Re: V-, B-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > > > > The notion that Indo-Iranian-speakers inhabited pre-Celtic
> > > > > Britain might be jarring to some; hopefully stiff upper
> > > > > lips can be kept.
> > > >
> > > > I don't think a-vocalism alone is enough to characterize
> > > > Alteuropäisch as Indo-Iranian. On might imagine early IE
> > > > dialects in Europe not having undergone ablauting (*a > e, o,
> > > > zero), or gone ablauting > de-ablauting like Indo-Iranian.
> > > > Note that the Vandals (with non-ablauted /a/) at the mouth of
> > > > the Oder (cf.
> > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineta
> > > > ) are connected archaeologically with Vend-syssel (with
> > > > ablauted /e/)
> > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendsyssel
> > > > and that the Langobardi, when they lived west of the Elbe
> > > > were called Vinnili (with Germanic *-en- > *-in-, from
> > > > ablauted /e/). From that it seems ablauting was dialectal in
> > > > Alteuropäisch/Venetic.
> > >
> > > Who gave the Vandals their name?
> >
> > I don't think there's any indication it's an exonym.
>
> They lived near Sarmatia, so if their name is indeed equivalent to
> Venelli or Venetuli (i.e. 'Little Veneti', separated from the
> rest), it could be an Iranian deformation, with /a/ substituted for
> */e/.
>
> On the other hand the British Damnii had a town called Vandogara or
> Vanduaria (now Paisley), so perhaps the Vandali are based on a
> different root, e.g. *wendh- 'to turn'. If we cannot be certain
> about their name, we cannot blithely assume that the Vandali were
> Veneti who merged */e/ (and presumably */o/) with /a/.

I will blithely assume the possibility you don't mention, namely that
some early IE dialects did not ablaut PPIE *a to (PIE) *e.

> > > They spoke an East Germanic language, so they were not
> > > LINGUISTICALLY Veneti,
> >
> > Nope. The only reason their language, of which we know nothing, is
> > classed as East Germanic, is that they lived in the eastern part
> > of the later Germania. One thing we do know, however, is that
> > their archaeological culture, that of the Lugii, is different
> > from the Przeworsk one, but similar to that in Vendsyssel etc. I
> > think that at least

as long

> > as the two cultures can be discerned as separate, they were
> > Venetic-speaking.
>
> Perhaps, but since they failed to write their names on their pots,
> we cannot know what language they cursed in when they dropped one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalic_language
'Very little is known about the Vandalic language beyond that it was
East Germanic, closely related to Gothic. A small number of personal
names of Vandalic origin in Spanish are known.'
It's obvious from the list of kings in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandal
starting with Wisimar (? - † 335), that they must have been
Germanic-speaking at the latest from the fourth cent CE. But in the
third cent CE, at least their kings had non-Germanic names (Raus and
Rapt).

> > > just as the Slavic Wends of Lusatia were not.
> >
> > They were too. I think the Slav languages expanded westwards with
> > the Ariovistus campaign.
>
> MUCH too early. Before the Huns, the Slavs were not likely to have
> enlisted in foreign armies.

The 500's as the time the Slavs expanded is actually a terminus ante
quem. There isn't anything archaeological to back it up. Also, there
are problems of how to fit in the Prague culture. Summed up in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs
In Joz^ef S^avli/Matej Bor: Unsere Vorfahren die Veneter (review of
the English translation here:
http://tinyurl.com/6jn43n )
a book nice linguists shouldn't read, the authors supply a number of
interpretations of place names in Switzerland and Austria from
Slovenian (mainly related to Alpine toponomy and agriculture), which
they call a demonstration that the previous inhabitants of the area,
the Veneti, were Slavic. Two other interpretations come to mind: the
Slovenian words in question are from a Venetic substrate, and 2) The
Charudes/Chrvati/Croats once colonized the area after the Ariovistus
debacle. I can't decide which on my rudimentary knowledge of Slavic.

> The great westward expansion of Slavs
> got going 50 or 100 years after the depopulation of the
> Restgermanen (which in my opinion points to a great plague, ignored
> by Byzantine historians since it occurred far inside barbarian
> lands; I cannot fathom ALL East Germanic peoples abandoning
> perfectly good lands).

Think Attila. As good a plague as any. But I think thatr population
was already mixed Germanic/Slavic, and that the 'Germanic' or 'Slavic'
nature of the area was a question of politics and demographics. Think
Eastern Germany or Austria/Hungary before and after WWI: hardly any
ethnic, but abrupt political change.


Torsten