Re: oldest places- and watername in Scandinavia

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2008-11-09 21:19, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > It just occurred to me that 'take' is a class VI verb, so I will
> > now put it in the 'loans from Venetic' box,
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/61076
> > <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/61076>
> > if that's okay with everybody.
> > Any objections? No, I didn't think so.
>
> Poor Venetic-speakers, all of them dead and unable to protest. So
> far you haven't shown that _any_ Class VI verb occurs in Venetic,
> but you have no qualms about making them _all_ Venetic.

That claim is impossible to fulfill. The corpus of Venetic
inscriptions basically contains a few verbs of sacrificing and
donating, as you very well know. Instead I have another criterion I'd
like them to fulfill: present stem in -a- in both Germanic and Latin.

> Phenomenal cheek.

That's me alright.

> Actually, many of those verbs are easy to explain. Most obviously,
> those with an initial *a- < *h2a- (*aka-, *ala-, *ana-) had
> preterites in *o:- for the very simple reason that their past tense
> reflects the original perfect stem:
>
> *h2a-h2ol-, *h2a-h2l- > *o:l-, etc.

Very simple. That was three verbs.

> As regards the rest, various ideas have been pur forward by
> Jasanoff, Ringe and others.

So it's a class of composite origin?

> If you choose to ignore all of them in favour of a just-so story

Why not 'just-so'?

> about a "non-ablauting a-language", be my guest, but don't
> expect to be taken seriously.

That's okay with me. Actually, when people begin to take me seriously,
I get uncomfortable.


Torsten