The Iceman's Berries

[proto-language]

Dear Stanley and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 9:39 PM

[ moderator snip ]

>>> 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.

[PCR]

This problem in general in one with which I am quite familiar. Though I, of
course, acknowledge loanwords, I frequently find the the reasons for
identifying them are less than totally convincing.

Now you did mention IE roots with *a that are reconstructed without a
"laryngeal".

I would be curious to know one or two of these. I was under the impression that
"laryngealists" allowed no *a without postulating a "laryngeal" to account for
it.

On the other hand, I believe that a small number of IE *p, *t, and k*, began
life as *ph, *th, and *kh (and perhaps *[n]k in *kar- and *kaka-), and, in the
process of losing aspiration (or nasality), lengthened and preserved the
proto-IE (or Nostratic) vowel quality, which, when *a, became first *a: during
the period of the introduction of Ablaut, then simply *a since this was
sufficient to differentiate it from *e/o roots with the same form.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)