Re: Strange words out of place

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> etc etc. Note: There aren't any -b- forms in his material from
> Poland and Germany. They all have -p-. Which means the first
> Germanic sound shift, the Grimm shift, wherever it took place, it
> wasn't here (are you listening, George?)
>
> ****GK: Since I'm not much of a linguist, I don't
> understand your point. If the Grimm shift means a
> substitution of "p" for "b", how does the presence of
> "p" and the absence of "b" argue against its having occurred?****
>

I left out one premise, the one Kuhn also uses: PIE *b was very rare,
almost non-existent. Therefore words in Germanic and toponyms in its
present area with /p/ almost certainly don't have a direct PIE
pedigree, but must have some other source, IE or non-IE.

Further, the word seems to belong to a *wip-, *wimp-, *wik-, *wik-
family of appellatives (non-toponyms), and that characterizes it/them
as belonging to a substrate language in NWEurope, Schrijver's
'language of geminates' (check archives).

This is non-standard stuff (yet), so it will have to stand on the
strength of the argument alone.


Torsten