Re: oldest places- and watername in Scandinavia

From: tgpedersen
Message: 61494
Date: 2008-11-09

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> At 6:22:20 PM on Saturday, November 8, 2008, tgpedersen
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > It is also known that no Germanic word could have begun a
> > p-, or be of the form TVT where T is any unvoiced stop (p,
> > t, k, kW) and V is a vowel.
>
> Ringe offers two possible counterexamples to that last
> assertion. One is PGmc. *kWikWaz 'alive' (ON <kvikr>, OE
> <cwic>) < *kWikwós < PIE *gWih3wós by hardening of *h3 to *k
> by Cowgill's law (*h23 > *k/R_w). The other is PGmc. *te:k-
> ~ *tak- (Goth. <tekan> 'to touch', ON <taka> 'to take'),
> which nicely matches Toch. B <täk-> 'touch, feel with the
> hand; fetch, procure'). In _From Proto-Indo-European to
> Proto-Germanic_ he derives these from post-PIE *deh1g- ~
> *dh1g- 'touch'; from Adams' _Dictionary of Tocharian B_ I
> gather that Ringe has previously attributed the Gmc.-Toch.
> match to borrowing in a direction that can't be determined.

That was two forms his proposal nailed. I wonder what he'll do with
the rest of this mess:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/55736
starting at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/55719

> > Words of that form, of which some but not all are common
> > to both West and North Germanic are therefore words of a
> > substratum in North and West Germanic.
>
> Or early (but post-Grimm) borrowings from Latin (probably
> *punda 'pound', *katilaz 'kettle', the *kaup- family), or
> the pre-Grimm borrowing *paido: 'cloak' (cf. Gk. <baíte:> 'a
> shepherd's cloak') from some eastern language.

Yes, I should have restricted myself to saying that those words are of
non-Germanic origin and not pointed out a particular substrate for them.


Torsten