--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., "Rex H. McTyeire" <rexbo@...> wrote:
>
> > I am reasonably certain that if
> > Thracian existed as a language, then most people who carried the
> Getae
> > label: spoke it. (And only slightly less certain that it was the
> same
> > dialect of Thracian as Daci.)
>
> Onomastic evidence (plus whatever lexical evidence can be salvaged
> from fragmentary inscriptions and substratal data) shows that
> Getic/Dacian and Thracian were distinct languages with different
> vocabularies and place-naming pattrens, and with divergent sound
> changes. The degree to which they may have been related is hard to
> determine (as is the exact position of Moesian). Both were Satem
> languages, at any rate.
>
>
> > I don't know the standard arguments against a Getae / Goth link;
> but
> > the following are some of mine:
> > [...]
> > 3. The G in Getae is soft locally, resulting in Jettae and Jetto
(in
> > Geto-Daci), while the G in Goth (Goti, locally pronounced: Gots)
is
> > hard.
>
>
> This is not a valid argument, since Latin /g/ was palatalised
before
> front vowels in *post-Classical* times in most Romance dialects;
the
> modern "local" pronunciation is therefore irrelevant. What's more
> important is the vowel difference (/o/ = Germanic *u
in "Goths", /e/
> in "Getae"). There is no plausible way to derive anything like
*geta-
> from *gut-o:n-. A comparison based solely on the similarity of
> consonant patterns has no value.
>
> Anyway, the Getae were mentioned in Roman sources before the Goths
> began to expand towards the Black Sea.
>
> Piotr
The reason I brought it up, was that I wanted to see if Snorri could
be used in a reconstruction of what happened in the the early history
of the Germanic languages. The argument I knew against a possible
identity Goths = Getae was the language: the Getae spoke a satem-
language, Germanic > Gothic definitely isn't. But: if Snorri was
right, that "Odin" ruled over twelve peoples, of which some with
several languages, then that objection falls. If furthermore Germanic
branched somewhere around 200 BCE-0 CE, it might have come into
existence at that time (I think that Germanic in its origin was a
trade pidgin, which developped into a creole, therefore it makes
sense to talk of a time of creation of that language). If it did, it
would not have spread beyond the market area (= Galicia?) before
migration of those traders caused it to be used elsewhere
(e.g. "Germania", in the Roman sense, and Scandinavia). This raises
the question of what language these people spoke before. Getae might
then have been one of the tribes of that nation (Sprachbund? One
homesite I've seen claims certain double forms of Crimean Gothic
points to it having suffixed articles, like the Balkan Sprachbund and
(aha!) North Germanic (except West Jutland)).
Both Jordanes and Procopius claim Goths were of Getic descent.
As for the derivation *got- > *get-, it looks just like umlaut (from
*-isk-) and then unrounding, doesn't it? Problem is, umlaut isn't
documented in Germanic before AngloSaxon and Old High German, several
hundred years later. Still, some have argued, for it to be in all
branches of Germanic, it must have been present in Proto-Germanic,
using the excuse that no one had bothered to invent a written
representation for it (to the other then written languages, the
process was unknown), since the following -i- that caused it, was
still there and thus the umlaut variants were not independent
phonemes (no minimal pairs existed). But, of course, there would then
be evidence of at least a:e in name material in classical sources.
Therefore (ta-dah!) I proclaim Pedersen's first law: There was Umlaut
in Getic (that oughta shut Glen up;-)).
The question is whether the date presently set for the Gothic
expansion from south of the Baltic is only a terminus ante quem?
Jordanes says approx. 1500 BCE (the 2030 years of Gothic history),
but everybody agrees this is ludicrous. But what if one of the
arguments against Jordanes is the recent origin of the Germanic
languages? Would they then first have been known as Getae and then
Goths?
Torsten