Vennemann's book Europa Vasconica – Europa Semitica (2003) was reviewed in Lingua by linguists
Philip Baldi and B. Richard Page, who made reasoned dismissals of a number of his proposals. The reviewers still applauded Vennemann's "efforts to reassess the role and extent of language contact in the development of Indo-European languages in Europe".[2]
Vennemann's controversial claims about the prehistory of European languages include the following:
Vasconic substratum theory: A "Vasconic" language family ancestral to
Basque is a
substratum of European languages, especially
Germanic,
Celtic, and
Italic. Vennemann claims this could be evidenced by various loan words, toponyms, and structural features such as word-initial accent. The linguistic origin of
Old European hydronymy, traditionally considered as
Indo-European,[3] is classified as Vasconic by Vennemann. Numerous toponyms that are traditionally considered as Indo-European by virtue of their Indo-European head words are instead names that have been adapted to Indo-European languages through the addition of a suffix.
Punic, the
Semitic language spoken in classical
Carthage, is a
superstratum of the Germanic languages. According to Vennemann, Carthaginians colonized the
North Sea region between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC; this, he claims, is evidenced by proposed Semitic loanwords in the Germanic languages as well as structural features such as
strong verbs and similarities between
Norse religion and
Semitic religion. The theory replaces his older theory of an unknown Semitic substrate language that he called "Atlantidic" or "Semitidic". The
Runic alphabet is derived directly from the
Phoenician alphabet used by the Carthaginians but without intervention by the
Greek alphabet. The
Germanic sound shift is dated to the 6th to 3rd centuries BC, as evidenced by the fact that only some presumed Punic loanwords participated in it.
References
^"Basken, Semiten, Indogermanen. Urheimatfragen in linguistischer und anthropologischer Sicht". In: Wolfgang Meid (ed.): Sprache und Kultur der Indogermanen. Akten der X. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 22.–28. September 1996. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. vol. 93. Innsbruck, 1998, pp. 119–138.
^Kitson, P.R. (November 1996). "British and European River Names". Transactions of the Philological Society. 94 (2): 73–118.
doi:
10.1111/j.1467-968X.1996.tb01178.x.
^English – a German dialect? Prof. em. Theo Vennemann, Ph.D. Rotary Club Munich International. 7 November 2005.
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