--- In cybalist@... s.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@ ...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@... s.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@ > wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@... s.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@ > wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In cybalist@... s.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@ > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Peter Schrijver
> > > > Lost Languages in Northern Europe
> > > > in: Early Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > A second example of direct contact between the language of
> > > > geminates and a branch of Uralic is the Germanic word hand
> > > > (Gothic handus etc.) < Proto-Germanic *hand-. All attempts at an
> > > > Indo-European etymology of this word remain unconvincing (see
> > > > recently Kluge & Seebold 1989:353). Yet if we take Grimm's and
> > > > Verner's Laws into account, we may reconstruct *hand- as *kant-.
> > > > This looks strikingly like a cognate of Proto-Finno- Ugric *käti
> > > > 'hand, arm', but with a nasal infixed into the root. Since this
> > > > nasalization is not a feature of Finno-Ugric, or of Indo-European
> > > > (outside the nasal presents, that is), and since it is a feature
> > > > of the language of geminates, it is reasonable to conclude that
> > > > Finno-Ugric *käti was borrowed by the language of geminates, from
> > > > which it subsequently entered Germanic before Verner's Law and
> > > > Grimm's Law.
> > >
> > > I find it hard to believe that Proto-Germans would have assigned a
> > > loanword lacking final /u/ to the feminine /u/-declension, rather
> > > than one of the more common paradigms. During historical times the
> > > Gmc. fem. /u/-decl., never high in members, loses ground. Old High
> > > German has already brought 'hand' into the /i/-decl., although
> > > traces of the /u/-decl. persist in Old and Middle HG. In Old
> > > English, beside <hand> only a handful of fem. /u/-stems are in
> > > common use. Indeed if the substratal protoform was *ka(n)t-, the
> > > Proto-Germans must have appended a stressed feminine *-ú- in order
> > > for Verner's Law to yield Gmc. *hanðu-, whence Gothic <handus> and
> > > the rest. This is not merely implausible, but without parallel.
> >
> > Why couldn't it be borrowed into PPGmc. as *kantú-?
>
> Why don't loanwords into modern English form plurals like <children>?
>
> > > Identifying substratal loanwords in Germanic requires more than
> > > just throwing Grimm's and Verner's Laws at the alleged protoforms.
> > > The morphology of the attested forms must be considered as well.
> > > In this case I think that *handu- is an inherited Indo-European
> > > word of archaic formation.
> >
> > How do we know those supposed archaic formation aren't chimeric, and actually belonging in the donor language? Anyway, that's what I'll propose.
>
> In your extensive citations from the UEW I don't see any *kantu-, or anything suggesting *kantu-, in the donor language. Whence -u- if not an inherited IE formation?
>
> > > My best guess at a PIE protoform is *kóndHu- 'pincher, squeezer',
> > > from *kendH- 'to pinch, squeeze, compress', in turn an enlargement
> > > of *ken- 'compact, compressed'. This primary adjectival root is
> > > Pokorny's *ken-(1) (IEW 558) under which are listed mostly nominal
> > > extensions of zero-grade *kn-, and some words whose IE origin is
> > > doubtful (Sanskrit <kanda-> m. 'bulb'; Greek <kóndos> 'horn, ankle-
> > > bone', <kóndulos> 'knuckle'). Nevertheless the enlargement *kendH-
> > > 'to make compact, compress, squeeze' has a good parallel in *weidH-
> > > 'to make apart, divide, separate' from the adjectival root *wei-
> > > 'apart, disjoint, in two' (mostly in zero-grade *wi-, sometimes
> > > dual *wi:- < *wih-, IEW 1175, 1127). As a morphological parallel
> > > to *kóndHu- I regard Greek <kórthus> 'millstone' (Theophrastus) as
> > > derived from PIE *g^Her- 'short, small, fine-grained' ; here the
> > > adjectival root (Pokorny's *g^Her-(6), IEW 443) is enlarged to
> > > *g^HerdH- 'to make small, grind' which in turn yields the agential
> > > *g^HórdHu- 'grinder, millstone', Proto-Greek *kHórtHu-, by
> > > Grassmann's Law <kórthus>. The same adjectival *g^Her- appears in
> > > two other archaic IE formations in Greek: *g^Hén-g^Hro-
> > > 'small-grained material', Greek <kégkhros> 'millet; fish-spawn';
> > > *g^H´n.-g^Hru- , Grk. <kákhrus> 'winter-bud' (Thphr.), 'parched
> > > barley' (Aristophanes) . The latter's variant <kágkhrus> is
> > > probably a cross between these forms.
> >
> > de Vries:
> > 'knoka schw. V. 'schlagen, prügeln',
> > nisl. hnoka 'unruhig sein', nnorw. knoka,
> > nschw. dial. knåka,
> > ndä. knuge 'drücken, klemmen'.
> > — mhd. knochen 'knuffen' und
> > ae. cnocian, cnucian 'schlagen, stossen'.
> > — vgl. knúi und knjúkr.
> >
> > usw. usw. usw.
> >
> > How can a root that behaves like that be considered IE?
>
> I already expressed doubt that everything referred to *ken- by Pokorny is really IE. The 'knoll' word fits poorly semantically, since it means more like 'swelling', and the 'knob' word has a geminated media; I'm willing to concede that many of these are NOT inherited by Gmc. from PIE the usual way. I think 'rye' both with and without -gg- came from an IE lg. of the Illyrian type (sorry, not Venetic) and will say more later; I suspect that both Kuhn's NWBlock lg. and Schrijver's lg. of gemm. are "really" NW Illyrian, with some loans from the West Mediterranean substrate.
>
> > > Verner and several contemporaries regarded 'hand' as connected with
> > > the Gmc. strong verb *henþ- 'to capture' reflected in Goth.
> > > <frahinþan>, <-hanþ>, <-hunþans> 'id.', Swedish <hinna> 'to obtain,
> > > reach', Danish dialectal <hinne> 'id.', in which case *hanðu- would
> > > be the correct Gmc. form and my explanation would fail. More
> > > recently however Seebold saw "keine sichere Vergleichsmöglichkei t"
> > > between 'hand' and *henþ-. Such a connection would require an
> > > oxytone /o/-grade agent, PIE *kontú- 'catcher', to be formed from
> > > *kent-, then inherited into Gmc. in the sense 'hand'. This is, in
> > > my opinion, more difficult to justify morphologically and
> > > semantically than what I proposed above.
> >
> > Actually I considered connecting them, but outside IE, in the donor language, whichever that is.
> >
> > Note that those Germanic nouns for which alternations show the effect of Verner, smell funny too:
> > http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ cybalist/ message/62159
> > which might lead one to believe that PPGmc had no mobile stress in nouns, only in verbs, and those cases which which seem to have had that only show the effect of loaning from language ewhich did have mobile stress in nouns. Note that *glas-(/*glar- ) is one of them, and that is suspected of being Venetic (as spoken by Aestians).
Is there no chance that 'hand' might be related to the word for 'ten', *dk^mt-, which might be analyzed as *du k^mt- "two hands" (ten fingers)?
Andrew
That's a popular explanation, in popular books, blogs, etc. I've never seen it pursued by any professional linguists, though.
But ten < taihun as "two hands" is appealling, hundred as "hand-rad/rath" i.e. handful and thousand as thous-hand "swollen hand' do sound appealling.
The problem is that I don't know of any other IE language that parallel this
You could try to stretch things and claim a relationship between Latin capio and centum --I can just see Brian laughing himself out of his chair over that one