Re: Implications of Bangani

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

> > > The existence of Khowar òhts 'bear' makes it likely that Finnish otso \ ohto was borrowed from an Indo-Iranian l. like Kh, possibly even proto-Kh.
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@ wrote:
>
> >
> > No, _otso_ is a recent hypercorrection based on _ohto_ (cf. Tampere dialectal _ketsu_ pro _kettu_ "fox"), which derives from older *okti . The unsuffix'd form _oksi_, gen. _ohden_, has been depreciated for taboo reasons but survives in placenames.
> >
> > Also cf. Mordvinic _ovto_ (where -o would be regular from either of -o and -i).
> >
> > The IE original needed to explain this *whole* bundle would need a shape similar to *okti; that some Dardic language happens to have a reflex that also has -tso is clearly nothing but a coincidence.
>
>
> There is no IE l. with -i; it's an o-stem

Not a problem. Old Uralic varieties evidently didn't allow 2nd syllable vowels other than *a, *ä, *i, and labial vowels have been substituted in a variety of ways in old IE loans. IIRC *u > *i fairly consistently, *o > a/i varyingly.

(There is also the option that this was loaned late enuff to come in as a Finno-Mordvinic o-stem *okto, and the Finnic *i > e-stem was rather derived from that.)

> and IE shows s/t variation itself (árktos/ursus) with no need for an explanation internal to Finnish (many languages change t>s in certain positions; Fin. didn't before o;

Too bad that the Finnish variation isn't s/t, but ts/ht, and *ts > -TT- > -ht- is a sound law of many Finnish dialects. In literary Finnish this change was reversed; with hypercorrection here since the -ht- here doesn't actually come from *-ts-! The word retains -ht- even in dialects where old Finnish -TT- had a different outcome (such as -tt-), so this must rather derive from *-kt-. (Or, potentially, *-pt- or *-St-, but there's no evidence in favor of those.)

> I've seen no ev. for *okti).

This is required for Middle Proto-Finnic by _oksi_ ~ stem _ohde_-; Mordvinic -vt- also requires *-kt-. I didn't see you addressing any of these forms. And as said, _ohto_ requires *-kt- as well.

> Your supposed "Dardic ... coincidence" is rationally impossible since the forms otso/ohto lack -r- in spite of their IE origin and Khowar changed r>R>X>h (in newer borrowings R>X>x) there, still perfectly detectable.

We do not require loaning from an /r/-less original, as the ban on CCC clusters you remarked on yourself would naturally reduce IE *-rkt- to (West) Uralic *-kt-.

John Vertical