Re: [tied] Re: Non-IE elements in Scandinavian

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

From: João Simões Lopes Filho

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 4:14 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Non-IE elements in Scandinavian

I doubt if you can infer much about the pre-Germanic substratum from such vague clues.

The following problems arise:

 

(1) The changes you mention are recent and not restricted to Scandinavian Germanic. For example, umlauted vowels did not become established as "new phonemes" until pretty late: they are missing in Gothic and in Common Nordic, and are not yet reflected in Old High German orthography (except for e < umlauted *a). In Old English, palatal umlaut must have occurred more recently than the palatalisation of velars before front vowels (which is why velars are retained in words like keep < ke:pan < kö:pan < *ko:pjan- or king < kyning < kuningaz). Palatal umlaut affected North and West Germanic alike. If it had been due to a pre-Germanic substratum, it would surely have been implemented when Proto-Germanic was forming in its homeland, not centuries later during the time when the Germanic languages were spreading over much of Europe.

 

(2) Changes in the system of phonemes may be brought about by any number of factors, internal or external, besides substrate influence. If you applied the same logic to the development of English, you would have to conclude that SE England was once inhabited by pre-English aboriginal people who were unable to pronounce final and preconsonantal /r/'s and who had no /h/ in their phonemic inventory. It seems they also vocalised their /l/'s in certain environments, and furthermore, as they were evidently fond of producing glottal stops, their language must have had a series of ejective consonants.

 

Piotr

 

 

Joao writes:

 

A clue for Pre-Germanic people from Scandinavia could be the phonetic shifts
from Proto-Germanic to Nordic.
What phonemes were lost? What phonemes were added?
PG (Proto-Germanic) didn't have vowels o"(oe), u"(y) (French u), but Nordic
got them. So, I presume Pre-Nordic people had these sounds. Nordic didn't
have Z (voiced sibilant), and didn't have X (German ch, Spanish j).