IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Ante Aikio]

Good IE-ists!

I'm interested in knowing how widely accepted is the theory that the
Indo-European "Urheimat" was located in Eastern Europe. And how much
support do such theories as e.g. Colin Renfrew's idea of the Anatolian
origin of IE languages have?

I ask this beacause one central piece of evidence in support for the
East-European origin comes from outside the field of IE studies, namely
Uralic linguistics. But it seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong!) that
among many IE-ists, there's a tradition of uninterest in diachronic
linguistics done outside the IE language family. So, I'd also like to ask
how well is the recent progress in Uralic linguistics known inside your
field of research? And especially, I'd be interested in hearing comments
on what is presented below from those who do NOT support the East-European
original home.

During the last ten years it has been discovered that Uralic languages
possess extremely ancient IE loan words: they were loaned from proto-IE to
proto-U[ralic], which has been dated approximately 4000 bc or before. In
order to provide some substance for discussion, I will give some
examples on the loan etymologies. All etymologies derive from the
Germanist Jorma Koivulehto and most can be found in his book "Uralische
Evidenz für die Laryngaltheorie" (1991). The etymologies are meant to
serve only as an illustration. Thus, only a fraction of the credible loan
etymologies put forward are presented here.

  proto-U *pel(x)i- 'fear' < proto-IE *pelH- 'grau, fahl; schreckig'
  p-U *toxi- 'bring, give, sell' < p-IE *doH- 'give'
  p-U *koki- 'see, find' < p-IE *Hokw- 'see'
  p-U *kulki- 'move, flow, walk' < p-IE *kwelH- 'drehen, sich drehen usw.'
  p-U *mos´ki- 'wash' < p-IE *mozg(-eye)- 'untertauchen'
  p-U *s´alkaw- 'pole, rod' < p-IE *g´halgho- id.
  p-U *weti- 'water' < p-IE *wed- id.

The criteria by which the loans must be judged proto-Uralic are the
following:
1) The phonological shape of their cognates in present-day U languages
does not warrant one to assume that they were loaned separately into (and
between) already differentiated U languages / dialects. The distribution
suggests the same: all the etymologies above have cognates in at least one
U language in the Baltic Sea area and one in Siberia.
2) the proto-U form requires a specifically proto-IE loan original. Many
even show proto-U *k or *x as a substituent of an IE laryngal.

It is undeniable that the contacts between speakers of U and IE languages
date back to the earliest stages recovered by the comparative method. Thus
the speakers of proto-U and proto-IE must have been geographical
neighbors. As a result, theories such as Renfrew's Anatolian "Urheimat"
must obviously be discarded (it is of course impossible to assume that
proto-U spekers would have occupied an area south of the Black Sea). It
seems that the only logical option is to place proto-IE in Eastern Europe
north of the Black Sea. This area is just about south from area where
current research usually places the center of the Uralic expansion.

Ante Aikio
student of the Saami language and general linguistics
The Department of Finnish and Saami Language and Logopedics
University of Oulu, Finland

anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi