--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@>
wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
>
> In what sense are those words Uralic hydronyms? Do they mean
> "wetness"? I can accept a word for "river" like 'Avon' being loaned,
> but not words for general humidity.
>
> Torsten
>
> =======
>
> They apply to rivers,
> they are etymologizable from either Uralic *el or *sos "wet"
> (German nass) they have a first component which is also Uralic
>
> Example :
> pykejn-ses' a river flowing into the Bajicha in the Turuchan
> water-basin.
> This should be somewhere near Krasnoyarsk.
> A Kamass-samoyed word : hawk-wet, not explainable from Yeniseic.
>
> Another one :
> en-Roj-Ces : tall-birch-wet (Ugric)
>
> Or
> keäN-ses : mountain-wet (Selqup)
>
> or just :
> jelok "Jeloguj River" : OStyak Vassjugan : "wet" and that's it.
>
> Whatever theory about hydronyms you have will have to take that
> into account.
>
> And this word most probably has been borrowed into Yeniseic where
> it is used to create Yeniseic hydronyms.
> Which causes a very huge mess if one is looking for Yeniseic
> homeland using that word (in fact a word and a LW that looks the
> same !) because this area is now stretching for the Volga to
> Mongolia !
Some informative maps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Asia_200bc.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ob_watershed.png
Pulleyblank
The Consonantal System of Old Chinese
has some phonetic information about the Hsiung-nu language
(pp 139-140):
'In support of the hypothesis of labials in this series we may note
the probable connection of .. M. hyon, "breast" with Tibetan bran´
(Simon 1929, p. 172). This would indicate *fl- rather than *f-
probably .., .. should be reconstructed as *fo:n, and the subseries of
.. (.. .. ..) was distinguished by the presence of medial -l-. We have
noted above that *fl could give either *h or *t.h. This reconstruction
is further supported by the probable equation of the name of the
Hsiung-nu . .. M. hyon,-nou < *flo:n,-nah^ with the Phrou~noi of
Apollodorus (Haloun 1937, p. 306, n. 1). As Haloun says, "Die
sachliche Identität ist m. E. unabweisbar". This equation does not
exclude the possibility of connecting the name of the Hsiung-nu with
the Hu:n.a of India and the Khou~noi, O´u~noi, Hunni of western
writers as has sometimes been thought. There is reason to think that
there may have been a simplification of the initial in the Hsiung-nu
language pari passu with the simplification in Chinese, and perhaps
under similar influence, that of neighbouring Altaic languages in
which initial clusters were excluded. Haloun perspicaciously thought
that the Grounai~oi Skúthai of Ptolemy might represent a more recent
linguistic stage of the name Phrou~noi. We might further compare the
name Garinai~oi which appears in Ptolemy for a people occupying the
Hsiung-nu territory in Mongolia. The Grounai~oi Skúthai, placed in
Transoxania, would represent a western offshoot, possibly the remnants
of Chih-chih's following who set themselves up on the Talas River
around 50 B.C. (Dubs 1957, p. 6 ff.).
This view is greatly strengthened by the earlier and later
transcriptions of the clan name of the Hsiung-nu ruler: .. .. M.
lywen-tei < *vla:n- (or *vlo:n-)teh^ (Honshu 94A, p. 0595.4) and .. ..
.. M. hyo-lyen-dei (Hou Honshu 119, p. 0907.1). The later
transcription would indicate that the original labial fricative in
Hsiung-nu had become a laryngal or velar fricative. Presumably this is
indicated also by Greek gamma-. A still later loss of -r- would give
us the Sogdian xwn of the early fourth-century letters (Henning 1948,
p. 615). [All Chinese character have been replaced by '..')
'
So, there were initial clusters in proto-Yeniseian?
Could that explain the s/t/l alternation of Yeniseian and Ostyak?
Did Uralic then once have initial clusters too once?
Initial consonant clusters were reduced in Chinese, were they reduced
also in Proto-Yeniseian, Proto-Uralic and Proto-Altaic, under Chinese
influence?
BTW, why were the Yeniseians so long called Yenisei Ostyak? Were they
that difficult to tell apart?
More here:
http://tinyurl.com/b2wl8q
Torsten