Re: Afro-Asiatic substrate

From: mytoyneighborhood
Message: 64431
Date: 2009-07-26

Thanks Torsten. I believe like Germanic Hellenic also has somewhere around 30%? I wonder if that could imply that there were fewer IE speakers of pre-Hellenic and pre-Germanic that migrated to their respective areas and a higher proportion of non-IE speakers than among other IE groups. I believe the non-IE Hellenic element is believed to be either Pelasgian (possibly an Eteo-Cretan language?) or Anatolian, and I've only seen Afro-Asiatic, Uralic or Basque proposed as substrates for Germanic.

-Michael

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mytoyneighborhood" <mytoyneighborhood@> wrote:
> >
> > So, the question remains, is there an identifiable non-IE lexicon
> > within Germanic like there is in Hellenic?
> >
>
> Since you can't identify something as something you don't know what is, that should be two questions:
>
> 1) Is there a lexicon not identifiable as IE within Germanic?
>
> 2) Is that lexicon identifiable as belonging to any known language group?
>
>
> ad 1) Yes. The attempts to explain the remainder traditionally set at 30% I've seen don't convince me.
>
> ad 2) Yes. Some etymologies I've seen convinced me.
>
> But in the end it depends on the jury and the jury is you.
>
>
> Torsten
>