Re: [tied] Substrates in Reconstructed-PIE itself??

From: C. Darwin Goranson
Message: 42455
Date: 2005-12-07

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G&P@...> wrote:
>
> There's an assumption in your email, O anonymous poster, that I
would like
> to question.

Anonymous? The top says "from C. Darwin Goranson." I don't think
that's anonymous.

> You are quite right to give the careful wording "to form what
could well be the Proto-Indo-Europeans". Here you leave open the
possibility that they were not. But the rest of your posting, and
the question at the end assumes that the scenario you describe did
indeed happen. In fact we have no such evidence at all. But we do
have dialect differences that seem irreconcilable for PIE, so that
we have to suggest a cluster of closely related dialects, not a
single monolithic language. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

That is pretty much what I mean. And as for my use of the Kurgan
Hypothesis, the scenario I gave is not at all meant to say "Here.
This is how it happened. No questions," but rather a POSSIBLE
history. If either of the suggestions of Mr. Renfrew or Mr.
Gamkrelidze of Anatolian or Caucasian homelands are true, then
something similar would likely have happened with different cultures.

> Also I don't think "substrate" would be the right word for what
you are asking. We have borrowed words (e.g. the words for 6 and 7)
and we have dialect variation, as in any normal human language. But
in addition there are suggestions of pre-PIE words that appear in
PIE languages. This is sometimes called "old european", and the
clues people look for are the phoneme /b/ (e.g. the word barbaros in
Greek), affricates, sibilants other than /s/, geminates, and so on.

I was thinking that even before PIE broke up, its culture had
absorbed other cultures which may have been unlike it. The words
for "6" and "7," and possibly "kWetwer" if it is a construction
[e.g. an Uralic "kwet" plus IE "wer-", or kWe-twe-r (and-two[deviant
form]-suffix)], are possible example of borrowing OR mergers with
other cultures.

> Suggestions have included the words that become English apple,
hazel,
> alder, cannabis, woad, mattock, axe, silver, cat, plough, and can
(=
> container); and German hemb (< *kamico-), dorf ~ Latin trab-
"beam"; and
> Latin caballus, salix, sagitta.
>
> You'll find some other suggestion in JES 17, 1989, by Sorin Paliga.

Well, IF the Anatolian origin is right, then some of these words
could be Etruscan or something like it, as well as Minoan. However,
a Pontic- Caspian homeland could also work, if trading occurred with
the Tripolye or related cultures, who seem to have likely done
trading; this would of course lead to word exchanges from lands
unconnected with Proto-Indo-European, like Egypt, Crete, and the
Middle East, and of course with the other "Old European" languages.
Such trade would not occur at first with a home in the Caucasus.

> Oh, and there is nothing rude in saying "The Ukraine". I believe
the word means "south", and like a number of placenames with "the",
it is simply a geographic term. Most of them lost the "the" over
time. By the way, do you say "Netherlands" or "The
Netherlands"? "Hague" or "The Hague"?
>
> Peter

I'd read an email, asked and got a response on this point. It's
looked upon as a means of belittling Ukraine by Soviet Russia.