Re: [tied] Affects of immigrant communities in language change

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 8371
Date: 2001-08-07

Joao:
>I agree with Glen, I think that there's a kind of "�-zone" in
>Northern Eurasia, from Northwestern Europe to Central Asia, [...]

Whoa! I was talking about Tyrrhenian, not about FinnoUgric. My
own view is that _Tyrrhenian_ (ancestor of Etruscan, Lemnian and
Rhaetic) was a major substrate in Central Europe before Germanic,
Italic or Celtic ever stepped foot there. Tyrrhenian also has
an initial stress accent (most of the time, at least) and I find
myself reconstructing *f, *c and *x at least for
Proto-EtruscoLemnian (eg: EL *nefotta "grandson", *xotta "four"
and *-ec [plural]). (The scheme I have is that Tyrrhenian had two
branches, Rhaetic and EtruscoLemnian with the latter being found
further south in the Balkans and Rhaetic spreading westwards into
Europe.)

In fact, the above examples of my reconstructions show a
"Uralic" style language with medial geminate consonants and
fricatives. I reconstruct a triangular five-vowel system for
Tyrrhenian *[a, e, i, o, u]. Unfortunately, that latter quality
doesn't explain the o-umlauts of Europe and this last thing might
be caused by Finno-Ugric languages that came to Europe rather
late... or maybe there were native languages in Europe with these
vowels?


-------------------------------------------------
gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!

home: http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email: glengordon01@...
-------------------------------------------------


>of Uralo-Altaic languages (with exception of Tungusic, if I'm not wrong),
>some Germanic languages, lbanian, Athenian Greek. The only Romance
>languages
>to acquire round vowels like �/� are French and Rheto-Roman.
>Thus, in my humble opinion I think it points to a substratum.
>
>Joao SL
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Marc Verhaegen <marc.verhaegen@...>
>To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 6:33 AM
>Subject: Re: [tied] Affects of immigrant communities in language change
>
>
> > >Lastly, when Germanic and especially Celtic venture further west, they
> > finally come across some truely exotic substrate languages beyond the
>blaz�
> > Tyrrhenian fringe, like Vasconic, Iberian and Tartessian languages.
>These
> > quite different substrate
> > languages help to alter these IE languages in unique ways, thus
>explaining
> > EVERYthing! Glen
> >
> > Glen, do you think some peculiarities of Germanic (initial stress, �,
>�...?)
> > could be explained by a Finnish-Estonian or so speaking people adopting
>an
> > IE language?
> >
> > Marc
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
>http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
>


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