--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- ualarauans <ualarauans@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> > <gknysh@...> wrote:
> >
> > > GK: [...]
> > > One of the thoughts I had in
> > this
> > > connection is that the significant so-called
> > "Gothic"
> > > words present in Old Common Slavic might have
> > actually
> > > been the contribution of the Bastarnae (this is
> > yet
> > > unverified).
> >
> > May I hear some linguistic arguments for that, if
> > you please?
>
> ****GK: I don't know that there are any, given that we
> only have a handful of "Bastarnian" words.
I didn't know there are some Bastarnian words attested. Where?
> The
> argument is largely historical. The assumption is that
> Gothic and Bastarnian would have been linguistically
> fairly close, and that Bastarnians interacted with
> East Balts and Proto-Slavs for centuries before the
> arrival of the Goths.
Afaik the Gothic loans in Slavic bear characteristic traits of
Gothic phonetics as distinguished from the rest of Germanic. If it
was Bastarnian as you suggest and as Shchukin's hypothesis goes, it
must have been indeed very close to Gothic, virtually the same
language I'd say. But then, you postulate for Bastarnian centuries
of independent development, and that in the area of active contacts
with non-Germanic idioms. It doesn't look plausible being put
together, somehow.
Does Shchukin consider Bastarni East Germanic?
> BTW my mistake about the
> "Stavani" (I'm working exclusively from memory): not
> Pliny's but Ptolemy's. Thus ca. 140/150 AD****
Yes, it's in his Geographia, III.5.9 STAUANOI, together with
GALINDAI and SOUDINOI which two are definitely Baltic. If STAUANOI
is indeed a reflex of the Slavic selfname, it doesn't exclude
*Slove^ne as a proto-form. Rendering Slavic [o] with foreign (Greek,
Gothic, whatever) [a] was absolutely standard in Common Slavic epoch.
You know ibidem there is another suspectedly Slavic name SOUOBHNOI
(VI.14.9), listed together with ALANOI SKUQAI and ALANORSOI, this
time with Greek omicron in the first syllable. It has been
hypothesized about *Svobe^ne > *Slove^ne, originally from PIE
*swe-/*swo- + -bh- "proper", "own" > "belonging to the same kin"
(cf. Germanic Suebi). What do you make of it?
Of course there is still some chance that both names have nothing to
do with Slavs.
Ualarauans