IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

Eduard Selleslagh edsel at glo.be
Thu Mar 2 17:13:54 UTC 2000


----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 1:55 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> I started this with a joke, now I see us in the middle of a nostratic
> discussion !

> Well, I'd rule it out that /gün/ (< kün), originally "sun" has anything
> to do with Basque /egun/, simply because a) no point has been made for any
> kind of relationship between the two languages (nor will one be made, but
> take this as my private opinion) and b) no physical contact has occured
> between the respective populations during all of known history (and it seems
> pretty unlikely for most of unknown history as well).

> However, just to give this a slightly serious turn, a connection between
> this Turkic word and an IE one has been seriously proposed (by A.
> Róna-Tas). It has been theorized that the Turkic word might be a loan from
> (some form of) Tokharian koM/kauM "id.". No, I'm not sure whether I believe
> this. I believe in *some* LW from Tokharian in very early Turkic, but not
> necessarily in this one, since any criteria to judge this particular case
> seem to be lacking. At least for me at 1:51 a.m. ...

> And, Ed, you can happily note in your calendar that on this very day this
> question will stop doing what it has been doing to you for years, since the
> internal history of the Turkic word (g < k) shows that what seems to be a
> similarity (Tk. g- : basque -g-) is only a secondary one, brought about by
> Oghuz initial sonorization (which happened no longer that at most 1k ago).
>
> Dr. Stefan Georg

[Ed]

Sorry, I didn't want to start a discussion, and wasn't thinking of a
relationship (I'm quite convinced there isn't any) or a direct loan - maybe a
Wanderwort or a loan from a common source (via some IE maybe).

Your response is interesting, as it says that the Turkish word is from the name
of the sun; apparently the Basque word is also related to 'daylight', at least
according to some.  And Basque also voices many old k's. So the nagging
actually continues, but I won't loose any sleep over it - or stay up until 1:51
a.m :-).

Let's end it here. Thanks anyway.

Ed.



More information about the Indo-european mailing list