Tag: finnic

Proto-Uralic Homeland (VIII): Earliest External Contacts

bandtoepfer-donau
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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

14. Earliest PU ~ PIE contacts

14.1. Indo-Uralic?

The most reliable correspondences to propose an Indo-Uralic phylum come from basic morphological comparisons. Some of the most frequently mentioned ones include (e.g. Čop 1975, Kortlandt 2002, Bjørn 2019, or Lubotsky 2019):

  • Nominal endings:
  • PU nom.sg. *-Ø ~ PIA nom.-acc.sg. *-Ø (in neuter athematic nouns).
  • PU acc.sg. *-m ~ PIA acc.sg. *-m.
  • PU dual *-ki(-) ~ PIA nom.-acc.du. *-h₁.
  • PU abl. *-tA ~
… Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (VIII): Earliest External Contacts”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (VII): Kinship & Numerals

schnurkeramiker-graber
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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

12. Kinship Terminology

12.1. Immediate Family

PU? (Saa.?, Fi.?, Md.?, Ma.?, Kh.?, Ms.?, Hu.?, Smy.?) *äććä?/*eć(ć)ä/*ić(ć)ä/*äjćä ‘father’ (UEW Nº 35). PSmy. was was borrowed into Yukaghir ečē ‘father’. Samoyedic form borrowed into Yukaghir ečē ‘father’ (Aikio 2014: 57)

NOTE. Pre-PSmy. *äjćä? could reflect an earlier Pre-PIIr. *eićo- or PIIr. *aića- ‘to control, to own’. An underlying Pre-PFi., Pre-PSaa. (based on PSaa. *e̮ćē from Skolt and Kildin Saami) and PMa. *ićä could reflect PIIr. … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (VII): Kinship & Numerals”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (VI): Mythology & Metallurgy

bronze-smelting
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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

10. Metallurgy

PU (Saa., Fi., Md., Ma., P, Ms.?, Kh., Smy.?) *wäśkä (*waśki?) ‘copper; ore, brass’ (UEW Nº 1123; Kallio 2006: 6). Irregular cognates suggest it might have been borrowed during the split-up of Proto-Uralic (cf. Aikio 2015: 42). However, compare potentially regular cognates from *wäskä in PFi. *vaski ‘ore, copper, bronze; brass’ (Kallio 2012: 167; Zhivlov 2014: 115), PSaa. *weśkä ‘copper; brass’, Md. Kazhlodka viśkä ‘chain’ (Häkkinen 2012: 18), and possibly Hu. … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (VI): Mythology & Metallurgy”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (V): Technology & Trade

technology-schnurtoepfer
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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

8. Technology

8.1. Pottery

PU (Fi., Ma., Kh., Ms., Hu.) *pata ‘pot’ (UEW Nº 710) has a striking resemblance with NWIE *pod-óm, cf. PGmc. *fatą ‘vat, vessel’, Lith. púodas ‘pot’ (Kroonen 2013: 131; Dérksen 2015: 372). However, a Pre-PGmc. origin of a PFU stem seems unlikely – based on the lack of any other case with such a large distribution. Assuming that an unattested PIIr. **padá- underlies the PU form (cf. Parpola … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (V): Technology & Trade”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (IV): Animal Husbandry

animal-husbandry-neolithic
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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

7. Animal Husbandry

7.1. Milk

PFU (Saa., Fi., Md., Ma., P, Kh., Ms. Hu.) *waji ‘butter/grease’ (UEW Nº 1156).

NOTE. Aikio (2019: 48) contra Häkkinen (2009: 28-30) considers an original meaning ‘grease’ more likely than ‘butter’. Indeed, a more general meaning is always the most conservative approach. In fact, it was possibly borrowed from Smy. into PTurk. *bań ‘fat, grease; edible oil, butter; lubricant’ (Czentnár 2015: 9-17). What is striking about Aikio’s comments … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (IV): Animal Husbandry”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (III): Agriculture & Apiculture

agriculture-plough
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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

5. Apiculture

5.1. Honey and honeybees

PU (Saa. ← Fi., Md., Ma.?, Hu., P → Smy.) *meti ‘honey, nectar’ (UEW Nº 539) ← PIE/Pre-PIIr. *medʰu ‘honey, mead’.

NOTE. The specific source PIE stage is impossible to determine with precision. For supporters of Indo-Uralic, the dental could represent the divergent evolution in both dialects (Kümmel 2019). However, the substitution of PIE *dʰ for PU *t and final PIE *-u for PU *-i are regular … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (III): Agriculture & Apiculture”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (II): Forests & Climate

neolithic-havelland-culture
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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

3. Forests

3.1. Regular terms

PU (Saa.? Fi., Md., Ma., Ms., Hu.? Smy.) *kojwa ‘birch’ (UEW Nº 334).

PU (Saa., Fi., Ma., P, Kh., Ms.) *ćänä ‘bracket fungus’ (UEW Nº 995; Aikio 2020: 115 with references).

PU (Md., Ma., Hu.) *ćalV/*će̮li/*ćälV ‘elm’ (UEW Nº 926), from PMd. *śäľǝŋ, PMa. *šolǝ, Hu. szil (Aikio 2020: 101 with references).

PU (Saa., Fi., Md., Ma., P, Kh., Ms., Smy.) *kowsi/*kusa ‘spruce; fir’ (UEW Nº … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (II): Forests & Climate”

European hydrotoponymy (VIII): Meshchera, a Permian wedge between Volga Finns?

north-east-europe-hydronymy-toponymy

On the ethnolinguistic origin of the Meshchera, Pauli Rahkonen had an interesting proposal that might eventually be tested with Bronze Age and Iron Age DNA samples from North-East Europe: The Linguistic Background of the Ancient Meshchera Tribe and Principal Areas of Settlement, FUF (2009) 60:160-200.

NOTE. The paper is included in his PhD Dissertation, South-eastern contact area of Finnic languages in the light of onomastics (2013).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine, minor changes for clarity)

The ethnonym Meshchera [Мещёра] is not found in such very early Russian chronicles as Povest’ vremennyh let [“Nestor’s Chronicle”] (PSRL 1965), first appearing in

… Read the rest “European hydrotoponymy (VIII): Meshchera, a Permian wedge between Volga Finns?”

Intense but irregular NWIE and Indo-Iranian contacts show Uralic disintegrated in the West

chalcolithic-early-uralic-indo-european

Open access PhD thesis Indo-Iranian borrowings in Uralic: Critical overview of sound substitutions and distribution criterion, by Sampsa Holopainen, University of Helsinki (2019), under the supervision of Forsberg, Saarikivi, and Kallio.

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

The gap between Russian and Western scholarship

Many scholars in the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation also have researched this topic over the last five decades. Notably the eminent Eugene Helimski dealt with this topic in several articles: his 1992 article (republished in Helimski 2000) on the emergence of Uralic consonantal stems used Indo-Iranian and other Indo-European loans as key evidence, and

… Read the rest “Intense but irregular NWIE and Indo-Iranian contacts show Uralic disintegrated in the West”