Re: Limigantes

> Let me see if I got this straight: you (not I) introduced the subject of a possibly non-Uralic substrate to Western Uralic,

No, your original message included both IE and Uralic words.

> and then you tell me that because you did that I'm morally obliged to move off this forum? Nice.

I suggested *us* taking *this* discussion to a forum specifically suited for the topic it had turn'd to. Your reply was to accuse me of ulterior motives, which, yes, I did find hostile. Where does this "you want me to leave the forum!" strawman come from?

> > > > > > You may remember eg. *kansa > goz.
> > >
> > > That would be relevant to our long discussion of the provenance
> > > status of *kans-
> >
> > Yes, in the traditional model it would date to Proto-Baltic
> > Finnic or therearound. Not the only such one however. Quoting
> > Saarikivi:
> > "Even older contacts between Finnic and Permian have been
> > proposed by Koivulehto (1981; 1983:124-125; 1989; 177-178) who
> > has argued that several Germanic and other early western
> > Indo-European borrowings (e.g. katras 'herd', joukko 'group;
> > crowd', otsa 'forehead; end', kypsä 'cooked; baked', ehtiä
> > 'reach; arrive in time') have spread from Finnic and Pre-Finnic
> > to Permian languages and Proto-Permian. He has argued that, in
> > addition to a loan etymology from Germanic or other western
> > Indo-European source, the irregular phonological correspondences
> > between Finnic and Permian suggest that these words have spread
> > as borrowings."
> >
> > (Actually, they aren't quite that irregular. Koivulehto still
> > thought *a > o was irregular, holding *a > u as regular, but the
> > 2nd actually results from Proto-Uralic *ë, which in Finnic merges
> > into *a.)
>
> No, it would mean that *kansa (> goz) would have to be ascribed to the CC layer.

It's a possibility, but the regularity does not rule out borrowing F > P. It only means that the borrowing would have to have occur'd before *a > o.

> > > > > 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?)
> > >
> > > That's not 'substantiate' in the sense you used it in your
> > > previous posting.
> >
> > No, but you only need a different kind of substantiation for the
> > "too close" part, not the "similar" part.
>
> What??

You said (in the upmost quote there) that you were talking in general about what the procedure for words that ARE too close to not be related is, not that you claim this for your initial wordlist. If you only claim similarity for that list, I agree, and we do not need to bother with how to substantiate a claim you did not make.

> And you haven't even told me what you mean by 'substantiate'.

I meant the general sense. Present evidence for, argue for, support somehow.

> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > Nobody does that. Saarikivi, eg., doesn't do that, and I don't
> > > think you should hold me to a different standard
> >
> > I don't.
>
> You do.
>
> > The difference between you and Saarikivi is that he points out
> > possible loan originals and explains why the attested words are
> > derivable from them.
>
> Of course, since his donor language has living relatives. Mine
> doesn't.

Yes, but that doesn't allow you to skip the stage where you identify possible loan originals.

I've seen this attitude before - you seem to think that sparser the data, the laxer we may make the rules. And me demanding the same degree of rigor as we demand of analysis of "good" data would be holding you to a different standard? But the standard is the same - it would amount to more work only because you've chosen to work with poorer data.

> > You didn't, you just made an allusion to your usual "*tLa(n)k/p"
> > bag-of-wonders without bothering to work out the details.
>
> It's *λaN-, and I've already walked you through the details of possible derivations from it one long exchange, as everyone knows.

Why do you insist on being thick?

As everyone also knows - if we're going to start making appeals to common knoledge ;) - your walkthrus have been most unconvincing. For one thing, your "possible derivations" did not in any way predict that there should be derivativs with the meaning "soft, weak".

> > (which means you need systematical similarities, not just
> > look-alike similarities),
>
> all the examples I provided can be derived from *λaN- by the rules I've already given; the question of why each one has its particular shape I can't answer

And therein lies the problem. You would need to answer that question.

> > > > As for how to do it, if you're at a loss of methodology: you
> > > > could demonstrate regular derivational relationships among
> > > > these words.
>
> I did.

You didn't actually do it, you only asserted you could.

For example, how would you derive the Mari-Komi-Khanty #lä(n)c´i "weak"?

> > > Stop trying to send me on a wild goose chase.
> >
> > If you are as correct as you believe, it wouldn't be futile:
> > you'd gain an argument that would be convincing to many.
>
> No I wouldn't, you'd demand I run another mouse racecourse.

Wrong. The beef I have with your theory is in the methodology, not in the results per se.

> > > > (BTW *lauSa at least has been compared to Germanic *lausaz.)
>
> With 'derivation' and/or phonetic statistics?

With regular phonetic correspondence. No need for any morphological adjustments.

(So phonetic statistics, really. It's clear even without a detailed calculation that two semantically close words having the same CVCCV phonetic shape by accident is unlikely. Still, it is provable in principle.)

> > > > > > > > > > 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"?
> > >
> > > No, of course not.
> >
> > What then?
>
> I meant whatever you meant by 'theory' in your quote one above that. Are you going to ask what you meant then too?

By "estabilished theory" I was referring to the Komi dialectal soundlaw l > v. And again, since we're not currently discussing Komi dialectology, it's irrelevant for you to point out that using "is" of currently discussed theories amounts to a bias.

> > What I found most likely (albeit still baffling) was that you
> > managed to forgot, or failed to notice in the first place, that
> > your original point (about it not being "is") was aim'd at a
> > statement that wasn't about our original topic of substrates.
>
> It was; I meant that you shouldn't refer to the contents of a set of proposals (in your words 'a theory') by *is* since that implies existence.

No, it only implies acceptance of the theory, as long as we are discussing worldly matters and not pure logic.

Did you have any point here beyond nitpicking about my choice of words?

> > > Now for the idea that the previous language in Aestia was BF,
> > > note that the root *gl- of *gl-aN-s "translucent glob" occurs
> > > in IE as "freeze (coagulate)" and in Uralic as a word for
> > > "coagulated blood" and so does the root *(j)iN- (approx.!) of
> > > IE and FU of the similarly constructed, thus possibly also
> > > Venetic, *iN-s "ice". The question of the identity of the
> > > language in Aestia prior to Venetic then hangs on the
> > > provenance status of these two roots within Uralic.
> >
> > Zero-grade is an entirely non-Uralic phenomenon.
>
> You call it zero grade. That's an IE term. It's loss of pretonic vowel, which is a natural development and thus not necessarily IE (which BTW I think Venetic is).

Yes, that's what I meant by "zero-grade". IE-ness not implied.

> > So you're suggesting these roots 1) were taken from Uralic, after
> > which 2) Venetic transform'd them into zero-grade?
>
> I believe Venetic stressed desinences / derivational suffixes which caused zero grade in the root.

> > For _glesum_ an origin from PIE *ghel- "glitter, yellow" seems
> > much better than an Uralic origin.
>
> I disagree. It would leave *käl- an orphan

What do you mean by "orphan"? It has been reconstructed all the way to Proto-Uralic, which should be sufficient.

> and Slavic glaz- "eye" would be stranded semantically.
>
> As I wrote, I think the original sense is "sea beach flotsam, dead jellyfish, semi-transparent gunk (> vitreous body of the eye)".

With the evidence being? I'm not aware of any *ghel- words with meanings like that; only meanings like "yellow, golden". *käl- doesn't mean any of that either. *gel- "to freeze" doesn't seem to help either.

> > *käl- "blood clot" does not occur in Baltic Finnic or any other
> > southern Uralic branch,
>
> It occurs in Saami.

Which is not in contact with Baltic.

> > and the appearence is also unlike.
>
> What do you mean?

Most relevant would be the voiceless initial k-. I see no reason why Venetic would have substituted g-.

> > Amber being fossilized resin is a relativly recent discovery as
> > well.
>
> Wrong.
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/58962

Aha, I see. Pliny would be too late, but this makes for a possible parallel.

> > And the part I'd like to see some arguments for is why you would
> > date the Karelian/Veps expansion a thousand years erlier than it
> > normally is dated.
>
> All I have is I know the Balts took the land of the Aestii around that time. They would have been mostly long Venetic-speaking by then.

Well, if they were Venetic-speaking, why would that imply anything about the Baltic Finns?

> OTOH, note the words of the Livonian Chronicle here
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/57554

This part?
"the mysterious tribe the Weneden which according to Heinrich von Lettland were driven out of the settlements between the rivers venta and Musza and after long wanderings settled among the Latgalians"

> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > In part at least, it would seem.
> > >
>
> > The point is that, linguistically, they are entirely Baltic
> > Finnic, and thus they must postdate Proto-BF.
>
> Who 'they' now?
>
> Torsten

The Vepsians and the Karelians.

John Vertical