[tied] Re: Skiri Bastarnae

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., tgpedersen@... wrote:
> > 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).
>
> Trade pidgins (and creoles arising from them) don't inherit the
> inflection and morphology of their "source languages". If Germanic
> had passed through a pidgin stage, no trace of PIE case or person
> endings would have survived, let alone complex morphophonological
> patterns like ablaut. Such things develop from scratch in creole
> languages, as e.g. in Tok Pisin:
>
> Pik bilong dispela man i kam pinis [PIG BELONG THIS-FELLOW MAN HE
> COME FINISH] 'This man's pig has come',
>
> ... or Sranan:
>
> Me teki fisi seri [ME TAKE FISH SELL] 'I sold fish'.
>

> All the words are English, but the grammar has nothing to do with
> English. This is what documented creoles look like.

Unless you consider eg. English (and the other "North Sea Germanic
languages") to be Creole.

> > Both Jordanes and Procopius claim Goths were of Getic descent.
>
> The lure of "similar-sounding".

I am now in the unhappy predicament of having to choose one source
over the other on the descent of the Goths: Jordanes and Procopius,
having met Goths, being perhaps of Gothic descent, and even having to
deal with them on a daily basis, and Piotr Gãsiorowski, acute-minded
linguist, writing 1600 years later. Which should I choose? I once
someone who studied history. She told me the subject of methodology
was the hardest.
Yes, the lure of "similar-sounding". Where would we all on this be
without it?

>
> > As for the derivation *got- > *get-, it looks just like umlaut
> (from *-isk-) and then unrounding, doesn't it? [...] Therefore (ta-
> dah!) I proclaim Pedersen's first law: There was Umlaut in Getic
> (that oughta shut Glen up;-)).
>
> Do you have *-isk- in <getae>? Is there anything like *<getisk->
> attested anywhere? Laws are based on credible examples, not on
> wishful thinking.

Would I be thinking wishfully, if I assumed the (Pre-)Goths, Getae
(or whoever) called their language *got-isk- ?

> Piotr

Torsten