Re: Uralic

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1327
Date: 2000-02-02

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 5:10 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Uralic

Glen:

... Here, Ante has supplied the following etyma which I have split into seperate 
categories:

1. IndoIranian-FinnoUgric loans (my IIr reconstruction is approximate
   due to ignorance of the precise forms, beg pardon)

  *koki- 'see, find'          IIr *hok- < *hwekw- (*Hokw- 'see')
  *kulki- 'move, flow, walk'  IIr *kelh- < *kwelH-
  *mos´ki- 'wash'             IIr *mozg- < *mozg(-eye)-
  *s´alkaw- 'pole, rod'       IIr *ghalgho-
Note that the vowels imply a historical stage when IIr still had different non-high vowels (before *e, *o, *a fell together as *a). This means either an extremely archaic form of IIr, or something still older ("Proto-Satemic?" -- the loss of labialisation in kW etc. and the replacement of *k etc. with FU *affricates [> fricatives] might justify such an interpretation). On the other hand, an IIr with laryngeals isn't problematic at all. Brugmann's law virtually proves that IIr still had them, and the IIr aspiration of voiceless stops next to a historical laryngeal supports this view.
 
Some Finns have suggested (quite plausibly from the LINGUISTIC point of view), that the words Suomi and Saami derive from the IE "earth" word (*gho:m) in such a primitive satemising dialect (of course assuming that some IEs did reach Fennoscandia about 3000 BC).
 
By contrast, it's clear for all to see that the word for 100 is a younger borrowing from Iranian (SPECIFICALLY Iranian, not IIr).
 
Piotr