Re: hawk

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen <elme@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Anthony Appleyard" <a.appleyard@>
> wrote:
>
> > It is to be wondered why Finno-Ugrian needed a new word for
> > "hawk". Birds of prey (goshawks in forest, gyrfalcons on tundra)
> > would have
> > been familiar to FInno-Ugrian speakers before the IE-speakers
> > spread.
> >
>
>
> I think it is plain that the word was there first. Both Finno-Ugric
> and Indo-European cover such a large territory that they cannot be
> original in all places. So, in places where the population later
> abandoned their native language and adopted FU or IE (by force or by
> choice, what do I know?), they just did not learn *all* words of the
> new language. Some words were so specialized that the alternatives
> would not really fit, or they just did not learn the new language
> that well, anyway, some words of the old - now substratum -
> language simply stuck and were not replaced. I think that is how
> a substratum works.

That's how it worked in America, so that seems reasonable.
The problem with it is that that substrate language would have
had a Grimm shift *k- > *h- judging from the Slavic and MLat. forms
in *k-, since there is no such rule to do the job in Baltic Fennic.
We know that the Grimm shift in Germanic was not yet completed in
Tacitus' time
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/27873
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/29016
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/46084
According to my own scenario, Scandinavia wasn't Germanic-speaking
before our era.

This idea might save that scenario though: suppose the "hawk" word
(and the "falcon" word, which looks odd too) came with the "Germanic
invasion" in the form of hawking and falconry? That would explain
the need for a new word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falconry


Torsten