Re: [tied] Uralic languages vis-a-vis Indo-European dispersal

From: Alexander Stolbov
Message: 29512
Date: 2004-01-13

Juha wrote:

> JS: Could you please give your argument in favour of your claim that
> it is impossible to draw an unbroken line from them to modern Finnic
> or Ugric nations?

I think that this discussion could be more productive in the following form:
you give such a chain of archaeological cultures from a Pit-Comb culture to
a
modern Finnic nation - let's take Udmurts as an example. Then I'll try to
show where and why this chain must be broken and suggest another chain,
relying on archaeological,
linguistic or ethnographic data. I don't know whether my arguments will be
convincing for you, but I'll demonstrate why they are convincing for me.

To be more certain in linguistic arguments those can be used please point
which of the following statements are true, and which are false:
A) There are loans in Common Finno-Ugric from Iranian and Indo-Aryan
languages (such loans can be found in both the Ugric and Finnic subgroups)
B) There are loans in Common Finnic from Baltic languages (such loans can be
found in all branches - Finno-Permic, Volga-Finnic, Finno-Baltic and Saamic)
C) There are loans in Tocharian from Finno-Ugric
D) There are Common Finnic farming terms (they can be found at least in
Finno-Permic, Volga-Finnic and Finno-Baltic languages)
E) There are Common Finnic terms of horse-breeding
F) There are Common Finnic terms of metallurgy or metal-working
G) There are Common Finnic terms of timberwork building
Perhaps some of the statements need more accurate definitions. Please do it.

> After all, as you quite correctly point out, the
> scholarly mainstream disagrees with you, at least here in Finland. A
> characteristic position is taken by Asko Parpola and Christian
> Carpelan in their "Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic and
> Proto-Aryan. They think that immigrants representing the Combed Ware
> Style 2 brought the Late Proto-Uralic language to Finland while the
> gradually assimilated earlier local population are likely to have
> spoken more or less distantly related languages.

Please explain in more details what is Combed Ware Style 2, as different
nomenclature can be used in different traditions (please point the region
and period of existing and typical archaeological sites).

Alexander