Muinainen Suomi

Kim, Ronald 2024: On the phylogenetic status of East Germanic
https://www.academia.edu/123510659/On_t ... view-paper

Ronald Kim perustelee, miksi itägermaani ei ole varsinainen kielihaara, jonka taustalla olisi yhtenäinen kantakieli. Pikemminkin raamattugootti, krimingootti, burgundi ja vandaali ovat erillisiä vanhakantaisia kielimuotoja, jotka vain olivat levinneet laajalle alueelle ja jääneet "ydingermaanisen" (luoteisgermaanisen) innovaatiokeskuksen vaikutuspiirin ulkopuolelle.

Tämä nostaa jälleen esiin vaihtoehdon, että olisiko mahdollinen suomengermaani osa tällaista itäisen periferian kielijatkumoa? Olisiko se voinut säilyä luoteisgermaanisten muutosten ulkopuolella mutta olla samanaikainen? (Eurajoki ei olisikaan vanhempi nimi kuin Aurajoki.) Toisaalta Lounais-Suomella ja Etelä-Ruotsilla on ollut jatkuvasti tiiviit kontaktit, joten kielen nopea päivittyminen on kuitenkin hyvin todennäköistä.

Itämerensuomen germaani- ja balttilainoista on tulossa juuri sopivasti uusi tutkimus, jota on esitelty konferenssissa Helsingissä (57th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea).

Terhi Honkola, Petri Kallio & Niklas Metsäranta:
Language contact landscape in the eastern Baltic region during the first millennium BC.
https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2024/ ... _part2.pdf (sivut 122-123)

As is well-known, Proto-Finnic has obtained hundreds of loanwords from both Germanic and Baltic language varieties (Kallio 2015, Junttila 2015). For instance, Germanic loanwords include terms connected to field agriculture and seafaring (Hofstra 1985), while Baltic loans include terms for hunting and fishing and for more primitive agriculture (Junttila 2012). In addition, kinship terms denoting close relatives have been borrowed from both Germanic and Baltic (Metsäranta et al. 2023). All this has been seen as an indication of bi- and multilingual communities (Koptjevskaja-Tamm & Wälchli 2001). Based on Lang’s (2020) recent hypothesis these groups resided during the first millennium BC in the eastern Baltic region: around the Daugava valley and northwards in the area of today’s Estonia.

What has not been taken into account in earlier loanword studies concerning Proto-Finnic is the division of Proto-Finnic into Early, Middle, and Late Proto-Finnic, suggested by Kallio (2007). Middle Proto-Finnic (MPF) was supposedly the centuries-long phase during which the Finnic branch had already split up from its closest sister branches but before the Finnic languages started to diverge from each other. Thus, MPF was the language spoken by the Finnic speakers during and after their arrival in the Baltic region. By specifically focusing on the borrowings into MPF, we hope to get a more precise picture of the contact landscape and life of the MPF speakers.

In this paper we categorise previously suggested, well-founded Germanic and Baltic loanwords based on the recipient proto-stage with the main focus on MPF. The main source of Germanic loanwords is Lexikon der älteren germanischen Lehnwörter in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen (LägLoS), whereas the main source of Baltic borrowings is Junttila (2015). In addition to the borrowings from Baltic and Germanic into MPF, we also collected loanwords of which one cannot certainly say into which Proto-Finnic stage they were borrowed. To attain a more complete view of the contact situation in the eastern Baltic region, we also collected the loanwords from Germanic to Baltic.

We found out that there are ca. 50 Germanic and Baltic borrowings that can specifically be connected to the MPF stage. Interesting examples of Germanic borrowings include rengas ‘ring’ and ahjo ‘forge’, which could perhaps be connected to bronze work that took place in the fortified settlements of Late Bronze Age Estonia. In addition, there are ca. 100 Germanic and 130 Baltic borrowings of which it is impossible to say whether they were borrowed into MPF or already into Early Proto-Finnic. All Baltic borrowings were received during the MPF period at the latest, while there are ca. 220 Germanic words of which one cannot say to which layer they belong to. There are also ca. 20 Germanic loanwords in Baltic. All these were recent borrowings, contemporary with Late Proto-Finnic. By revisiting the pre-existing loanword information, we aim at understanding the world in which the MPF speakers were living while highlighting the importance of loanword studies in the study of the human past.

Mielenkiintoista. Harmi, että niin moni lainasana on vaikeasti ajoitettavissa sopivien äännekriteerien puuttumisen vuoksi.