From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 19842
Date: 2003-03-15
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 12:03 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?
> I realise from Collynge "The laws of IndoEuropean" that the whole matter of the sequence of Grimm and Verner isn't settled yet.
One thing is certain: VL must follow the spirantisation of *p, *t, *k, *kW. Its ordering with respect to the remaining subparts of GL is irrelevant. Assuming for the sake of the argument that *þuringa- < *tur-enko- (which is by no means the only possiblity), the intermediate stage must be *þurenxa-, and however you manipulate the oredering of the changes, *-ng- can't appear earlier than the initial *þ-.
> Therefore asking me to settle that question before *tur-enko- > *tungra- can be settled is a fine move: no matter what I come up with, unless I'm better than all mu illustrious predecessors, will contain holes. So I'll do something else:
> *tur-enko- > *tur-nka- > *tunkra- > *tungra-
> And then I can claim that the last rule was specific to the language of Ariovist's Tungri. Not very special pleading, the rule seems ordinary enough.
Three changes (syllable loss, metathesis and voicing) posited arbitrarily with the sole purpose to justify a dubious connection -- and you say it's no special pleading? Ordinary or not, the "rules" (a single example doesn't make a rule) are ad hoc. Ariovist was king of the Suebi -- a West Germanic people; there is no reason to exempt their language from Grimm's Law. Unless Tacitus was completely wrong about the Tungri, they were Germanic too (the name does not appear to be Celtic, at any rate).
Piotr