Re: Limigantes

> > It occurs to me, why are we discussing this kind of a topic here
> > at Cybalist specifically? The Substratum list would seem to be
> > more apt:
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/substratumlanguages/
>
> This thread got into th subject of substrates about two postings ago. It occurs to to me that you are not interested in dabating my proposals, but in shutting me down.

Your hostility at a suggestion to relocate, by which I mean "for us to continue the discussion there" FYI, to a list specifically dedicated to the current topic surprizes me.

(I do have the full right to withdraw from a discussion if I find it to be of poor standard, or for any other reason, of course.)

> > > > > > The modern stance on *lama is that it is a loan from
> > > > > > Germanic > Finnic and that the Permic cognates are
> > > > > > unrelated (the palatalization and the vocalism are not
> > > > > > explainable from a common FP root).
> > > > > > Distribution in Komi but not Udmurt, and the a~a
> > > > > > correspondence may however suggest loaning from BF.
> > > > >
> > > > > How? By what movement?
> > > >
> > > > The eastward expansion of the Vepses and Karelians. There are
> > > > a number of other words that have been explain'd as loaned in
> > > > this way (see Janne Saarikivi, "Substrata Uralica").

> > > > > The least problematic proposal is one that ascribes the
> > > > > glosses I listed to a pre-IE, pre-Uralic layer.
> > > >
> > > > Fails to explain the shape of the Komi word. Normally *a > o
> > > > or ë (*kama "crust" > komyl´).
> > >
> > > That objection would make sense if I had proposed that the Komi
> > > word was inherited Finno-Permic, but I proposed that it was
> > > from a pre-IE, pre-Uralic layer. Please pay attention.
> >
> > No, I got that, but *a > o is seen even in numerous words of
> > limited distribution, where loaning from the Pit-Comb Ware
> > substrate,
>
> That substrate being a deviant Uralic langugage, if I understand
> Sarikivi correctly?

Saarikivi talks about the substrate of Northern Russia (in the "gap" of Uralic, between Karelia and the continuous Permic-Ugric-Samoyedic area), which would have been a Baltic Finnic variety. I'm not sure what you mean by "deviant".

I was pointing to an older layer however, ie. new words shared by western Uralic branches whose phonotactic structure is un-Uralic. These include agricultural words like "wheat" (*weSna) and "cow, horse" (*leSma) so the language(s) of the agricultural Comb Ceramic (ie. Pit-Comb Ware) culture is a good option for the origin of these words. (CC used to be thought of as Uralic, but not anymore - it spans too wide and too far back)

Saarikivi's layer has BF a ~ Komi a (generally without Udmurt cognates). The possibly CC layer has BF a ~ Komi o (~ Udmurt u), same as in words inherited from Proto-Uralic. So a word with a ~ a is a good candidate for loaning from BF to Komi, but not for loaning from CC to Pre-Permic (Proto-Permic proper is dated to around the beginning of the 2nd millennium CE).

> > or around that time is suggested.
>
> Around what time were those loans borrowed?

Well, the Comb Ceramic culture exists up 'til 2000 BCE. This is compatible with "Proto-Finno-Permic" (or the arrival of Western dialects of Proto-Uralic) being generally dated to those times.

> > You may remember eg.
> > *kansa > goz. Another good substrate candidate is *c^amc´a
> > "rotten" > Permic *Zodz´ which is probably not inherited since
> > the sibilants don't quite work, and *mc´ is an un-Uralic cluster.
> >
> > > > If you're talking about ALL the words (not just *lama), the
> > > > least problematic proposal is to keep them separate so far.
> > >
> > > Yes, that is what I am talking about. Standard procedure in
> > > cases where words can't be united within the established sound
> > > laws for a given language family, but they are too close
> > > phonetically and semantically not to be related somehow is to
> > > ascribe them to a substrate.
> >
> > Feel free to substantiate this claim of "too close to not be
> > related" at any time.
>
> Your cluttered statements makes it difficult for me to answer, because I have to guess at what you mean. I was talking the general case; that is the procedure. You might mean that I have made such a claim for the the collection of similar roots in IE and (Western) FU meaning "lime; soft; bind", and yes, by implication I have done that. And of course I can't 'substantiate' my claim that they are phonetically and semantically similar, because there are no hard rules for what 'similar' is. In fact, you could deny that they were similar and make them were separate roots with no historical connection. Problem is, to any unbiased observer, those roots *are* similar, to a degree that any linguist would try to find a common ancestor for them if he saw them in some other language family.

I agree they're similar, insofar that they begin with *l and contain a medial nasal or labial (so that part is certainly possible to substantiate, see?)

Your wording "too close to not be related" (or "any linguistic would try to find a common ancestor for them") however implies that this being coincidental would be implausible. This you have not demonstrated.

As for how to do it, if you're at a loss of methodology: you could demonstrate regular derivational relationships among these words. Or failing this, you could calculate how many different words with semantics as similar as this, and a shared structure as similar as *l-and-medial-nasal-or-labial, we statistically expect to find in the languages you are taking into account, and to sho that that number is much smaller than the number of forms you listed considered to be separate.

(BTW *lauSa at least has been compared to Germanic *lausaz.)

> > > > > > It's not "alternation", it's a regular dialectal
> > > > > > development l > v.
> > > > >
> > > > > It's not "is", it's "has been proposed to be"
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Using "is" for statements of estabilish'd theory is perfectly
> > > > acceptable. "The Earth is the third planet from the Sun, its
> > > > mean distance from the Sun is 1.5*10^8 km, and its mass is
> > > > 6*10^24 kg".
> > > >
> > >
> > > Not in a situation in which a theory, established or not, is
> > > being discussed, where it amounts to bias.
> >
> > We're not discussing Komi dialectology, we're discussing
> > substratal etymology.
> >
>
> That sentence does not even begin to make sense. The above was a discussion of the theory of science.

So by "a theory" (three quotes up) did you mean "theory of science"? By which I gather you mean "philosophy of science", or possibly "the scientific method"?

I took it to mean "in a situation where we are discussing a particular field", and that particular field in this case is linguistic substrates, not Komi dialectology, which my "is" statement falls under.

If you did not mean that, what you aim for with your "it's not 'is'" comment remains opaque to me.

> > > Anyway, Pekkanen has some data which might corroborate the
> > > scenario you mentioned.
> >
> > (...)
> >
> > > Pekkanen has earlier identified the Sulones as Suiones. That
> > > means that the Fenni were the eastern neighbors of the Suiones
> > > on the Baltic coast east of the Vistula, ie the Aestii might
> > > have been the Baltic Finns, later migrating north under
> > > pressure from the Balts arriving from further south, cf. the
> > > exonym Eesti.
> > >
>
> >
> > Those are Proto-Baltic-Finnic / Pre-Permic times.
>
> No, the time Pekkanen is discussing here is the centuries around the beginning of our era.

That *is* the timeframe where Proto-Baltic-Finnic is dated. The most recend date I've seen, in J. Häkkinen's "Jatkuvuusperustelut ja saamen kielen leviäminen" suggests about 150-300 CE in particular, concurrent with Proto-Scandinavian.

> > The Vepsian/Karelian ("Ladogan") expansion and the separation of
> > the Komis from the Udmurts date to about a millennia later.
>
> When?

The first centuries of the 2nd millennium CE.

> I was proposing that the situation Pekkanen describes corresponds to the situation immediately before the Vepsian/Karelian ("Ladogan") expansion which would then have been caused by (the pressure of) refugees from the Baltic Finnic speaking land of the Aestii.
>
> Torsten

What arguments would support this? This is far off from the standard view. For starters, if the speakers of Proto-Baltic-Finnic were the Aestii, then the Vepses and Karelians descend from them, rather than being contemporary with them.

John Vertical