Sky

E.G. Pulleyblank
The Hsiung-nu
'Only direct linguistic evidence can be of value in solving the
problem of the Hsiung-nu language. Unfortunately there is only a
small body of material available for investigating this question.
There are many Hsiung-nu words in Chinese transcription but most of
them are proper names or titles of which the meanings are unknown.
The corpus of words for which Chinese translations are provided is
quite limited. Efforts to connect these words with the major
languages that later dominated the eastern steppes have not been very
successful. One word which early attracted attention was ch'eng-li,
EMC thraïn,j-li < *thárn,-ri (?), "heaven". Every one agrees that
this must be etymologically the same word as Turkish tängri, Mongol
tenggeri, tngri. Pelliot (1944) has, however, given good arguments
for thinking that it is a loan word in both Turkish and Mongolian.
If this is correct, the word is probably one of the many cultural
elements borrowed from the Hsiung-nu by the later steppe empires and
may actually be evidence that the Hsiung-nu language was not closely
related to either Turkish or Mongolian.'

Alexander Vovin
Did the Xiongnu Speak a Yeniseian Language?
'Most recently, Stefan Georg provided an excellent etymological
analysis of Turko-Mongolian tengri/tngri "sky"
[The word is also attested in Xiongnu as .. .. *thang-rij],
cogently demonstrating that it goes back to a hybrid of PY *tïn,gVr-
"high" plus Turkic possessive suffix -i/-ï/-u/-ü-
[Georg, S.:
Türkisch/Mongolisch tengri 'Himmel, Gott' und seine Herkunft.
In: Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia Vol. 6 (2001), pp. 83-100]'
Note the difference in the inflection in declensions like, on the one
hand
"house"
talo
talon
taloa
talossa
talosta
taloon
talolla
talolta
talolle
talona
taloksi

(the cases, all sg., are
nom.
gen.
partit.
iness.
elat.
illat.
adess.
ablat.
allat.
ess.
transl.
)

and, on the other hand
"sky"
taivas
taivaan
taivasta
taivaassa
taivaasta
taivaaseen
taivaalla
taivaalta
taivaalle
taivaana
taivaaksi

and
"ring"
rengas
renkaan
rengasta
renkaassa
renkaasta
renkaaseen
renkaalla
renkaalta
renkaalle
renkaana
renkaaksi

Somehow the nominative -s and the lengthened stem vowel outside of
the nominative and partitive reminds one of IE thematic stems.
I was wondering if this Finnish declension is the preferred one for
(supposed) loaned IE thematic/Germanic a-stems?

Estonian has taevas "sky"; I have no information on its declension
class.
The UEW doesn't know this stem, whatever that means.


Janne Saarikivi
Substrata Uralica
Studies on Finno-Ugrian substrates in Northern Russian Dialects
'Even some new similar etymologies can be presented; all of them,
except number 3, are more thoroughly discussed in my unpublished
licenciate thesis (Saarikivi 2003). In many cases the words show
minor phonological and semantical differencies in comparison with
their Finnic loan originals. This, together with their unexpected
distribution 400 to 500 km east of the present Finnic language area,
suggests that we are dealing with borrowings from extinct Finnic
substratum languages:
1. vólgas (Archangel dialect group, Pinega and Upper Tojma
districts) 'low and narrow meadow by a river; bend or island of a
river on which hay grows' (SRNG 5: 37) < Finnic *alho(-s) 'dale'.
Substitution Finnic *a > Russian o is commonplace in old borowings
(cf. Kalima 1919: 46-47). The initial v- is a prothetic glide
characteristic of certain northern Russian dialects (for example
vól´ha < ól´ha 'willow', cf. Poz^arickaja 1997: 142-143). Final -s,
with all probability, originated in the substratum language and can
be explained as a secondary formation. These kinds of variants of
nouns exist in all of the Finnic languages and are especially
commonplace in toponyms (cf. hanka ~ hangas, rampa ~ rammas, Eräjärvi
~ Eräsjärvi, Hirvajärvi ~ Hirvasjärvi, etc.; see Tunkelo 1953:
98-99). The -s may also be explained by assuming a borrowing from an
oblique case (cf. Finnish alhossa 'in the dale').'

Or with a substrate to FU and IE.


Torsten