Re: Polynesian and South American place names

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 08/25/04 

Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:17:36 GMT

t(nospam)kavanagh wrote:
>
> Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > As all anthropologists and historians know, geographical
> > place names have a tendency to persist over the centuries,
> > and often even over the millennia.
>
> <snip>
>
> Yuri:
>
> You will please provide proper citations for this claim.
>
> I am an anthropologist and historian--of which you are neither--and I
> know of no such claim in either anthropology or history.

That's because it would be a claim in linguistics.

> If you have specifics, please produce them.

Europe teems with pre-Indo-European place names, and Greece itself
exhibits pre-Greek (but Indo-European) place names -- the so-called
"Pelasgic" substratum. Eric Hamp suggests calling it the "Hellenic"
substratum, because the name "Pelasgian" has too many irrelevant
connotations. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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