From: Rick McCallister
Message: 50081
Date: 2007-09-25
> 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 -----
> From: Brian M. Scott
> To: fournet.arnaud
> 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
>
>
>
>