Re: Uralic Continuity Theory (was: Meaning of Aryan: now, "white peo

> > > "(...) There are however a few words in the
> > > above list where it is not possible to be certain in this way.
> > > Nothing like the Indo-Iranian word for 'bee' (No. 21) is
> > > found in any other IE language, and this makes it more likely
> > > on the whole that in this case the Indo-Iranians have adopted a
> > > Finno-ugrian word. Similar considerations apply to Nos. 22
> > > (Skt. s´u:ka-)

Uralic (Finno-Permic, if you will) *s'uka "chaff" (which BTW should be connected to Finnic *suka "bristle", not _siika_). A clear cognate, but how do we explain the IA long vowel if the word is to be from Uralic? In the opposite direction the problem doesn't exist, since long Uralic vowels are not allowed before *-a.

> > > and 23 (Skt. chá:ga-).

Mordvinic s'ava, s'eja ?? This can't go back to even proto-Mordvinic, let alone any farther.

> > > There may be further examples of Finno-ugrian words in Indo
> > > Iranian, but the matter has never been investigated from this
> > > point of view. As plausible equations we may mention :
> > >
> > > Skt. kapha- 'phlegm', Av. kafa-, Pers. kaf 'foam, scum'
> > > :
> > > Hung. háb 'foam, froth, cream', Veps. kob´e 'wave, foam', Sam.
> > > (Kam.) khòwü ' foam';

Veps and Kamass might belong together, also with Mari _kowo_, which would then make up *kopi "wave". Permic *gï possibly also belongs here.

Hungarian -b- is from *-mp- however - more specifically, it's from Ugric *kompa "wave" (Mansi _kump_) which is (not entirely regularly) compareable to West Uralic *kumpo. These roots may be related in some fashion to the previous, however.

The biggest problem I see here is that the meaning "foam" seems to be a secondary development of Veps and Hungarian.

> > > Skt. kú:pa 'pit, well'
> > > :
> > > Fi. kuoppa 'pit', Lapp guöppe, C^er. kup, Voty. gop, etc.;

Samic is analyzed as a loan from Finnish, which may be derived in some fashion from _kuopi-_ "to dig, to scrape". Phonotactically (long vowel + geminate + a-stem) this cannot be an original Uralic word. Permic and Mari might still belong together with the IA item, but then I think we can call this of equally unclear origin in both families.

> > > Skt. s´ala:ka: 'splinter, etc'
> > > :
> > > Hung. szilank 'chip, splinter', Fi. sale, 3. saleen 'id', etc.

Both probably variants of *s'äla- "to cut" (> F. säle-, H. sel-), but that seems to work equally well as an Uralic original. The meaning "splinter" is again secondary, but quite reasonable.

> > or locally borrowed, that it didn't share with the other branches,
>
> Assuming IA borrowed a word from an otherwise unknown language and then passed it on to the Uralic languages is surely less parsimonious than assuming it borrowed it from the Uralic languages.

Of course, this only works if the Uralic item is inherited. If it has numerous irregular variants (like with "wave"), origin from an unknown language is not a bad choice.

> > the close-to-Uralic Urheimat hypothesis ought to have come up
> > with more and better proof from the Uralic vocabulary.

I'm not following here. Are you questioning the location of the Uralic Urheimat?

John Vertical