Re: Raven words

--- 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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Old Norse has a rather large number of terms for 'raven', presumably based on various characteristics of the bird. If the raven was viewed as carving flesh from carcasses with its beak, it might have acquired the epithet 'carver'. The verb 'carve' itself, Old English _ceorfan_, is referred to PIE *gerbH-. Thanks to Kluge's Law, this root could underlie ON _korpr_ st. m. 'raven' if we could formally justify a zero-grade agent *gr.bH-nó- 'carver', becoming regularly Early Proto-Germanic *kurppa-, later *korpa- with /a/-umlaut and degemination after a long syllable, whence ON _korpr_.

Such justification is apparently provided by OE _flocc_ st. m. 'company, troop, flock', which can similarly continue a zero-grade agent *plug^H-nó- > *flukka- > *flokka-, formed to the root *pleug^H- 'to travel quickly, fly' underlying OE _fle:ogan_ 'to fly'. A military unit must move quickly to be effective, and a flock of birds flies together.

Incidentally, one way of explaining (West) Gmc. *plo:ga- st. m. 'plough' is with an /o/-grade *plóug^Hos 'quick mover, flyer', Belgic *plauga-, later (East) Belgic *plo:ga-, borrowed into WGmc (or Proto-Old Saxon) in the specific sense 'quick-moving ard, wheeled ard', which appeared to fly over the fields in comparison to the conventional ard. With the old slow ard obsolescent, *plo:ga- became the standard term for the implement, with or without wheels, in this view.

> 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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I have no solution to this.

DGK