Megalithic Mapping & Cognitive Psychology - LexiLine Journal 460

The blog Cognitive Daily has a June 7, 2007 posting titled Human GPS: Some of us are better equipped than others, pointing out on the basis of tests in cognitive psychology that "navigation using both external visual information and mental mapping is the standard for most people."

What the psychologists have discovered conforms to our arguments concerning the hermetic mapping system of the ancients in adapting the "mental map" of the stars above to the external visual megalithic information which they correspondingly placed below.

LARYNGEAL THEORY (Where aspirated letter haitch (heɪtʃ) = Sem - LexiLine Journal 459

Ishinan wrote:

The eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet called _`ayn_ belongs to a class of consonants called Voiced Pharyngeal Fricative (termed in Arabic "majhuwrah" or vocal i.e. pronounced equally with the voice, and the breath). By contrast, the corresponding sixteenth Hebrew letter `ayn ( pronounced ah-yeen) is silent.

In that respect it is said that the Hebrew `ayn sees but does not speak. The Arabic `ayn is produced by stopping the airflow in the back of the mouth combined with a pharyngeal sound. It is a little like the sound "aaah" produced by pulling the back of the tongue back into the throat a bit.

Hence, I propose that the English aspirated letter haitch (heɪtʃ), which is treated as a phantom consonant, may have stood for the Semitic letter `ayn. A simple example can be found in the case of the term `briy (initial `ayn in both Hebrew and Arabic) for Hebrew (initial heɪtʃ in English).

Another case is the Arabic _h2nd_ which has been discussed in my earlier posts. Among its' many meanings, the following for hand stands out ( see the various Arabic and English definitions below). Among Afro Asian languages, the _h2nd_ term is unique to Classical Arabic .

In the above example, a comparaison between Classical Arabic and Germanic included Old English, where the primary sense of Hand is described in both as: Side, power and possession. A perfect match with a minor difference, in that the Old English term hand is treated as a noun, while the Arabic term `nd is a verb (conjugated as `andiy, `andak, `anduh etc. , translated as: have in my hand, have in your hand, has in his hand etc.)

For those of you who might be skeptical regarding these correspondents, I offer the additional example below where the English aspirated letter haitch [heɪtʃ] stood for Arabic `ayn.

Ishinan
______________

(this posting was posted later than the previous posting, but written earlier than that)

LARYNGEAL THEORY ( the case of h2nd) - LexiLine Journal 458

Ishinan wrote:

Thank you for drawing attention to Middle Egyptian "khnt" which has two meanings: a) in front of, and b) act of rebellion (same in Arabic)

In my opinion, if we take into account your example of Middle Egyptian "khnt" and compare it to the various Indo-European terms ("in front of // Latin: ante (before) // Greek: anti (against, in front of) //Armenien: and (in front of) // Lithuanian: ant (in front of) // Hittite: hanti (infront of)"} then, one can easily see how, in this instance, Proto-Indo-European (PIE) reconstruction is on shaky ground.

In addition, the following comparison between Indo-European (Latin, Greek & Hittite) and Afro Asian languages (Middle Egyptian & Classical Arabic) which exhibits the same cognate term shows how PIE, which tends to omit non-Indo-European cognate terms, can be at best incomplete.

Ishinan

FYI : The initial guttural letter `ayn in the above Arabic term h2nd, represents the eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet. In Arabic, `Ayn is one of the letters termed "majhuwrah" or vocal i.e. pronounced equally with the voice, and the breath (Pharyngeal Fricative) . It is one of the hardest sound for non-Arabic westerner speakers to hear in Arabic because, though a consonant in Arabic, it sounds most like the English a. It is like the softest or medium h , only humming (vocalized). It is a little like the sound a doctor asks to hear when looking down your throat. While saying "aaah" pull the back of your tongue back into your throat a bit." By contrast the corresponding sixteenth Hebrew letter `ayn (pronounced ah-yeen) is silent. In that respect it is said that the Hebrew `Ayn, unlike the Arabic one, sees but does not speak.

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Andis Kaulins wrote:

Thank you for your useful and interesting postings on the topic of "the case of h2nd" = khnt.

Your presentation is clear and easy to follow.
We definitley have some points of agreement that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions often are based on shaky ground.

This all looks like a very fruitful line of inquiry which I think we should continue to follow, although I will not always agree with your conclusions, as you will see, though I have no doubt that Arabic is related to Indo-European in origin, since - from my point of view - all languages of the world are related.

I have additional observations regarding the origin of khnt:

1. The Arabic meaning of "act of rebellion" seems to me to be merely one special case of being "opposite to" or "against" something. In my opinion, it is thus a specific Arabic application of the basic term khnt which does not necessarily give us any information about word origins here.

We have similar terms in Indo-European which are surely related to the above-mentioned special application of khnt in Arabic, for example the English contra and counter, i.e. "to counter something, to being against it". In Latvian, which is much more archaic than English, we find the surely related term cīnīt- "to struggle against, to battle with". We see in this manner that the Arabic use of khnt for the concept of "rebellion" is thus not linguistically unusual from the standpoint of Indo-European language.

2. It would seem to me that to get to the actual word root in the case of h2nd we have to go back much further in time than Middle Egyptian. Rainer Hannig's Egyptian Dictionary I of the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period has numerous terms on pages 954 to 962 from the Old Kingdom involving h2nd in various meanings centered around the idea of "being in front of", also in the apparently more archaic sense of "being at the head of, leading".

For that older meaning we have the comparable Baltic dzināt viz. dzīt (to drove, to drive (e.g. a herd of animals)) as a form of Latvian dzinējs "drover, driver" which we find in Lithuanian ginejas. For the Pharaonic prefixed variant m-khnt we then find the Latvian comparable mudzināt "to urge on, to spur on".

Also in in the Old Kingdom Pharaonic hieroglyphs - as in the Baltic - we then find h2nd written without the interceding letter N as kht which the Egyptologists falsely read as khnt.

The Egyptologists also falsely read e.g. khntj-sh for a similar hieroglyph without an N whose meaning is either "wood from Lebanon" or "settler", a hieroglyph which of course is correctly to be read as dzitar, i.e. cedar in the case of the wood from Lebanon and seter in the case of the settlers (as in the Norwegian seter "settlements" or Swedish seter or Latvian seta, "fence, border".) The scribes left the N out intentionally in Pharaonic.

The reason that the sound DZ- was represented in Pharaonic language by the standing vases is perhaps - and this is speculative - because in Indo-European, e.g. Latvian dzid-ris means "clear fluid" which may be what the vases homophonically represent.

The root for the Indo-European terms in form similar to the word hand is different, as in my opinion it relates to the concept of "side", in e.g. Latvian sānite viz. sāni meaning "side, for which we have the comparable German k-form in Kante "edge, side (in this sense)". The Indo-European terms of the form hand thus do not derive from h2nd word forms.

Moreover, the notion that the shift of pronunciation is from h to k to s, as I have often stated (see e.g. http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi53.htm ), is false. Rather the process is from the other direction: "S-forms in Sumerian and Akkadian predominate, so S is older than K, contrary to current "West-centered" satem - centum theory." The satem-centum shift never took place. Rather, S degraded to K and then to H. Neither Sumerian nor Latvian have a native H.

LARYNGEAL THEORY - LexiLine Journal 457

Ishinan wrote:

While writing a paper on guttural letters my research eventually touched upon the Laryngeal theory, specifically "PIE Reconstruction: *h2enti; Hittite hanti; Latin ante (before, against)". Considerable debate still surrounds the pronunciation of the laryngeals. Many believe that they represented some sort of glottal stop or pharyngeal. I am sure you are all familiar with this continuous argument.

In that respect, I discovered the following:

(Pre-Islamic) Classical Arabic has the very same term `nd (transliterated as : H2nd) spelled with a voiced pharyngeal fricative initial letter `ayn (see the attached JPEG below).

INDO -EUROPEAN ETYMOLOGY: "Ante- prefix meaning "before," from L. ante (prep. and adv.) "before, in front of, opposite" from PIE *anti "facing opposite, near, in front of, before. From L. ante "before," from PIE *anti "facing opposite, near, in front of, before" (cf. Skt. antah "end, border, boundary," Hittite hanti "opposite," Gk. anta, anten "opposite," anti "over against, opposite, before;" O.Lith. anta "on to;" Goth. anda "along;" O.E. and- "against;" Ger. ent- "along, against"). Thus PIE (traditional) *anti "in front of and facing" > Greek antأ­ "against"; Latin ante "in front of, before"; (Sanskrit أ،nti "near; in the presence of"). In Hittite there is a noun ل¸«ants "front, face", with various derivatives (ل¸«antezzi "first", and so on, pointing to a PIE root-noun *hâ‚ent- "face" (of which *hâ‚‚enti would be the locative singular)"

As you can see, the Arabic term has the range of meanings included in the Indo-European terms.

While the Arabic term is of great antiquity, it is still widely used to this day. Moreover, to my knowledge, it is unique to Arabic and not shared with its sister languages (like Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic etc.) Thinking I was dealing with typical Nostratic material, I checked "Early Reconstructions of Nostratics" by V.M. Illic Svitycs (translated by Mark Kaiser), but found that it was not included.

The question I would like to pose to Indo-Europeanists is the following:

In your opinion, If PIE *anti is shared with a non-Indo-European language, is it still eligible to be counted as PIE?

The same question, addressed to Nostratists:

Does the existence of this term in Arabic alone among A. A. languages qualify it to be counted as Nostratic?

Any thoughts?

Ishinan

Andis Kaulins wrote:

At the Ancient Egypt Weblog I provide my explanation for the Egyptian hieroglyphs for vowels as follows (http://www.lexiline.com/images/pharaonicvowels.png ):


The above graphic shows my discovery that the labeal, pharyngeal, velar and uvular sounds in Pharaonic Egyptian were represented by four separate hieroglyphs that correspond to the later matres lectiones of the Hebrew alphabet. Here we see that 'ayn was preeceded by a Pharaonic hieroglyph represented by a predatory bird, viz. ērglis in Indo-European (e.g. meaning "eagle" in Latvian) which is a word that is homophonic (same-sounding) with ieriklis or ierikle "in the throat" (in Latvian), so that 'ayn was most assuredly preceded by the eagle (vulture) hieroglyph representing the pharyngeal sound "in the throat".

A discussion concerning the current pronunciation of 'ayn is found at the Word Reference Forum.

The alleged PIE root 'hanti- viz. *anti- relates to two distinct ancient concepts,
namely "behind, back of" and "in front of, opposite of".

At the Bantu Basic Vocabulary Database
we find words comparable to Indo-European for the idea of "behind":

Bantu Bemba kùŋkì
Bantu Bukusu kóòŋgò
Bantu Koyo ŋgɔ̀ŋgɔ̀

or "back (of)"

Bantu Bukusu kóòŋgò
Bantu Kinyamwezi gɔ̀ɔ̀ŋgɔ̀
Bantu Lega gòŋgò

That corresponds to Indo-European, e.g. German gegen "against, opposite"
and English "against" from Middle English againes from ongeagn.
As the comparable Bantu terms show, this is a very old term in human language.

The question then arises whether the whole panoply of terms at the
"PIE Reconstruction: *h2enti; Hittite hanti; Latin ante (before, against)"
can be viewed to have the same word origin as ongeagn
or whether they have a different word origin.

Note here that *Hanti- is a term which in our opinion is already found as Hntj or Hntt in the Old Kingdom hieroglyphs of Pharaonic Egypt, e.g. in describing the concept of "in front of" in the names of the Nomes .

For example, the name of the nome that I decipher as
"14. Front of Cetus - Diphda, Hntj-j3btj, "front Eastern nome"
is seen to mean "in front of"
where
Hntj has also been transcribed as xntj and as Khent.

The main city of this nome was Tjaru, Greek Sile,
and in Arabic surely this was QANTaru.

We find that the Bantu Bukusu term èènì meaning "in front of" would support the Old Kingdom Pharaonic hntj "in front of", so that we would suggest that the original root of *hanti- viz. *anti- goes back to an original concept meaning "in front of", i.e. "opposite from" the viewer. The Pharaonic versions of the term would suggest a pharyngeal origin but the Bantu term would not.

In our view, all languages of the world are related in origin, a conclusion which conforms to modern genetic evidence, so that we do not turn here to the question of what here should be assigned to Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and what should be assigned to Nostratic. Egyptologists to our surprise still do not yet recognize the Indo-European stratum clearly present in Old Kingdom Pharaonic language and until they do, the whole thing is rather moot.