[tied] Re: Pre-Germanic speculation

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

> 30-10-03 11:16, Marco Moretti wrote:
>
> > In Proto-Germanic we have a huge amount on non-IE lexicon,

despite

> > the opinion of many parochial IEists, that consider IE every item
> > attested in every IE language.
>
> That isn't nice. The "parochial IEist" is a straw man of your own
> making. Show me an IEist as radical as that. As a matter of

principle,

> I'm in favour of a native etymology whenever a plausible one

presents

> itself, but I agree that e.g. the "silver" and "tin" words are non-

IE,

> and that Germanic *silubra- in particular represents a widespread

North

> European wanderwort replacing IE *h2arg^-n.t-

Perhaps the word "parochial" isn't nice. Sorry, I won't cause offence
to anyone. It wasn't direct to any member of the forum. These IEists
lived in the last century, and reconstructed IE protoforms
for "elephant", "monkey", "leopard", "lion". They derived
*(s)teuros / *tauros from the IE root meaning "swell", they derived
Greek (w)oinos and Latin vinum from another IE root (these items are
Semitic loanwords!), etc...
They are the old Pan-Sanskritists and others. I simply disagree with
their theories because it is reductive to deny every contribute of
pre-IE substratum.

> > For example, words of ultimately non-IE origin in English are:
> > "sheep", "ship", "silver", "help", "drink", "delve", "blood",
> > "land", "soul", "sea", "churl", "wife", "tin", "house", "knife",
> > "shore", "(night)mare" (only the second part of the
> > compound), "hut", "Hell", "if", "bone", "back", and many others.
> > Deriving "blood" from a IE *bhl- "to shine" is a patent

absurdity:

> > like canis a non canendo, lucus a non lucendo, etc...
> > In no IE language there is a similar semantic shift, and in no IE
> > language a similar supposed "kenning" displaced the old inherited
> > word. Every strange word for "blood" such as Latin sanguis or

Greek

> > haima is suspected to be of non-IE origin (substratum).
>
> At least some of these words _are_ IE. For example, cognates of

*dHelbH-

> 'delve, chisel' occur in Balto-Slavic, and since neither the shape

of

> the root nor its regularly ablauting behaviour militates against IE
> origin, I see no reason to posit a loanword, despite its limited
> distribution. Call it a "Northern IE dialectal word" if you like,

but

> there's no idication of its being non-IE. "Sheep" (West Germanic
> *skæ:pa-) has a plausible cognate in Indic (Skt. cha:ga- 'goat' <
> *sk^eh1gWo-). "House" may well be a derivative of *(s)keuh- 'hide,
> cover' (*xu:sa- < *xu:ssa- = *xu:d-ta- < *kuh-dH-to-, cf. hide <

hy:dan

> < *xu:d-jan-). "(Night)mare" (*mar-o:n-) has a counterpart in

Slavic

> *mora 'nightmare' (cf. *morU 'plague, pestilence', also when
> personified, and Skt. mara- 'death, killing'). Other items could be
> discussed as well, if you feel like playing this game.

I'm rather dubious. If cognates of *dHelbH- > 'delve, chisel' occur
in Balto-Slavic, we can admit that Balto-Slavic was contiguous to
Germanic. IN Balto-Salvic area there is the same word for "silver"
that we found in Germanic. So the presence of a Balto-Slavic-Germanic
isogloss is not decisive.
Skt cha:ga- is isolated. We cannot even safely reconstruct its
protoform. For example your reconstruction posit a labiovelar /-gW-/
in order to fit better the Germanic protoform, that you think to be
ralated. But /g/ of cha:ga can be from /g/. We aren't sure that proto-
Germanic *skæ:pa- < *ske:gWo-. Initial aspirated sound in Skt. is
difficult to account for. So your matchup (that would have pleased
Dumézil) is inconsistent. In Vedic Skt. there is a lot of substratum
of Dravidian, Munda or simply unknown origin. Nothing supports the
projection of an highly hypothetic protoform of cha:ga- into common
IE. Proves nothing at all, sorry.
"House" may be a derivative of *(s)keuh- "hide", but why should a
similar form displace older IE words? It is suspect.
Germanic *maro:n- has cognates in Slavic, but the central meaning
is "ghost, demon", Skt. item has a different etymon (cfr. Latin
morior, mors, etc...).

Marco