basic vocabulary borrowing (was: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics)

[Ante Aikio]

(Joat Simeon wrote:)
>-- true, although of course some things are more _likely_ to be borrowed than
>others. Numerals, body parts, family relationships, and so forth, are less
>likely to be loan-words.

What is likely to be borrowed and what is not in a given
circumstance depends on many factors. In U languages, the numerals are
largely cognate and there are no known borrowings except for 'seven',
'hundred' and 'thousand'. But even numerals can become cultural
items; e.g. the loan origin of Ob-Ugric/Hungarian *säptä '7' (< Aryan /
Iranian) and Samoyed *sejpti (< Tocharian?), replacing PU *s´exs´imi '7',
is perhaps connected with the 7-day week. Words for '100' and '1000' are
probably related to trade; for the same reason, even lower numerals may
have been borrowed to some languages, since counting is important in
trading.

(A note on the U numerals: Samoyedic has curiously replaced the U numerals
3-6 with roots of unknown origin; this is perhaps connected with the
strong lexical substrate from an unknown source that seems to be present
in Samoyedic. The U word *wixti '5' is generally considered to survive in
Samoyedic in the meaning '10', but the semantics seem peculiar to me. Does
anyone know any parallels?)

Kinship terms can become subject to borrowing in situations where
intercultural marriages between two language groups are common. This
probably explains the loaning of such words as e.g. Finnish äiti 'mother'
(< Germ.), morsian 'bride' (< Balt.), sisar 'sister' (I can't quite recall
the precise IE source of this one at the moment). Curiously, words for
female relatives appear to have been more freely borrowed by the U
languages than words for male ones. This perhaps tells something about how
marriages were organized.

As for body parts, there is hardly a real "reason" for replacing native
words by foreign ones in any circumstance (other than the wish to be
considered fashionable, of course).

  - Ante Aikio