> Good ol' Glen, offhand as usual. It was my vote, actually. >Since
>multiple votes were NOT disallowed, I exercised my right to >vote for three
>options:
Offhand? I'm never offhand. If it was truely you, Piotr, I will forgive. :)
But I still am bothered by the view and don't understand where it's coming
from. And of course, you have the right to voice your opinion... as do I,
and I think a good water-splashing is in order... :)
> a.. 1. Coincidence: I'm sure it accounts for quite a few
> >similarities between U and IE.
Some yes. It depends on what items you have in mind. I hardly find the
pronouns and accusative to be a coincidence though and because of this, "a"
is not a scientific option when all evidence is laid out.
> b.. 3. Genetic relationship: I regard it as very likely >for
>this particular pair of families, mostly because of the shared
> >morphological patterns of the kind you cite in your posting.
But you voted for "coincidence" in the end? I'm confused. I was under the
impression that this vote was on "the likelihood of Uralic and IE genetic
relationship", not on what had been presented by Aikio, which even I have to
say is nothing more than satem borrowings for the most part and unflattering
for the IndoUralic hypothesis.
> c.. 5. Loanwords from IE into Uralic: I think they >account for
>MOST of the observed similarities, though not for ALL of >them.
Certainly, I can agree there. Of course we have to sift out the Satem
borrowings. However, I have to question whether some of these words are
truely borrowings. They could also be inherited words or derivative from
inherited roots.
Let's take, for example, Uralic *wet� "water" which is often dismissed as an
early borrowing from IE. Now of course, this is possible but we must also
accept that it is just as possible (if not more) that it was never borrowed
from IE *w@... at all.
Exploring the inheritance hypothesis, we see that the IE word is
transparently a derived form, from a verb *wed- to moisten. If this verb
root is ancient, it may have quite pausibly been shared by Uralic or some
early form of Uralic to produce the seperate word *wet�. The verbal root
would thus be presented bare as a noun which isn't at all odd in Uralic - we
often find verbs with only a verbal affix like *-ta (compare IE *-s aorist)
or *-ka (IE *-(s)k repetitive) used as nouns as well. This possibility of a
common verb root is much supported by the other grammatical connections that
strongly suggest a true relationship between the two families. Thus, this
should be strongly considered as an origin for *wet�.
Exploring the borrowing idea, we have more of a problem in presenting a
serious case. If it were a borrowing it must have been borrowed BEFORE
common IE to explain the ancient Uralic term which has a Nenets variant
/jid/ (from Samoyedic, the oldest branch of Uralic). The IE term *w@... is a
heteroclitic inanimate, meaning that the genitive form has *-n- instead of
the *-r- found in the nominoaccusative. My view (a derived theory based on
the view of Joachim-Alscher who has a site devoted to this idea) is that the
heteroclitic arose from a sound change rule in Pre-IE: Final *n became *r.
The unmarked nominoaccusative then turned a previous *w@... to *w@... but
the genitive failed to change because a final *n did not exist in Pre-IE
*weden-�s. Problem solved - the Glen way!
Now this means that IE *w@... was originally Pre-IE *wed�n. Why don't we
find either the Pre-IE form represented in Uralic (**wet�n) or the common IE
one (**wet�r�)?? Is it common for the final consonant to drop off in these
so-called "borrowings"? Are there other examples of this? And we still
haven't accounted for the accent problem. Wouldn't a form with an odd final
accent as in *wed�r be perceived only as **der in a language like Uralic
with INITIAL ACCENT?! And even if not, shouldn't the accent have made it
even MORE likely for the *-r (or *-n) to be mimicked by uralophones?
Of course, if we accept both the genetic theory AND the borrowing theory, we
could set up a third hypothesis. By delving deeper into the relationship
between IE and Uralic, we will inevitably discover that IE acquired a
penultimate accent from an earlier initial accent just after Etruscan went
its own way circa 4500 BCE (I've stated that IndoEtruscan had a penultimate
accent to Piotr but I appear to be in error when reviewing my stuff - it had
initial accent like Uralic). We might suppose then that a late IndoEtruscan
*w�den was borrowed around this time or a little earlier into Pre-Uralic
(and after Yukaghir had split). This would seem to be the best bet in all if
we must insist on borrowing but again there is that final *n to contend
with.
But further, how sure are we that Uralic had such a southwesterly position
at this time? Doesn't Uralic's connection with Yukaghir suggest that Uralic
was once far to the north and east above the steppe? Couldn't Finno-Ugric be
the _only_ contact IE had with "Uralic"? I don't see strong evidence of
Uralic-IE loans anyway, only FU-IIr ones. If this view is offhand, so be it
but discussion is appreciated.
- gLeN
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