Re: [tied] Whence Grimm?

From: tgpedersen
Message: 31744
Date: 2004-04-06

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
> 05-04-2004 14:02, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > I forgot to mention that the saddle (according to what I could
find
> > on the net) is considered to be a Sarmatian invention. The
Iranian
> > and Indic mismatching cognates of "saddle" that Piotr provided
are
> > from Avestan and Sanskrit repectively, so they don't disprove the
> > assumption of a Sarmatian provenance for *saDula. Apart from it
being
> > Iranian, we don't know much about Sarmatian.
>
> Well, at least we know that it was a collection of Northeast
Iranian
> dialects, and if Alanic was a variety of Sarmatian, then the
Ossetes are
> speakers of Modern Sarmatian.
>
> "They don't disprove the assumption" is not a legitimate argument.
If so
> little is known about Sarmatian, you could use this convenient
ignorance
> as an excuse for the wildest claims about it, just repeating the
same
> weary statement: "It has not been disproved ...". But ignorance is
no
> substitute for positive evidence. If you want to put forward an
> etymological proposal, the burden of proof in on your shoulders.
You
> can't shift it on the critics.
>

True in principle, but I don't think it applies here. If the last
half of *saDula is the "tool" suffix PIE *-tlo, the first half would
be *sed- and not any other ablaut form, judging from the other "seat"
words, and /e/ > /a/ is characteristic of the II languages. That
together with the general assumption that the saddle is a Sarmatian
invention makes the idea that *saDula is a loanword from an II
language at least plausible.

Torsten