Substitutions of palatovelars in Indo-European loanwords into Uralic?

Abstract

In this paper, the Indo-European etymologies of Uralic words are analysed that allegedly contain reflexes of Proto-Indo-European palatal stops (palatovelars) *ḱ, *ǵ and *ǵh. Especially Jorma Koivulehto has in many works argued that words that show these reflexes manifest of very early contacts between Indo-European and Uralic, and these ideas have been very influential in the discussion of location of dating of early varieties of Uralic, and to a lesser extent, Indo-European languages. While most of these etymologies are convincing in that they are indeed borrowed from Indo-European, a critical scrutiny leads to the conclusion that they can be considered loanwords from later branches (such as Indo-Iranian) that had already went through satemization. Some etymologies also turn out to be unconvincing in the light of modern views of Uralic and Indo-European historical phonology. These results support other recent, more sceptic views of contacts between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic, and mean that many of the extra-linguistic conclusions based on earlier loanword studies have to be considered unreliable, which is in line with recent studies of prehistory.

On locating Proto-Uralic

“…In a donor lineage, there might have occurred changes concerning word-initial consonant clusters or voiced obstruents, but many such changes would remain invisible due to the restrictions caused by Uralic phonology and phonotactics: an initial cluster would have been substituted by a single consonant, and a voiced obstruent would have been substituted by a voiceless obstruent. Similarly, the presence of the Indo-European palatovelars and labiovelars in a donor lineage would be difficult to recognize reliably (Holopainen 2021).…”

“…There are several dozen proposed loanwords which could be borrowed from Late Proto-Indo-European, Archaic Indo-European, or Northwest Indo-European (e.g., Koivulehto 1991;, so the existence of such loanword layers does not suffer from the lack of quantity but from the possible lack of quality. There are recent critical assessments about the words with Uralic *š as the assumed substitute for the Indo-European laryngeals (Hyllested 2014), about the most widespread Indo-European loanwords in Uralic (Simon 2020), and about the words containing alleged Late Proto-Indo-European palatovelars (Holopainen 2021). Many of the assumed early Indo-European loanwords have already been proven to be improbable, but there are still plenty of proposed loanwords waiting to be assessed more thoroughly.…”

Uralilaisen lingvistisen paleontologian ongelmia — mitä sanasto voi kertoa kulttuurista?

“…esim. Koivulehto 2016: 128-130, Kallio [käsikirjoitus], Holopainen 2019: 103-105, 190-193;2021). Laajemmin voi todeta, että koko lingvistisen paleontologian metodin ongelmat ovat edelleen samoja kuin 1800-luvulla, ja samoista kysymyksistä kiistellään edelleen.…”