IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Adam Hyllested]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Ante Aikio wrote:

> On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>> This word is sometimes seen as supportive of a PIE ~ Uralic
>> genetic link, but it rather looks like a borrowing from IE into
>> Uralic.  The IE prototype contains two laryngeals (*h1neh3- or
>> *h3neh3-) and the abstract suffix *-men [*], none of which finds
>> expression in the Uralic word.

> Actually, the lack of reflex of medial *h3 is a bit problematic. One would
> expect borrowing from IE *Hneh3men- to give PU *nexmi / *nixmi. But I've
> seen such reconstructs as IE *nmen-, based (at least) on Slavic, as far as
> I understand. Is this reconstruct valid? It would account nicely for PU
> *nimi.

The reconstruction for (Pre-)Proto-Slavic *inmen is rather zero grade of
*H1neH3mn, i.e. *H1nH3men-.

Actually, the laryngeals should be no problem for U *nime-/*nima:- as an
IE loanword (why I believe it to be an Indo-Uralic cognate anyway, see
below):

In protetic position before consonant, laryngeals are usually
reconstructed as their consonantal variants. But the material from Uralic
(and other language families) generally tend to speak against
this, no matter whether you believe the look-alikes to be loans or
cognates. So we should perhaps rather reconstruct a *@1neH3mn,
phonetically realized as *nnoYwmn (read Y as gamma here; the consonantal
variant of *H3 was probably phonetically realized as a voiced, labio-velar
fricative *Yw).

The development *-eH3- > *-oH3- took place already in PIE, and I find it
very unlikely that a PIE *-oYw- should show up as *-i- in Uralic. Of
course the borrowing could have taken place at the time of
Pre-Proto-Indo-European, i.e. before the "colouring" of *eH3 to *oH3. But
the word is also found outside Uralic; it appears in Yukaghir as <niu,
neve, nim> and in Chuvan as <nyva:>. An Indo-Uralo-Yukaghir
reconstruction *(n)newme- seems much more probable.

Critics would point out that the PIE word is formed by adding a
derivational suffix *-men. First of all, I don't see why a stem ending in
*-me shouldn't analogically add an *-n, if nouns are productively formed
with a suffix *-men. Secondly, the Uralic reconstruction *-a: corresponds
perfectly to the IE vocalic *-n (*-e doesn't). So if the IE suffix isn't
analogical, the Indo-Uralic form must be reconstructed as *(n)newmn-.

Best Regards,

Adam Hyllested
--------------
Student of Indo-European, Uralic and Balkan Linguistics
Institute for General and Applied Linguistics
University of Copenhagen
adahyl at cphling.dk
---------------
Editor of etymologies and language surveys
Danish National Encyclopedia
dnhy at gyldendal.dk