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.