Re: Finnic substrate in Slavic?!

> > > For the purpose of explaining such striking correspondences
> > > between languages A and B,
> >
> > The thing is they don't seem very striking to me.
>
> I can tell you those features are unique among the IE branches; according to what you state below, in Uralic they are unique to Finnic.

Partitiv from *-ta is. I believe I said have no idea about the others (other than that dativs are not used for possesors).

> WALS?

World Atlas of Language Structures: http://wals.info/
A lovely site for typology needs.

> > > For the purpose of explaining such striking correspondences
> > > between languages A and B, it is common to posit a substrate,
> > > either as
> > > 1. some language related to A was a substrate of B, or
> > > 2. some language related to B was a substrate of A, or
> > > 3. some language unrelated to either was a substrate to both.
> >
> > What leads you to choose a Finnic substrate in Slavic over a
> > Balto-Slavic substrate in Finnic?
>
> Because historically the Finnics were the losers.

Seriously now.

> > Now this contrary view I HAVE seen previously suggested in
> > literature (and it has some support from the considerable amount
> > of Baltic loanwords in Finnic, a situation which has no parallel
> > for Slavic).
>
> I know. But lately the consensus seems to be that the Baltic languages are relatively recent at the Baltic coast, appr. 2000 years ago.

A similar consensus is emerging for Baltic-Finnic and Samic languages, so that doesn't really help.

It's possible that if there was any substrate influence either way around, that could have occurred farther to the east, before these language groups made their way to the Baltic coast.

> > > IIRC, the -d/-t ablative suffix is documented only in Italic and
> > > Indo-Iranian.
> >
> > I do not presume you're suggesting an Uralic substrate in those
> > (+ Celtic?) however.
>
> We have these logical possibilities:
> 1. some language related to PIE was a substrate of Finnic, or
> 2. some language related to Finnic was a substrate of PIE, or
> 3. some language unrelated to either was a substrate to both, or,
> if it was just a case of a loan of a postposition -t-
> 4. loan between neighboring languages.

5. IE and Uralic are related
6. coincidence

> > > BTW, how widespread within Uralic are the features I mentioned?
> > >
>
> > The partitiv case is a Finnic innovation. I'm not sure about 1 &
> > 2, but IIRC no westerly Uralic language has a dativ case at all.
>
> How does dative come into that question??
>
> Torsten

Your shared feature #1 was to contrast a locativ or prepositional formation to using a dativ for possessors. This latter option is obviously not possible if such a case doesn't exist.

John Vertical