Re: Uralic Continuity Theory ; Paleo-Germanic lexical borrowings in

> OK now we are talking business!
>
> In so many cases 2) must be excluded because for phonological reasons
> i.e. it would not work for the words. Substitution rules are not
> reversible of course. Finnic drops clusters: that's not reversible;
> Finnic drops voicing: that's not reversible. Finnic makes lots of
> fricatives plosives: that may be reversible given the case is right,
> and pre-grim's law, but usually it is not. As there are usually more
> than one phoneme in a word :) the likelyhood that there are
> irreversible rules will be high.

I think the idea that Finnish substitutes plosives for Germanic
fricatives is based on circular reasoning: They match semantically, so
this substitution has been assumed. But the timing of Grimm has been
creeping upward; it's now in the 1st cent. BCE, so how do we know that
these loans are not pre-Grimm, and consequently plosive to plosive?
And if they are plosive to plosive, how do we know then they are loans
from Germanic? If 'hartia-' is from Germ. *hart-, what made the Finns
suddenly change their mind about their supposedly ancient Germ. *x- ->
Finn. *k- ? It doesn't make a lot of sense.


Torsten