I noticed that you moved from "laughable" to
"highly implausible".
Under progress.
It is quite natural that Scandinavia has been
preempted as the most obvious
homeland for proto-Germanic in the XIX
century.
The question is :
Should this obvious solution be kept or be
changed ?
I believe it has to be changed,
for several reasons :
1. There are several loanwords from KArtvelian in
Germanic,
as in Balto-Slavic and western Uralic,
and these words show no signs of having reached
Germanic
through another language before.
So the "orignal" position in Scandinavia is a
problem.
The loanword sajwa < *zaghva is a worse
problem.
Why is it that Germanic needed borrow a KArtvelian
word for sea ?
This branch must have been away from any
sea.
2. Germanic shows a certain number of features in
common
with Tokharian, a far-off eastern language in PIE
tree.
One of my favorites is the innovation : skalm for
"boat".
This is also a problem with an original position in
Scandinavia.
The Centum status of Germanic can also be
achieved
if it is so far to the East that it is not
be involved in Satem processes.
3. Germanic has close connections with Central PIE
(Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian)
this is compatible with an original position in
Scandinavia.
or elsewhere more to the east.
4. the word mar-ko "horse" is a loanword from
Asiatic *mor- "horse"
and you need a language where *o >
a
Germanic is a good candidate.
just as Tokharian is a good candidate for yakw >
Greek (h)ippos
we bump again on the Tokharian / Germanic
pair.
Norse seems to have more words for horse than all
the rest of PIE.
5. Germanic also has a good deal of Uralic
loanwords,
So it must have been in a position to receive MORE
Uralic loanwords
than the rest of PIE.
This is not possible with Scandinavia as
homeland.
Germanic must have been a buffer between Uralic and
the rest of PIE.
These are already troublesome facts.
6. The final blows are ST loanwords
like back = Cantonese baak
If we had nothing else, we could discard this as
coincidence.
I think they are not coincidence.
They are the last drop.
All this points ever and ever in the same direction
:
far eastern origin for proto-Germanic
I have reached this conclusion
gradually.
I understand this is not what tradition has taught
us to believe.
I could change my mind
only in case very serious and strong arguments make
me
think I was wrong to reach this
conclusion.
So far, I see nothing.
The shallow and cheap reaffirmation that tradition
has
Scandinavia as homeland counts for nil.
And the fact you are (not yet) convinced also
counts for nil.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 4:48
AM
Subject: Re[4]: [tied] Re: Renfrew's
theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian
At 3:19:16 AM on Saturday, September 22, 2007,
fournet.arnaud
wrote:
> What is your own explanation ?
For OE
<brid(d)>? I have none: I've never seen a concrete
explanation that
was at all convincing. And I consider an
admission that we don't know far
preferable to a highly
implausible
explanation.
Brian