words specific to Saamic / Finnish and Germanic

[Hans-Werner Hatting]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:37:37 GMT Anthony Appleyard wrote:
>English "ship", Germanic "skip-", seems to have a relative in Greek:
>{skaphos}. Also, Greek {skapto:} = "I dig"; the connection is likely via
>dugout canoes (made by hollowing out a big single log).

The Gmc. cognates of these Greek words come most likely from the family of
Engl. _shave_, German _schaben_ (Gk. /ph/ < PIE /bh/,/gwh/). If Gmc. _skip_
had a cognate in Greek, it ought to be along the lines of
*sk(e/o)ib- . As _skip_ is one of the candidates for a loan from a substrate
in Gmc., which is made more likely by the fact that PIE /b/ was very rare,
so any Gmc. word with /p/ is suspect of being a loan from another (IE or
non-IE language). For an IE substrate, we could accept a connection to
_skapto:_.

As I see this problem, it would be good if we were able to reconstruct one
substrate or at least a sufficiently small number of substrate layers, with
clear rules for their phonological relationship with PIE (or some other
European language family). Otherwise we risk inventing a substrate for every
word in Gmc. which cannot be accounted by with the normal sound changes from
PIE, but which has a PIE feel about it. In a variation of an old rule -
substrata non sunt multiplicanda.

Best regards,
H. W. Hatting