IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Ante Aikio]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> 	Is there any lexical substrate (from an unknown source) common to
> Uralic and any IE languages? e.g. between Uralic (or its branches) and
> Germanic/Balto-Slavic (ot their sub-branches)?

None has been found, but then again, no serious attempts to find it have
been made. However, even if there is, it seems likely that it is very hard
or maybe even impossible to detect it, since the substrate language could
not have surviving daughters. But still, it might be worth the while to
compare e.g. the corpus of Proto-Saami words without etymology (there
are at least 500 of them) with e.g. the Germanic words of unknown
origin. (Does anyone have or know where to find a list of these? I have
compiled a list of Saamic words of unknown origin, which I'd be interested
in comparing with e.g. Germanic).

> 	What was the farther western boundary of Uralic speakers? Does it
> correspond to historically known boundaries between Saami and Scandinavian,
> & Estonian et al. and Baltic languages?

Yes, most probably.

> Or was Uralic once spoken in S.
> Scandinavian and farther west along the southern Baltic?

Probably not, but there are a couple of researchers who claim
otherwise. However, their views have been received severe criticism from
other Uralists.

 - Ante Aikio