Re: IE & Uralic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Partitive genitive in Russian may be due to a relatively late
> > > influence from the Baltic Finnish substrate.
> >
> > I thought the use of partitive genitive in negative existential
> > sentences was pan-Slavic, not just Russian?
>
> Looks like. I have to revise the statement so that it pertains
> specifically to North Russian dialects.
>
> > And why the correspondence
> > Slavic genitive < ablative *-od <-> Fennic separative *-tV?
>
> Frankly, I fail to see anything but a chance resemblance unless we
> look upon it from a Nostratic perspective. Obviously, PIE *-od
> ablative became Proto-Slavic genitive long before linguistic
> contacts between Slavs and Fenni.

No. The Slavs derive from those IE-speakers who survived Attila's
butcher tour back and forth over Europe in those swamps I forget the
name of, and the various FU languages are patches of a language family
that took up much more space in the area which is now East Slavic.
Numerous FU languages have disappeared from there in historic times
alone. The genesis of Slavic might well have taken place in formerly
Fennic territory by former Fennic speakers.

> Do you have ideas about why it (abl. > gen.) happened?

For a native Fennic speaker it was a natural thing to substitute his
separative/partitive with an IE ablative. Almost same ending, almost
same meaning. Also, case suffixes are old postpositions, those can be
borrowed.

> > > Note that the North
> > > Russian dialects (Slavo-Finnish contact area) make use of
> > > partitive genitive also in positive contexts which finds exact
> > > correspondence in Baltic Finnish (particularly in Suomi, see I.
> > > Vahros' Venäjän genetiivi ja suomen partitiivi eritoten objektin
> > > ja subjektin kaasuksina. Juhlakirja L. Hakulisen
> > > 60-vuotispäiväksi. Helsinki, 1959. Pp. 283ff).
> > >
> > > Conclusion so far: the partitive genitive is hardly a result of
> > > hypothetical European IE – Uralic contacts in the proto-epoch
> > > but rather either a typological feature attested in various IE
> > > (Germanic, Romance) and non-IE (Finnish, Basque) languages or a
> > > vestige of relatively recent contacts (North Russian < Finnish).
> >
> > So if it's both in positive and negative contexts it's substrate
> > influence but if it's only in negative contexts it's just
> > typology? I don't think so.
>
> Yes, you're right. It needs to be re-formulated more accurately too.
>
> North Russian examples in T. Dol's "Syntaksic^eskije osobennosti
> govora Zaonez^ja" [Lingvistic^eskij sbornik, 1. Petrozavodsk, 1962,
> p. 64]: _bylo by doz^dic^ka – bylo by i gribkof_; _komarof
> naletelo_; _utic plavajet_ et sim. Since constructions like these
> are specific for this dialectal zone and non-standard in Common
> Rusian but quite standard in Finnish which as we know has been
> spoken here before Russian, it seems natural to consider them a
> substrate influence.

Estonian 'sajab lund' "it rains" (lume "snow" in the partitive)

> It seems far more complicated with "negative context only"
> partitive. Its usage covers Fennic, Slavic, Baltic (see below) and
> East Germanic (do I miss some else?) This constitutes a geographic
> continuity. An explanation by diffusion may be sought and found. But
> Mate mentioned seemingly unrelated examples much more to the west.
> Typology, nevertheless?

Dutch is similar in some partitive aspects. I'll buy a typological
relationship between Fennic and some substrate language of NWEurope,
and take substrate for the remainder.

> And if we decide for a (proto-)Fennic
> (Uralic, whatever) influence on Balto-Slavic, how do we explain
> Gothic facts?

Fennic substrate?

> > What's the use in negative existential sentences in Baltic?
>
> In Latvian, it's grammatical genitive too, e.g. _man ir draugs
> (nom.)_ "I have a friend" (lit. "to me [there] is a
> friend") and _man nav draugu (part.-gen.)_ "I have no friends".

Ah, good that you reminded me: another hint of Fennic substrate of
Slavic is: (East) Slavic has the 'at-me is' construction for 'have',
which is not quite the same as a 'mihi est' construction; it involves
something spatial. Estonian uses allative, 'coming-to-me' in 'have'
sentences.

> > The other thing to consider is how close East Germanic was to
> > Slavic and Fennic during its genesis?
>
> During the genesis of East Germanic? I don't think it was
> particularly close to Slavic for it didn't border Slavic. But some
> syntactic traits shared with Slavic might have been acquired by
> Gothic later in East Europe, as a consequence of the Gotho-Slavic
> intercourse.

Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wielbark_culture


Torsten