27-10-03 12:48, tgpedersen wrote:
> Germanic has 30% non-IndoEuropean roots.
Do you have to repeat this on a list devoted to discussing a different
language family? "30%" is an informal and subjective assessment (as far
as I know, nobody has ever done any precise calculations) of the
proportion roots that don't seem to be regular reflexes of known IE
morphemes. That's a far cry from claiming that they aren't IE. They can
also be:
(1) loans from other (perhaps still unrecognised) IE sources;
(2) words not borrowed but coined in pre-Germanic or Proto-Germanic;
(3) IE roots that thanks to a quirk of chance happened to survive in
just one branch (of course it would be very hard either to prove or to
disprove their IE status);
(4) roots mistakenly believed to be non-IE, because the correct
etymology has not yet been discovered.
As for "30%" as the number of problematic roots, the number is
controvesial to say the least and ought not to be circulated so
lightheartedly. Since it lacks scholarly substantiation, it's just gossip.
Piotr