dive (was Re: Sos-)

> > > > > *sá:-/*sák-/*sáp-/*sank´-/*samp´-
> > > > > *sú:-/*súk-/*súp-/*sunk´-/*sump´-
> > > > >
> > > > > which would solve the 'Suomi' mystery
> >
> > > > Several possible etymologies exist, there's no need to posit a
> > > > yet another one
> > >
> > > You don't really want me to comment on that, do you?
> >
> > Why wouldn't I?
>
> Because it is difficult to do without making you look like a fool.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. My point is that you appear to be turning a situation of "we don't have an accepted etymology for _Suomi_ (because there are several contesting possibilities)" into "we don't have an accepted etymology (we have no idea where it could have come from)".

Otherwise, I don't understand what you would mean by "solving the mystery". It's not a mystery, it's a regular old dispute.

What are you exactly proposing as the answer, anyway? The long vowel items here can only explain the _suo_ part.

> > If we have X number of fairly plausible etymologies, adding one
> > that seems less plausible is not progress.
>
> That's not what you just said, you added a new and subjective premise. Why are you cheating on the scale?

I would've thought that me considering anything based on your substrate alternations not a plausible explanation was implicitly quite well estabilish'd by now.

> > > > (at least one involving all sorts of hypothetical forms).
> > >
> > > Reconstructions are hypothesis. I thought you knew?
> >
> > Reconstructions within extant families are one layer of
> > hypothesis.
> > I'm referring to the substratal layer you're proposing underneath
> > it, which does not appear to be a reconstruction in the
> > comparativ sense.
>
> What exactly about it is it you object to?

My prime issue is that the involved soundlaws do not appear to be based on regular correspondences, but on a very limited set of attested words and thus they're fairly ad hoc.

I was writing some stuff on methodology of dealing with unconditional changes, but it started getting long and rambling - that issue may deserve a separate topic...

> > > If you are asking for which forms it purports to explain
> >
> > Yes, that's exactly it.
> >
> > > look at 'sump' here:
> > > http://runeberg.org/svetym/0995.html
> >
> > I don't see a need to assume any velar variants if that's all we
> > are explaining.
>
> There are all the "suck" words here:
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62677

Semantically quite well-limited. I wouldn't consider this to be from the same root. I see the resemblance to Uralic "mouth" tho.

> There is the "sink" stuff:
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/43771
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/43779

*saiwa does not appear to be linkable - referring to clear, not muddy, water and containing the difthong -ai-.

I can propose _säng_ to come from Uralic *s´äNki- "to cut". The Baltic Finnic direct descendant *säNki primarily means "stubble". A later development of sense is "a patch of field or garden", in which sense it would have been loan'd into Scandinavian (my etymological dictionary tells this is attested, oh and so does Lars). From there "bed" would be a Scandinavian-specific development (cf. "a bed of roses"), with a backloan to Finnic. (This has mostly replaced the older word for "bed", seen in F. vuode, Liv. uodil´d.)

So _säng_ would have no etymological connection to _sink_ etc. The existence of that could have contributed to the semantic evolution however.

> > > The alternative is that both loaned from an unrelated
> > > substrate, ie the ar-/ur- etc language.
> >
> > False dichotomy. I'm going with the default alternativ of
> > "unrelated".
>
> Which entails that PIE had
> 1. bagn- "swamp"
> 2. pan- "swamp"
> Are you sure that holds up?

Why not? You've seen it's quite possible for a language to simultaneously have words such as _deep_, _dive_, _dip_ and so on.

There's no law that states that proto-languages have to have been some sort of pristine creations free of irregularities, lexical substrates and so on forth. The available methods of reconstruction probably make them usually seem more regular they actually were.

Oh and you're now going into a false trichotomy. If unrelated, these do not have to come from PIE; one or both can be loans from unrelated substrates, or even from a common substrate but unrelated within that too.

> > > > > 1 pin´: (Sal. pinli), pl. pi`n´n´&^D (neu: sùomli, pl. -st)
> > > > > finne (finnländer);
> > > > > s. pin´-mo:, pi`n´n´&^mìez.
> > > >
> > > > Transparently a loan from _Finn_. This provides no new
> > > > insight.

> > Another thing is that this word only occurs in Livonian.
>
> What would that prove?

Livonian was only incompletely documented, while Finnish and Estonian dialects are documented in exceeding detail. If the word still only occurs in Livonian (out of all Uralic languages), we can be rather sure it's not inherited from Proto-Finnic, ie. it's of later loan origin.

> > > Okay, so there is a/u alternation in Komi and Udmurt, under
> > > some conditions.
> >
> > Um no, I said there's a development u > ï in Udmurt in some words
> > in some dialects (no alternation, no /a/, and not in Komi).
>
> Sorry, I was being imprecise: there is an alternation a/u within
> Uralic
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62618

I see reference to no such thing in this link. It's all explainable from a root of a shape such as *sa:la.

> > > > Connecting this to "salt" has semantical problems, /ï/; long
> > > > *a: regularly > *o: in Finnic.
> > >
> > > Don't try connecting them in Finnic then.
> >
> > You managed to mess my quote somehow. That vowel part went with
> > the previous section.
>
> ???

Cf. the original, you'll see.
We'll find out which was the intended part depending on your reply to the next:

> > The semantic gap between "island" and "salt" does not seem any
> > smaller in other languages.
>
> The semantic gap between "island" and "salt" is the same in all languages since it is a semantic gap.

And so I think "in Finnic" is redundant in "don't try connecting them in Finnic".

> > > The a/u-alternation I am referring to is that of the ar-/ur-
> > > language; I suspect it arises from denasalization of a nasal
> > > vowel -aN- (cf. -aN- > -u- in Russian).
> >
> > That has no relation to denasalization; it's a~: > o~: > o: >
> > u: > u, plain old long vowel raising.
>
> OK, so aN >> (o: >) u:.
> The alternation is also manifested as a/o:, BTW.

Which alternation, and where?

> > > which means there must have been a word or morpheme boundary
> > > after the -ar-'s and -ur-'s Kuhn found in river names etc.
> >
> > So you've now turn'd an apparent ar/ur alternation into a
> > hypothetized aN/uN alternation. What did this accomplish, other
> > than the addition of some extra assumptions?
>
> It gives me an alternative way to explain the prenasalized forms.
>
> Torsten

The prenasalized forms that have -Nk/-mp and do not alternate with a rhotic?

I see no evidence that the vowel alternation has to be link'd to nasality. You could just as well assume let's say incomplete rhotic coloring ur > ar, and an incomplete change r > n (> m / _p, etc). Or ablaut that's independant of consonantal context. Or varying reflexes of an *o. Or umlaut of some sort. Or reduction + lowering of a short counterpart of *u. Or loss of a "laryngeal" that sometimes leaves coloring. Or any of a zillion other mecanisms that are possible but not really reflected in the data.

John Vertical