From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17182
Date: 2002-12-14
----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 6:28 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: [gothic-l] Fwd: Re: [tied] Harii/Hirri into (H)eruli?
> A cross posting. What do you think of Troels Brandt'se
> idea that "Heruli" came from "Harii" via Sarmatians or
> Greeks?
["The meeting between Harii and Alanic Sarmatians was another and with the Greeks a third. In such cases I do not believe that the system with
the reconstructed rules and *words will work."]
I don't understand the idea, frankly. How is a Greek or Sarmatian "filter" supposed to help in this case? How does it explain the difference between what's expected and what's observed? If all that Troels Brandt wants to say is that in a contact situation involving two or three languages situation anything goes, I can only say that (1) it isn't true (loans and words affected by foreign influence have their own regularities), and (2) it's self-defeating (if in such a linguistic configuration no constraints have to be observed and a plausible etymology cannot be distinguished from an implausible one, the "Harii -> Heruli" etymology is just arbitrary speculation).
Piotr