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This paper revisits the Greek *-nthos- and *-ssos/*-ttos names and analyzes them in the context of the language contacts between the Pre-Proto-Greek peoples arriving in Greece and the Pre-Greek populations already in place. It starts overviewing the prehistoric process of formation of the Greek language from Proto-Indo-European. A few concepts are defined, such as Pre-Proto-Greek, Proto-Greek, Common Greek and Pre-Greek. After an update on the main hypotheses regarding the dates of entry into Greece, the author stresses the role of the Pre-Greek substratum in the shaping of Proto-Greek due to the implicit phenomenon of language shift completed by the Pre-Greek population, and proceeds to an initial analysis, on the basis of the limited data available, of the Pre-Greek language(s), making use of Pre-Greek onomastics as the main, albeit indirect, source of information. With these names on the table, it is postulated that the phonological structure of the Proto-Greek plosive consonants (the fact, in particular, that the inherited voiced aspirated plosives appear as voiceless aspirated plosives in Greek) may show the effect of Pre-Greek, whose linguistic affiliation has given rise to several conflicting theories and many doubts. Even if the Anatolian hypothesis has seduced many researchers, a non-Indo-European option seems preferable. After considering different Pre-Indo-European proposals (Beekes, Facchetti, Schrijver), conclusions are drawn about possible coincidences between the Pre-Greek and Etruscan phonological systems and what this may imply. Schrijver’s recent suggestion that perhaps the language of the Minoans could be distantly related to Hattic is also considered. This could constitute an alternative explanation to the toponymic coincidences between the two regions: they could be sharing a pre-Indo-European substratum.

The Greek lexicon is known for its significant proportion of words lacking a clear etymology. Previous attempts to explain these words range from the socalled "Pelasgian" hypotheses, which resort to an unattested satem Indo-European language, to Beekes's (2010; 2014) non-Indo-European "Pre-Greek". In this paper, we reconsider this long-disputed question, and adduce Latin and even Proto- Romance data to unveil a centum language which possibly served as the basis for borrowing in both Common Greek and, at a later date, Common Italic. We analyse several dozen difficult Greek and Italic words as borrowings from this newly identified language, for which we provide a set of phonetic laws that model its development from Proto-Indo-European. Important methodological strengths of our proposal include the systematic correspondence between Greek and Italic forms, the semantic plausibility of our etymologies, and their consistency with what is known about Proto-Indo-European word-formation patterns. Moreover, a computer implementation of these phonetic laws ensures its formal consistency and validates the chronological ordering we put forward. This is all the more important since most of our etymologies involve more than one of these phonetic laws, which is an additional confirmation of the plausibility of our proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This is the text of a lunchtime lecture given at the Warburg Institute in the spring of 2004. It formed part of a series concerned with past Warburg scholars, and was devoted to the work of Henri Frankfort, Director of the Institute from 1949 to 1954. The first third of the lecture was a rapid account of his career; the remainder of the lecture was an analysis and criticism of the concept of ‘primitive thinking’ in the work of Frankfort and Aby Warburg.