>vowels...."

Yes, just as if he had written a dictionary of Latin in which he listed nouns
by their stems, such as

	homin- "human being"
	viro- "man"
	mala:- "apple"

These stem forms never appear as words in the language, although they underlie
those forms which *do* appear.  Therefore, they are not words.

>Granted that these 'roots' can be modified by affixes, but they are still the 
>same kind of words that one finds in a dictionary of English or any other 
>language.

No, they aren't.  And if you can't tell the difference, it isn't worth my time
to educate you.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
