About Proto-Germanic

[Anglesqueville]

1. Presentation
In the context of the transition from proto-GenArch to GenArch, I have felt compelled for days to open a thread around the proto-Germanic question. I will limit myself to the essentials, taking as a "leverage point" the summary made by Valter Lang of the work carried out in his 2015 text: "Formation of Proto-Finnic – an archaeological scenario from the Bronze Age / Early Iron Age". The word "archaeological" must immediately attract your attention. Lang is not a linguist, although he takes the work of the Estonian and Finnish schools of linguistics very seriously. I will therefore have, and this is essentially what the first part of my job will consist of, to develop and source the linguistic aspects of his thesis. Because the logic of my remarks here will in fact be the opposite of Lang's: first linguistic, it will allude to archaeological and genetic dimensions only for the sake of convergence. I would like to point out that I am not an absolute fan of Lang's theories, even if I maintain the impression that they represent today, overall, the best possible starting point for a synthetic presentation. I hope that the friends who opened and kept alive for a few weeks a thread devoted to the proto-Finnic question will carry their work here. The two topics are indeed inseparable.

1. A common horizon for both Pre-Proto-Saami and Pre-Proto-Finnic (if it indeed existed) can only be found in the Volga–Oka region in the Bronze Age;
2. From there two branches of cultural influences spread westwards, one through the North-Western and another through the South-Western Passage of Contacts. The former can be connected with Pre-Proto-Saami and the latter with Pre-Proto-Finnic.
3. Both movements took place in several waves lasting over many centuries. The first Pre-Proto-Saami movements perhaps started already within the Textile Ware networks, but they certainly continued in the later Bronze Age / Early Iron Age (Anan’ino influences). The Pre-Proto-Finnic speakers started to shift westwards at the end of the second millennium BC.
4. After a few centuries, these two branches of western Finno-Ugrians met again somewhere in Finland; they spoke similar languages, but those who came from the South-Western Passage had already obtained a rather strong Proto-Baltic ‘accent’.
5. On the shores of the Baltic, the Pre-Proto-Finnic newcomers met a mixed population speaking (several?) aboriginal and Proto-Germanic languages,the latter being in the dominant position.
6. In the following processes the biggest role was played by new waves of immigrants from the east; a particularly important wave was the one that brought along fortified settlements, bronze axes of the Akozino-Mälar type and early tarand-graves in the 9th–8th centuries BC. This wave also reached the western shores of the Baltic establishing in this way an axis of contacts between the bronze work centres in the Volga–Kama region and Scandinavia.
7. As a result of these processes and language contacts with Proto-Baltic,Proto-Germanic, and some Palaeo-European, Proto-Finnic emerged and it also achieved the dominant position at least in what are today coastal Estonia, SW Finland, and the Daugava valley in Latvia. <However, as more intensive and developing processes concentrated next on the coastal areas further north, it is easy to imagine the mechanisms of the separation of one portion of Proto-Finnic-population – the one that was later called South Estonian.

("Formation of Proto-Finnic – an archaeological scenario from the Bronze Age / Early Iron Age", Valter Lang 2015)

The subject of the present thread makes its first appearance in this text in 5. It will be necessary to bring some nuances and additions to it, in particular by examining what happened "on the other side", that is with pre-proto-Saami (what happened and when it happened). Let us not forget that Lang's concern here is Estonia, not Finland, nor proto-Germanic. What emerges here is this, which Lang seems to take for granted: when speakers of pre-proto-Finnic began to settle in the regions that correspond to present-day Estonia, southwestern Finland, and the Mälaren region in Sweden, they met there, among others, a population which spoke, Lang tells us, proto-Germanic. It is particularly assured for him that the people who in these regions buried their most precious representatives in monumental stone-cist graves and stone ships, were speakers of proto-Germanic. In another text, Lang writes:

The distribution of the cultural tradition emanating from the west, i.e. Scandinavia and Northern Central Europe in contemporary Estonia, Finland and Latvia began already during the Neolithic and continued during the Early Bronze Age and is archaeologically identifiable with ever increasing imported goods (flint daggers, bronze axes, etc.). Permanent monuments of a western origin began to be built in the countries of the east coast of the Baltic sea, however, from the Middle Bronze Age. In Finland, these were usually monumental stone graves or burial cairns (Finnish: hiidenkiuas) located atop higher hilltops, whereas in Estonia, somewhat smaller stone-cist graves and early Celtic fields were spread. On the lower course of River Daugava in Latvia, Reznes-type barrows and in Northern Latvia stone-cist graves similar to those found in Estonia are known. In addition, stone ships of Gotland origin are known on the east coast of the Baltic sea and the islands, and also cup stones especially from Estonia, less from Finland and the least from Latvia.
The appearance of such permanent monuments likely indicates the arrival of new groups of peoples from the south and west coasts of the Baltic sea. Taking into account historical linguistic comparisons, the newcomers must have been pre-Germanic peoples speaking pre-Proto-Germanic

On the other hand,later, there is every reason to identify the builders of the Tarand Graves with the Proto-Finnic immigrants of the southwestern route.The intersection of the distributions of these modes of burial, to which we could add the distribution of the Akozino-Mälar axes, would give us an idea precise enough of the area where pre-/proto-Germanic and proto-Finnic cultures met, and perhaps hybridized.

[img][/img]
That said, what are these "historical linguistic comparisons" on which Lang relies to identify those autochthonous people ("autochthonous" when proto-Finnic arrive in the zone) with Germanic-speaking people?

[Anglesqueville]

2. Interrelatedness Proto-Germanic - proto-Finnic (1)
"In conclusion, we point to the interrelatedness of location and dating of Proto-Germanic and Proto-Finnic. There are few reconstructed protolanguages in Europe with such intensive contacts, and the palaeolinguistic evidence suggesting nearly identical cultural characteristics of their prehistoric communities. Thus, the location and dating of these two protolanguages is largely dependent on each other." (Saarikivi and Holopainen 2017)
The signs that point to those "intensive contacts" are firstly (but perhaps not only) lexical.
Indeed, and here is the crucial point of the whole problem, the Balto-Finnic languages and Finnish itself before any other, borrowed from Proto-Germanic an enormous mass of words. (I say "proto-Germanic" for short. The oldest ones are indeed difficult to date with certainty and could have been borrowed from a late pre-proto-Germanic. In any case, these are indeed words prior to the proto-Scandinavian). This lexical mass is currently estimable at more than 500 terms, but it is constantly growing. It was estimated that it represents for the Finnish language a lexicon comparable to the Franco-Norman superstrate of the English language. The reference, indispensable although already quite old, is the huge three-volume dictionary that specialists and amateurs affectionately call "The" Läglös: "Lexikon der älteren germanischen Lehnwörter in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen" (Kylstra et al. 1991). For those who don't have the courage to delve into it, Wikipedia offers 581 pages (but some are devoted to Proto-Scandinavian borrowings): en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Finnish_terms_derived_from_Proto-Germanic

It is important, before continuing a little on this theme, to insist on this: there is nothing speculative here. The proto-Germanic lexicon of Finnish is an element of an absolutely factual nature.
It goes without saying that such a massive loan could not have resulted from occasional contacts, such as those resulting from simple commercial relations. But, beyond the simple quantitative observation, the semantic ubiquity of this proto-Germanic lexicon makes such a hypothesis untenable. It is particularly symptomatic that it contains most of the vocabulary relating to advanced techniques of agriculture (unlike primitive techniques where proto-Baltic borrowings dominate) and animal husbandry. To take just a few examples:

multa: soil,

aidun: pasture, field

niittää: to cut hay

lammas: sheep

aura: plow

lauma: herd

humala: hop

nauta: bovine

mallas: malt

kana: chicken

ruis: rye

juusto: cheese

kaura: oats

rasva: grease

laiho: growing grain

akanat: chaff

kello: (cow) bell

curve: peat

pelto:field

vainio: largish field

lanta: manure

tunkio: dunghill

It is also remarkable that the word "äiti" (mother) is a Proto-Germanic borrowing (while "tyttö" = daughter and "sissar" = sister are probably Proto-Baltic). Remarkable as well that the word "häpy" (shame, and by derivation human female genitalia) is one too. I could go on like this for pages, which I might do later because walking around the Läglös has become one of my favourite hobbies.
We cannot recoil from the only plausible explanation: the existence of communities where bilingualism was the rule. Why at a certain time did proto-Finnic take precedence by assimilating a whole borrowed lexicon? This question, certainly fascinating, is beyond the scope of this work.

[Anglesqueville]

3. Saami
The Saami languages have their share of proto-Germanic lexical borrowings. Even if this share is considerably less important than that of Proto-Finnic, it is nonetheless rich in lessons (and questions). In his 2006 text ("On Germanic-Saami contacts and Saami prehistory") Ante Aikio notes:

Jorma Koivulehto has demonstrated in his studies that there are two distinct strata of Germanic loanwords in Saami which precede the extensive stratum of Proto-Scandinavian loans, the existence of which has already for long been recognised. Even these older borrowings seem to have been adopted largely independent of Finnic, as most of them do not have Finnic cognates.

In detail the study of the problem of Germanic loanwords in Saami is difficult, and I'll refer to the texts of Aikio. It is, however, safe to say that the pre-proto-Saami speakers, who had travelled by the North-Western route, first settled throughout southern Finland where they encountered the native Germanic speakers. The time of this meeting cannot be very different from that when the common "German-Finnic" history began. But they may not coincide. One can in particular think that the first Germano-Saami meetings occurred before the pre-proto-Finnic speakers established, coming from Estonia, their first Finnish colonies. This is what Aikio suggests:

One thus arrives at the picture that Proto-Saami originally developed in an area situated between the known Germanic and Finnic language groups and the unknown Palaeo-European cultures of Northern Europe (see Map )

[img][/img]

I strongly advise studying the founding texts of Aikio, namely "An essay on Saami ethnolinguistic prehistory" and the one already quoted, which contains many fascinating etymologies. But it's time now for bringing an answer to the question implicitly contained in the title of this thread.

[Anglesqueville]

4. Proto-Germanic
I would like, at this point, to quote once again Saarikivi and Holopainen, in the abstract of a conference held in 2017 on the occasion of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (and unfortunately not yet published):

There are few reconstructed protolanguages in Europe with such intensive contacts, and the palaeolinguistic evidence suggesting nearly identical cultural characteristics of their prehistoric communities. Thus, the location and dating of these two protolanguages is largely dependent on each other.

In fact, it emerges from all the elements briefly mentioned here that the initial area (the "cradle", to use a usual metaphor) of the proto-Germanic language was necessarily in the immediate vicinity of that of proto-Finnic ( and proto-Saami). By far the most economical option is in Sweden, the region of Mälaren.

remark: In the same text Saarikivi and Holopainen note:

The prevailing hypothesis that the Proto-Germanic was spoken in Northern Germany and Denmark is quite problematic, taking into account the abundance of the Proto-Germanic word stock in Proto-Finnic that was spoken, with all likelihood, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland.

"Quite problematic" is a polite understatement. The "Jastorf" thesis is in fact not based on anything. Schwantes was an archaeologist, knew nothing of the East-Baltic side of the question (and probably didn't give a damn about linguistics, a common failing in his corporation). For us today, if there is one question that arises, it is how such a meaningless thesis could have become a tradition. But this question is objectively of little interest.

[Anglesqueville]

5. Interrelatedness Proto-Germanic - proto-Finnic (2)

The Consonantal Gradation ( in its two faces, namely Rythmic Gradation,RhG, and Syllabic Gradation) is a remarkable feature of Finno-Saamic languages and, at the other extremity of the Uralic expansion area, Nganasan. RhG in Finnish has been largely obliterated by the analogy, but its traces are detectable in the partitive case of substantives. Examples:
proto-Finnic *puu (wood) has partitive *puu-ta (as in modern Finnish)
proto-Finnic *kala (fish) has partitive *kala-da (> kala-a in modern Finnish)
In Saami and moreover, in Nganasan (where it's productive) the CG leads to much more complex mechanisms. The study of these mechanisms is far beyond the scope of my post, and I'll refer to Viktor Helimski's grounding text: "Proto-Uralic Gradation. Continuation and traces", 1995. In this famous work, Helimsky proves that CG traces back to proto-Uralic. In particular, he had to challenge the theories of some of his predecessors, who saw in the CG and in particular in the RhG the product of the influence of the first Germanic consonant shift, Verner's law.

The next possibility to account for the consonant gradation would be assuming a contact influence of Finnic-Lapp (or of its descendants) upon Nganasan, or of Nganasan upon Finnic-Lapp, or of a certain third language (a sub-, super-, or adstratum) upon both. The contacts must have been prolonged and extremely intensive, in order to impart the prosodic habits and morphonological mechanisms to the target language. It is hardly necessary to prove that such ideas do not have anything in common with historical and geographical realities (again, to the best of our present knowledge). L. Posti made an attempt to go farther than just comparing gradation to the Verner’s law, and to attribute its origin in Proto-Finnic to the Germanic influence [Posti 1953: 76–82]. This hypothesis continues to meet sympathetic response [Korhonen 1981: 142; Lehtinen 1994: 70–72]. But how can Nganasan facts be combined with this hypothesis? Perhaps only by a daring statement that certain yet unknown Germanic tribe migrated as far east as to the Yenisei river with the generous aim of telling the rules of consonant gradation to the forefathers of the Nganasans — and, on accomplishing its mission, got frozen to death…

The similitude of the Uralic RhG and the Germanic Verner's Law is indeed impressive:

Verner’s law turns all voiceless obstruents (Pre-Germanic *p, t, k, kj, kw, s) into voiced obstruents (ultimately Proto-Germanic *b/v , d/ð, g/?, g/?, gw, z) after a Pre-Germanic unstressed syllable. Rhythmic gradation turns all voiceless obstruents after an unstressed syllable into weak-grade consonants, which means that *p, t, k, s become Finnic *b/v , d/ð , g/?, z. This is striking.

 (Schrijver in "Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages", Routledge 2014)

As Helimski's text doesn't aim at Germanic but at Uralic, he doesn't go further from this point and goes on to argue his own thesis, namely that CG traces back to PU. On this very point starts, many years after, the work of the Dutch germanist Peter Schrijver, which consists essentially of inverting the terms of the bolded sentence: P.Schrijver makes an attempt to go further than just comparing Verner's Law to gradation and to attribute its origin in Germanic to the proto-Finnic influence.

Schrijver writes: 

Given the geographical proximity of Balto-Finnic and Germanic and given the rare occurrence of stress-related consonant changes in European languages, it would be unreasonable to think that Verner’s law and rhythmic gradation have nothing to do with one another."

Of course "unreasonable" is not a definitive argument to dismiss the possibility of an independent development in pre-Germanic of a Uralic-like feature. But since at the same time Germanic and proto-Finnic phonologies seem affected by strikingly converging evolutions ( without forgetting, in Germanic, likely shortly after Verner's law the loss of the IE mobile accent and its fixation on the initial syllable, as in all Uralic languages), the probability of such a resemblance by chance seems really very low.
I prefer to continue here to consider this hypothesis, namely that the evolution leading from pre-Germanic to proto-Germanic took place under the influence of pre-proto-Finnic (or/and pre-proto-Saami?) phonology, as speculative, whereas I think I have insisted enough on the factual character of the Proto-Germanic lexicon in Proto-Finnic and Proto-Saami. Nevertheless, however speculative it may be, I believe I can assign it a high probability coefficient. However, whether we accept it or reject it, this will not affect the thesis stated above on the location of the Proto-Germanic area.

However the acceptance of this hypothesis could perhaps help to solve a slightly annoying mystery, that of the asymmetry of lexical borrowings. I would like to insist on the fact that whereas the preceding developments owe nothing to my own reflection, for I only echoed the work of specialists otherwise competent than myself, all that I write now was born in my poor amateur brain. Let's sum up the question:
1) There is a large lexical flow in the Germanic > Finno-Saamic direction.
2) Conversely, the lexical borrowings to Proto-Germanic from Finno-Saamic are only a handful at best (see for this Hyllestedt's thesis, and the communication by Saarikivi and Holopainen if it is published one day).
3) We observe (still under the hypothesis stated above) a phonological influence in the Finno-Saamic > Germanic direction.
4) Conversely, if there was a phonological influence (or rather phonotactic in this case, as Kallio suggests) it is minor and caused precisely by the integration of Germanic words.
This definitely leads me to speculate on not one linguistic interference but two. If one accepts Thomason's distinction between interference by imperfect learning (which often affects phonology but is accompanied by little or no lexical transfer) and interference by borrowing (which often has little effect on phonology ), we see that observations 1) and 4) seem to converge towards an interference by borrowing, whereas points 2) and 3) would converge towards an interference by imperfect learning. I had formerly on AG advanced the idea that these two interferences were separated by a geographical distance. I wonder now if they could not be separated by a temporal distance and involve different actors. Precisely interference by imperfect learning (which Thomason explains takes place over a short time, often no more than a few generations) may have involved the earliest groups of pre-proto-Saami speakers, whereas interference by borrowing would have taken place over an incommensurably longer time, and would have been the hallmark of common Germanic-Finnic history.

[Anglesqueville]

Remark:
Between the first mutations (probably vocalic) which distinguish the pre-Germanic branch from the core Indo-European, and the first which signal the beginning of the dialectalization of Proto-Germanic, many centuries pass. How many? There is not and will never be a consensus obviously, but for example in Heikkilä's analysis a millennium and a half. To imagine the PGmc emerging fully formed, like Athena emerging fully armed from the thigh of Jupiter, is an error, and a dramatic one. It would undoubtedly be much closer to reality to see the PGmc, in relation to the late pre-Proto-Germanic continuum which very probably surrounded it, as a "new accent". I really liked on AG the comparison that Æsir made with "Rally English", the accent with which the Finns speak English (which has a lot to do with the absence of voiced 'b' and 'g' in their language, and the intonations which are never very marked and always descending). It was only a humorous comparison, but I think it was probably quite realistic.
One consequence of this observation is that the question "how long did PGmc take to spread?" doesn't actually make much sense. The situation is quite close to that of living traditions, for which the innovative dimension and the conservative dimension are inseparable. What we can say absolutely categorically is that all the mutations with which we mark, as milestones, the evolution towards Proto-Germanic and beyond, are reflected by the loans in the stratigraphy of the languages from the Finno-Saamic family, so that we can sync their respective chronologies. Obviously this does not happen without difficulties and debates. Above all, what results from this synchronization is a relative chronology. Fixing this relative chronology into an absolute chronology requires having fixed points, for which linguistics often requests help from other disciplines. Because the only thing we are more or less certain of is the terminal datings (and even then, only approximate). As for the beginnings, it is another adventure, which explains why for the Finno-Saamic chronology, for example, there is still no consensus as to its depth. Some specialists defend (this seems to me to be a fairly recent but very combative trend) a very short chronology, while others (like Kallio and Heikkilä) choose a chronology deeply anchored in the Bronze Age. I take the example of the Finno-Saamic chronology, but I think everyone will have understood that the options defended on this subject have fatal repercussions on the Germanic chronology.

[Anglesqueville]

Focus on Celtic borrowings in Proto-Germanic
In his book "CELTO-GERMANIC Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European Vocabulary in the North and West" (2020) J. Koch, after collecting a total of 276 Celto-Germanisms, notices: "A second point is that most of these items in all the subgroups do not look like loanwords". It is indeed very important to differentiate actual loanwords from simple isoglosses. I've searched which among those celto-germanisms are most likely loanwords, and actually only found a handful. I used two sources, Wikipedia and Kroonen.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category: Proto-Germanic_terms_borrowed_from_Proto-Celtic
Kroonen: "Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic" , Brill, 2013
Note that I left out geography terms, like the names of the Rhine, the Danube, and Rome, for obvious reasons.

1) brunjǭ ( = breastplate)
Wiki: Perhaps borrowed from an ancestral form of Old Irish bruinne (“breast, bosom, chest”), i.e. Proto-Celtic *brusnyos, derived from *brusū (“breast”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrews- (“to swell”) and cognate with Proto-Germanic *breustą, *brusts
Kroonen: Suspected to be a loanword from Celtic, perhaps from a pre-form of Oir. bruinne m. 'breast' < *bhrus-n-io-
2) gīslaz (= hostage)
Wiki: Borrowed from Proto-Celtic *gēstlos (“hostage, pledge”) (compare Old Irish gíall, Welsh gwystl), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gʰeydʰ- (“to desire, wait for”).
Kroonen: A Germanic-Celtic isogloss of ambiguous origin. Given the potential ablaut correlation of Olr. giall with gell n. 'pledge, surety' within Celtic, it seems logical to assume that the Germanic word was borrowed from Celtic (cf. Matasovic 2008: 159).
3) īsarną (= iron)
Wiki: Borrowed from Proto-Celtic *īsarnom, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésh₂r̥ (“blood”).
Kroonen: A PGm. loanword from PCelt. *fsarno- 'iron', cf. Olr. farn 'id.'.
4) lēkijaz ( = doctor)
Wiki: Uncertain; possibly from *lēkiz (“healing; medicine; healer”) +‎ *-jaz, or borrowed from Proto-Celtic *lēgis[1][2] of the same root.[3] Perhaps also from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to collect, gather”), and thus related to Latin legō.
Kroonen: A word that is usually assumed to have been borrowed from Celtic *legio-, cf. Olr. liaig 'doctor', before the great sound shifts. If the original meaning was 'blood-letter' ('leech'), however, the word can definitely be linked to the cluster of *lekan- 'to leak' (q.v.), in particular to the formally close *lekjon- 'rivulet' (q.v.). This would rather imply a Germanic origin.
5) leþrą (= leather)
Wiki: Related to Middle Irish lethar, Welsh lledr. Further origin uncertain. The Germanic term may be a borrowing from Proto-Celtic *ɸletrom or *ɸlitrom, from Proto-Indo-European *pl-etro-[1] or *pl̥-tro-,[2] from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“to cover, wrap; skin, hide”). Other suggested origins include borrowing from a pre-Indo-European substrate.
Kroonen: A Celtic loanword, cf. M ir. lethar, MW l/edr m. 'leather' < PCelt. *rplitro- < PIE *pl-tro-.
6) plōgaz (= plough)
Wiki: Mario Alinei[1] has proposed a borrowing from Proto-Celtic *ɸlowyos, *ɸlowyā (“rudder”)[2], itself from Proto-Indo-European *plówyos (“ship”), ultimately from the root *plew- (“to fly, flow, swim, float, run”). Compare Cornish lew (“rudder”), Old Irish luí (“rudder, tail”), Welsh llyw (“rudder, tail, leader, pilot”). Ancient Greek πλοῖον (ploîon) is derived from the same root formation. Compare furthermore Albanian plor or pluar (“prow, ploughshare, vomer bone”), supposedly from Ancient Greek πλώρη (plṓrē, “prow”), which should be from πρῷρα (prôira, “prow”), whence also prow. Alinei also mentions the Latin plaumoratum (Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 18.69), with the second element possibly relating to the family of Latin rota, Proto-Celtic *rotos and Proto-Germanic *raþą (“wheel”). Guus Kroonen has suggested a connection of the Germanic and the Latin words to *plehan (“to take responsibility, care”) (“to care for one’s life” > “to plow”); compare Old High German pfluog (“livelihood”) and Icelandic plógur, plóg (“profit”), which could nevertheless point as well to the opposite morpho-semantic evolution. Otherwise he proposes a connection with Proto-Germanic *plag/kkōn- (“rag, sod”), which seems a bit far-fetched.[3]
Kroonen: The etymology of 'plow', first attested in the enigmatic "plaumorati" mentioned by Pliny, is disputed (see e.g. Puhvel 1964 ). It is believed by many to
be derived from the verb PGm. *plehan- - *plegan- ( q.v.), in which case there must have been a shift of meaning from 'to be used to' to 'live' to 'to
plow' (cf. OHG pjluog 'livelihood'). However, the opposite semantic evolution from 'plow' to 'livelihood' cannot be excluded in view of e.g. Icel. plógur m., plóg n. 'profit'.
7) rīks ( = king)
Wiki: An early borrowing from Proto-Celtic *rīxs, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃rḗǵs.
Kroonen: id.
8) rūnō ( = secret, mystery, rune)
Wiki: From Proto-Indo-European *rewHn-, from *rewH-, *rēwH- (“to roar; grumble; murmur; mumble; whisper”). Compare Latin rūmor. Possibly a borrowing either from Proto-Celtic *rūnā or from the same source as it.
Kroonen: this theme is absent in Kroonen.
9) tūną ( = fence, enclosure)
Wiki: Borrowed from Proto-Celtic *dūnom (“stronghold, rampart”).
Kroonen: A Pre-Gm. loanword from Celtic *duno-, cf. Olr. dun n. 'fort, rampart', MW din m. 'id.'. OE dun f. 'hill, down', MLG dune f., MDu. dunen f.pl., Du. duin c.jn. 'dune' can be a later adoption, but has also been interpreted as belonging to the root *du- 'to blow', cf. *duna- 'down'.
In Kroonen only:
*ambahta- m. 'servant' - Go. andbahts m. 'servant, minister', MDu. ambacht m. 'servant', OHG ambaht m. 'servant, employee, official', MHG ambet, amt m. 'servant, caretaker' (Lw).
A loanword from Celtic, cf. Gaul. ambactus 'vassal', W amaeth m. 'servant' < *h2mbhi- 'around' (cf. *umbl) + *h2eg-to- 'goer' (see *akan- 1). Unlike PCelt.*rig- 'king' (see *rik-), the word entered Germanic after the great sound shifts.
Conclusion: it seems that only 4 lexemes can be with total certainty considered as loanwords.
Note: According to Heikkilä 5 Celto-Germanisms passed into Finnish: rikas, lääkäri, levätä, lievä, hamppu . One only is a Proto-Germanic word borrowed from Celtic (rikas). Lääkäri is very likely a Swedish loan. levätä is "probably borrowed from Proto-Germanic *slēpaną." but afaik this PGmc root is no celto-germanism. lievä comes from PGmc *hlēwaz, that has cognates inside the Celtic family , but in other indo-european subgroups as well. As for the famous hamppu ( = hemp), it is most likely a Swedish loan.

[Anglesqueville]

I will allow myself a brief foray into the field of autosomal genetics. Obviously, nothing here will constitute an argument for or against the thesis stated in previous posts on proto-Germanic localization, especially since I have always been very reactive against simplistic identifications between languages and genetic markers.
We remember that Lang (and certainly not only him) associates the first burials of the Tarand type with new arrivals from the Volga region. The Lake Mälar region is home to such burials, so we are entitled to wonder about a possible "Volgaic" influence in the genetic portrait of Iron Age Swedes. I kept this question in the back of my mind since, modelling the modern Finns with these Iron Age Swedes and the Volga-Oka_IA group as sources, I had to lament abnormally large standard errors, which often raises suspicion of defect orthogonality of the sources, in other words the sharing by them of a high number of alleles. As I had recently imputed the new Swedish Iron Age specimens from the Allentoft study for a search for IBDs, I could not resist the urge to look at what they yielded. I was so surprised by what I got that I felt compelled to look at what the unimputed data showed. Here are those results. the suffix “-orig” denotes unimputed genomes. These models were obtained via Admixtools (qpftats>qpAdm, all SNPs = YES).
right pops:
Russia_Ust_Ishim.DG
Cameroon_SMA.DG
Italy_North_Villabruna_HG
Czech_Vestonice16
Belgium_UP_GoyetQ116_1
Russia_MA1_HG.SG
Iran_GanjDareh_N
Russia_Kostenki14.SG
Ukraine_Mesolithic
Indian_GreatAndaman_100BP.SG
Russia_Arkhangelsk_Veretye_Mesolithic.SG
Israel_PPNB
Georgia_Kotias.SG
Turkey_N_I0707
Kazakhstan_Botai_Eneolithic.SG
Russia_Sidelkino_HG.SG
Russia_Tyumen_HG





left pops:
Stockholm_IA
Sweden-LN-orig
VolgaOka_IA

best coefficients:    0.907    0.093
totmean:      0.907    0.093
boot mean:    0.910    0.090
      std. errors:    0.102    0.102
     
     
fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    11.906        0.686098    0.907    0.093
          01  1    16    12.808        0.686722    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16  104.543    4.84389e-15    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00        0.686098              -  -
best pat:          01        0.686722  chi(nested):    0.902 p-value for nested model:        0.342286



left pops:
Stockholm_IA
Sweden-LN
VolgaOka_IA


best coefficients:    0.808    0.192
totmean:      0.808    0.192
boot mean:    0.809    0.191
      std. errors:    0.084    0.084
     
     
fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    14.630        0.478346    0.808    0.192
          01  1    16    19.882        0.225576    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16  104.589    4.74781e-15    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00        0.478346              -  -
best pat:          01        0.225576  chi(nested):    5.252 p-value for nested model:        0.021926

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

left pops:
Uppsala_IA
Sweden-LN-orig
VolgaOka_IA


est coefficients:    0.959    0.041
totmean:      0.959    0.041
boot mean:    0.962    0.038
      std. errors:    0.082    0.082


fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    8.413        0.906156    0.959    0.041
          01  1    16    8.664        0.926612    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16  159.443        1.06e-25    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00        0.906156              -  -
best pat:          01        0.926612  chi(nested):    0.251 p-value for nested model:        0.616608


left pops:
Uppsala_IA
Sweden-LN
VolgaOka_IA

best coefficients:    0.869    0.131
totmean:      0.869    0.131
boot mean:    0.870    0.130
      std. errors:    0.068    0.068
     
fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    11.812        0.693236    0.869    0.131
          01  1    16    15.537        0.485744    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16  159.513    1.02685e-25    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00        0.693236              -  -
best pat:          01        0.485744  chi(nested):    3.725 p-value for nested model:      0.0536014

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

left pops:
Nordland_IA
Sweden-LN-orig
VolgaOka_IA

best coefficients:    0.820    0.180
totmean:      0.820    0.180
boot mean:    0.823    0.177
      std. errors:    0.101    0.101


fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    14.529        0.485832    0.820    0.180
          01  1    16    17.982        0.324931    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16    92.692    7.96433e-13    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00        0.485832              -  -
best pat:          01        0.324931  chi(nested):    3.453 p-value for nested model:      0.0631304


left pops:
Nordland_IA
Sweden-LN
VolgaOka_IA


best coefficients:    0.750    0.250
totmean:      0.750    0.250
boot mean:    0.751    0.249
      std. errors:    0.084    0.084
     
     
fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    15.422        0.421478    0.750    0.250
          01  1    16    24.691      0.0754565    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16    92.730      7.8359e-13    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00        0.421478              -  -
best pat:          01        0.0754565  chi(nested):    9.269 p-value for nested model:      0.00233015
                     
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

left pops:
Oland_IA
Sweden-LN-orig
VolgaOka_IA

best coefficients:    1.001    -0.001
totmean:      1.001    -0.001
boot mean:    1.004    -0.004
      std. errors:    0.066    0.066

fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    16.720        0.33586    1.001    -0.001  infeasible
          01  1    16    16.721        0.403897    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16  378.066              0    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00          0.33586              -  -
best pat:          01        0.403897  chi(nested):    0.000 p-value for nested model:        0.985779


left pops:
Oland_IA
Sweden-LN
VolgaOka_IA


best coefficients:    0.918    0.082
totmean:      0.918    0.082
boot mean:    0.919    0.081
      std. errors:    0.046    0.046

fixed pat  wt  dof    chisq      tail prob
          00  0    15    13.758        0.543985    0.918    0.082
          01  1    16    16.801        0.398603    1.000    0.000
          10  1    16  378.474              0    0.000    1.000
best pat:          00        0.543985              -  -
best pat:          01        0.398603  chi(nested):    3.043 p-value for nested model:      0.0810807

There is no ambiguity about the Norrland group, where the Volgaic influx is massive. On the other hand, this influx seems tenuous at best in the Öland group. Overall, as I see no way to decide between the post-imputation data and the original data, my conclusion will be that the hypothesis of autosomal volgaic influx is at least tenable, although of uncertain quantification. I hope that one day a team of professionals will pose the problem in terms of IBDs (which I dare not do myself).

[Jaska]

Very impressive thread, Anglesqueville!
 
About consonant gradation: generally, it is not considered Proto-Uralic, because even in Finnic and Saami it is different by conditions. In Finnic, it is weakening of stops in the beginning of the closed syllables (ending with consonant), while in Saami, it is lengthening of stops in the beginning of open syllables (ending with vowel). Condition is syllable structure in both, but the processes are opposite (although there is also weakening gradation in Saami). Moreover, it looks like the gradation appeared in Saami only after the disintegration of Late Proto-Saami (Häkkinen & Piha, forthcoming this year).
 
The Nganasan gradation is very similar, but no trace of similar phenomenon is seen in other Samoyedic languages (in one Selkup dialect there is alteration between geminate stops and single stops), nor in other Uralic branches outside the three mentioned. Therefore, it seems more probable that the phenomenon occurred independently in the opposite ends of the Uralic language family.
 
“Proto-Germanic” is – like any other labels for proto-languages – used in a diverse manner, unfortunately. Some linguists use it to refer to Late Proto-Germanic, some use it to refer to the whole long continuum of Germanic-specific developments up until the disintegration of LPG. Sound changes in Finnic, Saami, and Germanic enable constructing a multi-step relative chronology, and the later end can be anchored in the absolute chronology provided by the early Runic inscriptions since the first centuries CE.
 
Here I refer to articles by Petri Kallio (in English):
Stratigraphy of Indo-European Loanwords in Saami (2009)
The Prehistoric Germanic Loanword Strata in Finnic (2012)
The Stratigraphy of the Germanic Loanwords in Finnic (2015)
https://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/petkalli/
The first one can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/1103685/Stratig...s_in_Saami
 
There are some – undeniable, although rare – occasions clearly showing Paleo-Germanic or earlier donor stage:
 
Late Proto-Saami *kuopērē ‘hoof of reindeer’ < Early Proto-Saami *kapa-ra
~ Late Proto-Finnic *kapja ‘hoof of horse’ < Early Proto-Finnic *kapa-ja
<-- Paleo-Germanic *kāpa-s > Late Proto-Germanic *χōfa-z > engl. hoof
< PIE *ḱoHp-o-
 
Here the vowel *ā is the main evidence, because LPG *ō would have been substituted by *o in EPSa and EPFi (long vowels are considered younger). LPG *χ would still have been substituted by *k, because *h appears only in Late Proto-Finnic during the Northwest Germanic/Proto-Scandinavian loanword layer, and in Saami still later.
 
Interesting is the fact that although different derivations prove Saami and Finnic being already regionally separate speech communities, no branch-specific sound changes have happened at this point (at least in these sounds we can see here). Germanic contacts alone cannot anchor the region, but other loanword layers are also relevant. Interestingly, there seem to be possible Germanic loanwords old enough to have been adopted into Early Proto-Finnic *e-ä combination (and also some Balto-Slavic words). This front combination is represented in the oldest Uralic vocabulary and oldest loanword layers.
 
Around Middle Proto-Finnic there appeared a new secondary back combination *e̮-a, which is almost exclusive in Baltic and Germanic loanwords. However, there are also possible Iranian loanwords showing this new back vowel combination (see works of Sampsa Holopainen), which seems rather contradictory for locating the Finnic speech community. Such factors make it difficult to locate it accurately.

[Anglesqueville]

Thank you for the compliment, which honours me as much as your presence on this new forum delights me. Concerning the possible role of rhythmic consonantal gradation (probably active in Proto-Uralic if we follow Helimski, in any case in Proto-Balto-Finnic) in the occurrence of Verner's law,  I explained on the old forum what it was for me. I first rejected this hypothesis forcefully when I discovered it in Schrijver's book, and then, as sometimes happens, by thinking about it I ended up developing a certain... sentimental affection for it. I questioned several of your colleagues on this point, and those who answered me gave a rather negative verdict, like you. I can't help but continue to find the resemblance between RhG and Verner strange, but I now refrain from going further. I hope I insisted enough in my presentation, but it was written before I received these opinions, and I took it from the old forum as I had written it. Beyond this question, my reflection on the proto-Germanic question in its relations with the Balto-Finnic family spanned years, with profound reforms along the way. In particular, I was once attached to very deep chronologies which I obviously had to abandon little by little. There must still be some "dross" from my early conceptions, and I suspect that my fascination with Schrijver-Helimski must be one of those "dross". I hope you are on this forum for a long time, it is a great chance that a real specialist agrees to take part in these amateur discussions. As this forum is new, everything is still very calm, but we will probably not have to wait very long to see, here as elsewhere before, the debates ignite. It will then be very useful to have someone around who can correct mistakes and excesses (including mine).

[Anglesqueville]

Jaska: I would like to return for a moment to consonant gradation. Your argument concerns what everyone knows by this name in Finnish (let's say from the very basic "koti -> kodin" to the nightmarish "tehdä - teen - tekee -tehnyt"). On this, we are in complete agreement, and I do not see what connection there could be between this and Verner in any case. But that's not what Schrijver is talking about, based on what Helimski wrote before him. He speaks specifically of the Gradation described as "rhythmic" by Helimski ("suffixal" before him). I reread Helimski's text once again ("PROTO-URALIC GRADATION: CONTINUATION AND TRACES" in "Congressus Octavus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum. Pars I: Orationes plenariae et conspectus quinquennales." Jyväskylä, 1995) and I definitely cannot understand to what extent your objections are decisive. I guess I'm going to sound like I'm clinging to a hopeless thesis, but no, I'm just trying to understand. I imagine that you have Helimski's text in your library. For others, the link on the University of Hamburg website seems inactive, but I can send a copy of the text.

edit: the simplest solutions are always the best! I just discovered that Wiki links to an archived copy of Helimski: https://web.archive.org/web/201110021505.../2.140.PDF

[Jaska]

Anglesqueville, I have no decisive opinion on this matter. Helimski has really put effort on his explanation, and I have to check his evidence more thoroughly. But here are some observations from the beginning of his paper.

Helimski himself writes: "Really, the weakening of consonants in pre-tonal position (or, to be more precise, in the position after an unstressed vowel) or in a closed syllable is a rather common typological trend."
Based on this commonness, one could easily believe that both similarity to Verner's Law and similarity between the lateral Uralic languages could also be accidental.

Helimski writes that words like *śüδäm ‘heart’ would fit to the rules of gradation, as there is never *t in such words in the beginning of a closed syllable. However, these words are normally reconstructed as three-syllabics: *ćüδamǝ (trad. *śüδämi). Then *δ would no longer appear in the beginning of a closed syllable, and its possible connection to gradation disappears.

Helimski writes: “If so, then at least in this point the phonetic shape of SyllGrad in Nganasan, where we find the pair t : δ (see 4.5), is innovative, because PUr. *t : *δ was to develop into PSam. *t : *r, Ngan. t : r.”
So, the Nganasan gradation t : δ is in any case later than Proto-Samoyedic – then, why should we expect that any part of gradation there should be older?

I will return later with more comments.

[Rodoorn]

4. Proto-Germanic
I would like, at this point, to quote once again Saarikivi and Holopainen, in the abstract of a conference held in 2017 on the occasion of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (and unfortunately not yet published):

There are few reconstructed protolanguages in Europe with such intensive contacts, and the palaeolinguistic evidence suggesting nearly identical cultural characteristics of their prehistoric communities. Thus, the location and dating of these two protolanguages is largely dependent on each other.

In fact, it emerges from all the elements briefly mentioned here that the initial area (the "cradle", to use a usual metaphor) of the proto-Germanic language was necessarily in the immediate vicinity of that of proto-Finnic ( and proto-Saami). By far the most economical option is in Sweden, the region of Mälaren.

remark: In the same text Saarikivi and Holopainen note:

The prevailing hypothesis that the Proto-Germanic was spoken in Northern Germany and Denmark is quite problematic, taking into account the abundance of the Proto-Germanic word stock in Proto-Finnic that was spoken, with all likelihood, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland.

"Quite problematic" is a polite understatement. The "Jastorf" thesis is in fact not based on anything. Schwantes was an archaeologist, knew nothing of the East-Baltic side of the question (and probably didn't give a damn about linguistics, a common failing in his corporation). For us today, if there is one question that arises, it is how such a meaningless thesis could have become a tradition. But this question is objectively of little interest.

I will only contribute once to why Jastorf was indeed an area where a form of proto-Germanic was spoken. Which does not at all hinder the speaking of a form of proto Germanic in parts of Scandinavia. 

My departure point is Koch (2020), he situates a 'split off' or 'birth' of pre Germanic about 1900 BC.


Narrative:
"Indo-Iranian strongly suggests the territory of CWC, especially once we take into account the case for placing the origins of Indo-Iranian
with Abashevo culture in Eastern Europe (§23). R1a Y chromosomes also line up suggestively with this subset of Indo-European
branches. It has many times been pointed out that the geographic distribution of the Beaker Phenomenon corresponds approximately,
but strikingly, with that of the Ancient Celtic languages (cf. Cunliffe 2010). Within the CWC area, the dialect shift that Ringe at al.
2002 envision for Pre-Germanic on purely linguistic evidence has an analogue in archaeology. ~2500 BC the Beaker phenomenon
entered the CWC area from the west and henceforth interacted and partly fused with CWC in West-central Europe, in a zone extending
as far east as the Middle Danube. By ~2300 BC the Beaker package reached Jutland.6 These ‘Beakerized’ regions henceforth had more
attenuated contact with non-Beakerized CWC to the east."

"Linguistically, these developments suggest an intensification of contacts towards Pre-Italo-Celtic and reduction of contacts with PreBalto-Slavic/Indo-Iranian. Now confronting the evidence that most CG words are not detectable as loanwords, it seems likely that PreGermanic and Pre-Italo-Celtic simply continued to be close long into the Bronze Age. That state of affairs continued to the time when copper from the Atlantic façade was traded to Scandinavia. That scenario would be more economical than supposing that contact between Scandinavia and the West ended in the post-Beaker Early Bronze Age then picked up again in the Late Bronze Age. A model of continuing contact with the post-Beaker West is also consistent with evidence of copper from Wales coming to Scandinavia in the period ~2000–1400 BC (Nørgaard et al. 2019). "

Where we can situate this about 1900 BC. a culture that meets all the conditions that Koch mentions: Unetice of the middle Elbe Saale and the Harz.

VandKilde about Unetice's sphere of influence Elbe-Saale-Unetice:


So around 1900 BC this is the first area that was 'primal suspect', in which pre-Germanic emerged. The Unetice culture of Middle Elbe Saale/ Harz was according to expert Harald Meller the ultimate blend of Single Grave culture and Bell Beakers. In which the TRB rooted Schönfeld culture also played a part (Hecht):



Euler (2009, 2021) also states this the makers of the Nebra Sky Disc could be very well seen as the first pre-Germanic speakers and direct ancestors of the Germanic people.


Udolph (1994) also points to the middle Elbe and Harz as the oldest Germanic speaking area's.

This middle Elbe-Saale/ Harz area is also part of Jastorf:



There is no reason to assume that the likely pre-Germanic area of origin: Middle-Elbe Saale and Harz switched to a language other than from pre-Germanic to proto-Germanic. As stated by Donald Ringe (2017):

[PopGenist82]

I advocate a population approach - the glottogenesis of proto-Germanic must be where the proto-Germanic tribes coalesced.
The dominance of R1b-U106 and I1, now attested beyond dispute in Iron Age and Roman era Germanic and Nordic people, places the Germanic homeland centred on Jutland (but being more expansive than that) within the cultural context of the NBA.

The Baltic zone & central -eastern Sweden are a periphery. Lang’s thesis about Bronze Age Germanic colonists in the east Baltic is in serious need of update, as they’re clearly “Balto-Slavs”.

[Jaska]

Rodoorn:
“I will only contribute once to why Jastorf was indeed an area where a form of proto-Germanic was spoken. Which does not at all hinder the speaking of a form of proto Germanic in parts of Scandinavia.”

Thank you, your comment was informative and intriguing. However, Koch himself supports Scandinavia as the Pre- and Proto-Germanic homeland. Jastorf and Unetice are not as credible options. Or do you have arguments stronger than Koch presents?

Koch 2020: 38:
“As to the whereabouts of Pre-Germanic during the Nordic Bronze Age (~1700–600 BC), advances in recent years have not upset, as the least controversial view, a homeland in Southern Scandinavia extending into northernmost Germany along the Baltic. Therefore, Pre-Germanic would have been approximately coterminous with the Nordic Bronze Age. Its timespan as proposed here (~1900–500/400 BC) contains all of that archaeological period’s usual date range (~1700–600 BC) extended into the final metal-using stage of the Scandinavian Neolithic and the first 150 years of the Nordic Iron Age.”

Koch 2020: 76:
“It is also noteworthy that the totals for Old English and Old High German, languages situated entirely on territories that had been Celtic speaking, do not show higher percentages of CG words than Old Norse, the territory of which was completely disjoint from what had been Celtic. In fact, the Old English and Old High German totals are lower. All and all, it is worth remembering that the highest total on the Celtic side is Goidelic and the highest in Germanic is Norse, languages that were not in contact in historical times until the Viking period, and that Viking-period loans are almost always easily recognized and have been excluded from the Corpus.”
“Here we review points consistent with an essential facet of our hypothesis: the Bronze Age—when Welsh and then Iberian copper reached Scandinavia and Scandinavian rock art and Iberian warrior stelae shared iconography—was also the horizon to which many Celto-Germanic words are most plausibly attributed.”
https://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Docume...ic2020.pdf