Re: Morimarusa

From: dgkilday57
Message: 65630
Date: 2010-01-13

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > Unless of course you accept that *himil- etc is not Germanic.
> >
> > But if not Germanic, then what? It would have had to be borrowed
> > before Grimm's Law as *kemil- or whatever, and that gives no
> > advantage that I can see over assuming a derivative of inherited
> > *k^em-, regardless of the difficulty in finding exact morphological
> > parallels for the whole set of words. I am not ruling out the
> > possibility of a loan, but mere l/n-suffix-alternation does not
> > raise a red flag. In fact, by chance I ran across two Gmc.
> > examples of -n > -l in loanwords: OHG <kumil> beside <kumin> from
> > Lat. <cuminum> 'cumin', and Westf. <laemmel> from Lat. <lamina>
> > 'layer'. But all these illustrate is that the suffix-alternation
> > in inherited words was sufficiently common to be generalized. They
> > do not make such an alternation diagnostic of loanwords.
>
> We can leave -l/-n alternation out of consideration as a diagnostic, but we still have the association with the -et- collective suffix, otherwise most connected with tree and plant names of dubious ancestry, cf Udolph
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/57163
> and with settlements which would have been caught in the middle between a northern and a southern branch of Germanic expansion from Przeworsk (Suevi)
> http://tinyurl.com/ydcsm68
> (thus Venetic?)

Regarding the map, I will need to look in detail at the English place-names cited by Udolph (unless Brian has already done so). Anyhow, this suffix also forms denominative abstracts like OE <the:owet> 'servitude', so I would not bet too heavily on <himilizzi> as a collective, now that <Elmet> is out of the picture.

DGK