[tied] Re: Pre-Germanic speculation

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 30-10-03 11:16, Marco Moretti wrote:
>
> > In Proto-Germanic we have a huge amount on non-IE lexicon,

despite

> > the opinion of many parochial IEists, that consider IE every item
> > attested in every IE language.
>
> That isn't nice. The "parochial IEist" is a straw man of your own
> making. Show me an IEist as radical as that. As a matter of

principle,

> I'm in favour of a native etymology whenever a plausible one

presents

> itself, but I agree that e.g. the "silver" and "tin" words are non-

IE,

> and that Germanic *silubra- in particular represents a widespread

North

> European wanderwort replacing IE *h2arg^-n.t-
>
> > For example, words of ultimately non-IE origin in English are:
> > "sheep", "ship", "silver", "help", "drink", "delve", "blood",
> > "land", "soul", "sea", "churl", "wife", "tin", "house", "knife",
> > "shore", "(night)mare" (only the second part of the
> > compound), "hut", "Hell", "if", "bone", "back", and many others.
> > Deriving "blood" from a IE *bhl- "to shine" is a patent

absurdity:

> > like canis a non canendo, lucus a non lucendo, etc...
> > In no IE language there is a similar semantic shift, and in no IE
> > language a similar supposed "kenning" displaced the old inherited
> > word. Every strange word for "blood" such as Latin sanguis or

Greek

> > haima is suspected to be of non-IE origin (substratum).
>
> At least some of these words _are_ IE. For example, cognates of

*dHelbH-

> 'delve, chisel' occur in Balto-Slavic, and since neither the shape

of

> the root nor its regularly ablauting behaviour militates against IE
> origin, I see no reason to posit a loanword, despite its limited
> distribution. Call it a "Northern IE dialectal word" if you like,

but

> there's no idication of its being non-IE. "Sheep" (West Germanic
> *skæ:pa-) has a plausible cognate in Indic (Skt. cha:ga- 'goat' <
> *sk^eh1gWo-). "House" may well be a derivative of *(s)keuh- 'hide,
> cover' (*xu:sa- < *xu:ssa- = *xu:d-ta- < *kuh-dH-to-, cf. hide <

hy:dan

> < *xu:d-jan-). "(Night)mare" (*mar-o:n-) has a counterpart in

Slavic

> *mora 'nightmare' (cf. *morU 'plague, pestilence', also when
> personified, and Skt. mara- 'death, killing'). Other items could be
> discussed as well, if you feel like playing this game.
>
> Piotr

************
English "(night)mare" has also a counterpart in Albanian:
lëmeri/lemeri 'dread, terror' (lë- is prefix, cf. lëbardh 'to make
white', lëkuq 'red-skined (animal)', lëmek 'to moisten, to wet'),
<mnerë> only in Geg, metathetic form of <nmerë> 'id.',
<tmerr> 'horror, dread, terror' (t- is prefix, like in
<tban> 'shepherd's hut'from Alb. verb <banj> 'to make, to build'. cf.
also <banesë> 'home', banë 'shepherd's hut'), noticed for the firs
time, as I remember, by E. Çabej.

Konushevci