Re: [tied] Thracian place-names

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> george knysh wrote:
>
> > GK: Stryzhak, Trubachov, Lehr-Splawinski and
> many
> > others, state that the "a" in the Iranic dan-
> (river)
> > word was long in the area adjoining the Slavs at
> the
> > beginning of the 1rst millennium AD (Stryzhak, op.
> > cit., pp.12-31, passim). This does not mean that
> the
> > Iranic "a" was long generally. I prefer their
> > documented authority to your bare assertion.
>
> In what way is their authority documented, if their
> assertions aren't
> "bare" as well? We have no taped recordings of
> Scythian or Sarmatian.
> The development of NE Iranian vowels can be
> reconstructed on the basis
> of comparative analysis (involving Ossetic and its
> closest relatives),
> which indicates that the original contrast of
> quantity became one of
> "strong" vs. "weak" vowels at one point, well before
> the individual
> history of Ossetic began. I can't see what
> "documentation" allows us to
> date the loss of inherited length with any
> precision.

*****GK: I suggest you get the book and react to its
evidence. If you're not interested in doing this,
there's not much point in continuing.*****

>
> > GK: We're not dealing with Modern Ossetic but
> > with Iranic *dan- at the start of the first
> millennium
> > AD.
>
> Are we, though? Where's the proof that the Slavs
> borrowed those names at
> the start of the first millennium rather than a few
> centuries later?

*****GK: Why not? The proto-Slavs were part of the
classical Scythian realm. Why would they have
waited?******

>

the hypothetical

> "Thracoid" language of
> Ukraine, far from being documented in any way, may
> yet turn out to be a
> figment of highly imaginative toponymic analysis
> (like the purportedly
> "Illyrian" etymologies of river-names in Central
> Europe).

******GK: Look here, Piotr, my good fellow. You're an
impressive linguist, and I respect your expertise
greatly. I've profited from it in the past and am
grateful. But when you utter sillinesses like the
above, it just won't wash. I don't know what you have
against Ukrainian linguistic literature, but why not
get over it? They have some pretty good people, and to
ignore them as thoroughly as you seem prepared to is
not very commendable. Why not get Stryzhak via
inter-library loan? Or read Zhelezhniak's study of the
Ros' basin hydronyms for starters? That might change
your strange reluctance to keep an open mind about the
Thrakoid language of West Scythia. I'll stop now, and
resume (if need be) after you've read some of this
literature (Stryzhak has an excellent
bibliography).******




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