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Variously described and much-debated since its first "discovery" more than a
century ago, Pre-Proto-Germanic is a headache or a thrill to study depending on your disposition. Germanic has long been characterized as
having strong non-Indo-European influences, first by Jakob Grimm and later
formalized by Sigmund Feist. Feist's arguments were made in 1932 and are
well outdated, but his idea that Germanic absorbed lexical information from
extinct, unattested languages has won many converts.
The strongest candidates for stratum are words that have cognates in other
language families that point to non-IE morphophonology. That multiple
families have the lexeme excludes the possibility that the item arose from
internal innovation and gives us two options: either the item came from PIE
and underwent idiosyncratic developments or it came from a third party
source.
*ag-r ["tree (?)," "plant (?)"] North European Substratum or European
Substratum. Kroonen calls this one an obvious substratum loan. [Kroonen
doesn't go nearly far enough and he misses his own underhand pitches when
he could've hit a homerun; see *akr- here and *akr- in Tree Names]. This may
all come from PIE *h2eug- "grow" as Tocharian B oko "fruit" portends an IE
origin. Kroonen 2014.
acer, -eris (n. r.) "maple tree." Latin. The only Latin tree-name of unclear
etymology that is masculine and not feminine. [Germanic cognates seem
more likely than the Greek proposals]. de Vaan 2014; Leschber 2012.
*ahurna- "maple tree." Proto-Germanic. Main form. Reflex also in Old Church
Slavonic borrowing avor-ov "made of maple." Kroonen 2014.
acer, -eris (n. r.) "maple tree." Latin. The only Latin tree-name of unclear
etymology that is masculine and not feminine. [Germanic cognates seem
more likely than the Greek proposals]. de Vaan 2014; Leschber 2012.
(A)LAU? "lark." An initial a-vocalism like *arut- points to a substratal
borrowing of unknown value. Schrijver 1997b; Kroonen 2014.
*laiwaz/s- Proto-Germanic.
*laiwizako:n- (m.) "lark." Diminutive suffix *-iko:n*alk- ["holy place". Western European.] Kroonen 2014.
alnus (f. o.) "alder" Latin. Note: no Greek cognates. de Vaan 2014.
*mesal-k-eh2- Proto-Celtic.
baggelje Frisian.
barba Latvian.
barzd Lithuanian.
aal Dutch.
Aal German.
l Swedish.
eel English.
EPR? "(wild) boar." Substratum. Initial vowels disagree in each protolanguage, leading one to conclude they were borrowed. [Implying *VVpr?].
Kroonen 2014.
*epr- Pre-Proto-Germanic.
*apro- Pre-Proto-Italic.
*lVm-
*Vlm-
GAPR? "goat." European. Differences between *k- and *g- cannot be resolved
into a sole proto-form, which Kroonen (2014) probably takes as evidence of
differences in the substratum language.
*habran- (m.) "oats." Faroese havur can mean "goat" and "unthreshed corn,"
which Kroonen takes as evidence that this etymon was derived from *kap-ro-.
*gris-t-l- Proto-West Germanic. Reflexes in Old English and Old Frisian. Reflex
in Middle Low Germanic probably imported from Frisian.
*gros-il- Proto-West Germanic. Reflex in Old High Germanic and Old Saxon.
*ogh-on- "shrub," "small part of tree" North European. Suffix *-on- is not NFS
PIE *-on- but related to arboreal suffixes Italic *-n- (cf. fraxinus) and Celtic *Vn- and possibly Greek. See * - in Tree Names.
*ko:kko:n- "skid," "sledge runner." Skids were made of wood. Vowel extension
either from ablaut, *o:-mutation, stress shift, reduplication (?) or
proterodynamite. More research needed. < *ko:gh-ko:n-.
*Hito- "oath." Possibly PIE but could also be a substratum based on the
limited range of the word and the semantic closeness. Kroonen notes this is
probably part of a regional legal tradition and that many Germanic words
have peculiar deriviations of 'oath' (e.g. Swedish ed-gng- "oath-walk").
Boutkan & Siebinga 2013; Kroonen 2014.
*ile- "callus." Reflexes in Middle Low Germanic, Old Dutch and possibly Old
Norse.
*ili (m.) "footsole." Reflexes in Old English, Old Frisian, and Middle Low
Germanic.
i:lia "belly." Latin. Boutkan & Siebinga (2013) note that the word points to a
long *i.
*hluni- Proto-Germanic.
*kleu-o- Proto-Baltic.
*klen-o- Proto-Slavic.
*ko:kko:n- "skid," ["sledge runner."] If related to *kagan- (see *gogh-on-) then
we can reconstruct a Pre-Proto-Germanic geminate. Kroonen 2014.
[O/A-form Ablaut.]
[E-form Ablaut.]
*maldo:- Proto-Germanic.
molla Swedish.
malda Cimbrian.
(n.pl.). Greek.
*mrk-uH- Proto-Slavic.
RAP? "turnip." Western European. An agricultural substratum term. Note the
dual a-prefix with zero-grade versus zero-prefix with full grade that is so
common among substratum terms. A full reconstruction, however, is not
offered. Schrijver 1997b; Kroonen 2014.
SAKS? "sedge." Substratum. Classic dissagreement with a-prefix and zerograde versus prefixless grades which implies a non-IE source. Kroonen 2014.
*silabur- Proto-Germanic.
silubr Gothic.
silfr Old Norse. [Was *-ur- re-analyzed as nom. case -r in Old Norse and later
eliminated due to analogy?]
sidbras Lithuanian.
*su/irebro- Proto-Slavic.
zido "iron" Udian. Most metals were first mined in the Caucasus and the
mountains were a chief source of metal (Mallory & Adams 1997). The
similarities with Greek has not escaped the notice of Beekes (2014),
who links the words to European words for silver.
sparus Latin.
*swVl(l)- "swell," "rise." Substratum. The variation between single and double
l is curiously not mentioned in Boutkan (1999). Boutkan & Siebinga 2013.
*swellanaN (v.) "swell," "rise." Proto-Germanic. Reflexes in Old Frisian and Old
Norse.
*swil- "bump." Proto-Germanic. Reflexes in Old Saxon and Old High Germanic.
vas Latin.
Boutkan, Dirk & Sjoerd Siebinga. Etymological Dicitionary of Old Frisian. IndoEuropean Dictionaries Online. Ed. by Alexander Lubotsky. Brill, 2013.
Derksen, Rick. Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon. IndoEuropean Etymological Dictionaries Online. Ed. by Alexander Lubotsky. Brill,
2014. 'Brill Online'. 10 February 2014.
Leschber, Corinna. "Latin Tree Names and the European Substratum". Studia
Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis. 129. Krakow. 2012.