Re: Afro-Asiatic substrate

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "etherman23" <etherman23@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mytoyneighborhood" <mytoyneighborhood@> wrote:
> >
> > Several years ago there was a brief discussion here about
> potential evidence indicating a possible Afro-Asiatic Substrate to
> Northern European Germanic and Celtic languages in Continental
> Europe and the British Isles (possibly explaining the non-Indo-
> European lexicon within Germanic?-which is 1/3 according to
> Hawkins) , and I don't recall anyone outright refuting the notion.
> I was wondering if there's been any change of opinion regarding the
> matter or new evidence?
> > -Michael
> >
>
> Sounds like you're talking about Theo Venneman's work. From what
> I've heard there are basically two problems with his argument.
> First, it's based primarily on typological arguments, like word
> order in Celtic.

1) No, he has written extensively on individual words

2) The typological argument he took over from Pokorny.

> Second, much of the non-IE words in Germanic have been found to
> have IE roots.

No, but more or less plausible IE etymologies have been proposed for them.

> I've heard, but can't justify, that some of the
> non-IE vocab in Germanic is from Chuvash.

That's new to me.


Torsten