Re: Grimm shift as starting point of "Germanic"

From: tgpedersen
Message: 54751
Date: 2008-03-06

> > We have three "leader names" from the 2nd c.BCE.
> > Torsten, following Gibbon, does not think they are
> > Germanic. But Gibbon's text is at least partially
> > defective. Muellenhoff, a much stronger scientific
> > authority than Gibbon, thinks they are indeed
> > Germanic. And I see no reason to doubt this.
> > Muellenhoff believes that 1."Clondicus" resembles
> > O.Sax. "Indico", that 2."Cotto" resembles Old Sax.
> > "Goddo", and 3."Talto" has Alemannic analogues.

I'll give one more reason to doubt this. The stem of Cotto, *kot-, if
Germanic, would have been *gVd-. That violates the constraint on PIE
roots that they can't be of the form *DVD-, where D is a voiced,
unspirated stop (this is actually one of the criteria Kuhn uses to
sift non-Germanic roots in his material.


Torsten