Re: Strange words out of place

Torsten,

I am not belittling your investigation of when Grimm took place; I think it
is interesting also.

But, I must have missed something earlier.

What does -*to as the source of Germanic dental preterites have to do with
Grimm?


Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 2:58 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Strange words out of place



> > > >
> > > >
> > > > The only rivers in *wib- Udolph finds are in Britain
> > > > (not on the map).
> > > > Does that mean the Germani were all over the continent when
> > > > the Grimm-shift took place?
> > >
> > >
> > > GK: I'm afraid
> >
> > No you're not.
> >
> > > the evidence of -wib/-wip is too
> > > opaque to draw any firm conclusions one way or the
> > > other (on this basis alone) as to where and when the
> > > Grimm shift began. ****
> >
> > Not so. The only way to have the Grimm shift take place in the
> > Jastorf area is to assume, as Udolph does, that all those river
> > etc names exactly in the Jastorf area and nowhere else on the
> > continent were *wib- and not *wip- forms. That's bad science. All
> > this talk of opacity is just to hide fact that you want to go on
> > believing the Grimm-shift took place in Jastorf, as if nothing
> > happened.
> >


Just so that other people don't feel I've been defated and start
harassing me with tired dead-horse metaphors, I think I better answer
this although it's become loathsome to me.


> ****GK: I don't know where the Grimm shift initially
> occurred, and how it spread.

We linguists thought we did. Now we'll have to give it up.

> That's not the point, Torsten. The issue was: where did Germanic
> begin? (The Grimm shift was surely not the beginning of this
> linguistic group even if subsequently one of its most
> obvious characteristics).

I'm afraid it is in linguistics. No one tries to pursue its history
beyond the Grimm shift. If you followed the discussion between Jouppe
and myself you will have observed that all loans from Germanic into
Finnic (they are not even considering the possibility of loans from a
common substrate when the proposed cognate in Germanic is without
relatives elsewhere in IE languages) are assumed to be from after the
Grimm shift, which means that they match Germanic *f-, *þ-, *x- ->
Finnic *p-, *t-, *k-, instead of the obvious solution, ie. to assume
the loans are pre-Grimm (Jouppe points out there are some
correspondences Germanic *-x-, *-G- -> Finnic -h-, but that could be
handled assuming those loans alone were post-Grimm, or that *k -> *x
preceded the rest of the Grimm shift).


> You suggested the area of the Przeworsk culture. I offered arguments
> against this (including the existence of the Sciri long before
> the emergence of Przeworsk) none of which you were able to deal with
> (so far).

We have no linguistic material showing that the Sciri were Germani. As
far as I can see, the three Bastarnae names aren't either (if there's
anyone on cybalist thinks he can prove otherwise, please do), and the
Sciri and Bastarnae must have been para-Germanic, linguistically, if
anything. All present Germanic language groups must either have
descended from Przeworsk westwards expansion, or be the result of the
Cimbri/Teutones grand tour a half century earlier; the time depth of
the separation of the Germanic language families is simply too shallow
to permit anything earlier (some have remarked that Runic is
practically PGermanic).

> Deflecting matters to inconclusive side discussions about
> *wib-/*wip- won't do (:=)))****

What is this, bad cop interrogation technique? Until I answer your
last question, you declare any other evidence 'opaque' and
'inconclusive'? You know very well how relevant it is.

And here is Wikipedia on the relevant cultures. I can't seem to find
all the Jastorf influence on Przeworsk you claim there was? Perhaps
you'd care to emend them? It's open for anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jastorf_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przeworsk_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Roman_Iron_Age
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Iron_Age

As for the map of expansions on the Pre-Roman Iron Age map, it shows
Jastorf taking over the Nienstedt(NWBlock) culture before 500 BCE.
Presumably the rest of the expansions claims are equally accurate, so
you can forget about them.



Torsten