Re: V-, B-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think a-vocalism alone is enough to characterize
> > > > > Alteuropäisch as Indo-Iranian. On might imagine early IE
> > > > > dialects in Europe not having undergone ablauting (*a > e,

o,

> > > > > zero), or gone ablauting > de-ablauting like Indo-Iranian.
> > > > > Note that the Vandals (with non-ablauted /a/) at the mouth

of

> > > > > the Oder (cf.
> > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineta
> > > > > ) are connected archaeologically with Vend-syssel (with
> > > > > ablauted /e/)
> > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendsyssel
> > > > > and that the Langobardi, when they lived west of the Elbe
> > > > > were called Vinnili (with Germanic *-en- > *-in-, from
> > > > > ablauted /e/). From that it seems ablauting was dialectal

in

> > > > > Alteuropäisch/Venetic.
> > > >
> > > > Who gave the Vandals their name?
> > >
> > > I don't think there's any indication it's an exonym.
> >
> > They lived near Sarmatia, so if their name is indeed equivalent

to

> > Venelli or Venetuli (i.e. 'Little Veneti', separated from the
> > rest), it could be an Iranian deformation, with /a/ substituted

for

> > */e/.
> >
> > On the other hand the British Damnii had a town called Vandogara

or

> > Vanduaria (now Paisley), so perhaps the Vandali are based on a
> > different root, e.g. *wendh- 'to turn'. If we cannot be certain
> > about their name, we cannot blithely assume that the Vandali were
> > Veneti who merged */e/ (and presumably */o/) with /a/.
>
> I will blithely assume the possibility you don't mention, namely

that

> some early IE dialects did not ablaut PPIE *a to (PIE) *e.

Several matters are involved here. First, it is clear (at least to
me, and at least from my ongoing river-name study) that PIE had both
ablauting and non-ablauting roots. The latter typically (but not
always) had invariant */a/ in the root as opposed to the */e/ vs.
*/o/ vs. *zero of ablauting roots, and while they took the same
deverbative suffixes, they apparently did not use root-extensions
(e.g. *-g^h-, which somebody brought up recently) as the ablauting
roots did.

Second, if some "early dialects" did not have ablauting roots at all,
then they might be Para-IE dialects, but not PIE or IE. I like to
think of PIE as late "North Pontic", with the related "West Pontic"
giving rise on the one hand to Balkan-Danubian / East Mediterranean /
Pre-Greek, on the other to the LBK and TRB languages; West Pontians
who stayed at home ended up as Tripolyeans. But this goes beyond the
scope of the present forum.

Third, the only major IE group merging both */e/ and */o/ with */a/
is Indo-Iranian, so if this merger is observed, the simplest
conclusion is that we are dealing with an I-Ir language.

> > > > They spoke an East Germanic language, so they were not
> > > > LINGUISTICALLY Veneti,
> > >
> > > Nope. The only reason their language, of which we know nothing,

is

> > > classed as East Germanic, is that they lived in the eastern

part

> > > of the later Germania. One thing we do know, however, is that
> > > their archaeological culture, that of the Lugii, is different
> > > from the Przeworsk one, but similar to that in Vendsyssel etc.

I

> > > think that at least
> as long
> > > as the two cultures can be discerned as separate, they were
> > > Venetic-speaking.
> >
> > Perhaps, but since they failed to write their names on their

pots,

> > we cannot know what language they cursed in when they dropped one.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalic_language
> 'Very little is known about the Vandalic language beyond that it was
> East Germanic, closely related to Gothic. A small number of personal
> names of Vandalic origin in Spanish are known.'
> It's obvious from the list of kings in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandal
> starting with Wisimar (? - † 335), that they must have been
> Germanic-speaking at the latest from the fourth cent CE. But in the
> third cent CE, at least their kings had non-Germanic names (Raus and
> Rapt).

I see that Raus and Rapt are missing a reference. I have a Celtic
name, and my male-line ancestors haven't spoken Irish since the
generation uprooted by the potato famine. Kings of France, Spain,
Italy, etc. have had Germanic names centuries after the royal houses
quit speaking Germanic. I don't see that a whole lot can be
concluded from Raus and Rapt.

> > > > just as the Slavic Wends of Lusatia were not.
> > >
> > > They were too. I think the Slav languages expanded westwards

with

> > > the Ariovistus campaign.
> >
> > MUCH too early. Before the Huns, the Slavs were not likely to

have

> > enlisted in foreign armies.
>
> The 500's as the time the Slavs expanded is actually a terminus ante
> quem. There isn't anything archaeological to back it up. Also, there
> are problems of how to fit in the Prague culture. Summed up in

Wikipedia:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs

P.M. Barford, _The Early Slavs_ [Ithaca 2001] has more recent
archaeological information.

> In Joz^ef S^avli/Matej Bor: Unsere Vorfahren die Veneter (review of
> the English translation here:
> http://tinyurl.com/6jn43n )
> a book nice linguists shouldn't read, the authors supply a number of
> interpretations of place names in Switzerland and Austria from
> Slovenian (mainly related to Alpine toponomy and agriculture), which
> they call a demonstration that the previous inhabitants of the area,
> the Veneti, were Slavic. Two other interpretations come to mind: the
> Slovenian words in question are from a Venetic substrate, and 2) The
> Charudes/Chrvati/Croats once colonized the area after the Ariovistus
> debacle. I can't decide which on my rudimentary knowledge of

Slavic.

Don't bother. The review (which is friendly as regards content)
indicates that the book is crap. The comments on Etruscan alone show
that. Now and then a dilettante from one of the countries using the
Cyrillic alphabet will look at Etruscan inscriptions and believe he
can read them as Slavic (the wrong way, hence the Etruscan praenomen
Vel will be misread as the Slavic name Lev). I've seen this nonsense
several times on the Web (even on Linguist List!) and in several
published books.

No doubt there are Slovenian place-names in the East Alps, but they
do not go back to antiquity. Hubschmid's father, J.U. Hubschmied,
could have debunked this stuff with his eyes closed. He was quite
accomplished at East Alpine toponymy, and familiar with Slovenian.
As for the claim of Slovene/Slavic loanwords in Breton and such, this
is the hallmark of ultranationalist kookery. "OUR people were not
only HERE first, they were EVERYWHERE first!" Sheeeeesh ...

> > The great westward expansion of Slavs
> > got going 50 or 100 years after the depopulation of the
> > Restgermanen (which in my opinion points to a great plague,

ignored

> > by Byzantine historians since it occurred far inside barbarian
> > lands; I cannot fathom ALL East Germanic peoples abandoning
> > perfectly good lands).
>
> Think Attila. As good a plague as any. But I think thatr population
> was already mixed Germanic/Slavic, and that the 'Germanic'

or 'Slavic'

> nature of the area was a question of politics and demographics.

Think

> Eastern Germany or Austria/Hungary before and after WWI: hardly any
> ethnic, but abrupt political change.

Veterans demand resettlement. If we accept the stereotypical imagery
of Attila's unshaven hordes brandishing battle-axes and driving
everyone out of these lands, the notion that Attila would simply have
let the lands remain vacant is absurd. The lands would immediately
have been occupied by veterans from these same hordes, speaking
Hunnish, Sarmatian, Alanic, and whatever.

Early Slavic houses were sunken into the ground, with a square floor-
plan and an oven in a corner opposite the door. Slavic for 'bread',
Russian <khlyeb> etc., is a loanword from Germanic (cf. OE <hla:f>).
Before the catastrophe that devastated the Restgermanen, the Proto-
Slavs likely inhabited a forest-steppe zone where cereal cultivation
was impractical. The expanding Slavs probably did have some
surviving Germans among them, from whom they learned how to grow and
use cereals in their new lands, along with the word for 'bread'.

DGK