--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 1:08 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Torun´
>
>
> > So it is! I kept looking for 'Thurn', not 'Thorn'. Given German
<Turm>, Dutch <toren> (Da. <tårn>) I was surprised to learn that the
knights spoke platt.
>
> Why not? Torun' was a member of the Hansa from the very beginning,
and Low Saxon was the Hanseatic lingua franca.
Yes, I know. My brother had some correspondance with their archives
in Mal/bork (Marienburg) after he found a little known eyewitness
account in Low German of the peasant's revolt from the Hanse Kontor
in London. Now there's a nice feeding niche for anyone doing
historical research, not many of those that study English history
know Plattdeutsch. Which reminds me: England was the only place where
the Hansa sent out its own agents to buy goods (in this case wool) in
stead of relying on go-betweens. Perhaps someone ought to study the
impact on English of Low German (especially Low German as a
simplified trade language (or creole?) for the Hansa).
What puzzled me was that the German knights (not the Hansa) would use
Low German. As you know, all of German Prussia showed only High
German.
>
> > Might we infer something about the timing of the first Germanic
sound shift (Grimm),
> ie. between 50 BCE and 531 CE? Of course the Tungri might have been
Celticized after having been defeated, and þ- > t- is known eg. from
the continental Scandinavian languages. But on the other hand no
Roman author writes **Thungri?
>
> 50 BC (or later) is definitely too late for Grimm's Law. Tribal and
personal names recorded about the beginning of the common era show
its operation without a shadow of a doubt.
>
Beginning of the common era? That leaves room exactly between 50BCE
and 0. Interesting. Do you have evidence of Grimm operating before 0?
> > ... But wasn't there a suggestion once that Verner came before
Grimm, ie in this case first -t- > -d- (and then, by Grimm > -ð-)?
>
> But Grimm's Law changes *d into /t/, not into /ð/. Grimm's and
Verner's Laws, however, are in a "feeding" order, so you can't get
the right results by reversing them. Remember that Verner's law is
essentially fricative voicing (affecting also *s). If you propose
that *t > *dH in a revised version of Verner's Law (and then *dH >
ð~d), how can you unify it with the simple voicing *s > /z/? What has
been discussed on the list is the possibility that Grimm's Law was a
series of changes distibuted over a long period of time, rather than
a single change, and that Verner's Law operated in its mid course.
But at any rate Verner's Law must have taken place after the change
of PIE voiceless stops into fricatives.
>
> Piotr
You're right, of course. Still, what is the etymology of <tungri>, if
it has nothing to do with <þuringi>? BTW, do you have the reference
for that/those posting(s) (there are a lot of hits on Verner)?
Torsten