Re: RE : [tied] Re: North of the Somme

About Germanic Homeland and migrations,

My point of view is that Proto-Germanic originates

somewhere in the south of Urals mountains,

in between Balto-slavic at its north-west,

Indo-Iranian and Kartvelian at its south-west,

proto-Finno-Permic at its north-east,

and Tibetan and Tokharian at its south-east.

Proto-Germanic was pushed westward by Uralic expansion

(at a date I don't know but most probably after - 5000 :

that is after Kartvelian neolithic influence had been felt on Pontic Areas)

Proto-Germanic then was cut in two branches :

the northern branch went to the north avoiding Balto-Slavic at its south

and then invaded Scandinavia from Finland southwards.

the southern branch (westic) went under Balto-Slavic at its north

and encroached upon Celtic homeland, pushing them westward.

Westic and Nordic Germanic abruptly met in Schlesvig-Holstein.

this is no dialectal continuity between westic and nordic because

they had been separated for too long when they met again there.

I consider Scandinavia was once inhabited by people

that are neither Uralic, nor Germanic, nor Kartvelian.

This can be a branch of PAleo-European, akin to BAsk and ETruscan.

This remains to be proved by lexical substrates in Norse.

Maybe it can also be a variety of Celtic.

This could happen to be the more suitable hypothesis (see below)

I don't know if we can accept a strong connection between Armenian and Germanic.

I think Germanic got Kartvelian loanwords when it was still in the south of Ural mountains.

Armenian first "tried" to become a Satem language *g > *z > s

but shifted to a kind of "germanic-like" mutation.

The weakening/strengthening processes of Armenian are more complex than

the Germanic Lautverschiebung, and therefore is likely to be unrelated.

Armenian may have reached its phonetic profile after it was transported in Armenia.

I will leave this as a open question.

Uralic Home-land is not to be found in Europe, nor in the west of Ural mountains.

There is a strong tendency among Finnish workers to claim "autochthonous" status

in Northern Europe. I consider this as totally unfounded.

I do not believe in Finnish "paleolithic continuity" theory.

My point of view is : Finno-Ugric is connected with Ob river, Samoyedic with Ienissei.

Uralic languages are basically North-Asiatic languages, with strong connections with

Sino-Tibetan and Japanese. (I will provide examples afterwards)

In general, I have very little confidence in works made by Finnish linguists

and only scanty confidence in Hungarian linguists.

(Hungarians are less biased than Finish linguists)

Proto-Uralic as reconstructed in the Uralisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch

is really pathetic, even though it is written by Hungarians.

All this reconstruction has to be reworked on the basis

of standard comparative methodology to make it reliable.

I plan to rework this in 2009

(for private reasons, I won't be able to do it before)

I have no idea what Venneman's Semitimid is.

It has to be based on Phoenician to make sense

otherwise I cannot imagine what Semitic is doing in Western Europe.

If we look at the diverse substrates previously evoked in Cybalist :

1. the language of bird's names (Schrijver)

2. the language of geminates

My point of view is this :

1. this substrate is not a substrate but just a glaring hole

in orthodox PIE morphology.

Morpheme H2a- is part of PIE, as exemplified by Greek.

H2o- is rare but present in a bird-name.

H2i- also exists in :

Greek ip(h)nos oven

Celt a-pa-tinos > Irish a:th

from *kwH2 "to burn, to heat".

2. the geminate phenomenon is more interesting.

This geminate phonomenon is connected with glottalic phonemes.

As some people claim that PIE might have had glottalic phonemes

and some of these some people claim these are pre-glottalized,

I wondered if it was possible find macro-examples of

alif + unvoiced stop in Semitic > voiced stop in PIE.

So far, the result of my quest is this :

1. I have found no example of initial alif + unvoiced > PIE voiced.

2. A clear example of unvoiced + alif > Voiced is *dwo "two".

Hebrew te?omi "twin" where t+?=d,

and w and m are from m? (glottalized m).

Cf. saw "sun" versus sham and yam-ani versus yam "sea".

All PIE agrees with the result t+? =d.

3. the result of alif + unvoiced is more "diffractive"

In Celtic, ?+C = CC (so called expressive geminate)

In Latin, ?+C sometimes v:+C or dialectal v+CC

Osco-umbrian ?+C = CC

Elsewhere ?+C = Voiced.

Pre-glottalization is an eastern feature that applies to

Germanic, Greek, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, etc.

One Semitic example is : l_(?)w_k "swallow"

hence Celtic *s-lukk- > Irish slug-im

Greek lu(n)g-

Germanic s-lu(k)k

Although I have much respect for Meillet,

I totally disagree with his "populaire expressifs" words.

This is glottalic phonology.

This applies to -k and -t.

Cf. BhelH-k :

LAtin ful-c-

Greek phalang-

Germanic bal-k-

Sanscrit bhur-j-

etc

Hence this geminate language is probably Celtic.

Considering the fact that Islandic displays some -kk words,

we are maybe allowed to posit that Scandinavia substrate

is a variety of Celtic language,

or a third branch of western PIE alongside Celtic and ITalic.

this has to be determined thru careful analysis of data.

If you have data to send, I am ready to try to disentangle the knots.

----- Original Message -----

From: Rick McCallister

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, August 31, 2007 12:02 AM

Subject: Re: RE : [tied] Re: North of the Somme

Well.yes and no
N Europe was their homeland, and from there they
expanded south
BUT they had to arrive in Lower Saxony and Scandinavia
from somewhere, so you have a point
Do you have a timetable? Was Germanic an IE outlier
and one of the 1st to enter NW Europe?
I imagine Uralic was a subtrate in Scandinavia,
possibly the southern Baltic shore BUT not too Uralic
words turn up in Germanic, as I recall
Supposedly, some 25% of Saami is pre-Uralic substrate
and their is a Finnish Saami linguist who has quite a
few articles in Finnish on that topic
The Kartvelian conection is interesting in that
Germanic and Armenian are said by some to have similar
phonologies, Armenian is in close proximity with
Kartvelian
BUT these threads all seem pretty loose to me
The only one that seems noteworthy is Uralic and I
would take a look at its substrates as well, so you do
have quite an interesting job ahead
I've read of various Germanic substrates such as
Venneman's Semitimid (vel sim), Vasconic, "Folkish",
"Apple Language", etc. Do you think you could sort
these out for us?

--- "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@ wanadoo.fr>
wrote:

> The proto-Germanic homeland usually is considered
> to be found in Northern Europe,
> especially Scandinavia.
> I now have very strong doubts about such a supposed
> home-land.
> Here are my reasons in order of increasingly
> unacceptability :
>
> 1. Germanic displays some morphological affinities
> with Balto-Slavic
> 2. Germanic shares some lexical innovations only
> with Tokharian
> such as *skalm "boat"
> 3. Germanic displays very few affinities with Celtic
> and Italic
> Contacts seem to be fairly recent.
> 4. Germanic displays apparently Kartvelian Loanwords
> :
> saxli "house", zghva "sea", tsvari "sheep", dzixgi
> "goat"
> to cite the most obvious ones
> 5. Germanic displays Uralic loanwords :
> hunt = Cf. Moksha kunda-ms "seize, capture"
> hand = Cf. kem-t, kum-t "five, ten, hand"
> s-wi-m = Cf. Uralic uje-ms
> Morphemes -t plural and -m- infinitive are now parts
> of the root.
> 6. Germanic displays apparently Sino-Tibetan
> loanwords :
> Tib phag = pig
> Tib bya = bird < brid (r > y is frequent in ST)
> Tib smug = fog (Cf. smoke)
> Tib skjag = shit
> Chin pok = back
> Tib rtsib = rib
> Tib sme = mole
> I do not take into account some other words :
> bru = eye-brow
> sna = snout
> that look like loanwords into Tibetan.
>
> On account of this, Germanic displays a very strong
> eastern (and not northern) tropism.
> Somewhere in the middle of Kazakhstan seems the
> right place ?!?
>
> So if we mix the difficulty of telling what is
> P-celt from non P-celt
> with the problem of what is to be considered
> Germanic,
> we are in front of tough trouble.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Rick McCallister
> To: cybalist@... s.com
> Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 6:30 PM
> Subject: Re: RE : [tied] Re: North of the Somme
>
>
> My understanding of the "known historical facts"
> of
> the lower Rhine area is that it was originally
> Celtic
> and then was invaded by Germanic speakers. The
> resulting people were mixed and perhaps spoke a
> Mischsprache. And maps I've seen in many books
> show
> the Germanic people as originally in a limited
> area of
> present N Germany and Scandinavia (Lower Saxony
> and
> points north).
> Perhaps the Belgae were a mixed group with a
> Germanic
> elite who spoke a form of Celtic mixed with
> Germanic
> on top of whatever substrate language that
> persisted
> in the area. Is there anything in the local names
> or
> surviving modern languages that leads to such a
> conclusion?
>
> --- "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@ wanadoo.fr>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: george knysh
> > To: cybalist@... s.com
> > Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 11:29 PM
> > Subject: Re: RE : [tied] Re: North of the Somme
> >
> >
> >
> > > ============ ========= ========= ========= =
> > >
> > > A.F :
> > > This statement you write about the originally
> > > Celtic status
> > > of the two parts : "Belgica" and "Gallia"
> proper
> > > does not seem to be meeting everybody's
> opinion
> > > (on your side).
> >
> > ****GK: There is no "your side". We converge on
> > some
> > isues and diverge on others. Take this as
> > individually
> > stated. My opinion is as above.****
> >
> >
> > ============ ========= ===
> >
> > A.F : I wrote this sentence this way because I
> had
> > (wrongly) perceived you had the same core idea :
> So
> > there are in fact three groups of hypotheses :
> >
> > A : the 1+ 1 = 1, which I represent (All Celtic
> > people)
> >
> > B : the 1 + 1 = 1,25, which you represent (Most
> > Celtic but with "Germanic" invaders in the
> > northernmost area)
> >
> > C : the 1 + 1 = 2, which Torsten was advocating
> > with the sub-group C.2 that believe the
> "Belgian"
> > area is not only non Celtic but may represent a
> > separate branch of PIE to be defined.
> >
> > ============ ========= ========= ==
> >
> >
> > > My point of view from the start was that there
> > is
> > > no known
> > > criterion to distinguish these two parts.
> >
> > ****GK: There is Caesar's opinion, an excellent
> > one,
> > based on information passed on by many local
> > Gauls,
> > esp. Iccius and Antebrogius of the Remi (DBG
> 2:3).
> > This is much more reliable than speculative
> > reinterpretations two thousand years
> removed.****
> > ============ ========= ========= ========= ===
> >
> > A.F :
> >
> > I don't know who is reinterpretating
> > speculatively. So far, I made it clear that I
> deem
> > DBG as not trustworthy.
> >
> > What you are describing in an "act of faith" :
> one
> > has no reason to express doubts about words
> > (unrecorded) transmitted by a man, Caesar,
> > (notoriously untrustworthy enough to get
> murdered by
> > his own familly), transmitted by a chain of
> people
> > (we know about none at 99% rate). That kind of
> "act
> > of faith" could also apply to Jesus, for
> example. It
> > is probably easier to list of the chain of popes
> and
> > apostles from Jesus to present-day, than to list
> the
> > chain of people from Iccius down to us. How can
> we
> > be sure that Iccius even existed ? We might also
> > believe everything Herodotes wrote with such an
> "act
> > of faith". And Heraklês resisting Sirens'
> singing,
> > tied to his mast.
> >
> > So far, my approach is based on historical
> > phonology : I consider that we have enough data
> kept
> > in sufficiently precise state to be able to make
> > documented statements about what is what, what
> is
> > clear, what is unclear. And From this lexical
> and
> > phonological basis, duly ascribed to known (or
> > supposed) languages, we can try to figure out a
> > scenario, without forgetting Occam's razor :
> > undocumented languages do not exist.
> >
> > I will not move from this way of dealing with
> this
>
=== message truncated ===

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