The Neolithic Hypothesis (Germanic)

X99Lynx at aol.com X99Lynx at aol.com
Wed Apr 28 03:38:28 UTC 1999


I wrote:
<<Ur-Hans:  UF, why is whiting at cc.helsinki.fi talking about
handshoes when he should be talking about "archaisms" the way
Miguel used the term in those earlier posts?>>

In a message dated 4/26/99 6:11:33 PM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi replied:

<<If he had seen that he would have realized that "archaisms" don't
necessarily have to be connected with isolation. >>

Nobody said "necessarily."  But isolation is a plausible explanation for the
archaisms mcv has mentioned in previous posts.  My bringing up the
archaeological evidence of an isolation of Germanic specifically related to
the archaisms referred to in those previous posts, that mainly begin in a
thread called "How weird is Hittite?"

E.g.:
In a message dated 1/26/99 8:32:31 AM, mcv at wxs.nl wrote:
<<However, both Germanic and Armenian show some striking archaisms in their
verbal systems, which might be seen as approximating Germanic to Hittite
(simple two tense verbal system, no aorist/perfective aspect), and Armenian
to Tocharian (e.g. imperfect  = optative).  This makes me suspect that
Germanic and Armenian were early split-offs, which have become difficult to
classify due to their subsequent interaction in the Baltic and Balkan spheres
with Balto-Slavic and Greek/Albanian, respectively.>>

In a message dated 2/7/99 4:10:50 AM, mcv at wxs.nl wrote:
<<The most archaic verbal systems (or at least the ones least similar to
Greek and Indo-Iranian) are those of Tocharian, Germanic and especially
Hittite.

If we take the active past tense forms with *s as our primary
isogloss, we have:

1) no -s or *-s is a 3rd.p.sg. personal marker: Hittite, Tocharian, Germanic.
3) *-(i)sk-: Armenian.
4) s-preterite: Italic, Celtic, Albanian.
5) s-aorist: Greek, Indo-Iranian, Slavic(-Baltic).>>

To the best of my recollection, mcv did not mention compounding.

My reference to northern European speakers being poor, primitive and cut-off
was not meant to be derogatory. (Others IE speakers were in the same
circumstance at the same time.) They were specifically in reference to a
series of statements regarding cultural continuity and that proto-Germanic
could not have been affected by outside factors.  E.g.,:  (message dated
2/2/99 12:26:15 AM) <<There's no archaeological discontinuity in northern
Europe after the Corded Ware/Battle Axe horizon arrives...>>

The evidence appears to be otherwise.

Regards,
Steve Long



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