--- George Hinge <
litgh@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> <gknysh@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- George Hinge <litgh@...> wrote:
> > > If you derive the riverword from the same IE
> root, I
> > > cannot see, why
> > > a Thracian intermediary would make the short
> vowel
> > > more
> > > understandable.
> >
> > GK: Because the relevant "a" is short in the
> > attested areal Thracian and long in the attested
> > areal Iranic. Why this should have occurred is a
> > different question.
> >
> > > The problem with the hypothesis that the
> Cimmerians
> > > were Thracians
> > /rest snipped for economy GK/
> > GK: I do not claim that the Cimmerians proper
> > were Thracians. In fact I prefer the hypothesis of
> > their Iranism. This is a different issue from that
> of
> > the short "o" in Don and its historical
> > implications.
> >
>
> But if the Cimmerians were not Thracians, why should
> the rivername
> Tanais with its short a be derived from an unknown
> Thracian source?
*****GK: The issue of the Don rivername is independent
of the Cimmerian problem. Ukrainian linguists studied
the former in the context of their analysis of river
names in historical Scythia, with the Don (Tanais) as
eastern border river, something with which you're
surely familiar as a Herodotus Scythian specialist.
And here I tend to agree with you that their
nomenclature raises unnecessary difficulties. By
"Thracian" they frequently mean what I refer to as
"Thrakoid" ( a larger family including the Thracians
proper, the Geto-Dacians, and the "Western
Scythians"). They prefer a "Thracian" solution to the
Don river name because they have evidence that these
Thrakoid Western Scythians once extended much further
to the east and southeast, e.g. practically to the
headwaters of the Siverian Donets, and they have
evidence as to the short Thracian (Thrakoid) "a" for
the "dan-" river root.*****
> It could be any (non-Iranian or Iranian)
> Indo-European dialect with a
> short a in this word. After all, Don is pretty far
> from the core land
> of the Thracians, isn't it?
*****GK: The thing is, that we don't know of any
attested "Iranian or non-Iranian Indo-European
dialect" in the Scythian area (note BTW that the "t"
in Tanais is apparently an isolate. Nothing like this
further east, subject to correction)with a short "a"
for the river word. And the presence of the "th" in
Borysthenes encourages the U. l. to think in
"Thracian" (Thrakoid) terms. In 650 BC the Thrakoid
presence was "pretty near" the Don. Did they inherit
this from some earlier Indo-European dialect?
Probably. But here things get pretty murky. In any
case this discussion started with the alleged Iranic
explanation of Tanais/Don. It is unsatisfactory, and
the positing of unattested dialects won't cut it.*****
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