Re: PIE suffix =t in food?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:

>
> > > I see. But do we run into problems since this item is found in Mordvinic as well? How far east can North Venetic be assumed to have been spoken?
> >
> > On the distribution of the Veneti, Torsten's model was the British Empire, with far-flung groups of Veneti remaining in contact through maritime routes. I think a better comparison is with the Vikings and Normans. That is, the Veneti were able to travel around the ocean and up navigable rivers, establishing habitations wherever there was opportunity, but without any central control, or any necessary communication going on among the various groups. I see no problem with Veneti in Mordvinia, but of course I have no archaeological evidence.
>
> The geography of the situation would call for any incoming boatsmen to employ northern routes very similar to the actual Vikings in that case (who BTW are not thought to have left any loanwords in Mordv. or Mari) - or southern ones from at least around the Don. Without further evidence either just sounds like a stretch.

Yes, I must admit that a single Mordv. word with -o- is insufficient to argue for Veneti here. It is far better simply to refer this word to unspecified OWIE.

> > > PU *-i is probably better reconstructed [@] than [i]. The by-now traditional notation *i (up to circa 70s *e was the norm) is rooted more in symmetry arguments than in any particular evidence. Even Finnic word-final /i/ is an innovation from former *e (e.g. "bear" being inflected _oksi_ : _ohden_).
> >
> > I read too much into the *-i, then.
>
> > > It's frequently thought Proto-Uralic did not allow labial vowels outside of stress'd syllables - indeed, nothing outside of open *a/*ä and non-open "*i"/"*e"/*@.
> >
> > I also read too much into the *-a.
>
> I imagine this happens for many who are new to Proto-Uralic.
>
>
> > > Another good loan-giver here would be Germanic since their *s was consistently render'd with MPF *s^.
> >
> > Interesting. Predorsal *s?
>
> If by "predorsal" you mean "slightly backed alveolar" then yes, that seems to be a common realization for /s/ in languages with a single sibilant. It's what we have in modern Finnish, for example.

Michelena argued for a similar situation in Latin on the basis of Basque borrowings ("Lat. /s/: el testimonio vasco", RFE 86:474-89, 1967). Most of these continue Lat. /s/ with the Bq. predorsal /z/, not the apical /s/. Thus Bq. zucu 'sap' < Lat. succum, gauza 'matter, affair' < causam, gaztelu 'castle' < castellum, etc.

One apparent exception is Bq. soka 'rope', but since this is of Celtic origin, it probably entered Basque from Gaulish, not Latin. The evidence is meager, but it suggests that Gaul. /s/ was apical, which in turn makes it likely that there was another sibilant. That was probably not the reflex of *-st-. I think Bq. bost 'five' is best explained as borrowed from Celt. *bosta: 'palm, fist' (not the other way round!), so *-st- was maintained as a cluster in the Gaulish dialect which supplied loanwords to ancient Basque. More likely the reflex of IE *-tt- was not apical *-ss- in that dialect; perhaps it was interdental *-TT- or some kind of laminal, and sibilant crowding forced ordinary /s/ to be apical.

> For completeness: around the same time *st was also being substituted by *s, and another notable exception is that masculine stems yield *-as : *-aha- regardless of origin (Gmc, Baltic, II).

Word-final *-s must have sounded stronger, at least when words were uttered in isolation. Thus Basque has gorputz 'body' < Lat. corpus against simple /z/ in other positions. Later, Christian Latin abbas 'priest' yielded Bq. apaiz, ap(h)ez, showing weakening of Lat. final -s, even in isolation.

One might think the II loans to Finnic must be earlier than the sandhi-induced weakening seen in Skt. -ah., -o: before voiced consonants and Av. -o: generally. But again if the borrowing was based on isolated utterance, sandhi would be irrelevant.

> > > Many (most?) papers from Koivulehto, who has been doing the most work in this area, are in German. This compilation is probably the best starting place:
> > > http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust237.html
> >
> > Thanks very much for this list. The most intriguing title is the one about words with Fi. -aav- corresponding to Gmc. *-aww-. If these came indeed from Gmc., they must have been borrowed before the Verschaerfung, when Gmc. laryngeal residues still constituted distinct phonemes, with the vowel-lengthening occurring later within Proto-Finnic.
>
> K. actually suggests just what stlatos noted: that there was no sound change as much as a length substitution due to *ww not being a valid cluster in pre-Finnic.

Are there other examples of such a length-metathesis?

> They would not be too hard to handle as postdating Verschärfung, however. Given that *akj > *aaj is a known change in several Finnic varieties (including Savonian which lacks stop vocalization in similar clusters like *tv *tj *kl *kr etc.), *akv > *aav would be an expected development as well, if this cluster occurred in LPF. The case of *haava "wound" > Livonian _oov_ would remain exceptional (Liv. generally retains medial stops in all positions), but this also has irregular loss of *-a, so loaning from Estonian is an option.
>
> The other two words concerned here are:
> *fnawwa > naava "lichen on trees"
> *skawwa > kaava "formula, pattern"
>
> In the standard explanation there also is a problematic upper limit for dating these loans, given by *N > *w, which introduced *ww into MPF (seen in *sawNa > LPF *savva "staff"; there is also *nëvvo "advice") - and this was one of the older Finnic innovations.
>
> > But the Gmc. shift *-o- > *-a- had already occurred (otherwise Fi. *-oov- from Early PGmc *-oHw-, no?)
>
> Loaning before laryngeal loss would probably predict *-okk- or possibly *-ohv-. It sounds like you're thinking of the reconstruction of Proto-Uralic *-VxC- for Finnic *-VVC-, but this has actually been explained otherwise recently; and at any rate vocalization there would have been a much too ancient development to be fed by Germanic loans.

I was thinking (tacitly) of MPF *-aaw- from EPGmc *-aHw-, regardless of the origin of NATIVE Finnic *-VVC-.

> > so if there is a stratum with Fi. *ka- from PGmc *Ha-, one would expect the EARLIER borrowings from EPGmc *Ho- to show *ko-, not *o-, unless I'm overlooking something (which I could well be, considering my track record in this thread).
>
> It would seem so, yes, but I'm not following how that matters for the aav~aww layer?

I made the tacit assumption that PGmc laryngeals lasted about equally long in different positions, which is unwarranted. Odd things can happen with laryngeals.

> This however is probably the reason most "o-loans" have been generally explain'd from Indo-Iranian, even when not showing any developments particular to the branch.
>
> Considering that there's good evidence for late retention for medial laryngeals in II, I do find it odd that initial ones would have been lost there at a time different from Germanic/Baltic.

Intervocalic laryngeals were still around when Brugmann's Law operated, but I have no idea when that was with respect to the sequence of changes in Finnic.

DGK