--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> *****GK: What about all the other references to Baltic
> tY- instead of tI- [TYRAS,
> TYRUS,TYRYBE,TYRUMAS,TYRULIAI;TYRELIO UPELIS, TYRELIS,
> TYRUPELIS,TYRUPIS]
> *****GK: Is tY- also "long Baltic *-i:-" ?*****
[i:] in monophthongs is orthographically rendered as {y} in Standard
Lithuanian and {i_} (i with a macron above) in Latvian (you omissed
this macron in your Latvian examples, so all the i's are actually
long in the roots of the words enumerated).
In diphthongs where the off-glide is a sonorant (/l/,/r/,/n/ or /m/),
the historically long /i/ of the nucleus can be short [i],
phonetically long [i:] or semi-long [i.], depending on concrete
dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian, but it is always rendered as {i}
orthographically in the conventional writing in both languages. In
scientific texts, the diacritic of a pitch accent helps distinguish
short /i/ from (semi-)long one. Eg., Lith. {tir~pti} [tir.~pti]
'melt;become numb' and Latv. {ti`rpt} [ti.`rpt] 'become numb'; Lith.
i`lgas [i.`lgas] 'long' and Latv. {il~gs} [il.~gs].
>the last four are hydronyms,
> cited from LTS-Ruev, p. 173.*****
Most likely a scribal error. I reconstruct the original text as
**LTSR UEV, an acronym for Lietuvo~s Tary'bu, Sociali`stine.s
Respu`blikos u`piu, ir~ ez^eru,~ vardai~ 'Names of rivers and lakes
of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic' :))))
> *****GK: Independently of this, I have my own doubts
> as to whether TURAS represents a "Baltic" relict. The
> upper reaches of the river were probably called "ISTR"
> even in Herodotus' time (though he didn't know about
> it). This sounds "Getan" or "Thracian".
> But in fact
> TUR(E,A)S could go back to that putative lost dialect
> ("Scythian") with both eastern and western affinities.
> Considering that 60% of the extant "Thracian" lexicon
> has "Baltic" equivalents this seems as possible as the
> surmise about Herodotus' "U".
Some scholars (Duridanov, Maz^iulis and Trubachev being among them)
insist on relations between Thracian and Baltic, Trubachev even
states that the origins of the Balts should be looked for somewhere
in Eastern Balkans and/or Western Anatolia (rejecting the Balto-
Slavic stage and pointing to the upper Danube region as a possible
Slavic Urheimat). As for the Thracian (in Greek rendering) <I'stros>
'the Lower Danube' < (?) *is-ro- 'running in some specific way' <
*eis-:is- 'move (quickly) etc', cf. Old Prussian (in German
rendering) <Inster>, <Instrud>, <Instrut> < OPruss *Instra:
'hydronym' < Baltic *ins-ra- 'flowing swiftly' < *ins- 'be moved
quickly' + *-ra- < (through infixation) *eis-:is- and Lith. E'isra
'hydronym' < *eis-ra- < *eis-.
> I don't much care for
> the Iranic solution either, since it seems strange to
> me that a good Iranic name would have been changed to
> the generic DANA- with the influx of more Iranian
> speakers into the steppes. Yet it was.*****
I don't see anything typologically impossible here. Eg, Vi`lnius is
named after a river (the biggest tributary of the Niemen) called
*Vi`lnia: 'streaming; rippling', which later changed its name to
Neri`s 'swift,whirly' (indeed!). Again, Sarmatians might well have
brought a 'ready' name from their previous territory.
Sergei