Re: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 11:11 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?


> * In the case of <Vegtamr> (and probably <Vagn> as well)
> you appeal to folk etymology when there is a natural and
> reasonably convincing etymology, and you place great
> evidentiary weight on superficial resemblances.

> 'Evidentiary weight'? That's the kind of language I use when I run
out of arguments. And 'superficial' by what criterion?

Hey, Thorsten, isn't THIS the kind of language you resort to when you run out of arguments? I mean, attacking words rather than ideas. You should know very well why "correspondences" like <Vegtamr> = <Vakhtang> are superficial. The criterion is the dictionary definition of "superficial":

"Concerned only with what is on the surface, and is therefore apparent or obvious; lacking depth or thoroughness; not deep, profound, or thorough; shallow." (OED)

"The surface" is the form of these words in the two languages in question. "Lacking depth", because you don't bother to account for the details -- the outward resemblance is all you need. Your "dated Low Copenhagen Danish" example is not particularly felicitous: if nobody doubts that <undervisitet> represents a folk-etymological colloquial variant of <universitet>, it's precisely because the expected form of the loan is amply attested in Danish (as well as practically all the other languages of Europe). Therefore, it takes no leap of faith to accept that <undervisitet> is a garbled variant of an otherwise familiar loanword. If we had ONLY Mediaeval Latin <universitat-> on the one hand and isolated <undervisitet> on the other, with nothing in between to connect them, the etymology of <undervisitet> would not be that obvious, despite the resemblance, would it?


> The pre-Grimm roots of "Thuringian" would be *turing-. The root
of 'tungr' is *tungr-. Thus *turing- > *turng- > *tungr- by
metathesis. You were saying?

You seem somehow unable to mention Grimm's Law without applying it erroneously. Homework: detect a violation of Grimm's Law in the above and discuss its implications.

Piotr