--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
> > > 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.
>
> But once we try to explain ablaut as derived from from single vowel
> (which it must be), we get into difficulties with that model, since
we
> then will have to explain why the rule we arrive at (eg. stressed e,
> posttonic (svarita) o, unstressed zero), pplies to some roots, not
to
> others. The best we can do is to assume mixing of an ablauting with
a
> non-ablauting language.
That is ONE thing we can do, not necessarily the BEST thing.
> > 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.
>
> Yes.
>
> > 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.
>
> The problem I have with that is that Old European river names are so
> uniform over such a large area that they must have been spread by a
> water-people, and the IIr.'s are land-people.
A subset of these landlubbers, Iranian-speakers, are known to have
ranged from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, and from the
Ukraine to Afghanistan. For a time they dominated Egypt, Anatolia,
and Thrace.
Also, I disagree about the alleged uniformity of the river-names
assigned to the Alteuropäisch system. Apart from later names (mostly
Celtic and Baltic) included by mistake, Alteuropäisch has river-names
of both Veneto-Illyrian and Indo-Iranian types. In the Northwest of
Europe, I see a core of Veneto-Illyrian with an intermittent overlay
of Indo-Iranian. In the Southwest, Indo-Iranian forms the oldest
Indo-European stratum, overlain in turn by Lusitanian (which I
consider to be a Veneto-Illyrian language) and Celtiberian.
In developing his theory of Alteuropäisch, Hans Krahe focused too
much attention on suffixes, too little attention on the relation
between root-grade and suffix, and far too little attention on the
semantics of the complete names. His successors have offered some
partial remediation, but to my knowledge no revision of the theory
has been published which addresses all the problems. What I propose
is, of course, a radical revision. Resulting from the conflation of
distinct strata, the Alteuropäisch system as such is a mirage, not
the product of a uniform Proto-Western IE as Krahe thought, much less
of PIE itself as W.P. Schmid insisted.
Disentangling the river-name strata is more difficult than merely
reassigning individual roots and suffixes. The rivers known as
Derventio or Derwent (4 examples in England plus the Dart, cf.
Dærenta muða 'Dartmouth' 1049) provide a good illustration. Neither
Krahe nor his colleague W.F.H. Nicolaisen regarded this name as
Alteuropäisch, evidently accepting Eilert Ekwall's Celtic
etymology 'river where oaks grow abundantly' (cf. Welsh
<derw> 'oak'). P.R. Kitson, in "British and European River-Names"
(TrPhS 94:73-118, 1996), pp. 77-81, points out a problem with the
presumed suffix, and suggests *Deru-went- 'full of oaks' as the
immediate protoform, although this suffix *-went- is not productive
in historically attested Celtic. So far, so good. But Kitson then
takes *Deru-went- as an Old British paretymological reshaping of
Alteuropäisch *Dravantia, thus shoehorning the rivers Derwent into
one of Krahe's most productive groups, that based on *dreu- 'to run,
hasten, hurry' (an extension of PIE *der-, but Krahe cites only Indo-
Iranian appellatives formed from *dreu-, and the Sanskrit river-name
Dravanti:). Kitson's explanation of the British place-name Venta as
hypostasized from the suffix *-went- is brilliant, but the maneuvers
required to make the suffix available in Old British are unnecessary
if we regard it, along with the name *Deru-went-, as Veneto-
Illyrian. Likewise the rivers Alewent (now Alwent, Alwin, Allen, in
my opinion *Alu-went- 'full of froth', not 'full of flow') and the
continental rivers Alisontia (now Elze/Alzette, Alsenz, Elsenz,
*Aliso-went- 'full of alders'; Celtic uses *werno- for 'alder'
instead) have the same formation. That is, some of the river-names
in *-nt- assigned to the Alteuropäisch system by Krahe and others
contain the participial suffix *-nt- and a verbal root, while others
have *-went- and a nominal root.
> > > > [...]
> > > 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.
>
> I know, but that is irrelevant
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/13271
> Here are the alleged Breton - Slovenian correspondent words (pp.
339-
>
> [snipped for brevity]
The presence of crap IS relevant, since it indicates that the book
was published without being meaningfully edited. Chris Gwinn has
already commented, suggesting that the authors study Jackson before
venturing into Breton philology. (They might also study the "other"
Pedersen.)
DGK