Re: *ber-m-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>
> Maybe I should sum up:
>
> In general, root extensions in IE morphology suck. They are added
> all over the place, but no one has been able to determine what they
> mean. In particular, no one knows what *-m- in *ber-m- means
> (assuming we know *ber- meant something connected to 'side of river'
> vel sim.).
>
> Now if the root of those stems that have 'meaningless' extensions
> were loans in PIE, the extension might have been meaningful in the
> donor language.
>
> In the case of -m-, one doesn't have to appeal to PFU *maGe- "land";
> there's Germanic *mad- "meadow" too. But the whole formation would
> be irregular in Germanic or IE.
>
> So it seems one will have to conclude: *ber-m- is from some
> substrate langage of (part of?) FU and North European IE.
>
>
> Torsten
>

If you are looking at FU for possibilities, there is a native word in
Finnish, 'permanto', floor, originally dirt floor. In Per-man-to, the
per- is a productive element meaning base, support, behind and -man-
looks as if it could be a genitive of 'maa' ground, land. It is
speculation though.

Peter P

Peter P