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

VERY innovative....
Just add here a parallell to the Armenian treatment of PIE
plosives..! You are half way already to the South East!
What was the ethnic definition of the "Bastarnae" by the way. They
were BCE somewhere neighbouring Dacia. I think some source label
them "Germanic", but critical commentators have held it impossible. I
have pledged not to debate this sort of stuff but it would be
thrilling, wouldn't it :).

I have to think about it, but there is a lot of data that would have
to be reconciled. I'm very sceptic. And the distribution of Paleo-
Germanic loans in Finnic need to be considered as well. The etymons
are rather skewed towards the north of the Gulf of Finland. But on
the other hand there are a few paleo-gmc cases with volgaic
distribution as well (muta, lumota, runko, sika) and even permic!
(kärsiä and lansi, re: my homepage, and ?joukko?). But on a balance,
there is no comparison with their wide distribution in Saami.

I will rest with my sceptic reactionary views until examining your
links and reasoning closer.

Jouppe

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
> > A clear case is the word 'moth' where the substitution could have
> > worked Saami > Gmc but not the other way. Phonological criteria
> > leaves no mercy. But you are right, it is controversal because of
> > the lack of parallell borrowings. That's why I threw it out to
you.
> > The fact that the language were neighbours at that time is not
> > controversial though, because borrowings in the other direction
are
> > plenty.
>
> But that is not a fact, it is a convention. The null hypothesis, so
to
> speak, that lkanguages don't move unless we can prove orherwise. I'm
> not basing this on Snorri alone, there are other things:
>
> 1) Why do Caesar and Tacitus state that the Germani had never been
> heard of before?
>
> 2) Why do earlier Greek and Roman writers never mention anything
> recognizably Germanic from the areas where Caesar and Tacitus know
> them and where they live today?
>
> 3) Why would the Germanic language family that was supposedly stable
> for thousands of years suddenly break up 2000 years ago?
>
> 4) Is it not more likely that such a breakup would occur if there
had
> been a rapid expansion of its original area at that time?
>
> 5)
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50154
> and follow the links.
>
>
> In short, I think the Germanic language is a product of the
Przeworsk
> or Oder-Warthe group. Whatever contact existed between Germanic and
> Finnish pre-Grimm, ie loans with substitutions 'Gmc.' -> Finn., must
> have taken place there or further east. And given that one can argue
> for a Fennic substrate for all of Balto-Slavic, not just for
Russian,
> perhaps that's not so impossible.
>
>
> Torsten
>