Progress in South American Protolinguistics
Recent work in South American Proto-World language reconstruction has
placed the well-attested Proto-Sino-Franco-Indonesian (*PSFI)
superfamily (Pulju 1990) [See also Pulju 1989—eds.] in a larger historical context which includes
Kiowan, a North American Indian language which has not, until now, been
definitively affiliated with any language family (Watkins 1984). This
paper gives evidence for a Proto-Sino-Kiowan (*PSK) superfamily, which
interacted with Proto-Franco-Indonesian (*PFI) to form the well known
*PSFI group. At this point it seems that the larger Proto-*PSFI-Kiowan
(*P*PK) metasuperfamily, the Holy Grail of South American
protolinguistics, has evaded us once again and we are forced now to
posit two independent South American protolanguages.
The following examples leave little doubt that Kiowan and Chinese are historically related.
*PPK |
Kiowa |
Chinese |
| *ne |
|
‘however’ |
|
| ne |
|
‘but’ |
|
ne |
‘a modal particle’ |
| *kii |
|
‘old man’ |
|
| kii |
|
‘husband’ |
|
gē[gē] |
‘elder brother’ |
| *yii |
|
‘a small number’ |
|
| yii |
|
‘two’ |
|
yī |
‘one’ |
| *wei |
|
‘hello’ |
|
| wee |
|
‘word of welcome’ |
|
| wei |
|
‘telephone greeting’ |
The relatively sparse lexical overlap between Kiowa and
French/Indonesian reveals the historic process leading to today’s
distribution. I propose the following progression.
- *PSK and *PFI speakers inhabit South America. This is the state of the Proto-World as far back as we can trace it.
- The Kiowan group splits off from *PSK and moves north, presumably to await the white man, disease, genocide, etc.
- The remainder of the *PSK group, now speaking what we might call proto-proto-proto-Chinese temporarily
link up (presumably not by their own doing) with the bloodthirsty
Proto-Franco-Indonesian speakers. This is the well-known *PSFI period,
during which proto-proto-proto-Chinese adopted an enormous number of
*PFI words and completely lost the complex *PSK inflection-derivation
system, as tends to happen to oppressed people who become lazy,
depressed and mumbly. Note that Kiowa and Chinese both retained the
tone system of *PSK, while *PFI presumably was not a tone language
(assuming we disregard Lørenesenn’s contention that French is a
tone language).
- By this time the proto-proto-proto-Chinese speakers, now speaking
proto-proto-Chinese, break the bonds of slavery (or whatever) and
escape to Asia completely free of inflection, agreement, etc., but, as
luck would have it, terribly afflicted with word-order.
- The final migration, which locates the modern French and Indonesian
speakers in France and Indonesia, respectively, is the source of some
conjecture, and I direct you to Parker’s (1990) monograph for further
discussion.
The historical progression described above leaves the present
situation. The descendants of the peaceful Proto-Sino-Kiowan group are
now a large, docile, disinflected Chinese-speaking population in Asia
and an almost nonexistent docile Kiowan population on a reservation in
Oklahoma. Large unsavory, warlike populations in France and Indonesia
are the remnants of the original *PFI group. I feel my findings are
conclusive, and do not intend to entertain any criticism.
Bibliography
Lørenesenn, Fugløy. “Tone Sandhi in French.” Psammeticus Quarterly X.4, 1984. Pp 661-71.
Parker, Christ J. Big Scary Jungle Spiders: New Perspectives on the Depopulation of Ancient South America. 1990. (unpublished)
Pulju, Tim Q. The Phonology of Proto-Sino-Franco-Indonesian. The Hague: Mouton & Company, 1990.
Watkins, Laurel J. A Grammar of Kiowa. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Robert Norris | Rice University |
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