PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics)

[Ante Aikio]

[I wrote:]
>> But if you reconstruct *H3 phonetically as *[Yw], this should give PU *x
>> (which was phonetically most probably *[Y]).

[Adam Hyllested replied:]
> The reconstruction of *H3 as Yw is Indo-European, not Indo-Uralic.

Yes - what I meant was that if PU *nimi is an IE loan word, one would
expect that IE *H3 (= [Yw]) was substituted with *x (= [Y]) in PU.

> I suggest:

> PIU *(n)newme- or *(n)neYme-

> Pre-PIE (with analogical -men) *H1neH3men > PIE *H1noH3mn

> PU-Yuk *niwme > PU *nime > Finnish nimi

This sounds completely ad hoc. But I'm ready to inspect the validity
of your Indo-Uralic reconstruction with an unbiassed attitude. So, could
you give exact parallels for the sound correspondences between the items?

>> But you can't reconstruct PU *-ä for this item: the reconstruction must
>> be *nimi (= traditional *nime).

> Why are you reconstructing an *-i for traditional *-e ? From what I know,
> *-e > Finnish -i, whereas Finnish -e < *-eC.

PU high *i is reconstructed in non-intial syllables in place of
traditional mid *e by Juha Janhunen and Pekka Sammallahti. There are
at least two good reasons for this (although these were not the reasons
stated by P.S. and J.J.; they based their reconstruction on the assumption
of maximal distinctions):

- Saami and Ugric show metaphony *(C)e(C)Ci > *(C)i(C)Ci. (*e-e > *i-e
hardly makes sense).

- Finnish shows sporadic labial assimilation *-i > y/u in some stems with
y/u in the first syllable (e.g. PU *kuli- 'wear out' > Finnish kulu-, PU
*süks´i 'autumn' > Finnish syksy). Again, *u-e > u-u and *ü-e > y-y
would not make sense; one would rather expect *o-e > o-o, but there is no
evidence of such a development.

According to this assumption, Finnish -i (alternating with -e- and zero
when non-final) comes regularly from PU *-i and Finnish -e (phonologically
/-e?/, alternating with -ee-) comes from PU *-ik and *-iS.

 Regards,
 Ante Aikio