Somebody -- I think it may have been Eric
Hamp, but I don't recall exactly where -- hypothesised that Cimmerian was a
distinct branch of IE, characterised by a peculiar sound shift whereby the
voiced aspirated series underwent devoicing and deaspiration (PIE *dH > *t)
while the plain voiceless stops became voiced (PIE *t > *d; I forget what
happened to the voiced unaspirated series). It was argued that a substrate with
such a shift was detectable in Slavic (as unexpected voicing), and the ethnonym
Kimmerio- was explained as something like *g^H[m]m-er-jo- (or maybe *-el-jo- if
the Cimmerians rhotacised their l's) from *g^Hom- 'earth'. Pretty far-fetched,
and to be taken with a very large pinch of salt, given that we have absolutely
no historical documentation of _any_ Cimmerian words (except for a couple of
Iranian-looking personal names). As for irregular voicing in Slavic, it may
take place even in words borrowed or coined in recent times (thus
quite often in the local dialect of Poznan) and is most frequent in expressive
vocabulary (like Polish <pryskac'> 'spray' ~ <bryzgac'>
'splash').
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 5:38 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Cymerians?
I don't accept at the moment that Cimbri and Cimmerioi are
related - it seems more likely to me that Cimbri is a Celtic name (Cimmerioi is
generally taken as Scythian, if I am not mistaken - though I don't think I have
seen a good etymology for it). Cimbri may be related to the Irish verb cimbid
"captured person/victim" perhaps making Cimbri "The Slavers".
-Chris
Gwinn