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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Chinese Contrary to John Halloran's Thesis?
Message-ID: <petrichDyHJGJ.AB6@netcom.com>
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References: <5184eg$p8a@halley.pi.net> <seagoat.581.0086518A@primenet.com> <324C0017.2B0F@uclink2.berkeley.edu> <seagoat.583.010AF3B7@primenet.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 08:26:42 GMT
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In article <seagoat.583.010AF3B7@primenet.com>,
John A. Halloran <seagoat@primenet.com> wrote:

>Sumerian used compounding a lot to create new words - by the time the language 
>ceased to be spoken around 1800 B.C. compound sign words made up more than 
>half of the words in the Sumerian vocabulary.  But what I have been discussing 
>are the compound words that are written with a single logographic sign and 
>where identification of the component words that contributed to the compound 
>word value has to be deduced from an intimate knowledge of the vocabulary.  

	Sumerian had two types of symbols -- ideographic and phonetic 
(syllabic). A compound can be written with a choice of (1) 1 ideographic 
symbol for the whole word, (2) an ideographic symbol for each word going 
into the compound, (3) phonetically (several symbols, of course), or (4) 
a mixture of (2) and (3).

	Also, what says that the scribes who invented the Sumerian
ideographic symbols had to analyze every compound they came across? 
Analyzing a compound would mean at least 2 instead of 1 symbol, for
starters. I suspect that a systematic syllabary came *after* many of the
ideographic symbols were invented, as a way of representing unanalyzable 
proper names and to avoid having to create too many ideographic symbols.

>These identifications can never be proven, except by a fair evaluation of the 
>semantic and sound correspondences.  These were the kind of compounds that I 
>posted in this thread, on most of which Loren Petrich stamped his approval.

	So what about them? And did you notice one big blooper: "donkey" 
from "sky" + "grain"???

... Because what I am arguing is that we know that the 
>Sumerian CV and VC words that have come down to us always had that form, 
>instead of being truncated versions of longer words, because the same 
>consonants are found in very basic words like "breast, chest", "sickle", 
>"bronze", which are compounds of these CV and VC words.  These compounds are 
>not considered in the Sumerian writing to be compounds, but are written with 
>single logographic signs.  We only know the pronunciations from the Sumerian 
>sign lists inscribed by their Semitic successors.

	So what about shared consonant sounds???

	Just look at my postings, or yours, and you will find that 
English is replete with such shared sounds.
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
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