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

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

>
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> > <gknysh@> wrote:
>
> > > 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.
>
> ****GK: *bast- may well have passed into Germanic
> [what's the evidence that it reached ProtoG rather
> than some dialect from which it spread further?]

It's true that by reconstructing from Da. frimærke, Sw. frimärke, Nw.
frimærke "postage stamp" one can arrive at at a protoform which proves
that the vikings had postage stamps, but it is general practice to
assume that a word which can be reconstructed for a proto-language was
present in that proto-language. *bast- would have to arrive in the
finished PGerm. though, after Grimm had worked.

> from
> Iranian (or Thracian or Dacian for all we know),
> without necessarily leading directly to the emergence
> of the term "Bastarnae" as a self-identifying
> appellative. That distinct process could have occurred
> as above.****

Possible. But judging by Tacitus descripyion, they all seem to have
connected the root with the same contents, more or less.

> > > 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.
>
>
> ****GK: I agree that Bastarnae is in all likelihood a
> term devised by Iranians. I agree that *bast- could be
> an Iranian loan. This does not prove your contention
> that Germanic originated in Southeastern Europe.****

Do you have a better scenario?
I suppose you have a hunch what I'll say next if you concede this one?

> > > GK: Tacitus is writing more than 300 years after
> > > the emergence of the Bastarnae. Polybius had different
> > > notions.

> > (T)Racist notions have been known to last even
> longer.
>
> ****GK: Lapsing into non-sequiturs? What's "racist"
> about thinking that the Basternae were Galatians
> (Polybius)?****

I recall an anecdote Oppenheimer told in 'Eden in the East': He had
happened to identify a genetic subgroup some place he worked in the
South Seas and happened to mention to a local that there was something
setting these people apart, and the local man got very suspicious: how
did Oppenheimer know that they were the descendants of that bad one of
their two founding brothers? It was the preservation of the idea of
different origins, be it from Sarmatians or not, in Tacitus' account I
commented on.


Torsten