Re: Yeneseic and Na-Dene

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

>
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > If the identity proposed between the Huns and the
> > Hsiung-nu/Xiongnu
> > holds, perhaps we should look for unexplained
> > Germanic words in Ket?
> >
> >
> > Torsten
>
> ****GK: The Xiongnu were a very large empire, which
> did not only include the original Yenissean nucleus.
> Two preliminaries to consider before embarking on the
> above:
> (1) Are there any Yenissean elements in the surviving
> data on the Hunnish language (Cf. Maenchen-Helfen and
> esp. Pritsak)? Off the top I would think not. The
> European Huns may have been "political" rather than
> "linguistic" Xiongnu.

Worth a try, if it's not been done before.

> (2) Is there any evidence that some Hunnish remnants
> fled all the way back to Eastern Asia after Nedao or
> later? Attila's power only reached to the Volga. Some
> Huns actually made it to Armenia (in the 6th c.). Any
> traces of Germanic in proto-Hungarian (left "on the
> way"? Doubtful).

It looks like you believe all Yeniseian-speakers went with Attila. I
think what Pulleyblank proposes is that Xiongnu/Hunnish is a Yeniseian
language, thus it would have left cousins behind, those we've heard of.

> As to the proposed "Ket-Germanic similarities
> (mentioned by Fournet). How do we know these did not
> belong to some old Baltic area substrate?****

That would be a danger if the Huns escaped all the way home but that
doesn't seem likely and anyway isn't logically necessary; see above.

At least some of them stayed. I like to think:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/6212


Torsten