From: Rick McCallister
Message: 53843
Date: 2008-02-21
> Very funny story ;) The problem with it is, that the=== message truncated ===
> point Helimski
> is trying to make contradicts completely what we
> know about lexical
> borrowings in more modern times. Things happen when
> words are
> borrowed and there are plenty of uncontested
> analogies for the
> methodology applied. There is no reason to believe
> that borrowings
> would have followed other rules in the past > more
> follows below
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003"
> <swatimkelkar@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.christopherculver.com/ignorance/?p=65
> >
> > Helimski thinks this is entirely without
> foundation, and offers the
> > following mirthful dialogue to illustrate this:"
>
> > M. Kelkar
> >
>
> The ridiculing story has been published in
> Helimski's article in
> Carpelan, Christian; Parpola, Asko & Koskikallio,
> Petteri (eds.):
> Early Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European:
> Linguistic and
> Archeological Considerations. Helsinki (Mémoires de
> la Societé Finno-
> Ougrienne *242*) 2001: 201ff. The whole volume is
> described well in
> the internet at
> http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-934.html
>
> Since I am in possession of the source I may share
> with you also the
> response by Jorma Koivulehto to that story and to
> the 5 introductory
> charges it strives to illustrate (same book page
> 251f). I have
> expanded the bibliographic references and added two
> ortographic
> remarks. I have written it by hand so any
> misspellings or errors are
> on my account. Italics are ignored.
>
> Quote
> I hope the readers of this volume had a good laugh
> at my expense
> while reading the fictional scene staged by Eugene
> Helimski in order
> to ridicule my etymology. Seriously speaking,
> however, there is no
> substance in Helimski's criticism. Anything can be
> borrowed, provided
> that the contacts are intensive enough (Laakso,
> Johanna 1999,
> Language contact hypotheses and the history of
> Uralic morphosyntax.
> Journal de la Société Finno-ougrienne 88: page 62);
> and words for
> means of locomotion are especially likely to be
> borrowed, unless
> there is an acceptable autochthonous etymology,
> which is not the case
> here. The constant flow of lexical borrowings from
> Indo-European to
> Finno-Ugric accounts for the fact that no ancient
> common Uralic or
> Finno-Ugric term for `boat' has been preserved (at
> least not in
> westerly Finno-Ugric languages), although the object
> itself was, as
> an `Einbaum', well known in early Uralic times and
> for a long time
> before. The method chosen by Helimski only shows
> that he has run
> out of serious arguments.
> Since Helimski has also chosen to attack my
> etymological research in
> general and to reject my results wholesale, I am
> obliged to deal with
> his accusation in brief.
> - Charge number 1: Lexical scope: My loan
> etymologies contain almost
> as many verbs and adjectives as nouns; and, more
> generally, my loan
> etymologies contain words for elementary objects and
> actions. This
> charge is invalidated by the widely-known fact that
> "in the case of
> very intensive language contacts, practically
> anything can be
> borrowed, from words to affixes and structures"
> (Laakso 1999: 62).
> Unfortunately, this basic fact that has controlled
> and verified by
> numerous cases from more recent languages, seems to
> be ignored by
> researchers working on Nostratic premises. Actually,
> this is quite
> understandable: early loans _must_ be rejected
> because they threaten
> the Nostratic positions which presuppose that the
> words concerned are
> genetically related, Nostratic words. It would also
> be interesting to
> know which of the many adjectives claimed by
> Helimski really are
> covered in my paper published her. Among the 56
> cases I can find only
> the following three: *sera `old, aged' (no. 48),
> *paksu `thick, fat,
> dense' (no 52), *acnas {the c here carries a
> v-shaped hat in the
> source/Jouppe} `greedy, voracious' (no. 53), all of
> them are Proto-
> Iranian loans (additionally there is Finn. kalvas,
> kalpea `pale',
> which is only hinted at in connection with Saami
> guolbba: no.26). I
> will return to this question at the end of this
> paper.
> - Charge no. 2: The Indo-European source words and
> their Finno-Ugric
> counterparts postulated by me, "often" differ
> semantically. I think
> we can safely claim the opposite: most of my cases
> show a rather far-
> going semantic congruence, given the fact that there
> is a great time-
> depth. That there are sometimes minor semantic
> differences, is of
> course unavoidable: the same can be observed also in
> some recent
> loans: cf. e.g. Finn. colloquial snaijata `to
> understand, comprehend'
> from Russian znat', znaet `to know'.
> Charge no. 3: Stem structure: "quite often the
> presumed sources
> differ from the words which actually are attested in
> the Indo-
> European languages in the presence or absence of a
> suffix, in their
> Ablautstufen, etc.". In my present paper, at
> least, where is the
> evidence of the first claim? Of course, now and then
> we can observe
> that genuine Finno-Ugric or Proto-Finnic suffixes
> have been attached
> to the borrowed stems, but this is nothing peculiar.
> E.g. almost all
> later verb borrowings have verbalizing suffixes, and
> suffixation can
> occur in nouns, too (e.g. es {the s carries a
> v-shaped hat in the
> source/Jouppe} is a frequent suffix, often without
> an exact
> counterpart in the source word: see Koivulehto,
> Jorma 1999. Verba
> mutuata. Quae vestigia antiquissimi cum Germanis
> aliisque Indo-
> Europaeis contactus in linguis Fennicis reliquerint.
> [in German].
> Helsinki: Mémoires de la societé Finno-Ougrienne
> 237. ISBN 952-5150-
> 36-4. pages 309-328). The "omission" (Helimski:
> "abscence") of a
> suffix in the source word, as far as I know, very
> rare in my material
> and easily be accounted for. In no. 10 (*vete) the
> Indo-European
> counterpart is a heteroclitic er/-en-stem, but it
> is obvious that
> this stem has been derived from a root noun *wed-
> (cf. also Armenian
> get `river'). And this is, of course also postulated
> by
> Nostraticists. As to the Ablautstufen, the assertion
> is simply not
> true. In no case do I suggest an Ablautstufe which
> would not be
> attested in the source material, that is in the
> postulated source
> word.
> Charge no. 4: Phonetics: Helimski reproaches me for
> having made new
> rules, which, however, are illustrated only with new
> etymologies
> which also stem from me. Helimski obviously refers
> to new
> substitution rules. Helimski's attacks here a
> standard scientific
> procedure. If I claim to have found a new
> substitution model, the
> proof of it can only be produced by showing that "it
> works",