2012/5/9, Richard Wordingham <
richard.wordingham@...>:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
>> This is not a demolition derby between dump trucks, with the victory going
>> to the biggest load. A FEW place-names which cannot be plausibly
>> explained as Celtic suffice to establish a pre-Celtic substrate.
>
> So long as we don't have anything akin to the Greek substrate in the US -
> Philadelphia, Ithaca, etc.
>
> Semijokingly,
>
> Richard.
>
>
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
(w/ref. to the not joking half)
You have enucleated the methodological requirements:
1) Historical information prevails on any linguistic argument -
without any historical information, linguistic conclusion can be the
best criterion we have
2) Place-names with exact matches in other places are more suspect to
have been imported
3) Place-names without any hint to their local formation (such as e.g.
phonological transformations at the joining point between the
topographical appellative included in them and the name - similarly
included in them - of a local topographical referent like a river,
mountain or the like) are less diagnostic than place-names with such a
hint
4) Phonological traces of diachronic transformations identify the
linguistic history of the name.
In the case of Philadelphia and Ithaca, even in absence of any
historical evidence, we nevertheless detect Q haplogroups of
Y-Chromosome mainly in Iroquese-speaking people and R1b, I, R1a
haplogroups (with minor pockets of E3b and J haplogroups) in the
overwhelming majority of local English speakers. (This is a
correlation; it's a fact.)
Since we have these data, we can also observe that we are in presence
of, on one side, population groups whose Y-Chromosome haplogroups
originated in Western Eurasia between approximately 40,000 and 20,000
years BP and, on the other side, population groups whose Y-Chromosome
haplogroups originated in North-Eastern Eurasia approximately 20,000
BP. Their common ancestor F (with the exception of the one of E3b)
lived approximately 50,000 BP. We could be sure that we have two
clearly different populations, which we could call "Iroquese" and
"English". (This is said in contrast to Transalpine and Cisalpine
Gauls, who mainly exhibit R1b haplogroup)
Let's then suppose - as it's implicitly suggested (and this is the
very source of the joking half of the message) - that we don't have
any historical piece of evidence about Philadelphia, PA or Ithaca, NY
(on the other side, we must have linguistic evidence about Iroquese,
Greek, and English): as per point 4 (above), we would immediately see
that both <Philadelphia> and <Ithaca> show Ancient (and Late Ancient)
Greek, Middle Latin, and Modern English sound laws, but no Iroquese
sound law. This means that Phidalphia and Ithaca can 'pre-English'
names, but in no way pre-Iroquese names. (Of course, Iroquese exonyms
of English names and English pronounciation of Iroquese names can't
prove anything, because both languages are still spoken and therefore
these exonyms may simply reflect mutual phonological adaptation.)
A place-name can show either Iroquese phonological development and
contemporary English pronounciation or English historical
transformations and synchronic Iroquese adaptation, but never both
Iroquese and English historical phonology. This proves that the two
populations have had separate linguistic history.
All Greek names in North America show English phonology, even when
they have Iroquese pronounciation; they never exhibit Iroquese
features without the contemporary presence of English transformations.
This testifies that Greek names are included in the English
toponymical set.
Greek names in the English toponymical set don't show Modern Greek
developments (at least, Philadelphia and Ithaca don't: they should be
*Philathelphia and *Ithaky or the like); they show Middle Latin - but
not Archaic Latin - developments; they don't show Common Germanic or
West Germanic nor Old or Middle English phonological transformations.
So they are neither the result of a Modern Greek superstrate on
English nor of an ancient Greek substrate of Old or Middle English.
Philadelphia and Ithaca have exact matches in Europe (Greece), cf.
point 2 (above); they don't incorporate any local river or mountain
name or the like, aren't formed with a topographical appellative and
therefore they don't have any hint of a local formation (cf. point 3
above).
A Cisalpine parallel to them could be, at best, Milan < Mediólanon
(Polybios' proton legomenon), with about 60 occurrences in European
toponymy, although it may contain a topographical appellative (*la:non
'plain', unless it's *la:nos 'full') and in any case doesn't exhibit
any trace of non-Celtic phonological transformation. This latter is
seen, on the contrary, in Cisalpine Germanic names, whose historical
phonology shows Ancient Germanic (but not Old German) features, Late
(but not Classical) Latin - and Romance - features and no Celtic
trace.
We can be safely confident that, even without any literary source,
Linguistics can establish a lot of historical conclusions:
Philadelphia, PA isn't a pure Greek place-name in the US and
therefore can't continue a PIE *Bhile-sm-gewelbh-(i)y(a)h2 (in itself
a perfect PIE formation);
New York isn't a pure Celtic nor a pure Germanic-Celtic hybrid in the
US and therefore can't continue a PIE *Newos H1ebhur-ah2ko-m (per se a
perfectly intelligible PIE formation)
Stodegarda is a Late Germanic name in Lombardy, but can't continue
*as a name* a PIE *Stah2-to-g'hordh-o-m (a completely regular
formation according to PIE norm and usage)
Milan is a Celtic name in Lombardy and can, but not necessarily needs
to be an already PIE *local* place-name *Medhyo-plh1/2-no-m 'middle
plain / full' (very probably a PIE place-name, at least somewhere)
Briotti (Ponte in Valtellina, Sondrio Province; the first village on
the South Bank of Adda river subject to a village on the Northern
Bank) is a PIE place-name in situ with the entire Old Celtic
historical phonology (and, beside that, only Latin > Romance
phonology): Gaulish *Bri:wotti: (bri:ua: 'bridge' = Romance ponte) <
Celtic *Bri:wottoi <- *Bri:wottu:s < Late IE *Bhre:wotnó:s < PIE
*Bhre:u(H)o-tnó-h1es < *Bhre:u(H)o-tnH-ó-h1es 'extensions of Bridge (=
Ponte)' with *Common* PIE 'neognós' laryngeal deleting - a linguistic
proof that Common PIE was spoken after 14,000 years BP in Valtellina /
Valtline (as the 'local', quite German-like English exonym sounds)