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T
HE
E
ARLIEST
C
ONTACTS BETWEEN
S
CANDINAVIANS AND
S
OUTH
S
AAMI
165
the reconstructed proto-language provide us with a richer picture of the sys-
tem. In UEW one can even find examples of reconstructed minimal pairs,
e.g., *
sala
‘verstecken, verhehlen, stehlen; Dieb’ ≠ *
śala
‘Ulme’. That is in
good accordance with the fact that non-palatal *
s
can be found in 38 recon-
structions and palatal *
ś
in 48 cases (SUL 116 ff.).
Among the reconstructed phonemes we also find a non-palatal *
δ
and a pala-
tal *
ß
. There are several examples that support the non-palatal *
δ
after the first
syllable, and it shows a different development than, e.g., the occlusive *
t:
Saami Finnish Hungarian Reconstructed Meaning
giehta käte-
kéz
*
käti
‘hand’
buođđu pato fal
*
paδa
‘dam; enclosure for
netting salmon’ (KN)
There is, however, no certain example of a reconstructed word that would
have had a *
δ
in the initial position. The only one of this kind could be *
δāpδē
‘spleen’, an etymology that is accepted by Sammallahti (1998: 198 f.) and
Lehtiranta (1989: 219), but is regarded as highly uncertain by Korhonen (1981:
129; cf. UEW s.v.
läppз
2
). On the other hand, there are three reconstructed
words with an initial palatal *
ß
(SUL 98), which results in a rather puzzling
picture of the frequency of these sounds in Proto-Finno-Ugric (here compared
with the number of *
t
in both positions; all numbers according to SUL):
Phoneme Initial Non-initial
*
t
43
16
*
δ
0
13
*
ß
3
10
The palatal *
ß
differs from all other reconstructed sounds in one notable
respect; namely, that it has not been maintained in any language of today, so
some element of uncertainty is connected with it. László Honti (latest 2012)
has for this, and some other reasons as well, suggested that the quality of this
sound was another, namely
n
, with a non-palatal correspondence
l
. The ad-
vantage of this explanation is that such a sound can be found in Khanty dia-
lects (Honti 2012: 47) and can be explained as deriving directly from the
same sound in the proto-language. Of course, it is also possible to argue in
favour of the traditionally reconstructed *
ß
, since there is a good deal of
logic in it. Already the correspondence between Saami
ođđa
‘new’ / Finnish
ute-lias
‘curious’ / Hungarian
új
‘new’ indicate that we are dealing with a
dental, palatal sound.