RE : [tied] Germanic (Was Re: North of the Somme)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > *bast- does appear in the Germanic (and Romance,
> > bâtir etc) languages,
> > but is *not* derivable from PIE *bhe(n)dh- "bind"
> > within Germanic, in
> > fact it doesn't have an etymology within Germanic.
> > However, it is
> > derivable in Iranian from that root; Ossetic bætt&n
> > "tie", past stem
> > (for preterite and ppp) bast "tied", also "package".
> > If the question
> > hadn't been so decisive for the whole debate of
> > Germanic origins, it
> > would be uncontroversial, given the evidence, to
> > assumer that the
> > Germanic root is a loan from Iranian.
>
> ****GK: If the Wikipedia info ("Bastarnae" re bast- in
> Germanic) is questionable, that's no big deal.

Not really. *bast- *is* in Germanic, in the sense that it can be
reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, it just can't be directly from PIE
and so must be a loan.

> We
> don't know what the Bastarnae called themselves (there
> are no Bastarnian texts) And if the term was coined by
> Scythians or Sarmatians (="allies"), taken over by
> Greeks, then passed on to history, that's fine.

But we do know that *bast- passed into Proto-Germanic, and Iranian is
a good candidate for a donor language.

> Just
> like "Germani" and many other instances. We don't have
> to make any 0.0000001% assumptions even about a
> possible Germanic loan from Iranian.****

See above. It must be a loan. If you have a better candidate for donor
language, do tell.

> > > The written record is quite sparse. The
> > > Skiri and Galatae (=Bastarnae) are clearly recent
> > > arrivals in the southeast Europe area as of 200
> > BC.
> >
> > I disagree. Peoples may appear seemingly out of
> > nowhere given the
> > right ingredients are present, a small number of men
> > with a project
> > and a set of languages to make a creole out of.
>
> ****GK: I prefer not to take the 0.000001% solution as
> to the Sciri, Bastarnae, and Galatae.***

I never understood the idea of assigning probabilities to theories
before testing them.

> > A
> > large number of
> > people are now involved in running the state of
> > Papua New Guinea in
> > the language called Tok Pisin; would you also ask
> > where the Tok Pisin
> > people arrived from?
>
> ****GK: I might, if I was told "the Tok Pisin are
> running Papua New Guinea" (:=)))****

But they are. The one mark that separates them from the ruled is that
their mother tongue *is* Tok Pisin (which is sociologically no longer
a pidgin or a creole, it is a language like any other).

> > With names like Skiri and Bastarnae, you'd expect
> > there to be a mixing
> > of something, and some 'limpieza de sangre'
> > sociology.
>
> ****GK: I thought you might expect this in practically
> any situation (:=)))****

It is a relative concept, as you know. Eg. there was more of it in
South Africa thirty years ago than today.

> Cf.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastarnae
> > esp. Tacitus.
>
> ****GK: Tacitus is writing more than 300 years after
> the emergence of the Bastarnae. Polybius had different
> notions.****

Racist notions have been known to last even longer.


Torsten