The Iceman's Berries

[Stanley Friesen]

At 12:30 AM 7/1/01 -0500, proto-language wrote:

>Dear Stanley and IEists:

>> Unless the Hittite form belongs here, I would not reconstruct this word to
>> PIE.  It looks more like a European word, like many other words shared only
>> between Slavic, Germanic and Celtic.

>[PCR]

>And just how does a "European word" look?

>What are its identifying characteristics?

It is shared between the northern European branches of IE, and perhaps is
also found in the north-central dialects (aka Balto-Slavic).  Balto-Slavic
attestation is somewhat marginal here, but there are so many words shared
specifically between Balto-Slavic and the other European branches that I
have a hard time excluding it.  Certainly Balto-Slavic appears to have been
adjacent to some of the northern European dialects through most, or all, of
its history, so shared innovations are not that unexpected.  Since these
branches are all mutually adjacent at the time of first attestation, such a
limited attestation is insufficient to establish PIE antiquity for a word.

Thus, there is a large class of roots in Pokorny, and elsewhere, that are
only attested anciently from northern Europe and immediately adjacent
areas.  These form a substantial corpus of words that, while locally
shared, cannot be confidently reconstructed for PIE proper.  One
interesting factoid about this corpus is that it includes most of the roots
in Pokorny with a reconstructed *a that is not traceable to an a-coloring
laryngeal.  (Note, this is not an identifying characteristic, it is an
observation).

Now, my *hypothesis* about many of these words is that they are borrowings
from a non-IE language family formerly wide-spread in northern Europe, but
now extinct.  I wish I could figure out how to test this idea.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net