PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics)

[Fabrice Cavoto]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>> But if you reconstruct *H3 phonetically as *[Yw], this should give PU *x
>> (which was phonetically most probably *[Y]).

> The reconstruction of *H3 as Yw is Indo-European, not Indo-Uralic. I
> suggest:

> PIU *(n)newme- or *(n)neYme-
> Pre-PIE (with analogical -men) *H1neH3men > PIE *H1noH3mn

[Fabrice Cavoto]  The use of analogies is one of the things which has made
long range comparativists so unpopular years ago. If analogies do indeed
happen from time to time and must be accepted, either as paradigmatic
analogies, or as recurrent for the same elements (that is, for this precise
topic, if one could prove that there are other cases where a root ending in
*-me has become, analogically, a *-men- stem in IE, and it is not sure
there are other examples of this), the fact is that recurring to those is
often interpreted by skeptics as the proof that we don't know exactly what
happened. However, in this precise case, why should analogy be invoked at
all? Couldn't it simply be that the root itself in PIE was *H1neH3m-, and
that it was formed by the addition of the whole *-men- suffix:
*H1neH3m-men-. Do we have any case at all of geminate nasals in IE roots?
Because if we don't, as I think, then one only needs to assume that the
sequence *-mm- was reduced, by a regular sound law, to simple *-m-. This
way, we can avoid the use of analogies (which problem is also that when
they don't belong to one of the categories above, they simply can't be
verified), and instead have a set of regular evolutions. As for the Uralic
part, if the root itself is identical with IE, then the stem formation
doesn't have to be. In the same way that IE has a productive *-men-suffix,
Ural. has also different stem formations, more or less productive, and can
simply have choosen another one, thus *-e.
However, what I just proposed can't, I am afraid, be used for or against
the Indo-Uralic (or older) origin of the word. I think that both options
might have their argumentation.

> PU-Yuk *niwme > PU *nime > Finnish nimi

>> But you can't reconstruct PU *-a for this item: the reconstruction must be
>> *nimi (= traditional *nime).

> Why are you reconstructing an *-i for traditional *-e ? From what I know,
> *-e > Finnish -i, whereas Finnish -e < *-eC.

[Fabrice Cavoto]  I don't see why neither. *-e and *-a seem to be needed,
but I don't see why *-i.