Re: Hercynian (again)

But there's no need of steppes. The fact that steppes cultures were
probably of Proto-Indo-European language cannot in any way dismiss the
linguistic fact that the Alpine area has been Indo-European from the
very beginning (at least from the date of neognos-rule, which is
Common Indo-European)

2012/2/27, Trond Engen <trond@...>:

> [Reply trimmed and top-posting fixed]
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
>> 2012/2/25, Tavi <oalexandre@...>:
>>
>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Trond Engen <trond@...> wrote:
>>>
>>>> <Hercynia> is seen as a latinization of a Celtic word corresponding
>>>> to Gmc. *fergun- "mountain". Today it struck me that if Lith.
>>>> <Perkunas> "god of heaven and thunder", ON<Fjörgyn> "mother of
>>>> Thor" is the same word, that would give us an independent example
>>>> of the IE dualism "stone/hammer" ~ "sky" that we glean from the
>>>> "hammer" word.
>>>>
>>>> And now I'm thinking: Since the Hercynian forest spanned across
>>>> central Europe from the Rhine to the horizon of the known world, is
>>>> it actually possible that *perkW-un- is reconstructable for
>>>> Indo-European not only as a generic "mountain (range)" but as a
>>>> toponym designing the Carpathian mountains, and could that be the
>>>> very origin of the IE semantic duality? Would the Carpathians be
>>>> the "sky mountains" seen from the Pontic plain? Would that be where
>>>> the god of thunder killed the dragon and unleashed the waters?
>>
>> @Trond: why the Carpathians and not, for instance, the Alps (as
>> well)?
>
> Suggesting it's a toponym rather than a generic is admittedly a stretch,
> so the Alps are perhaps not much less likely than the Carpathians. To
> me, though, that makes it hard to see both how it could have been coined
> from the steppe and how it could have been extended to the mid-German hills.
>
> But anyway, as Douglas made clear, it's probably not an especially good
> idea.
>
> --
> Trond Engen
>