From: gpiotr@...
Message: 28
Date: 1999-09-19
> gpiot-@... wrote:up
> original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=24
> > cyryll-@... wrote:
> > original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=23
> > > Dear Members!
> > >
> > > Thank you all who joined this list. I am sure this idea will be a
> > > success of Indo-European studies online!
> > >
> > > I'm now gathering info about substratum words in Indo-European
> > > languages for a new project on CyBaLiSt. I have already found
> something
> > > very interesting about Germanic, Greek and Celtic, but I'm sure
> other
> > > branches also contain lexicon which was spoken in Europe and Asia
> long
> > > before Indo-Europeans came.
> > >
> > > I would appreciate if you can share your knowledge on the matter.
> > >
> > > Cyril
> > >
> > Hi, Cyril!
> >
> > It's a splendid project, but how about reporting to the rest of us
> briefly
> > what interesting things you've found so far? Given the widespread
> assumptions
> > about European prehistory, one would be led to expect traces of a
> Uralic
> > substrate in Germanic, "Minoan", "Pelasgian", "Mediterranean" or
> what-you-may-
> > call-it in Greek, Theo Vennemann's "Atlantic" (Afroasiatic?) in
> Celtic. Do
> > your findings bear out such expectations, or do you intend to come
> withalmost
> > something really surprising?
> >
> >
> > Piotr
> >
> >
>
> I would like to comment a bit on substrate in Germanic. There is
> certainly quite a lot of substrate influence in Germanic, probablyapple
> something like 20-30 % of the common Germanic vocabulary is apparently
> not derived from IE, and there is additional non-IE vocabulary in the
> north Germanic languages.
> Some of this is quite central vocabulary items like 'blood' and 'sea'.
> It has been noted that such words tend to cluster in some particular
> fields, such as terms which has to do with the sea and boats, names of
> plants and animals and with pig-keeping.
> The hypothetic substrate language is sometimes referred to as the
> language or "folkish", from two of the supposed substrate words.my
> As for this substrate being Uralic there does not seem to be the
> slightest evidence for this, and the affiliations of "folkish" is in
> opinion quite obscure.while
> On the other hand there has certainly been a lot of linguistic contact
> between Finnish and the (north) germanic languages. There are many
> germanic loan-words in Finnish and their form show that borrowing has
> been going on for a very long time (at least 2000 years). Examples of
> various ages: Fin. kuningas 'king' from common Gmc *kuningaz, Fin.
> kaupunki 'town' from Old Norse kaupung, Fin tykki 'cannon' from Early
> Modern Swedish stycke. Loans the other way are rather less common, but
> there is a limited number of examples, the most well-known being
> Swedish pojke 'boy' from Fin. poika.
> Strangely there is rather less evidence for contact with Saamish,
> there are a fair number of Gmc loanwords in Saamish, I am not aware ofFor pre-Germanic substrates, cf. the following:
> a single well authenticated pre-modern case of borrowing from Saamish
> to Swedish.
> Also I am not aware of any loanwords which would indicate contact
> between Germanic and Proto-Uralic or Proto-Finno-Ugric or indeed even
> with proto-Baltic Finnic.
>
> Tommy Tyrberg
>
>