Re: [tied] Uralic languages vis-a-vis Indo-European dispersal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Juha Savolainen" <juhavs@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 4:54 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Uralic languages vis-a-vis Indo-European dispersal


> Anyway, Koivulehto�s list of North Western IE loans in
> westerly Finno-Ugric (the following are attested in
> Finnish): kalja ("beer"), kasa ("sharp point",
> "edge"), kaski ("burnt-over clearing"), kyrs�
> ("unleavened, thin bread, perjorative bread, not risen
> or which went wrong; crust; something small,
> insignificant"), lansi ("lowland, low"), lehti ("leaf,
> blade"), pohtaa ("to winnow"), porsas ("piglet"),
> rohto ("medicine", medicinal plant; weed; green herb;
> cattle feed"), solki ("fibula, (thorn pin to attach
> clothes with), buckle, broach"), tahdas ("dough,
> paste") etc. etc. There are also similar loans
> attested only in Saami. That these loans are NWIE
> Koivulehto tries to establish by phonetic-phonological
> arguments - and they are generally accepted by the
> Finnish practioners of the comparative art.

I suppose his NW IE includes Balto-Slavic (e.g. <tahdas> looks relatable to
Slavic *te^sto, <lehti> to *listU, <kasa> to *kosa 'scythe', etc.). But if
so, the borrowing may have taken place far from Germania. <porsas> may well
be a loan from Proto-Iranian or even Proto-Indo-Iranian.

> As far as properly Proto-Germanic loans are
> considered, I think that the following words, viewed
> as early by Kaisa H�kkinen, might be interesting:
> pelto ("field"), heitt�� ("to throw"), rengas
> ("ring"), sairas ("sick"), k�rsi� ("to suffer"), sara
> ("column"), vitsa ("twig"), kana ("chicken"), rauta
> ("iron"), kansa (" people").
>
> And Pekka Sammallahti explains that the Proto-Saamic
> words for "red", "edge", "to borrow", and "periphery"
> are Early Proto-Germanic loans (I can try to provide
> the reconstructed forms when I learn how to produce
> them properly!).

Most of these are well known and often quoted in the literature; but I see
nothing in their form that rules out borrowing about the beginning of the
common era. That's "early" in Germanic terms, but not early enough for
Koivulehto, I'm afraid.

> It is well worth mentioning that Koivulehto fully
> accepts that purely linguistic argument cannot show
> that his NWIE loans were adopted in what is now
> present-day Finland. Rather, he uses plausibility
> arguments to suggest that the Nordic Bronze Age of
> 1700 BCE to 500 BCE was Proto-Germanic (what else
> could it be, given the known later history of the
> area?)

The usual reservations about associating material culture with language
apply here. God knows how many unknown and unknowable languages must have
been spoken in Northern Europe before historical times. Germanic was lucky
enough to survive, but there's no way of knowing for sure when its ancestor
arrived in the area, even if it's a relatively safe guess that the early
Iron Age cultures of NW Germany and southern Scandinavia were mostly
Germanic-speaking.

> P.S. In case somebody thinks that I have a hobby-horse
> of my own in defending a great ancestry for my
> fellow-Finnish speakers in Finland, I will say this:
> I have no desires or interests whatsoever here; it is
> just that Indo-Europeanists should know, for their own
> good, more about what is going on on the other side of
> the linguistic/archaeological/genetic fence. Indeed,
> there is the school of Kalevi Wiik and his followers
> who do advocate unmistakably indigenist ideas on
> Finno-Ugric prehistory. They are much frowned upon by
> the Finnish scholarly mainstream - and me too...

Well, you know I know, Juha.

Piotr