IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Ante Aikio]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> This word is sometimes seen as supportive of a PIE ~ Uralic
> genetic link, but it rather looks like a borrowing from IE into
> Uralic.  The IE prototype contains two laryngeals (*h1neh3- or
> *h3neh3-) and the abstract suffix *-men [*], none of which finds
> expression in the Uralic word.

Actually, the lack of reflex of medial *h3 is a bit problematic. One would
expect borrowing from IE *Hneh3men- to give PU *nexmi / *nixmi. But I've
seen such reconstructs as IE *nmen-, based (at least) on Slavic, as far as
I understand. Is this reconstruct valid? It would account nicely for PU
*nimi.

> Hittite <lamaan> has been dissimilated, as is not totally
> unexpected in a word containg only nasal consonants.  Uralic
> *nimi has only two of them, but I believe (my Proto-Uralic is not
> that good) that the genitive case would add another -n-.
> Dissimilation would be a natural thing to happen.  I don't think
> Mordvin-Mari necessarily offers any evidence of Uralic-Anatolian
> contacts.

Yes, since this is an isolated case, sporadic dissimilation seems more
probable than Anatolian influence. I didn't think of the genitive; it
really is PU *nimi-n with three nasals. There are also lots of other
suffixes with nasal consonants, at least accusative *nimi-m, lative
*nimi-N, locative *nimi-nä, and sing. 1p px *nimi-mi 'my name'.

  Ante Aikio