Re: turkey/peru/portuguese

From: Douglas G. Kilday (fufluns_at_chorus.net)
Date: 09/07/04 

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 02:04:50 -0000

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote ...
> Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
>
> > The really interesting matter is the unshifted /p/ in Low German, for
which
> > I can think of two explanations. One is Hans Kuhn's Nordwestblock, the
> > presumed group of IE-speakers located between Celts and Germans, with
> > neither the Celtic loss of initial /p/ nor the Germanic consonant-shift.
> > The other is borrowing from Vulgar Latin. Some scholars scoff at the
> > Nordwestblock, but it provides the only plausible etymology I have seen
>
> Then I trust you won't scoff at Hamp's "Hellenic" and "Cimmerian" IE
> substrata in Greek and Slavic respectively.

I'm certainly not scoffing at his "Cimmerian", which I know nothing about,
but I think the derivation of <Thúle:> from the IE root *tel- found in L.
<tellus>, OIr <talam>, etc. is unwarranted, and the explanation of <I:talia>
as 'This Land' with the demonstrative *i- prefixed to the same root *tel- is
unconvincing. (Then again, Woody Guthrie's heirs would probably not scoff.)