Etymologie, Etimología, Étymologie, Etimologia, Etymology
GR Griechenland, Grecia, Grèce, Grecia, Greece
untergegangene Wörter, Archaismen, Archaïsme, Archaism

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indo-european
Beeks, R.S.P.
The Pre-Greek loans in Greek

R.S.P. BEEKES
PRE-GREEK
The Pre-Greek loans in Greek
third version jan. 2007
To the memory of Edzard Johan Furnée

CONTENTS: PHONOLOGY | The phonemic system of Pre-Greek | Characteristic sound(group)s | Prothetic vowel | s mobile | Variations: consonants | Voiceless / voiced / aspirated stop | Prenasalization | Nasalization | Labial | Stops | Velar / labial / dental: labio-velars | Dentals / liquids | Simple / geminate | Metathesis, and aspiration shift | Secondary phonetic developments | Other variations | Variations: vowels | Single vowels, timbre | Long / short | Single / diphthong | Rising diphthongs? | Secondary vowels (or syncope) | MORPHOLOGY | Reduplication | Suffixes | Word end | THE UNITY OF PRE-GREEK | NON-INDO-EUROPEAN | GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

A. INTRODUCTION

In 1956, Kuiper wrote a study on Greek substratum words which opened a new chapter in the study of the field. Furnée then wrote a dissertation on the subject (1972), in which he presented twenty years of research and which is up to now the handbook for the subject. As Kuiper was also my promotor, I knew the book from the beginning (see my review in Lingua 36, 1975). The short overview which follows here is based on Furnée's material and on my own research, during thirty years.

Furnée's book met with fierce criticism and was largely neglected. [An exception is R.A. Brown's Pre-Greek Speech on Crete, 1985.] That was a major mistake. Pre-Greek words often show variations which are not found in inherited words. It is obvious to study these variations. That is what Furnée did. It appeared, as Kuiper had shown, that these variations show certain patterns, so that they can be used to recognize Pre-Greek elements. Two points of criticism on Furnée are possible. One is that he considered almost all variations as expressive, which is certainly wrong. It is evident that the variants are due to the adaptation of words of a foreign language to Greek. We shall see below that in this perspect many variations can be understood.
The second objection to Furnée is that he suggested several etymological connections between Greek words, as variants of a Pre-Greek word. When several possible variants are used, many combinations become possible, and here Furnée has gone too far in a number of cases. Here he made some ingenious suggestion. We can hardly reproach the author in these cases, however, as he was exploring new ground: it is only to be expected that in such a situation one goes sometimes too far. Several scholars were baffled by these proposals and so rejected the whole book. The method, however, was correct; what we have to do, as always in the case of etymology, is to see which suggestions are probable and which are not. Of course, in many cases we cannot reach certainty, but this is no objection. On the whole, Furnée's material is indeed Pre-Greek (a very few cases excepted), and so we have a large corpus of material. His index gives 4400 words; as many derivatives and variants are given (and a few Indo-European words that were discussed in the text), I guess that it contains some 1000 Pre-Greek etyma. Also, Furnée often adduces new material, which is (even now) not mentioned in the etymological dictionaries (mostly glosses from Hesychius).
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It is generally accepted, on the basis of the place names, that the same language was once spoken in Greece and in (western) Asia Minor. [A point for further study is to establish how far to the east such related names are found. It is my impression that such forms are found in the south as far as Cilicia. See F.] But it is mostly impossible to distinguish between substratum words and - (mostly) later - loans from Asia Minor. A word may have been taken over through commerce etc., as happens between two neighbouring countries, or since the time when Greeks settled in Asia Minor, which happened probably as early as in the 14th century. I think that, from a methodological point, it is better to consider such words as Pre-Greek, and only to take them as - normal - loan words when there is reason to do so, but it is clear that here we may often make mistakes.
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