--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andy Howey <andyandmae_howey@...>
wrote:
> Hi, Torsten:
>
> You keep talking about this "Nordwestblock". Is it supposed to be
IE or pre-IE? If pre-IE, what linguistic affiliations might it have?
>
Nordwestblock was IE. According to Kuhn in his last works, it was
preceded not long before by a non-IE language which he calls "the
other Old European" in approximately the same area plus Jutland and
western Norway, characterised by an -i-/-a-/-u- ablaut in river
names. The IE Nordwestblock names has the characteristic suffixes -st-
, -andr-, -k-. Nordwestblock words can be identified eg. if they
begin in p- (lost in Celtic, f- in Germanic, or has the stem struture
P1-P2 where both P's are some unvoiced stop (thus not Germanic, since
that would violate the IE root restriction on roots of the form B1-
B2, where the B's are voiced stops).
Personally I think IE Nordwestblock might have had some archaic
features similar to those of Anatolian, eg common/neuter gender (cf
Dutch and "Scandinavian") and the vacillation 3rd sg. -s/-t (English
-s, "Scandinavian" -z > -r).
Torsten