Re: Raven words

Isn't this an obvious candidate for onomatopoeia?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:
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> Background: I've been exploring some evidence for a possible unknown Uralic substrate in Finnic. One feature of this hypothetical substrate would be *w > pp after a liquid, e.g. _kärppä_ "stoat" vs. PU *käDwä "weasel".
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> One of the words of this shape in Finnish is _korppi_ "raven". This is normally analyzed as a loan from Scandinavian _korp_, and I see no obsctacle to this - this replaced the common Finnic word for the bird, *karnV, which is probably inherited Uralic. I however believe the Sc. word does not have a credible IE etymology (after all, k-p makes the very premise suspicious).
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> So, the question is: can an IE original such as *korwV be reconstructed, which would allow a loaning into Scandinavian from the hypothetical substrate? Latin _corvus_ suggests something along these lines. I see this has been compared with Lithuanian _karvelis_ "dove", but the semantic difference is a bit wide here, I think.
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> Original *krowV might also work, given that some IE loans in Finnic show a metathesis CrVCV > CVrCV for resolving initial clusters. This brings _crow_ and its relatives in mind, though no original 1st-syllable *o seems possible to assume here (NWGmc *kraawoo).
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> _j.
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