[tied] Re: Accepted cognates of Arya?

From: tgpedersen
Message: 12482
Date: 2002-02-25

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 2:32 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Accepted cognates of Arya?
>
>
> > The single /l/ in Alemanni (indicating long a:) puzzles me, since
it is traditionally derived from the PGerm. cognate of "all".
>
> The single <l> indicates nothing of the kind. The graphemic
principle "short vowel, double consonant; long vowel, single
consonant" is a relatively recent convention used in several modern
Germanic languages, but it doesn't work for early Germanic, where
geminates were phonetically real. *alla- < *alna- < *h2al-no-, with
assimilation, just as *fulla- < *fulna- < *plh1-no-. A variant
without the nasal suffix, *ala-, is also attested in Germanic, e.g.
in the common OHG prefix <ala-, ale-, alo-, al-> 'entirely, all-'
(<ala-mahti:g>, <ala-wa:r>, etc.). It meant 'whole, true' when
prefixed to a noun, as in <ala-namo> 'Hauptname', so it would seem
that the somewhat naive interpretation of Alamanni (*ala-manniz)
as 'all men' should be corrected to 'real ("whole") men, machos'. Cf.
also the Visigothic royal name Alaric (*ala-ri:ks).
>
> > One Roman source claims that the Alemanni were Alani, which is
denied by linguists, on the Occam principle the entia (concepts)
should not be multiplied (they seem to forget the "sine ratione" ie.
without reason). Thus in this type of traditional linguistic
reasoning, without (linguistic!) evidence to the contrary, a pre-
historic people must not be thought to have changed their language
(although there are plenty of examples of that in historical times).
I think it is a mistake to use such an argumentum ex nihilo if there
is extralinguistic evidence present (eg. the testimony of an
otherwise reliable chronicler).
>
> Who are those "traditional linguists" who deny the possibility of
language shift? You erect some men of straw and then knock them down,
which is an easy but futile feat. Any historian will tell you that
the _equation_ Alamanni = Alani cannot be maintained for
extralinguistic reasons. The Alamannic confederation reportedly
absorbed a number of originally distinct tribes, quite possibly
including some Germanised Iranian marauders. Still, the constitutive
ethnic element was certainly Germanic, and so was the
name "Alamanni". As a linguist, I can only assure you that the
Germanic <ala> in <Alamanni> is etymologically different from the
Iranian <ala> in <Alani>, and that the two ethnonyms are unrelated.
>
> Piotr

"Some Germanian Iranian marauders" is too modest. The Alani under
their own king, Sangiban, took part on Aetius' side against Attila in
the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields near Chalons in 451 CE.

And if you assure me so as a linguist I must of course accept that
Germanic *ala- "true, real" is not borrowed from or otherwise related
to Alanic *ala- < PII *arya- "true, real" (which also is great for
compounds). Maybe we should ask one of those historians?

And I distinctly recall a battle with a straw man(?) who claimed that
the Getae and the Goths could not possiblke the same people?

Torsten