From: Tavi
Message: 70940
Date: 2013-02-14
>In my opinion, both Latin and Scandinavian are substrate loanwords related to Semitic *GVrVb- 'crow, raven', with syncope in the second syllable. The latter could be in turn linked to *Garb- 'sunset, evening' < Afrasian *Garub- 'darkness' (HSED 1008) , thus reflecting the color of the bird. As in the case of other lexical correspondences relative to names of animals (not only birds), the source language(s) must have been spoken in Neolithic Europe.
> Background: I've been exploring some evidence for a possible unknown Uralic substrate in Finnic. One feature of this hypothetical substrate would be *w > pp after a liquid, e.g. _kärppä_ "stoat" vs. PU *käDwä "weasel".
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> One of the words of this shape in Finnish is _korppi_ "raven". This is normally analyzed as a loan from Scandinavian _korp_, and I see no obsctacle to this - this replaced the common Finnic word for the bird, *karnV, which is probably inherited Uralic. I however believe the Sc. word does not have a credible IE etymology (after all, k-p makes the very premise suspicious).
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> So, the question is: can an IE original such as *korwV be reconstructed, which would allow a loaning into Scandinavian from the hypothetical substrate? Latin _corvus_ suggests something along these lines. I see this has been compared with Lithuanian _karvelis_ "dove", but the semantic difference is a bit wide here, I think.
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