Re: [tied] Re: Gimbutas

----- Original Message -----

From: Marc Verhaegen

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2000 9:39 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Gimbutas

 

As I was telling Glen, the proposition that these words are non-IE is falsifiable for individual items. For example, "east" and "west" (*aus(-t)-, *wes(-t)-) are quite evidently derived from IE *xaus- 'dawn' and *weskW-/?*wesp- 'evening' (BTW, they certainly aren't "naval" in the sense that "sail" or "mast" are). "King" (*kun-ing-a-) has been connected with *genh- (tentatively, to be sure). "Rudder" (*ro:-Tr-a-) is derived from "row" and is thus related to the IE 'oar/row' root (*Hreh-). "Ebb" is nicely relatable to *xapo- 'away from' (cf. off, after and eftsoons). Etc.

 

Piotr

 

 

Germanic does have a proportion of vocabulary which appears to be non-IE,
the origin of which is still unsure.

I read somewhere (G.Gritter 1993 "Van oerklank tot moedertaal" Kosmos
Utrecht) that words like "drink, drive, sea, soul, broad..." could have come
from the megalithic culture in S-Scandinavia (no further explanation in the
book).        Marc

About 30% of the Germanic vocabulary is of non-IE origin. Many of these non-IE words belong to distinct categories in an interesting way:

naval terms (ship, sea, keel, boat, rudder, mast, steer, sail, ebb, north, south, east, west)

war and weapons (sword, shield, helmet)

animal names, especially names of fish

titles and social relations (king, wife)

What language did these words come from? The most informative book I've found on this subject says that the Germanic peoples probably entered southern Scandinavia before 1,000 BC, where they met an unknown, non-IE-speaking people whose language had a deep influence on the development of Germanic. From the sound changes that separated early Germanic from other IE languages (Grimm's law), they have deduced that this unknown language must have been rich in fricative sounds (such as s, sh, th, zh, f, ch)  while it lacked voiced stops (b, d, g). It seems like this is about all we know.        Hakan