Re: Kuhn's ar-/ur-language

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Morris
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 12:14 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Kuhn's ar-/ur-language


Hello Torsten,

charming as ever. I was thinking of:
W.P. Schmid "Alteuropaeisch und Indogermanisch" (Mainz1968) 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.
=========
Thank you,
Unfortunately, it does not seem to be easily accessible on the web.

I wonder what "lots of examples" really is and how one can assert anything
really clear.

Anyway, I'm not ready to blindfoldedly buy the idea that an Indo-European
language could be responsible for a very old layer of toponyms in the
Hispanic penisula, and in Andalucia on top of that !

Arnaud
=======


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).

=======

Such a segment as <ur> is phonetic smash-up and it can originate in about
anything.
I'm not surprised the notorious Greenberg chose that piece of nothingness.
It guarantees absolute leeway for unlimited fancy.
I suppose just <u> would too much look like a scandal,
but <ur> is a learned and clever scandal.

A.