Re: Non-IE elements in IE languages

--- In cybalist@..., malmqvist52@... wrote:

>
>
> Thanks Mark for this:
> <The possibility that
> <the majority of the ancestors of proto-Germanic speakers had
> <replaced
> <a native non-IE language with what became Germanic is real.
>
> As I understand it other linguists also believe this. E g I read
> Östen Dahl from Stockholm:
> http://www.ling.su.se/staff/oesten/papers/Theorigin.pdf
> Eg he writes:
> "The Older Futhark inscriptions are few and in general very short.
> Many of them
> consist only of the futhark itself or of a single word, often a

name.

> Their interpretation
> is sometimes obscure; some have not been interpreted at all. The
> latter obviously
> cannot be taken as evidence for a uniform Scandinavian language ­ in
> fact, for all we
> know, their language could be non-Germanic."
>
> This is of course just a loose quote and perhaps I shouldn't review
> his article here but in the introduction he says that he will argue
> that " the Common Nordic
> hypothesis is neither plausible
> given what we know about language and language change in general

nor

> supported by the linguistic data at hand."
>
> I really think he makes his case
> very well. The difference between so called urnordic and the later
> east scandiavian languages *are* striking. So be it that the older
> uthark inscriptions are scarse and obscure in many cases, but
> nonetheless.
>
> Just as striking is the uniformity of the written East Scandinavian
> language in the beginning of the former millenium. And Dahl gives

out

> a nice theory how come.
>
> And I think Östen Dahl is soo right about this:
> "The period in which the transition from Early to Late Runic

occurred

> is a "dark"
> period with little known about linguistic or non-linguistic
> developments."
>

I think a real interesting part of Östen Dahl's paper is in 8.
Acknowlegements:
"In this paper, I have ventured into fields that are rather far from
the ones where I have been working earlier. I am grateful to a number
of people who know more than I do about these subjects and who have
gracefully tried to keep me from going too far astray: ... "
Translation: I have read Snorri and some of his recent proponents and
basically I think they are right but the people I mention have
explained to me that I should worry about jeopardizing my academic
career, so I won't say anything about Snorri and please don't
criticize me"
Anyway, what he says backs up my Odin-the-Wanderer theory nicely.

> Best wishes
> Anders

Hälsningar
Torsten