Re: Frankish origins

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

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

>> In search for a Sarmatian etymon for his invented Iazigyan word
>> **far-ang 'enemy, one of the others',

> actually, invented word hve only one asterisk in linguistics,

Trask, _The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics_,
s.v. <asterisk>:

Some linguists prefer to use a double asterisk for certain
purposes: to indicate that a proposed form has been reconstructed
on the basis of other forms that are themselves reconstructed,
to mark a suggested reconstruction as doubtful, or to distinguish
a form as actually impossible rather than as merely non-existent
or unrecorded.

We may generously suppose that Francesco's double asterisk is
somewhere between the second and third of these possibilities.

[...]

> The problem is, however, that the word exists in Germanic both
> with -ank and -ak, and does so creating an ungodly mess such that
> an honest linguist will refuse to create some common Germanic
> descent for it.

>> Therefore, your invented Sarmatian ethnonym should, in case, be
>> reconstructed as **fala:k(a) or, at best, **fara:k(a). Would you
>> derive Germanic 'frank' from such a word?

> You don't derive loans, as you very well know.

This is a perfectly good use of 'derive' in its everyday sense.

[...]

> Now who would try to unite all this under the hat of 'Germanic'?
> Not me, for sure.

'Who would try to unite all this?' seems a more reasonable question.

Brian