Re: [tied] Uralic and PIE/Danube

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 10562
Date: 2001-10-23

Steve:
>I don't know how far back we are going here, but there is evidence
>that would suggest a borrowing of a lexicon group from PIE into
>Uralic just about the time Danubian culture would have come into
>contact with pre-dispersal Uralic speakers.

You mean that it is *assumed* that these are loans. Unfortunately
for you, there is always the equal (if not greater) possibility
that these "loans" could be "cognates" or "red herrings" instead.

>proto-U *pel(x)i- 'fear' < proto-IE *pelH- 'grau, fahl; schreckig'

How do we substantiate the supposed Uralic *-x-?

>p-U *toxi- 'bring, give, sell' < p-IE *doH- 'give'

This verb is also present in Yukaghir (/taa-/, if I recall)...
and since Yukaghir is *not* a Uralic language but a language
deemed to be part of a larger Uralic-Yukaghir grouping mentioned
in the Enc.Britt, you will have to throw this particular etymon
away. Here's another interpretation:

ProtoSteppe *t:uxi
Boreal *tuxi
UralicYukaghir *tuxi
Uralic *towi-
Yukaghir /taa-/
IndoTyrrhenian *t:�xW�
IndoEuropean *dexW- (*deH3-)
Tyrrhenian *t:ou-c- (Etruscan /tur/)

>p-U *koki- 'see, find' < p-IE *Hokw- 'see'

Possible only if PIE *[h.] (*H2) correlates with Uralic *k...
but then, why would it if Uralic supposedly already has *x, as
in *toxi-?? Why not **xoki-?? (And Uralic probably doesn't have
such a phoneme anyways, which makes this discussion almost
crazytalk).

>p-U *kulki- 'move, flow, walk' < p-IE *kwelH- 'drehen, sich drehen usw.'

I'm sure you mean the thematically extended root *kWel-e-. Quite
impossible, I'm afraid. Now we have the following messy proposal:

*?- (*H1-) => *k
*-h- (*-H1-) => *x
*x (*H2) => *k

Am I the only one that sees the looseness of these equations?
It's almost paradoxical.

>p-U *mos�ki- 'wash' < p-IE *mozg(-eye)- 'untertauchen'

What branches does *mozg- survive in?

>p-U *s�alkaw- 'pole, rod' < p-IE *g�halgho- id.

Um, might I ask why this looks like a *satem* loan? We already
know that loans were exchanged between IndoIranian and FinnoUgric
around the third millenium BCE. I suspect your "Uralic" word
*s^alkaw- is in fact FinnoUgric (What is the evidence in
Samoyedic?). If Samoyedic attestation exists, we cannot claim this
word to be a loan due to the unexpected early satemisation that
never was. In the archives, you'll find Piotr's posts on
satemisation and his reasons for why satemisation occured rather
late and swiftly.

Secondly, where is *gh^algho- from?

>p-U *weti- 'water' < p-IE *wed- id.

You mean Uralic *wete. No go. The word in IE is *wodr with the
suffix *-r and there is no trace of **-r in the Uralic word.
Most probably, these words suggest an earlier verb, Proto-Steppe
*wit:- "to moisten". There's nothing to suggest that *wete is
a foreign word.

>Because the terminus (last unity) of P-U is most often dated from
>no later than 5000 BC (e.g., Hajdu 1975),

That's funny. I could swear 4000 BCE for Uralic and 5000 BCE for
Uralic-Yukaghir.

- love gLeN


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp