Re: park, was *pVs- for cat

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> Dutch waard, German Werder "area enclosed by rivers"
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/60000
>
> Semantically I think it's OK: It seems reasonable that a land between
> rivers was a 'ward' which should be 'warded' by a 'warden'.
>

Semantically, both ward and warden are readily derived from the meaning 'to cover, to close (surround)' of the root *Hwer-.

> My guess: Semitic ('Atlantic') loan into Venetic/Old European which
> spread it into the river names + Old European(?) suffix -er. Later
> loan into West Germanic.
>

Actually, Vennemann's term is Atlantidic, not "Atlantic", which IMHO represents the remmants of some language(s) spoken in Neolithic Central Europe (LBK culture?), later supersed by IE. One of the consequences of this language replacement was precisely Grimm's Law, which represents the adaption of the IE lexicon to the phonology of the underlying pre-Germanic language(s).

But unlike Vennemann, I don't think Atlantidic and its near relatives actually belonged to the Afrasian family. Rather, it looks like Semitic (and to a lesser extent other branches) has a significant proportion of Eurasiatic lexicon (e.g. PSem *barr- 'wheat' ~ borrowed PIE *bhar(e)s- 'barley' from an Eurasiatic root meaning 'thorn, spike'), which would point to a common Mesolithic (c. 12,500 BC) ancestor in the Levant (Natufian culture).

Getting back to the point, it seems to me the Semitic cognates adduced by Vennemann are rather weak and it isn't also clear whether they actually refer to one or two homonymous roots (IMHO probably the latter).