Re: Indo-European for Indo-European

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> Hultman's etymology was the most popular one until recently. The

most

> serious problem with it is that the required intermediate form
> *fenþ-n-a- (or Vernerian *fend-n-a-, both from PIE *penth2-) is

proposed

> entirely ad hoc. "Weak" agent nouns in *-an- are a productive

Germanic

> formation, so one wouldn't normally expect *fenþ-an- (or *fend-an-)

to

> be converted into an a-stem. In other words, Old English would have
> *fi:þa (pl. *fi:þan) or *finda (pl. *findan) rather than the

attested

> forms, i.e. finn (pl. finnas). Martin Huld's new solution is

elegant and

> formally impeccable (apart from its entertaiment value); the

proposed

> pre-form *pes-no- 'man' is independently attested in Hittite. It

also

> strengthens the reconstruction *pesos 'penis' (stem *pes-es-; cf.

Gk.

> peos and OInd. pasas-). The word <finn> occurs as a Germanic name --

> most notably that of Finn, king of the North Frisians. Some Finnish
> scholars (e.g. Raimo Anttila) have accepted the new etymology
> ethusiastically -- hah, who wouldn't?
>
> Piotr

Well I donno? I've been called a 'prick' lots of times, but I didn't
know my ethnicity was that obvious.

Peter P