Re: Uralic

Tommy Tyrberg wrote in reply to the post

> >One thing worth noting is that dates have gone back conciderably. The
> >Uralic expansion (for whatever reason it happened) may have been

earlier

> >than the IE one. Some descendant of proto-U (which would later evolve
> >into Finnic and Saamic) was spoken in the Baltic Sea / Scandinavia

area

> >already 3200 bc, when the Indo-European battle axe culture arrived in
> >southwestern Finland. There are some Finnic-Saamic loan words with

proto-IE

> >characteristics (e.g., laryngal reflexes) which are probably

connected

> >with the battle axe culture, such as Finnic-Saamic *kas´a- 'tip,

end'

> >IE *Hak´-, *suki- 'family, kin' < IE *suH-. These words are unknown

in U

> >languages outside the Baltic Sea / Scandianavian area. There are also
> >independent proto-IE loans in Saamic (e.g. *s´uki- 'sharpen' IE

*k´uH-

> >'pointed, sharp'), which possibly points towards a very early IE /
> >pre-Saamic contact zone in mid-Scandinavia. At any rate, a uniform
> >proto-U language cannot be assumed to have existed after 4000 bc,

and

> >4500-5000 bc seems more likely. I am not sure how this correlates

with IE

> >dates - is 4000-5000 bc too early a date for proto-IE?
>
> I agree with most of the things said in this post, however the very

early

> arrival of Finnic/Saamic in Scandinavia suggested above seems

impossible

> since there is also a number of specifically indoiranian loanwords in
> Finnic and Saamic which can hardly be as old as 3200 bc, and which

must

> have been picked up somewhere north of the Black Sea. Saamic also has

a

> considerable number of Baltic (or possibly Balto-Slavic) loanwords

which

> are also rather unlikely to have been acquired in northern

Scandinavia. It

> seems more likely that the PIE loan-words unique to Finnic and/or

Saamic

> have simply been lost in other U languages (as there is at least one
> Baltic loanword that is unique to South Saamic, the dialect spoken in

the

> far south-west of the Saamic area).
> Note also that most saamic words related to the sea and sea animals

are

> loans from Protogermanic, not PIE.

Could these Indo-iranian loan words have come into Finno-Saami with the
introduction of Reindeer herding from across the Urals a fair while
after the contact with Balts and Germans. Certainly reindeer herding
is supposedly adopted first by Samoyeds in contact with Indo-iranians,
who coppied their use of the horse. This spread of technology could
probably spread Iranian loan words that could have entered Samoyed
languages, especially if associated with reindeer herding technology.

Has there been any research on this Tommy?

Regards

John