[tied] Re: Interpreting some Scythian names

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

> ****GK: A quote from "Hidronimia Ukrajiny...," p.66:
> "V.P. Petrov, in a paper read in December 1965,
> advanced the thesis that the hydronyms of the river
> Ros' basin, which may be interpreted by materials of
> the contemporary Baltic languages, are not in reality
> an attestation of the spread of Baltic ethnic
> territory into the forest steppe zone up to the border
> of the steppe, but merely an indication of the lexical
> fund of the language of the local population of this
> basin in prehistoric times, a fund which partly
> disappeared in the Nadros'ja while being preserved in
> the Baltic languages. The views of V.P. Petrov are
> close to the position of V.M. Toporov on the question
> of the "Baltic" elements in the hydronymic and
> toponymic of a number of territories to the West of
> the Vistula" (with a reference to T's article in Acta
> Univ. Carol. Philol., 1966, 1-3. Slavica Pragensia,
> n.8, pp. 255-272.******
> >
>

My sympathy is not blind, I must admit, and the passage you cited is
a good illustration of what a preconceived idea can lead to. Despite
the fact the hydronymy in question _can't_ be explained through the
Slavic lexis but _can_ through the Baltic one, the two scholars (one
of them indeed being a professional linguist, though, IMHO, too often
buying his (sometimes romantic) ideas at the expense of scrupulous
analysis) nothing doubting state the people to whom the hydronymy
belongs were the Proto-Slavs (or what?) and not the Balts. That's the
logic I can't understand. Can you? And could you provide me with the
information on what argumentation Petrov used to 'advance the thesis'?

Sergei