Re: Uralic Continuity Theory ; Paleo-Germanic lexical borrowings in

From: jouppe
Message: 54018
Date: 2008-02-23

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
> > OK now we are talking business!
> >
> > In so many cases 2) must be excluded because for phonological
reasons
> > i.e. it would not work for the words. Substitution rules are not
> > reversible of course. Finnic drops clusters: that's not
reversible;
> > Finnic drops voicing: that's not reversible. Finnic makes lots of
> > fricatives plosives: that may be reversible given the case is
right,
> > and pre-grim's law, but usually it is not. As there are usually
more
> > than one phoneme in a word :) the likelyhood that there are
> > irreversible rules will be high.
>
> I think the idea that Finnish substitutes plosives for Germanic
> fricatives is based on circular reasoning: They match semantically,
so
> this substitution has been assumed. But the timing of Grimm has been
> creeping upward; it's now in the 1st cent. BCE, so how do we know
that
> these loans are not pre-Grimm, and consequently plosive to plosive?
> And if they are plosive to plosive, how do we know then they are
loans
> from Germanic? If 'hartia-' is from Germ. *hart-, what made the
Finns
> suddenly change their mind about their supposedly ancient Germ. *x-
->
> Finn. *k- ? It doesn't make a lot of sense.
>
> Torsten

The point is that the Finnic fricative was moving at that time. We
know it started from something like 'sh' in 'she', then moved back
towards present day 'h' like 'he'. The evidence for what the
intermediary stages might have been is scarce, essentially what we
know is from universal analogies (cf. swedish pronounciation of sj-
skj-stj today and the further backing in spanish Don Quixote!) and
from the evidence of germanic loanwords (I know, if you question the
whole stratum you may accuse here of circular reasoning!)

We know for instance that *skeuXw- (> engl shy) gave => köyhä (<
*keühä) 'poor'; NB the substitution rules are non-reversible), but we
do not know at which value the Finnic fricative exactly stood when
the word was borrowed. We could well have had a time before that
(right after Grimm) when the substitute for gmc. X had to be chosen
between a pure 'she-fricative' and the 'k-plosive' and the choice
would then have been the latter, in analogy with *f=>*p and *th=>*t,
which were (almost) unambiguous. Only after the Finnic fricative was
backed towards the velar position the new rule X => h, like
in "hartia" 'shoulder' would have taken effect.

But I must admit there is not much of a time window for this:
The substitution eu => eü in köyhä entails a very early borrowing.
Later substitutions, which need to be accomodated on the time scale
(unless they are dialectal alternatives) before the end of the Proto-
Norse period were
were:
1) -eu- => -ep- (-ek-) (>-eu-)
Fi. keula 'prow' < (arch. dial.) kepla/kekla <= *skeula- (> Sw.
skjul 'shelter'); NB the substitution rules are again, non-reversible
2) -eu- (> iu) => iu
Fi. liuta 'crowd, swarm' <= gmc. *leudha(z) > PN. *liudhaR > ON.
ljódhr 'people, crowd'
Fi. kiusata/kiusaa- <= gmc. *keusan > PN *kiusa(n) > ON. kjósa
(cf. Goth. kiusan 'tempt, test; choose') ~ choose.
(Hofstra's 1985: 44–47, 177–179.)

Also the substitution of the voiced fricative 'gh' with /h/ must be
rather soon after Grimm. In saha 'saw', laho 'decayed, rot' there is
another old substitution rule from NWgmc. *a: => Fnc /a/ (short).
This substitution ceased to work when Baltic Finnic developed a long
a:, which had been non-existing since Proto-Uralic, like in
raato 'carcass' <= NWGmc bra:dho: > ON brádh.

But this whole reasoning is almost unique for the velar position.
pelto 'field' could just as well come from *feltha- or *pelta-. And
indeed it is still possible that it did came from *feltha- because it
is hard to see what other substitutions could have been possible...
(**velha??? - in very recent loans we do have f=>v at least into
western dialects, and there are isolated gmc. incidents of th => h
(murha 'murder', huopa 'felt' ~ sw. tova) but the main rules were in
any event *f=>*p and *th=>*t and it is still productive in much
younger loans.

There is also the substitution of *w => *p like in pyrkiä 'strive'~
Sw. yrka, pyhä 'holy' ~ Sw -vi, and pylväs 'column, pillar, post' ~
Sw. (h)valv 'arch, vault' so the tendency of favouring plosives is
very firmly established, especially in word-initial position (NB.
also older h1/h2/h3 => /k/).

There is another Grimm-relevant issue, which is the younger
substitution of -p/t/k- => -pp/tt/kk- contrasted with an older rule -
p/t/k- => -p/t/k- Hofstra 1985 p.149ff. It would be tempting to do
away with the older rule altogether and postulate the originals as
pre-Grimm -b/d/g-. I personally think the time is ripe for this,
considering the new datings for Grimm, and I have taken this into
account on my home page.

If the relative chronolgy of substitution rules is of particular
interest to your research the ph.d. of Tette Hofstra from 1985 is
definitely a MUST, and it's good you ordered it. In addition you
should read Petri Kallio's article on the relative chronology of
Proto-Finnic consonant developments, which is available as PDF (in
Finnish:-) ) at
http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust253/sust253.html

Jouppe