Re: Kuhn's ar-/ur-language

From: Jonathan Morris
Message: 62809
Date: 2009-02-04

Hello Torsten,

charming as ever. I was thinking of:

W.P. Schmid "Alteuropaeisch und Indogermanisch" (Mainz
1968) and "Baltische Gewaessernamen und das vorgeschichtliche Europa" (Idg.
Forsch. LXXVII, 1972, pp. 1-18)
As for Arnaud:

The reference is Chapter 16 - El sistema vocálico de la lengua indoeuropea paleohispánica - in F. Villar, Indoeuropeos y no indoeuropeos en la hispania preromana, University of Salamanca press.


The Villar chapter describes a 4-vowel system, i, e, a, u - which looks similar to Kuhn's but Villar is resolutely pro-IE and cites lots of examples of river names containing ur in Andalucia, which can't possibly be Basque.


If you read the entry for urus 'river' in Greenberg IE & Its closest relatives, you'll see that it's a general Eurasiatic root in IE, Altaic etc. Hence, ur in Basque is either a genetic cognate or a borrowing from IE (I can;t see how it can be the other way round, since you would have to explain how it gets from Basque to Altaic).


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