The Germanic substrate - knives?

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/5/2000 7:44:49 PM, stevegus at aye.net writes:

<< There is an obvious and similar substrate in Germanic, apparently the
language of the Ship and Sword Guys; not sure if they have a technical
academic name.  Like the Western movie words, the borrowed vocabulary seems
to have focused on cultural territory that was retained by the proto-Germans.
Boating is the area that sticks out most prominently; most Germanic
languages share a group of unique words like ship, keel, oar, and sail.
There is another group that features swords, knives, and helmets.>>

But there's something that just doesn't seem to ring true about some of the
words often mentioned as evidencing the substrate - at least as far as it
being non-IE.

Rick Mc Callister, on his very informative web site on the Germanic substrate
(http://www.muw.edu/~rmccalli/subsGerIntro.html), mentions the reasons that
words are included in this category:

"....most evidence suggesting that a given word is non-Indo-European is
essentially negative :
*   the word does not exist in other branches of Indo-European
*   its phonology does not conform to the norms of Indo-European
*   the evolution of the word does not correspond to known phonological laws
of the branch in question"

Looking at some of the most commonly cited words however, one might wonder if
these criteria may not be producing the substrate.  And without questioning
the value of the comparative method in the least, it just seems like
narrowing the meanings of these words can sometimes be the big problem in
tracing them, rather than the phonology.

Starting with a word like "knife."  I'm not positive how it got on the list,
but I suspect that it might be from an anachronistic idea of what knives are.

What we might call "knives" in English appear very early in the
archaeological record in Germany and across Europe.  Knives made in shapes
almost identical to modern ones were made in great number from stone and
perhaps in even greater number from bone, antler and wood, which are
perishable.

Knives don't only predate metal, but "knives" made of bone and antler also
continue to be made into the iron age.  So, that in the bronze age, the word
might well have referred to tools made of a variety of materials.

This is important because the most common uses of knife-like objects was not
as weapons or even kitchen implements, but as tools.

There's evidence of knives regularly being used as scrapers for the dressing
of skins, for the gathering and processing of wool (before shears), for
pruning, cutting holes in hides and cloth and a variety of other tasks.

On that basis, there is a whole flock of words in Greek alone that show
something close to the variations of "knife" found in Germanic. (Along with
the <f> forms OED also reports "kneupe, gneip, gnippe" in Germanic).

In Greek, we see:

knao: (L&S adds "but in correct Att., knêi,...") -  to scrape, grate or
scratch

knaph-os  - the "card" used  to clean or dress wool, cloth and presumably
hides

knapto: - "carding" of wool, but also tearing or mangling anything

knaps - to cut short (dalos)

knapsis, later gnapsis - the dressing of "cloth" or presumably hides

kne:phe: -  itch (ie, something to scratch)

knupoô - fencing with thorn bushes

knizo: - (Dor,  eknixa; pass, knizon) scratch, gash, cut up, grate, also
associated with sacrificial cutting-up.

kata-knizo: - chop up, mince,cut grooves in, score, and let blood from, again
sacrificially

kne:s-ma -  scrapings, sting, bite

kne:s-trion - scraper,

kne:s-tos -  scraped, rasped

knide:  - nettle

nusso: - touch with a sharp point, prick, stab, pierce

nuxis - pricking, stabbing

chnauo: - nibble, bite

chnauma - slice

In Lithuanian, "gnybti" is to pinch or prune.  (Cf., kni:pen (MGer) pinch,
prune)

In Polish, "no:z:" is knife, but "gnyp" is a leather dresser or shoemaker's
knife.
(The notion that "gnyp" and "gnybti" are borrowed from Germanic runs somewhat
in the face of the distinct possibility that the proto-speakers of those
other two languages had prunning or dressing knives as early or earlier than
other northern Europeans.)

None of the words above may qualify for strict phonological relationships
with the Germanic "knife", but it seems rather implausible that so many close
examples have no relationship to the word.

If anything, it suggests that if "knife" is in fact part of a substrate, that
substrate might well also be Indoeuropean.

There are a fair number of other common examples of the Germanic substrate
that suggest the same thing.

Regards,
Steve Long