From: darth.caton@...
Message: 28586
Date: 2003-12-18
> At 4:15:15 PM on Wednesday, December 17, 2003,
> darth.caton@... wrote:
>
> > Whether or not we accept 30% as the number of non-IE words
> > in some subset of Germanic, it stands that there are an
> > anomalously large number of words that are not IE, and I
> > think most would agree, a larger number than in other
> > branches. I say this because I saw Piotr's claim to the
> > contrary, but have seen no lists of such words for, say,
> > Slavic or Greek or Italic.
>
> Mallory mentions that a cursory examination of Greek
> vocabulary by Anna Morpurgo Davies found that less than 40%
> of the lexicon had transparent IE etymologies, 8% had
> established non-Greek origins, and about 52% had no clear
> etymologies.
>
> > But vocabulary is not the only difference between the
> > Germanic branch and the other branches. Germanic languages
> > are well-known for exhibiting certain notable odd
> > characteristics. One of them is the Germanic languages'
> > much greater tendency to agglutination, relative to most
> > other IE languages (though this feature has appeared in
> > rare cases elsewhere in individual languages).
>
> Could you give some examples of what you mean? Germanic
> compounding is familiar enough, but agglutination?
>
> > In short, what I am proposing is that proto-Germanic,
> > during the time its speakers lived only in Scandinavia,
> > experienced areal effects from its Finno-Ugric neighbor
> > (s) and in so doing developed the unique characteristics
> > we know as Germanic today.
>
> > The strongest linguistic evidence for my theory comes from
> > these grammatical similarities. Despite those, one weak
> > spot the theory has is that of the supposedly non-IE
> > words, only a third of them (by my count of one
> > abbreviated list) have similarities to Finnish, and some
> > of these are obvious borrowings from Norse into Finnish.
> > (Cognates listed at end of message).
>
> The list has some problems even to my untutored eye, and I
> know almost nothing about Finnish.
>
> > Shield (Swedish sköld, Finnish suojavaippa)
>
> It's not clear to me that the Finnish word has any
> connection with the Swedish, but the latter has an
> impeccable IE pedigree, from *(s)kel- 'to cut'.
>
> > Bite (Swedish bita, Finnish pistos/pistaa)
>
> The Gmc. word again has a good IE pedigree, from *bheid- 'to
> split'.
>
> > Keel (Swedish köl, Finnish köli)
>
> The Finnish looks like a late borrowing from Swedish; the ON
> is <kjöll>, from PScand. *kialuR < PGmc. *keluz. This last
> has been connected with PIE *gWelh1- 'to swallow', though
> I'm not sure of the semantics involved; the suggestion that
> I've seen is 'swallow' > 'throat' > 'object bent at one
> end'.
>
> > Oar (Swedish åra, Finnish airo)
> > Rudder (Swedish styre, Finnish ruori)
>
> Another one with a good IE pedigree: <rudder> is from PIE
> *h1erh1- 'to row' and a suffix *-tro- forming nouns of
> instrument.
>
> > Rider, knight (Swedish riddare, Finnish rittari) (almost
> > def. borrowing from Norse)
>
> The Scand. word is a borrowing from Middle Low German, and
> I've no doubt that the Finnish word is also a late
> borrowing.
>
> > Mast (Swedish masto, Finnish masto)
>
> I believe that the Swedish word is a borrowing from MLG, in
> which case the Finnish is presumably a late borrowing as
> well.
>
> > king (Swedish konung, kung, Finnish kuningas)
>
> The Finnish is clearly a borrowing of something very close
> to PGmc. *kuningaz.
>
> > carp (Swedish karp, Finnish karppi)
> > lamb (Swedish lamm, Finnish lammas)
> > folk (Swedish volk, Finnish väki)
>
> The Gmc. word is usually assigned to PIE *pelh1- 'full', I
> believe, and according to de Vries has been borrowed into
> Finnish as <hulk> 'crowd'.
>
> Brian