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

From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 54033
Date: 2008-02-23

I can't agree there. It seems to me many of the proposed cognates in
Germanic are part of the 30% roots which have a Germanic, but not a
convincing PIE pedigree, and many more have a, as you called it,
skewed distribution, ie. they are only known in NWEuropean languages.
Calling it a loan from Germanic for methodological reasons alone in
that case is flawed. It is a loan from whatever was the substrate of
Germanic and might have been the substrate of Finnish and Estonian too.
Torsten
================
I think the substrate of Finnish and North Saami
is a kind of Baltic language.
The substrate words listed by Aikio
clearly are Satem, and exhibit Ruki law.
*Bhergh "mountain" > bärsha
*rasshu "(heavy)rain" < *dhrouso (Ruki)
Cf. English drizzle < *dhreus-

The substrate of North Germanic
is most probably not IE at all.
I have claimed that "sea" < *sajwa < *z_h_va "sea"
is a loanword.

This word "sea island"
looks like a variant of *z_h_v-
*zahl-

Cf .the word *sa(:)l "salt"
which is also a loanword.

Finnish sal with short -a-
cannot be a direct loan from *zah-l
In that case it would be either
suol < *za:l or säjl < *zajl
It's obviously a Baltic loanword as usual.
Note that North Saami säll can be a direct
loan from *zahl

I would be surprised if Finnish could
have direct loanwords from the (Baltic) or
(non IE pre-Germanic) substrate(s).
Baltic was there before anybody else.

And the non IE substrate of western Scandinavia
got dissolved into Germanic before Fennic
reached this area.

Arnaud
=================


> The word for salo 'island' fullfills the criteria of narrow
> distribution on both sides, but here unfortunatey substitution rules
> are reversible so 1) and 2) works. Can you think of any better
> examples?

'Salo' works good enough for me. What do you think of these
etymologies of Sjælland and Lat. insula (*enk^-salaw):

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50268
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50271


Torsten