From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  1 03:30:47 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:30:47 EST
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.223047.EST.>

>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>cave-hibernating.

-- bears don't stand up when advancing; they stand up when making threat
displays, or trying to see what's going on.

When advancing -- aka 'charging' -- they run towards you, very very quickly,
with a very large mouth full of teeth wide open, making distressing sounds.

To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  1 03:32:10 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:32:10 EST
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.223210.EST.>

>sarima at friesen.net writes:

>This brings up a little hypothesis of mine: the principle origin of the
>thematic inflection of nouns (the o-stems) was via nominalization of
>adjectives. >>

-- well, it seems to be a common process.  Particularly when taboo-avoidance
was at work.


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Wed Mar  1 08:20:46 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:50:46 +0530
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.135046.0530.>

From: Gabor Sandi <g_sandi at hotmail.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Ante Aikio <anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi>
Sent: Thursday, 27 January, 2000 5:28 PM

[snip]

>> Flaunting my ignorance, I may perhaps ask the silly question: How can
>> you exclude that the Uralic homeland had a prehistory south of the Black
>> Sea? If Proto-Uralic was only one language when it split into the many
>> that have become known, can one really exclude that the speakers of that
>> language had earlier lived somewhere else? I'm not advocating that one
>> should make up all sorts of fanciful scenarios, far from it, but it just
>> could be playing a trick on us.

>In principle, it cannot be totally excluded. However, the idea of a P-U
>homeland south of the Black Sea would not be a very fruitful hypothesis,
>since it would only create a new, very difficult question to answer: why
>and how would the P-U speakers have migrated north to become
>hunter-gatherers in the taiga/tundra zone of northern Eurasia? There is
>no evidence suggesting that the P-U Urheimat would have been -outside- the
>area where U languages are spoken today.

 >- Ante Aikio

Well, our linguistic (I presume you to be Finnish, I am Hungarian) ancestors
must have migrated to the taiga/tundra zone from the south at one point,
seeing that the ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens were in Africa. I would
venture the guess that they were big game hunters, and as the ice sheets
moved north, the predecessors of Proto Uralic speakers followed the mammuth
and other large game to the north.

Just before the first offshoots of Proto-Uralic (the Samoyeds?) split off, I
agree that they must have lived somewhere north of the Black Sea/Caspian
area. Some of them might even have lived just north of the Black Sea, to be
pushed north by the more populous neolithic farmers moving into the area -
ancestors of the Sredni Stog, Tripolye etc. cultures.

Best wishes,

Gabor


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar  1 14:55:12 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 15:55:12 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.155512.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 4:50 PM

> Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de> wrote:

>>> to the south (with s-mobile)
>>> - bask    izen

>> So Basque is Indoeuropean, I see (try to inflect it, maybe it shows -r/-n
>> heteroclisis as well).

> Careful now, Basque *does* have -n/-r- "heteroclisis" of sorts
> (e.g. <egun> "day", <egur-aldi> "weather"[*]) and even one case
> of true -r/-n- heteroclisis (erg. <haur> oblique <hon-> "this").

> [*] Despite PII *ag^her, ag^hnas "day", I do *not* think that the
> Basque phenomenon can be equated with the PIE one.

[Ed]

Maybe this is not the right place, but I have this question that has been
nagging me for years: would Turkish 'gün' for 'day' fit in here?

Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar  1 14:56:29 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 15:56:29 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.155629.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 5:47 AM

> In a message dated 2/27/2000 11:16:35 PM, edsel at glo.be wrote (re English
> syntax):

>> E.g. What would you
>> think of a sentence like *"I said clearly that "modern Afrikaans many of the
>> characteristics has of a creole"*...?

> Pennsylvania Dutch.

> Regards,
> Steve Long

[Ed]

No wonder: 1) Penn Dutch is actually Penn Deutsch (German); 2) The syntax of
(High) German and Dutch (and Low German) is 99% the same; the only big
grammatical difference is the almost complete loss of noun flection in Dutch
and Low German; 3) In Pennsylvania this sentence reflects both Dutch and German
syntax transposed into English.

Ed.


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Wed Mar  1 09:08:59 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:08:59 +0200
Subject: Borrowing verbs [was: Basque <ibili>]
In-Reply-To: <E12NuqX-00079T-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.110859.0200.>

[I wrote:]
>>  Saami has a huge amount of
>>  verbs borrowed from both Finnish and Scandinavian, and most of these are
>>  quite recent borrowings. They are without exception inflected according to
>>  the normal Saami inflectional paradigm. This even holds for new
>>  borrowings: a borrowed verb root that has not even been phonologically
>>  nativized gets Saami mood, tense, number and person suffixes attached to
>>  it quite regularly.

[Larry Trask:]
> Very interesting, and I thank you for the information.

> I presume, though, that the inflectional pattern of Saami is such that a
> foreign verb-stem can be readily absorbed and inflected.  In many other
> cases, the two languages involved have such different verbal morphologies
> that there is no way the borrowing language can inflect the borrowed
> verb-stem.  Arabic loans into Turkish are a good case in point: there is no
> earthly way that an internally inflected Arabic verbal root can be handled
> within the purely suffixing Turkish verbal morphology, which requires
> verb-stems to contain vowels.

The case of Arabic > Turkish is rather extreme, since Arabic roots are
non-continuous. But even great differences in phonotactic structure
(e.g. between Norwegian and Saami) do not hinder borrowing, if the roots
in both languages have a relatively consistent form throughout the
paradigm (i.e., they are not e.g. infixed, as in the case of Arabic).

Saami has complex morphophonemic alterations in its verb paradigms, but
even this is not a hindrance to borrowing verbs. Bisyllabic verb stems
borrowed from Finnish are usually nativized into Saami inflectional class
one, which has both qualitative and quantitative alterations affecting
first and second syllable vowels and medial consonants / consonant
clusters. On the other hand, Scandianvian loan verbs are often (but not
always) nativized into inflectional class three, which has no alterations.

You originally mentioned cases where verbs are borrowed as non-finite
forms and used with native auxiliaries. This kind of borrowing is not
even theoretically possible for Saami, since Saami has only one genuine
auxiliary (the negative verb) and one semi-auxiliary (leat 'to be, have,
exist etc.') whose syntactic use is limited in such a way that it cannot
be used to build constructions with borrowed non-finite verbal elements.

A perhaps interesting case of verb borrowing is found in Finnish, which
has lots of Proto-Scandinavian / Swedish loan verbs. Since borrowing
non-finite forms is not possible for Finnish either, Finnish has generally
nativized the verbs by adding a "verbalizing" suffix -a-/-ä- to the
stem: e.g. Swedish måla 'to paint' > Finnish maala-a-. The suffix goes
back to the PU factititve / causative dx *-ta- / *-tä-, but from a
synchronical point of view Finnish -a-/-ä- is hardly more than a kind of
verb marker.

 Regards,

 Ante Aikio


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 09:18:56 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 10:18:56 +0100
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e0692f276e@[208.25.89.75]>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.101856.0100.>

>>>The I-H hypothesis I believe has Hittite < PIE.

>>Not at all.  In fact the very *form* of the word implies exclusion of
>>Anatolian from IE proper

>I'm puzzled by why the IE languages have come to be referred to as
>"Anatolian." What then do they call non-IE tongues like Hurrian?

Non-IE languages of Ancient Anatolia. We call Indic Indic, to the
disadvantage of Dravidian, and we call Baltic Baltic to the disadvantage of
Estonian.  There is no such thing as an ideal terminology. Sometimes we
have to use one name for two languages (Bulgarian, Chwarezmian, Udi aso.)

> (Or are
>non-IE languages other than Hurrian known in Anatolia?)

Hattic, Urartaean, Assyrian (Turkish ;-)

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From strand at sedona.net  Wed Mar  1 09:24:02 2000
From: strand at sedona.net (Richard F.Strand)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:24:02 -0000
Subject: Nuristani
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.092402.0000.>

Stephen Georg wrote:

>PS: as I just discover, your fine web-site contains some answers to my
>questions, and I'd like to recommend it for anyone interested. But maybe there
>are more features of N[uristani] lg. relevant for Aryan subclassification
>which could be mentioned ?

I'm glad that you found my website useful.  I am in the process of preparing
for my site a summary of the current phonological processes that distinguish
the speech of the diverse linguistic communities of the Nuristan region.
These processes provide some interesting insights into the development of
Nuristani and Indo-Iranian in general from PIE times, and I have prepared a
chart depicting this development.  For presentation on the Web this is a
labor-intensive task, so I beg your indulgence for a month or so until it
appears.

As for the distinctiveness of Nuristani within Indo-Iranian, we find in it
an intertwining of Iranian and Indo-Aryan processes; but the relative
chronological ordering appears to be:

proto-Aryan > Iranian > Indo-Aryan > Nuristani,

which is consistent with the hypothesis that the Nuristanis were ethnically
non-Aryas who were first overtaken by the proto-Aryan expansion, later swept
up in the Iranian sphere, migrated eastward into the Indo-Aryan sphere, only
to be expelled again by Iranian speakers (Afghans) into their present
homeland.  A simple Stammbaum obviously can't properly depict the
relationship of these languages.  Nuristani is best described as a
"satellite" to the Aryan (Iranian and Indo-Aryan) languages, rather than as
a "branch" of the Indo-Iranian group.

Nuristani before it ended up in Nuristan is as much defined by what it
avoided as by what it shared with its Indo-Iranian neighbors.  After it
shared an Iranian process of dentalizing lamino-alveolar affricates (< PIE
palatals), it avoided the simplification of the resulting dental affricates,
as happened in Iranian.  It avoided the harshening of *s after *u.  There
are possibly distinctive treatments of vocalic *rH (e.g., Kamviri /dra~g'aR/
'long', with close /a/ instead of expected open [vriddhied] /A/).  Stay
tuned to my website for more details.

Morphologically distinctive is the system of local adverbs, with suffixes
that seem to go back to PIE *-ro, *-no, *-mo indicating, e.g., in Kamviri,
specific location, nonspecific location, and expanse, respectively.  If the
former two suffixes are indeed those of the ancient heteroclites, their
local meanings in Nuristani may shed some light on the original distinctions
encoded in the ancient alternating *r/*n stems (*r = specific item on the
energy path [nom. & acc.] vs. *n =  indefinitely located item on the motion
path [oblique cases]).  *mo may have originally indicated an outward
expansion of the root action, as in Skt. bhu:mi 'earth'.  More details of
this system appear on my website.

>Some references would be welcome, too (post-Morgenstierne).

Check out the bibliography on my site, but not much new on the historical
position of Nuristani has been added beyond Morgenstierne's fundamental
contributions.

     Richard Strand

     Richard Strand's Nuristan Site
     http://users.sedona.net/~strand


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  1 13:22:03 2000
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:22:03 +0000
Subject: Etymological dictionaries
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.132203.0000.>

>> From: "jose.perez3" <inakistand at yucom.be>
>> Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 02:42:20 +0100

> [ moderator snip ]

>>      Final request: Ernout and Meillet's Dictionnaire itymologique de la
>> langue latine has been out of print for ages and my photocopies (yups!)
>> were never much good to start with. What shall I replace them with?

Ernout & Meillet is not out of print. It is available at 693.50 FF from Culture
Surf (http://www.culturesurf.com/rech.htm).

I bought a copy from them in October 1999.

Chantraine's Dictionnaire Etymologique de la Langue Grecque is also in print; 2
vols, 1444 FF, from Culture Surf. (I reckoned I couldn't afford Chantraine as
well, last October.)

Max Wheeler
____________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON BN1 9QH, G.B.

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975 Fax: +44 (0)1273 671320 Email: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
____________________________________________________________


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 07:52:57 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 07:52:57 -0000
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.075257.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 8:10 AM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>> *ulkwiha?

<MCV>
> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

<PR>
Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants in
combination, but how do we know?

Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 13:55:29 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 14:55:29 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <1a.ea8d26.25ecba1f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.145529.0100.>

>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>A number of Greek historians tell us the Celtic word for horse was <marka>,
>>never mentioning <equus> or <hippos> or any other name.

>-- wrong, and completely wrong at that.  Eg., the following Celtic words for
>"horse", deriving from *ekwos:

>Old Irish:  ech
>Gaulish:    epo (plus "equos", as the name of a month)
>Welsh       ebol (colt)

>You really should be more careful... 8-).

Excuse me, but do the Greek historians mention the Old Irish and Welsh
words ? I'd be surprised, if they did, so the statement above is not really
touched by your assertion that it is "completely wrong"  ...

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From jrader at m-w.com  Wed Mar  1 09:38:41 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:38:41 +0000
Subject: Celtiberian
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.093841.0000.>

Joseph Eska, in his succinct and useful review of some of the recent
literature on Celtiberian/Hispano-Celtic (posted 28 Feb), modestly
fails to mention his own contribution, _Towards an Interpretation of the
Hispano-Celtic Inscription of Botorrita_ (1989), published in the
Innsbrucker Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft series, and now out of
print, I believe.

Jim Rader


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Mar  1 14:48:35 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 08:48:35 -0600
Subject: Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.084835.0600.>

On recent etymological dictionaries, Lehmann's revision of Feist's Gothic
etymological dictionary (1986. A Gothic Etymological Dictionary ... Leiden:
Brill) lists everything that has a reflex in Gothic by Gothic word, with
good indices to the other languages and a fairly complete list of
references with all abbreviations resolved.

CFJ

[ moderator snip ]


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Mar  1 15:12:45 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:12:45 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.091245.0600.>

Is there some compelling reason for rejecting Edgar Polome's (JIES 22
[1994] 289-305] with references) linguistic arguments (based on earlier
studies as well) for an initial closer link between Germanic and Baltic,
but Slavic and Iranian, then a movement of Slavic closer to Baltic with
Germanic moving closer to Italic, then when Italic tribes moved south into
Italy, closer contact between Celtic and Germanic? This would not imply an
original unity but successive post-PIE areal contacts at different stages
of cultural development.

Carol Justus

>Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>>At 07:55 AM 2/23/00 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>>>Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>>>>[Though I actually question tracing B-S back to Corded Ware].

>>>G-B-S.

>>I am coming from the position of being unconvinced of the reality of
>>Germano-Balto-Slavic.  In fact I cannot consistently place Balto-Slavic in
>>the IE tree.  Depending on how I analyze it, it either comes out linked to
>>Germanic (as you suggest), or linked to the Greek and Indo-Iranian groups.

>Actually, I'm not suggesting a GBS genetic node.  I think
>Germanic "broke away" quite early on (while "Balto-Slavic" was
>still more or less undifferentiated eastern PIE).  Afterwards,
>Germanic and Balto-Slavic came into close areal contact (a "GBS
>Sprachbund", possibly in the Corded Ware period).  In fact, the
>opposite of what Ringe seems to be suggesting (GBS, later areal
>Gmc-Ital/Celt contacts).

>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Mar  1 15:17:04 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:17:04 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.091704.0600.>

>>Ritualization of the death of an animal, asking its forgiveness when the
>>hunter is about to take its life, it not unusual in traditional cultures,
>>whether that animal be a bear or a rabbit.

>If *that* is the sort of rituals the IE horse rituals were, this would be
>meaningful.  But they do not have the structure of ritualized prayers for
>forgiveness - at least not *from* the horse.  (Some variants may have been
>supplications for forgiveness from Dye:us P'ter - but the horse's
>permission was not asked for).

The earliest attested IE prayers don't usually ask for forgiveness but are
more like Menelaos's prayer to Zeus for guiding his spear so that he will
kill Paris or Chryses' to Apollo to make Agamemnon's army pay for
Agamemnon's insults. Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence
forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

Carol Justus


From sonno3 at hotmail.com  Wed Mar  1 16:30:08 2000
From: sonno3 at hotmail.com (Christopher Gwinn)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:30:08 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.113008.0500.>

From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>

>> I consider Welsh (including its Latin component) to be pretty
>> solid linguistical evidence.

> -- of a Celtic language _in Wales_.  In the absence of written records, it
> would be virtually impossible to show that there had ever been such a
> language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor landscape
> features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few and
> often the product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western English
> rivers are called "Avon", which means... 'river'.

That is not entirely true - Brittonic elements in placenames (hills,
forests, towns, rivers) are present all throughout England (most of the
English cities even retain a modernized Romano-British name), though the
names are less common in the East as opposed to the West. The largest
percentage of Brittonic elements are in Western England, including
Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire as well as Shropshire,
Worcestershire, North East Herefordshire, Western Gloucestershire and, of
course, Devon and Cornwall. This Western area maintains Brittonic elemnts
even in smaller rivers and streams, brooks, villages, and homesteads and
even has names which are not from the Brittonic level, but rather from early
Welsh/Cornish


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Wed Mar  1 13:17:42 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:17:42 +0000
Subject: approach - methodology - history
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.131742.0000.>

Sorry if this is tangential, but the working behind some recent
proposition/assumptions on the list seems potentially (and maybe fatally)
flawed.  I tend to use as a working hypothesis the notion that the past was
in many respects (which we may well disregard as the result of a crude
pseudo-Darwinian approach picked up at an early stage in our education when
we we were also fed guff about mediaeval people thinking the world was
flat) the same as the present, and in particular that it was always
'modern', and that the effects of an event or series of events then are
likely to follow a pattern conforming to the effects of a similar event or
series of events now.  The assumption may be wrong in a specific case, but
it should require good evidence (which might be circumstantial) to overturn
it, and without the evidence an alternative should be no more than an
immediately weaker hypothesis.

At  04:56:20 UT 29 ii 2000 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
[>Miguel wrote:]
>>I consider Welsh (including its Latin component) to be pretty solid
>>linguistical evidence.

>-- of a Celtic language _in Wales_.  In the absence of written records, it
>would be virtually impossible to >show that there had ever been such a
>language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor >landscape
>features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few
>and often the >product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western
>English rivers are called "Avon", which >means... 'river'.

I think that this conflates two (or more) issues - why the rivers in the
west are called 'Avon', and the relations between the 'British' and the
'English'.

There is no a priori reason why the rivers in question should not have been
called 'the river' (ie abona/abana) by the 'British'.  It is common for
streams to be innominate, though the Avons are larger than mere rivulets,
brooks, becks or burns.  Some small lakes even - there was a proposal to
give a Lake District tarn the title 'Innominate Tarn' because it had
somehow not acquired a, or had lost an earlier,  name.  Of course, there
are cases of sounds being wrongly interpreted as _names_ (a bit of
reification there, perhaps) of a namable thing an inquirer wishes to know
the local/native name for.  But these are not mutually exclusive
situations.  [And there is a Welsh port called 'aberafan' - 'mouth of the
river' as well.  Perhaps it's an example of Major Major :-)]

The early dark age history of Wessex (and all the English rivers I can
think of called 'Avon' were at one time or another in Wessex) is obscure,
but it may well be an example of a British principality becoming Saxonised,
ie acquiring a North Sea rather than a Romanised cultural background.  The
founder of the dynasty had a Welsh name, and in some parts of its territory
there are few signs of any population displacement co-inciding with the
arrival of the 'English'.  Indeed in my part (which was snatched from
Wessex by Mercia in the mid-7th century) there is fair evidence for
cultural continuity, and for Welsh still being spoken in the 8th and 9th
centuries at some distance east of Offa's Dyke.  This contrasts with the
situation further north along the Welsh border, where Mercia defeated Powys
c. 635 CE and acquired the bulk of what is now Shropshire as a result.

And there is no reason to think that the 'English' did not know that
'abana/abona' (-> 'afan/afon') meant river.  The famous meeting between the
Celtic bishops and Augustine or his emissary took place not far from where
I am writing a generation after the region was added to Wessex, and I do
not imagine that the bishop of Aquae Sulis (or Corinium, Gleuum or
wherever) did not recognise in the first case what the 'English' were
calling the stream a few hundred metres from his episcopal seat.

There is a discussion by JRR Tolkein in his O'Donnell lecture
(unfortunately I do not have a copy to hand) of the role of the 'wealhstod'
(?sp), the person who served as an interpreter between Welsh speakers and
English speakers when one was needed, but we cannot be sure how
incomprehensible each group was to the other - the word is the title of an
official.

And the examples of the history of English spelling against it connection
with the sounds of the language give me qualms.

My understanding is that there was no systematic spelling in the time of
Chaucer, but that central government established its own standards during
the 15th century.  An individual's spelling might well remain idiosyncratic
until the 18th century, perhaps until Johnson's dictionary.  The problem of
the mismatch between the number of characters available and the number of
phonemes in English (and the phonemes themselves no doubt varied between
dialects as well as between idiolects) was never addressed, while habits
based on the 'little knowledge' which Pope declared 'a dangerous thing', eg
changing spelling more conforming with the pronunciation to one which
follows the believed history of the word (an example which comes straight
to mind is 'iland' being replaced by 'island' because of an alleged
connection with 'insula' -> 'isola/isle(ie île)'.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From ECOLING at aol.com  Wed Mar  1 16:30:35 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:30:35 EST
Subject: Polar Models vs. real-world Intermediates
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.113035.EST.>

I would much prefer that we were working on displaying
data of the difficult intermediate cases,
rather than fending off the theoretical pronouncements
of Trask that in essence deny the existence of real-world
intermediates.

The debate, as so often with Trask,
seems to be based mostly on definitions,
his polar oppositions instead of the reality of gradient intermediates.

For Altaic,
for Germanic within IE,
and for English descended from a partial fusion of Older English
     with a substantial morphological component from Norman French,
for Indo-Aryan (vocabulary and some morphology from PIE,
     much syntax and other morphology from Dravidian area
     especially at the contact fusion zones such as Konkani and Marathi,
     if I remember rightly),

the simpler polar oppositions are inadequate.
These are, despite Trask's denials, real-world cases,
whose intermediate status is most probably *known* at this point,
(though like all presentations of facts, not absolutely certain the best,
and subject to future revision).

In a message dated 3/1/2000 12:01:34 AM, Trask writes:

>All parties to the Altaic debate agree that there are just two
>possibilities: either Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are genuinely related
>within a single larger Altaic family, or they are not, and the obvious
>connections among them are merely the result of prolonged contact among
>unrelated families.  The parties differ as to which view they believe is
>the true one, but nobody I know of is arguing for any third view.

The statement above would be true if our conclusions were limited to
the two extremes, limited to the pure models.
But they need not be so limited,
not if our conclusions are to have mostly empirical content,
rather than mostly definitional non-empirical content.

Once we recognize that our models are not the same thing as reality,
and that there are intermediates and fuzzy edges in the real world,
it becomes possible to recognize in a particular case
that the truest answer we can give *may be*
that the real world was *intermediate* between two polar models.

The reality for the Altaic grouping
*might* have been that there were once independent languages,
or parts of their areas,
which were in such intimate and intense contact that they fused
into a single language continuum, describable imperfectly either
as a family tree (with strong areal differences) or
as a dialect network (with strong polar differentiations and overlapping).
Either of those phrasings clearly describes an intermediate.

Trask must I think reject at least a part of what is in the
immediately preceding paragraph, having to do with languages
fusing, because he writes:

>Middle English did not "inherit" these words at all:
>it *borrowed* them from Norman French.
>This is just the way the terms are used in linguistics.

Trask seems unwilling to recognize that the degrees of language
fusion can differ, and that there is no sharp boundary for the
appropriate use of the word "inherit".
Is there some unbiased view in which we can clearly say
that the descendants of the Norman conquerers did *not*
inherit language material from their ancestors, they only borrowed it?
At each stage of the process, they probably believed they
were inheriting, borrowing from English bit by bit.
Despite the recognized role of Norman French morphology in this
history? Despite the fact that modern English (and Middle English)
*use* parts of French word-formation morphology?
That morphology sits very deeply in the structure of modern English,
so deeply that "inherited" seems indeed an appropriate word
to describe the social situation, the psychological situation of
individual speakers, and the linguistic situation.

None of the above implies that the status of Old English and
Norman French are equal in the fusion.  But there was some kind
of fusion, more than simply borrowing of a few items of vocabulary.

That is why it is indeed dealing in "extreme" cases to compare
the borrowings of English from Indic, Chinese, and other sources.
It is a failure to recognize the gradient intermediate nature of the real
linguistic worlds that would class these as the same as the Norman
French component in the history of English.
The clarity of the simple models in *one* case
(polarly opposed "genetic" vs. "borrowing" in the case of
Chinese loanwords in English)
*can in no way* demonstrate any similar clarity in another case,
such as the interaction between Old English and Norman French.
The situations are so different in degree that the simple polar models
do not work for the case of English, which both
(a) emerged from the unequal fusion of the two, and
(b) emerged from the borrowing by one from the other.
BOTH statements (a,b) are true in a gradient real world,
and the denials of EITHER of them are false.
Saying so does not imply the absence of polar cases,
merely that polar cases *are* polar cases,
not fully appropriate to describing interemediates.

*

Noting the possibility of intermediates and demonstrating their
applicability to some particular cases of course decides
no empirical question  in any other particular cases.
Each case must be examined in its own right.

Whether a more intermediate model better applies to Altaic
is of course still an open question.
It may simply be that there has been insufficient analysis,
and that it may someday be discovered that one of the simpler,
more polar models actually does work quite well
(with certain extraneous factors then identified and segmented off).

Or it may be that the debate is an artificial one, sharpened by the
oversimplified models being used as the polar opposites in the debate.
Altaic, so far as we can reconstruct it from available data,
may be a dialect network which can be best analyzed using
neither pure tree nor pure dialect network models.
We may be unable to go deeper than that,
in which case we should state just that as our most responsible conclusion,
and claiming either polar model would be a less responsible conclusion.
BOTH polar parties to the current debates about Altaic
(the only two alternatives Trask considers) may be wrong.

Obviously, neither polar model is yet satisfying for Altaic,
which is why the debate continues!

Saying that the ultimate answer may be an intermediate
in no way says that people should stop investigating lines of
reasoning and sets of evidence which might more strongly support
a model closer to one of the polar models.
But the failure of either pole to satisfy in the case of Altaic
does suggest that we should use some frameworks
for displaying our data and results which recognize the possibility
of an intermediate as the closest to the truth.

Trask writes:

>Anyway, I can see absolutely no point in invoking hypothetical "substrates".
>If we have no hard evidence for the reality, and the nature, of a particular
>substrate in a particular case, then there is no point in raising the issue.

Certainly there is, if the point is to accumulate and display data
in such a way that evidence for a substrate or for "language area" sharing
or similar intermediate models can be recognized more easily when
it might be staring us in the face.  Excluding such possibilities
from the beginning is an unjustified bias against them.

*

One, but only one, possible outcome in such a case can be the
recognition of elements common between on the one hand
(a) one portion of a dialect network of a fused language area "F", or
(b) one polar focus of a fused language area "F"
(whichever view one takes of a fused language area)

and on the other hand a portion of a neighboring fused language area "G",
which suggests that fused language area "G" has as one of its components
something which is intermediate between being the effects of a dialect area
and the effects of a component language in fused language area "G".

(This is not what I think is most typically meant by "substrate",
but whether one uses that particular term or another
is not my concern here, the substantive facts are.)

In such a case, one might consider the possibility that there was once
a language "L", a part of which was fused into area "F"
and another part fused into area "G".
Absent such (or of course other external evidence which might support
one of the more polar models, clear genetics or clear borrowing),
we may simply remain with a "language area" as the best statement
of our results.

***
Trask writes:

[LA]
>>  To recognize that this is a possible situation
>>  for a proto-language,
>>  we must handle vocabulary and morphological
>>  distributions across *portions* of the dialect network of any
>>  proto-language in *at least* the frameworks of the following

[LT]
>Sorry, but this is putting the cart before the horse.
>
>We cannot identify any possible cases of variation within a proto-language
>before we have first identified the proto-language itself.

Unless the above is definitionally tautologous (and therefore without
empirical content, describing the status of a particular model not
the status of a real-world case),
I must reply that this is simply on its face wrong.

Much of the work on Altaic has consisted in doing both of these things
simultaneously, accumlating vocabulary distributions
as areal phenomena, and developing family-tree analyses.
Neither needs to precede the other.

Variation *within* a proto-language which is *not* demonstrably
linked to the genetic family-tree structure of the proto-language,
and which is *not* simply a demonstrable result of waves of borrowings,
may be discovered or recognized
*at the same time* as one is establishing a genetic tree or a dialect network
or other model as partially fitting that particular proto-language.

The two can proceed quite together, and in fact may reinforce each other.
The fact of some *partial* shared genetic origin must of course be assumed for
such a discourse to make sense.  But one need not know the answer
to any one part of it with complete assuredness at any one time.
Even a "final" conclusion, in the sense of the best a set of techniques
can do given a set of data available, may very well need to rest with
a conclusion that there was a proto-language, but
(a) what we can reconstruct from the evidence
     is not a uniform proto-language, and
(b) perhaps there never was a uniform proto-language.

Mr. Trask agrees that proto-languages need not be completely uniform.
I think by that, he is agreeing with the point being made here,
once we add modesty about the limitations of our techniques and conclusions.

Asking that the data relevant to studies of historical relationships
be assembled and visually displayed so far as possible
*independent of any conclusions one may wish to draw from such data*
is merely responsible common sense,
it is more conservative and careful than what Mr. Trask appears to be
advocating, which is to draw one kind of conclusion, then only to consider
questions (even some which might undermine that first conclusion)
within the limits imposed by that conclusion.

One important difference does come in just that, the ability to
carefully consider new data as evidence,
or even to consider previously known data from new perspectives, etc.
If we cannot see the data *except* restricted by a particular model,
especially a polarized model,
then the data which might lead to an eventual demonstration
that another model is required, also or in stead of a prevailing one,
simply cannot be gathered.  Each individual piece of data is ruled
out of order by the assumptions of the model if it is taken as representing
the reality with complete adequacy and no strain whatsoever.
So the fact that a number of pieces of data do converge on an alternative
synthesis will not be seen.
A classic case of Kuhnian resistance to changes of view in science.

***

Trask's definitional approach, referring to discussion of
English having more links to French than to Italian:

[3rd party]
>>  >They're not my terms; I didn't invent them -- they are standard
>>  >in historical linguistics textbooks.  But I agree with the
>>  >premise -- except that I wouldn't say "equally related"; I would
>>  >say "related at the same level."
>
[LA]
>>  I of course agree.
>
[LT]
>And so do I.
>
[LA]
>>  Perhaps our common reluctance to use the phrase
>>  "equally related" here is that it has a portion of its ordinary-language
>>  meaning,
>
[LT]
>Well, it shouldn't.  [snip]

That is not an adequate response.

Mr. Trask can of course try to tell others what they "should"
mean by terms, in his view,
but that is quite different from what I was doing,
describing what they *do* mean by terms.
*Including* those who use *genetically related* in a sense distinct
from borrowing, and who sometimes recognize
a more subtle 3rd distinction, such intimate contact that neither
simple genetic inheritance nor borrowing seem correct terms,
rather something in between the two.

If we are dealing only with simplistic models,
then of course a model can rule out fuzzy edges and rule out intermediate
cases, but that makes any such model less widely applicable in a real world
which actually contains such intermediates.
There is no justifiable burden-of-proof, by which we can somehow
magically know that one model is more true of a given
real-world case than another model *independent* of any actual evidence
(both models here assumed to be valid for some known languages).

***

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics
PO Box 15156
Washington, DC 20003


From jrader at m-w.com  Wed Mar  1 13:51:51 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:51:51 +0000
Subject: Borrowed verbs (Was: Basque <ibili>)
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.135151.0000.>

> At 09:46 AM 2/24/00 +0000, Larry Trask wrote:
>> is no way the borrowing language can inflect the borrowed verb-stem.  Arabic
>> loans into Turkish are a good case in point: there is no earthly way that an
>> internally inflected Arabic verbal root can be handled within the purely
>> suffixing Turkish verbal morphology, which requires verb-stems to contain
>> vowels.

>[Stanley Friesen:]
> Umm, what will get borrowed into Turkish is one of the "expanded" variants
> *with* its vowels, which will then be treated as a Turkish verb stem, and
> inflected according to the Turkish rules.

But this isn't what happens in Turkic, at least in Anatolian Turkish,
and I believe pretty much the same situation pertains in other,
particularly western Turkic languages, if to a lesser degree.  What
Anatolian Turkish does is combine a borrowed Perso-Arabic noun with
the verb <ed->, "do, make," which in these collocations is a
semantically empty auxiliary.  Hence, from <hareket> "motion,"
<hareket etmek> "to move"; <seyahat> "journey,"  <seyahat etmek> "to
travel," etc.  The same is done with nouns of European origin, e.g.,
<telefon etmek> "to phone, call on the telephone."  Turkish is almost
the paradigm of a language that does not borrow verbs.

On the other hand, I don't think I'd want to go as far as Larry Trask
in claiming that languages don't borrow verbs directly.  A
surprising number of Celtic and Germanic loans into French can only
be regarded as directly borrowed verbs, e.g., <briser> on the Celtic
side and <garder> and <garnir> on the Germanic side.  I once made a
list of other examples, but it's doubtless long lost....

Jim Rader


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 19:39:31 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 20:39:31 +0100
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000228190238.0098e510@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.203931.0100.>

>At 09:46 AM 2/24/00 +0000, Larry Trask wrote:
>>is no way the borrowing language can inflect the borrowed verb-stem.  Arabic
>>loans into Turkish are a good case in point: there is no earthly way that an
>>internally inflected Arabic verbal root can be handled within the purely
>>suffixing Turkish verbal morphology, which requires verb-stems to contain
>>vowels.

>Umm, what will get borrowed into Turkish is one of the "expanded" variants
>*with* its vowels, which will then be treated as a Turkish verb stem, and
>inflected according to the Turkish rules.

I confess that I don't know what an "expanded" variant of an Arabic root
is. What I do know, however, is that *every* Arabic verb form has vowels.
The triconsonantal root is a (necessary) abstraction, since for the lion's
share of Arabic verbs it is the three consonants which seem to be the only
*invariant* part of the verbal lexeme. But three consonants are no verb,
the "root" thus is a theoretical artefact, something like dehydrated coffee
actually.

Arabic verbal "roots" show up in Turkish mostly in the garb of verbal nouns
(in a wide variety of formations), accompanied by verbs of "doing" (el-,
eyle-, kIl-) or "becoming" (edil-, olun-)  in order to be "inflected".

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar  1 19:10:28 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 20:10:28 +0100
Subject: R and r
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.201028.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 9:20 PM

> Ed suggested a contrast in Classical Greek (rho / rho with spiritus asper or
> dasemon)?

> I cannot think of any words where there would such a contrast.  In the
> absence of such words, the presence or absence of the spiritus asper is
> purely mechanical, and therefore not phonemic, so there cannot be a phonemic
> contrast.   Some modern publications no longer even print the spiritus
> asper, since it is so predictable.

[Ed]

I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast: why would they
have invented this unobvious orthography in the first place? Note that
rho-sp.a. or the combination rho-rho-sp.a. occurs in the positions where you
could expect a 'fortis' R, very similar to the occurrence of rr in Spanish
(word-initially and in case of gemination), and the one in Portuguese. The
spiritus asper is strongly suggestive of some form of aspiration.

Specialists: 'what say you'?

Ed.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Mar  1 19:41:25 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 20:41:25 +0100
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <ab.10bac9a.25ecab74@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.204125.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>>>-- and currently around 800 million speaking Indo-European languages there,
>>>which if you add in Iran, eastern Anatolia and central Asia, comes to over 1
>>>billion.

>>That wasn't my point.

>-- well, it was my point.  The Indo-Iranian expansion into these areas was
>_later_ than the probable Indo-Europeanization of Europe, but comparable in
>scale... and demonstrably due to the infiltration of elements ultimately
>derived from the Eurasian steppe zone.  If Iran/India, why not Europe?

My point being: if Europe, why not India?

>>I consider Welsh (including its Latin component) to be pretty
>>solid linguistical evidence.

>-- of a Celtic language _in Wales_.  In the absence of written records, it
>would be virtually impossible to show that there had ever been such a
>language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor landscape
>features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few and
>often the product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western English
>rivers are called "Avon", which means... 'river'.

Evidence enough for Celtic in western England.

>>>-- not according to Cavalli-Sforza, who shows a wave of migration starting
>>>north of the sea of Azov and spreading throughout Europe.

>>Yes, *precisely* according to Cavalli-Sforza.

>-- he shows two migrations into Europe, one in the early neolithic from the
>south-east, and one in the late neolithic, from the east.

>How do you valorize the earlier one over the later?

I could look it up, but as I recall, the primary component
according to Cavalli-Sforza is the Anatolian one (besides the
"paleolithic" "native European" component).  The "steppe" genes
form one of several minor components.

>>How so?  The linguistic evidence confirms that there is a sizeable
>>Pre-Germanic substrate element, which fits exactly with the genesis of the
>>TRB culture in the area around Denmark.

>-- a pre-Germanic substrate in _Germanic_, not in the rest of the IE
>languages.

>In fact, Baltic and Slavic -- closely adjacent -- show the _least_ evidence
>of pre-IE substrates.

Exactly.

>>Early infiltration in the Baltic area fits with the PIE borrowings into
>>Uralic

>-- nonsense.  Much too far to the west.  There's virtually universal
>agreement that the Uralic languages dispersed from the _Ural_ area (that's
>why they're called "Uralic", of course)

The name "Uralic" of course doesn't prove a thing.  The
consensus, as far as one exists, is that the PFU homeland is well
west of the Ural mountains.  It stands to reason that Samoyedic
(and earlier possibly Yukaghir) split off from a Proto-Uralic
located in roughly the same area.  If anything, and depending on
the time-depth of Proto-Uralic, more to the south(-west), for
reasons of climate.

>>But linguistic information gives no absolute dates.  There's nothing about
>the "linguistic information" that "rules out" a date of 5500 BC.

>-- sure there is.  It's too early, unless we make radical assumptions about
>slow differentiation;

Nothing radical about it.  Based on the differentiation of the IE
languages as attested ca. 1500 BC (Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek
and Hittite), any date within the range 5500-3500 is absolutely
reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl.  Older or younger than that is
of course possible, but not terribly likely.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Mar  1 20:07:16 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 21:07:16 +0100
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000228193716.0098f360@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.210716.0100.>

Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>At 05:44 PM 2/25/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>But, let us approach this from another avenue.

>>1) What I believe we find in the earliest IE is one vowel, /*e/, which has a
>>conditioned variant , /*o/.

>Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
>differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
>conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

>It is possible that some pre-PIE language had such conditioned variation,
>but any such conditioning factor had disappeared by the time we reach the
>reconstructible time layers.  [One viable possibility is an old accent
>system as the conditioning factor, with conditioning destroyed by a shift
>in the accent pattern to the one reconstructed for PIE].

The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
[unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
/&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
(stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
(i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  1 20:36:17 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 12:36:17 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <9e.1b2a44a.25ecd76c@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.123617.0800.>

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> Going back to what all this was supposed to prove, what is supposedly
> "leaping off the page" is NOT IEness.  What is supposed (according to the
> original premise in this thread) to "leap off the page" is the time of
> separation.

I've gone back to the archives, because I couldn't believe what I read above.
The phrase "leap off the page" arose in the following context:

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com) wrote regarding the
proposal that PIE spread with the Neolithic agriculturalists such that the
(ancestors of the) Celts were in place by 4000BCE:

> The IE languages when first encountered are NOT DIFFERENTIATED ENOUGH to have
> bee separated by that depth of time!

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Mr. Long replied:

> Is this differentiation is quantifiable?  Are you sure it works in your
> favor?
> ...
> Following Renfrew, roughly 4000 years separates non-Anatolian PIE from
> Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin (500BC).  How
> 'differentiated' are those three languages?  On a scale of 1 to 10?

Now, to me, and apparently to Mr. Stirling, this is a challenge to state how
easily these three languages are recognized as being related to one another.
Nothing in the query stands out as asking for "the time of separation" of these
languages, just "can one look at them and say 'that no philologer could examine
them all 3, without believing them to have sprung from some common source'".
So that's the question we have been answering, and apparently wasting our time
in doing so, because that wasn't the question asked.

To continue, on Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Mr. Stirling responded to the query above:

> -- around 2.  About as different from each other as the Romance languages
> today -- in a stage where the similarities leap off the page and where some
> words and phrases are still mutually comprehensible.

While I might disagree with the numerical score (to me, a 2 would be something
like Vedic Sanskrit and Gathic Avestan), the characterization is about right--
if we remember to include the minor Romance languages and to concern ourselves
with spoken rather than formal written French.

The confusion continued when, on  Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Mr. Long responded in turn:

> This is interesting.   2000yrs from modern Romance language back to Latin?

> 2000 yrs from Myceanaean, Sanskrit and Latin back to what?

> PIE? Not likely.  Because even if Mycenean, Sanskrit and Latin were as
> 'undifferentiated' as is claimed above, this group hardly represents the full
> range of differences that ACTUALLY emerge out of the darkness of 4000 years
> ago, are they?

> Do the similarities between Latin and Hittite 'leap off the page" as you say?
> (Please recall how long it took for relationship to even be detected.)

I cannot say at this point what Mr. Stirling thought, because he declined to
answer the question in a posting made on Mon, 14 Feb 2000.

However, to me, this looks as if I understood the question above correctly,
because the next question is, is Hittite is similar enough to the above three
languages for the relationship to be obvious in the same way.  Stanley Friesen
seems to have thought much the same, based on his posting of Mon, 14 Feb 2000,
in which he answered in much the same fashion as did I.

Only now, in the light of Mr. Long's statement quoted at the start of this post
about what he meant with his question does the following paragraph from Mr.
Long's post of the 11th change how I would have formulated my answer to the
question about Thracian:

> And what does Hittite (for starters) add to the total 'differentiation'
> between the first attested PIE languages?  If 2000 years separates Latin and
> Sanskrit, Hittite should certainly add another 2000 years, wouldn't you say?

I would have said that Thracian provides *nothing* to our thoughts on the time
of separation of the IE languages, precisely because there is too little
material available to us to characterize the language as thoroughly as we have
the major languages.  Nor is Thracian being singled out in this:  For example,
take Albanian, which since it is attested so late and is so changed from the
protolanguage, contributes nothing to the dating of the breakup of PIE, or
Lithuanian, which is attested so late and is so *little* changed in many ways
that we cannot use it as evidence, either.

That is why I was excited by the idea of a *long* text in Thracian.  Behistun,
for example, qualifies as a text to get excited over.  For short texts like
those we have, only a bilingual is going to be of much use in getting things
started.

To quote the comedian Dennis Miller, "Of course, that's just my opinion.  I
could be wrong."

								Rich Alderson


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Mar  1 23:04:47 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 00:04:47 +0100
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <200002252237.OAA10978@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.000447.0100.>

"Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

>> What are the chances that the gap between Hittite and Classic IE languages
>> is actually much older?

>[ than 500 years or so, as stated by several posters, myself included ]

>What are the chances?  Not good.  Not zero, but not good.

>Yes, we have the example of the extreme conservatism of Old Lithuanian, but
>that is so unusual that we *do* make note of it.  Historical linguistics is,
>after all, a *historical* science, and so must make assumptions about such
>things as rates of change based on *historical* obversation of similar occur-
>rences--the development of the Romance languages from Latin, the development
>of modern English from Anglo-Saxon, and so on.

>In order for Hittite (and the other Anatolian languages) to have diverged from
>the rest of the Indo-European languages very much more than 1000 years earlier
>(my own outside estimate), we would have to reject the evidence for rates of
>change provided by all the historical obversations we can make and instead say
>that Old Lithuanian is the expected result, and *every* *single* *other* *IE*
>*language* underwent accelerated development.

Glottochronology, I think we all agree, is baseless, so I'm
afraid this is a matter of Sprachgefuehl, heuristics, and which
languages one knows/speaks well enough to compare (for me, that
would be, as far as speaking goes, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan,
English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and
Polish).

Anyway, for what it's worth, 500 years for me is Dutch and
Afrikaans, Spanish and Portuguese, good mutual intelligibilty.  I
think (Vedic) Sanskrit and (Mycenaean) Greek are further apart
than that.  I'd say Vedic Skt. and Gathic Avestan comes close to
about 500 years.  A thousand years or so (slightly more) is in
the neighbourhood of Slavic (e.g. Russian and Polish), reasonable
but far from perfect mutual intellegibility.  Two thousand years
is Spanish and Italian (i.e. the Italian dialects, not std.
Italian!) or French: structurally very similar, marginal mutual
intelligibility.  I'd say that's where Greek and Sanskrit fall.
Hittite and either M.Greek or V.Sanskrit for me is definitely
2000 years or more.  The languages are structurally further
apart, there is no mutual intelligibility to speak of.  Parallels
become more dubious here.  Dutch and Swedish?  Welsh and Irish?
Akkadian and Cl.Arabic?  Is that 2, 3 or 4 millennia?  Impossible
to tell...

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  1 20:46:33 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 12:46:33 -0800
Subject: Indo-Hittite Hypothesis
In-Reply-To: <200002290030.QAA06907@netcom.com> (alderson@netcom.com)
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.124633.0800.>

In reference to the UPenn papers, I wrote on Mon, 28 Feb 2000, in response to a
statement from Steve Long:

> Since the papers available on their website state that it was an unrooted
> tree to which they added rooting information, you appear to be accusing the
> group of deliberate falsehoods.  I'd be very careful of that, were I you.

It has since come to my attention that the authors do explicitly state that
they have intentionally created a rooted tree within the data, a statement I
had missed.

My apologies to Mr. Long and to the other readers for the above.

								Rich Alderson


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Wed Mar  1 19:01:20 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 19:01:20 +0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <18.145ad21.25ecb46a@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.190120.0000.>

At 12:34 am -0500 29/2/00, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>>petegray at btinternet.com writes:
>>English of a slightly earlier time (still intelligible today) shows good
>>similarities in person endings, eg: >>Thou hast, thou makest;  she hath,
>>she maketh
>>du hast,  du machst,   sie hat,  sie macht

>-- But the English of today -- and of the past few centuries -- uses much
>simpler forms:  You have, you >make, she has, she makes.  There's been a
>radical loss of inflection (not to mention the loss of >grammatical
>gender, the declension of the noun, the role of word order in forming
>sentences, etc.)

Some Englishes do retain certain of the earlier features.  The great sound
shift has not had universal effect, there is (or was) the relict of
14th/15th century English, called Yola, in Co Wexford, and some other
features remain (or did until the 1870 Education Act took its toll) in
local dialects.  Of course, these are not the high prestige forms which
presumably endure where the governmental system supports them and does not
collapse, so that they are disseminated widely within the population.

But 'thou' (as a workaday pronoun, rather than in fixed formulas) - in some
cases with the conjugated verb form - does survive.  I wonder whether the
use of the authorised version of the bible may have affected this, though I
would not expect a low status child saying 'thou hast' to be well received
in an educational system which elsewhere made use of the 'Welsh not' (a
kind of wooden thing to be placed on the neck of the latest child to speak
Welsh instead of English).  And an otherwise useful collection of
Worcestershire dialect forms by a Mrs Jessie Chamberlain (about whom I know
nothing beyond her name and what can be gleaned from her book) decries the
lower orders' pronunciation of 'Tenbury Wells' as 'Tembury Wells', ignoring
the strong likelihood that almost everyone would assimilate the 'n' to the
following 'b'.

>By way of contrast, early Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE
>features -- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.

Yes, but the functions of the aorist and perfect were different in each
language.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 22:24:29 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:24:29 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <18.14cdd25.25ede8e7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.232429.0100.>

>>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>>A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>>roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>>essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>>cave-hibernating.

>-- bears don't stand up when advancing; they stand up when making threat
>displays, or trying to see what's going on.

>When advancing -- aka 'charging' -- they run towards you, very very quickly,
>with a very large mouth full of teeth wide open, making distressing sounds.

>To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
>pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

Friends, have a look at some Siberian languages; the very fact that these
fellas can get *really nasty* is responsible for the fact that most people
who *really know* them   use some taboo word, lest the bloddy beast
understands its name and comes along to look at who's talking.
Zoo-goers may use descriptive names for our brown friends, forest-dwellers
aren't stupid enough to do that.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 22:10:33 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:10:33 +0100
Subject: "name" - was: evidence for "Urheimat"
In-Reply-To: <200002291037.p2515@h2.maus.de>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.231033.0100.>

>SG>you probably mean /Chukchi/
>.. thank you so much. But I hate the //ch//. Just a personal tick.

So do I. When will we be able to read and write hachek'ed c-s and s-s on
e-mail ?

>SG>welcome to the beautiful land of Ruhlenistan
>.. excuse me for not to own any work of Ruhlen;-((

Together with my excuses for my  rather cutting remark (though I don't
promise that it won't happen again ;-) I'd like to say that this is
something you can be congratulated for, rather than something you'd have to
apologise for ;-)

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu Mar  2 00:55:27 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 01:55:27 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
In-Reply-To: <00b601bf8396$1d2bb540$4c01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.015527.0100.>

>[Ed]

>Maybe this is not the right place, but I have this question that has been
>nagging me for years: would Turkish 'gün' for 'day' fit in here?

>Ed.

I started this with a joke, now I see us in the middle of a nostratic
discussion !

Well, I'd rule it out that /gün/ (< kün), originally "sun" has anything to
do with Basque /egun/, simply because a) no point has been made for any
kind of relationship between the two languages (nor will one be made, but
take this as my private opinion) and b) no physical contact has occured
between the respective populations during all of known history (and it
seems pretty unlikely for most of unknown history as well).
However, just to give this a slightly serious turn, a connection between
this Turkic word and an IE one has been seriously proposed (by A.
Róna-Tas). It has been theorized that the Turkic word might be a loan from
(some form of) Tokharian koM/kauM "id.". No, I'm not sure whether I believe
this. I believe in *some* LW from Tokharian in very early Turkic, but not
necessarily in this one, since any criteria to judge this particular case
seem to be lacking. At least for me at 1:51 a.m. ...

And, Ed, you can happily note in your calendar that on this very day this
question will stop doing what it has been doing to you for years, since the
internal history of the Turkic word (g < k) shows that what seems to be a
similarity (Tk. g- : basque -g-) is only a secondary one, brought about by
Oghuz initial sonorization (which happened no longer that at most 1k ago).

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 19:21:46 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 19:21:46 -0000
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.192146.0000.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 3:30 AM

>> proto-language at email.msn.com wrote:

>> A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>> roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>> essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>> cave-hibernating.

<JS>
> -- bears don't stand up when advancing; they stand up when making threat
> displays, or trying to see what's going on.

> When advancing -- aka 'charging' -- they run towards you, very very quickly,
> with a very large mouth full of teeth wide open, making distressing sounds.

> To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is
> a pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

<PR>
I wrote hastily, and I accept your correction of a bear's standing as a
threat display.

I guess the real point I wanted to make is that PIE adjectives, apparently
independent of verbal or nominal roots, are few.

I am not aware of a regular and consensually accepted derivational process
for converting an adjective to a noun in PIE --- although there are
recognized derivational processes for converting nouns to adjectives, and,
if one is willing to count participles as adjectives, adjectives from verbs.

Of course, 'destructive one' might be an appropriate name for a bear --- if
PIE-speakers could easily form such a word.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From panis at pacbell.net  Wed Mar  1 22:32:46 2000
From: panis at pacbell.net (John McChesney-Young)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 14:32:46 -0800
Subject: Jose Perez' questions [was: Re: *hwergh-, *hwerg- or *hwerk-?]
In-Reply-To: <20000228113903.96107.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.143246.0800.>

Although books go out of print (as we all know all too well), I ordered a
copy of Ernout-Meillet just last December from Culturesurf:

<http://www.culturesurf.com/culturesurf-bin/fiche_livre?type=1&donnee_appel=CULTURESURF&fisbn=9782252024911&id=21459936807952&l-auteur=ERNOUT+ALFRED>

Their current price is 693.50 FF (list is 730.00); at today's exchange
rates that's about $103, GBP 65.

Chantraine's dictionary is also listed by them in a couple of different
formats; the two-volume edition (if I understand it correctly) is 1444 FF;
$212, GBP 135.

They take credit card numbers via a secure server, and I received my
well-wrapped package three weeks from the time I placed my order.

John

(snip)

>>     Final request: Ernout and Meillet's Dictionnaire itymologique de la
>>langue latine has been out of print for ages and my photocopies (yups!)
>>were never much good to start with. What shall I replace them with?

John McChesney-Young  ** panis at pacbell.net **  Berkeley, California, USA


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar  2 16:57:42 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 17:57:42 +0100
Subject: 8-bit e-mail,
 again [was Re: "name" - was: evidence for "Urheimat"]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.175742.0100.>

[ Moderator survey at end of message -- please read ]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 11:10 PM

> >SG>you probably mean /Chukchi/
> >.. thank you so much. But I hate the file://ch//. Just a personal tick.

> So do I. When will we be able to read and write hachek'ed c-s and s-s on
> e-mail ?

[Ed Selleslagh]

Right now (using the right encoding or character set), the moderator
permitting, and if all members' systems could interpret it - quod non.

It works with most of my correspondents (using PC's and Macs running the most
common e-mail programs, with the right settings).

Ed.

[ Moderator's response:
  MIME goes through all the time, unmolested.  I've been "permitting" it for
  months, even though I cannot read large portions of certain writers' posts.
  But it *must* be in MIME format, and that's not a matter of my "permitting"
  it or not:  The system on which the Indo-European and Nostratic mailing lists
  reside uses 7-bit characters packed 5 to a 36-bit word for ASCII data (like
  electronic mail) and there is no way around that--it is built into the hard-
  ware as well as the operating system.

  There was a time when I translated the MIME constructs to TeX, because there
  was at least one subscriber whose system treated 8-bit data specially, and
  showed him Chinese characters instead of Latin-1, but he no longer receives
  the IE list, so I have not bothered with that for some time now.

  I doubt that I am the only person reading these lists who does not use some
  form of personal computer to do so, but perhaps I am mistaken.  I think it
  may be time for a survey.

  Let's keep this simple:  If and only if you read the messages posted by the
  Indo-European list using some tool *other than* a personal computer, please
  reply to this message stating what you are using.  For example, I would send
  the following:

	Xterm window to Tops-20 system with MM mail program
	Xterm window to SunOS system with GNU Emacs editor

  Those using Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Communicator, etc., need not
  respond.

								Rich Alderson
  ]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 22:09:37 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 22:09:37 -0000
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.220937.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 3:56 AM

> At 05:44 PM 2/25/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>> But, let us approach this from another avenue.

>> 1) What I believe we find in the earliest IE is one vowel, /*e/, which has a
>> conditioned variant , /*o/.

<SF>
> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
> differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
> conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

<PR>
Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

<SF>
> It is possible that some pre-PIE language had such conditioned variation,
> but any such conditioning factor had disappeared by the time we reach the
> reconstructible time layers.  [One viable possibility is an old accent
> system as the conditioning factor, with conditioning destroyed by a shift
> in the accent pattern to the one reconstructed for PIE].

<PR>
I agree that an older accentual system is a reasonable theory, which I also
agree is viable. So, if I understand correctly, you are proposing that this
older system predates PIE?

<SF>
> Note, when there is only one non-high vowel in a language, it is *always*
> best viewed as /a/, not /e/.  (It may have /e/ as an *allophone* in some
> environments, but its neutral allophone will always be low).

<PR>
I agree 100%. And it is /*a/ which I theorize preceded /*e,*o/ in what I
call the Pontic stage, which I believe preceded PIE. But I also believe the
non-phonemic status of the /*e,*o/ Ablaut suggests strongly that it
developed from a single predecessor. My best guess is that /*a/ developed
first into /*e/ in stress-accented positions while stress-unaccented /*a/
became /*0/. When the stress-accent was transferred from /*e/, the newly
stress-accented syllable had /*e/ while the (secondarily??) formerly
stress-accented syllable had /*o/. On this basis, I believe that no /*a/
existed in PIE except possibly as a result of a reduction of /*a:/ deriving
from a "laryngeal" + /*a/ in the Pontic (pre-PIE) stage.

<PRp>
>> 2) I believe with Benveniste that /*u/ and /*i/ are to be accounted as
>> avocalic instances of /*w/ and /*y/.

<SF>
> I can only accept this where there is good evidence of alternation with
> /*ue/ or /*eu/.  There are just too many cases where there *is* no such
> variation visible.  [The obvious examples are mostly inflectional ending
> and pronouns, but there are certainly others as well].

<PR>
Let us look at some of those examples. The strongest argument for this idea
is foreclosed to me because it involves the "N" word.

<SF>
> One *additional* reason for this is that languages without high vowels are
> exceeding rare in the world.  They are topologically marked - highly so.
> Typologically reasonable vowel systems include: /a/, /i/, /u/; /e/, /o/,
> /i/, /u/; and so on.  (There are a fair number of languages in which the
> high-back vowel is non-rounded, but there are reasons to reject that for
PIE).

<PR>
I think we must be careful about overvaluing typological facts. If the
Pontic stage of pre-PIE were the only language in all our knowledge to
employ a single vowel (even for a very short period), phonological rather
than typological considerations should influence more strongly. Typology,
generally, is a heuristic device, would you not agree?

<PRp>
>> 3) I also believe that all /*a/ and any long vowels are due to the presence
>> of "laryngeals", and that /*a(:)/ cannot exist in a syllable that did not
>> contain a "laryngeal" at some earlier stage.

<SF>
> I strongly suspect that this *is* the case.  [In a number of cases, I treat
> some words as later borrowings: words found only in Europe I do not treat
> as going back to PIE].

<PR>
So, we have found at least one common basis.

<SF>
> I am still struggling with the number and phonetic nature of the
> laryngeals.  In my own notes I generally, and tentatively, use H for H1, X
> for H2, and X^w for H3.   [I am fairly confident that the o-coloring
> laryngeal had to be labialized, since that fits so well with the PIE
> obstruents, and explains its phonetic effects so well].  If I were to
> accept the evidence for voicing in (some instances of) H3, I would probably
> want to add two more laryngeals, to make a more consistent set (that is I
> would tend towards both voiced and unvoiced variants of both H2 and H3).

<PR>
I fear a discussion of my ideas in this regard would take us too far afield.
I will save my comments on 'laryngeals' for another discussion but, if
anyone is interested, I have outlined my ideas in:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/comparison-AFRASIAN-3_schwa.htm

and

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/comparison-AFRASIAN-3_laryngeal.htm

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 22:26:53 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 22:26:53 -0000
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.222653.0000.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 5:43 AM

>> proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>> *ulkwiha?

<JS>
> -- Carl Darling Buck's _A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal
> Indo-European Languages_.  Old High German "mariha" is a reflex.

<PR>
Well, since I find no obvious reflexes of *ulkwiha in Pokorny, perhaps you
would share some examples from Buck (sorry, I do not have it myself) that he
believes are based on it.

OHG mariha is, I believe, does not exist in Pokorny, which has meriha from
*marko-. In any case, the usual derivation of OHG -ha would be IE -ko. Is
that not right?

<PRp>
>> Well, perhaps. But 'mustang' comes very close, does it not, to being a
>> 'wild horse'?

<JS>
> -- "feral horse", actually, rather than "wild".

> And it's a recent North American dialect term, borrowed from the Spanish
> "mestengo", meaning "a stray or ownerless beast".

<PR>
Actually, it is a term for "wild horse" according to AHD. And "feral" has
the principal meaning "existing in a wild or untamed state". Now, this *may*
but need not have the additional qualification "having reverted to such a
state from domestication" but that would only properly refer to the first
generation of horses. Subsequent generations would never have known
domestication.

The word is not restricted to any regional dialect in the United States
unless, of course, you consider American English a "dialect".

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Mar  2 18:56:18 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:56:18 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <007c01bf8353$29d7dc80$9ad31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.195618.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>> *ulkwiha?

><MCV>
>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

><PR>
>Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants in
>combination, but how do we know?

I merely assumed a transcription error (for h-sub_a or something
like that).

>Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

With i: < iH and u: < uH one never knows.  Or does one?  Let me
refer to Jens E. Rasmussen's article "IH, UH and RH in
Indo-European".  (Abstract: Greek, Tocharian and Armenian show
ih1/uh1 > i:/u:, ih2/uh2 > ya:, wa:, ih3/uh3 > yo:, wo:, with
exceptions).  Greek -ia(:) therefore points to *-ih2.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Thu Mar  2 19:53:00 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:53:00 -0800
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
In-Reply-To: <007c01bf8353$29d7dc80$9ad31b3f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.115300.0800.>

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com), following up a
query about a form in a Stirling post, wrote:

>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>> *ulkwiha?

> <MCV>
>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

> <PR>
> Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants in
> combination, but how do we know?

By "both formants", I'm assuming you mean your notion of *y and *H_2 as
feminine formations.  I won't address that.

> Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

> And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

Last question first:  Vowels are only lengthened with the loss of a *following*
laryngeal, so if the proto-form were ?*ul{k^w}i{H_2}e, the outcome would have a
short vowel *a, not a long *a:.  However, the suffix is *-i{H_2}, with no
trailing *-e.

For the remainder of this post, I am going to write just the numeric portion of
the TeX constructs {H_1}, {H_2}, and {H_3} to represent the e-, a-, and o-
coloring laryngeals.  This should make things easier to read without added
ambiguity.

The feminine-forming suffix *-i2 is reconstructed based on Skt. -i:, Gk. -ia,
etc.; Latin has extended the form with an additional suffix, -g-, as in
_stri:x, stri:gis_.  The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this
is one of the few places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel
developments: We find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing ?*ul{k^w}i1
or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a different outcome
in Greek.

								Rich Alderson


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Thu Mar  2 07:20:29 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:20:29 +0200
Subject: possessive [form of a] pronoun
In-Reply-To: <34.1f5bab4.25ed2e96@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.092029.0200.>

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

> It has taken some time to get to the bottom of the
> differences in the use of terminology here,
> but I think we have arrived:

> To summarize into its most succinct form:

> The relation:

> he :: his

> is from syntactic and semantic points of view
> essentially the same as the relation

> the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's

This is the man we met yesterday's book.
This is the book of the man we met yesterday.

This is his book.
This is the book of he.*

The two forms do not transform in the same way, therefore they are not
equivalent.  Even if it is claimed that the preposition 'of' requires
the objective case for which 'the man we met yesterday' cannot be marked,
the expression 'This is his book' still does not transform:

This is the book of him.*

The expression 'This is his book' only transforms to:

This is a book of his.

or

This is the book of his (that he lost).

Therefore:

the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's

as

his :: his

in this instance.

The English noun does not behave in the same way as the English pronominal
system (that's one way you can tell the difference).

You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.  Try
using 'my' and 'mine' or 'their' and 'theirs' and you will see the
difference.

This is my book.

This is a book of mine.

Try using 'the men we met yesterday' and 'they' in your analogy and see
how it works out.

This ends the argument as far as I am concerned.  Any responses will be
referred to this message (whether appropriate or not).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Thu Mar  2 08:21:36 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:21:36 +0200
Subject: PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and
 evidence from Uralic linguistics)
In-Reply-To: <01BF8307.D81F4180.fabcav@adr.dk>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.102136.0200.>

[Fabrice Cavoto wrote:]
(snip)
> As for the Uralic
> part, if the root itself is identical with IE, then the stem formation
> doesn't have to be. In the same way that IE has a productive *-men-suffix,
> Ural. has also different stem formations, more or less productive, and can
> simply have choosen another one, thus *-e.
(snip)

There is no reason to concider *-i (= your *-e) in PU *nimi 'name' a stem
formant. *-i is no known a PU morpheme, and *nim- couldn't even
theoretically be a PU morpheme, since all roots (except pronouns and the
two auxilaries) had to be of shape *(C)V(C)CV-.

[I wrote:]
> But you can't reconstruct PU *-ä for this item: the reconstruction must be
> *nimi (= traditional *nime).

[Adam Hyllested asked:]
> Why are you reconstructing an *-i for traditional *-e ? From what I know,
> *-e > Finnish -i, whereas Finnish -e < *-eC.

[Fabrice Cavoto:]
> I don't see why neither. *-e and *-a seem to be needed,
> but I don't see why *-i.

My *-i doesn't contrast with *-e; I simply rewrite non-initial syllable
*i for traditional *e. For the reasons, see my parallel mail to the list.

Regards,

Ante Aikio


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Thu Mar  2 16:57:15 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:57:15 +0200
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e369934c48@[195.247.65.197]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.185715.0200.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Probably time to put this sub-thread to rest.
  --rma ]

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Stefan Georg wrote:

>> [Ed]

>> Maybe this is not the right place, but I have this question that has been
>> nagging me for years: would Turkish 'gün' for 'day' fit in here?

>> Ed.

> I started this with a joke, now I see us in the middle of a nostratic
> discussion !

> Well, I'd rule it out that /gün/ (< kün), originally "sun" has anything
> to do with Basque /egun/, simply because a) no point has been made for any
> kind of relationship between the two languages (nor will one be made, but
> take this as my private opinion) and b) no physical contact has occured
> between the respective populations during all of known history (and it seems
> pretty unlikely for most of unknown history as well).  However, just to give
> this a slightly serious turn, a connection between this Turkic word and an IE
> one has been seriously proposed (by A.  Róna-Tas). It has been theorized
> that the Turkic word might be a loan from (some form of) Tokharian koM/kauM
> "id.". No, I'm not sure whether I believe this. I believe in *some* LW from
> Tokharian in very early Turkic, but not necessarily in this one, since any
> criteria to judge this particular case seem to be lacking. At least for me at
> 1:51 a.m. ...

<irony><big grin>
No, no, Stefan -- have you forgotten everything that Mark Hubey taught us?
Turkish /gün/ (< kün) is related to Sumerian ud by the good Dr. Tuna,
making use of a rule where Sumerian initial /u/ corresponds to Turk. /kV/
(except when it doesn't) and another rule whereby Sumerian final /d/
corresponds to Turk. /n/ (except when it doesn't).  That makes it really
tough to decide between Basque, Sumerian, or Toch. as the source of the
Turkic.  But this is doubtless looking at things backwords.  These forms
clearly show that Turkish is the original language just like Atatürk said.
How else could these forms get into otherwise isolated languages?
</big grin></irony>

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar  2 17:13:54 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:13:54 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.181354.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 1:55 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> I started this with a joke, now I see us in the middle of a nostratic
> discussion !

> Well, I'd rule it out that /gün/ (< kün), originally "sun" has anything
> to do with Basque /egun/, simply because a) no point has been made for any
> kind of relationship between the two languages (nor will one be made, but
> take this as my private opinion) and b) no physical contact has occured
> between the respective populations during all of known history (and it seems
> pretty unlikely for most of unknown history as well).

> However, just to give this a slightly serious turn, a connection between
> this Turkic word and an IE one has been seriously proposed (by A.
> Róna-Tas). It has been theorized that the Turkic word might be a loan from
> (some form of) Tokharian koM/kauM "id.". No, I'm not sure whether I believe
> this. I believe in *some* LW from Tokharian in very early Turkic, but not
> necessarily in this one, since any criteria to judge this particular case
> seem to be lacking. At least for me at 1:51 a.m. ...

> And, Ed, you can happily note in your calendar that on this very day this
> question will stop doing what it has been doing to you for years, since the
> internal history of the Turkic word (g < k) shows that what seems to be a
> similarity (Tk. g- : basque -g-) is only a secondary one, brought about by
> Oghuz initial sonorization (which happened no longer that at most 1k ago).
>
> Dr. Stefan Georg

[Ed]

Sorry, I didn't want to start a discussion, and wasn't thinking of a
relationship (I'm quite convinced there isn't any) or a direct loan - maybe a
Wanderwort or a loan from a common source (via some IE maybe).

Your response is interesting, as it says that the Turkish word is from the name
of the sun; apparently the Basque word is also related to 'daylight', at least
according to some.  And Basque also voices many old k's. So the nagging
actually continues, but I won't loose any sleep over it - or stay up until 1:51
a.m :-).

Let's end it here. Thanks anyway.

Ed.


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Wed Mar  1 07:46:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 07:46:00 GMT
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.074600.GMT.>

On Wed, 1 Mar, Robert Whiting replied:

RW>all of which is quite beside the point (irrelevant).

RW>is the end of the matter.

RW>is an absolute

Please excuse my humble inquiries, thank You for these very polite, clear,
and inspiring lectures ...

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover.


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu Mar  2 10:14:25 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:14:25 +0100
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e320af2c59@[195.247.65.99]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.111425.0100.>

>Arabic verbal "roots" show up in Turkish mostly in the garb of verbal nouns
>(in a wide variety of formations), accompanied by verbs of "doing" (el-,

sorry,: et-

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu Mar  2 10:20:12 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:20:12 +0000
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.102012.0000.>

Roz Frank writes:

[on Basque <(h)anka> 'haunch', 'leg' (and other senses)]

>  There does seem to be a good case that could be made for <(h)anka> being
>  related to the French/Romance forms mentioned above and consequently a
>  recent borrowing.

Overpowering, I'd say.

>  But what is one to make of the Basque word <zango>
>  (<zanga-> in composition) that means 'leg, foot, calf' and its phonological
>  variant in <zanko, zankho> (<zanka-> in composition) with the same
>  meanings?

The word is <zanko> or <zanka> in Zuberoan, <zango> in the rest of the French
Basque Country, and usually <zanko> south of the Pyrenees, though <zango> in
High Navarrese.  The widespread presence of <zanko> in the south is clear
evidence of a late borrowing, since an inherited *<zanko> would have
developed regularly to *<zango> in the early medieval period -- as indeed
has happened in much of the north, in which this voicing process seems to
have persisted longer than elsewhere.  The combining form <zanka->, of course,
is perfectly regular in Basque.

The word variously means 'paw', 'foot', 'leg', 'calf', according to region,
with various transferred senses in places, such as 'track' (of a game animal)
and 'jack' (in cards).

The source of the word is clear.  It is the very widespread Romance word
which appears in Castilian Spanish as <zanca> 'calf', 'leg (of a bird)',
'shank', and, according to Corominas, also 'stilt'.  Castilian also has
an altered form <zanco> 'stilt'.  The same word occurs in Portuguese,
Mozarabic, Catalan, and perhaps elsewhere, with a range of senses
including 'wooden shoe', 'kind of sandal', and 'stilt', at least.
(I'm not sure if Italian <zampa> 'leg (of an animal)', 'paw', 'foot'
represents the same word or not.  Anybody know?)

This word is derived by Corominas from a late Latin <zanca> 'kind of shoe'
(no asterisk, according to Corominas).  And this he traces to Old Persian
<zanga-> 'leg', the source of modern Persian <zang> 'leg'.  He proposes
that the Persian word was carried west into Europe by cobblers, especially
since (he says) shoes were an eastern invention which passed into Europe
via Persia.

But, whatever you may think of Corominas's account, the loan status of
the Basque word is certain, and the origin is unlikely to be anything
other than the Romance word.

>  Are we to assume that 1) it that isn't related in anyway to
>  <(h)anka>;

It is assuredly not related.

>  2) that Euskera borrowed a French form and then added a sibilant
>  to it;

No.

>  3) that Euskera has two totally unrelated words, one borrowed and
>  the other native;

No.  Both borrowed from Romance.

>  or 4) that Euskera has two words, one clearly a recent
>  borrowing and yet another that derives from a deeper layer, i.e., a western
>  European substrate that gave rise to the Romance items as well.

If Corominas is right, the source is Persian, not an unknown European
substrate.

>  If one were
>  to choose the fourth alternative, it would provide a slightly different
>  source for the Old French <haunche> and one wouldn't have to rely only on
>  an unattested Germanic/Frankish form, but rather there would also be an
>  amply attested word field available for comparative purposes in Euskera.

Sorry.  Out of the question.  Anyway, even though the Frankish word is
unrecorded, its descendants in Dutch and Romance suffice to prove its former
existence.

It is curious that no native Basque word for 'leg' can be reconstructed.
If there ever was one, it has been lost beyond recovery.  But maybe the
native <oin> 'foot' once meant 'leg' as well.  This is a common state of
affairs in languages.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Thu Mar  2 10:38:26 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:38:26 +0000
Subject: misleading use of borrowed technical terms
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.103826.0000.>

Larry wrote:
>>Middle English did not "inherit" these words at all: it *borrowed* them
>>from Norman French. >This is >>just the way the terms are used in
>>linguistics.

And Lloyd responded:
>Trask seems unwilling to recognize that the degrees of language fusion can
>differ, and that there is no >sharp boundary for the appropriate use of
>the word "inherit".

Well, well, well.

Langauages (at least living ones) are acquired at the beginning of our
lives, mostly, and as a rule (unless we are deaf Nicaraguan kids) from
those around us.  We do not 'inherit' language (even if we are monoglot
Israelis, I suppose) in the same way as we inherit Aunt Emily's clock, ie
after she's shuffled off this mortal coil.

Languages continue to exist because as parents (&c) we pass on our speech
to our kids.  Not absolutely (unless we are consciously learning Sanskrit
under the bo tree, or 7th century Arabic), but substantially or in large
measure.  In some milieux, though, change is rapid - cf suppletion of
modern Indian languages in these islands by adult-learned English in the
case of non-speakers, or by school-learned English in the case of their
kids, and then fairly complete assimilation in later generations.  There
can be relicts, though: some Scottish Englishes, or rather their speakers,
can show inherited patterns traceable back to Gaelic.  There may be varied
mechanisms for this.

Modern English is spoken by people who acquired the language from earlier
speakers, and so on back to when the language in its then form was to found
presumably in the angle it gets its name from, at the mouth of the Elbe.
Not from people who spoke French.

And what on earth is 'partial fusion'?

But of course there is a terminological as well as an analytical and a
methodological dimension to this thread.  Hope I've not made it more futile.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Thu Mar  2 12:11:41 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 14:11:41 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <l03130302b4e348196ee5@[195.247.65.197]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.141141.0200.>

[Patrick Ryan:]

>A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>cave-hibernating.

[Joat Simeon:]
(snip)
>To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
>pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

[Stefan Georg:]
>Friends, have a look at some Siberian languages; the very fact that these
>fellas can get *really nasty* is responsible for the fact that most people
>who *really know* them   use some taboo word, lest the bloddy beast
>understands its name and comes along to look at who's talking.
>Zoo-goers may use descriptive names for our brown friends, forest-dwellers
>aren't stupid enough to do that.

But it is precisely the descriptive names that are created for taboo reasons.
E.g. Finnish has karhu 'bear' < karhea 'coarse' (referring to fur), kontio
'bear' < kontia 'crawl on all fours' (referring to manner of motion). As
for 'destruction', there's Finnish hukka 'wolf' = hukka 'loss,
destruction', hukkua 'get lost, perish, drown'. These words predate zoos,
for sure ;-)

Speaking of wolf and bear, how would a semantic shift 'wolf' > 'bear'
sound like? It has been suggested that Proto-Samoyed *wErkE 'bear' (E =
schwa) < Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?

 - Ante Aikio


From DSavignac at aol.com  Thu Mar  2 23:06:11 2000
From: DSavignac at aol.com (DSavignac at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:06:11 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.180611.EST.>

A delightful comment!

David Savignac
Lurker


From jrader at m-w.com  Thu Mar  2 09:09:19 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:09:19 +0000
Subject: British Celtic placenames [Was: the Wheel and Dating PIE]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.090919.0000.>

> That is not entirely true - Brittonic elements in placenames (hills,
> forests, towns, rivers) are present all throughout England (most of the
> English cities even retain a modernized Romano-British name), though the
> names are less common in the East as opposed to the West.
>[Christopher Gwinn]

A classic discussion of this issue, with a map showing river names of
British Celtic origin in what is now England, is the chapter "Britons
and Saxons in the Fifth to Eighth Centuries" in Kenneth Jackson's
_Language and History in Early Britain_ (1953).  I think Jackson's
conclusions tend to support Mr. Gwinn, and I doubt that in this area
more recent scholarship would conflict with Jackson.

Jim Rader


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar  2 17:28:08 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:28:08 +0100
Subject: Welsh not [was: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.182808.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gordon Selway" <gordonselway at gn.apc.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 8:01 PM

[snip]
> But 'thou' (as a workaday pronoun, rather than in fixed formulas) - in some
> cases with the conjugated verb form - does survive.  I wonder whether the
> use of the authorised version of the bible may have affected this, though I
> would not expect a low status child saying 'thou hast' to be well received
> in an educational system which elsewhere made use of the 'Welsh not' (a
> kind of wooden thing to be placed on the neck of the latest child to speak
> Welsh instead of English).

[Ed Selleslagh]

An almost identical custom existed in (almost exclusively: Catholic) schools in
Flanders to ban Dutch, before it became the official (and compulsory education)
language in 1931. They used a 'key' or some other device.

This was a remnant of the times since the foundation of Belgium in 1830 by a
very limited French speaking upper class (voting right based upon real estate
taxes paid), intending to create a French speaking nation, even though 50%
spoke Dutch (dialects) (Now, over 60% speaks Dutch).

Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that can
be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we should
be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

BTW, spoken Flemish Dutch is still somewhat more archaic than Holland Dutch.
e.g the actual equivalent (not linguistically speaking: it is an old plural,
like 'you') of 'thou' ('gij') is still in daily use in the lower registers,
while in Holland it is Biblical.

[snip]
> Gordon Selway
> <gordonselway at gn.apc.org>

Ed.


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Wed Mar  1 07:09:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 07:09:00 GMT
Subject: IE silver?; was: Balkan Kurgans
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.070900.GMT.>

Thank you for the shaft-grave excursion.
In my unprofessional view there was a fine comparison of perhaps IE graves
in JIES 23/1995 by some archaeologists of Moldavia.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover, (no mails >16kB please).


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  2 20:50:55 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:50:55 -0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.205055.0000.>

>Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE features
> -- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.

This is a chicken and egg situation.   The present, aorist and perfect *as
tenses* are read back into PIE from Greek and I-I alone.   We cannot
therefore say whether they are "retained archiasms" or "shared innovations".

The various formations - s suffix, reduplication, secondary endings etc etc
are scattered all over PIE, but those tenses as part of a tense system are
only in those two language groups.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Mar  2 19:04:30 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:04:30 +0100
Subject: R and r
In-Reply-To: <001101bf83b2$53559c00$ca03703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.200430.0100.>

"Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

>From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
>> Ed suggested a contrast in Classical Greek (rho / rho with spiritus asper or
>> dasemon)?

>> I cannot think of any words where there would such a contrast.  In the
>> absence of such words, the presence or absence of the spiritus asper is
>> purely mechanical, and therefore not phonemic, so there cannot be a phonemic
>> contrast.   Some modern publications no longer even print the spiritus
>> asper, since it is so predictable.

>[Ed]

>I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast: why would they
>have invented this unobvious orthography in the first place? Note that
>rho-sp.a. or the combination rho-rho-sp.a. occurs in the positions where you
>could expect a 'fortis' R, very similar to the occurrence of rr in Spanish
>(word-initially and in case of gemination), and the one in Portuguese. The
>spiritus asper is strongly suggestive of some form of aspiration.

There was a contrast, but it wasn't contrastive.

Greek initial r- comes mainly from *sr- > *hr- (original *r- had
become er-).  The r- was surely aspirated (i.e. voiceless) in
Classical Attic Greek, but since this applied to *all* initial
r's, there is no reason to postulate a separate phoneme /rh/.
The spiritus asper here is a case of subphonemic orthography (as
in many of these cases introduced after the fact, in this case by
Byzantine scribes).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  2 20:28:46 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:28:46 -0000
Subject: R and r
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.202846.0000.>

>Classical Greek (rho / rho with spiritus asper ...

>I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast:

There cannot be a phonemic contrast, because there are no options.   All
initial /r/ is given the spiritus asper (which, remember, was not written in
texts until some centuries after the time of the language in question) and
all initial /r/ in compounds with a prefix ending in a vowel is written
double, with spiritus lenis on the first, and asper on the second (hence
those horrendous English words such as dia-rrhoea).   Single medial /r/ ( as
in patera) or final /r/ is never given the spiritus asper.

So if there were a difference in pronunciation, it cannot have been
phonemic!   There are no words distinguished by it - at least if I am
correct.

Peter


From karhu at umich.edu  Thu Mar  2 15:55:57 2000
From: karhu at umich.edu (Marc Pierce)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:55:57 -0500
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4dff1b327df@[195.247.65.199]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.105557.0500.>

Hi,

Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

Marc Pierce

How can men who've never seen light be called enlightened?
	Pete Townshend


From fabcav at adr.dk  Thu Mar  2 18:07:06 2000
From: fabcav at adr.dk (Fabrice Cavoto)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:07:06 +0100
Subject: Jose Perez' questions [was: Re: *hwergh-, *hwerg- or *hwerk-?]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.190706.0100.>

> Their current price is 693.50 FF (list is 730.00); at today's exchange
> rates that's about $103, GBP 65.
> Chantraine's dictionary is also listed by them in a couple of different
> formats; the two-volume edition (if I understand it correctly) is 1444 FF;
> $212, GBP 135.

[Fabrice Cavoto]  Ernout & Meillet is still in print. The price 730 Ff
includes the French VAT. As for Chantraine, there is a very new version
(december 1999, still Klincksieck) now in one vol. (incl. the addenda Vol.
and indexes) at about the same price, or a little bit more.

[ moderator snip ]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  2 20:38:40 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:38:40 -0000
Subject: Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.203840.0000.>

>>    Could you, please, give me the complete reference of the Lexicon der
>Indogermanischen Verbum?

...>    Does anybody know whether it could be purchased via internet?

Someone posted a while back the information that it is available for about
40 English pounds from Amazon.de  (note the suffix!  It doesn't show up in
English versions of Amazon)

Peter


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Thu Mar  2 12:31:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 12:31:00 GMT
Subject: Pokorny-CD-Version; was:Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.123100.GMT.>

SG>the reference of the Pokorny's CD version of his roots dictionary?

SG>There is none.

.. no official one. I asked several times for personal issues. E.g. the
St.Peterburg University at least is trying to digitalize the Pokorny.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:39:52 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:39:52 -0800
Subject: Assumptions in Computing phylogenies
In-Reply-To: <200002291125.p2517@h2.maus.de>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.193952.0800.>

At 09:25 AM 2/29/00 +0000, Hans Holm wrote:
>SF>Actually, properly done, cladistic analysis *determines* which
>SF>characters are innovations and which are retentions.

>.. In my humble understanding it is vice versa.
>The biologist or linguist decides which features are retentions vs.
>innovations, and the cladistic algorithm computes the 'optimal' tree.

Actually, the initial "assignments" of status for a character as derived or
ancestral are purely for ease of encoding, and have no real impact on the
final result.  In the final analysis it is the placement of the characters
relative to the root that matters. Thus one has to have some means of
placing the root independent of the researcher's judgement of the relative
advancement of the characters.

I have this on very good authority - from people who do cladistic analysis
for a living, such as the paleontologist Dr. Holtz.

[I suppose one could *tentatively* place the root at the link with the
highest count of ancestral characters per the researcher's judgement, but
this would be considered weak evidence, at best].

> See
>my parallel mail for a textbook on the topic.
>But perhaps it is a misunderstanding.

I think it is.  When encoding the characters, the researcher usually
assigns numeric codes in the expected order of derivation from the most
"primitive".  But once the tree is actually derived, position of the
character on the tree takes precedence over this initial encoding.

Dr. Holtz is VERY insistent on that.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From frauzel at azstarnet.com  Fri Mar  3 01:56:57 2000
From: frauzel at azstarnet.com (John Frauzel)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:56:57 -0700
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <v01540b05b4e2e425eaae@[128.83.254.24]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.185657.0700.>

At 09:17 AM 3/1/00 -0600, Carol Justus wrote:

>The earliest attested IE prayers don't usually ask for forgiveness but are
>more like Menelaos's prayer to Zeus for guiding his spear so that he will
>kill Paris or Chryses' to Apollo to make Agamemnon's army pay for
>Agamemnon's insults. Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence
>forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

It's certainly common in Indic tradition. The "house of clay" hymn, RV
7:89, ends "If we humans have committed some offence against the race of
the gods, O Varun.a, or through carelessness have violated your laws, do
not injure us, O god, for that sin." (O'Flaherty's translation). Sin might
be an unfortunate translation for 'enas', although Grassmann does give as
meanings Frevel, Suende, Bedraengnis, Unglueck (originally Gewalttat). But
the concept is not that far removed. And there are dozens of RV hymns with
formulaic verses, to various gods, "If we have offended you in a or b or c,
please don't x or y or z."

This does seem to be much more common in the Indo-Iranian tradition that in
the Greek. In fact I can't think of anything comparable in Greek.

John Frauzel  Phone 520 579-3235
		Fax 520 579-9780


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:19:02 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:19:02 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.011902.EST.>

>cjustus at mail.utexas.edu writes:

>Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence forgiveness, enters the IE
>prayer record? >>

-- it certainly doesn't seem to be very important in the early stages.  In
fact, to the limited extent one can tell, the PIE-speakers seem to have been
a bunch of "right bastards" -- to use a British dialect term -- whose
religious concepts centered on boozing themselves into altered states and
bribing the gods with blood-sacrifices and flattery, when they weren't
bashing their neighbors over the head and stealing their cattle... 8-).


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:16:03 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:16:03 -0800
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <763mbsgiddettmcik5j0ueehmqcjk72gnc@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.191603.0800.>

At 01:11 AM 2/29/00 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>Actually, I'm not suggesting a GBS genetic node.  I think
>Germanic "broke away" quite early on (while "Balto-Slavic" was
>still more or less undifferentiated eastern PIE).  Afterwards,
>Germanic and Balto-Slavic came into close areal contact (a "GBS
>Sprachbund", possibly in the Corded Ware period).   ...

Ah, yes, well I find that reasonable.  Though I would tend to place the
contact somewhat later, my sense on that is uncertain.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:06:11 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:06:11 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.000611.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Afterwards, Germanic and Balto-Slavic came into close areal contact (a "GBS
>Sprachbund", possibly in the Corded Ware period).  In fact, the
>opposite of what Ringe seems to be suggesting (GBS, later areal
>Gmc-Ital/Celt contacts). >>

-- continuous Germanic/Balto-Slavic contact, diminishing in intensity, with
continuous contact between Germanic and Italic and Celtic, ditto, would seem
to fit the evidence.  That is, from the PIE period the dialects antecedent to
Germanic were "always" west of Balto-Slavic, and north of Italic and Celtic.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:25:29 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:25:29 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.012529.EST.>

>sonno3 at hotmail.com writes:

>The largest percentage of Brittonic elements are in Western England, including
>Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire as well as Shropshire, Worcestershire,
>North East Herefordshire, Western Gloucestershire and, of course, Devon and
>Cornwall.

-- true, the process of Germanization seems to have been both slower and less
complete in these western areas (Cornish surviving into the 17th century, and
the provisions for "Welsh" persons in the early Wessex law codes).

Even there, however, there are placename features which show incomprehension
-- besides the "river river" ones, there are the "hill hills".

You often get these types of names in situations of limited bilingualism.

Eg.,  Lake Malawi was, for a long time, called "Lake Nyasa", because of the
explorer Livingston's lousy chiChechwa.  He pointed at the lake and asked a
Malawian "what's that lake?" in what he thought was the local language.  The
peasant, who didn't understand a word he said, replied "That's the
_lake_".... which in chiChechwa, is of course "nyasa".  So the lake was "Lake
Lake" for several generations.

There's a town in Madagascar whose name means "you can tie up your boat down
there" for similar reasons.

One can imagine a Saxon grunting out something and pointing, at which the
bewildered Briton says "That's the _river_," or "That's the _hill_".


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:18:45 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:18:45 -0800
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <ab.10bac9a.25ecab74@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.191845.0800.>

At 11:56 PM 2/28/00 -0500, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor landscape
>features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few and
>often the product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western English
>rivers are called "Avon", which means... 'river'.

And then there is the place called (after translation) "Hillhill Hill".

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:39:36 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:39:36 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.013936.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Based on the differentiation of the IE languages as attested ca. 1500 BC
>(Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek and Hittite), any date within the range
>5500-3500 is absolutely reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl. >>

-- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar; with a knowledge
of one language and of the sound-shifts, you can trace the general meaning of
a text in the other language.  There are even common elements in things like
poetic kennings.  They're more similar than modern standard German and
English, comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those are unusually
conservative.

Looking at those two examples, one would assume something in the 500-1500
year range for last-common-ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek.

Granted, Hittite is more differentiated.  However, the example of the _other_
early IE languages, when we get some records -- early Latin, for instance, or
the reconstructed forms of Proto-Germanic or Proto-Celtic or Proto-Tocharian
-- show that this is an exceptional case.

As of their earliest attestation, all the other IE languages with the
_exception_ of the Anatolian group show divergences not much earlier than the
Greek-Indo-Iranian.

So if the ancestors of Sanskrit and Greek parted company sometime between
2000 BCE and 3000 BCE, which seems reasonable, then the ancestor of, say,
Latin and the others must have done so only a little earlier.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 04:51:31 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 23:51:31 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.235131.EST.>

>maxdashu at LanMinds.Com writes:

<< Or are non-IE languages other than Hurrian known in Anatolia? >>

-- several, depending on your definitions. (Eg., Hattic, which was probably
extinct except as a learned language by the 14th century BCE.)  The Hittite
royal archives included extensive texts in six languages!

The situation during the Imperial Hittite period seems to have been that the
Hittite-Luvian-Palaic complex occupied western and parts of central Anatolia,
with Hurrian (and presumably the related proto-Urartian) to the east and
south, and various little-known but probably non-IE languages to the east and
northeast.

Nobody seems to know what the "Kaska people" directly to the northeast of
Hattusas spoke, for example, despite extensive contact (they sacked and
burned the Hittite capital at least twice).


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:03:28 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:03:28 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.000328.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>But the lack of obvious - jump off the page - reflex doesn't mean that
>Thracian wasn't IE.  But it might mean that it is very old IE.

-- no, it just means that we don't have enough of it to say much about it.
And we probably never will.  So much for the extensive texts...

>The problem is that what little we have can't be read.

-- no, you've got it bass-ackwards again.  We can't read it because we have
so little.

If we had as little Greek writing as we do Thracian, we'd have exactly the
same problems.

So the relevance of the few small fragments of Thracian to the question at
hand -- time-depth -- is... well, zero.  They say nothing.

>It made up of [either 61 or 81 - I can't read it] Greek charcters engraved
>on a golden ring.  The reading of the letters poses no difficulties but
>division of the text into words is uncertain.

-- 60-80 characters is about four to twelve words.  This is not a "text";
this is a _fragment_.

>It contains 51 characters and no acceptible translation has been made.

-- see above.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:58:36 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:58:36 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.015836.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Anyway, for what it's worth, 500 years for me is Dutch and Afrikaans

-- 500 is much too long for that example.

The settlement at the Cape was founded in 1654, and only started receiving
any substantial number of long-term Dutch settlers a generation later.

So until well after 1700, the majority of Dutch-speakers at the Cape were
European-born and hence would be speaking dialects of Dutch direct from the
Low Countries. (In fact, a lot of them were Germans or French, but that's by
the by for present purposes.)

Afrikaans was present as a spoken language in very much the present form by
the middle of the 19th century, and was in use fairly extensively in written
form by the 1870's.

So it's more like 150 years from Dutch to Afrikaans.  No more than 6
successive generations of speakers, in an extremely small population -- and
at that, in a population still using High Dutch as a written and
administrative standard.

>I think (Vedic) Sanskrit and (Mycenaean) Greek are further apart
>than that.  I'd say Vedic Skt. and Gathic Avestan comes close to
>about 500 years.

-- much closer.  Vedic and Avestan are dialects of the same language for all
practical purposes; similar to the differences between, say, Yorkshire
dialect and Texan, or Standard English and Cockney.

>Hittite and either M.Greek or V.Sanskrit for me is definitely
>2000 years or more.  The languages are structurally further
>apart, there is no mutual intelligibility to speak of.

-- Look at the differences between the English of 1000 CE and 1500 CE.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Fri Mar  3 07:06:59 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 08:06:59 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <e0.1be58a3.25ecb667@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.080659.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>>>By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>>*ulkwiha?

>-- Carl Darling Buck's _A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal
>Indo-European Languages_.

No you don't.  CDB doesn't do laryngeals.
I can't think of any source which uses <h{a}> for H2.

>Old High German "mariha" is a reflex.

OHG <mariha>, OS <meriha>, OE <mi:ere>, ON <merr>, Dutch <merrie>
are thought to reflect PGmc. *marhi: < *m'arkih2, metathesized to
*mari:h and augmented with feminine -a < *-eh2.

I probably prefer an alternative explanation, with two /h/'s in
Germanic (PGmc. *marhih-) from a variant form *markik- [I know
there's a problem with Verner here], likewise later augmented
with feminine -a.  Cf. Martinet and the Latin feminine suffix -ix
(*-ik(s)) for expected *-ih2(s).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:10:10 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:10:10 EST
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.011010.EST.>

>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>Excuse me, but do the Greek historians mention the Old Irish and Welsh
>words ?

-- possibly I misunderstood Mr. Long, but from the original posting I assumed
he meant that there were, in fact, no terms derived from *ekwos in any Celtic
language, and adduced the Greek historians as supportive evidence.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 08:16:12 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 03:16:12 EST
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.031612.EST.>

I wrote:
>>>A number of Greek historians tell us the Celtic word for horse was <marka>,
>>>never mentioning <equus> or <hippos> or any other name.

Mr. Stirling replied:
>>-- wrong, and completely wrong at that.  Eg., the following Celtic words for
>>"horse", deriving from *ekwos:
>>Old Irish:  ech
>>Gaulish:    epo (plus "equos", as the name of a month)
>>Welsh       ebol (colt)
>>You really should be more careful... 8-).

(I take it that Mr. Stirling was correcting the Greek historians and asking
them to be more careful, since all I was doing was reporting what they said.)

In a message dated 3/1/2000 10:07:52 PM, Dr. Stefan Georg replied:
>Excuse me, but do the Greek historians mention the Old Irish and Welsh
>words ? I'd be surprised, if they did, so the statement above is not really
>touched by your assertion that it is "completely wrong"  ...

Thanks for trying to keep that straight.  If anyone recalls, this is about
Mr. Stirling's claim that <marko-> or something like it was "probably" the
word for wild horses.

With regard to *equus reflexes in Celtic, of course each of the languages
above also has a <marko-> word for horse.  But it make me wonder how
forgiving this analysis should be - since I see a complete absence of *ekwos
in Breton, NIr and Manx.

(And those words the author cites for Gaulish and Welsh - epo and ebol? - I
guess that pesky p/q thing can make a Latin-looking word for horse look like
a Greek-looking word for horse.)

Also I note that Buck has somehow failed to include in his book a rather
important OIr word for 'deer' - <ach>  (Gaelic - <each>).  Perhaps more on
that later.

But here's one quote if anyone's interested:

Pausanias Description of Greece (Loeb edition)
[10.19.11]
"The Persians used to wait until the battle was over before replacing
casualties, while the Gauls kept reinforcing the horsemen to their full
number during the height of the action. This organization is called in their
native speech trimarcisia; it is well known that marca is the Celtic name for
a horse."

[...Galatais de hup' autên tou ergou tên akmên ho arithmos apeplêrouto
tôn hippeôn. touto ônomazon to suntagma trimarkisian têi epichôriôi
phônêi: kai hippôi to onoma istô tis markan on ta hupo tôn Keltôn.]

Cf. Greek <margas> = <desmos> (band, bond, anything for tying and fastening,
as halter, Hom. Il. 6.507; yoke-strap, Xenophon. Anabases.) LS.

Regards,
Steve Long


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:43:53 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:43:53 -0800
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <007c01bf8353$29d7dc80$9ad31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.194353.0800.>

At 07:52 AM 3/1/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

This depends in part on the accent pattern, and in part on the direction of
analogical levelling.  Proterodynamic words in -iH(2)- tend to come out one
way, and hysterodynamic ones the other - because one paradigm has more case
forms containing -ieH(2) than the other, biasing the direction of
analogical levelling.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Mar  3 00:01:45 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:01:45 -0000
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.000145.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 6:56 PM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>>> *ulkwiha?

>> [MCV]
>>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

[PRp]
>> Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants
>> in combination, but how do we know?

[MCV]
> I merely assumed a transcription error (for h-sub_a or something
> like that).

[PRp]
>> Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

[MCV]
> With i: < iH and u: < uH one never knows.  Or does one?  Let me
> refer to Jens E. Rasmussen's article "IH, UH and RH in
> Indo-European".  (Abstract: Greek, Tocharian and Armenian show
> ih1/uh1 > i:/u:, ih2/uh2 > ya:, wa:, ih3/uh3 > yo:, wo:, with
> exceptions).  Greek -ia(:) therefore points to *-ih2.

[PR]
I like Jens' resolution.

But what is the significance of Greek -ia(:) for this question?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Mar  3 00:19:37 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:19:37 -0000
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.001937.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 7:53 PM

> On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com), following up a
> query about a form in a Stirling post, wrote:

>>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>>> *ulkwiha?

>> [MCV]
>>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

>> <PRp>
>> Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both
>> formants in combination, but how do we know?

[RA]
> By "both formants", I'm assuming you mean your notion of *y and *H_2 as
> feminine formations.  I won't address that.

[PRp]
>> Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

>> And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

> Last question first:  Vowels are only lengthened with the loss of a
> *following* laryngeal, so if the proto-form were ?*ul{k^w}i{H_2}e, the
> outcome would have a short vowel *a, not a long *a:.  However, the suffix
> is *-i{H_2}, with no trailing *-e.

> For the remainder of this post, I am going to write just the numeric portion
> of the TeX constructs {H_1}, {H_2}, and {H_3} to represent the e-, a-, and o-
> coloring laryngeals.  This should make things easier to read without added
> ambiguity.

> The feminine-forming suffix *-i2 is reconstructed based on Skt. -i:, Gk. -ia,
> etc.; Latin has extended the form with an additional suffix, -g-, as in
> _stri:x, stri:gis_.  The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this
> is one of the few places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel
> developments: We find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

> This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing ?*ul{k^w}i1
> or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a different outcome
> in Greek.

[PR]
But *u.lkwi2 has no outcome in Greek, does it?

And the Greek outcomes look like:

-iH1 -> ie: -> i:; -H2 -> ia: -> ia; -iH3  -> -io:

The pattern here is evidence, I believe, for my hypothesis that H1 = e:; H2
= a: H3=o:.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:50:37 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:50:37 -0800
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e320af2c59@[195.247.65.99]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.195037.0800.>

At 08:39 PM 3/1/00 +0100, Stefan Georg wrote:

>I confess that I don't know what an "expanded" variant of an Arabic root
>is. What I do know, however, is that *every* Arabic verb form has vowels.

That is what I meant.  I do not know the correct terminology for
differentiating between the "pure" triconsonantal root and the actually
spoken forms that, naturally, have vowels.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 04:02:27 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:02:27 -0800
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <mrsqbs8c8ds8cjbd1b54cjtdiv0a2j0bqt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.200227.0800.>

At 09:07 PM 3/1/00 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
>vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
>on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
>fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
>course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
>[unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

Which is one of the bases on which some IEists have reconstructed a pre-PIE
stage with some obscure conditioned variation that was reinterpreted as an
e/o variation when the true PIE accent pattern developed.

Now, personally, I have never found any of these systems particularly
convincing.  As you say, it makes little phonetic sense.

>The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
>with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
>consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

I am not sure this works either, unless one postulates extensive analogical
extensions of *o to places where it was not original.  Certainly it came to
be a marker of derivation, found in the root of many nouns derived from verbs.

The problem is that many of these schemes sound *reasonable*, but there are
always just enough exceptions to make one wonder.

>The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
>an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
>/&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.
...
>Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
>The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
>(i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
>predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
>Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

Actually, I find this a very plausible scheme.  Probably the best I have
ever heard.

It is interesting to postulate that pre-PIE underwent the same sound change
as English did (compare my name to the independent noun: Stan vs. stone).

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 04:53:00 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:53:00 -0800
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <010101bf83ca$eb94e760$5cc71a3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.205300.0800.>

At 10:09 PM 3/1/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

><SF>
>> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
>> differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
>> conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

><PR>
>Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

As far as minimal contrast goes, one can simply look at the "perfect"
versus the "aorist" of many verbs (especially in the third singular).

A quick perusal of Pokorny (yes, I know, out of date) gives:
*kem: "summen"
and
kom: "neben, bei, mit"

That the e/o distinction was phonemic at breakup is unquestionable.

><PR>
>I agree that an older accentual system is a reasonable theory, which I also
>agree is viable. So, if I understand correctly, you are proposing that this
>older system predates PIE?

Not really, just mentioning it as a *possibility*.  I find a switch from a
length distinction to be more plausible.

><SF>
>> Note, when there is only one non-high vowel in a language, it is *always*
>> best viewed as /a/, not /e/.  (It may have /e/ as an *allophone* in some
>> environments, but its neutral allophone will always be low).

><PR>
>I agree 100%. And it is /*a/ which I theorize preceded /*e,*o/ in what I
>call the Pontic stage, which I believe preceded PIE. But I also believe the
>non-phonemic status of the /*e,*o/ Ablaut suggests strongly that it
>developed from a single predecessor.

I tend to agree.  I think you can make your theory work as well with a
length distinction though, which is phonetically more likely.

>stress-accented syllable had /*o/. On this basis, I believe that no /*a/
>existed in PIE except possibly as a result of a reduction of /*a:/ deriving
>from a "laryngeal" + /*a/ in the Pontic (pre-PIE) stage.

I tend to agree.  I reconstruct a PIE vowel system with e/o/i/u.

[Note, I consider it likely that laryngeals survived into many of the
daughter languages, so lengthening due to loss of laryngeals was probably
*post* PIE].

><SF>
>> I can only accept this where there is good evidence of alternation with
>> /*ue/ or /*eu/.  There are just too many cases where there *is* no such
>> variation visible.  [The obvious examples are mostly inflectional ending
>> and pronouns, but there are certainly others as well].

><PR>
>Let us look at some of those examples. The strongest argument for this idea
>is foreclosed to me because it involves the "N" word.

Well, there is the root Pokorny list as *bheu.  However, the only branch
showing an e-grade of it is Indo-Iranian.  Outside of that it is
universally in "zero" grade.  Thus I do not believe the e-grade is ancient.
 I reconstruct *bhuH "grow, increase".

Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two distinct
roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an e-grade at all
(since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

There is *uper "over, above".

The root listed as *ueidh shows no actual reflexes with e-grade in Pokorny,
so one must really reconstruct *widh: "trennen".

And those are just some random gleanings from Pokorny.

><PR>
>I think we must be careful about overvaluing typological facts. If the
>Pontic stage of pre-PIE were the only language in all our knowledge to
>employ a single vowel (even for a very short period), phonological rather
>than typological considerations should influence more strongly. Typology,
>generally, is a heuristic device, would you not agree?

Up to a point.  If we find ourselves reconstructing something that is
completely unknown in well-attested languages, we really do need to think
three times before accepting the reconstruction.  [Absolute universals are
rare, and when they do exist are probably fundamental].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From jer at cphling.dk  Fri Mar  3 14:27:03 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 15:27:03 +0100
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <mrsqbs8c8ds8cjbd1b54cjtdiv0a2j0bqt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.152703.0100.>

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> [...]
> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

Thanks! we are still a minority I believe, but a viable alternative does
not seem to have been proposed.

> The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
> an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
> The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
> (i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
> predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
> Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

I don't get the part on Brugmann's Law. But stressed -e:'n vs. unstressed
'-o:n (and -e:'r vs. '-o:r and -e:s vs. '-o:s in parallel
fashion) indicates that the expected loss of the unstressed vowel of the
suffix (/-en-/, /-er-/, /-es-/) had not progressed further than to a stage
of weakening when the "nominative lengthening" set in: The nominative
marker (some variety of /s/) caused lengthening of the nearest preceding
vowel in the environment VC(C)_# Thereby, underlying /e/ appears as /e:/,
and the weakened counterpart is found, at the end of the day, to surface
as /o:/. Phonetically, this could perhaps be seen as something like the
French e muet which is indeed a weakened vowel and does exhibit a marked
rounding (at least in some varieties of the language). Supposing the
relevant prestage of PIE to have been comparable to this, one gets a "long
rounded schwa" from where the /o:/ of the PIE forms could well have
developed. It takes a rule saying the lengthened vowels were not deleted
by the working of the accent-governed ablaut, and in fact I see no
counterexamples. So, I agree, IE /o/ has a multitude of sources.

Cheers,

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar  2 23:54:15 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 23:54:15 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.235415.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 8:07 PM

> Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>> At 05:44 PM 2/25/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> But, let us approach this from another avenue.

>>> 1) What I believe we find in the earliest IE is one vowel, /*e/, which
>>> has a conditioned variant , /*o/.

>> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs
>> that differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have
>> been conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

>> It is possible that some pre-PIE language had such conditioned variation,
>> but any such conditioning factor had disappeared by the time we reach the
>> reconstructible time layers.  [One viable possibility is an old accent
>> system as the conditioning factor, with conditioning destroyed by a shift
>> in the accent pattern to the one reconstructed for PIE].

[MCV]
> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

[PR]
I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
which produces *e/*o variations.

[MCV]
> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

[PR]
I must have been on vacation when this was discussed. Is there any kind of
consensus on this list that Jens has demonstrated this?

[MCV]
> The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
> an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut,

[PR]
Of course, this is a possibility. But if all /**a,**a:/ had become
/*e/*o/-Abldute, how would we ever know? Is this not pure speculation?

[MCV]
> with developments /a/ >
> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

[PR]
But why would they (prtimary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

[MCV]
> The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
> (i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
> predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
> Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:19:52 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:19:52 EST
Subject: non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.001952.EST.>

>rdrews at richmond.edu writes:

>Intrusive in the Halys arc, yes, but "Hittite" seems to have come to Hatti
>from the south, where Luwian and other Anatolian languages seem to have been
>spoken as far back as there were permanent settlements.

-- well, the Hittites called their language "Neshite".  It shows every
evidence of being intrusive in the area which constituted the heartland of
the Hittite kingdom.

The area east and southeast of the Hittites was non-Indo-European throughout
recorded history until the intrusion of Armenian -- eg., in the early Iron
Age, Armenia was occupied by the Urartian kingdom, which spoke a non-IE
language related to Hurrian. Evidence for Hurrian and languages related to
Hurrian in eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia goes back well into the
3rd millenium BCE.

>FROM western Anatolia, and from this population's subsequent separation from
>its western Anatolian roots.

-- proto-Anatolian couldn't possibly have been _ancestral_ to
proto-Indo-European.  And the degree of differentiation doesn't suggest a
prolonged separation.

All theories which posit an Anatolian homeland for PIE or PIH run into this
problem.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:59:04 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:59:04 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.005904.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>First you say that Greek is intrusive than you say Hittite must be intrusive
>because it is not related to Greek.

-- no, I said Hittite is intrusive in Anatolia. This is obvious due to the
very large set of loan-words from Hattic, the non-IE language originally
spoken in the Halys area, and the nature of those loan-words.  It's been a
standard interpretation for a long time.

The implications of Hittite's lack of close relationship with Greek is
another matter.

>Well, then my explantion is either Hittite's intrusive or Greek's intrusive
>and that's why they don't have to be closely related.

-- if you're arguing that the IE languages spread from east to west, Anatolia
to Greece and then to the Balkans, then logically Greek and Hittite ought to
be closely related, and Greek and say, Latin (still more Sanskrit or
Balto-Slavic) distantly related.  Whereas precisely the opposite is the case.

And Renfrew does claim that Greek is the result of development _in situ_, at
least in his original book.

>That makes NO sense.

-- correct.  However, since this argument existed nowhere but in your mind...
8-).

>So Greek proves nothing about Hittite's lack of intrusiveness.

-- where did you get the idea that I said it did?

>I know this is a waste of time, but what SPECIFIC internal relationships are
>you talking about?  What SPECIFIC links would you expect?

-- here's where we get to the stuff about Hittite and Greek.  You know,
morphology and so forth?  Greek lacks the specific isoglosses which define
the Anatolian group of IE languages (eg., loss of grammatical gender).  Greek
has specific isoglosses which it shares with Indo-Iranian (eg., retention of
the augment).

(Note:  since you seem to have trouble with the concept of "example", I will
specify that these are not the _only_ common features of these languages --
these are just single _examples_.)

>And what do you mean by other IE languages?  I know you won't answer any of
>these, but I'll ask anyway.

-- Greek, Balto-Slavic, Tocharian, Germanic, Italic, Celtic, Indo-Iranian.

>What do you think Hittite is closely related to?

-- Luwian and Palaic in its own time; Lycian and the others later.  Not,
however, to Phrygian or Armenian.

You see, the Anatolian languages -- Hittite, Luwian, etc. -- are subfamily,
like the Romance or Germanic or Indo-Iranian.

>In your last post, you have the entire Ukraine and maybe even the Balkans
>occupied by a Greek-Sanskrit-Armenian dialectical continum. You have
>Anatolia completely encircled.

-- here I must refer you to a map.  That puts PIE north of Anatolia, and
separated by the Black Sea, the Balkans, and the Caucasus mountains.

>So where do you think Hittite came from?

-- same place as the rest, only rather earlier.  The first wave in a series.
Given the predominantly non-IE population of eastern Anatolia and most of
transcaucasia at the earliest recorded periods, probably although not
certainly from the west, via the Bosphorus.  Sometime after 3500 BCE, but
before 2000 BCE (the latter being a _terminus ad quem_ because of the
Anatolian-IE names recorded by Assyrian merchants about that date).  Not too
much earlier than 2000 BCE, because of the -- here's that term again --
degree of differentiation shown by the Anatolian languages when we get some
written records of them, around 500 years after the Assyrian _karum_ tablets.

>My read on this is that "PIE minus Anatolian" forms on the Danube and becomes
>Bandkeramik.  The predecessor "Anatolian-Balkan painted pottery" culture
>found in the Balkans and Anatolia represents the residue of 'wide PIE' AFTER
>the split and would include proto-Hittite-Luwian...>>

-- and so all these languages vanished, except a couple in central Anatolia.
Hmmm.
Convenient, eh?  And non-falsifiable.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:02:01 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:02:01 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.010201.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

 I wrote:

 >(and possibly proto-Phrygian-Thracian, though don't hold me to that.)

 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

 >-- good thing you added the qualifier, since Phrygian shows close links to
 >Greek and none in particular to Anatolian.

>Once again, I'll have to ask you what SPECIFIC links you are talking about.
>>From all I know, Phrygian doesn't show much of anything and its evidence is
>about a 1000 years later than Luwian and Hittite.

-- once again, I'll have to refer you to the literature on the subject.  I
can't teach you comparative philology, even to the meagre extent I've
absorbed it.

If you want a few examples...

...there's the retention of the augment -- eg., "edaes", "he put", from PIE
*h(1)edeh(1), 'he put', a feature Phrygian shares with Greek, Armenian and
Indo-Iranian; this is usually considered a late innovation shared by the
southeastern dialect group of PIE.

Features shared by Phrygian and Greek include the relative pronoun *ios, the
suffix *-meno, the pronoun *auto-, the use of the ending *-s in the
nominative singular masculine of a-stems, and the augment (mentioned above).

There's a Phrygian inscription on the tomb of King Midas:  "Midai lavagtaei
vanaktei", "To Midas the War-leader and King".

This contains two terms shared with (Mycenaean) Greek:  lawagetas and wannax
("war-leader" and "king", respectively.)

>It may even be only understood by only one person.

-- since you're very much in the minority here, that's a rather odd remark.


From fabcav at adr.dk  Fri Mar  3 06:58:12 2000
From: fabcav at adr.dk (Fabrice Cavoto)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 07:58:12 +0100
Subject: PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and
 evidence from Uralic linguistics)
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.075812.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

> There is no reason to concider *-i (= your *-e) in PU *nimi 'name' a stem
> formant. *-i is no known a PU morpheme

[Fabrice Cavoto]  It certainly is, see below.

> , and *nim- couldn't even
> theoretically be a PU morpheme, since all roots (except pronouns and the
> two auxilaries) had to be of shape *(C)V(C)CV-.

[Fabrice Cavoto]  See f.ex. Decsy 1990, p. 26-35, as well as, more
recently, Abondolo (ed) 1998, p. 6-7. The structure of Uralic *roots* is V,
CV, CVC or CVCV. The fact that PUral. *words* ended in a vowel doesn't
imply that the vowel was originally part of the root. Some call it
"thematic vowel", other "stem vowel", and it is mostly seen as an element,
or part of an element, forming stems. Whether it is for prosodic or
morphologic reasons is not entirely clear, but the fact that the vowel is
not always the same (since there are a-stems, e/i-stems), and that it
happens that the same root is attested with both, also points to the fact
that that element, what ever we call it, is added on the root.


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Mar  3 14:01:16 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 16:01:16 +0200
Subject: Uralic Urheimat (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from
 Uralic linguistics)
In-Reply-To: <20000301082113.54350.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.160116.0200.>

[I wrote:]

>In principle, it [= Uralic Urheimat South of the Black Sea] cannot be
>totally excluded. However, the idea of a P-U homeland south of the Black Sea
>would not be a very fruitful hypothesis, since it would only create a new,
>very difficult question to answer: why and how would the P-U speakers have
>migrated north to become hunter-gatherers in the taiga/tundra zone of northern
>Eurasia? There is no evidence suggesting that the P-U Urheimat would have been
>-outside- the area where U languages are spoken today.

[Gábor Sándi replied:]
> Well, our linguistic (I presume you to be Finnish, I am Hungarian)

Yes, I'm both Finnish and Saami.

> ancestors
> must have migrated to the taiga/tundra zone from the south at one point,
> seeing that the ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens were in Africa. I would
> venture the guess that they were big game hunters, and as the ice sheets
> moved north, the predecessors of Proto Uralic speakers followed the mammuth
> and other large game to the north.

This is true. And I'd stress the word predecessors - this must have
happened conciderably before Proto-Uralic. There are researchers who
maintain that e.g. the first inhabitants of Finland who moved there
along the retreating ice sheet approx. 9000BP were PU speakers, but this
view seems to be anachronistic. There are similar problems with it as most
IE-ists see in Renfrew's model of the IE expansion - it is simply too
early.

Thus, some Pre-PU "homeland" may well have been located south of the Black
Sea, but the PU homeland can not (as you agree below).

> Just before the first offshoots of Proto-Uralic (the Samoyeds?) split off

I don't believe the primary split in Uralic is between Samoyed
and all the rest (= "Finno-Ugric"). There is no clear linguistic evidence
in support of this view, although the traditional binary family tree has
been the concensus view in Uralistics for over 100 years (since Otto
Donner presented it the first time in 1879). On the contrary, I'd go as
far as to say that it was falsified by Kaisa Häkkinen in her doctoral
thesis, and her 1984 article in Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher.

> I agree that they must have lived somewhere north of the Black Sea/Caspian
> area. Some of them might even have lived just north of the Black Sea, to be
> pushed north by the more populous neolithic farmers moving into the area -
> ancestors of the Sredni Stog, Tripolye etc. cultures.

I mostly agree with this - except that I see no reason to assume that PU
speakers would have lived just north (= on the shores of?) Black Sea. I
think the most logical option is to place the PU homeland in the forest
zone between Volga and Urals. The spread happened on an east-west
axis; Pre-Saamic-Finnic must have spread to the Baltic Sea area before the
introduction of Battle Axe culture in southwestern Finland (5000BP), and
the first branch to spread east to Siberia must obviously have been
Pre-Samoyedic. But nothing indicates that one of these spreads would have
taken place earlier than the other. The fact that the western branches
(Saami, Finnic) show more cognate lexemes with the central languages than
Samoyedic does probably results from later contacts.

Best wishes,

Ante Aikio


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:04:05 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:04:05 EST
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20Tocharian=20A=20w=E4s,=20B=20yasa?=
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.010405.EST.>

>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>So, Samoyed *wesä ~ Tocharian *wesa seems like chance correspondence. But,
>assuming that the Toch. form requires an irregular (?) metathesis, the loan
>etymology perhaps remains as a(n unlikely) possibility? >>

-- I suppose it could have been a Tocharian-Samoyed loan?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 07:14:23 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 02:14:23 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.021423.EST.>

>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>

-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.

That might indicate (since there are or were wolves in Anatolia as well as
lions) that the 'wolf' meaning is a semantic narrowing from "dangerous one",
which would seem to be supported by the Hittite "walkuwa" ("dangerous") and
Sanskrit "a-vrka" ("safe").

There's also been a suggestion that the *uelkwo word is a derivative of
*uel-, meaning 'tear, lacerate', so the name would be "the thing that rips
you up". (Some Russian linguist, wasn't it?)

Of course, the fact that there's no clear PIE root for "lion" is also
indicative, since in Bronze Age and neolithic times lions were known all
across Greece, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East, and into India.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 07:16:58 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 02:16:58 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.021658.EST.>

Someone wrote:
>>To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
>>pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

In a message dated 3/2/2000 6:19:06 AM, Dr. Stefan Georg wrote:

>Friends, have a look at some Siberian languages; the very fact that these
>fellas can get *really nasty* is responsible for the fact that most people
>who *really know* them   use some taboo word, lest the bloddy beast
>understands its name and comes along to look at who's talking.
>Zoo-goers may use descriptive names for our brown friends, forest-dwellers
>aren't stupid enough to do that.

Not to rile anyone but just to express a minority opinion in the short time
I'm allowed lately -

Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

Although bears are big and dangerous, you are talking here about people whose
ancestors seemed to make a living out of hunting some big, angry things.
Native Americans even before having acquired gunpowder were extremely
effective at keeping a steady supply of bearskins coming into the European
colonies right from the start, and it was reported that every single colonial
home in cold New Amsterdam had several nice warm bearskins acquired from
indigenous hunters.

Two schools of thought here - one says the bear stood for dread.  The other
says that the bear stood for a warm bear skin - provided by a benign
Providence who nevertheless did mandate some, small inconvenience in
obtaining this gift by attaching it to a bear.  And a
not-very-ecologically-minded Davy Crockett could therefore proudly prove by
an invoice he always carried with him that he once "harvested" 40 bearskins
in a single week.

My little suggestion here is again that brown did not give its name to the
bear, but that the bear's fur gave its name to brown.

I suspect that - as today - most folks back then had more contact with the
by-products of wild animals than they did with the animals themselves -
witness the large number of wild fauna remains at Troy until it appears the
local wild fauna ran out.  And perhaps most folks back then would have had
more contact with bears by way of bearskins than by way of mortal personal
experiences with bears.  Plus bears are not full-time professional predators
being natural omnivores and are also hibernators.  So it doesn't seem likely
that there was a bear assigned to terrorizing each and every IE speaking
village.

Hunters are not the social types.  Merchants are.  And merchants are more
likely to influence what we call things than hunters are.  Our own modern
experience has been been that we've eaten or worn more fox, sable, buffalo,
mink, beaver, alligator, shrimp, salmon, tuna and crayfish than we'd ever see
alive.  I know that I've seen more cowhide than I've seen cows.  And of
course merchants make up names as the market demands.  In the US, we can
order a fish called a scrod.  Sardines are little fish that come in a can.
It's beef, not cow meat.  And though I've looked I've never seen a veal, a
suede or a leather scampering around out there.

And that may be why bears are mostly called otherwise.  Bearskins.  And the
word for bearskin may have become one word for brown.

I don't think there's much evidence that ancients were often terrorized BY
wild animals, but there is a lot of evidence that they often terrorized wild
animals.  Read Homer's description of lions - most are showing great courage
and its much too much courage of course that gets them killed by guess who...

And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
north star. And of course its hard not to look at L., ursa (bear) without
thinking of Gr., bursa (animal skin).  But of course if a bear knew that you
were thinking that way, that might make that bear pretty darn mad.

Regards,
Steve Long


From xdelamarre at siol.net  Fri Mar  3 21:09:24 2000
From: xdelamarre at siol.net (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:09:24 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0003021354510.14136293-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.220924.0100.>

Ante Aikio wrote :

>But it is precisely the descriptive names that are created for taboo reasons.
>E.g. Finnish has karhu 'bear' < karhea 'coarse' (referring to fur), kontio
>'bear' < kontia 'crawl on all fours' (referring to manner of motion). As
>for 'destruction', there's Finnish hukka 'wolf' = hukka 'loss,
>destruction', hukkua 'get lost, perish, drown'. These words predate zoos,
>for sure ;-)

As for Finnish _karhu_, I have proposed (_Historische Sprachforschung_ 105,
1992, pp 151-54) that it could be a loan from a Proto-Aryan form
_*harkSas_, itself from IE _*h2rtk'os_, with hardening of the laryngeal
(very much like _kana_ 'chicken' from Germanic _*xana_, or _teke_ 'to do'
from IE _*dheH1-_) and  regular outcome of Uralic and Aryan -kS- into _h_,
in Baltic Finnish (O.Ind. _makSa:_ 'fly' = Mordvin _mekS_ = Finn.
_mehi(lainen)_ 'bee'). Mentioned by Szemerényi in his _Introduction to IE
Ling._, 53.

The etymology of _karhu_ by _karhea_ 'coarse' (J. Mägiste, _Estn. Etym.
Wörtb._, followed by Itkonen & Alii, _Suomen Sanojen Alkuperä_) is probably
a 'popular etymology'.

The existence in Finnish (and Uralic) of very archaic loans from various IE
strata (late IE, Aryan, Baltic, Germanic etc), which are, so to say,
'fossilised' in the language, is in my view the strongest argument for a
Eurasian Urheimat.

I am presently dealing with Old Celtic lexicography where, as is well
known, the word for 'bull' is _taruos_ (Gaulish _taruos_, O.Ir. _tarb_
etc.) a metathesised form of IE _*tauros_, maybe on the analogy of _caruos_
'deer'. The funny thing is that we have a Finnish word _tarvas_ designating
big cervidae, which shows the same metathesis as Celtic (whereas there is
none in Aryan, Baltic & Germanic). But it may be pure coincidence or we
have to postulate that the loan was made somewhere in present Russia,
before (Proto-)Celts entered Central Europe.

Xavier Delamarre
Ljubljana


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Mar  3 10:17:48 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 15:47:48 +0530
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.154748.0530.>

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Pierce <karhu at umich.edu>
Sent: Thursday, 02 March, 2000 9:25 PM

> Hi,

> Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

> Marc Pierce

> How can men who've never seen light be called enlightened?
> Pete Townshend

The web address of Universitdtsverlag C. Winter is:
http://www.winter-verlag-hd.de/

But it's under construction, and seems to contain no information. It does,
however, provide an e-mail address:

info at winter-verlag-hd.de

All the best,

Gabor Sandi

PS: As I work in an artificially illuminated office with the brillian Indian
sunshine outside, can I be called enlightened?


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar  3 12:40:02 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 13:40:02 +0100
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.10.10003021054540.7817-100000@centipede.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.134002.0100.>

>Hi,

>Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

A few years ago it went bankrupt. That's the bad news. But its program (and
the name) is, as far as I know, continued by some other publisher whose
name I keep forgetting. Anyone in the know ?

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From oldgh at hum.au.dk  Fri Mar  3 16:00:14 2000
From: oldgh at hum.au.dk (George Hinge)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 17:00:14 +0100
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.170014.0100.>

Marc Pierce asked:

>Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

They have a web page: www.winter-verlag-hd.de, but it is apparently under
construction and is therefor of little use. It has been under construction
for a year and a half, as far as I remember. They refer to the www.geist.de,
but it doesn't seem that they are sited there anymore. A complete catalogue
of available books printed in Germany ist to be found on www.buchhandel.de.

George Hinge,
The Department of Greek and Latin,
The University of Aarhus, Denmark


From edsel at glo.be  Fri Mar  3 11:32:38 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 12:32:38 +0100
Subject: Pokorny-CD-Version; was:Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.123238.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hans Holm" <Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 1:31 PM

> SG>the reference of the Pokorny's CD version of his roots dictionary?

> SG>There is none.

> .. no official one. I asked several times for personal issues. E.g. the
> St.Peterburg University at least is trying to digitalize the Pokorny.

> Regards
> Hans J. Holm

[Ed Selleslagh]

I tried their website at

	http://www.spbu.ru/engl/html/Education/Faculties/Philology/

but couldn't find anything about this project. Do you know in what stage it is?
Very early?

Regards,
Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Fri Mar  3 12:07:35 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 13:07:35 +0100
Subject: R and r
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.130735.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 8:04 PM

> "Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast: why would they
>> have invented this unobvious orthography in the first place? Note that
>> rho-sp.a. or the combination rho-rho-sp.a. occurs in the positions where you
>> could expect a 'fortis' R, very similar to the occurrence of rr in Spanish
>> (word-initially and in case of gemination), and the one in Portuguese. The
>> spiritus asper is strongly suggestive of some form of aspiration.

> There was a contrast, but it wasn't contrastive.

> Greek initial r- comes mainly from *sr- > *hr- (original *r- had
> become er-).  The r- was surely aspirated (i.e. voiceless) in
> Classical Attic Greek, but since this applied to *all* initial
> r's, there is no reason to postulate a separate phoneme /rh/.
> The spiritus asper here is a case of subphonemic orthography (as
> in many of these cases introduced after the fact, in this case by
> Byzantine scribes).

> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

[Ed]

This really seems to touch upon the core of the matter, Miguel. Thank you for
the clarification.

But I find it difficult to believe that Byzantine scribes would have been aware
of the initial r- < *hr- < *sr- (which is pre-classic I believe, i.e. close to
a 1000 years earlier) if there hadn't been left some trace in pronunciation.
The different spelling at the beginning and in the middle of a word is not
surprising: Spanish and Portuguese, in which the sounds represented by r and rr
in intervocalic positions are clearly distinguished phonemes, use the same
system: word-initial written r is always pronounced as if it were written rr,
while intervocalically it is written rr; intervocalic r is another phoneme. So,
my conjecture would be that word-initial rho-sp.a. and intervacalic
rho-rho-sp.a. were pronounced the same way (uvular like in Portuguese?) and
intervocalic rho some other way (flap?).

I said 'uvular' (or similar) because that comes close to what a non-linguist
(like the Byzantine scribes) would possibly hear as 'breath' (spiritus, pneuma)
in the pronunciation of an r. That's a not-too-uneducated guess, I hope.

Regards,
Ed.


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar  3 12:45:21 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 13:45:21 +0100
Subject: Jose Perez' questions
In-Reply-To: <015001bf8489$7d9a1860$4a46063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.134521.0100.>

>>>    Could you, please, give me the complete reference of the Lexicon der
>>Indogermanischen Verbum?

>...>    Does anybody know whether it could be purchased via internet?

>Someone posted a while back the information that it is available for about
>40 English pounds from Amazon.de

Yes, they do have it, for 60 Euros, much to my surprise they also have Rix'
Greek Grammar (55 Euros), and Meiser's Latin grammar (40 Euros); they don't
have the Winter bookls, however.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 15:06:55 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 10:06:55 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.100655.EST.>

In a message dated 3/3/2000 1:45:45 AM, edsel at glo.be wrote:

>Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that
>can be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we
>should be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

I just want to mention again the statistic that I mentioned earlier that says
that most Americans are descended from non-English speakers.  The model in
the US is aspirational and quite different, as it might have been in other
places where the concept of "newness" makes old languages seem old.  The
neolithic hypothesis has the advantage of perhaps offering the concept of
newness as did perhaps Latin through its association with Christianity.  (See
Fletcher's The Barbarian Conversions, where Latin is one of the measures of
the new order of the civitas and centers, versus the old older of the
countryside and pagani)  Even where such oppressive measures as Ed describes
were apparently successful - e.g., the medieval criminal laws in Germany
against the speaking of Wendish dialects - the process seems to leave a
prominent subtrate (e.g., Berlin is from a Slavic word).  And it is also
grindingly slow.  Plus, as in the case mentioned by Ed and in the case of the
19th cent. Russian ban on teaching Polish, the process can also backfire.

The spread of IE, however, seems to have been both fast and extremely
effective, suggesting that both a large neolithic population increase in IE
speakers and the advantage of "newness' favored language expansion and
displacement and created little resistance, except of course among those
admirably stubborn Basques, Finns and Estonians.

Regards,
Steve Long


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri Mar  3 09:15:29 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 09:15:29 +0000
Subject: Basque <egun> 'day'
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.091529.0000.>

Ed Selleslagh writes:

>  Your response is interesting, as it says that the Turkish word is from
>  the name of the sun; apparently the Basque word is also related to
>  'daylight', at least according to some.

OK.  Basque <egun> 'day' has no etymology, and is clearly native and ancient.
The combining form of this word is either <egu-> or <egur->, showing
alternations which are quite regular in ancient words.

The nearly universal word for 'sun' is <eguzki>, which consists of <egun>
plus a compound noun-forming suffix <-z-ki>, where <-ki> is a suffix
forming concrete nouns, and <-z> is the instrumental suffix, which has
a habit of turning up in odd places.  The whole thing is, roughly,
'day-thing'.

The Zuberoan dialect has for 'sun' <ekhi>, which is almost certainly
from *<egu-ki>, the same as above but without the <-z>.  The development
of *<egu-ki> to <ekhi> would in fact be quite regular in Zuberoan.

For 'daylight', the most widespread word today is <eguargi>, with <argi>
'light', and the compound is parallel to the English one.  Some varieties
have re-formed this as <egunargi>.

Hiding behind all this is the seemingly ancient stratum of words formed
on *<ortzi> ~  *<osti>.  The precise significance of this is uncertain,
but its numerous compounds point to the range of senses 'sky, cloud,
thunder, storm'.  One of the derivatives is <oskarbi> 'clear sky', with
<garbi> 'clean'.  Best bet for the original sense of *<ortzi> is 'sky',
I think, but the evidence is not decisive.  The modern Basque word for
'sky' is <zeru>, from a Romance development of Latin <caelum>, roughly
*<tselo>.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From ECOLING at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 04:20:01 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 23:20:01 EST
Subject: possessive [form of a] pronoun
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.232001.EST.>

Bob Whiting has widened our set of examples.
He thereby brought up yet another wholly new line of argument,
which was not covered by preceding messages.

I still refer back to the message "possessive [form of a] pronoun"
for the parallelism which it *did* contain,
and which is strongly supported by more detailed considerations,
as shown below.

First, I am not knowingly trying to mislead anyone,
despite Bob Whiting's claim:

>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
>determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.

Not so, though I should not have to defend myself against
such a groundless ad-hominem assertion.
(The Postscript notes that I normally do just the reverse of that!)

I *did* choose the word "his" deliberately because unlike
some of the other genitive forms ("determiners", as many call them),
it does look more like an apostrophe-s form.

But I did not choose it because of homonymy between
determiner (my) and pronominal (mine) forms: (his, his).
I was not at all concerned with the pronominal forms
(his, hers, mine, yours, ours, theirs).
Bob Whiting's examples involve such pronominal forms,
but my examples did not involve them.
So there was nothing to "slide past" anyone.

If you add to the following examples I used the specification
that *we are talking about the determiner use of "his, my, etc"*,
which was certainly the context in which I was writing
(and please note that Larry Trask had also not been discussing
"mine" etc., and said so in response to Pat Ryan)...

Then there is no way of adding Bob Whiting's examples,
because they do not fit that context.  Here were my examples,
now extended only by adding a first-person example as well.

> The relation:
> he :: his
[> or
> I :: my   ]

> is from syntactic and semantic points of view
> essentially the same as the relation

> the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's.

This statement remains valid, as I think all linguists know.
A "syntactic and semantic" "relation" is not the same as a slot-filler
word class.
In the cases of "he", "I", and "the man we met yesterday",
dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
are as full noun phrases.
In the cases of "his", "my", and "the man we met yesterday's ",
dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
are as determiners of full noun phrases
(referring by "determiner" here to function and positions
of some occurrences, not to slot-filler word class).

The latter are not full noun phrases in most usages, as we all agree

(though the third of these can be used also as a full noun phrase,
in the more complex structures discussed below).

End of main line of argument (again, and just as previously stated).

***

Now as to the tangent, elaboration, or extension of range
of the discussion to pronominal forms like "mine, yours, ...":

Bob Whiting alleges that the lack of a complete parallel between forms
shows that an equivalence of syntactic and semantic relations does not exist.

This is not the case, as when we talk about word classes,
determined by slot-filler criteria, we often find only partial equivalences.
We even find that the surface form "this"
can function both as a determiner and as a pronoun (as I think the
participants in these discussions wish to call them).  So a relation
"this :: this" functions syntactically and semantically equivalently to
"my :: mine".  Merely one such asymmetry.

***

Whiting's parallels were these:

>This is the man we met yesterday's book.
>This is the book of the man we met yesterday.
>
>This is his book.
>This is the book of he.*

I find the fourth of these ungrammatical, of course.
I also find the second one odd, *either* in possessive sense
*or* in another sense which it might conceivably express,
a book about the man we met yesterday.
For the possessive sense, the sense in the examples I had given,
(note again that I had *not* given examples with pronominal usages),
I believe such a usage more normally occurs with a relative clause
following, than in the simple form given by Whiting:

This is the book of his   which we were talking about.
This is the book of mine   which we were talking about.
This is the book of John's   which we were talking about.
This is the book of the man we met yesterday's   which we were talking about.
     [as opposed to the books belonging to the man we met yesterday
     which we were not talking about]

The "of..." phrase in each case has at least sometimes been treated
as a transformation of something with a bit more concrete content:

This is the book from among mine which we were talking about.
This is the book from among John's which we were talking about.

or even
This is the book [which is mine] which we were talking about.
This is the book [which is John's] which we were talking about.

We also have the following form, which to me is more colloquially normal
with the apostrophe-s.  I believe it shows that, like "his",
the form "the man we met yesterday's" *can* function
either as modifier (parallel to "my")
or *sometimes* as a full noun phrase (parallel to "mine").

We then have a three-way relation,
and although some may not prefer the terminology which immediately
follows, I trust with the examples they will know what I am referring to:

The triple relations:

(nominative pronoun; determiner genitive pronoun; possessive pronoun NP)

he :: his :: his
I :: my :: mine

are equivalent to the triple relation:

the man we met yesterday ::
:: the man we met yesterday's :: the man we met yesterday's

with some slippage that in certain contexts and styles,
in the last triple relation,
the first form may sometimes be used for the third form
(but with stylistic marking and awkwardness of different forms
for different speakers depending on additional details of the contexts...).
The third of the forms in each of the relations above was *not*
previously prominent in these discussions (except very briefly).

I still plead to our list:
Can we now stop trying to prove people are wrong in using
traditional terminology?  It meant what it in fact referred to,
and we all knew what it was intended by the author to refer to.
Still does refer to just what it did before,
not only for those who themselves use terms that way,
but *also* for those who understand the terms that way
while preferring themselves to use different terms!
(And just as Larry Trask has pointed out that "pronoun" is an
illogical term, because it refers to what are really "proNP"s,
yet that we still use it successfully, so it can be the case for
other traditional terminology.)

Can we please rule out of order on this list any messages which
go off into meta-analysis to prove someone wrong because
of the terms they used,
instead of dealing with the content of what we perfectly well
know they were saying?
I thought that was the policy which our moderator declared
sometime back?

Sincerely yours,
Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics

***

In response to Bob Whiting's ad-hominem, an incorrect one:
>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
>determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.

I may be *wrong* in some analysis I propose,
but I don't try to "slide" things "past" anyone.
Just the contrary, I tend to bring up counter-examples
even to my own beliefs!
People sometimes try to get me to shut up when we are on the same
team, precisely because I do that, because they don't want me to
present a more nuanced or balanced case.
I always try to see all sides and especially do not want to overstate
and have to retract something later!


From ECOLING at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:43:18 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:43:18 EST
Subject: Logical Gap
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.004318.EST.>

Larry Trask writes,
concerning his criteria for including words as potential early Basque
monosyllabic words:

>My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>particular phonological form.

I have no doubt that Trask believes this.
But it has been pointed out before that it does not follow.

There is a logical non-sequitur here, which is *one* of the core
difficulties in the entire discussion we have been having on this subject.

It is perfectly possible that criteria may be *stated* in words
none of which have the slightest thing to do with phonological form,
and yet, in the real world, the combination of those criteria have
some consequence which end up excluding some category
of vocabulary elements describable by a particular phonological
form, at least statistically.

(Statistically is for me systematically, especially when in quite
a number of cases the exclusions may reach near-complete
exclusion.
If Trask wishes to define "systemically" as meaning "100%",
then I would probably agree with him on his statement above;
but then he would be discussing a different question from the
one I was discussing, and we should not be continuing this
conversation.  Assuming Trask wishes to discuss what I was
discussing, since his message appears to be a response to what
I said, I continue...)

Here is an example of an exclusion which is an indirect consequence,
not explicitly stated in a set of criteria, yet a real exclusion nonetheless.
None of Trask's criteria refer explicitly or directly to verbs,
yet given the structure of Basque, in which as I understand Trask
no verbal word is monosyllabic (though verbal *roots* are),
his criteria do end up excluding all verbs.
In this case, we only need a single criterion, monosyllabicity of the word,
to end up excluding all verbs.  Yet "monosyllabicity of the word"
is a criterion which nowhere mentions anything directly related to
"verb".  The exclusion is indirect, because of something else,
a fact of verb structure (specific to, though not unique to, Basque).

In the case of a criterion based on early attestation,
there is nothing referring explicitly to excluding any particular
strata of vocabulary or individual lexical items,
yet an indirect consequence is that any strata of vocabulary
which are selectively disfavored for written attestation,
or any individual lexical items so disfavored,
will be statistically excluded.

So it can happen, through using a combination of criteria,
that several strata of vocabulary end up being excluded *statistically*
(all I have ever claimed) by Trask's criteria.
Since most of us know independently of Trask's criteria
that most or all living languages contain vocabulary of such strata,
it would normally be considered appropriate to include some of them
as candidates for reconstruction of any pattern which is expected
to have any sort of general validity for the language.
("general" does not mean "universal").

And any set of criteria which had the effect, direct or
indirect, of excluding such vocabulary strata systematically
(statistically), would be judged as a poor set of criteria.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics

***

An addendum:

Given the previous publication on this list of a very detailed message
by me listing 9 very specific points in which I argue it would be
better to modify Trask's general criteria for including and
for excluding potential words as reflecting ancient Basque,
the following statements by Trask seem exceedingly odd.

I refrain from repeating the nine specific items,
since they can be found in the archives.
The message was titled
"9 specifics on Including and excluding data"
and was posted on 30th October, 1999.
I have had in preparation for about a month a list of an
*additional* eight or so specific modifications which I argue would
improve such a set of criteria, numbers 10-17.
It will be sent to the IE list shortly.

These statements by Trask:

[LA]
>>  It is not that the long monomorphemic words have been generally lost,
>>  it is that Trask's criteria exclude them from his considering them as
>>  early Basque (this has been discussed in many other messages, one a
>>  cumulation of 9 ways in which his criteria might usefully be modified).
>
[LT]
>Oh, no -- not this again! ;-)

It's not going to go away.  There are responsible people
who disagree with Trask on what are linguistically justifiable criteria,
*even* for the goal Trask says he has set himself.
I believe that in stating the 9 (soon 17) specific modifications I have
proposed,
I am being *more conservative* in the sense of *more careful*
than Trask, careful not to jump to conclusions which have a
substantial probability of being incorrect.

>Lloyd, this is not true.  My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>particular phonological form.

Discussed above in the main portion of this message.

[LA]
>>  It is one respect in which the totality of Trask's criteria embody a
>> bias against certain vocabulary
>>  not justified by careful linguistic methodology.

[LT]
>And just what "careful linguistic methodology" would you put in place of
>my explicit criteria?
>
>Lloyd, I have asked you this question countless times now, and you have
>still refused to answer it.

Answered many times, in specifics.

***
[I interrupt here to insert a direct quotation from Larry Trask's message
of 9th December, 1999, in which Trask *admits* the comments were
specifics, though he had been contending they were only generalities,
not specifics.  Perhaps Larry has forgotten he agreed they were specifics.

Quote:

>OK.  Lloyd Anderson has raised a number of specific points concerning
>my criteria for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words.
>His posting is too long to address at one go, so I'll try to deal with it
>in a series of postings, one for each point raised.]
***

>You just keep muttering darkly

No, not muttering,
rather crafting careful responses, worded carefully.

>that there must be something wrong with my criteria,
>but you have *never* advanced any other
>explicit criteria.  Now have you?

Yes, I have.  In the message cited, and in many other messages.
Trask knows this.

>If you want to pursue this matter, will you *please* finally now spell
>out the criteria you think we should be using?
>Mine are on the table: where are yours?

Already did spell out specific modifications to Trask's criteria.
*Including* explicitly cases where
the best modification is to partly or wholly remove a criterion,
as wrong-headed at least when used as an absolute exclusionary
barrier rather than as part of a weighted set of criteria balanced
against each other.

Trask doesn't agree with them.
But that is quite another matter from claiming they
were not spelled out.

***

A tangent in Trask's message:

I am perfectly well aware that /tx/ is an affricate.
In the terminology I use, along with many other linguists,
affricates are considered or may be considered as a sub-class of stops.
I did so refer to them that way.
I do not care what Trask wishes to call affricates phonetically.
It has no bearing on any substantive differences of views at the moment.

Whether /txitxi/ (my error) or /txito/ (as Trask corrects the form),
there are two voiceless stops (in my terms)
and there are voiceless initial stops (in my terms),
and I believe Trask argues that (translated into those same terms)
voicless initial stops do not occur in native ancient Basque vocabulary.
(If we call some of them "affricates",
then we simply say that "stops or affricates" are excluded initially...?
Or did the statement of initial non-occurrence
apply only to voicless stops which are *not* affricated?).

(I think I stated in my first reference to the word for 'chick'
that I was not sure I had remembered the spelling right.
Trask states that it is /txito/ rather than /txitxi/.
Of course it is then no longer an example of apparent reduplication.
But that correction has no bearing on the main point I was making,
that a word of highly exceptional form, as Trask states,
was nevertheless quite plausibly a part of ancient Basque vocabulary
(a status he was inclined in this case not to deny,
even though it might stick out a mile).


From ECOLING at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:43:14 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:43:14 EST
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.004314.EST.>

The discussion of "criteria" when seeking candidate vocabulary
which descends from earlier stages of a language is clearly
relevant whenever we seek such vocabulary,
is is relevant to much more than Basque.
Most of the particular suggestions made also apply to more than just Basque.

This message contains additional material to support
a more sophisticated and nuanced set of techniques for selecting items
to include as potential monomorphemic Old Basque lexicon.
The core concept underlying all of these specific suggestions
for modifying Trask's criteria is that we are dealing with gradient
and fuzzy matters, matters of degree, ones not susceptible to
sharp yes-or-no decisions.  Though each criterion or perspective
by itself may give a clear result in special cases, it need not,
and the combination of criteria can give a complex of information
which we can weight different ways.  If we "tag" the items
with multiple scores in a computer database, we can then change
the weightings as seems appropriate to consider different hypotheses.

This message adds criteria 10-17 to the earlier message titled
"9 specifics on Including and excluding data"
sent on 30th October, 1999.

Larry Trask recently again challenged that he had not received
specific alternative suggestions for criteria for inclusion
of words when seeking ancient native monomorphemic lexical items
for Basque.  That statement is false on its face,
I simply refer to the message just mentioned from 30 October, 1999,
which should be in our archives, with the additions here.

And Trask's statement is also false on its face based on Trask's own
message of 9th December, 1999, in which he admitted that he had
received specific suggestions:

>OK.  Lloyd Anderson has raised a number of specific points concerning
>my criteria for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words.
>His posting is too long to address at one go, so I'll try to deal with it
>in a series of postings, one for each point raised.]

No need to go over the same ground again.

Let's start with a point of agreement:

>So, Lloyd, are you now agreeing to the following?

>   Expressive formations should be subject to no special treatment
>   at all, but must be treated just like all other words, according
>   to exactly the same criteria, whatever those are.

>Yes or no?

Of course I agree with this, and always did agree.
I have only protested against criteria which had biases against
expressives or other strata of vocabulary,
not advocated that we should have some a priori criteria
to include specifically expressives or any other words
even if they did not satisfy other *reasonable, legitimate, unbiased*
criteria.  I emphasize the latter part deliberately,
because criteria cannot stand as valid judges of other matters
unless the criteria themselves are first judged.

***

I'll continue here with principled, fully general criteria
which differ from Trask's:

***

10.  bias against longer words

Trask has stated the goals of his collection this way:

>native, ancient and monomorphemic lexical items.  That's all.
>I think I've been pretty explicit about this.

Yet in the same message where he stated this, he also
replied as follows:

[LA]
>> The exclusion of expressives,
>> *or systematically of any other group of words*
>> (such as the longer words, as noted above),
>> through any aspect of the sampling procedure,
>> would of course tend to invalidate such general validity.

[LT]
>No; not at all.  Polysyllabic words are excluded by definition: they are
>not relevant to my task.

I'll assume that was a typo, "polysyllabic" instead of "polymorphemic",
because otherwise polysyllabic words are *not* excluded by the definition
of goals just quoted.  They certainly are *not* excluded automatically
by any principles of reliable historical reconstruction!

***

11.  "polymorphemic" not intended synchronically

But it may not be a typo, it may rather reveal some interdependence of
criteria in Trask's thinking.
Assuredly, polysyllabic words are more likely to be polymorphemic,
and the skilled and knowledgeable analyst may be able to segment
many polysyllabic words into etymologizable parts.  Some of these
results must certainly reflect the psychological reality of the morphemes
for the speakers.
But if we take the concept seriously in a synchronic sense,
then we must recognize that also in ancient languages,
even proto-languages, there may be many words
which demonstrably once were morphemically composite,
which yet for the speakers of the proto-language were single morphemes.
Trask does not seem to recognize this problem.
Most or all languages we know of do contain historically polymorphemic
vocabulary items which are synchronically monomorphemic.
So we must be willing to reconstruct such words for any proto-language
also.  This is the error of over-analysis, over-segmentation.

Trask (in another message today) classes English "vixen" as
"Bimorphemic in English",
I do not understand a synchronic basis for his doing so.
It was polymorphemic at one time, but surely not in English now.
There is no other word in the American Heritage Dictionary beginning
with "vix-", and there is no English feminine ending "-en" sufficiently
salient
that I can think of a word with it right off hand, though that may be my
personal mental limitation of the moment.
(I could only think of "oxen", "oven", "coven", "maven", "raven",
"maiden".)
So "vixen" is not even as decomposible as the
famous "cranberry" where at least "-berry" is obvious.
This has been the pattern of Trask's remarks on a host of other items,
where he classes them as polymorphemic if he can *etymologize*
them as multiple morphemes, not if they are polymorphemic
in a sychronic analysis of the language itself.

That tends to exclude words illegitimately by my understanding
of the goals Trask has stated for himself.  As we use "polymorphemic"
more and more loosely, we make the restricted monomorphemic
set included by a set of criteria less and less representative of
the language as a whole.  Representativeness of the language as a whole
is of course not Trask's aim when he states his goal explicitly
including the criterion "monomorphemic".
But it is a relevant way to evaluate how he states his conclusions,
and it is my distinct impression that he very often states his goals
without that limitation, as if his results could then have a wider
validity, as if he had not restricted himself to monomorphemic words only.
Here is one, from Trask's message of 9th December, 1999,
quoted more fully elsewhere in this message today:

>for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words

Notice that this did *not* specify
"a plausible list of monomorphemic Pre-Basque words".
It might be inferred from context, and he has stated
the monomorphemic criterion elsewhere, but as I said,
I think he tends to drop that limitation, and therefore to
end of in effect claiming a wider validity of his eventual
conclusions than is warranted by the severe limitations
he imposes on his data.

***

12.  Reduplications are not polymorphemic unless the
unreduplicated form also occurs.
This is elementary.  The term "reduplication" is rather often
applied to words that are primary, merely because they have
the same consonant or even syllable as their first and second.
It is often applied to nursery words and expressive words.
But "dad", "mom", "mommy", "daddy", etc. are not polymorphemic,
by a careful use of the criteria for morpheme division.
Not even "mama", despite "ma" which seems synchronically
to be a shortening of "mama" not the reverse.
     Trask has not explicitly said, so far as I know, that
reduplications are polymorphemic, but I suspect he has tended
to think of them that way.  I'll be happy if this is not the case.

***

13.  Words in ancient Basque, vs. words descended from words
in ancient Basque?  Identity requirements popping up when only historical
descent is relevant

>Obviously expressive words hardly ever satisfy
>my criteria, from which the most appropriate conclusion appears to be
>that *these particular words* are not ancient.

[That is not the most appropriate conclusions
if the criteria are biased against expressives, even indirectly,
as i believe I have shown Trask's are]

>Of course, Pre-Basque
>doubtless possessed *some* expressive words, but there is no evidence to
>support a claim that these were identical to the modern ones.

Identity is not the requirement, surely.

Here again, a typo:  Presumably Trask means that they were not
the ancestors of the modern ones?  Because if identity is required,
we have yet another criterion introduced which was not implied by
his definition of goals, and which would further reduce the vocabulary
which he admits into his collections.  He *has* used this kind of
wording at other points, as in the discussion of whether a range
of forms which show partial resemblances to each other,
as for 'butterfly', warrant the assumption of some proto-form.
For 'butterfly', he argued there was too much variation,
that none of the forms was ancient.
That is not the relevant question, a relevant question is
rather whether any of the forms *descend from* antecedents,
which were part of Basque at an earlier stage.

This may seem like nit-picking, but I think it is not,
or I would not mention it.  I believe it is merely one of the
steps Trask takes which lead his sample to be rather unrepresentative,
not merely of ancient Basque, but even of ancient Basque
monomorphemic words, Trask's expressed goal.

Taking off from Trask's use of the word "modern" just above,
I do not accept any sharp temporal cutoff date
as a legitimate part of historical linguistic inquiries
in attempting to determine which words descend from
ancestors in their language, because of the demonstrable
occurrence of systematic biases in exclusion of some sorts
of items from written attestations, dependent on culture
and other factors...

On Basque words for 'badger', Trask today expressed
what I regard as a more inclusive attitude about historical descent
rather than identity of words,
though still excluding these words by their date of attestation.
After some considerable discussion of others' hypotheses, he says:

>Who knows?  Not sure what to do with this, but it looks too fishy to go
>straight into the list.  Anyway, not recorded before 1745, and therefore out,
>even though I agree at once that the numerous and peculiar regional variants
>point to a much older word.

The last clause is for me sufficient to justify study and inclusion
in any list of the best candidates.  Date of attestation by itself is a
very minor influence.  Even lack of regular sound correspondences
is very minor, given the knowledge that irregular historical descent
is not rare.

The same phrasing, applied to words for 'butterfly',
as I hope to show in future discussion of them,
after Trask has had his opportunity to comment on my first analysis,
would appropriately suggest that they "point to a much older word",
just as for words for 'badger'.  That discussion will of course
be based on the facts of the words for 'butterfly' and of the
patterns of sound changes and irregularities in Basque, etc..

***

14.  Use of patterns dominant in Basque to downgrade words
which do not fit the dominant patterns.

(This objection, pointing to an alternative to Trasks application
of his criteria, may have been part of the earlier list of nine,
though I do not at present recall that it was;
but because new concrete examples make it relevant,
I highlight it here.  It has at least new application now.)

One of Trask's objections to inclusion of words in his lists,
which influences him to regard them as loanwords or
inventions, is that no native Basque words have two voiceless
stops, or voiceless stops beginning the first syllable.
(I may not have stated that exactly right, but the general
point is clear.)

On Basque 'chick', which he points out is the only word
for a small animal (from a list) which is *not* formed with
the suffix -(k)ume 'offspring' and thus polymorphemic,
he writes:

>'chick' is the obviously imitative
>          <(t)xito> ~ <(t)xita> ~ <txitxa>.
>This last word will probably meet my
>criteria, but will stand out a mile.

Well, but if it is included, then at least that word
with two voicelss stops is presumptively part of ancient Basque
(if it meets other legitimate evaluations to a sufficient degree).
And if that one is included, then others with two voiceless stops
must not be downgraded on that basis, nor must it be argued
on that basis alone that they are non-native, borrowings or even
recent inventions.

But then one of the words for 'butterfly',
"pitxilota", is also a good candidate for inclusion.
Its four-syllable status does not by itself prove it to be
non-monomorphemic, though it may be.
Nor do the two voiceless stops prove it to be a loan.

***

15.  The use of mere suspicion to exclude items,
or of occurrence in neighboring languages,
even when absent from the closest relatives of the
neighboring languages which are not proximal to the
language of focus (Basque).

Trask writes, concerning "bill" (of bird) that the form
<moko>, variant <mosko> may possibly qualify on his other
criteria, but continues:

>But the widely held belief in a
>Romance origin will probably disqualify it.

A belief, no matter how widely held, should not be
considered relevant at all.  Evidence is relevant.
Perhaps Trask had some which he did not mention
because it did not seem germane or important at the moment.

But this may possibly go along with
Trask's exclusion of items which occur *only*
in Iberian Romance and in Basque.
For such a distribution of attestations, lacking any other evidence,
I think standard linguistic methodology dictates a conclusion
that the item was in early Basque and borrowed into Romance,
rather than the other way round;
or else perhaps in a "substrate", borrowed into both Ibero-Romance
and Basque, but with no reason to prefer this second explanation.
As has been pointed out by careful historical linguists,
supposed substrates should not be appealed to without direct
evidence of their existence, they are a wildcard.

***

16.  In addition to all the other restrictions, there is an implicit one
against verbs, because

>1. No ancient Basque verb is monomorphemic.
>A native verbal root is a bound morpheme,
>and hence no ancient verb will make my list.

While there is certainly nothing wrong with Trask seeking
the canonical forms of native ancient monomorphemic
lexical items, it would be appropriate to join any conclusions
drawn with the point that of course no verbs are included at all.
So the validity of any conclusion becomes yet again more
narrowly limited.
Trask has been explicit about this fact of Basque verbs
this is really a point about evaluating
whether the results of Trask's criteria can be representative
of an interesting portion of Basque.  Every restriction of
course reduces the range of any conclusions.  The exclusion
of verbs also does so, whether specified explicitly or not.

It is well known that verbs can have different canonical forms
from non-verbs, in some languages, so it is important to point
out very prominently this kind of exclusion of verbs,
if one is studying canonical forms.
I do not wish to claim more on this point than literally just that.

***

17.
This is in one sense not a new criterion,
but in another sense it is, and it is convenient to refer to it
with a new number.  It is an example of one noted long ago.
Range of distribution among dialects should be *relative to* the
number of dialects which can be included in the sample.
One reason a dialect cannot be included is that no word was
recorded for the concept in question.
Another reason, almost the same one in effect,
is that a loanword has replaced whatever the dialect would have
had otherwise.  The last point is what makes this item a new item.
Trask writes:

>For example, 'pine tree' is the Latino-Romance loan <pinu>
>almost everywhere, while the eastern dialect Roncalese has <ler>
>and its neighbor Zuberoan has <leher> in some varieties.
>It is highly possible that <leher> ~ <ler> represents an indigenous
>word displaced almost everywhere by the loan word,
>but I can't be sure of this, and the word does not qualify for
>inclusion.

Admittedly any item could be better if attested in more rather than
fewer dialects, but in this case, the form <leher> ~ <ler>
is attested in 100% of the dialects where there is no loanword <pinu>.
100% is a rather high number.  Very different from a case in which
a non-loanword is attested in place of <pinu>.

The problem of criteria for the "best",
but not really meaning the "best", recurs here.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sat Mar  4 03:52:40 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:52:40 -0500
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.225240.0500.>

Marc Pierce wrote:

> Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

There seems to be one under construction at
<http://www.winter-verlag-hd.de/>.  For now they are referring visitors
to <http://www.geist.de/>.

Brian M. Scott


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sat Mar  4 03:43:10 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:43:10 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.224310.0500.>

[ moderator snip ]

try Kipling's "The Truce of the Bear" (extracts)

                                    1898
 .....................

"Two long marches to northward, at the fall of the second night,
I came on mine enemy Adam-zad all panting from his flight.
There was a charge in the musket -- pricked and primed was the pan --
My  finger crooked on the trigger -- when he reared up like a man.

"Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer,
Making his supplication rose Adam-zad the Bear!
I looked at the swaying shoulders, at the paunch's swag and swing,
And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous, pleading thing.

"Touched witth pity and wonder, I did not fire then . . .
I have looked no more on women -- I have walked no more with men.
Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands that pray --
>From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!

"Sudden, silent, and savage, searing as flame the blow --
Faceless I fell before his feet, fifty summers ago.
I heard him grunt and chuckle -- I heard him pass to his den.
He left me blind to the darkened years and the little mercy of men.
.......

"Rouse him at noon in the bushes, follow and press him hard --
Not for his ragings and roarings flinch ye from Adam-zad.

"But (pay, and I put back the bandage) this is the time to fear,
When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near;
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of his little, swinish eyes;

"When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer
That is the time of peril -- the time of the Truce of the Bear!"

.....

Over and over the story, ending as he began: --
"There is no trnce with Adam-zad, the Bear that looks like a Man!"


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 16:43:44 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:43:44 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <e2.1e4a091.25f0c04f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.174344.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>

>-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
>"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.

I don't see how that word can be related.  G&I give walwa-,
walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian walwa-, but
that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not
aware of a development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes).

The Anatolian word is much more likely to be related (as wa-lwa-
< *lwa-l(e)wa- ?) to the general Eastern Mediterranean word for
"lion", Egyptian <rw> (< *lw), Kartvelian *lom-, Semitic *labu?at
("lioness").  As to Greek-Latin/Germanic-Slavic *lew-, G&I argue
with some justification against the Germanic > Slavic word being
< Latin, although I probably wouldn't go as far as establishing a
PIE *lew- "lion" (well maybe, if Toch. <lu> "wild animal" is
another reflex).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat Mar  4 16:54:45 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:54:45 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.175445.0100.>

There's a lot of interesting stuff in Steve's message, and I only want to
throw in a tiny remark:

>Two schools of thought here - one says the bear stood for dread.  The other
>says that the bear stood for a warm bear skin -

Well, the taboo coin has two sides: one is: tabooize any names for
things/animals/neighbours you fear, and, do so for those who want to get
hold of. *If* you specialize in bear hunting, and *if* you have the brains
to outsmart and the weapons to barbecue Old Misha, and *if* you have
reasons to believe that he might be in the know about that, then, well,
you'd *again* rather use a cover term for him, since, if the smaller furry
creatures of the forest whisper in his ears what they overheard when near
your village, viz. that you and your chums are contemplating to have a
really juicy piece of bear-paw for dinner, followed by some first-class
skinning (no, the other way round) he might chose to retreat into the
thicket, spoiling your feast.

One of the bases for lexical taboo is thus: to avoid that the creature in
question hears its "real" name mentioned and is able to draw any
conclusions from that. It works both ways, and both schools of thought can
be happy with it.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar  4 11:00:04 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 11:00:04 -0000
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.110004.0000.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 7:14 AM

[JS]

[ moderator snip ]

> Of course, the fact that there's no clear PIE root for "lion" is also
> indicative, since in Bronze Age and neolithic times lions were known all
> across Greece, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East, and into India.

[PR]
I am not convinced that there is no PIE root for 'lion'.

For a few thoughts on the subject, some readers may want to visit:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/apollo.htm

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Sat Mar  4 22:55:16 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:55:16 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.155516.0700.>

[Steve Long wrote]

> Not to rile anyone but just to express a minority opinion in the
> short time I'm allowed lately -

> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

...

> My little suggestion here is again that brown did not give its name to the
> bear, but that the bear's fur gave its name to brown.

Being an outsider to serious PIE work, where to the earliest attested
Indo-European languages and PIE fall on the Berlin and Kay color scale?
This is an important thing to know before discussing whether 'bear' >
'brown' or vice versa.  Ultimately, 'brown' should be traced to something
non-color (since it's a VERY late color term to develop), but did this
happen before, during, or after PIE?  If there isn't a full range of
white/light, black/dark, red, yellow, green, and blue, then we can't really
expect 'brown' and perhaps the PIE term reconstructed 'brown' might better
be reconstructed 'bear' with the understanding that the development of
'bear-colored' to 'brown' might be very early.  I'm just guessing, so would
one of the real Indo-Europeanists like to factualize the discussion?  (I'm
in a creative derivational mood today. :-)).

> I suspect that - as today - most folks back then had more contact with the
> by-products of wild animals than they did with the animals themselves -
> witness the large number of wild fauna remains at Troy until it
> appears the
> local wild fauna ran out.  And perhaps most folks back then would have had
> more contact with bears by way of bearskins than by way of mortal personal
> experiences with bears.

Your (longer) discussion on this matter assumes that PIE was more urbanized
than not.  I must disagree.  While there was a certain amount of agriculture
and pastoralism involved, the time dates and locations for PIE suggest a
culture much more closely tied to the environment than modern communities in
the Middle East.  Among hunting peoples around the world, there is virtually
no one in a community who has not seen a large local predator.  Stories from
the North American frontier are replete with encounters with bears by
virtually every adult in a tribe or community.  During the earliest layers
of PIE, this would undoubtedly be more true than not.  You also argue that
fear is not so great among those who are not in regular community-wide
contact with the source of that fear.  Witness, however, the continued human
revulsion to snakes, yet how many urban Americans have never even seen a
garter snake, let alone a Mohave Rattlesnake (the most aggressive and
poisonous of the bunch)?  However, I do agree that prolonged non-exposure
does lead to a reduction of the immediate caution and fear, but that this
reduction requires urbanization and not just agricultural communities.
While most modern urbanized Americans understand on an intellectual level
the danger posed by a female grizzly with cubs, they still picture her in
the light of Yogi, or Smokey, or Baloo.  Most of the grizzly maulings and
bison gorings that occur each year out here in the Yellowstone and Glacier
country are performed on city people.  Rural people know better.  They
aren't hunter/gatherers, but being a part of an agricultural community close
to wild country is enough contact to maintain healthy fear and respect,
whether one has ever actually seen the creature or not.  One of my
colleagues here in the English department specializes in the literature of
monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.).  His conclusion is this very thing,
that fearsome wild creatures and monsters tend to become more 'tame' the
more urban the environment, but that there is a distinct difference in the
level of the "Barnification of Tyrannosaurus Rex" and the "Count
Choculization of Dracula" in urban areas versus rural areas.  (For the
non-Americans here, "Barney" is a friendly purple T. rex with straight white
herbivore teeth that hosts a preschooler afternoon show on television and
"Count Chocula" is the name of a chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal made by
General Mills [it's the chocolate version of the fruit-flavored
"Frankenberry"].)

To reiterate my earlier questions, where do the earliest IE languages stand
on the Berlin and Kay scale?  Where does PIE stand?

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Sun Mar  5 01:11:53 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 20:11:53 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.201153.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
perhaps?

>Although bears are big and dangerous, you are talking here about people whose
>ancestors seemed to make a living out of hunting some big, angry things.

-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

>Our own modern experience has been been that we've eaten or worn more fox,
>sable, buffalo, mink, beaver, alligator, shrimp, salmon, tuna and crayfish
>than we'd ever see alive.

-- our own modern experience is of being urbanites and non-farmers, which
makes us utterly un-typical of human beings before this century.

Until historically recent times, the overwhelming majority of human beings
spent their time finding their own food, and making most of their everyday
clothing, housing and tools.


From sarima at friesen.net  Sun Mar  5 01:56:48 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:56:48 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.175648.0800.>

At 02:16 AM 3/3/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
>bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
>artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
>north star.

Umm, there is a problem with that: Polaris was NOT the pole star in Homer's
day!  In fact it wasn't even the pole start in Roman times!

Now, it is true that the constellations called the Big and Little Bear have
always been northerly, but they have not always incorporated the celestial
north pole.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Mon Mar  6 07:43:09 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 09:43:09 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.094309.0200.>

[Steve Long:]
(snip)
> And that may be why bears are mostly called otherwise.  Bearskins.  And the
> word for bearskin may have become one word for brown.
(snip)

There's a similar semantic shift in e.g. Finnish puna 'red color' <
< *'fur' (its cognates mean 'hair', 'fur', 'wool').

 - Ante Aikio


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Mon Mar  6 10:30:21 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 12:30:21 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e5c6db9c6e@[212.30.94.240]>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.123021.0200.>

[I wrote:]
>E.g. Finnish has karhu 'bear' < karhea 'coarse' (referring to fur)

[Xavier Delamarre:]

> As for Finnish _karhu_, I have proposed (_Historische Sprachforschung_ 105,
> 1992, pp 151-54) that it could be a loan from a Proto-Aryan form
> _*harkSas_, itself from IE _*h2rtk'os_, with hardening of the laryngeal
> (very much like _kana_ 'chicken' from Germanic _*xana_, or _teke_ 'to do'
> from IE _*dheH1-_) and  regular outcome of Uralic and Aryan -kS- into _h_,
> in Baltic Finnish (O.Ind. _makSa:_ 'fly' = Mordvin _mekS_ = Finn.
> _mehi(lainen)_ 'bee'). Mentioned by Szemerényi in his _Introduction to IE
> Ling._, 53.

I was not aware of this etymology. It sounds phonologically quite
well possible; the only thing one could object to is Aryan *-as > Finnic
*-u (why not Finnish karhas : karhaa- ?). But this is not a big problem, I
guess - e.g., back-formation of non-attested karhas seems possible.

PU *kS > Finnish h is regular, but I don't think it's necessary to
assume *kS here. Aryan *rkS > Pre-Finnish *rS > Finnish rh is equally
possible, since three-conconant clusters are a relatively late development
in Uralic.

> The etymology of _karhu_ by _karhea_ 'coarse' (J. Mägiste, _Estn. Etym.
> Wörtb._, followed by Itkonen & Alii, _Suomen Sanojen Alkuperä_) is
> probably a 'popular etymology'.

I'd still see it as a possibility. But the loan etymology sounds quite
well argumented.

> The existence in Finnish (and Uralic) of very archaic loans from various IE
> strata (late IE, Aryan, Baltic, Germanic etc), which are, so to say,
> 'fossilised' in the language, is in my view the strongest argument for a
> Eurasian Urheimat.

I consider them an argument against e.g. the Anatolian Urheimat of
IE. "Eurasian" is a wide concept - what do you mean, more precisely?

> I am presently dealing with Old Celtic lexicography where, as is well
> known, the word for 'bull' is _taruos_ (Gaulish _taruos_, O.Ir. _tarb_
> etc.) a metathesised form of IE _*tauros_, maybe on the analogy of _caruos_
> 'deer'. The funny thing is that we have a Finnish word _tarvas_ designating
> big cervidae, which shows the same metathesis as Celtic (whereas there is
> none in Aryan, Baltic & Germanic). But it may be pure coincidence or we
> have to postulate that the loan was made somewhere in present Russia,
> before (Proto-)Celts entered Central Europe.

The Finnish metathesis is independent of the Celtic one. Actually,
Pre-Finnish *wr > Finnic / Finnish rv seems to be a regular sound law -
there are no counterexamples, and several Baltic loan words have undergone
the same sound shift (e.g. Finnish torvi 'horn (instrument)', Finnish
karva 'hair (not on head)', cf. Lithuanian taure~, gau~ras). Finnish
tarvas is thus < *tawras < Baltic.

Regards,

Ante Aikio


From rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu  Sat Mar  4 05:54:47 2000
From: rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu (rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 00:54:47 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.005447.0500.>

John Frauzel wrote:
>At 09:17 AM 3/1/00 -0600, Carol Justus wrote:
>>The earliest attested IE prayers don't usually ask for forgiveness
>>but are more like Menelaos's prayer to Zeus for guiding his spear so
>>that he will kill Paris or Chryses' to Apollo to make Agamemnon's
>>army pay for Agamemnon's insults. Has anyone found when the concept
>>of sin, hence forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

>It's certainly common in Indic tradition. The "house of clay" hymn,
>RV 7:89, ends "If we humans have committed some offence against the
>race of the gods, O Varun.a, or through carelessness have violated
>your laws, do not injure us, O god, for that sin." (O'Flaherty's
>translation).

These lines from George Hart's "The Nature of Tamil Devotion" (in
"Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, eds. Deshpande and Hook, 1979) may be
of some relevance:

'So prominent is this consciousness of sin among the Tamil bhakti
poets... On the other hand, the awareness of sin is notable for its
almost complete absence in premedieval North India.  Wendy O'Flaherty
writes, "There are some striking exception examples of a true sense of
sin and repentance in [classical] Hinduism: some Rig-Vedic hymns to
Varuna, some poems of Tamil Saivism, and a [Sanskrit] verse still
recited by many sophisticated Hindus today: "Evil am I, evil are my
deeds".  But these are outweighed a thousandfold by instances of sin
regarded as the fault of God or nature.  Evil is not primarily what we
do; it is what we do not wish to have done to us.'

The rest of the article is an extremely interesting study of the
mapping of "high" (Sanskritic) devotion onto the indigenous Tamil
varieties.

Might we postulate 1) that while sin may occur more frequently the
Indian (Indo-Iranian?) tradition than in the Greek, it is still
exceptional when it does; and 2) as a concept there, it may have
leached in from Dravidian traditions where it is not only common but
basic?

An Iranian perspective would probably be valuable here.  It would be
interesting if the Gathas parallelled the Rig Veda but without the
concept of sin -- sort of like the parallels between the languages
that stop short at retroflex consonants.

Disclaimer: I am not a student of any of this.

Regards,
Rohan.


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Sat Mar  4 14:00:03 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 14:00:03 +0000
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <c3.277d234.25f0b4d9@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.140003.0000.>

At 1:25 EST yesterday morning, Joat Simeon <JoatSimeon at aol.com> wrote:
>>sonno3 at hotmail.com writes:
>>The largest percentage of Brittonic elements are in Western England,
>>including Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire as well as Shropshire,
>>Worcestershire, North East Herefordshire, Western Gloucestershire and, of
>>course, Devon and Cornwall.

>-- true, the process of Germanization seems to have been both slower and
>less complete in these western areas (Cornish surviving into the 17th
>century, and the provisions for "Welsh" persons in the early Wessex law
>codes).

>Even there, however, there are placename features which show
>incomprehension -- besides the "river river" ones, there are the "hill
>hills".

[and at 19:39 PST on Thu, 02 Mar 2000 Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net>
wrote:
>And then there is the place called (after translation) "Hillhill Hill".

Whoa, again, and back to methodology and the quality of the argument.

One of the hill-hill-hill examples is close to the bald hill (not hill
bald) example.

I suppose that the bald hill (ie British) rather than hill bald (ie Welsh)
name might be prayed in aid as proof of limited or non understanding, but
bear in mind that Glasgow (with a body of speakers of the language which
gave the city its name resident there throughout, though changing from all
the residents to a minority of incomers over the period) has the same
manner of formation and has retained it for 1,500 odd years, and that there
is a community in Powys not far from Offa's Dyke which is called Glascwm,
though you may elsewhere find Brynglas, iirc.

We should not suppose that place names remain transparent, or more
precisely are heard transparently.

One 'hill-hill' is in or adjoins what was until the 19th century a
Welsh-speaking area (it's on the English side of the border, but Welsh was
spoken on both sides not far away (Oswestry/Croes Oswallt), not sure about
the area east of Trallwng.Welshpool).  The second 'hill' in the Bredon
group of names (of which four or five come to mind straightaway without
looking them up, Somerset 'Brendon', Worcs 'Bredon' and 'Breedon', Salop
'Breidden', Leics 'Breedon') could be British or Germanic (dinas in Mod
Welsh is 'city';
Clifton Downs in Bristol, North and South Downs in Surrey/Sussex/Kent &c
are presumable OE)

I've already disposed of the 'river river' claim.  And people are happy to
speak about 'Lake Windermere', 'Lake Derwentwater' and so forth (thought
the OS map mames have no 'Lake', and it's common to comment that there is
only one lake in the Lake District - Bassenthwaite Lake, but that's by the
by).

>You often get these types of names in situations of limited bilingualism.

That is certainly true, but that is not a transitive proposition, and no
evidence that the names in western England (or indeed on the extreme SE
corner of GB at *Dubra:s > Dover

>One can imagine a Saxon grunting out something and pointing, at which the
>bewildered Briton says "That's >the _river_," or "That's the _hill_".

We can each imagine what we like, but there's no evidence it's what
happened here, and there are place names which are transparently Welsh in
modern Welsh, as well as the calques where the English names may have
replaced a Welsh one with the same or a similar meaning (eg *yr Helynau ->
Wich) and hybrids where there are elements of both Celtic and Germanic and
they are not repetitious.

And why on earth should a Briton tell a Saxon pointing at a nearby hill,
'That's a hill'?

As Tony Andrewes (I think - it may have been the AH don at Trinity and not
the professor at New College) said of the C8-ish BCE bucket from Laconia
with the inscription 'Alpheiou eimi' (or whatever the Arcadian/Doric/Elian
form of the words should be, claimed to have the name of a river on it, 'it
doesn't hold water'.

><snip>

Gordon Selway
< gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Sat Mar  4 16:03:19 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 10:03:19 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.100319.0600.>

>It's certainly common in Indic tradition. The "house of clay" hymn, RV
>7:89, ends "If we humans have committed some offence against the race of
>the gods, O Varun.a, or through carelessness have violated your laws, do
>not injure us, O god, for that sin." (O'Flaherty's translation). Sin might
>be an unfortunate translation for 'enas', although Grassmann does give as
>meanings Frevel, Suende, Bedraengnis, Unglueck (originally Gewalttat). But
>the concept is not that far removed. And there are dozens of RV hymns with
>formulaic verses, to various gods, "If we have offended you in a or b or c,
>please don't x or y or z."

>This does seem to be much more common in the Indo-Iranian tradition that in
>the Greek. In fact I can't think of anything comparable in Greek.

>John Frauzel  Phone 520 579-3235
>                Fax 520 579-9780

Thank you for pointing me in the direction of these passages. In Hittite
too there is a lot of emphasis on not performing the ritual correctly, and
with Mursili's plague prayers a recognition that the gods are punishing
them for errors, but part of the prayer theme is that Mursili doesn't know
why the punishment continues. Hittite wastai- 'make a mistake' (often
translated as 'sin') not quite the same thing as sin, which would seem to
be related more closely to personal (knowing) responsibility and resultant
guilt. With Zarathustra and the dichotomy between good and evil, there
seems to be a basis for what we have come to know as 'sin' associated with
guilt, although as late as the Biblical Job and its Babylonian parallel
(Ludlul bel nemeki 'Let me praise the lord of wisdom' ca. 700 BC ?), there
is a sort of rejection of a necessary connection between deeds and
punishments.

As has been pointed out in the discussions of dating and contact, there
were historical periods of contact between the Hittites and the
Indo-Iranian Mitanni perhaps as early as 1500 BC, certainly by 1400 BC.
Zarathustra's Iranian then represented a religious reform which had an
impact on their Near Eastern neighbors as well. If the Vedic notion of
violation of divinely prescribed ritual was more like the Hittite and less
like later guilt associations, we should find datable IE vocabulary to
distinguish these, datable vocabulary that might help with the distinctions
that Neu, Meid, Polome, and others have drawn between old peripheral
retentions (between e.g., Germanic and Anatolian) and newer shared
isoglosses like those among Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Italic, and Celtic.
What about words for 'sin', 'guilt', and 'violation', for example?

Thanks again for the Vedic passage,

Carol Justus


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar  3 11:08:20 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 06:08:20 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.060820.0500.>

> Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence
> forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

Rgveda, book 7 has some prayers for forgiveness addressed to Varuna.
These are considred to be later hymns but not the latest hymns of the
RV. I am not sure of the Avesta. So, unless we have Hittite prayers,
RV/Avesta would be the oldest.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar  5 13:11:38 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 14:11:38 +0100
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
In-Reply-To: <v01540b04b4e2e2d49b6b@[128.83.254.24]>
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.141138.0100.>

cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>Is there some compelling reason for rejecting Edgar Polome's (JIES 22
>[1994] 289-305] with references) linguistic arguments (based on earlier
>studies as well) for an initial closer link between Germanic and Baltic,
>but Slavic and Iranian, then a movement of Slavic closer to Baltic with
>Germanic moving closer to Italic, then when Italic tribes moved south into
>Italy, closer contact between Celtic and Germanic? This would not imply an
>original unity but successive post-PIE areal contacts at different stages
>of cultural development.

One of course cannot reject what one hasn't seen.

I could be wrong, but my own impression is that the
Slavic-Iranian contacts are relatively recent (much like the
Germanic-Celtic ones).  Indeed the Scythians appear late in the
western steppe region.  It largely depends on whether Cimmerian
was an Iranian language or not (if Hamp's identification of a
"Cimmerian" substrate in Slavic is correct, it definitely wasn't
[*bh > p, *p > b]).

[Aha, Hamp (sometimes) uses H-sub_a to denote H2 (or is it @2?)]

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Mon Mar  6 07:19:00 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 12:49:00 +0530
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.124900.0530.>

There must be some

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, 03 March, 2000 12:09 PM

Joat Simeon wrote on 3 March 2000:

>> mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>> Based on the differentiation of the IE languages as attested ca. 1500 BC
>> (Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek and Hittite), any date within the range
>> 5500-3500 is absolutely reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl. >>

> -- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar; with a knowledge
> of one language and of the sound-shifts, you can trace the general meaning of
> a text in the other language.  There are even common elements in things like
> poetic kennings.  They're more similar than modern standard German and
> English, comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
> the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those are unusually
> conservative.

> Looking at those two examples, one would assume something in the 500-1500
> year range for last-common-ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek.

> Granted, Hittite is more differentiated.  However, the example of the _other_
> early IE languages, when we get some records -- early Latin, for instance, or
> the reconstructed forms of Proto-Germanic or Proto-Celtic or Proto-Tocharian
> -- show that this is an exceptional case.

> As of their earliest attestation, all the other IE languages with the
> _exception_ of the Anatolian group show divergences not much earlier than the
> Greek-Indo-Iranian.

> So if the ancestors of Sanskrit and Greek parted company sometime between
> 2000 BCE and 3000 BCE, which seems reasonable, then the ancestor of, say,
> Latin and the others must have done so only a little earlier.

I do not see how what you wrote here is tenable. Mycenean Greek, as far as I
know, is only known from Linear B texts, which can only be read (tentatively
in many cases) because of likely cognates in later versions of Greek, which
is so well known. The writing system of Linear B is so difficult that
normally we cannot distinguish among the three series of stops, final -s (of
rather great importance in Greek) is not shown, etc. etc. Under these
circumstances, I don't understand how it can be stated that Mycenean Greek
and Vedic Sanskrit are "extremely similar". How can we possibly know? In any
case, most of the extant Linear B texts are inventories and palace accounts,
hardly comparable to Vedic texts.

I know that there are many structural similarities between Homer's Greek and
Vedic Sanskrit, but even there I doubt that it is possible to read
continuous text in one, if you only know the other.

Any Classical scholars or Sanskrit experts out there who could comment?

Sincerely,

Gabor Sandi


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 14:56:40 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:56:40 +0100
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <9b.22c9611.25f0bc9c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.155640.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>>Anyway, for what it's worth, 500 years for me is Dutch and Afrikaans

>-- 500 is much too long for that example.

That's OK.  Subjective valorations of differences between
languages/dialects can't be made with a granularity smaller than
500 years or so (even that may be too fine).

>>I think (Vedic) Sanskrit and (Mycenaean) Greek are further apart
>>than that.  I'd say Vedic Skt. and Gathic Avestan comes close to
>>about 500 years.

>-- much closer.  Vedic and Avestan are dialects of the same language for all
>practical purposes; similar to the differences between, say, Yorkshire
>dialect and Texan, or Standard English and Cockney.

I don't know enough Gathic Avestan (or Yorkshire dialect) to
decide (and my Vedic Sanskrit and Texan aren't that much better
either).  Indo-Aryan and Iranian must have lost most contact at
least 500 years before the earliest texts on historical grounds
(not that there's much consensus on the historical trajectories
or even the dating of the earliest texts).  A subjective
assessment of the differences and commonalities between Vedic and
Gathic can't pin it down to anything more exact than "about 500
years" either (which means that it could just as easily be 200
years as it could be 800 years).  Within Proto-Indo-Iranian, the
dialects ancestral to Indo-Aryan may have been diverging from
those ancestral to Iranian for as long as there was a
Proto-Indo-Iranian (which would add another millennium or so to
give 1500 years of divergence), while in other respects
Indo-Aryan and Iranian may have been sharing isoglosses even
after the Indo-Aryans crossed over into the Indian subcontinent
(some amount of contact may have been retained).

Northumbrian was already a distinct dialect in OE times, so here
too in some respects the divergence is almost 1500 years old,
while in others it hasn't started yet.  Dating "dialects" (in the
sense of speech communities speaking languages having a common
origin and which have remained in contact throughout) is almost
impossible.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Mar  6 11:04:41 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 06:04:41 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.060441.EST.>

In a message dated 3/2/2000 4:29:38 AM, Rich Alderson quoted me:
> Is this differentiation is quantifiable?  Are you sure it works in your
> favor?....
> Following Renfrew, roughly 4000 years separates non-Anatolian PIE from
> Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin (500BC).  How
> 'differentiated' are those three languages?  On a scale of 1 to 10?

And then wrote:
>>Now, to me, and apparently to Mr. Stirling, this is a challenge to state how
>>easily these three languages are recognized as being related to one another.
>>Nothing in the query stands out as asking for "the time of separation" of
>>these languages,...

Well, even my quote given above includes a pretty good indication of what
kind of difference I was talking about <<roughly 4000 years separates
non-Anatolian PIE from Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin
(500BC)>>.

And of course Mr Stirling has continuously used selective examples of IEness
to somehow give dates of separation.  None of these examples have proved
anything about absolute dating and much less any absolute statements about
IE's final unity - which is after all the subject of this thread.

It's blindingly obvious that 'agnis/ignis' does not represent the typical
difference between Latin and Sanskrit.  And when you compare this "look how
similar" approach to what geologists, biologists and yes archaeologists
consider credible time measurement, it does not come off as particularly
viable.

Going back in the archives, one will see that my point has always been about
how clear the evidence was against Renfrew's dates.  I cannot take any of Mr.
Stirling's arguments about archaeological dating seriously.  They are just
oftern as not outright incorrect.  Go back to the beginning of this thread,
and you'll see that the first arguments against Renfrew were all based on
paleolinguistic dating of archaeological subjects.  Every single one of those
arguments is either weak or simply now wrong.  Everytime I dig into one I
find there's nothing there.  (With the possible exception of an argument that
a list member sent to me privately that may date the wheel in fact to some
stage of PIE.)

The other argument against Renfrew's dates is the supposed correlation
between differences in unreconstructed languages and the time those
differences represent.

I respect Rich Alderson's impressions of "time/differentiation" measures
(Hittite to Mycenaean/Sanskrit = 500years) as I do Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
([The difference between] "Hittite and either M.Greek or V.Sanskrit for me is
definitely 2000 years or more.").  But I really don't have to choose.

You see, my guess has always been that there is NOTHING in comparative
linguistics that in some scientific way clearly DISPROVES Renfrew's dates.
And although professional impressions have weight, they cannot be dispositive
on scientific issues.  Nothing so far has scientifically disproven Renfrew's
dates.

And despite what has been written on this last any number of times - advising
me to read textbooks and such - I haven't found a single instance of anything
resembling an objective, reproducible method of measuring time/difference in
languages.  If it is an art, that is fine.  But then the objection to
Renfrew's dates are artistic, not scientific.  (I have found exceptions to
what I've just written in the textbooks, but they all deal with
glottochronology - e.g., Robert Lee's formula for calculating 'time depth'
given by Lehmann (1992, p.176) at least attempts to quantify elements and
just as importantly offers reproducibility and a measure of possible error -
requirements these days in real science.)

In this context, the persistent use of examples of cognates to prove some
kind of time relationship is very troubling.  It's basic problem is
demonstrated - just as an example - in the post below:

In a message dated 2/25/2000 7:04:34 PM, rao.3 at osu.edu quoted:
>"Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
>> I know how similar cognate words are in Hittite and Sanskrit.
>>  After one abstracts out the differences in writing systems, they
>> are very little different at all.  Indeed, if the phonetic differences
>> were all there were, they would be more like dialect variants of
>> one language.... - much like the fact that in my dialect of English, "worm"
>> is pronounced almost identically to the reconstructed
>> PIE root it derives from [*wrm] - sans endings).

Here the author is saying that stripped of writing systems and if "the
phonetic differences were all there," THE COGNATES in Sanskit and Hittite
would sound not different than in two "dialect variants."  Of course in other
messages, the same author has also pointed out there is a 'dearth of
cognates' in Hittite, raising the question of how much of Hittite he is
comparing to Sanskrit.  Do the amount of cognates count against time?  What
about the non-cognates, do they count in easuring time?

But more importantly what do these cognates say about time differentation?
In the very same post, he tells us how much these cognates can change -

<<...much like the fact that in my dialect of English, "worm" is pronounced
almost identically to the reconstructed PIE root it derives from [*wrm]>>

5000-7000 years and the 'cognate' sounds the same?  What does that tell us
about the use of cognates to indicate time and change correlations?  How long
does it take agnis/ignis to stop sounding a lot like "ignite" in modern
English or "ognik" in modern Slavic?  This is like clocking something with a
watch that isn't running.

When I brought up the fact that its the differences that should be measured
and that agnis/ignis does not occur in Mycenaean or Hittite and that thay is
the key difference, I got the following reply:

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:48:36 -0800, Rich Alderson wrote:
<<The answer to the question *as posed* is "Within the bounds of phonological
change in the individual languages, yes, Mycenaean and Hittite decline their
words for 'fire' similarly to Latin and Sanskrit. That is one of the defining
characteristics of the IE family, after all."

But that's not what you meant to ask, is it?>>

I'll take that as a measure of time/difference, if by thae above it was meant
that the 'phonological change in the individual languages' was going to be
equated to a reproducible, objective meausre of time and change in languages.
 Yes, that is what I meant to ask.

And the next question I'd have is how long does it take to come up with an
-xi conjugation - which I understand to be a real difference between Hittite
and the languages it is being compared to.

In the same post, I was quoted:
>> Well, it seems that Anatolian is in the picture when the evidence helps, but
>> x.not when it doesn't.

The defense offered was:

>But that's the way of *all* evidence in *every* discipline:  If there's
>nothing to be said by a particular witness, you don't bother to call her to
>the stand.

Unfortunately, that is not true when the witness has contrary evidence to
offer.  In many disciplines, failing to call her might then be considered
falsifying.  In 1978, I saw two economists censured and fined in federal
court for failing to mention contradicting evidence in their affidavits
before an appeals court.

There is much contradictory evidence here.  And as I said above, the position
I've taken doesn't require me to take sides.  I'm only contradicting the
statement that Renfrew's dates are 'impossible' given the linguistic
evidence.  At this point I can say that certainly is not true, by any
scientific standard.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Mar  4 07:23:34 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 02:23:34 EST
Subject: Assumptions in Computing phylogenies
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.022334.EST.>

>>Actually, properly done, cladistic analysis *determines* which
>>characters are innovations and which are retentions.

In a message dated 3/1/2000 7:27:04 PM, Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de replied:
>.. In my humble understanding it is vice versa.
>The biologist or linguist decides which features are retentions vs.
>innovations, and the cladistic algorithm computes the 'optimal' tree. See
>my parallel mail for a textbook on the topic.
>But perhaps it is a misunderstanding.

Well, as far as biology is concerned, cladistics is about finding out what
attributes count and which don't.

If you've noticed that some of our friends here on the list in discussing
time, have put a lot of emphasis on cognates and other genetic features.
This I think reflects one logical approach to the problem.  Proceeding on the
idea that if a mass of the most genetically related portions of two language
are very close, then the languages themselves must be close in time.

Cladistics sort of switches this kind of thinking around.  Traditional
classifications in biology were in fact based on "similarities" between
species and the closer the similarities were, the closer the expected
relationship.  Cladistics on the other hand disregards large blocks of
similarities on a rather wholesale basis.

The example that should alert one to the turnaround in thinking that
cladistics represents is given in Henry Gee's In Search of Deep Time - and in
the review of the book by Kevin Padian in the Feb '00 Scientific American
that Lloyd mentioned on the list awhile ago.

And that's the example of the Salmon, the Lungfish and the Cow.

The lungfish and the salmon (like Sanskrit and Latin) have many, many things
in common.  From specifics of average shape to scales and boniness (as
opposed to the shark's cartilage)  and both of course live in water and are
traditionally grouped as fishes.  And we can with some certainty identify the
common ancestor of the salmon and the lungfish - the paleocinids - and
identify a large number of retentions and shared innovations between salmon
and lungfish.

On the basis of those similarities and innovations, the traditional
classification of the salmon and the lungfish had them relatively closely
related on the vertebrate family tree.

The surprise is that cladistics groups the lungfish not with the salmon but
with the cow.  (Lest this appear obvious in any way, the specific innovations
indicated that the salmon lacks and the lungfish and cow share are "nasal
passages that open in the throat and jointed bones in the fins/limbs".)

Cladistic trees are actually a chain of innovations.  And this is in fact the
cladistic definition of "ancestry".  There is no equivalent of reconstructing
a hypothetical parent on the basis of phonetic equivalencies in cladistics.
In fact, there is generally speaking no reconstructing of parents in orthdox
cladistics at all.  How the dinosaur became a bird for example is NOT
reconstructed and nothing in between the dinosaur and the bird is
reconstructed.  Particular innovations are the only trail and backward
reconstruction to identify forward relationships is not part of the scheme.
(Though Padian in his review gives some reasonable space for dissenting a
small degree from what he calls this 'hard-nosed' position about any
reconstruction.)

The problem with applying cladistics to historical linguistics as reflected
in IE scholarship (the one that the UPenn tree ran into) is that the methods
are so thoroughly contrasted in the nature of their data.

One can see this in a fundamental definition of cladistics which defines "the
unrooted tree" as one "for which the ancestor (= root) has not been
hypothesized...."
(A good glossary of cladistic terms by Micheal Crisp at ANU is available on
the web at http://www.science.uts.edu.au/sasb/glossary.html.)

If you look for commercial software that construct cladistic phylogenies on
the web, you will see that they all are designed to construct "unrooted
trees" but not necessarily rooted trees.  And the reason for that is that
cladistic analysis starts with unrooted trees.  The whole idea is to strip
the data of any assumptions regarding ancestry.  The exact opposite of using
PIE cognates as data, which would root the tree before any analysis is done.

One can see how this could create a problem in using traditional IE data in
cladistic analysis.

Reflexes based on PIE reconstructions and reconstructed PIE morphologies of
course are based on a hypothesized parent.  They cannot be used to build a
unrooted tree any more than DNA sequences reconstructed from a hypothetical
parent can (a celebrated error in early cladistics.)

And without an unrooted tree, you lose the core of cladistic analysis - since
the rooting process is all about finding the best fitting actual ancestors
and thereby the direction of evolutionary change among the branches.

Thinking about it again, it would seem that morphology - so long as it is not
based on reconstructed *PIE morphology - might be appropriate data for a
cladistic analysis.  But the taxonomy would need to be thorough.  And the
results might be surprising.

Remember the significant amount of biological "morphology" (the body parts
and how they are put together) that the lungfish and the salmon share in
common and how little either look at all like the morphology of the cow.  But
it is a very few, very particular and not very obvious pieces of morphology
that groups the lungfish and the cow together.  It's not the weight of
evidence of ancestry in cladistics, it can be very one small piece of
evidence.  And that could produce the same very unexpected results - like
perhaps grouping French with Armenian or Slavic with Basque.  But, after all,
surprises keep life interesting.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Steve Long


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Mon Mar  6 11:45:45 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 13:45:45 +0200
Subject: PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and
 evidence from Uralic linguistics)
In-Reply-To: <01BF84E6.510B41E0.fabcav@adr.dk>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.134545.0200.>

[I wrote]
>There is no reason to concider *-i (= your *-e) in PU *nimi 'name' a stem
>formant. *-i is no known a PU morpheme

[Fabrice Cavoto]
> It certainly is, see below.

No, it isn't - see below.

[I wrote]
>, and *nim- couldn't even
>theoretically be a PU morpheme, since all roots (except pronouns and the
>two auxilaries) had to be of shape *(C)V(C)CV-.

[Fabrice Cavoto]
> See f.ex. Decsy 1990, p. 26-35, as well as, more
> recently, Abondolo (ed) 1998, p. 6-7. The structure of Uralic *roots* is V,
> CV, CVC or CVCV. The fact that PUral. *words* ended in a vowel doesn't
> imply that the vowel was originally part of the root. Some call it
> "thematic vowel", other "stem vowel", and it is mostly seen as an element,
> or part of an element, forming stems.

Abondolo 1998: 6-7 doesn't discuss PU root structure. As for Décsy, his
view that all PU words ended in a vowel is untenable (as are many of his
other views concerning PU phonology). There is a very clear distinction
between the reflexes of PU suffixes of the shape *-C, *-Ca/-Cä and
*-Ci. Cf. e.g. PU genitive *nimi-n, accusative *nimi-m, nominative plural
*nimi-t, but locative *nimi-nä, nominative with sing.1.p. px *nimi-mi and
separative *nimi-tä.

Also, pronouns could end in a consonant: e.g. PU *mun 'I', *tun 'thou'.
Because *-i and *-a/*-ä were also present in the morphologically unmarked
nominative of nouns in PU (e.g. *nimi 'name'), there is no justification
for a segmentation like *nim-i. I can't see why a PU noun "root" should be
anything else than the nominative singular.

> Whether it is for prosodic or
> morphologic reasons is not entirely clear, but the fact that the vowel is
> not always the same (since there are a-stems, e/i-stems), and that it
> happens that the same root is attested with both, also points to the fact
> that that element, what ever we call it, is added on the root.

The fact that the vowel is not always the same, i.e. that there are
stems in *-i and stems in *-a/-ä, points to the opposite: the vowel was a
part of the root, since it is an arbitrary element - there's no way to
predict which stems have a high vowel and which a low one.

Could you specify what you mean by "the same root is attested with [*-i and
*-ä/-a]"? I can only think of the morphologically unclear pair PU *luki-
'count', *luka 'ten', which has no parallels. I did check the 700+ cognate
lexemes between Saamic and Finnic and found only two cases with irregular
correspondence of stem vowel: Finnish raina 'badly worn item' (< *rajna) =
Saami ruoidna- 'to become skinny' (< *rajni-) and Finnish sysätä 'to shove'
(< *süskä-) = Saami saskat 'to copulate (of reindeer bull)' (<
*süski-), both of which are obviously affective.

Regards,

Ante Aikio


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 12:37:38 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 13:37:38 +0100
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0003031524280.5024-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.133738.0100.>

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>> [...]
>> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
>> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
>> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
>> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
>> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
>> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

>> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
>> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
>> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

>Thanks! we are still a minority I believe, but a viable alternative does
>not seem to have been proposed.

I apologize for the typo, I meant "one haS to agree".

>> The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
>> an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
>> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
>> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
>> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
>> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
>> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
>> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
>> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
>> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
>> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
>> The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
>> (i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
>> predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
>> Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

>I don't get the part on Brugmann's Law.

In my scheme, after **a had become [E] and **a: had become [O:]
(and something else had happened to **i and **i:, *u and *u:),
vowel length momentarily ceased to be phonemic in PIE, much as is
the case in modern Dutch, or was the case in proto-Western
Romance (quantitative distinctions had given way to qualitative
ones).  The back vowel can thus be phonologically represented as
*/o/, even if at least in the PIE dialect ancestral to
Indo-Iranian it still had an allophonic vaiant *[O:] in at least
the open syllables (with or without the Kleinhans restriction,
etc., see Collinge's "The Laws of Indo-European" if you have the
stomach).  This allophone later merged with the new long vowels
resulting from nominative lengthening, sigmatic aorist
lengthening, derivative vrddhi, laryngeal lengthening etc., all
resulting in Proto-Indo-Iranian *a:.

In this context, it is perhaps interesting that in Tocharian the
reflexes of *o and lengthened *e: also merge (as Toch. <e> ~
<(y)e>).

>But stressed -e:'n vs. unstressed
>'-o:n (and -e:'r vs. '-o:r and -e:s vs. '-o:s in parallel
>fashion) indicates that the expected loss of the unstressed vowel of the
>suffix (/-en-/, /-er-/, /-es-/) had not progressed further than to a stage
>of weakening when the "nominative lengthening" set in: The nominative
>marker (some variety of /s/) caused lengthening of the nearest preceding
>vowel in the environment VC(C)_# Thereby, underlying /e/ appears as /e:/,
>and the weakened counterpart is found, at the end of the day, to surface
>as /o:/. Phonetically, this could perhaps be seen as something like the
>French e muet which is indeed a weakened vowel and does exhibit a marked
>rounding (at least in some varieties of the language). Supposing the
>relevant prestage of PIE to have been comparable to this, one gets a "long
>rounded schwa" from where the /o:/ of the PIE forms could well have
>developed. It takes a rule saying the lengthened vowels were not deleted
>by the working of the accent-governed ablaut, and in fact I see no
>counterexamples.

As I said, my **a: > *o rule does not give a totally satisfactory
account of the d'aimo:n ~ poim'e:n distribution.  It is tempting
to include it anyway, but it can only be done by the
counterintuitive step of assuming that stressed vowels resisted
lengthening, while unstressed ones did not (and that is
contradicted by the existence of stressed thematic vowels).

The main advantage of assuming lengthening of the unstressed
vowels in this position is that it explains why they did not
disappear as they should have after the working of "zero grade".

Similarly, an unstressed (pretonic) *primary* long vowel was
shortened, but did not disappear (and in fact attracted the
accent secondarily) in the (acro)static nominal and verbal
paradigms, some of which show o-grade (*wodr, *wedn- "water"),
others lengthened grade (*ye:kwr, *yekwn- "liver").  Of course,
in the case of *ye:kwr the preceding palatal consonant (*y, maybe
originally *l^) may easily have prevented the backing of *aa to
*o(o), and the original long vowel merged with new *e: instead.
Perhaps other cases of acrostatic *e: instead of *o can also be
explained by my theory that *all* (pre-)PIE consonants had
labialized and palatalized versions.  I'd have to investigate
that.

>So, I agree, IE /o/ has a multitude of sources.

Indeed.  Besides *h3e, I believe another source of *o can be
labialized consonant + *e (if we assume *h3 itself was
labialized, as it most probably was, we need no special rule for
the laryngeal here).  For instance, the Italo-Celtic(-Slavic)
1pl. verbal ending *-mos can be derived from *-mwes (cf. Hittite
-wen but Luwian -wan), with labialized *mw (from **mu "I") +
plural *-es.  Another example may be the apparent o-grade *mol-
"to grind" (Lat. mole:re), which appears where we would
morphologically expect e-grade, and which in zero-grade appears
as e.g. Greek mul-os "mill".  If we assume a single labialized
phoneme */mw/, the situation is normalized: e-grade *mwel- (>
Lat. mol-), zero-grade *mwl- (> Grk. mul-).  With loss of the
labialization we have *mel- and *ml- elsewhere.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun Mar  5 00:11:41 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 00:11:41 -0000
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.001141.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 4:53 AM

> At 10:09 PM 3/1/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

<snip>

>> <SFp>

>>> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>>> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
>>> differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
>>> conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

>> <PRp>

>> Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

<SF>

> As far as minimal contrast goes, one can simply look at the "perfect"
> versus the "aorist" of many verbs (especially in the third singular).

<PR>

All three aorists have the *H(1)e- prefix. No perfect has it.

According to Larry's dictionary, a _minimal pair_ is "two words of distinct
meaning which exhibit different segments at one point but identical segments
at all other points".

In his examples, no pair is given like **sing-sung so I presume that
"meaning" does *not* include nuaces created by inflection or conjugation.

Even if one ignored the personal suffixes (which is hardly permissible), any
PIE aorist-perfect pair would contrast in at least two points: 1) *e/*o
Ablaut and +/- H(1)e- prefix.

Now you may have another definition of minimal pair but according to this
one, which I think it generally accepted, PIE aorisy and perfect *cannot* be
termed a 'minimal pair'.

<SF>

> A quick perusal of Pokorny (yes, I know, out of date) gives:
> *kem: "summen"
> and
> kom: "neben, bei, mit"

<PR>

I see you have not indicated *kem in the way that Pokorny does, namely
"*kem-".

What the omission of the hyphen masks is that there is no entry in Pokorny
for any language that shows the bare root "*kem*.

Therefore, by reason of the definition cited above, I do not believe that
*kem-+X ('summen') can be considered as a part of a minimal pair with *kom,
'neben, bei, mit'.

<SF>

> That the e/o distinction was phonemic at breakup is unquestionable.

<PR>

Unless you can produce an acceptable minimal pair contrasting *e/*o, I
believe the question of phonemicity remains open.

>> <PRp>

>> I agree that an older accentual system is a reasonable theory, which I also
>> agree is viable. So, if I understand correctly, you are proposing that this
>> older system predates PIE?

<SF>

> Not really, just mentioning it as a *possibility*.  I find a switch from a
> length distinction to be more plausible.

>> <SFp>

>>> Note, when there is only one non-high vowel in a language, it is *always*
>>> best viewed as /a/, not /e/.  (It may have /e/ as an *allophone* in some
>>> environments, but its neutral allophone will always be low).

>> <PRp>

>> I agree 100%. And it is /*a/ which I theorize preceded /*e,*o/ in what I
>> call the Pontic stage, which I believe preceded PIE. But I also believe the
>> non-phonemic status of the /*e,*o/ Ablaut suggests strongly that it
>> developed from a single predecessor.

<SF>

> I tend to agree.  I think you can make your theory work as well with a
> length distinction though, which is phonetically more likely.

<PR>

I read Miguel's exposition of this but, in my answer to him, you may see
that I was not persuaded.

<PRp>

>> stress-accented syllable had /*o/. On this basis, I believe that no /*a/
>> existed in PIE except possibly as a result of a reduction of /*a:/ deriving
>> from a "laryngeal" + /*a/ in the Pontic (pre-PIE) stage.

<SF>

> I tend to agree.  I reconstruct a PIE vowel system with e/o/i/u.

<PR>

For that, you would need to present minimal pairs contrasting *Ce/oC with
*CiC and *CuC. Can it be done?

<SF>

> [Note, I consider it likely that laryngeals survived into many of the
> daughter languages, so lengthening due to loss of laryngeals was probably
> *post* PIE].

>> <SFp>

>>> I can only accept this where there is good evidence of alternation with
>>> /*ue/ or /*eu/.  There are just too many cases where there *is* no such
>>> variation visible.  [The obvious examples are mostly inflectional ending
>>> and pronouns, but there are certainly others as well].

>> <PRp>

>> Let us look at some of those examples. The strongest argument for this idea
>> is foreclosed to me because it involves the "N" word.

<SF>

> Well, there is the root Pokorny list as *bheu.  However, the only branch
> showing an e-grade of it is Indo-Iranian.  Outside of that it is
> universally in "zero" grade.  Thus I do not believe the e-grade is ancient.
>  I reconstruct *bhuH "grow, increase".

<PR>

I wonder if you have Pokorny there or are trusting to memory.

I see several examples of *e-grade in languages other than Indo-Iranian,
e.g. Armenian boin, 'nest'; Albanian bane", 'dwelling'; Gothic bauan,
'dwell', etal. --- as well as some *o-grade examples.

<SF>

> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two distinct
> roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an e-grade at all
> (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

<PR>

There are several *bher- roots. Why not expand on this a bit?

<SF>

> There is *uper "over, above".

<PR>

If one notates it as Pokorny does, namely *upe'r, the problem is simplified:
**wepe'r -> *upe'r. There are many examples of *weC- becoming *uC-: e.g.
*wep-:*wo/o:p-:*up-, 'water'.

<SF>

> The root listed as *ueidh shows no actual reflexes with e-grade in Pokorny,
> so one must really reconstruct *widh: "trennen".

<PR>

What about Old Indian ve:dh- or German *waisan < *woidh-son- (we should take
cognizance of o-grades in this context, should we not?).

<SF>

> And those are just some random gleanings from Pokorny.

<PR>

Frankly, you may need to go back between the rows.

>> <PRp>

>> I think we must be careful about overvaluing typological facts. If the
>> Pontic stage of pre-PIE were the only language in all our knowledge to
>> employ a single vowel (even for a very short period), phonological rather
>> than typological considerations should influence more strongly. Typology,
>> generally, is a heuristic device, would you not agree?

<SF>

> Up to a point.  If we find ourselves reconstructing something that is
> completely unknown in well-attested languages, we really do need to think
> three times before accepting the reconstruction.  [Absolute universals are
> rare, and when they do exist are probably fundamental].

<PR>

Agreed.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 13:24:17 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 14:24:17 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <007601bf84a2$b55e7ca0$209f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.142417.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
>> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
>> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
>> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
>> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
>> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

>[PR]

>I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
>stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
>which produces *e/*o variations.

That is often said, but it needs to be elaborated for it to make
sense.  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
its development?  If it switched from stress accent to pitch
accent (as suggested by zero grade everywhere and Vedic-Greek
accentuation), how did the unstressed vowels that were to become
o's by pitch accent survive the reduction caused by stress
accent? Etcetera.

>[MCV]

>> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
>> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
>> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

>[PR]

>I must have been on vacation when this was discussed. Is there any kind of
>consensus on this list that Jens has demonstrated this?

I don't think there's a consensus.  I find the evidence
conclusive (one does need however, to distinguish between two
kinds of sibilant: **"s" [*-e-s] and **"z" [*-o-s]).

>[MCV]

>> with developments /a/ >
>> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
>> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
>> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
>> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
>> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
>> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
>> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
>> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
>> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

>[PR]

>But why would they (prtimary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
>the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
>indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

Primary (etymological, non-apophonic) **a:'s gave *o (sometimes
<a:> in Indo-Iranian by Brugmann's Law) just like secondarily
lengthened **a's.  This is the origin of the PIE acrostatic
paradigms (I again agree with Jens), as opposed to the "regular"
proterodynamic (root/extension-accented) and hysterodynamic
(extension/suffix-accented) models without an original long vowel
in the root.

Lengthened grade was certainly a morphological device in PIE
(vrddhi).  JER has an alternative explanation, but I would
distinguish between cases of "old vrddhi", where the **a was
lengthened to **a: and appears as PIE *o (e.g. the
causative-iteratives in CoC-'ei-e-), and "younger vrddhi" where
the **a first developed to *e and was subsequently lengthened to
*e:.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 13:29:25 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 14:29:25 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <008901bf84a3$aaa5ee00$209f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.142925.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>But what is the significance of Greek -ia(:) for this question?

Feminines in *-ih2 appear in Greek as -ia (e.g. potnia < *potnih2).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Sat Mar  4 16:15:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 16:15:00 GMT
Subject: Armenian, was: Horses
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.161500.GMT.>

SG>>Eastern? Or Western? or hopefully, Graban?
SG>/e:sh/ "donkey" is the same in EArm, WArm and in ClassArm ("graba*r*").

If we hadn't Georg, correcting every typing error...
Of course it's <grabar> 'book language'.

Because everyone in the list knows that comparatists should use the oldest
forms available, a just 'Armenian dictionary' would not suffice.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 02:06:37 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 21:06:37 -0500
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.210637.0500.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> With regard to *equus reflexes in Celtic, of course each of the languages
> above also has a <marko-> word for horse.  But it make me wonder how
> forgiving this analysis should be - since I see a complete absence of *ekwos
> in Breton, NIr and Manx.

Breton <ebeul> 'colt', NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed', and
I assume Manx <eagh> 'riding horse, steed, racehorse'.

Brian M. Scott


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 02:06:54 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 21:06:54 -0500
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.210654.0500.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> Also I note that Buck has somehow failed to include in his book a rather
> important OIr word for 'deer' - <ach>  (Gaelic - <each>).  Perhaps more on
> that later.

Can you give a reference to this word?  There is no entry
for <ach> 'deer' in the Dict. of the Irish Lang. Based
Mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials; there *is* <ech>
'a horse, a steed', giving NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed'
and Sc. Gael. <each> 'a horse, a brute'.  OIr <ech> can
of course be found in Buck's 3.41 (generic term for a horse).

Brian M. Scott


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Mar  4 04:46:08 2000
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:46:08 -0600
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
In-Reply-To: <69.1d6018e.25f0af59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.224608.0600.>

	And how do we know that they're not loanwords from Greek?

[snip]

>There's a Phrygian inscription on the tomb of King Midas:  "Midai lavagtaei
>vanaktei", "To Midas the War-leader and King".

>This contains two terms shared with (Mycenaean) Greek:  lawagetas and wannax
>("war-leader" and "king", respectively.)

[snip]

	Everything I've read on Phrygian, admittedly not much, seems to
claim a different genetic relationship: Albanian, Armenian, Hellenic,
Thracian
	Anyone game enough to explain which one might be correct, if any,
and why?
	btw: regarding Thracian, there's an extensive website linking it to
Balto-Slavic. Given that I know even less about Thracian than the miniscule
amount that I know about Phrygian, I'd like to hear from someone better
informed

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar  3 11:05:05 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 06:05:05 -0500
Subject: Hypergeometric?  [was Re: GREEK PREHISTORY AND IE (EVIDENCE?)]
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.060505.0500.>

> MAI>What is meant here by "the hypergeometric"?

>  It is too difficult to explain it in a nutshell here.

Given that I teach this stuff occasionally, I can't resist trying :-)

Consider an urn with 8 red balls and 4 black balls. Pull out three at
random, without replacing the balls you draw. Then count the number of
black balls among the three drawn. The hypergeometric distribution
models this kind of thing.

More generally, if you have population of size N (12 in the example
above) and a subgroup of size A (4 in our example) and you take a sample
of n (3 for our example) members at random and count the number of
members from the subgroup in the sample, you get the hypergeomtric.

If both A and N-A are at least an order of magnitude larger than the
sample size n, hypergeometric is hardly distinguishable from the
binomial. As this is the common situation in many applications (so I
don't quite understand Hans's comment about where it is used),
hypergeomtric is usually omitted from courses in the US meant for
general audiences.


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Sat Mar  4 16:14:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 16:14:00 GMT
Subject: Black Sea Flood; was: non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.161400.GMT.>

RD>Ryan and Pitman had not yet published their Black Sea Flood discovery.

The black sea, or, more exact, its northwestern part, was 'flooded' in the
middle of the 5th millennium BC, according to my information.

RD>Now that flood will have to be taken into account by anyone
RD>speculating how the community that gave us PIE could have been severed
RD>from the community that gave us PA.

..< According to this time depth I would find it difficult if not daring
to draw connections in favour of any theory of IE diversification.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Sat Mar  4 16:16:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 16:16:00 GMT
Subject: UPenn tree; was: Indo-Hittite Hypothesis
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.161600.GMT.>

MAI>The UPenn work is supposed to provide exactly the information we have
MAI>lacked till now, that is, where to put in branches.  Having generated
MAI>their branching structure, they then picked a root position such that
MAI>Anatolian branches away from the entire rest of the family, all of
MAI>which can be viewed as going back to a single proto-language.

.. again: "Where is the exact information" on the UPenn tree???

We only do have the description of Tandy Warnows so-called 'optimality
criteria'. And the results. But in my humble understanding, there are
still some (or a lot of?) links missing.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Sat Mar  4 22:20:04 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:20:04 -0700
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000302194905.009bfec0@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.152004.0700.>

Wouldn't a more universally understood terminology for the Semitic (using
Hebrew) b-r-' versus bara' be to call the "triconsonantal root" the "root"
(i.e., a phonological meaning-carrying form that is incapable of being
divided into further morphemes) and the "expanded root" the "stem" (i.e., a
polymorphemic or monomorphemic form consisting only of root(s) and zero or
more derivational morpheme(s) that is ready for inflection)?  I'm not a
Semiticist, so I'm not so familiar with the terms used in traditional
Semitic (or Afro-Asiatic) linguistics, but as far as universal linguistic
terms "root" and "stem" seem to be the proper words to use.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)

> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 8:51 PM
> Subject: Re: Arabic "expanded" roots

> At 08:39 PM 3/1/00 +0100, Stefan Georg wrote:

>> I confess that I don't know what an "expanded" variant of an Arabic root
>> is. What I do know, however, is that *every* Arabic verb form has vowels.

> That is what I meant.  I do not know the correct terminology for
> differentiating between the "pure" triconsonantal root and the actually
> spoken forms that, naturally, have vowels.

> --------------
> May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Sun Mar  5 01:16:40 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 20:16:40 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.201640.EST.>

>edsel at glo.be wrote:

>Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that
>can be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we
>should be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

-- people learn languages because they're useful.  In most contexts, there
seems to be fairly limited emotional investment in them -- modern linguistic
nationalism being an exception, of course.

Even there, it's mostly political militants and bureaucrats who agitate such
matters.  Eg., the continuing inexorable decline of Gaelic in Ireland has
been completely unaffected by political intervention since the emergence of
the Irish Free State, with its policy of promoting Gaelic by all possible
means.

Ordinary people seem to switch languages when circumstances make such change
(a) possible and (b) a useful means of 'getting ahead'.


From sarima at friesen.net  Sun Mar  5 01:37:38 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:37:38 -0800
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <015101bf8489$7e6382e0$4a46063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.173738.0800.>

At 08:50 PM 3/2/00 +0000, petegray wrote:

>>Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE features
>> -- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.

>This is a chicken and egg situation.   The present, aorist and perfect *as
>tenses* are read back into PIE from Greek and I-I alone.   We cannot
>therefore say whether they are "retained archiasms" or "shared innovations".

>The various formations - s suffix, reduplication, secondary endings etc etc
>are scattered all over PIE, but those tenses as part of a tense system are
>only in those two language groups.

However the non-present forms in Latin and Germanic (at least) are
obviously heterogeneous in origin, on purely internal grounds.  This lends
support to a model postulating originally separate tenses a la Greek and I-I.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 02:06:59 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 21:06:59 -0500
Subject: English as a creole
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.210659.0500.>

>>  The inversion after an
>> initial adverb or phrase still appears in Elizabethan English and
>> the King James Bible.

> The texts you are referring to are 'high' style, probably voluntarily
> archaicizing (Lawyers still do it : 'What say you?').  Do we know how the
> ordinary people were (already) speaking in the 16-17th century?

Queen Elizabeth I uses 'for that I se not' in a letter that
seems unlikely to represent an archaic style:

	I haue, right deare brother, receaued your
	frendly and affectionat letters, in wiche
	I perceaue the mastar Grayes halfe, limping
	limping answer, wiche is lame in thes respectz:
	the one, for that I se not that he told you
	who bade him talke with Morgan of the price
	of my bloude, wiche he knowes, I am assured,
	right wel; nor yet hathe named the man that
	shuld be the murtherar of my life.

[_Letters of Queen Elizabeth and King James VI of Scotland
(1582-90)_, ed. J. Bruce (Camden Society, 46, 1849), pp.12-13,
as quoted in Martyn Wakelin, _The Archaeology of English_,
Barnes & Noble, 1988, pp.111-2.]

_The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of
London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D.1563_, ed. John Gough Nichols
(Camden Society I, 42, 1848), offers even less formal writing.
On p.2: 'The xxx day of November was bered Crystoffer Machyn,
Marchand-tayllor'; 'The xiiij day of Feybruarii was dysposyd
of ys bysshoppr[icke] of Wynchestur, the old bysshope M.
Stevyn Gardener, and cared in to the Towre ...'.  P.6: 'The
v day of Juin cam to Clessay the yerle of Shrusbery with
xij^xx hors, ...'.  (The caret indicates a superscript.)
P.7: 'The vij day of July begane a nuw swet in London, and
... ded my lord Crumwell in Leseter-shyre'.  (Here 'ded' is
'died', not 'dead'.)

Such inversions are also to be found occasionally in the
late 16th c. _Gerard's Herbal_, a very plain and straight-
forward piece of writing.

Brian M. Scott


From jimbilbro at email.msn.com  Sun Mar  5 04:12:15 2000
From: jimbilbro at email.msn.com (James Bilbro)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 22:12:15 -0600
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.221215.0600.>

Since I haven't checked my email in some time, this response may be a bit
belated, as I still have 376(!) messages from this list yet to check.  (This
is too much!)

In any case, what you may be remembering is that Celtic, Anatolian, and
Tocharian all share all share a passive formation in /r/, as does Italic
(and Phrygian?).  All four are also "centum"-languages.  The r-passive seems
to be a shared retention of a fairly archaic formant.  Of course, this
should not be interpreted to indicate any closer relationship between these
languages in the PIE-period, beyond the fact that they were all
centum-dialects.

Sincerely,
Jim Bilbro

-----Original Message-----
From: ECOLING at aol.com <ECOLING at aol.com>
Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 1:46 AM

>For Italic,
>is there any argument that on balance
>the geographic position of Italic in the earliest
>stages of PIE dialect network would put it
>closer to Slavic, or Armenian, or etc.,
>because of a few shared isoglosses with those
>which might be common innovations?
>Or are any sharings retentions?

>In either case,
>Perhaps shared verbal conjugations?
>If so, shared with which other IE groupings?

>I am trying to dredge up some old memories.

>Lloyd Anderson
>Ecological Linguistics


From jimbilbro at email.msn.com  Sun Mar  5 04:30:09 2000
From: jimbilbro at email.msn.com (James Bilbro)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 22:30:09 -0600
Subject: The law
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.223009.0600.>

Although I have not yet read it, Jaan Puhvel's book, "Myth and Law Among the
Indo-Europeans might shed some light on this question.

-Jim Bilbro

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Appleyard <mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 7:58 PM

Did the speakers of common IE have any notion of "the law" as an institution?

What was the IE word for "law", either as "the rules to be obeyed" (Latin
{lex}), or as "the process of justice" (Latin {jus})? Each IE language that I
know of seems to have a different word. My knowledge here is limited and I
accept any correction. Doubled vowel = long. Greek w = digamma.

- Anglo-Saxon {ae(w)}, compare Greek {ewaoo} = "I allow".
- Old Norse {log} < {lagu}, c.f. {l-g-} = "lay, lie": < "that which is laid
  down"?
- Latin {leg-}; the root also occurs as "choose" and "read".
- Latin {jus} < *{jous-} : what cognates are there for that word?
- Greek {dikee}: same root in Greek {deiknuumi} = "I indicate", Latin {dico} =
  "I say".
- Greek {nomos}: same root in Greek = "I apportion".
- Russian {zakon}.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar  5 12:39:54 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 13:39:54 +0100
Subject: R and r
In-Reply-To: <008f01bf8509$159eed00$9101703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.133954.0100.>

"Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

>From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> Greek initial r- comes mainly from *sr- > *hr- (original *r- had
>> become er-).  The r- was surely aspirated (i.e. voiceless) in
>> Classical Attic Greek, but since this applied to *all* initial
>> r's, there is no reason to postulate a separate phoneme /rh/.
>> The spiritus asper here is a case of subphonemic orthography (as
>> in many of these cases introduced after the fact, in this case by
>> Byzantine scribes).

>But I find it difficult to believe that Byzantine scribes would have been
>aware of the initial r- < *hr- < *sr- (which is pre-classic I believe, i.e.
>close to a 1000 years earlier) if there hadn't been left some trace in
>pronunciation.

Of course they were not aware of *sr-, but they were aware of the
classical pronunciation [rh-], with aspirated (voiceless) r.

>I said 'uvular' (or similar) because that comes close to what a non-linguist
>(like the Byzantine scribes) would possibly hear as 'breath' (spiritus,
>pneuma) in the pronunciation of an r. That's a not-too-uneducated guess, I
>hope.

There is no reason to assume a uvular pronunciation and no reason
not to take the Byzantine spelling at face value: the spiritus
denotes an aspirated (voiceless) [rh].  See the discussion in
Allen "Vox Graeca" pp. 41-45.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 16:55:08 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 11:55:08 -0500
Subject: Logical Gap
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.115508.0500.>

ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

> Larry Trask writes,
> concerning his criteria for including words as potential early Basque
> monosyllabic words:

>> My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>> and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>> particular phonological form.

> I have no doubt that Trask believes this.
> But it has been pointed out before that it does not follow.

It does, if one makes an effort to understand what he's
trying to say.

> There is a logical non-sequitur here, which is *one* of the core
> difficulties in the entire discussion we have been having on this subject.

> It is perfectly possible that criteria may be *stated* in words
> none of which have the slightest thing to do with phonological form,
> and yet, in the real world, the combination of those criteria have
> some consequence which end up excluding some category
> of vocabulary elements describable by a particular phonological
> form, at least statistically.

I doubt very much that when Larry says that his criteria
'cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any particular
phonological form', he means to deny this rather obvious fact.
I understand him to mean that any such (statistically) systematic
exclusion will be the necessary result of real correlations
between phonological form and status as an early, native,
monomorphemic Basque word.  And if the phonology of the words
in question really is statistically different from that of
the lexicon as a whole, any criteria that do their job will
of course result in exclusions that are correlated with
phonological form.

> So it can happen, through using a combination of criteria,
> that several strata of vocabulary end up being excluded *statistically*
> (all I have ever claimed) by Trask's criteria.
> Since most of us know independently of Trask's criteria
> that most or all living languages contain vocabulary of such strata,
> it would normally be considered appropriate to include some of them
> as candidates for reconstruction of any pattern which is expected
> to have any sort of general validity for the language.

I don't think that you've ever answered the obvious question:
Precisely how would you choose these candidates?  For that
matter, how would you decide just what strata are inadequately
represented in the written record?

Brian M. Scott


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Sat Mar  4 16:51:50 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 10:51:50 -0600
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.105150.0600.>

At 01:42 PM 3/2/00 +0000, Larry Trask  wrote:

>>  Roz Frank writes:

>>  [on Basque <(h)anka> 'haunch', 'leg' (and other senses)]

>>>  There does seem to be a good case that could be made for <(h)anka> being
>>>  related to the French/Romance forms mentioned above and consequently a
>>>  recent borrowing.

>>  Overpowering, I'd say.

>>>  But what is one to make of the Basque word <zango>
>>>  (<zanga-> in composition) that means 'leg, foot, calf' and its
>>>  phonological
>>>  variant in <zanko, zankho> (<zanka-> in composition) with the same
>>>  meanings?

>>  The word is <zanko> or <zanka> in Zuberoan, <zango> in the rest of the
>>  French Basque Country, and usually <zanko> south of the Pyrenees, though
>>  <zango> in High Navarrese.  The widespread presence of <zanko> in the south
>>  is clear evidence of a late borrowing, since an inherited *<zanko> would
>>  have developed regularly to *<zango> in the early medieval period -- as
>>  indeed has happened in much of the north, in which this voicing process
>>  seems to have persisted longer than elsewhere.  The combining form
>>  <zanka->, of course, is perfectly regular in Basque.

>>  The word variously means 'paw', 'foot', 'leg', 'calf', according to region,
>>  with various transferred senses in places, such as 'track' (of a game
>>  animal) and 'jack' (in cards).

>>  The source of the word is clear.  It is the very widespread Romance word
>>  which appears in Castilian Spanish as <zanca> 'calf', 'leg (of a bird)',
>>  'shank', and, according to Corominas, also 'stilt'.  Castilian also has
>>  an altered form <zanco> 'stilt'.  The same word occurs in Portuguese,
>>  Mozarabic, Catalan, and perhaps elsewhere, with a range of senses
>>  including 'wooden shoe', 'kind of sandal', and 'stilt', at least.
>>  (I'm not sure if Italian <zampa> 'leg (of an animal)', 'paw', 'foot'
>>  represents the same word or not.  Anybody know?)

So, according to this version of events, what we have are two Basque words,
both borrowed but from totally different sources. The first would be
<(h)anka> that would be borrowed first from one of the adjoining Romance
dialects and then these Romance dialect(s), in turn, would have borrowed
their expression from an unattested Frankish etymon whose prior existence
is posited on reflexes of <haunch> (Eng.) in Germanic. In short, in the
case of <(h)anka> its source would be traced back to the Frankish term and
that story ends there.

>>  This word is derived by Corominas from a late Latin <zanca> 'kind of shoe'
>>  (no asterisk, according to Corominas).  And this he traces to Old Persian
>>  <zanga-> 'leg', the source of modern Persian <zang> 'leg'.  He proposes
>>  that the Persian word was carried west into Europe by cobblers, especially
>>  since (he says) shoes were an eastern invention which passed into Europe
>>  via Persia.

Then we have a different story that explains the source/etymon for the
Basque word <zanko/zanga-/zango/zanga->. That story argues that the Basque
word was borrowed from a Romance language or languages in the early Middle
Ages. And that the Romance terms, in turn, can be traced to a Wanderwort
brought in by cobblers who got it from Old Persian, i.e., from <zanga->.
That means that the ultimate origin of <zanko> (Basque) is an Old Persian
word <zanga-> meaning 'leg'. But the story (see option #1 discussed below)
does not posit any relationship between A and B, between the source for
<(h)anka> and that of <zanka>.

Stated dfferently, the scenario in question would posit that <(h)anka>
(Basque) deriverom <anca> (Spanish), related in turn to <hanche> (Fr.)
and naturally <haunch> (Eng.). But this scenario alleges that there is no
relationship whatsoever between these two terms and the expression <shank>
(Eng.): '1) the part of the human leg between the knee and ankle or the
corresponding part in other vertebrates; 2) the whole leg of a man; 3) a
cut of meat from the leg of a steer, calf, sheep, or lamb; 4) the long
narrow part of a nail or pin; 5) a stem, stalk, or similar part'. The
relationship between <shank> (Eng.) and <zanca> (Sp.) as well as <anca>
(Sp.) is noteworthy since the terms are used to refer to a similar part of
human and animal anatomy.

The AHD gives the following under <shank>: "*skeng- 'crooked. Germanic
*skanko- 'that which bends,' leg, in Old English <sc(e)anca>, shinbone,
shank. [Pok. (s)keng- 930]." Are there other reflexes in IE languages of
<shank>, i.e., outside of Germanic?  In short, we have an unattested
Germanic *skanko- that according to the AHD is unrelated to the other
Germanic etymon: haunch 1) the hip, buttock and upper thigh in man and
animals; 2) the loin and leg of an animal
 [From] Middle English ha(u)nche
from Old French <hanche> from Germanic <hanka> (unattested)."

Also, what evidence is there, when the item means 'leg' in Old English, for
defining the prototype meaning of the term as "crooked" and/or "that which
bends". Where are the concrete data supporting this
interpretation/reconstruction? Was it Pokorny or another inventive
philologist who decided/decreed that 'leg' originally meant 'crooked' or
'that which bends'? Is there other evidence that could be employed to
support this interpretation?

One also notes that unattested Germanic items are given precedence while
there seems to have been little discussion of the possibility that both the
Germanic unattested forms and the Basque and Romance attested forms could
have arisen from a common substrate/areal effect that was overlaid by the
influence of a Wanderwort dating back only to the Middle Ages (as
summarized in option #2 below).

Moreoever, previously on the IE-list there has been 1) discussion of
substrate elements in Germanic and 2) discussion of the number and sorts of
languages in which an item needs to be attested before it can be a
candidate for (P)IE status. From those discussions it would seem that at
best the reflexes of *hanka nor *skanko- might make these proposed etyma be
candidates for some areal effect, but not for PIE status. I state this
basing my interpretation on the fact that, to my knowledge, neither of
these two IE items has been related to the Old Persian etymon cited by
Corominas as the source for the or Romance and Basque items in <zanka>, et.
al.

Before we examine Corominas' theory about cobblers and Old Persian
(included in option #1 below), we need to consider the way that prototypic
meanings operate. The present scenario, according to Corominas, requires an
Old Persian word meaning 'leg' to pass into Romance and once there to
acquire the more specialized meanings of 'stilt' or 'long skinny leg-like
appendage', e.g., like the 'leg (of a bird)' or 'shank'. Euskera would have
borrowed the term early on and kept both meanings. Such a shift in the
prototypic meaning, i.e., from general to specific, would be a normal and
expected development.

However, it would be far more convincing if the same term showed up in
other IE languages of the same geographic zone, since one assumes that the
cobblers were a guild and the Wanderwort went along with them irrespective
of what the local language was. In other words, if we seek out a point
source for the Romance and Basque items, alleging that they all derive from
an Old Persian etymon, we need to explain why the same expressions don't
show up in many other IE languages. Or perhaps they do?

That is, they would 'show up' if one were to accept that <shank> (Eng.) and
the Old English reflex of it meaning 'leg' were cognate with the Old
Persian <zanga->. It seems tme that the case would be even stronger if
one were to argue that <haunch> (Eng.) along with the Romance and Basque
reflexes of it, form part of the same morpho-semantic field (MSF). In such
a reconstruction of linguistic events, the two Basque items <(h)anka> and
<zanko> would pertain to the same MSF although the former would be
perceived as a more recent borrowing from the Romance languages adjacent to
Basque. In this scenario the status of (or domain occupied by) <zanko>
(Basque) within the translingual MSF would be less clear.

If, for example, one accepts the story told by Corominas about the path
that brought an Old Persian Wanderwort into Romance languages, one must ask
why the cobblers didn't stop off in Germanic speaking lands first? Or, in
contrast to what Pokorny, et. al. have alleged with respect to this data,
could we consider another option: the possibility that we  talking about a
MSF that has several reflexes showing up: in modern English as  <shank> and
 <haunch>, in Romance as <zanca> and <anca> and in Basque as <zanko>
(<zanka-> in composition) and <anka>?

In summary, it seems to me that there are several approaches open to us if
we accept that proposing several options might correspond better to the
fuzzy nature of the data itself: These options might be phrased in the
following way:

1) to accept the rather complex stories that have been told to explain all
of these items, alleging a different origin for each (<haunch> comes from
an unattested Germanic etymon; <shank> from another unattested Germanic
etymon; and the Romance <zanca> from yet another, an Old Persian etymon
<zanga->);

2) to allege that the western European variants (<haunch> (Eng.), <shank>
(Eng.) and <zanca> (Sp.) are related to each other and can be explained by
complex substrate influences (perhaps including the role of a Wanderwort
that also meant 'stilt) that also gave rise to the Basque <zanka>;

3) to allege that the western European variants are related to each other
and that they all derive from a single Persian Wanderwort that was brought
into the west by cobblers. For the latter scenario to become more
convincing, one ought be able to identify reflexes of the Old Persian
lexeme in other western European languages. Again, I offer these three
options as possible ways of modeling the data.

Now it may well be that a particular type of shoe was brought in from
Persia, but shoes in general seem to date back beyond the Middle Ages. Now
would this scenario require the first cobblers moving into Europe to be
Persian? Or, for example, would this simulation of the data mean that at
some part there was contact between a guild of European-born cobblers and
those speaking Farsi? Certainly it would require cobblers to have adopted
an Old Persian word for 'leg' at some point. And as is well known, there
are other words for 'leg' in IE languages so if we are talking about
cobblers working in Europe with access to an IE language with a word for
'leg', they wouldn't have had any pressing need to acquire this word from
their Persian colleagues. On the other hand, one might imagine a scenario
in which the use of an 'exotic' term, could enhance the specialized
vocabulary of the cobblers' guild. Obviously, if one is talking about a
guild, then we must project a medieval backdrop to the Wanderwort's
activities. And if we chose this option (3), since the Romance languages
date back to the Middle Ages, the Wanderwort would have had to enter the
area after these linguistic systems were in place. Again, what I am trying
to do is draw out and make visible the underlying assumptions that strike
me as being implicit in options # 1 and # 3.

On the other hand, the connection between <zanca> and a 'wooden-shoe' in
Romance seems to be fairly peripheral to the term's prototypic meaning.
Rather one might argue that it was the use by shepherds of special stilts
that allowed them to travel rapidly and keep their feet dry that may have
played a role here in terms othe technological innovation that spread the
word about. Of course, it would be difficult to pin-point the location
where such an invention first came into being for I am aware that there are
a number of locations in southwestern France and northern Spain where
amazing feats are performed while the dancers/shepherds whirl about mounted
on their <zancas>.

On the other hand, again following the lines of argument laid down by
Corominas, the cobblers who preferred <zanga-> to whatever the word was for
'leg' in their native tongue, came to the west and introduced it into the
geographical region called Spain and Portugal today. There perhaps they
whittled away making tall stilt-like wooden-shoes for the local populations
and teaching them a special term for them. Thus, the expression was picked
up by the locals sometime in the Christian era as the incipient Romance
tongues were emerging.

On that note, we should mention that Meyer-Lübke (9598) offers a slightly
different version for he gives the meaning of <zanca> (pers.) as 'Schuh'
citing Ait. <zanca> 'Bein, Fufs, Schaft'; <zanche> 'Stelzein', Fühlhörner,
comask. <txanc> 'Holzschuhe', prov. Sanca 'Kothurn', sp. <zanca> 'Bein',
<zanco> 'Stelze', zancas 'Schuh mit Hotzsohle, pg. <sanco> 'Bein des Vogels
von der klaue bis zum ersten Gelenk,' et. al. This version fits better with
the prototypic meanings of <zanca> and allows for 'high wooden shoe' to
become conflated with 'very tall shoes' or 'stilts' and or 'skinny legs'.
However, again we should note that for Basque, one would have to propose a
further evolution, that the word entered Basque meaning 'a type of high
wooden shoe' and/or 'a type of stilts' and then took on the meaning of
'leg'. And once again we are confronted with the question of whether or not
there is a larger MSF operating here that would comprise <shank> and
<hanch> along with the items cited by Meyer-Lübke and the Old Persian
lexeme in its earlier (?) meaning of 'leg'.

In closing I would mention that Meyer-Lübke (9598) also lists "nordostit.
<tsanko>, engad. <tschanc> and <friaul. <tsanko> 'linkshändig, links'" in
the sense of 'clumsy, akward'; similar to the meaning of Spanish
<zancajoso>. Are these exceptions to be understood as extensions of the
meanings associated with the image schema of someone walking on tall wooden
shoes or stilts?  Or are we still talking also about 'skinny wobbly legs'
and/or 'shanks'?? In summary, are we to reconstruct three different
morpho-semantic fields or is there a possibility that the three fields form
part of a larger and more complex MSF. That option doesn't deny the role of
the Persian Wanderwort, but rather would incorporate it into a larger
explanatory paradigm for the etyma in question.

Finally, what is interesting about this Wanderwort is the fact that a
careful review of the history of foot-ware in Europe could allow us to
determine the port of entry of the word. From the little that I know of
that topic, the fashion of wearing 'high wooden shoes' would have moved
along a vertical axis from the upper classes to the lower classes, the
upper classes having greater access to exotic foreign goods and being more
attune to the winds of fashion. From there the shoes, along with the exotic
term for them, would have made their way down to the lower echelons of
society, and finally both would have entered the vocabulary of shepherds
whose costume of wearing stilts to go about their everyday tasks may well
have antedated the arrival of the Persian expression. A careful examination
of the use of stilts would be needed to determine whether this assertion is
true. Or if, conversely, the shepherds didn't utilize stilts until after
they came into contact with outsiders/upper class gentry wearing tall
wooden shoes, etc. This interpretation of the Persian lexeme would connect
it directly with a type of shoe that reached western Europe, perhaps
through the marketing efforts of merchants operating out of Italy or
Catalunya. Indeed, there mig be some connection between these 'tall
shoes' and those referred to as <chapines> that became the rage in the
courts of Aragon, Navarre and Catalunya. As I vaguely recall reading
somewhere, the shoes were originally relatively modest in height, but the
fashion trend was to build them higher and higher, until some of them had
wooden or cork soles elevated three to four feet off the ground, an
advantage for the ladies of high blood for that way their dresses didn't
drag in the mud when they emerged from their carriages, but a problem, too,
since many of the ladies had to crouch down in order to fit themselves
through the openings of doorways constructed to accomodate normal-sized
mortals. And walking itself was a major problem unless one were accompanied
by a servant who could keep one from tripping.

Have a good day,
Roz


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Sun Mar  5 00:07:59 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 18:07:59 -0600
Subject: Excluding Basque data
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.180759.0600.>

Since the topic of criteria for inclusion and exclusion of Basque data has
surfaced again on the list, perhaps the following information will be of
interest.

Larry Trask Fri. Oct. 15 1999 writes:

ECOLING at aol.com writes:

>Concerning Larry Trask's list of criteria for potential candidates
>for early Basque vocabulary lists:

> [on the choice of cut-off date]

[LA]

>>The details in the paragraph above suggest to me OBVIOUSLY
>>if you want early Basque, you use 1700 in preference to 1600,
>>because the 16th-century materials are so limited in content.
>>It is always possible to study any differences between 16th and 17th century
>>equivalent grammatical morphemes, forms of the same words, etc.,
>>where those are attested in both centuries, but obviously much
>>non-religious vocabulary will be systematically disfavored by the earlier
>>cut-off date.

[LT]

>Well, I've already explained that I am prepared to consider 1700 rather than
>1600. But I don't think the choice is obvious. My impression at this stage -
>which might prove to be wrong, of course - is that most of the words that meet
>my other criteria are already attested by 1600, and so, if possible, I'd
>prefer to use the more restrictive early date.

I've prepared the following background summary in order to aid those
members of the list who might be somewhat unfamiliar with the source
materials for Basque. Hopefully, the summary also will bring into focus
some of the problems that inevitably arise when one attempts to choose a
"more restrictive early date" for the cut-off, whether that be set at 1600,
1700 or even 1800.

1) There is essentially no Medieval Basque 'literature' of any kind. Hence,
by 1500 what we have accumulated are some epitaphs, a few song fragments
(verses taken from the oral traditions) stuck into things written in
Romance, place names, proper names, e.g., in legal documents, and a couple
of very short word lists compiled by non-Basque speakers. That's it.
Whoops, I left out the marginal notes in the _ Glosas Emilienses _ and a
word or short phrase here and there inserted into poetic works written in
Romance, e.g., in the poetry of Gonzalo de Berceo. He was a priest from La
Rioja who wrote in Castillian. Although he might not have been a
Basque-speaker himself, he apparently was at least passingly familiar with
the language. He was known by the name of the village where he was born,
Berceo (in La Rioja), while he received his education at the Monastery of
San Millan in Araba. This was a zone that we can assume was bilingual at
that time (13th century) since it was located near the Castilian-Basque
linguistic border. Curiously, as was the case with the author of the first
example of Castilian, i.e., the _Glosas Emilienses_, the first medieval
poet writing in Castilian whose name we know, also seems to have had some
knowledge of Basque. For example, as Larry Trask mentions in his book
(1997:45), Berceo "spattered his poems with vasconisms, such as <don
Bildur> (a personification of <bildur> 'fear'), <zatico> (a derivative of
western <zati> 'period of time') and <gabe> 'without'."  In contrast to the
author of the _Glosas Emilienses_ who was clearly a Basque speaker, it is
more difficult to determine the level of fluency that Berceo had in the
language.

2) The Renaissance legacy.

a) The first book in Euskera: Poems.
It wasn't until 1545 that the first book in Euskera was published
consisting of a short collection of poems, many of which are dedicated to
the Virgin Mary (and to women in general). And then there is one poem
dealing with the writer's personal problems with certain ecclesiastical and
civ authorities. In addition to the poems the book also has a very brief
introductory section in prose of about one page in length. The work called
_Linguae Vasconum Primitiae_ has a medieval ring to it. And since the
author was from Low Navarre, that is the dialect represented. The author is
Bernard Dechepare (his name has other spellings), a priest who at one point
in his life becomes an 'arcipreste'.   The overall length of the sample can
be appreciated if one keeps following fact in mind: that in the recent
facsimile edition of the work (1995), the Spanish translation of the Basque
original runs from page 107 to page 127.

b) The second book: The New Testament (a Protestant version).
Next we have Johannes Leizarraga, another religious man. Actually he was a
Protestant minister who ended up in charge of a group of translators who
would produce the first Basque translation of the New Testament (1571), a
work which ended up, not unexpectedly, quite plagued with Latinisms. The
team of 'Wycliffs' worked for Juana de Albret, Queen of Navarre and Dame of
Bearne. Bearne was the location where the translators worked and resided.
Firmly committed to Calvinism, Leizarraga himself was from Lapurdi
(Labourd) although he opted to use a mixture of the three northern Basque
dialects in the translation. When published it was accompanied by _ABC edo
Christinoen Instructionea_, a catechism that contained the principals of
the Calvinist Creed, and _Kalendarea_, calendrical tables to be used to
calculate the moveable feasts.

c) Three collections of sayings.
Then the century ends with three collections of proverbs and sentences
written as far as I know in Bizkaian which at that time was more similar to
the Lapurdin dialect than it is today. Two of the collections weren't
published until several centuries later.

The name of the author of only two of the three collections is known, i.e.,
Esteban de Garibay of Mondragon, chronicler of Phillip II. The latter
writer also included a fragment from a Basque ballad in his _Memorias_.
Leaving aside the proper names and repeated elements found in that
fragment, the text contains a total of 21 words.

d) Although not strictly a literary work, there is also a letter from an
individual residing in the New World to someone back home ( I don't
remember exactly who the recipient was). It is a couple of pages long as I
recall, and was written by a man born in Durango, Bizkaia. He was Fray Juan
de Zumarraga, first Bishop of Mexico. The letter is dated 1537.

Criteria.

Larry Trask has stated that he would prefer 1600 as the cut-off date for
"early attestation".  As one can see from the information given above, if
the cut off date is set at 1600, it's pretty slim pickins.

And furthermore, if one applies Larry Trask's other criterion to the same
corpus, namely, that for an item to be included in his list it must be
recorded early in all dialects or most of the dialects, we're fried
(although this might not be the way that Larry intends the dialectal
criterion to be applied to the data). The database in question simply
doesn't provide a wide sampling. In other words, serious difficulties would
arise if one were to apply the second criterion of widespread dialectal use
to items attested prior to 1600: the two books mentioned above and three
collections of proverbs do not cover all the dialects. Thus, a strict
application of Larry's second rule would actually eliminate all the words
found in these works. Again, he may assume that if the word is attested
early (prior to 1600) in one or more of the northern dialects that would be
sufficient.

Earlier Larry Trask has stated that in his opinion, when finished his list
would end up containing only 200 "native" Basque words. He may have stated
'a couple hundred' (sorry I don't have the exact citation). By my
calculations, there might be even fewer, unless he means that he would
include a if the word can be attested prior to 1600 in one dialect and then
rediscovered in the nineteenth and tntieth centuries in four of the five
dialects.

Thus, there is the question of how the sample is skewed because of the
following facts:

1) that many works are translations from Latin by clergymen;
2) that when the works are not translations they are nonetheless books or
treatises written by priests about religious themes; and
3) during the 16th and 17th centuries the works represent primarily one
dialectal zone, Lapurdi.

With respect to the first point, we note that both of the major books from
the 16th century were written by members of the clergy. In the 17th century
there were 36 editions (note: these are editions, not necessarily new
books) whose authors with one exception, that of Oihenart, were priests; in
the 18th century all the authors were members of the clergy except two,
Barrutia and Etcheberri. Hence, 90% of the works published in these three
centuries were by clergymen; this compares with 6% of the works written in
French for the same period. In terms of the authors themselves, 28% of the
French books were authored by members of the nobility; another 28% by
members of the clergy; and 66% by members of the Third Estate. In contrast,
90% of the books in Euskera were written by the clergy and 10% by members
of the Third Estate.

In terms of the dialect distribution, in the 17th century, of the 36
editions of books over 100 pages, 32 were written in Lapurdin (for a
dialect population estimated at 30,000), 1 in Low Navarrese and 3 in
Zuberoan. None of them were written in any of the southern dialects (for a
discussion of these statisitics, cf. Ibon Sarasola, _Historia social de la
literatura vasca_, Madrid: Akal, pp. 35-55).

So if my understanding is correct, Larry Trask's "more restrictive early
date" would admit one translation of the New Testament with a catechism and
tables for calculating moveable feasts, 1 short book of poems, a letter
from Mexico, and three brief collections of proverbs as his data base to
which he would add the miscellaneous citations, epigraphs, songs, place
names, proper names, a couple of very short word lists compiled by
non-Basques and some random words and phrases found in works written in
Romance prior to 1700.

Should such a database be considered a representative sample?

Keep reading, there are more surprises!!

List members unfamiliar with the highly oral nature of Basque culture might
be surprised to know that the date set for the beginning of Basque
literature is 1879. And to give people a better idea of just how few texts
there really are I would like to reproduce (actually summarize) information
in the form of three charts. In their original form the charts also
indicate which dialects the works were written in, but I've left that
information out. The cut off date for the statistical tabulation is 1879.
To qualify as a work, the text had to be a non-periodical and at least 48
pages long, a standard definition taken from UNESCO.

The time periods covered are:

XVIb 1545-1599
XVIIa 1600-1649
XVIIb 1650-1699
XVIIIa 1700-1749
XVIIIb 1750-1799
XIXa 1800-1849
XIXb 1850-1879

Chart #1.
 In chart #1 we have listed the number of works published in Euskera for
each half-century period, whether written originally in that language or as
a translation. The numbers on the right don't include re-editions of the
same work.

XVIb 3
XVIIa 7
XVIIb 13
XVIIIa 17
XVIIlb 43
XIXa 47
XIXb 64

Total 194

Chart #2
In chart #2 we have a list of all works written and published originally in
Euskera, i.e., those that are not translations.

XVIb 1
XVIIa  6
XVIIb 6
XVIIIa 5
XVIIlb 24
XIXa 26
XIXb 33

Total 101

Chart #3
In chart #3 we can appreciate more fully the dearth of non-religious works
meeting the above minimal UNESCO criteria. Stated differently, the
following list contains the tabulation of secular works written originally
in Euskera up to 1879.

XVIb 1
XVIIa 0
XVIIb 1
XVIIIa 1
XVIIlb 1
XIXa 4
XIXb 4

Total 12

For a full discussion of the data and these chartsf. Sarasola
1976:179-183.

I believe that these three charts help explain some of the reason that Jon
Patrick and I have repeatedly argued in favor of including Azkue's
dictionary as a legitimate and necessary addition to any database for
Euskera. In addition, Azkue was meticulous in noting the dialect, even
indicating the name of the village, in which he collected the item.
Moreover, he utilized some 150 Basque texts as part of his database and he
indicates precisely which text each item comes from, citing the entire
sentence in which it occurred so that the reader has the contextualization
of the entry.

In conclusion, keeping in mind the question of whether religious texts,
primarily translations, are appropriate (or the best) data sources for our
purposes, I would like to quote a few short passages from Jon Juaristi's
book _Historia de la literatura vasca_ from the series _Historia critica de
la literatura hispanica_ (Madrid: Taurus, 1987).

Speaking of the production during the 16th century, he states that the fact
the texts were written in Euskera at all can be attributed to the religious
struggle of that time that was being waged between Protestants and the
forces of the Counter-Reformation:

"Los primeros textos en euskera (al menos, los primeros que tuvieron una
entidad digna de tenerse en cuenta) fueron obras de caracter religioso para
la evangelizacion de un pueblo sin escritura, libros escritos por clerigos
para servir de apoyo a la labor pastoral de otros clerigos. Unamuno pudo
comparar con toda justicia la literatura vasca de los siglos XVI al XIX con
la literatura guarani que los jesuitas promovieron en sus Reducciones del
Paraguay: 'Los catecismos de doctrina cristiana se escribian en vascuence,
pero no para que los ninos los aprendiesen leyendolos, sino para que los
curas se los ensenasen de viva voz. Porque no se debe perder de vista que
el vascuence no ha sido letra escrita por el pueblo (Unamuno 1920).' En
efecto, como sucedia con los textos religiosos guaranies, los libros
euskericos rara vez se dejaban en manos de aquellos a cuya edificacion y
adoctrinamiento iban destinados (Juaristi 1987:13-14)."

In short, from my point of view, given the nature of the facts set out
above, to assign the cut-off point for the database at 1600 is not
particularly logical; and it would be only slightly more logical to assign
the cut-off to 1700. This is particularly so if we keep in mind that our
aim is to reconstruct a stage of the language roughly 2000 years earlier,
i.e., prior to its first contacts with the Roman invaders who entered the
Peninsula in 218 BC.  Considering the intended purpose of the database, it
is unlikely that any changes that the language would have undergone in the
hundred-year period, i.e., from 1599-1699, would affect the outcome of the
study in any significant way.

By the way is there a chronological cut-off point for words in Romance
languages? Or in Slavic? Just curious.

Ondo ibili,
Roz


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Mar  6 21:06:13 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 16:06:13 EST
Subject: Celtiberian
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.160613.EST.>

In a message dated 3/1/2000 10:25:54 PM, Jim Rader wrote:

> Joseph Eska, in his succinct and useful review of some of the recent
> literature on Celtiberian/Hispano-Celtic (posted 28 Feb), modestly
> fails to mention his own contribution, _Towards an Interpretation of the
> Hispano-Celtic Inscription of Botorrita_ (1989), published in the
> Innsbrucker Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft series

And I should apologize to Dr. Eska.  This reference was frequent in the
materials an informant sent me.  But because I was editing to save space and
because I don't know any better, I left it out.  Obviously a poor decision.
And thanks to Jim Rader for pointing it out.

Just a few notes regarding Joseph Eska's reply to my post:

I wrote:
>> "The 'first full manual' on the language appeared in 1998.  Jordan Cslera,
>> Carlos. Introduccisn al Celtibirico. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu replied:

> Not so much a manual as a preliminary description.

The description is not mine but Javier Martínez García's: "This is the
first manual of this language to appear. Using a comparative framework, the
author discusses phonetic-phonological and morphological features of the
Celtiberian language. He also describes the most important documents (coins,
graffiti, tombstones, documents of hospitality, etc.). The book includes a list
of linguistic features, a word index, and bibliography."

I also wrote:
>> Wolfgang Meid's commentaries on Celtiberian Inscriptions Archaeologica
>> (Budapest 1994) have been considered authoritative.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> Again, not so.  In fact, the very large majority of specialists on
> Continental Celtic have found Prof. Meid's hermeneutic analyses anything but
> authoritative, and, indeed, rather fantastic.

Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that Meid is cited often enough
alongside of Dr. Eska to deserve mention, aside from the merits of his
approach.  An example from the a Blackwell Peoples of Europe series: "Botorrit
a I remains the most important Hispano-Celtic inscription for linguistic
anaylsis (Meid 1993: 9-15; Eska 1989: 3-10).
...Interpretations of this inscription have varied widely, with most
commentators considering the text to be either religious or legal. This
disagreement is due to our fragmentary knowledge of the grammar and
vocabulary of the language. Both Meid and Eska supply exhaustive
bibliographical information throughout their treatments of the inscription
(Meid 1993, Eska 1989)."

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also wrote:

<<As for the q-Celtic label, well, this is pretty trivial phonologically, and
not really much of a diagnostic.  Cf. the case of Lepontic, traditionally
considered to be p-Celtic, but in which several examples of the inherited
voiceless labiovelar arguably occurs.>>

I had written:

> However, it now appears that this may also have been the result of
> the Latinization of the language in the late period, since some early texts
> now seem to show signs of being P-Celtic...

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

>> Absolutely not!  There isn't the slightest bit of evidence for this at all.
>> Now, Lusitanian, which Untermann maintains could be, at least, para-Celtic,
>> does retain IE *p, but few specialists are persuaded that it's related to
>> Celtic in any close way.

I am not sure of the upshot of this.  If "the q-Celtic label, well, this is
pretty trivial phonologically, and not really much of a diagnostic." then I
would not understand the importance of the next observation.  And if
Lusitanian relationship to Celtic is problematic at least - then the asserted
'remarkable similarity' of Celtic starts to depend on narrowing the
definition of Celtic instead of actually acknowledging the ambiguoity and the
possible lack of that 'remarkable similarity'.  Also the very fact that the
first clearly attested Celtic languages - Gaulish, Lepontic and Celtiberian-
are "q-Celtic" might suggest that conjectures about when and how the change
from IE <p> occurred are not part of any real evidence regarding time.  As
you wrote, "several scholars have claimed that [Hispano-Celtic] is
practically identical to proto-Celtic, a sentiment I do not share..." The
absence of evidence of any transition to q-Celtic leaves open when and how
that transition may have occured.  Others on this list have referred to
Lepontic and Hispano-Celtic as evidence that the transition to "q-Celtic was
already occuring by the 7th century," an unjustified dating of that event
from my point-of-view.

I wrote:

>> There is also the difficult problem, mentioned above, as to whether
>> Latinization in the mid 2d century BC altered the language so that it was
>> at least dialectically different from the one used in the Iberian script.
>> Familiar structure that appears in Latin alphabet texts are not often
>> confirmed in the earlier texts.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> If this is a reference to structural differences between Hispano-Celtic texts
> written in Iberian and Roman characters, respectively, I'd really like to
> know what they are, as I'm not aware of them.

I believe the original writer was referring to the suggestion made by some -
I'm not sure but I think it seems to say e.g., Kim McCone in A Relative
Chronology of Celtic Sound Changes (1996) - that evidence of Gaulish's
Latinization might also be found in Celtiberian.  I do see the following
cited:  Cremin's The Celts in Europe: "Although the Botorrita text is
lengthy, it gives little information about grammar, and this is also the case
with most of the Celtiberian inscriptions we have... "  But that Roman
scripts, such as those at Peñalba de Villastar, Teruel, reveal "almost all we
know of the structure of Celtiberian."

Finally, with regard to dating Hispano-Celtic I wrote:

>> Since evidence of Celtiberian dates back as far as early Latin, contraryto
>> what [Mr Stirling] said above, it certainly is a candidate as one of the
>> earliest IE languages on record and needs to be accounted for on an equal
>> basis, I think.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> While Hispano-Celtic is clearly archaic -- several scholars have claimed that
> it is practically identical to proto-Celtic, a sentiment I do not share  --
> it also has its share of innovations, and evidence does not date back as far
> as early Latin.  Hispano-Celtic texts are often notoriously difficult to
> date, but I know of no specialist who would claim that any texts date from
> earlier than the first half of the second century BCE.

Actually, I was actually repeating the post that came before on the list that
mine was in reply to, from Christopher Gwinn <sonno3 at hotmail.com which read:

<<In any case, we know
Celtiberian was already being spoken in Spain in the 6th century BC, and
that it shares many similarities with the Goidelic branch
(PIE -Kw-=Qu/Ku/Cu, for example). Its vocabulary preserves some archaisms
not found in Goidelic or Brythonic (Silbur "silver" next to regular Common
Celtic word Arganto-)...>>

One would prefer not to refer to the existence of a language in a particular
location having particular attributes 400 years before there is real
attestation of it.  But be aware that this 5th century date is often
repeated.  E.g.:

<<The Celtiberian script is in fact a modified form of Iberian, with some
innovations... Celtiberian inscriptions, very few in number, were made from
the 6th to the 1st century BC; since the 3rd century the Roman alphabet came
in use, being much more convenient and suitable for the language.>>
You'll find the above on the web at http://www.ropnet.ru/cyryllo/script/celti.
html

Much thanks once again to Dr Eska for taking the time to inform us on this
subject.

Regards,
Steve Long


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Mar  6 22:25:59 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 17:25:59 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.172559.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

> G&I give walwa-, walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian walwa-,
> but that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not aware of a
> development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes). >>

-- Mallory & Adams seem to think it's credible.


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Tue Mar  7 00:43:39 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 01:43:39 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.014339.0100.>

>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>>'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>>prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

>-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
>perhaps?

Joat, have you read Berlin/Kay's "Basic color terms", or at least some
extensive quotation from it, and if so, what do you find basically wrong
with it ? If, however, the answer to the first question is no, my next
question has to be: why ?

>>Although bears are big and dangerous, you are talking here about people whose
>>ancestors seemed to make a living out of hunting some big, angry things.

>-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

You obviously were around.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Mar  7 03:31:13 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 19:31:13 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFEEBDCHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.193113.0800.>

At 03:55 PM 3/4/00 -0700, Dr. John E. McLaughlin wrote:
>[Steve Long wrote]

>> Not to rile anyone but just to express a minority opinion in the
>> short time I'm allowed lately -

>> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'
>...

>> My little suggestion here is again that brown did not give its name to the
>> bear, but that the bear's fur gave its name to brown.

>Being an outsider to serious PIE work, where to the earliest attested
>Indo-European languages and PIE fall on the Berlin and Kay color scale?

Fairly "early", at least as far as Homeric Greek is concerned (with four
color words according to B&K).  Which is probably why Steve is dubious
about there being a word for 'brown' in PIE.

However, I have some doubts about *some* of Berlin and Kay's conclusions.
For one thing, I am less certain than they that color words cannot be lost.
 And I suspect that borrowed color words replace older ones more frequently
than B&K seem to believe (they are less explicit on this issue, however,
they tend to use the presence of a borrowed basic color term as an
indication of recency of that concept in the language).

So, the presence of only 4 basic color words in Homer is not really that
conclusive vis-a-vis PIE, IMHO.

>This is an important thing to know before discussing whether 'bear' >
>'brown' or vice versa.  Ultimately, 'brown' should be traced to something
>non-color (since it's a VERY late color term to develop), but did this
>happen before, during, or after PIE?

Or did it come and go several times before and after PIE?

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Mar  7 03:34:28 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 19:34:28 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.193428.0800.>

At 08:11 PM 3/4/00 -0500, you wrote:
>-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
>perhaps?

Many languages, even today, have no word for brown.  This is what allowed
Berlin and Kay to develop their color hierarchy.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Mar  7 06:23:18 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 01:23:18 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.012318.EST.>

In a message dated 3/6/2000 6:32:12 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

>Your (longer) discussion on this matter assumes that PIE was more urbanized
>than not.  I must disagree.  While there was a certain amount of agriculture
>and pastoralism involved, the time dates and locations for PIE suggest a
>culture much more closely tied to the environment than modern communities in
>the Middle East.  Among hunting peoples around the world, there is virtually
>no one in a community who has not seen a large local predator.

I am not sure what "time dates and locations for PIE" you have in mind, but
if you are going to clear forests and shrubland at the rate Bandkeramik did
(pollen deposits reveal where plant forms changed to domesticates), you are
going to run into a similar situation to the one that faced european settlers
for a century in places like Kentucky and Western PA.  And bear remains are
definitely among the fauna found in the trash heaps of these settlements.
And because bears normally do not have high population density (except when
they chase salmon - when they become vulnerable in open areas) and are
vulnerable during hibernation, they can be eradicated from a broad area
rather quickly.  Where winter prevails, agricultural communities rely on
hunting quite a bit.  And in Europe - from the Steppes to the Atlantic -
there were already very effective mesolithic hunting communities - especially
in the territory of TBK, where later Germanic would make the bear/brown
connection prominent.

Once again, Bandkeramik had a very effective trade network and if there was a
market for bear by-products like bear furs, there were probably specialists
who made a living looking for them, along with other wild fauna.  And that
would say that while members of the community might have seen the bear, they
may have seen a lot more of what was left of the bear - while there were
still bears around.

Stefan Georg's turnaround on the taboo (hunter not wanting bear to be
forewarned) does suggest that the taboo might have applied anyway.  Having
engaged in such mesolithic activities, I know that my belief in luck went up
sharply when the trail got cold.

Regards,
Steve Long


From xdelamarre at siol.net  Tue Mar  7 06:51:48 2000
From: xdelamarre at siol.net (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 07:51:48 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0003061206280.14979637-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.075148.0100.>

I wrote:

>> As for Finnish _karhu_, I have proposed (_Historische Sprachforschung_ 105,
>> 1992, pp 151-54) that it could be a loan from a Proto-Aryan form
>> _*harkSas_,

Ante Aikio wrote :

>I was not aware of this etymology. It sounds phonologically quite
>well possible; the only thing one could object to is Aryan *-as > Finnic
>*-u (why not Finnish karhas : karhaa- ?). But this is not a big problem, I
>guess - e.g., back-formation of non-attested karhas seems possible.

I have adressed this question in my article, but not in a very satisfying
manner, proposing a back-formation, like you. I think now a more obvious
solution would be to see the -u of karhu as a reflex of the Aryan ending
-o: of the thematic nominative (cf the Avestan & O.ind. treatment  -o: of
the ending -as) ; but we have the counter-exemples of _porsas_, _taivas_
(against _orpo_, _arvo_), maybe a question of time when the loans were made
(those in -as being earlier than those in -o/-u).

>>. "Eurasian" is a wide concept - what do you mean, more precisely?

I only mean that the IE were, since remote times, in close contact with the
Uralic tribes, that is somewhere in present Russia (so, let us say Eastern
Europe rather than Eurasia)

>> The funny thing is that we have a Finnish word _tarvas_ designating
>> big cervidae, which shows the same metathesis as Celtic (whereas there is
>> none in Aryan, Baltic & Germanic). But it may be pure coincidence or we
>> have to postulate that the loan was made somewhere in present Russia,
>> before (Proto-)Celts entered Central Europe.

>The Finnish metathesis is independent of the Celtic one. Actually,
>Pre-Finnish *wr > Finnic / Finnish rv seems to be a regular sound law -
>there are no counterexamples, and several Baltic loan words have undergone
>the same sound shift (e.g. Finnish torvi 'horn (instrument)', Finnish
>karva 'hair (not on head)', cf. Lithuanian taure~, gau~ras). Finnish
>tarvas is thus < *tawras < Baltic.

Thank you for the information, I did not know this law. What comparative
grammar  do you use ? (I have Laanest's "Einführung" and I have been
looking for years for Hakulinen's "Rakenne & Kehitys", out-of-print,
introuvable).

X. Delamarre
Ljubljana


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Mar  7 16:30:15 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 09:30:15 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.093015.0700.>

[Steve Long wrote]
>> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

[Joat Simeon replied]
> -- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
> perhaps?

There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late term to
develop in color vocabulary.  It does not mean that there are no brown
things or that the the speakers of these languages are deficient in their
visual acuity, but only that the basic terms for color cover a wider range
of hues than in languages with a word for 'brown'.  Typically, 'brown' as a
primary color term is found only in languages that have already developed
white/light, black/dark, red, yellow, blue, and green as primary terms.  In
languages without a primary 'brown' term, brown things are typically
described with words like 'dark', 'dark red', 'red', 'yellow', 'dark
yellow', 'dirt-colored', 'rock-colored', and probably even 'bear-colored'.
In Panamint, for example, the word commonly translated 'brown' is a
derivative of the word for 'yellow'.  Many African languages, for example,
also lack 'brown' as a basic color term.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 19:23:57 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 11:23:57 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.112357.0800.>

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote on the subject of bears
and how they have been named:

> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

Let's all remember that the word for "bear" is firmly reconstructible, based on
Skt. _r.ks.as_, Gk. _arktos_, Latin _ursus_, etc., as *r.tkos, with the well-
known "thorn" metathesis, and that only *one* group, the speakers of Proto-
Germanic, renamed the bear as "brown one" (just as the Proto-Slavic community
renamed him as "honey-eater").

So the question that arises is not whether PIE had a colour term "brown"
(almost certainly not), but whether Proto-Germanic did.  I have no opinion on
the topic, just want to keep straight who and what language we are discussing.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 23:20:45 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 15:20:45 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0003060939470.14979637-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
 (message from Ante Aikio on Mon, 6 Mar 2000 09:43:09 +0200)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.152045.0800.>

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Ante Aikio (anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi) wrote:

> There's a similar semantic shift in e.g. Finnish puna 'red color' < *'fur'
> (its cognates mean 'hair', 'fur', 'wool').

Is it the basic term for _red_ in Finnish?  Or is there another, so that only
certain things get labeled _puna_?  (Cf. horse-hide terms in English such as
_bay_, _dun_, _chestnut_, and so on.)

								Rich Alderson


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Mar  7 05:48:19 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 00:48:19 EST
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.004819.EST.>

In a message dated 3/6/2000 6:32:12 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

>Being an outsider to serious PIE work, where do the earliest attested
>Indo-European languages and PIE fall on the Berlin and Kay color scale?
>This is an important thing to know before discussing whether 'bear' >
>'brown' or vice versa.  Ultimately, 'brown' should be traced to something
>non-color (since it's a VERY late color term to develop), but did this
>happen before, during, or after PIE?  If there isn't a full range of
>white/light, black/dark, red, yellow, green, and blue, then we can't really
>expect 'brown' and perhaps the PIE term reconstructed 'brown' might better
>be reconstructed 'bear' with the understanding that the development of
>'bear-colored' to 'brown' might be very early....

>To reiterate my earlier questions, where do the earliest IE languages stand
>on the Berlin and Kay scale?  Where does PIE stand?

Some points about Berlin and Kay might be helpful here.

1. The original B&K conclusion in Basic Color Terms (1969) was - if you had
11 or less color terms in your language, they would be present pretty much in
the same order no matter what the language was - or at least for the speakers
of the original 98 living languages they studied.  These are from some notes:
 <<eleven psychophysically defined colours serve as the perceptual focal
points of all the basic colour words in all the languages of the world. This
set of eleven psychophysically defined percepts thus constitutes a
substantive semantic universal... B&K found that words for the basic colours
arose in different languages in a particular sequence: so all languages with
only two basic colour words have words for black and white; languages with
exactly three basic colour words have words for black, white and red and so
on. They interpret this ordering as an evolutionary one.>>

I see B&K had brown as #7, after blue, so that if you had seven or more
"basic color terms" in your language, you'd have brown.

2.  B & K based all categorization on what they felt defined "basic color
terms", so there were a lot of languages that didn't get as high as level 7
brown - mostly non-European languages - and I see that in my notes that much
to my surprise they included "Homeric Greek" and made it a "stage IIIb level
language" (only four BCT's - not brown).  How many Homeric Greeks they tested
those color chips on I do not know.

3. B&K were hit heavy by conventional researchers - and even innatists had
problems with their not taking proper account of the rods and cones.  But the
heaviest hit came from the experimentalists on methodological grounds. The
targeted article was Saunders, B. A. C. & van Brakel, J. (1997). Are there
nontrivial constraints on colour categorization? Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 20 (2):167-228, and a whole series followed.

I have this note as summarizing the state of the dialogue by "Gammack and
Denby": "Classic previous studies motivated by a search for universals
constraining color terms (Berlin & Kay, 1969) have, however, had their
methodology criticized. Saunders and Van Brakel's (1997) target article and
the associated critical responses gives a good status report on the major
arguments. Berlin and Kay's later studies make some slight concessions, but
Kay and Berlin (1997) maintain the essence of their original position on
universals. The unreliability of naming as a dependent variable is one major
problem, and so attempting to design studies around some objectively
comparable standards is preferred. Colour sensations "number in excess of
7,000,000 ... [color names] are of infinite variety" (Cohen, 1969)."

4. My big problem with B&K is that they used solid-color chips.  That treats
color not as a feature of an object, but as an independent thing in itself.
This is a modern convention - a result of the color spectrum and pigment
technology - and not the way ancients saw these things until pigmentation and
color analysis became sophisticated.  (Homer didn't use the word <chroma> and
he never used a noun for a specific color - it was always an adjective or a
physical stain.  <Chroma> was a metaphorical adaption of a word for skin used
by the later Greek natural philosophers.  Words for pigments, <pharma>, mix,
I believe, were even more clearly derived from the specific sources of those
pigments.)

5.  I suppose that all 11 "basic color terms" might be reconstructed back to
*PIE, but this would really feel like an anachronism.  Just like with
wheel-words, you might find they are all there in one IE language or another.
 But the historical "semantics" just don't seem to support that with colors
at all.

Anyway - hope this helps.

Regards,
Steve Long


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar  7 09:11:39 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 14:41:39 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.144139.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Monday, 06 March, 2000 4:34 PM

I would like to comment on the following statement by Steve Long:

> You see, my guess has always been that there is NOTHING in comparative
> linguistics that in some scientific way clearly DISPROVES Renfrew's dates.
> And although professional impressions have weight, they cannot be dispositive
> on scientific issues.  Nothing so far has scientifically disproven Renfrew's
> dates.

It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory). After
all, any word in a language can be a loanword, therefore - in principle -
the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
roots. The main question is: how likely is it that such borrowings /
derivations happened independently from each other, often in languages far
removed from each other?

Let me concentrate on the word for horse in Latin: equus.

Where do you think it comes from? Let me assume that you accept the reality
of PIE - if you don't, it is difficult to continue any kind of debate. So -
I can think of four possibilities:

------------------------------------------------------
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION ONE:

Equus is derived linearly, with one generation of speakers following
another, from a PIE word reconstructed by linguists as *ek^uos.

Here, k^ stands for a velar or palatal voiceless stop that was subject to
satemization in the "satem" languages; I am ignoring the possibility of an
initial laryngeal, which - not being reflected in any daughter language - is
not relevant here. Now, if this etymological explanation is correct, the
word *ek^uos or its linear descendants all the way to 'equus' must have
existed at all stages in the development of PIE > Latin, as - before the
invention of writing and written traditions - there was no way for words to
disappear and then reappear in a language, unless by borrowing (for which
see later).

If this was the case, the word must have referred to something, presumably
to a horse-like creature. The problem is that there is no evidence of
horses, wild or domesticated, in Italy before the Polada culture (ca. 2600
BC, if I am not mistaken). If Renfrew's Indo-Europeans arrived in Italy
around 5000 BC, or even earlier, they presumably encountered no horses
there. Actually, there is no evidence for horses at the time in the areas
that they had come from according to Renfrew, namely Greece or the Balkan
peninsula. So: what did *ek^uos refer to? Either a mythical beast, or the
donkey (were there actually donkeys around?), or maybe the sheep or the cow?

I don't like any of these explanations, and I find it hard to believe that
when the pre-Latins encountered the horse after 2600 BC, they pointed at it
and said: aha, here is this mythical beast that our ancestors in Anatolia
called 'equos', nice to find it again after so many millennia. Or,
alternatively, they said: let's call it 'equos' after the donkey, which it
resembles somewhat, now all we have to do is invent a word for the donkey,
not to confuse the two. Good thing that the word 'asinos' is around, applied
to - say - the deer, now we have to find a word for the 'deer'. A nice chain
reaction, there.  [You'll notice that I presume that the ending -os had not
yet become -us, because this is a historically attested phonetic change that
occurred during the 1st millennium BC].

The only weakness in this argument is that maybe horses were present in
Italy at the time, we have just found no evidence for them. I ask
archaeologists: is this likely? Italy is well covered by archaeological
sites from many eras - if horses were there before 2600 BC (at first only in
the extreme north), is it likely that their bones would be consistently
missing from before 2600 BC, while present in ever increasing numbers
afterwards?

----------------------------------------------------------------

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION TWO

The word "equus" in Latin is an independent creation, possibly from the root
that gave also 'ocior' (faster). The fact that Old English had "eoh",
Sanskrit "asvas" is irrelevant - by chance these languages have relied on
their own derivational resources to end up with a similar word for horse.

I will not spend time refuting this possibility - it is too absurd.

----------------------------------------------------------------

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION THREE

The word "equus" is ultimately a loanword in Latin - it was borrowed from an
IE language spoken north of the Alps at the same time (or later than) the
animal itself was introduced into Italy.

This explanation is not impossible, and it would not contradict Renfrew. The
main problem is that there are far too many words associated with the early
Bronze Age and Sherratt's Secondary Products Revolution that would have to
have been borrowed around the same time. Not impossible, but unlikely - at
least in my opinion.

A modification of this theory would have other IE languages borrowing the
word from Italy - this strikes me as extremely unlikely, seeing that the
domestication of the horse is in any case associated with the area north of
the Black Sea.

---------------------------------------------------------------

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOUR

I can think of a fourth explanation, one that would not completely destroy
Renfrew's theory, but modify it: Renfrew could be right as far as PIE
(Anatolia) > PIE (Balkans), but then the Italic languages would have been
introduced later into Italy from the north or the northeast, say as
derivatives of the Baden culture. These people would have had the horse,
which would have came to them by diffusion from the east together with its
name.

This explanation would not exclude an earlier strain of IE speakers in Italy
(with no name for the horse), who would have come in as Renfrew indicates,
and who would have supplied Latin and the other Italic languages with an IE
substratum. Such a substratum might well have supplied Latin with the many
words with "unetymological" a: quattuor, canis, manere etc.

--------------------------------------------------------------

A nice hypothesis, this last one - and, maybe, one pointing in the direction
of eventually reconciling Renfrew and Gimbutas. After all, the Kurgan theory
has no very convincing hypothesis for the prehistory of the PIE speakers -
they might have come from the Balkans, in which case the neolithic
revolution in Europe would have introduced languages closely related to, or
even ancestral to, what we know as PIE.

But I leave all this to another posting.

Best wishes to everyone,

Gabor Sandi


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Mar  7 17:19:24 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 10:19:24 -0700
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <q572csclmcotc1q531cfd3p8pdnqcdhjpj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.101924.0700.>

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote]

> That's OK.  Subjective valorations of differences between
> languages/dialects can't be made with a granularity smaller than
> 500 years or so (even that may be too fine).

Actually, it's not.  The earliest known recording of Comanche dates from
1786 in a treaty signed with the governor of New Mexico.  The Comanche names
are recorded there in a Spanish orthography and reveal that, at that time,
Comanche and Eastern Shoshoni had identical phonologies.  There are enough
Comanche names in the document (with Spanish translations of the meaning) to
find nearly all of the diagnostic phonological markers that separate Modern
Comanche from Modern Eastern Shoshoni and see that none of the Comanche
changes had happened yet.  Also present are a number of archaic Shoshoni
morphemes that Modern Comanche has lost or changed.  In a Comanche word list
collected in a French orthography in 1828, a few of the phonological changes
in Comanche had taken effect, and there are fewer archaic words.  In an
extensive Comanche dictionary recorded in a Spanish-based orthography in
1861, all the changes that separate Modern Comanche from Eastern Shoshoni
have taken place and there is much less archaic vocabulary.  There are other
Comanche word lists and documents recorded in the much less adequate English
orthography (all workers in Native America dread working with nineteenth
century English-orthography word lists), but the first list based on a
phonetic alphabet is a body of texts from 1901.  I have found only one
archaic form in that body of texts (for Coyote, of course) and the phonology
is completely modern.  The nature of the evidence is quite good and clearly
shows that Comanche differentiated from Eastern Shoshoni (the two are only
about as mutually intelligible as Spanish and Portuguese) within the 500
year boundary claimed by Miguel.  We can state with confidence that the
distinction is only on the order of about 200 to 250 years (possibly up to
300, but definitely not any more than that).  These two languages are also
not differentiated on a dialect level, but on a full language level--there
are major phonological, morphological, and syntactic differences between the
two.  Comanche speakers generally say that they can understand a little
Shoshoni if they live among them for a couple of months, but the reverse is
not true.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 23:56:00 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 15:56:00 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <q572csclmcotc1q531cfd3p8pdnqcdhjpj@4ax.com> (message from Miguel
 Carrasquer Vidal on Sat, 04 Mar 2000 15:56:40 +0100)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.155600.0800.>

On Sat, 04 Mar 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (mcv at wxs.nl) wrote:

> Indo-Aryan and Iranian must have lost most contact at least 500 years before
> the earliest texts on historical grounds (not that there's much consensus on
> the historical trajectories or even the dating of the earliest texts).

Indeed there is not.  At one time, I corresponded for several weeks with a
gentleman working on his dissertation in the area of early Persian history (or
religion, it was never quite clear which), who was arguing that Zarathustra was
a Vedic-period reformer trying to introduce a sense of sin to marauding cattle
thieves/young warriors.  (This was several years ago, on the alt.zoroastrianism
newsgroup.  I doubt that it was archived anywhere.)

I would put the similarities between Vedic and Gathic at much less than 500
years, but then, you knew that.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  8 01:42:08 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:42:08 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <d.2425118.25f4eac9@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.174208.0800.>

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> Well, even my quote given above includes a pretty good indication of what
> kind of difference I was talking about <<roughly 4000 years separates
> non-Anatolian PIE from Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin
> (500BC)>>

The original text reads "Following Renfrew, roughly 4000...", which I of course
ignored in answering the (to me) *real* question, which was (from his earlier
post):

>> How 'differentiated' are those three languages?  On a scale of 1 to 10?

The answer to this question *should* lead one to question, strongly, Renfrew,
but apparently it does not, as witness the following:

> You see, my guess has always been that there is NOTHING in comparative
> linguistics that in some scientific way clearly DISPROVES Renfrew's dates.
> And although professional impressions have weight, they cannot be dispositive
> on scientific issues.  Nothing so far has scientifically disproven Renfrew's
> dates.

[ ... ]

> I haven't found a single instance of anything resembling an objective,
> reproducible method of measuring time/difference in languages.  If it is an
> art, that is fine.  But then the objection to Renfrew's dates are artistic,
> not scientific.

Under this regimen, Renfrew's dates are artistic as well, as he has no evidence
for his claim that the Neolithic farming spread is to be equated with that of
the Indo-European languages.  So let's be honest about what we're rejecting,
and why.

> (I have found exceptions to what I've just written in the textbooks, but they
> all deal with glottochronology - e.g., Robert Lee's formula for calculating
> 'time depth' given by Lehmann (1992, p.176) at least attempts to quantify
> elements and just as importantly offers reproducibility and a measure of
> possible error - requirements these days in real science.)

It has been demonstrated, time and again, as each generation re-discovers the
mistake that was glottochronology, that there is no possible measure of rate of
change in language.  Take the two grossest examples with which I am familiar,
Greenlandic Eskimo and Icelandic:  The rate of lexical retention in the former
is 40% loss per century, in the latter 0%.

Real science, these days or any other, requires that things measured actually
be mensurable.  Rate of change in language is not.

> In this context, the persistent use of examples of cognates to prove some
> kind of time relationship is very troubling.

The "persistent use of examples" was due to a massive misunderstanding of what
it was you were actually asking (due, in part, of course, to a rejection of
some of your premises as untenable).  The reason for using those examples, and
any others, is to show how similar these languages are without having to teach
a full year course in Indo-European comparative phonology and morphology, as
that was the question as understood ("How 'differentiated' are those three
languages?"  "Not all that much.")

> When I brought up the fact that its the differences that should be measured
> and that agnis/ignis does not occur in Mycenaean or Hittite and that thay is
> the key difference, I got the following reply:

What you actually *asked* (Tue, 22 Feb 2000), and I noted that my answer was a
tacky cop-out, was:

>>> Does Mycenaean decline 'fire' the same similar way as Latin and Sanskrit?
                   ^^^^^^^
>>> Does Hittite?

> On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:48:36 -0800, Rich Alderson wrote:
> <<The answer to the question *as posed* is "Within the bounds of phonological
> change in the individual languages, yes, Mycenaean and Hittite decline their
> words for 'fire' similarly to Latin and Sanskrit. That is one of the defining
> characteristics of the IE family, after all."

and I stand by that answer.  The *declension*, that is to say, the *nominal
morphology*, of the different words for _fire_ in the four languages, is very
much the same.  What you *wanted* to ask, and did not, was whether or not the
*same lexical item* occurred in all four languages.  So it was a smart-ass
answer to an unintended question, for which I should be ashamed.

> I'll take that as a measure of time/difference, if by thae above it was meant
> that the 'phonological change in the individual languages' was going to be
> equated to a reproducible, objective meausre of time and change in languages.
> Yes, that is what I meant to ask.

No, the "phonological change in the individual languages" was not, and is not,
and never will be, "equated to a reproducible, objective meausre of time and
change".  Rather, it was a nod to the fact that the languages in question have
undergone some changes that happen to make the nominal endings opaque to the
non-specialist viewer.

> And the next question I'd have is how long does it take to come up with an
> -xi conjugation - which I understand to be a real difference between Hittite
> and the languages it is being compared to.

I assume you mean the hi-conjugation, and the answer is that there is no way to
know.  We have to explain the creation of the hi-conjugation, but we don't have
to say when it was created.  And the parts that go into it already existed in
PIE:  The stative ("perfect") endings, the *-i deictic ("here and now") also
seen in the so-called primary endings, the notion of adding the deictic to
past-time forms to create present-time forms.  So it could have been created
the Tuesday before the first Hittite text was written down--or it could have
existed from time immemorial in the Indo-European Ursprache and only have been
retained in Hittite.  But its simple existence tells us nothing either way.

I'll ask you a similar question in your own field, to show you why it is
meaningless:  What does the creation of the Clovis point tell us about when a
Neanderthal decided to put flowers in the gravesite at Shanidar?

> In the same post, I was quoted:
>>> Well, it seems that Anatolian is in the picture when the evidence helps,
>>> but x.not when it doesn't.

> The defense offered was:

>> But that's the way of *all* evidence in *every* discipline:  If there's
>> nothing to be said by a particular witness, you don't bother to call her to
>> the stand.

> Unfortunately, that is not true when the witness has contrary evidence to
> offer.  In many disciplines, failing to call her might then be considered
> falsifying.

[ ... ]

> There is much contradictory evidence here.

None of the evidence you have cited contradicts what linguists have to say
about Renfrew's dating, no matter how little you may like to hear that.

> I'm only contradicting the statement that Renfrew's dates are 'impossible'
> given the linguistic evidence.  At this point I can say that certainly is not
> true, by any scientific standard.

Renfrew's dates *are* impossible, by any scientific standard you care to name:
He has no evidence for any of his claims about the linguistic heritage of the
Neolithic farmers, only his own belief that migrations don't happen so this
*must* be what happened.

You, of course, don't see it that way, and don't see why anyone would see it
any other, so there's really no reason to continue to discuss the point.

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:54:25 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:54:25 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.235425.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>I don't know enough Gathic Avestan (or Yorkshire dialect) to decide (and my
>Vedic Sanskrit and Texan aren't that much better either).

-- I forge ahead fearlessly on a basis of very limited knowledge... 8-).
Consider, though, that speakers of both groups used the same ethnonym for
themselves.  I think it's plain that there was a dialect continuum across the
Iranian plateau and into Afghanistan and the Punjab.  Avestan itself shows,
of course, differences from Old Persian, a southwestern dialect within the
Indo-Iranian continuum; it was geographically as well as linguistically
closer to Sanskrit.

However, even by about 1000 BCE -- taking a late date for Vedic Sanskrit and
an early one for the Gathas -- lexical similarities must still have been
obvious even to an illiterate speaker of either:

Eg.,

Sanskrit                    Avestan

ajati                       azaiti          drives
bhratar                     bratar          brother
tuvam                       tuvem           thou
hanti                       jainti          strikes
na                          na              man
janu                        zanu            knee

-- and so forth.  Likewise, verbal morphology was still very strongly
similar; yajai/yajai for "I honor".

In a sentence like "I honor the man who strikes thee on the knee" slowly, a
speaker of either would be able to follow someone from the other.
Particularly with a little practice.

This is not the case for most Germanic languages now, for instance; but it
_is_ the case for, say, Dutch and Afrikaans, or the more divergent dialects
of English.  That gives a "200-800" year comparison.

Admittedly I'm not deeply familiar with either language, but it does look as
if one can be fairly easily 'transposed' into the other with an "accent".

>Indo-Aryan and Iranian must have lost most contact at least 500 years before
>the earliest texts on historical grounds

-- not really.  In the late Bronze/early Iron Age the whole area between the
Zagros and the Ganges was inhabited by people who called themselves "Aryans",
worshipped (roughly) the same set of deities, and spoke closely related
dialects.  And they were plainly intrusive in the whole area south of the
Oxus.  The ones who influenced the language of Mitanni were plainly
Indo-Aryans specifically, but of a much more primitive strata than those who
composed the Rig-Veda, which strongly suggests that they preceeded the
Iranians proper on the Iranian plateau.

>From the evidence, I'd place the period of Indo-Iranian linguistic unity
sometime around 2000 BCE with significant differentiation still minor by
about 1500 BCE, and with Proto-Indo-Iranian emerging from "eastern dialects
of PIE" sometime around 2500 BCE, when it was still in close enough contact
with Balto-Slavic for the spread of innovations like satemization.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar  7 12:11:58 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 14:11:58 +0200
Subject: possessive [form of a] pronoun
In-Reply-To: <af.163a313.25f09771@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.141158.0200.>

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

>Bob Whiting has widened our set of examples. He thereby brought
>up yet another wholly new line of argument, which was not covered
>by preceding messages.

>I still refer back to the message "possessive [form of a]
>pronoun" for the parallelism which it *did* contain, and which is
>strongly supported by more detailed considerations, as shown
>below.

First of all, I was surprised to see that message posted since
the moderator pulled the plug on this discussion on 3 October
1999.  And I wouldn't have replied to it except for the fact that
the poster promised not to respond (but I should have known
better).

The moderator was quite correct to stop the discussion because it
was another terminological discussion that could have been
resolved by simply consulting an up-to-date reference book.  The
discussion centered around the fact that possessive pronominal
determiners are not possessive pronouns and that therefore it is
improper to call possessive pronominal determiners possessive
pronouns because syntactically determiners are not pronouns
(although there is often a close semantic relationship and many
determiners can also function as pronouns).

Larry Trask has pointed out that general dictionaries are often
not up-to-date on grammatical terminology and therefore not to be
trusted as sources of definitions.  However, I find that, despite
some inconsistencies and overgeneralizations, 'my' dictionary
(Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged, 1994) is quite strong in this
area so I provide the following definitions from that source
which will be needed in the following discussion:

     determiner 2. Gram. a member of a subclass of English
     adjectival words that limits the nouns it modifies in a
     special way and that usually is placed before descriptive
     adjectives, as _a_, _an_, _the_, _your_, _their_.

     pronoun Gram. any number of a small class of words found in
     many languages that are used as replacements or substitutes
     for a wide variety of nouns and noun phrases, and that have
     very general reference, as _I_, _you_, _he_, _this_ _who_,
     _what_.  Pronouns are sometimes formally distinguished from
     nouns, as in English by the existence of special objective
     forms, as _him_ for _he_, or _me_ for _I_, and by
     nonoccurrence with an article or adjective.

     possessive 4. Gram. indicating possession, ownership,
     origin, etc.  _His_ in _his book_ is a possessive adjective.
     _His_ in _The book is his_ is a possessive pronoun.

     genitive _Gram. --adj. 1. (in certain inflected languages)
     noting a case used primarily to indicate that a noun is a
     modifier of another noun, often to express possession,
     measure, origin, characteristic, etc., as _John's hat_,
     _man's fate_, _week's vacation_, _duty's call_.  2. noting
     an affix or other element characteristic of this case, or a
     word containing such an element.  3. similar to such a case
     form in function or meaning.

     adjective 1. Gram. any member of a class of words that in
     many languages are distinguished in form, as partly in
     English by having comparative and superlative endings, or by
     functioning as modifiers of nouns, as _good_, _wise_,
     _perfect_.

Probably not even Larry T. would find much to dispute in these
defintions (although I wait to be corrected), except for the more
or less interchangeable use of adjective and determiner.  Larry
has argued that determiners are not adjectives because they can't
fill the same slots.  Specifically, he pointed out that the slot
'the ______ book' cannot be filled by a determiner but can be
filled by an adjective.  This, however, is the only restriction
on use, and for the rest of their ranges determiners and
adjectives are coextensive although there are other distinctions
between determiners and adjectives (e.g., determiners do not have
comparative and superlative forms).  I would prefer to categorize
determiners as a subclass of adjectives, rather than saying that
determiners are not adjectives.

The restriction in use comes from the fact that determiners of
various classes are mutually exclusive within their classes.
While one can have as many coordinate adjectives in an NP as one
wants, an NP can have only one determiner of a particular class
at any particular level.  Thus a slot like 'I like ______ books'
can be filled by either a determiner ('I like the books', 'I like
his books', 'I like some books') or (any number of) adjectives
('I like long, interesting, inexpensive books') or even a
determiner and any number of adjectives ('I like some long,
interesting, inexpensive books') while a slot like 'the ______
book' already contains a determiner in the NP and thus cannot
have another of the same class.  If a determiner and adjectives
are used together, the determiner normally precedes all
adjectives.

>First, I am not knowingly trying to mislead anyone,
>despite Bob Whiting's claim:

Then perhaps you are at your best (or worst) when you aren't
trying.

>>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form
>>where the determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are
>>isomorphic.

>Not so, though I should not have to defend myself against
>such a groundless ad-hominem assertion.

You are still responsible for what you say and do, regardless of
whether you did it knowingly or not.

>(The Postscript notes that I normally do just the reverse of that!)

>I *did* choose the word "his" deliberately because unlike some of
>the other genitive forms ("determiners", as many call them), it
>does look more like an apostrophe-s form.

I don't believe this!  You are telling me (and the whole list)
that, after having badgered Larry Trask for almost a year with
claims that his selection criteria for Basque words *could* bias
his conclusions, you have deliberately [your word] selected your
data specifically for its bias towards your conclusions?  Shame on
you.  As far as doing scientific work is concerned, I am afraid that
we are simply on two different planets.  I regard knowing how data
selection can bias results as a way of avoiding it myself or
recognizing it when others do it.  You seem to see it as a way of
deciding which method to use when you want to demonstrate that
your conclusions are correct.  Constantly questioning the motives
and methods of others while steadfastly refusing to examine your
own is simply the height of arrogance.

>But I did not choose it because of homonymy between
>determiner (my) and pronominal (mine) forms: (his, his).
>I was not at all concerned with the pronominal forms
>(his, hers, mine, yours, ours, theirs).
>Bob Whiting's examples involve such pronominal forms,
>but my examples did not involve them.
>So there was nothing to "slide past" anyone.

The fact that the fault that you were accused of did not happen
to be the actual fault that you practiced does not exonerate
you.  It is rather like being charged with driving 60 mph in a 25
mph zone and claiming in your defense that you weren't going a
bit over 50.

I claimed that the choice of 'his' biased the data sample in
favor of your conclusion.  I am willing to accept your claim that
the reason I gave for why this was true (the determiner and the
pronoun are isomorphic) never occurred to you.  But this does not
change the fact that the selection of 'his' as the data sample
does bias the conclusion.  Since you admit that you chose 'his'
for this very purpose, the specific reason why it biases the
conclusion is immaterial.

But if that was your reasoning then there are a number of
compelling reasons why you made a poor choice.  Given this line
of reasoning, the obvious choice for an example is 'its' because:

     (1) 'its' looks much more like an apostrophe-s form than
     'his' does (I cannot remember ever seeing anyone write
     <he's> for <his>, but I constantly see <it's> for the
     pronominal determiner <its>).

     (2) 'its' is used only as a pronominal determiner in
     English, not as a possessive pronoun.  Therefore the
     possibility of confusing the determiner with the possessive
     pronoun does not exist.

     (3) 'his' is the *only* personal pronoun where the
     determiner and the possessive pronoun are isomorphic.
     *All* of the other determiner:possessive pronoun pairs use
     different forms for the different functions (my:mine,
     you:yours, her:hers, its:--, our:ours, their:theirs).

In short, your example only works if you use 'his'.  This is the
only way that you can get 'the man we met yesterday's' to always
map to 'his' and thus justify your equation.  If you use 'the
woman we met yesterday's' it sometimes maps to 'her' and
sometimes to 'hers'.

>If you add to the following examples I used the specification
>that *we are talking about the determiner use of "his, my, etc"*,
>which was certainly the context in which I was writing
>(and please note that Larry Trask had also not been discussing
>"mine" etc., and said so in response to Pat Ryan)...

Nobody knows what you are thinking unless you say what you think.
One can only determine what you mean from what you write.
Personally, I think it is rather fanciful to expect listmembers
to remember the context of a discussion that was killed by the
moderator six months ago.  And please note that possessive
pronouns like 'mine', etc. were not being discussed because
everyone agrees that they are possessive pronouns.  What was
being discussed was the relationship between the possessive
pronominal determiners and the possessive pronouns and the
question was "if the possessive pronouns are pronouns, why aren't
the pronominal determiners pronouns too?"  In this discussion,
the possessive pronouns are taken as given; but the question of
the relationship of the pronominal determiners to them is not
likely to be resolved by eliminating them from the discussion.

>Then there is no way of adding Bob Whiting's examples,
>because they do not fit that context.  Here were my examples,
>now extended only by adding a first-person example as well.

>> The relation:
>> he :: his
>[> or
>> I :: my   ]

>> is from syntactic and semantic points of view
>> essentially the same as the relation

>> the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's.

>This statement remains valid, as I think all linguists know.

Yes, so long as you restrict the context to the use of
determiners.  But any linguist will also tell you that "syntactic
and semantic" equivalence is the same as "functional"
equivalence, not the same as "formal" equivalence.  And
membership of words in classes is determined by function, not by
form (particularly in English with its general lack of
inflectional elements; perhaps less so in areas like Semitic
languages where form is very closely tied to function).  The
analogy shows that both NPs in the genitive and pronominal
determiners function as determiners, not that NPs in the genitive
are formally identical to possessive pronouns (despite your, as
you admit, deliberately choosing 'his' to suggest that they are).
Now pronominal determiners function as pronouns in that they can
be substituted for NPs.  But they can only be substituted for NPs
when the NP is being used as a determiner/adjective, not when the
NP is complete in itself.  But since they are then functioning as
determiners, they are pronominal determiners and not pronouns.
Is there anyone else who can't see the difference?

>A "syntactic and semantic" "relation" is not the same as a
>slot-filler word class.

If the "relation" is equivalence, then it is precisely the same.
Syntax is the rules by which forms can be combined to create
(grammatically correct) utterances.  Semantics is meaning, pure
and simple.  Thus "syntactic and semantic" equivalence of forms
means that the forms can replace one another in the same
combination of forms and still produce a grammatical utterance
without changing the meaning concept (but not necessarily the
specific meaning) of the utterance.  So all you are doing by
setting up analogies to demonstrate "syntactic and semantic"
equivalence and then not giving examples of the constructions is
creating the slots and then refusing to fill them.

>In the cases of "he", "I", and "the man we met yesterday",
>dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
>are as full noun phrases.
>In the cases of "his", "my", and "the man we met yesterday's ",
>dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
>are as determiners of full noun phrases
>(referring by "determiner" here to function and positions
>of some occurrences, not to slot-filler word class).

By Jove, you've got it (except for the slot bit).  Determiner is
a functional class.  Determiners are not full NPs but modify NPs.
An NP in the genitive case can be used as a determiner.  A
pronoun can be substituted for an NP.  A determiner can be
substituted for (fill the same slot as) another determiner.  Hold
that thought.

>The latter are not full noun phrases in most usages, as we all agree

Precisely.  And since you state that Larry Trask has stated that
pronouns replace full noun phrases, what replaces these "not full
noun phrases" are not pronouns.  It's that simple.

>(though the third of these can be used also as a full noun
>phrase, in the more complex structures discussed below).

But in that case it can't be replaced by a pronominal determiner,
only by a possessive pronoun.

>End of main line of argument (again, and just as previously stated).

Except that this time your own explanation has shown how faulty
the conclusions based on this argument were and how the choice
of the data was made to support the conclusion.

>***

>Now as to the tangent, elaboration, or extension of range
>of the discussion to pronominal forms like "mine, yours, ...":

>Bob Whiting alleges that the lack of a complete parallel between
>forms shows that an equivalence of syntactic and semantic
>relations does not exist.

>This is not the case, as when we talk about word classes,
>determined by slot-filler criteria, we often find only partial
>equivalences. We even find that the surface form "this" can
>function both as a determiner and as a pronoun (as I think the
>participants in these discussions wish to call them).  So a
>relation "this :: this" functions syntactically and semantically
>equivalently to "my :: mine".  Merely one such asymmetry.

Yes, merely one.  Practically any deictic or quantifying
determiner can function also as a pronoun (this, that, some, any,
each, every, many, etc.).  And it is easy to tell how it is being
used.  If it is part of an NP it is a determiner and if it
replaces a full NP it is a pronoun. (Henceforth [d] and [p] will
be used to mark isomorphic determiners and pronouns
respectively.)

     Some[d] books are red, some[p] are blue, some[p] are black.

     Q:  Are all books red?
     A:  Not all of them are; some[p] are, some[p] aren't.
         This[d] one is red, those[p] are blue, and those[d]
         others are black.

And so on ad nauseum.  But since the usage can always be
determined from the environment, this distinction is not a
random, sporadic use of "this :: this", but rather it is a
predictable "this[d] :: this[p]" which functions syntactically
and semantically equivalently to (= fills the same slots as) "my
:: mine".  No asymmetry left.

>***

>Whiting's parallels were these:

>>This is the man we met yesterday's book.
>>This is the book of the man we met yesterday.

>>This is his book.
>>This is the book of he.*

>I find the fourth of these ungrammatical, of course.

Of course.  That's what the asterisk after it means.

>I also find the second one odd, *either* in possessive sense
>*or* in another sense which it might conceivably express,
>a book about the man we met yesterday.

There is also another sense, which apparently hasn't occurred to
you yet:  a book written by the man we met yesterday.

>For the possessive sense, the sense in the examples I had given,
>(note again that I had *not* given examples with pronominal
>usages),

Actually, you hadn't given any examples at all.  All you had
given was analogies of "syntactic and semantic" equivalence
without any examples of usage.  You created the slots but didn't
fill them.  Using 'his' in your analogies without giving usages
does not make it clear whether you are using the determiner or
the pronoun.  And saying that everyone should have known what you
were talking about from a six-month old context is taking a lot
for granted.

>I believe such a usage more normally occurs with a relative
>clause following, than in the simple form given by Whiting:

Whether a relative clause is to be expected after the NP or not
is determined by whether the head of the NP is definite or not so
the rest of this paragraph is just argumentum ad infinite
digression.

>This is the book of his   which we were talking about.
>This is the book of mine   which we were talking about.
>This is the book of John's   whih we were talking about.
>This is the book of the man we met yesterday's   which we were talking about.
>     [as opposed to the books belonging to the man we met yesterday
>     which we were not talking about]

>The "of..." phrase in each case has at least sometimes been treated
>as a transformation of something with a bit more concrete content:

>This is the book from among mine which we were talking about.
>This is the book from among John's which we were talking about.

>or even
>This is the book [which is mine] which we were talking about.
>This is the book [which is John's] which we were talking about.

[end of digression]

>We also have the following form, which to me is more colloquially normal
>with the apostrophe-s.  I believe it shows that, like "his",
>the form "the man we met yesterday's" *can* function
>either as modifier (parallel to "my")
>or *sometimes* as a full noun phrase (parallel to "mine").

Spot on again.  And the fact that we can determine which form has
to be used in a given environment shows that it is not a vague
"*sometimes*" but "under certain conditions".  But you have the
basic idea correctly stated: 'my' is a modifier, 'mine' is a
pronoun ("functions as a full noun phrase").  And this is the key
to the entire thing.  Pronouns do not act as modifiers.  If
something that looks like a pronoun acts as a modifier then it
isn't a pronoun any more.  It's a pronominal modifier.

>We then have a three-way relation,

And this is where you should have started in the first place.

>and although some may not prefer the terminology which
>immediately follows, I trust with the examples they will know
>what I am referring to:

I'm glad that you realize that the terminology is out of line.
Up to this point you have demonstated only that the second
category is a determiner, not a pronoun.  In fact, you have
rather conclusively shown that it is not a pronoun.  So labelling
it as a pronoun is what is known as petitio principii ("begging
the question").  You haven't proved that it is a pronoun, you
have begged the conclusion.

>The triple relations:

>(nominative pronoun; determiner genitive pronoun; possessive pronoun NP)

>he :: his :: his
>I :: my :: mine

>are equivalent to the triple relation:

>the man we met yesterday ::
>:: the man we met yesterday's :: the man we met yesterday's

>with some slippage that in certain contexts and styles,
>in the last triple relation,
>the first form may sometimes be used for the third form
>(but with stylistic marking and awkwardness of different forms
>for different speakers depending on additional details of the
>contexts...).
>The third of the forms in each of the relations above was *not*
>previously prominent in these discussions (except very briefly).

Which is why your bipartite scheme fell apart with a little
gentle prodding.  You claim that demonstrating that two
expressions are "syntactically and semantically" equivalent
proves that they are the same form.  I say that demonstrating
this proves that they have the same function.  Proving that two
things have the same functional relationship does not prove that
they have the same formal relationship.

You claim that since 'the man we met yesterday's' is the genitive
case of 'the man we met yesterday' then 'his' must be the
genitive case of 'he' because both have the same function (and
look: they both have <s> on the end).  This presupposes a proof
that expressions with the same function always have the same
form.  I know of no such proof.  It is simply a premise ex nihilo
bolstered by your choice of 'his' for your analogy because "it
does look more like an apostrophe-s form."

Now it is not terribly difficult to demonstrate fairly
conclusively that the pronominal determiners must be pronoun
forms (apart from the obvious formal similarity) and that they
must be genitive forms, but it requires the tripartite relational
system.

To simplify it and expand it to cover all the personal pronouns:

   NP   :: NP's[d] :: NP's
   I    :: me      :: mine
   you  :: your    :: yours
   he   :: his[d]  :: his[p]
   she  :: her     :: hers
   it   :: its     :: --
   we   :: our     :: ours
   they :: their   :: theirs

This scheme accounts for all the genitive uses of NPs.  Since
'NP's' is genitive and can be replaced by any form in the third
column the other members of the column must be pronouns (forms
that can be substituted for NPs).  Since pronouns can have cases,
the evidence all converges on the supposition that these members
of column three are the genitive forms of the personal pronouns,
especially since all the forms with the exception of the first
person singular end in '-s' which is characteristic of the
English genitive.  Note that this is different from going
directly to 'his' in column two (or even 'its') and claiming that
it must be the genitive because it has an '-s' ending and is
congruent with one (and only one) use of the genitive 'NP's'.

The next problem is to account for the forms in column two.
First, we note the transparent similarity (or even identity) of
the members of the second and third columns.  Next we note that
the heads of each of these columns are identical in form, but not
in function.  The head of column two occurs only when 'NP's' is
part of another NP (i.e., it modifies another noun or NP).  We
note that only when 'NP's' occurs in this environment can it be
replaced by another member of column two.  Members of column
three occur in all other environments where 'NP's' can occur.
Thus the members of columns two and three are in complementary
distribution since it can be predicted from the environment which
one must be used.

Any linguist will tell you that similar forms that are in
complementary distribution are most likely to be aspects of the
same form.  Thus it is highly likely that if the members of
column three are pronouns then the members of column two are also
pronoun forms.  Furthermore since both can replace only genitives
both are probably allomorphic variants of genitive pronoun forms.

This establishes that the members of column 2 are genitive
pronoun forms.  Fine, everyone says, but if they are pronoun
forms, why not just call them pronouns and be done with it?
Well, many people do.  In fact, 'my' dictionary classifies each
one of these forms as a pronoun (even though if you look at its
definition of 'determiner' you will see that it knows that they
are really determiners) and then goes on to note that they are
used as attributive adjectives.  And for the man in the street,
to whom grammar is something that he had to study in school, this
is sufficient.  If he considers these forms as pronouns used as
adjectives he will still be able to speak the language correctly.

Linguists (and some grammarians), however, are less concerned
with how to use *a* language than with how language works (please
note the difference between *a* language and language), so this
simplistic approach of "if it looks like a pronoun, it must be a
pronoun" is not sufficient.  For a linguist, words are classified
by what they do, not by how they look.  Pronouns do not act as
modifiers, so something that acts as a modifier can't be a
pronoun no matter how much it looks like a pronoun, or even if it
is transparently derived from a pronoun.

Now while these forms do have a pronominal function in that they
can replace NPs, they cannot replace just any NP.  They can only
replace NPs that are being used as modifiers.  Hence their
pronominal funcion is entirely subordinated to their function as
modifiers.  A few simple tests will show a linguist that the type
of modifier that these forms function as is a determiner so the
linguist will call them pronominal determiners.  Anyone can say
that 'her' is a pronoun to the man in the street and no one will
argue (and if someone does you can look it up in a dictionary and
"prove" that it is a pronoun).  But anyone who says that 'her'
is a pronoun to a linguist will be told "no, it is a determiner"
and if he persists in calling it a pronoun (and the linguist is
patient) the linguist will explain to him why it is a determiner.
The moral of the story is that if you want to talk to people, you
have to speak their language.

>I still plead to our list:
>Can we now stop trying to prove people are wrong in using
>traditional terminology?

And can we reject the use of arrogance as a hermenutic?

>It meant what it in fact referred to,
>and we all knew what it was intended by the author to refer to.
>Still does refer to just what it did before,
>not only for those who themselves use terms that way,
>but *also* for those who understand the terms that way
>while preferring themselves to use different terms!
>(And just as Larry Trask has pointed out that "pronoun" is an
>illogical term, because it refers to what are really "proNP"s,
>yet that we still use it successfully, so it can be the case for
>other traditional terminology.)

Terminology is important in linguistics, as it is in most
specialized disciplines.  One can use imprecise terminology as
much as one wants to in general discussions, but when one starts
talking about linguistics with linguists one should be prepared
to use linguistic terminology.

>Can we please rule out of order on this list any messages which
>go off into meta-analysis to prove someone wrong because
>of the terms they used,
>instead of dealing with the content of what we perfectly well
>know they were saying?

Not when the terms used affect the content.

>I thought that was the policy which our moderator declared
>sometime back?

And I thought that our moderator killed this discussion last
October for just that reason.  Or do we now have a new,
self-appointed moderator?

>Sincerely yours,
>Lloyd Anderson
>Ecological Linguistics

>***

>In response to Bob Whiting's ad-hominem, an incorrect one:
>>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
>>determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.
>I may be *wrong* in some analysis I propose,
>but I don't try to "slide" things "past" anyone.
>Just the contrary, I tend to bring up counter-examples
>even to my own beliefs!
>People sometimes try to get me to shut up when we are on the same
>team, precisely because I do that, because they don't want me to
>present a more nuanced or balanced case.
>I always try to see all sides and especially do not want to overstate
>and have to retract something later!

I will simply let this stand on its own merits.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Tue Mar  7 14:00:59 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 08:00:59 -0600
Subject: -r passive archaic or innovating?
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.080059.0600.>

>In any case, what you may be remembering is that Celtic, Anatolian, and
>Tocharian all share all share a passive formation in /r/, as does Italic
>(and Phrygian?).  All four are also "centum"-languages.  The r-passive seems
>to be a shared retention of a fairly archaic formant.  Of course, this
>should not be interpreted to indicate any closer relationship between these
>languages in the PIE-period, beyond the fact that they were all
>centum-dialects.

>Sincerely,
>Jim Bilbro

It is, however, peculiar that in Hittite the -ri of the present tense -r
passive in innovating. Older Hittite medio-passives have the -ri optionally
tacked on. One scenario suggests the Old Hittite lost a final *-R passive,
then it began to be restored with the present -i as -ri. There is a nice
study by Yosida in the early 90s (?) that plots the progress of this new
-ri through historically dated Hittite texts, from OH without it to NH with
increasingly more uses of -ri in e.g., forms such as arta(ri) 'stands',
kisa(ri) 'becomes', esa(ri) 'sits', kitta(ri) 'lies' (cf. Greek keitai,
Sanskrit saye, sete).

Interesting that this *-R passive / middle, medio-passive got lost in OH
and everywhere except Italic, Celtic, Tocharian, and later Hittite. Holger
Pedersen and Annelies Kammenhuber thought that the opposite was true, that
this form, as many lexical items too argued for a closer relationship among
Hittite, Italic, Celtic, and Tocharian. A closer relationship among these
branches, of course, is problematic for an variant of an Indo-Hittite or
first branching off of Anatolian.

Carol Justus


From edsel at glo.be  Tue Mar  7 16:11:29 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:11:29 +0100
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.171129.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 2:16 AM

>> edsel at glo.be wrote:

>> Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that
>> can be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we
>> should be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

> -- people learn languages because they're useful.  In most contexts, there
> seems to be fairly limited emotional investment in them -- modern linguistic
> nationalism being an exception, of course.

[Ed]

That's a complete misunderstanding. There is huge difference between learning
another language for practical reasons (or in more modern times: out of
interest in other cultures, religion or what have you) and being forced to
abandon one's own language (and inevitably:culture). The latter invariably
involves a transition period of being second-class (or worse) citizens.

There is hardly anything people are so attached to as their own language and
culture. It is something that defines them. Recent studies have even shown that
this has an influence on how the brain gets 'wired' during early infancy.
Mother tongue affects the deepest levels of the way we perceive the world. Ask
those who study cognitive linguistics; there are several of them on this list.

> Even there, it's mostly political militants and bureaucrats who agitate such
> matters.

[Ed]

That's the theory of the linguistic majorities (social, numerical, political,
etc...). The fact is that ordinary people resent very much being treated as
somebody who can't speak properly.

> Eg., the continuing inexorable decline of Gaelic in Ireland has
> been completely unaffected by political intervention since the emergence of
> the Irish Free State, with its policy of promoting Gaelic by all possible
> means.

[Ed]

That's what happens when the original language loses its critical mass and
becomes the language of a minority: it is then beyond salvation in most cases.

Another case of this kind is Basque: only 25% of the Basque population (which
itself is 5% of the Spanish population) can speak it, and not many more
understand it. It happens after very long periods (centuries e.g.) of
domination by a powerful language community, during which active measures may
be taken to ban, eradicate, or degrade in status, etc. the original language.
The original population becomes 'barbarian natives' (a.Grk. barbaroi: those who
speak like "bar bar bar...", an unintelligible language of the uncivilized)

> Ordinary people seem to switch languages when circumstances make such change
> (a) possible and (b) a useful means of 'getting ahead'.

[Ed]

That is true, but it doesn't mean they like it. They do it because the
circumstances are not favorable to the use of their own language. Your (b) is a
typical case: underlying is social discrimination, unless...('If you can't beat
them, join them'). The 'glass ceiling' is not only a gender matter: it can also
be linguistically determined and has often been so throughout history. It is
absolutely not a modern invention. It has existed as long as peoples have
conquered or dominated in some way other peoples' lands and/or economies, but
we only know that for sure since writing was invented.

Ed. selleslagh


From jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au  Tue Mar  7 23:39:08 2000
From: jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au (Jon Patrick)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 10:39:08 +1100
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 04 Mar 2000 20:16:40 EST."
 <1e.23515a4.25f30f78@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.103908.1100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com    said

    -- people learn languages because they're useful.  In most contexts, there
    seems to be fairly limited emotional investment in them -- modern
    linguistic nationalism being an exception, of course.

    Even there, it's mostly political militants and bureaucrats who agitate
    such matters.

    Ordinary people seem to switch languages when circumstances make such
    change (a) possible and (b) a useful means of 'getting ahead'.

This is a very simplistic picture that belies the complexities of many
situations. For example in the Basque Country. The language was in retreat for
40 years with oppression from the franco regime where people were beaten for
using it, and now is in advance as a popular movement that is also supported
by basque government policies. Neither scenarios fit your picture.

Jon
---------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Jon Patrick			BH +61-2-9351 3524
Sybase Chair of Information Systems	FX +61-2-9351 3838
Basser Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sydney
Sydney, 2006	
NSW
Australia	    WEB: http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~jonpat
----------------------------------------------------------


From ECOLING at aol.com  Tue Mar  7 16:17:52 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 11:17:52 EST
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.111752.EST.>

What I believe I was remembering, and would fit the subject of
my question (Italic close to Slavic?) was something concerning the
membership in verbal conjugation classes, Latin a:/e:/short-e/i:-stems,
and matches in Slavic or elsewhere (where else if so?).
That also might be an archaism,
and it might therefore suggest nothing about a family tree,
but it could also be a reflection of significant dialect-network areas
in early PIE or IE, in a framework in which we consider such
dialect areas to be potentially of importance alongside or instead of
family tree views.  That is, stated much more precisely,
the kind of question I was asking.

Thanks for the mention of where the "r-passive" occurs:

In a message dated 3/7/2000 6:58:24 AM, jimbilbro at email.msn.com writes:

>In any case, what you may be remembering is that Celtic, Anatolian, and
>Tocharian all share all share a passive formation in /r/, as does Italic
>(and Phrygian?).  All four are also "centum"-languages.  The r-passive
>seems
>to be a shared retention of a fairly archaic formant.  Of course, this
>should not be interpreted to indicate any closer relationship between these
>languages in the PIE-period, beyond the fact that they were all
>centum-dialects.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 18:55:37 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 10:55:37 -0800
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
In-Reply-To: <009001bf84a6$3d4605e0$209f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.105537.0800.>

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) responded to my
statement of the preceding day:

>> The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this is one of the few
>> places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel developments: We
>> find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

>> This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing
>> ?*ul{k^w}i1 or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a
>> different outcome in Greek.

> But *u.lkwi2 has no outcome in Greek, does it?

Disingenuous.  The *suffix* in question has a number of occurrences, all with
a short alpha.

Note that there are occurrences of long alpha following iota, which are *not*
reflexes of this suffix, and which therefore show that something else is going
on here.

> And the Greek outcomes look like:

> -iH1 -> ie: -> i:; -H2 -> ia: -> ia; -iH3  -> -io:

I'm afraid not.  There is no evidence for either of your intermediate stages
with regard to H_1 or H_2.

								Rich Alderson


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Tue Mar  7 21:42:49 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 22:42:49 +0100
Subject: Latin word formation
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.224249.0100.>

Latin /de:bilis/ is mostly etymologized today as consisting of a privative
prefix /de:-/ (which also exists in Celtic), the root /be/ol-/ "power,
strength", as seen in skt. /bali/, and Slavic /bolIjI/ + a denominal suffix
-e/os.ö

Now, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that the word formation displayed
here looks rather odd. Is anyone aware of parallels, i.e. de:- + nominal
root + -e/os ?
Is this formation pretty normal in Latin (Italic, Celtic, IE ...), or am I
right in finding it a bit fishy ? What about halfway parallels (de:- +
n.r., or n.r. + -e/os) ?

Grateful for any input, pointing me to paragraph 1 of the beginner's
handbook included.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:20:10 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:20:10 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.232010.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>I could be wrong, but my own impression is that the Slavic-Iranian contacts
>are relatively recent (much like the Germanic-Celtic ones).  >>

-- there are contacts, and then again contacts.  Some of the Iranian
vocabulary in Slavic -- the word for "god" and the river-names of the Ukraine
-- would seem to be comparatively recent.  And, after all, the breakup of
Proto-Slavic is very recent, relative to that of the other large stocks.

On the other hand, other features -- satemization -- are undoubtedly much
earlier, Bronze Age at the latest.

This would point, I think, to at least intermittent contact between
Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian right from the splitup of the PIE dialect
cluster down to historic times.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:26:07 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:26:07 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.232607.EST.>

In fact, given the archaic characteristics of the Baltic and Slavic
languages, the lack of apparent substratal influence, and the high percentage
of their vocabulary which can be traced back to PIE, I would say that their
position (_at the earliest recorded periods_) would be indicative of the PIE
urheimat.

Not that it would be identical, but that it would be fairly close.

At the earliest historic attestation, Slavic is in what's now eastern Poland
and the northwestern Ukraine, with Baltic to the north -- Baltic-speaking
tribes reached as far east as Moscow as late as the early medieval period,
and a vast swath from the Baltic Sea to the Volga is characterized by Baltic
river-names although it became Slavicized later.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:31:12 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:31:12 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.233112.EST.>

>g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>The writing system of Linear B is so difficult

-- this is a severe handicap, granted.  The Linear B script is vilely
unsuited to writing Greek, or any inflected language, for that matter.

>I don't understand how it can be stated that Mycenean Greek and Vedic
>Sanskrit are "extremely similar". How can we possibly know? In any case, most
>of the extant Linear B texts are inventories and palace accounts, hardly
>comparable to Vedic texts.

-- true, but one can compare some lexical items.  Eg., Mycenaean *gous
(Homeric and later Greek "bous"), which compares closely to Sanskrit 'gav'
and Avestan 'gaus'. (Or PIE *gwous, for that matter.)

>but even there I doubt that it is possible to read continuous text in one,
>if you only know the other.

-- I've been told that it's possible to puzzle out the general meaning; it
would be going to far to say that one could "read".


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Wed Mar  8 12:13:08 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 07:13:08 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.071308.0500.>

"Gábor Sándi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Joat Simeon wrote on 3 March 2000:
>> -- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar;
>> with a knowledge of one language and of the sound-shifts, you
>> can trace the general meaning of a text in the other language.
>>  There are even common elements in things like poetic kennings.
>>  They're more similar than modern standard German and English,
>> comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
>> the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those
>> are unusually conservative.

> I do not see how what you wrote here is tenable. Mycenean Greek,
> as far as I know, is only known from Linear B texts, which can only
> be read (tentatively in many cases) because of likely cognates in later
> versions of Greek, which is so well known.  [...]
> I know that there are many structural similarities between Homer's
> Greek and Vedic Sanskrit, but even there I doubt that it is possible
> to read continuous text in one, if you only know the other.

> Any Classical scholars or Sanskrit experts out there who could
comment?

I don't claim to be a Sanskrit expert, but I suspect that my experience
would be typical and give a resounding no as the answer. A collegue of
mine, a Classics Faculty member who works on Homer, wouldn't be able to
read Vedic without a refresher course.

What was said, I think, is a bit different: Start with a Vedic form like
bhara:mi. Trace it back to PIE *bhero: and map forward to Greek fero.
This is the kind of similarity that can be claimed.

But not really accepted: Start with s'rn.omi or a:rin.ak; trace it back
to *k'lneumi, (e)linekt; and map forward to Greek to come up with
klanu:mi, (e)line (?). I would be surprised if Homer could have made any
sense of these.

I am doubtful of even the extent of structural similarities: The
difference in the verbal system and case syncretism would cause enough
problems even without the extent of phonological change.


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 23:47:58 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 15:47:58 -0800
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel and
 Dating PIE]
In-Reply-To: <20000306072028.18160.qmail@hotmail.com> (message from
 =?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?= on Mon, 6 Mar 2000 12:49:00
 +0530)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.154758.0800.>

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Gabor Sandi (g_sandi at hotmail.com) wrote:

> I know that there are many structural similarities between Homer's Greek and
> Vedic Sanskrit, but even there I doubt that it is possible to read continuous
> text in one, if you only know the other.

While my Sanskrit professor thought (and taught) this way in his introductory
class, in my opinion one would have to be extremely well versed in the history
of both languages in order for this to work, so much so that the experiment is
not really possible:  By the time one had learned enough of the background to
do it, one would have learned enough of the target language to read it.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  8 01:59:45 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:59:45 -0800
Subject: UPenn tree; was: Indo-Hittite Hypothesis
In-Reply-To: <200003041816.p2817@h2.maus.de> (Hans_Holm@h2.maus.de)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.175945.0800.>

On Sat, 04 Mar 2000, Hans Holm (Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de) wrote:

[NB:  "MAI" = Rich Alderson, the present author, presumably somehow extracted
 from my full name (which includes a numeral, like it or not).]

MAI>The UPenn work is supposed to provide exactly the information we have
MAI>lacked till now, that is, where to put in branches.  Having generated
MAI>their branching structure, they then picked a root position such that
MAI>Anatolian branches away from the entire rest of the family, all of
MAI>which can be viewed as going back to a single proto-language.

HH> .. again: "Where is the exact information" on the UPenn tree???

I admit, I inferred the purpose of the UPenn work from the descriptions of the
work, and the sketchily published results of the work, rather than learning it
from any grand descriptive document.

Personally, I'm often happy just to continue using the "massive 10-way split"
model...

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 05:00:55 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:00:55 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.000055.EST.>

>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

>Everything I've read on Phrygian, admittedly not much, seems to
>claim a different genetic relationship: Albanian, Armenian, Hellenic,
>Thracian. Anyone game enough to explain which one might be correct, if any,
>and why?

-- my own guess would be that Phrygian, Armenian and Hellenic were, in
origin, part of the same dialect-cluster and simply share a lot of late
isoglosses.  Thracian we simply don't know enough about to say.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 05:15:24 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:15:24 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.001524.EST.>

>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

>And how do we know that they're [lavagtaei and vanaktei] not loanwords from
>Greek?

-- well, it would be highly unusual if they were, since they'd have to be
_very_ early, and the recorded instances of their use in Phrygian are from
times long after those terms were lost in Greek.

"Wannax" was an obsolete term even by Homer's time, largely replaced by
"basileus", from Myceaean "gwasileus", with a semantic shift from "headman"
or "foreman" to "king" and showing the characteristic *gw ==> b.  Reflexes of
"wannax" in Classical Greek referred to religious, not secular posts, if my
memory serves me correctly.

As for "lawagetas", it survived only as an obscure dialect form in Classical
times.

And of course the "w" sound dropped out of Greek even by Homer's time; he has
'annax' for 'wannax'.

So, conceivably, they could have been Bronze Age loans into pre-Phrygian from
Mycenaean Greek; on the other hand, cognates are more likely, I'd say.

"wannax/vanaktei" would both be from PIE *unatks (gen *unatkos), meaning
"leader, lord"; there's a Tocharian reflex, "natak", with precisely that
meaning.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 05:03:56 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:03:56 EST
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.000356.EST.>

>BMScott at stratos.net writes:

>Breton <ebeul> 'colt', NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed', and
>I assume Manx <eagh> 'riding horse, steed, racehorse'. >>

-- correct.  The point being that Proto-Celtic started out with two words for
horse; one derived from *ekwos and one from *markos (the latter also being
present in Germanic).

There can be no certainty in the matter, but the prevalence of
*ekwos-reflexes in the IE languages indicates that this was probably the
"default" word for "horse" and that *markos had some other, specialized
meaning.  Probably "wild horse".


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 09:46:24 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 04:46:24 EST
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.044624.EST.>

I wrote:

>> With regard to *equus reflexes in Celtic, of course each of the languages
>> above also has a <marko-> word for horse.  But it make me wonder how
>> forgiving this analysis should be - since I see a complete absence of
>> *ekwos in Breton, NIr and Manx.

In a message dated 3/7/2000 2:32:19 AM, BMScott at stratos.net replied:

> Breton <ebeul> 'colt', NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed', and
> I assume Manx <eagh> 'riding horse, steed, racehorse'.

Buck does list <ebeul> for colt, but not <each> for NIr - in NIr, it doesn't
seem any *ekwos looking words appear in any of the different categories Buck
lists for different kinds of horses (horse, stallion, gelding, mare, foal,
colt).  The word is <eagh> OR <agh> in Kelly's Manx dictionary - Buck does
not have either.

I also wrote:

>> Also I note that Buck has somehow failed to include in his book a rather
>> important OIr word for 'deer' - <ach>  (Gaelic - <each>).  Perhaps more on
>> that later.

In a message dated 3/7/2000 2:32:19 AM, BMScott at stratos.net replied:

> Can you give a reference to this word?  There is no entry
> for <ach> 'deer' in the Dict. of the Irish Lang.

Quite right.  Sorry about that.

The word is <agh>.  McBain's Etymon. Dict. defines it in Gaelic and Ir as
"hind", and as "deer" in <agh allaidh> (allaidh being 'wild'), citing
O'Clery's Glossary (1643).  OIr is given as <ag>.   (Also interesting in
McBain's is Welsh <uch> = elk or deer.) Buck mentions none of these.

In Manx, <agh> = steed, horse, <agh markiaght> = riding horse; (Kelly's
Fockleyr Gaelg - Baarle (Manx Gaelic).

BMScott at stratos.net also wrote:

> there *is* <ech>
> 'a horse, a steed', giving NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed'
> and Sc. Gael. <each> 'a horse, a brute'. OIr <ech> can
> of course be found in Buck's 3.41 (generic term for a horse)

Yes, well, in any case, marko-  is the only word Buck gives for "generic"
horse in ALL four of the Celtic languages (<marc>/<march>/<marc'h>) and Buck
lists marko- words for "mare" in NONE of those four Celtic languages.  (His
rationale for leaving out other relevant words is unexplained.)

Regards,
Steve Long


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  8 00:02:07 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:02:07 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.000207.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2000 1:24 PM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>> From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

<snip>

[MCV]
> That is often said, but it needs to be elaborated for it to make
> sense.  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
> accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
> its development?  If it switched from stress accent to pitch
> accent (as suggested by zero grade everywhere and Vedic-Greek
> accentuation), how did the unstressed vowels that were to become
> o's by pitch accent survive the reduction caused by stress
> accent? Etcetera.

[PR]
This is, of course, a crucial question.

At a time long ago, in an Urheimat far away . . .

When PIE had only one vowel, /a/ . . .

One possibility might be that, just prior to the transition from
stress-accent (which was *free*) to tonal accent, the syllable which would
later display /o/ was stress-accented; in other words, at that point was
/a'/.

The stress-accented syllable with /a'/  (which might have induced to become
/a:'/), then became /a(:)*/, with the asterisk indicating a high-tonal
accent, when tonal accent supplanted stress-accent.

Sanskrit reflects this stage.

Subsequently, the tonal accent was moved to the root syllable, and *fixed*,
producing Ca*-Ca(:)., with . indicating a low tone.

Later yet, high tones produced syllables with /e*/, low tones produced
syllables with /o(:)./.

Finally, stress-accent was re-introduced, and the syllable with high-tone
/e*/ became /e'/ while the syllable with low-tone /o(:)./ became simply
/o(:)/.

<snip>

>> [MCVp]

>>> with developments /a/ >
>>> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
>>> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
>>> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
>>> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
>>> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
>>> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
>>> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
>>> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
>>> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>>> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

[PR]

So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/ and
/a:/?

And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

>> [PRp]
>> But why would they (primary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
>> the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
>> indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

[MCV]
> Primary (etymological, non-apophonic) **a:'s gave *o (sometimes
> <a:> in Indo-Iranian by Brugmann's Law) just like secondarily
> lengthened **a's.  This is the origin of the PIE acrostatic
> paradigms (I again agree with Jens), as opposed to the "regular"
> proterodynamic (root/extension-accented) and hysterodynamic
> (extension/suffix-accented) models without an original long vowel
> in the root.

> Lengthened grade was certainly a morphological device in PIE
> (vrddhi).  JER has an alternative explanation, but I would
> distinguish between cases of "old vrddhi", where the **a was
> lengthened to **a: and appears as PIE *o (e.g. the
> causative-iteratives in CoC-'ei-e-), and "younger vrddhi" where
> the **a first developed to *e and was subsequently lengthened to
> *e:.

[PR]

And could you describe the morphological function of lengthened grade in
PIE?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar  8 06:44:04 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 22:44:04 -0800
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <006001bf8637$7ba81700$9314153f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.224404.0800.>

At 12:11 AM 3/5/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>>> <PRp>

>>> Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

><SF>

>> As far as minimal contrast goes, one can simply look at the "perfect"
>> versus the "aorist" of many verbs (especially in the third singular).

><PR>

>All three aorists have the *H(1)e- prefix. No perfect has it.

While they are not *strictly* minimal pairs, the augment is, in general,
separated from the root vowel by one or more consonants, and thus has
virtually no phonetic influence.  As far as establishing *e and *o as
distinct phonemes, these pairs are quire sufficient.

>In his examples, no pair is given like **sing-sung so I presume that
>"meaning" does *not* include nuaces created by inflection or conjugation.

Rather, he just doesn't have space to cover all the variations, as meaning
most certainly *does* include tense.  In fact it includes any semantic
variation at all.
><SF>

>> A quick perusal of Pokorny (yes, I know, out of date) gives:
>> *kem: "summen"
>> and
>> kom: "neben, bei, mit"

><PR>

>I see you have not indicated *kem in the way that Pokorny does, namely
>"*kem-".

>What the omission of the hyphen masks is that there is no entry in Pokorny
>for any language that shows the bare root "*kem*.

So?  Umlaut aside, suffixes are generally too loosely associated to
interfere with establishment of phonemic distinctions.

[Remember, I made QUICK perusal of Pokorny, not an exhaustive search: a
more detailed search would take such things into account, both for and
against].

><PR>

>Unless you can produce an acceptable minimal pair contrasting *e/*o, I
>believe the question of phonemicity remains open.

Phonemic status does not really require the existence of strict minimal
pairs, just semantic distinction in the absence of phenetic conditioning
factors.  Minimal pairs are merely a *sufficient* condition, not a
necessary one.

><PR>

>I read Miguel's exposition of this but, in my answer to him, you may see
>that I was not persuaded.

><PRp>

My problem is that I have always found the purely accentual systems
unconvincing phonetically.  They just do not match my experience.  On the
other hand, the breaking of a length distinction into a qualitative one is
well attested in other, less ambiguous cases.

As I pointed out, my own name includes and example of it: Stan vs. stone,
where the Modern English qualitative difference harks back to a prior
length distinction: stan- vs. sta:n.

><PR>

>For that, you would need to present minimal pairs contrasting *Ce/oC with
>*CiC and *CuC. Can it be done?

No, I just need contrasting meanings in non-contrasting *environments*.

><SF>

>> Well, there is the root Pokorny list as *bheu.  However, the only branch
>> showing an e-grade of it is Indo-Iranian.  Outside of that it is
>> universally in "zero" grade.  Thus I do not believe the e-grade is ancient.
>>  I reconstruct *bhuH "grow, increase".

><PR>

>I wonder if you have Pokorny there or are trusting to memory.

Yes, I do.  I was looking at it as I wrote.  (Care must be taken: for
instance Old English vowels show some odd modifications that may *look*
like e-grade, but are just dipthongized o-grades, whence the Modern English
long 'e').

>I see several examples of *e-grade in languages other than Indo-Iranian,
>e.g. Armenian boin, 'nest'; Albanian bane", 'dwelling'; Gothic bauan,
>'dwell', etal. --- as well as some *o-grade examples.

I will have to cross check these.  Right off they do not look like obvious
e-grades to me.

><SF>

>> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two distinct
>> roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an e-grade at all
>> (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

><PR>

>There are several *bher- roots. Why not expand on this a bit?

Pokorny list both of them as one root: "bh(e)reu: bh(e)ru(:)".  It starts
on page 143 in my printing.  The root *bheru is under subheading A., and
the root bhreHu is under subheading B.

><SF>

>> There is *uper "over, above".

><PR>

>If one notates it as Pokorny does, namely *upe'r, the problem is simplified:
>**wepe'r -> *upe'r.

The problem is that this assumes the conclusion.  No trace of any such
thing as **wepe'r is found anywhere.  This is my complaint: reconstructing
an *e for the *sole* reason of avoiding "bare" *u and *i as vowels.

> There are many examples of *weC- becoming *uC-: e.g.
>*wep-:*wo/o:p-:*up-, 'water'.

Certainly there are.  But just because something is *common* doesn't make
it *universal*.

><SF>

>> The root listed as *ueidh shows no actual reflexes with e-grade in Pokorny,
>> so one must really reconstruct *widh: "trennen".

><PR>

>What about Old Indian ve:dh- or German *waisan < *woidh-son- (we should take
>cognizance of o-grades in this context, should we not?).

Yes, though in perfects there is always the possibility of analogical
extension of the o-grade to forms originally lacking it.  Still, you are
right, this one may require further study.

>Frankly, you may need to go back between the rows.

If I had time.  I cannot spend the hours necessary to research this properly.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From edsel at glo.be  Tue Mar  7 16:11:09 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:11:09 +0100
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.171109.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "roslyn frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2000 5:51 PM

[snip]

> If, for example, one accepts the story told by Corominas about the path
> that brought an Old Persian Wanderwort into Romance languages, one must ask
> why the cobblers didn't stop off in Germanic speaking lands first?
[snip]
> Have a good day,
> Roz

[Ed]

Persian craftsmen, architects etc. played an important role in what is now
perceived as expressions of 'Arab' or Muslim material culture. The most likely
place to find these people during the Middle Ages would be the Arab occupied
part of Spain, and nowhere else.

Ed. Selleslagh


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  8 10:22:32 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 10:22:32 +0000
Subject: Excluding Basque data
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.102232.0000.>

Roz Frank writes:

>  Since the topic of criteria for inclusion and exclusion of Basque data has
>  surfaced again on the list, perhaps the following information will be of
>  interest.

[snip my discussion of cutoff dates]

>  I've prepared the following background summary in order to aid those
>  members of the list who might be somewhat unfamiliar with the source
>  materials for Basque. Hopefully, the summary also will bring into focus
>  some of the problems that inevitably arise when one attempts to choose a
>  "more restrictive early date" for the cut-off, whether that be set at 1600,
>  1700 or even 1800.

>  1) There is essentially no Medieval Basque 'literature' of any kind.

Indeed, apart from a few songs transmitted orally before being finally
written down.

[snip summary of medieval Basque materials]

These medieval materials are more substantial than is sometimes realized.
Michelena's 1964 Textos Arcaicos Vascos is a dense 200-page book summarizing
them.  These materials are of immense linguistic value.  And Michelena
himself was fond of reminding us that the linguistic history of Basque
begins in the 10th century, and not, as is often supposed, with the
literary works of the 16th century.

I can't stress this too strongly.  A great deal of Basque vocabulary,
plus some phonology and morphology, and even a little syntax, is recorded
in those medieval materials.

[snip summary of 16th-century materials, which by the way omits one very
important work: Landucci's Basque dictionary of 1562]

>  Criteria.
>
>  Larry Trask has stated that he would prefer 1600 as the cut-off date for
>  "early attestation".  As one can see from the information given above, if
>  the cut off date is set at 1600, it's pretty slim pickins.

Oh, no -- not at all.

In spite of the modest body of material before 1600, the proportion of
the basic Basque vocabulary recorded in it is very high.

Take a look at Sarasola's 1996 dictionary, which reports dates of first
attestation.  Every page I glance at lists between two and eight words
first recorded before 1600.  The average seems to be about four or five
such words.  So, since the dictionary has 800 pages, that means that the
total of such words must be somewhere around 3000-4000.  Not bad.

Of course, there are further words first recorded between 1600 and 1700.
But these are less numerous, and, more importantly, *practically all*
of them are transparent compounds or derivatives, or sometimes obvious loan
words, and hence will be excluded from my list in any case.  In fact, on
browsing through the dictionary just now, I couldn't find *a single word*
first recorded between 1600 and 1700 which was neither obviously
polymorphemic nor an obvious loan word.  I think this is a telling point:
the kind of vocabulary I'm interested in is almost invariably recorded
before 1600, if it's recorded at all.

>  And furthermore, if one applies Larry Trask's other criterion to the same
>  corpus, namely, that for an item to be included in his list it must be
>  recorded early in all dialects or most of the dialects, we're fried
>  (although this might not be the way that Larry intends the dialectal
>  criterion to be applied to the data).

No; it is not.  My criteria are (1) that the word is recorded *somewhere*
before 1600, (2) that it is recorded *at some time* in all or nearly all
dialects, (3) that it is not obviously polymorphemic, and (4) that it does
not appear to be shared with any neighboring languages.

>  The database in question simply
>  doesn't provide a wide sampling. In other words, serious difficulties would
>  arise if one were to apply the second criterion of widespread dialectal use
>  to items attested prior to 1600: the two books mentioned above and three
>  collections of proverbs do not cover all the dialects. Thus, a strict
>  application of Larry's second rule would actually eliminate all the words
>  found in these works.

No.  This is a misunderstanding.

>  Again, he may assume that if the word is attested
>  early (prior to 1600) in one or more of the northern dialects that would be
>  sufficient.

It is sufficient for me if the word is recorded *anywhere* before 1600.
There's nothing special about the northern dialects.  And, for historical
work, it would be difficult to name a single more important text than
the Refranes y Sentencias of 1596 -- written in the Bizkaian dialect.

>  Earlier Larry Trask has stated that in his opinion, when finished his list
>  would end up containing only 200 "native" Basque words. He may have stated
>  'a couple hundred' (sorry I don't have the exact citation).

No; I have never named any such precise number, nor any number this small.
What I suggested was "a few hundred" or "several hundred" words.  In fact,
even this estimate is perhaps too cautious, but I'm trying to err on the
safe side until I've done the work.

>  By my
>  calculations, there might be even fewer, unless he means that he would
>  include a if the word can be attested prior to 1600 in one dialect and then
>  rediscovered in the nineteenth and tntieth centuries in four of the five
>  dialects.

Yes, that's roughly what I mean.

>  Thus, there is the question of how the sample is skewed because of the
>  following facts:
>
>  1) that many works are translations from Latin by clergymen;
>  2) that when the works are not translations they are nonetheless books or
>  treatises written by priests about religious themes; and
>  3) during the 16th and 17th centuries the works represent primarily one
>  dialectal zone, Lapurdi.

But none of these is a problem for me.  All may well be issues in other
kinds of historical work.  For example, they are *certainly* issues in
working on early Basque syntax.  But, for basic vocabulary, they are
simply not a problem.

Even if he's merely translating a religious text, a Basque writer is not
going to translate things like 'hand', 'eye', 'cow', 'two', 'sister' or
'go' with anything other than the ordinary Basque word.  The *additional*
presence of a mass of religious vocabulary is no obstacle.  Nor is the
likely absence of words like 'somersault' or 'otter' a problem, since
these less usual words are almost invariably polymorphemic or borrowed.

Moreover, it is not quite true that our 16th-century texts are
overwhelmingly Lapurdian: the R&S is Bizkaian, and Landucci's
dictionary is Alavese.

Finally, the sheer size of a work is also not necessarily a big issue.
Axular's huge 1643 book Gero contains a total of only about 4300 words,
and this total includes proper names and derivatives: for example, it
includes <jakin> 'know' and six derivatives of this word, all counted
separately.  And this total is not so much greater than the perhaps
2000 words recorded in the tiny 16th-century collections of proverbs.

There just *isn't* that much Basque vocabulary which is native,
ancient and monomorphemic.  And what there is keeps turning up over
and over again, in text after text, regardless of how big the text
is or of how many other words it contains.

>  With respect to the first point, we note that both of the major books from
>  the 16th century were written by members of the clergy.

But Landucci was not a clergyman, and his 143-page dictionary of 1562
is not religious in nature.  Among other delights, this book contains
the first known occurrences of the words <alu> and <zakil>, which I
shall delicately gloss here as 'vulva' and 'virile member' -- admittedly
words which most Basque clergymen were reluctant to commit to print.

[snip summary of subsequent Basque literature]

>  So if my understanding is correct, Larry Trask's "more restrictive early
>  date" would admit one translation of the New Testament with a catechism and
>  tables for calculating moveable feasts, 1 short book of poems, a letter
>  from Mexico, and three brief collections of proverbs as his data base to
>  which he would add the miscellaneous citations, epigraphs, songs, place
>  names, proper names, a couple of very short word lists compiled by
>  non-Basques and some random words and phrases found in works written in
>  Romance prior to 1700.

Plus Landucci.  But Roz makes it sound as though this were a feeble and
inadequate body of materials.  It is not.  Not only does it contain
thousands of words, it contains practically all of the words which have
any chance of meeting my other criteria.

>  Should such a database be considered a representative sample?

For my purposes, absolutely.

If you doubt this, then accept a little challenge: name me three Basque
words which are first recorded only after 1600, which are attested more
or less throughout the country, which are not transparently polymorphemic,
and which do not appear to be shared with any neighboring languages.
Please report back to me when you've found them. ;-)

>  Keep reading, there are more surprises!!

For who?

>  List members unfamiliar with the highly oral nature of Basque culture might
>  be surprised to know that the date set for the beginning of Basque
>  literature is 1879. And to give people a better idea of just how few texts
>  there really are I would like to reproduce (actually summarize) information
>  in the form of three charts. In their original form the charts also
>  indicate which dialects the works were written in, but I've left that
>  information out. The cut off date for the statistical tabulation is 1879.
>  To qualify as a work, the text had to be a non-periodical and at least 48
>  pages long, a standard definition taken from UNESCO.

[snip tables]

All irrelevant, I'm afraid.

First, whether some text does or does not qualify as "literature" by
somebody's definition is irrelevant.  All that matters is that it is
written in Basque by somebody who knows Basque.  For this purpose, a
laundry list is as good as a novel, except that the laundry list is
likely to be shorter.  In fact, in some respects, a laundry list is
preferable to a novel, since it's more likely to represent ordinary
everyday usage than is a work of self-conscious literature.

Second, while later texts obviously add greatly to the record of
Basque words, they do *not* add significantly to the body of words
I'm interested in: the best candidates for native, ancient and
monomorphemic status.  Finding <ikusmen> '(sense of) vision', 'eyesight'
only in 1785 is of no interest to me: the word is plainly polymorphemic,
and the suffix is borrowed.

>  I believe that these three charts help explain some of the reason that Jon
>  Patrick and I have repeatedly argued in favor of including Azkue's
>  dictionary as a legitimate and necessary addition to any database for
>  Euskera.

No.  Not to *any* database.  There is practically nothing in Azkue which
is relevant to me but which is not more readily available elsewhere.
Remember what I'm doing.

>  In addition, Azkue was meticulous in noting the dialect, even
>  indicating the name of the village, in which he collected the item.
>  Moreover, he utilized some 150 Basque texts as part of his database and he
>  indicates precisely which text each item comes from, citing the entire
>  sentence in which it occurred so that the reader has the contextualization
>  of the entry.

I've already discussed Azkue's virtues and vices on this list.  His
meticulous citing of sources is a big plus, and I make heavy -- but
cautious -- use of him for this purpose.  However, as I've explained
before, Azkue contains many errors, and the dictionary cannot be taken
at face value for historical work.

>  In conclusion, keeping in mind the question of whether religious texts,
>  primarily translations, are appropriate (or the best) data sources for our
>  purposes,

For my purposes, it is the *earliest* texts which are crucial.  I don't
care whether those texts are about religion or about alien abductions.
As long as they are written in Basque, that's all that matters.

[snip passage on the religious nature of early Basque literature]

>  In short, from my point of view, given the nature of the facts set out
>  above, to assign the cut-off point for the database at 1600 is not
>  particularly logical;

Sorry; I can't agree.  This is a fine choice, for my purposes.

>  and it would be only slightly more logical to assign
>  the cut-off to 1700. This is particularly so if we keep in mind that our
>  aim is to reconstruct a stage of the language roughly 2000 years earlier,
>  i.e., prior to its first contacts with the Roman invaders who entered the
>  Peninsula in 218 BC.

Careful.  It makes a big difference just *what* we are trying to reconstruct.

Thanks to Michelena, we already have an excelent reconstruction of the
phoneme system of the Pre-Basque of some 2000 years ago.

Now I want to move on to a reconstruction of the morpheme-structure
constraints applying to monomorphemic lexical items in Pre-Basque.
To do that, I need to identify the best attesed candidates for such
lexical items.  And those best candidates, unsurprisingly, are largely
to be found in the basic everyday vocabulary, the words which recur
constantly in Basque texts at all periods.

>  Considering the intended purpose of the database, it
>  is unlikely that any changes that the language would have undergone in the
>  hundred-year period, i.e., from 1599-1699, would affect the outcome of the
>  study in any significant way.

I agree, Roz.  But this is an argument for taking 1600 as the cutoff
date -- now isn't it?

However, we don't have to choose the cutoff date arbitrarily.  As I've
pointed out above, a quick scan of the evidence suggests that preferring
a later date to 1600 is not going to increase the number of relevant
words to any significant extent.

And, once again, let me remind you wearily that I am *not* trying to
identify *all possible* candidates for native and ancient status --
at least, not at this stage.  I am only trying to identify the *best*
candidates.

>  By the way is there a chronological cut-off point for words in Romance
>  languages? Or in Slavic? Just curious.

Depends on the purpose.

Look.  I'm not suggesting that my criteria are the best possible
criteria for doing *any work* on Basque.  I'm only suggesting that
they're the most suitable criteria for *my particular purposes*.
Other tasks will very likely call for different criteria.  But so what?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  8 11:14:02 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 11:14:02 +0000
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion (1)
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.111402.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

The posting I'm trying to reply to here is enormous.  I'm afraid
I can't possibly deal with all of it now, or perhaps ever.  So I'll
content myself with responding to a point or two for now.  Maybe
later I can turn to other points.

>  The discussion of "criteria" when seeking candidate vocabulary
>  which descends from earlier stages of a language is clearly
>  relevant whenever we seek such vocabulary,
>  is is relevant to much more than Basque.
>  Most of the particular suggestions made also apply to more than just Basque.

But I'm only working on Basque, and the doubtless fascinating and
complex issues that arise in working on Algonquian are of no
relevance to me.

>  This message contains additional material to support
>  a more sophisticated and nuanced set of techniques for selecting items
>  to include as potential monomorphemic Old Basque lexicon.
>  The core concept underlying all of these specific suggestions
>  for modifying Trask's criteria is that we are dealing with gradient
>  and fuzzy matters, matters of degree, ones not susceptible to
>  sharp yes-or-no decisions.

Unfortunately, I have to *make* "sharp yes-or-no decisions".
For my purposes, I need a list of words, and so, before I can
do anything else, I have to decide which words should go into that
list.  I can't include a word to only 30%.  Fuzziness exists, yes,
but my response to fuzziness is this: if there is *any* doubt that
the word belongs in the list, then leave it out.

>  Though each criterion or perspective
>  by itself may give a clear result in special cases, it need not,
>  and the combination of criteria can give a complex of information
>  which we can weight different ways.  If we "tag" the items
>  with multiple scores in a computer database, we can then change
>  the weightings as seems appropriate to consider different hypotheses.

Irrelevant to my purposes, I'm afraid.

I am not considering different hypotheses.  In principle, I don't
even have *any* hypotheses.  I want to compile a list of words,
and I want my conclusions to derive entirely from that list.
That's all.

So, the only issue for me is a simple one: which words go into
the list?

>  This message adds criteria 10-17 to the earlier message titled
>  "9 specifics on Including and excluding data"
>  sent on 30th October, 1999.

>  Larry Trask recently again challenged that he had not received
>  specific alternative suggestions for criteria for inclusion
>  of words when seeking ancient native monomorphemic lexical items
>  for Basque.  That statement is false on its face,
>  I simply refer to the message just mentioned from 30 October, 1999,
>  which should be in our archives, with the additions here.

It is not false.  Please watch yourself, Lloyd.

>  And Trask's statement is also false on its face based on Trask's own
>  message of 9th December, 1999, in which he admitted that he had
>  received specific suggestions:

Suggestions.  Comments.  Points.  Yes.  But criteria?  No.

That posting did not add up to a set of explicit criteria for
deciding whether any given Basque word should or should not
go into my list.

>  Let's start with a point of agreement:

>  >So, Lloyd, are you now agreeing to the following?

>  >   Expressive formations should be subject to no special treatment
>  >   at all, but must be treated just like all other words, according
>  >   to exactly the same criteria, whatever those are.

>  >Yes or no?

>  Of course I agree with this, and always did agree.

Fine.  Good.

>  I have only protested against criteria which had biases against
>  expressives or other strata of vocabulary,
>  not advocated that we should have some a priori criteria
>  to include specifically expressives or any other words
>  even if they did not satisfy other *reasonable, legitimate, unbiased*
>  criteria.  I emphasize the latter part deliberately,
>  because criteria cannot stand as valid judges of other matters
>  unless the criteria themselves are first judged.

OK, Lloyd: then *what other* criteria do you propose?

>  I'll continue here with principled, fully general criteria
>  which differ from Trask's:

>  10.  bias against longer words

>  Trask has stated the goals of his collection this way:

>  >native, ancient and monomorphemic lexical items.  That's all.
>  >I think I've been pretty explicit about this.

>  Yet in the same message where he stated this, he also
>  replied as follows:

>  [LA]
>  >> The exclusion of expressives,
>  >> *or systematically of any other group of words*
>  >> (such as the longer words, as noted above),
>  >> through any aspect of the sampling procedure,
>  >> would of course tend to invalidate such general validity.

>  [LT]
>  >No; not at all.  Polysyllabic words are excluded by definition: they are
>  >not relevant to my task.

>  I'll assume that was a typo, "polysyllabic" instead of "polymorphemic",
>  because otherwise polysyllabic words are *not* excluded by the definition
>  of goals just quoted.  They certainly are *not* excluded automatically
>  by any principles of reliable historical reconstruction!

Indeed.  That was a dozy typo, and I did mean 'polymorphemic'.
My apologies.

>  11.  "polymorphemic" not intended synchronically
>
>  But it may not be a typo, it may rather reveal some interdependence of
>  criteria in Trask's thinking.

No; it was just a typo.

>  Assuredly, polysyllabic words are more likely to be polymorphemic,
>  and the skilled and knowledgeable analyst may be able to segment
>  many polysyllabic words into etymologizable parts.  Some of these
>  results must certainly reflect the psychological reality of the morphemes
>  for the speakers.
>  But if we take the concept seriously in a synchronic sense,
>  then we must recognize that also in ancient languages,
>  even proto-languages, there may be many words
>  which demonstrably once were morphemically composite,
>  which yet for the speakers of the proto-language were single morphemes.
>  Trask does not seem to recognize this problem.

Yes, I do.

When I exclude polymorphemic words, I exclude words which can
reasonably be shown to be polymorphemic *in origin*.  I don't
care whether these words are still regarded as polymorphemic
by speakers today.  I'm doing historical work, not synchronic
work on the contemporary language.

Probably no modern English-speaker perceives 'hussy' as polymorphemic,
but we can show that is, in origin.  And probably no modern
Basque-speaker perceives <itun> 'confession', 'banns' as
polymorphemic, but we can show that it is, in origin -- in fact,
it consists of no fewer than *four* morphemes -- and so
it doesn't go into my list.

>  Most or all languages we know of do contain historically polymorphemic
>  vocabulary items which are synchronically monomorphemic.
>  So we must be willing to reconstruct such words for any proto-language
>  also.  This is the error of over-analysis, over-segmentation.

If it's monomorphemic as far back as we can trace it, then it's
monomorphemic for my purposes.

Basque <itun> is certainly polymorphemic, so it's out.

Basque <gibel> 'liver' is probably polymorphemic in origin, but
I can't demonstrate this decisively, so it will probably go in.
I'm pondering this one.

Basque <sabel> 'stomach' is possibly polymorphemic, but this is
doubtful and far from demonstrable, so it goes in.

There is no trace of evidence that Basque <buru> 'head' is
polymorphemic, so in it goes.

>  Trask (in another message today) classes English "vixen" as
>  "Bimorphemic in English",
>  I do not understand a synchronic basis for his doing so.
>  It was polymorphemic at one time, but surely not in English now.

True, but not relevant.  The word is polymorphemic *in origin*, and
so, for the kind of purpose I have in mind, it must be classed
as polymorphemic.

>  There is no other word in the American Heritage Dictionary beginning
>  with "vix-", and there is no English feminine ending "-en" sufficiently
>  salient
>  that I can think of a word with it right off hand, though that may be my
>  personal mental limitation of the moment.
>  (I could only think of "oxen", "oven", "coven", "maven", "raven",
>  "maiden".)
>  So "vixen" is not even as decomposible as the
>  famous "cranberry" where at least "-berry" is obvious.
>  This has been the pattern of Trask's remarks on a host of other items,
>  where he classes them as polymorphemic if he can *etymologize*
>  them as multiple morphemes, not if they are polymorphemic
>  in a sychronic analysis of the language itself.

Of course.  Lloyd, I'm doing *historical* work here.

>  That tends to exclude words illegitimately by my understanding
>  of the goals Trask has stated for himself.  As we use "polymorphemic"
>  more and more loosely, we make the restricted monomorphemic
>  set included by a set of criteria less and less representative of
>  the language as a whole.

Certainly not.  And I am not using the term 'polymorphemic' "loosely"
at all.  For me, if we can show beyond reasonable doubt that a word
consists historically of two or more morphemes, then it is
polymorphemic.  What could be clearer?

>  Representativeness of the language as a whole
>  is of course not Trask's aim when he states his goal explicitly
>  including the criterion "monomorphemic".

Damn straight.  I am not interested, at this stage anyway, in
characterizing Pre-Basque "as a whole".  I'm only interested in
the morpheme-structure constraints applying to native and
monomorphemic lexical items.

>  But it is a relevant way to evaluate how he states his conclusions,
>  and it is my distinct impression that he very often states his goals
>  without that limitation, as if his results could then have a wider
>  validity, as if he had not restricted himself to monomorphemic words only.

Certainly not.  What on earth are you talking about, Lloyd?

>  Here is one, from Trask's message of 9th December, 1999,
>  quoted more fully elsewhere in this message today:

>  >for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words

>  Notice that this did *not* specify
>  "a plausible list of monomorphemic Pre-Basque words".
>  It might be inferred from context, and he has stated
>  the monomorphemic criterion elsewhere, but as I said,
>  I think he tends to drop that limitation, and therefore to
>  end of in effect claiming a wider validity of his eventual
>  conclusions than is warranted by the severe limitations
>  he imposes on his data.

Again, certainly not.  True, I don't always bother to type out
the tediously long word 'monomorphemic' on every occasion.
But, in these discussions, that's what I usually mean, unless
I say otherwise.

>  12.  Reduplications are not polymorphemic unless the
>  unreduplicated form also occurs.
>  This is elementary.

It is not elementary, and it is probably not even true.

Basque has a class of m-reduplications.  Here are a few:

	<aiko-maiko> 'pretext'
	<zirimiri> 'drizzle'
	<zurrumurru> 'whisper, rumor, gossip'
	<txistmist> 'lightning'

In each case, the first element has no known existence outside the
reduplicated form.

Now, whatever one may think of these things, it is certainly
not obvious that they are "monomorphemic" -- end of story.

>  The term "reduplication" is rather often
>  applied to words that are primary, merely because they have
>  the same consonant or even syllable as their first and second.
>  It is often applied to nursery words and expressive words.
>  But "dad", "mom", "mommy", "daddy", etc. are not polymorphemic,
>  by a careful use of the criteria for morpheme division.

Eh?  What?

Lloyd, you don't think 'mommy' and 'daddy' are polymorphemic?
You don't think 'mommy' is <mom> + <-y>?  You don't think 'daddy'
is <dad> + <-y>?  You also don't think 'doggy' is <dog> + <-y>?

This is your idea of "careful" morpheme division?

>  Not even "mama", despite "ma" which seems synchronically
>  to be a shortening of "mama" not the reverse.

A different case, I'd say.

>       Trask has not explicitly said, so far as I know, that
>  reduplications are polymorphemic, but I suspect he has tended
>  to think of them that way.  I'll be happy if this is not the case.

I have my doubts as to whether reduplicated forms lacking source words
are capable of being segmented into morphemes in the ordinary way at all.
But I am certainly not going to declare them obviously monomorphemic.

However, this is unlikely to be an issue, since few if any of these
words will satisfy my other criteria anyway.  For example, <aiko-maiko>
is recorded only from 1909, and is hardly found outside the Bizkaian
dialect, and similar remarks apply to my other examples.

OK; that's all I've got time for now.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  8 14:20:42 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 14:20:42 +0000
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion (2)
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.142042.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

>  13.  Words in ancient Basque, vs. words descended from words
>  in ancient Basque?  Identity requirements popping up when only historical
>  descent is relevant

>  >Obviously expressive words hardly ever satisfy
>  >my criteria, from which the most appropriate conclusion appears to be
>  >that *these particular words* are not ancient.

>  [That is not the most appropriate conclusions
>  if the criteria are biased against expressives, even indirectly,
>  as i believe I have shown Trask's are]

>  >Of course, Pre-Basque
>  >doubtless possessed *some* expressive words, but there is no evidence to
>  >support a claim that these were identical to the modern ones.

>  Identity is not the requirement, surely.

>  Here again, a typo:  Presumably Trask means that they were not
>  the ancestors of the modern ones?

No; no typo.  When I say "identical", I mean identical in the sense in
which modern English 'house' is identical to Old English <hus>.

>  Because if identity is required,
>  we have yet another criterion introduced which was not implied by
>  his definition of goals, and which would further reduce the vocabulary
>  which he admits into his collections.  He *has* used this kind of
>  wording at other points, as in the discussion of whether a range
>  of forms which show partial resemblances to each other,
>  as for 'butterfly', warrant the assumption of some proto-form.
>  For 'butterfly', he argued there was too much variation,
>  that none of the forms was ancient.
>  That is not the relevant question, a relevant question is
>  rather whether any of the forms *descend from* antecedents,
>  which were part of Basque at an earlier stage.

If you like.  But the answer to this question, for the 'butterfly'
words, is clear: it is "no".

>  This may seem like nit-picking, but I think it is not,
>  or I would not mention it.  I believe it is merely one of the
>  steps Trask takes which lead his sample to be rather unrepresentative,
>  not merely of ancient Basque, but even of ancient Basque
>  monomorphemic words, Trask's expressed goal.

>  Taking off from Trask's use of the word "modern" just above,
>  I do not accept any sharp temporal cutoff date
>  as a legitimate part of historical linguistic inquiries
>  in attempting to determine which words descend from
>  ancestors in their language, because of the demonstrable
>  occurrence of systematic biases in exclusion of some sorts
>  of items from written attestations, dependent on culture
>  and other factors...

OK, Lloyd: what are your criteria?

You still haven't given us any, you know.

>  On Basque words for 'badger', Trask today expressed
>  what I regard as a more inclusive attitude about historical descent
>  rather than identity of words,
>  though still excluding these words by their date of attestation.
>  After some considerable discussion of others' hypotheses, he says:

>  >Who knows?  Not sure what to do with this, but it looks too fishy to go
>  >straight into the list.  Anyway, not recorded before 1745, and therefore
>  >out, even though I agree at once that the numerous and peculiar regional
>  >variants point to a much older word.

>  The last clause is for me sufficient to justify study and inclusion
>  in any list of the best candidates.  Date of attestation by itself is a
>  very minor influence.

No, it isn't: not for my purposes.  Early attestation is crucial.
If a word is nowhere recorded until long after a substantial body
of written materials is available, then the word is a doubtful
candidate for antiquity.

>  Even lack of regular sound correspondences
>  is very minor, given the knowledge that irregular historical descent
>  is not rare.

Presence or absence of regular sound correspondences is not one of my
criteria.  But the presence of the wholly, even wildly, unsystematic
correspondences in form among the numerous Basque words for 'butterfly'
is certainly a strong argument against antiquity, when you look at
all the evidence.

>  The same phrasing, applied to words for 'butterfly',
>  as I hope to show in future discussion of them,
>  after Trask has had his opportunity to comment on my first analysis,
>  would appropriately suggest that they "point to a much older word",
>  just as for words for 'badger'.

They do not.  They point instead to expressive formations of recent
origin.  The 'butterfly' words exhibit *all* the characteristics of
expressive formations in Basque: segments and sequences not found
in ordinary vocabulary, unusual length, enormous and unsystematic
variation, severe localization of individual forms, lack of early
attestations, and semantics (name of a small creature, in this case).

With the partial exception of considerable and unsystematic variation,
the *single* 'badger' word exhibits *none* of these properties.  Most
(not all) of the variant forms can be straightforwardly derived from
an original *<azkone>.  This looks nothing like an expressive formation.
In fact, it is indistinguishable from a native Basque word.  But it
has been widely suspected of being borrowed from Latin <taxonem>.
Quite apart from the late attestation (1745), this plausible Latin
source is enough to exclude the word from my list.  Any Basque word
for which a good case can be made for a loan origin must be excluded
from my list.

>  That discussion will of course
>  be based on the facts of the words for 'butterfly' and of the
>  patterns of sound changes and irregularities in Basque, etc..

Indeed.  And the 'butterfly' words are out, by every conceivable
criterion.

>  14.  Use of patterns dominant in Basque to downgrade words
>  which do not fit the dominant patterns.

>  (This objection, pointing to an alternative to Trasks application
>  of his criteria, may have been part of the earlier list of nine,
>  though I do not at present recall that it was;
>  but because new concrete examples make it relevant,
>  I highlight it here.  It has at least new application now.)

>  One of Trask's objections to inclusion of words in his lists,
>  which influences him to regard them as loanwords or
>  inventions, is that no native Basque words have two voiceless
>  stops, or voiceless stops beginning the first syllable.
>  (I may not have stated that exactly right, but the general
>  point is clear.)

Change to "two voiceless plosives", and you are right.

However, this is only a belief of mine, a preliminary conclusion.
It is *not* a criterion for excluding words.  So, as I've said before,
Basque <tipi> 'small', in spite of its two voiceless plosives, and
in spite of my beliefs, must go into my list, because it satisfies
all my criteria.

>  On Basque 'chick', which he points out is the only word
>  for a small animal (from a list) which is *not* formed with
>  the suffix -(k)ume 'offspring' and thus polymorphemic,
>  he writes:

>  >'chick' is the obviously imitative
>  >          <(t)xito> ~ <(t)xita> ~ <txitxa>.
>  >This last word will probably meet my
>  >criteria, but will stand out a mile.

>  Well, but if it is included, then at least that word
>  with two voicelss stops is presumptively part of ancient Basque
>  (if it meets other legitimate evaluations to a sufficient degree).

Doesn't follow, I'm afraid.

The observation that a word satisfies my criteria does not entail
that it can be projected back to Pre-Basque.  It merely means that
I can't exclude it from my list -- a very different matter.

>  And if that one is included, then others with two voiceless stops
>  must not be downgraded on that basis, nor must it be argued
>  on that basis alone that they are non-native, borrowings or even
>  recent inventions.

But no one has suggested any such thing.  Wakey, wakey, Lloyd:
I do *not* exclude anything from my list on the basis of its
phonological form.  To do so would be self-defeating, since it is
the phonological forms of Pre-Basque which I am trying to recover.

>  But then one of the words for 'butterfly',
>  "pitxilota", is also a good candidate for inclusion.
>  Its four-syllable status does not by itself prove it to be
>  non-monomorphemic, though it may be.
>  Nor do the two voiceless stops prove it to be a loan.

Reality check, Lloyd.

No one has suggested that a four-syllable word must *ipso facto*
be polymorphemic.

No one has suggested that its phonological structure proves it to be
a loanword.

In fact, no one has suggested that it *is* a loanword.

So what are you talking about?

Finally, it is *false* to assert that <pitxilota> is "a good
candidate for inclusion" in my list.  It is a simply terrible
candidate, since it satisfies *no criteria at all*, apart from
absence from neighboring languages.

Oh, sorry -- it apparently does satisfy one criterion: Lloyd likes it.
;-)

Lloyd, if you think this word is a good candidate for inclusion
in my list, then you must have some criteria in mind -- criteria
which you haven't told us about.

The form <pitxilota> is recorded nowhere except in a very small area
of the Bizkaian dialect, and it does not appear to be recorded at all
before the 20th century.

So: what criteria are you appealing to in telling us that this word
is a good candidate for inclusion in my list?  May we know, please?

OK.  Enough again.  Maybe back later.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 07:05:26 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 02:05:26 EST
Subject: the Bear and the north star
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.020526.EST.>

I wrote:
>>And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
>>bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
>>artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
>>north star.

In a message dated 3/6/2000 7:19:25 PM, sarima at friesen.net wrote:
>Umm, there is a problem with that: Polaris was NOT the pole star in Homer's
>day!  In fact it wasn't even the pole star in Roman times!

>Now, it is true that the constellations called the Big and Little Bear have
>always been northerly, but they have not always incorporated the celestial
>north pole.

The author is correct about Polaris.  But note that I did not mention Polaris
and there were clearly "north stars" - in the sense of "pole stars" - before
Polaris.  I have that Polaris "stands almost still all night above the
northern horizon as other stars wheel around it... For nearly 1000 years,
Polaris has been located within a few degrees of the north celestial pole,
but in other times other stars have been nearer the pole. If a bright star is
located near the north celestial pole, it is called the North Star....  The
current North Star, Polaris, is in Ursa Minor as was it's predecessor,
Kochab."

Before 2300BC the pole star would have been in the constellation Draco, but
afterward would have been well on its way into the region of Bootes (the
herdsman) and the adjacent Ursae.  (BTW, Bootes contains Arcturus, Gr.,
"guardian of the bear".)  By 1200BC, the celestial pole would entered the
Ursae region and the pole star would have been found there.

And, by Hellenic times, the Greek super-geometrists were referring to the
pole-star with scientific precision, some using the term "polos" (LS:
"pole-star, Eratosth. Cat.2.")  By 300BC, one of them - Pythias - had even
established that neither celestial axis nor "pole star" were fixed.

Thales says that the Phoenicians were already navigating by the pole star
(@600BC.) and that would suggest some kind of calculation of latitude.  But
Homer's references are obviously to "the star" as a simplier navigational
guide.

In the Odyssey, we read:
"Gladly then did goodly Odysseus spread his sail to the breeze; [270] and he
sat and guided his raft skillfully with the steering-oar, nor did sleep fall
upon his eyelids, as he watched the Pleiads, and late-setting Bootes, and the
Bear, which men also call the Wain, [Wagon] which ever circles where it is...
[275] and alone has no part in the baths of Ocean. For this star, Calypso,
the beautiful goddess, had bidden him to keep on the left hand as he sailed
over the sea."

In the Illiad, Homer gives us "and the Bear, that men call also the Wain,
that circleth ever in her place, and watcheth Orion [the Hunter], and alone
hath no part in the baths of Ocean. " - e.g. never sets below the horizon.

It is clear in any case, that by the time of Herodotus (@500BC), <arktos> was
becoming a word for north: (LS) to de Paniônion esti tês Mukalês
chôros hiros pros ARKTON tetrammenos (The Panionion is a sacred ground in
Mycale, facing north...) Hdt. 1.148.

It is also interesting that in some of the earliest accounts the Bear gets up
there thanks to the intervention of Zeus who saves it from being shot by an
arrow.  Once again, it's not the bear who is doing the mayhem.  And in the
Greek sky, the Bear apparently even needed "a guardian."

Regards,
Steve Long


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 07:16:07 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 02:16:07 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.021607.EST.>

>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>>-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

>You obviously were around.>>

-- what alternative subsistence strategies do you find more credible?
Hunting and gathering, or selling insurance door-to-door?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 07:21:15 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 02:21:15 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.022115.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>And that would say that while members of the community might have seen the
>bear, they may have seen a lot more of what was left of the bear - while
>there were still bears around. >>

-- since the brown bear remained common in Europe down to early medieval
times (and beyond, in some regions), they would have plenty of time to make
its acquaintance.  One would think.

Incidentally, a look at the faunal assemblages found in Neolithic and later
habitation sites would help you avoid these speculation-in-a-vacuum
excursions into folk entymology.


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Thu Mar  9 09:37:16 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 11:37:16 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <200003072320.PAA10927@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.113716.0200.>

On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

> On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Ante Aikio (anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi) wrote:

>> There's a similar semantic shift in e.g. Finnish puna 'red color' < *'fur'
>> (its cognates mean 'hair', 'fur', 'wool').

> Is it the basic term for _red_ in Finnish?  Or is there another, so that only
> certain things get labeled _puna_?  (Cf. horse-hide terms in English such as
> _bay_, _dun_, _chestnut_, and so on.)

No, it's the only term for 'red' in Finnish. _puna_ is actually a noun
meaning 'red color', and the corresponding adjective is a derivative of it
(punainen 'red'). The meaning 'color' is also attested in some of the
other Uralic cognates, but not 'red'.

						 	Ante Aikio


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 21:18:07 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 16:18:07 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.161807.EST.>

>mclasutt at brigham.net writes:

>There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
>'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late term to
>develop in color vocabulary.

-- ah, my fault.  I should have been clearer.  I think it's entirely academic
and pointless to distinguish between "primary" and other color terms.  We say
"orange"; the word is derived from the fruit, not vice-versa; is "orange"
then a "primary" color term, or not?  Who cares?

Likewise, PIE seems to have had a term for "bay-colored horse".  If its
speakers then referred to other things of similar color as "bay", so what?


From stevegus at aye.net  Fri Mar 10 01:42:23 2000
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:42:23 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.204223.0500.>

Richard M. Alderson quoth:

> Is it the basic term for _red_ in Finnish?  Or is there another, so that only
> certain things get labeled _puna_?  (Cf. horse-hide terms in English such as
> _bay_, _dun_, _chestnut_, and so on.)

Interestingly, most of the horse colours in later Latin seem to have been
borrowed from Germanic: blancus, fulvus, griseus, blondus.  These also seem
to have taken root while classical words like -albus-, -spadix-,
and -fuscus- were dropped by the wayside.

--
Hyge sceal thy heardra, heorte thy cenre,
mod sceal thy mare, thy ure maegen lytlath.
                            --- The Battle of Maldon


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Mar 10 07:42:44 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 09:42:44 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <l03130301b4ea4a7c2afd@[193.189.191.14]>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.094244.0200.>

[I wrote]
> the only thing one could object to is Aryan *-as > Finnic > *-u (why not
> Finnish karhas : karhaa- ?). But this is not a big problem, I guess -
> e.g., back-formation of non-attested karhas seems possible.

[Xavier Delamarre]
> I have adressed this question in my article, but not in a very satisfying
> manner, proposing a back-formation, like you. I think now a more obvious
> solution would be to see the -u of karhu as a reflex of the Aryan ending
> -o: of the thematic nominative (cf the Avestan & O.ind. treatment  -o: of
> the ending -as) ; but we have the counter-exemples of _porsas_, _taivas_
> (against _orpo_, _arvo_), maybe a question of time when the loans were made
> (those in -as being earlier than those in -o/-u).

Finnish orpo 'orphan' is a back-formation of *orpas - it includes the
deminutive suffix *-j (*orpa-j > Proto-Finnic *orpoi > Finnish
orpo). The other languages show *-s: Saami oarbbis, Mordvin uros, and
probably also Hungarian árva (*s > zero being regular in Hungarian). The
-o in arvo 'value' must be secondary, since there is Finnish arva-ta 'to
guess, estimate'.

But there is at least one loan where some languages show *-s and some don't:
Pre-Ary. *erdhos 'side' > Uralic *ertäs (> Mordvin ir´d´es, Mari
ördEZ) ~ *ertä (> Saami earti, Udmurt urd-lï, Komi ord-lï). So,
*harkSas > Pre-Finnic *kar(k)Sa seems perfectly possible - but Finnish -u would
have to be a suffix (< *-Vw).

[I wrote]
>>>. "Eurasian" is a wide concept - what do you mean, more precisely?

[X.D.]
> I only mean that the IE were, since remote times, in close contact with the
> Uralic tribes, that is somewhere in present Russia (so, let us say Eastern
> Europe rather than Eurasia)

Yes - I fully agree.

[I wrote]
>> Actually,
>> Pre-Finnish *wr > Finnic / Finnish rv seems to be a regular sound law -
>> there are no counterexamples, and several Baltic loan words have undergone
>> the same sound shift (e.g. Finnish torvi 'horn (instrument)', Finnish
>> karva 'hair (not on head)', cf. Lithuanian taure~, gau~ras). Finnish
>> tarvas is thus < *tawras < Baltic.

[X.D.]
> Thank you for the information, I did not know this law.

I don't think it has been explicitly stated anywhere.

[X.D.]
> What comparative
> grammar  do you use ? (I have Laanest's "Einführung" and I have been
> looking for years for Hakulinen's "Rakenne & Kehitys", out-of-print,
> introuvable).

Laanest is a bit outdated, but it's still the best, I'd say. There
really isn't a more up-to-date presentation. Häkkinen's "Suomen kielen
äänne- ja muotorakenteen historiallista taustaa" (1985) is a short
presentation on historical phonology and morphology written mainly for
teaching purposes, but it might also be handy. There would really be a
need for an up-to-date comparative grammar of Finnic (and Uralic, for that
matter).

Regards,
Ante Aikio


From alex at AN3039.spb.edu  Thu Mar  9 19:36:43 2000
From: alex at AN3039.spb.edu (Alexander S. Nikolaev)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 22:36:43 +0300
Subject: Hittite walwa 'lion' WAS: Bears and why they are mostly...
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.223643.0300.>

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>>>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>

>>-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
>>"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.

>I don't see how that word can be related.  G&I give walwa-,
>walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian walwa-, but
>that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not
>aware of a development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes).

>The Anatolian word is much more likely to be related (as wa-lwa-
>< *lwa-l(e)wa- ?) to the general Eastern Mediterranean word for
>"lion", Egyptian <rw> (< *lw), Kartvelian *lom-, Semitic *labu?at
>("lioness").  As to Greek-Latin/Germanic-Slavic *lew-, G&I argue
>with some justification against the Germanic > Slavic word being
>< Latin, although I probably wouldn't go as far as establishing a
>PIE *lew- "lion" (well maybe, if Toch. <lu> "wild animal" is
>another reflex).

	I agree; there is no reason to connect the
	hittite word to PIE *wl.kwos (regrettably, one can't appeal to
	any authorities: the hittite word discussed is missing in
	both Puhvel and Tischler dictionaries, Neu mentions it in
	his Anitta-edition, but without any IE etymology).
	But there is to my mind little which can prevent us from
	reconstructing a PIE lexeme for 'lion' -- we must reckon with the fact,
	that in prehistorical times the species Panthera Leo was
	spread vastly, the ancestors of today's lions were dwelling
	even in Europe (Darlington P. Zoogeography: the geographical
	distribution of animals. NY, 1957.)

	As to the shape of this putative PIE lexeme, hittite walwa
	posits a lot of difficulties. I know of a hypothesis,
	which i find attractive, but the text can hardly be accessible
	to any of the list members  (it appeared in the
	"Jazgulamskij sbornik", St-Petersburg, 1996 and belongs to A.
	Ryko). I am taking the liberty to outline it briefly, as it
	is of interest. A "broken reduplication", suggested by G&I,
	is an extremely rare type, if exists at all.
	That is why the author suggests to reconstruct the word as
	a o-grade nominal formation from the root *welw/wlew, which
	om its part can be an w-enlarged root *wel- 'to tear' (some
	of the other PIE roots with the same shape *wel-, such as 'to
	see', 'to deceive', 'hair'  are compelling candidacies, too. -
	- why not trace wl.-kw-os to the same root, whatever it might
	be? And what is gr. alo:pe:ks then?)
	The initial *w- in this Schwebeablauting root can be proved
	with the help of the greek material, cf. e.g.
		Tro:es de {F}leiousin eoikotes o:mophagoisi
	"de", which stands in the beginning of the 2nd foot, should form a long
	syllable, and the length is caused by the dygamma, which
	closes the syllable.

	Any comments?

			Alexander Nikolaev


From sarima at friesen.net  Thu Mar  9 14:14:19 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 06:14:19 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <20000307091728.73770.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.061419.0800.>

At 02:41 PM 3/7/00 +0530, Gábor SándiuZGk= wrote:
>peninsula. So: what did *ek^uos refer to? Either a mythical beast, or the
>donkey (were there actually donkeys around?), or maybe the sheep or the cow?

Or the now-extinct Quagga.  (I think this unlikely, as there seems to be a
linguistic tendency to keep the striped equines distinct from the plain
one, but it is possible).

>substratum. Such a substratum might well have supplied Latin with the many
>words with "unetymological" a: quattuor, canis, manere etc.

In addition to this, there is also the uncertainty whether all of the
supposed Italic languages really are such.  If some are not, then they
suggest a non-Italic IE stratum in Italy.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 10 06:58:01 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 01:58:01 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.015801.EST.>

In a message dated 3/9/2000 4:35:46 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory). After
>all, any word in a language can be a loanword, therefore - in principle -
>the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>roots. The main question is: HOW LIKELY is it that such borrowings /
>derivations happened independently from each other, often in languages far
>removed from each other?

No, I'm sorry.  This must be a misunderstanding.  The main question has not
been HOW LIKELY?  The main question is WHEN?  When did the words enter the
languages?

I'd like to address just this part before I go onto the case of the Italian
horse.

g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:
>It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of the horse
was @2000BC.  The cow about 3000BC in the Near East, 2000BC in Europe.  The
discovery of metal working made the wheel possible in the Near East about
2500BC.   When that Near East technology reaches the IndoEuropean homeland
about 2000BC, it sets off the invasions of the "Indoeuropeans" in 1600BC when
they enter Greece and India and the Near East.  All culminating in 1125BC
with the fall of Troy.

The above would STILL disprove Renfrew.  If any of those dates were still
true.

The problem is that they are not still true.   And the dates have moved
backward in time.  And that makes Renfrew's hypothesis more likely.  And what
was described above less likely.

>the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>roots.

But 'native' or 'borrowed' isn't really the first question as far as Renfrew
goes.  The dates are first thing you have to address.  I don't know what you
are referring to as far as "trees and wild animals" go.  But all the rest of
those things NOW date pretty well in the range for Renfrew's hypothesis -
especially if you don't find words like <kwelo> and <ekwos> in Anatolian -
which you don't.

And basically you can find a reasonable explanation for why words referring
to milk and land and horse and cow and yoke and sow and grain and field are
often common in IE languages - those languages came with farming.

Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who had
a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed with
roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to pop
that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every meaning and
sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such skill it
would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

Those are the two scenarios I have been given so far.

g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:
>It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

Conversely, given the above, it's equally hard to see what kind of additional
evidence you would need to consider Renfrew's dates possible.

Regards,
Steve Long


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Thu Mar  9 06:42:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 06:42:00 GMT
Subject: Assumptions in Computing phylogenies
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.064200.GMT.>

>Proceeding on the idea that if a mass of the most genetically related
>portions of two language are very close, then the languages themselves
>must be close in time.

.. this ad-hoc idea is too simple. As soon as two languages split/depart,
the amount of losses in each of them may differ extremely, as we all know,
but often forget.

>The surprise is that cladistics groups the lungfish not with the salmon
>but with the cow.

.. you must not really cite any misuse of cladistics; and: there is no one
"cladistics", of which Warnow on the one side of the Atlantic and Bandelt
on the other are the youngest offsprings.

>The problem with applying cladistics to historical linguistics as
>reflected in IE scholarship (the one that the UPenn tree ran into) is
>that the methods are so thoroughly contrasted in the nature of their
>data.

.. Try to argue with Ringe. /We all/ do not have the data.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 21:41:48 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 16:41:48 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.164148.EST.>

>edsel at glo.be writes:

>That's a complete misunderstanding. There is huge difference between learning
>another language for practical reasons (or in more modern times: out of
>interest in other cultures, religion or what have you) and being forced to
>abandon one's own language (and inevitably:culture).

-- "abandon" is a value-judgement; it would be equally (or more) accurate to
speak of "acquiring" a new culture.

Eg., I have a friend who's Japanese-Canadian, second generation.  She knows
maybe 6 words of Japanese (fewer than I do) and is married to someone whose
parents came from Lancashire.  Has she 'abandoned' a language and culture
which is somehow uniquely 'hers'?  Of course not; she has a perfectly good
language -- English -- and a perfectly good culture -- "Overseas European",
samesame as the rest of us.

Language and culture are not like skin color.  They're more like your
clothes.  One can change, mix and match to suit the circumstances.  Many of
my ancestors were Gaelic-speaking and wore the Great Kilt.  I'm
English-speaking and wear trousers, and firmly of the conviction that Butcher
Cumberland did Scotland a favor.

>It [language] is something that defines them.

-- until they get a new definition.  Linguistic and ethnic identity are fluid
and changeable, subjective in nature.

Eg., to take just one example, there's a community of over 1,000,000 people
of South Asian (Indian) origin in South Africa, descended mainly from
indentured workers brought in to cut sugar cane.  A large majority of them
now use English as their native language.  How are they any worse off than if
they were speaking Gujarati or Tamil?  A small language is a prison, under
modern conditions.

>The fact is that ordinary people resent very much being treated as
>somebody who can't speak properly.

-- and then in most cases, shrug and get on with the job.  Eg., my father
worked very hard as a young man to shed his Newfoundland accent. (A dialect
which can get extremely impenetrable to Standard English speakers).  Standard
English was more useful, so he learned it; just as my more remote ancestors
shed Gaelic and Lallans -- or most of the ancestors of the inhabitants of
Vienna shed various Slavic languages for German.

>That's what happens when the original language loses its critical mass and
>becomes the language of a minority: it is then beyond salvation in most
>cases.

-- a "minority" where?  Minority/majority status is a product of the size of
the sphere of interaction, which in turn these days is a product of
technological development.

A small language could get along quite well when most people were illiterate
peasants who rarely left their villages.  The local patois was as useful --
more useful -- than a larger national language.

In the age of 'globalization', even French or German are "small" languages,
of declining usefulness.  A fifth of the entire human race can speak English,
and the percentage increases rapidly.  Meanwhile half the languages spoken in
1900 AD are extinct, and half the languages spoken in 2000 AD are moribund
(no longer learned by children).  This is all to the good.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar  9 19:36:25 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:36:25 -0000
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.193625.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 6:55 PM

> On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) responded to my
> statement of the preceding day:

[RAp]

>>> The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this is one of the few
>>> places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel developments:  We
>>> find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

>>> This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing
>>> ?*ul{k^w}i1 or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a
>>> different outcome in Greek.

>> But *u.lkwi2 has no outcome in Greek, does it?

> Disingenuous.  The *suffix* in question has a number of occurrences, all with
> a short alpha.

> Note that there are occurrences of long alpha following iota, which are *not*
> reflexes of this suffix, and which therefore show that something else is
> going on here.

[PRp]

>> And the Greek outcomes look like:

>> -iH1 -> ie: -> i:; -H2 -> ia: -> ia; -iH3  -> -io:

[RA]

> I'm afraid not.  There is no evidence for either of your intermediate stages
> with regard to H_1 or H_2.

[PR]

What PIE suffixal form would you reconstruct for a Greek word like
so:te:ri'a:?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar  9 19:45:27 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:45:27 -0000
Subject: -r passive archaic or innovating?
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.194527.0000.>

Dear Carol and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Carol F. Justus" <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 2:00 PM

[ moderator snip ]

For whatever it may be worth, I believe I have isolated a PIE element *re/o,
meaning 'any', so that the medio-passive forms with -r- should be regarded
as indefinites.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar 10 05:08:20 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:08:20 EST
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel
 and Dating P...
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.000820.EST.>

>alderson at netcom.com writes:

>While my Sanskrit professor thought (and taught) this way in his introductory
>class, in my opinion one would have to be extremely well versed in the history
>of both languages in order for this to work, so much so that the experiment is
>not really possible:

-- as an experiment, why not compare a few sentences?  Say:

"I sacrificed a hundred cattle to the gods."

"Our powerful and mighty heroes siezed the land of their enemies."

That sort of thing.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 10 05:58:10 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 07:58:10 +0200
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <8e.22251db.25f7305f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.075810.0200.>

On Tue, 7 Mar 2000 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> In fact, given the archaic characteristics of the Baltic and Slavic
> languages, the lack of apparent substratal influence, and the high
> percentage of their vocabulary which can be traced back to PIE, I
> would say that their position (_at the earliest recorded periods_)
> would be indicative of the PIE urheimat.

Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing periphery"
model?  Following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion,
Lithuania is the Urheimat.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Fri Mar 10 05:11:40 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 23:11:40 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.231140.0600.>

At 11:26 PM 3/7/00 EST, you wrote:
>In fact, given the archaic characteristics of the Baltic and Slavic
>languages, the lack of apparent substratal influence,

Could someone spell out in more detail what these 'archaic characteristics'
are? Or at least the most salient ones.

Thanks.
Roz Frank


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  9 20:59:15 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:59:15 -0000
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.205915.0000.>

>similarities between Homer's Greek and
> Vedic Sanskrit,
> Any Classical scholars or Sanskrit experts out there who could comment?

The claim of similarity has troubled me for some time.   I read Greek well
and Sanskrit badly, and I think the claim has no foundation except (a) that
the PIE we reconstruct from Greek and Sanskrit looks remarkably like both,
and (b) similarities are superficially more obvious than between say Gothic
and Sanskrit, partly because the sound changes are more transparent.

I am surprised the claim has not been challenged and dismissed before now.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 12 08:45:06 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 08:45:06 -0000
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.084506.0000.>

>Mycenean Greek and Vedic
> >Sanskrit .
> -- I've been told that it's possible to puzzle out the general meaning;

Even that is an overstatement in my opinion.    A knowledge of Greek can
help at times when I am reading Sanskrit, but it could never replace
learning the language.   With a knowledge of historical linguistics, some
words and forms can be recognised, but not much more than that.   There is
Dravidian vocabulary even in Vedic, and non-PIE vocab in Greek.  Sanskrit of
course has 8 cases to Greek's 5, so any claim that you can read Sanskrit
with Greek is absurd.

I also repeat my earlier point.  It was claimed that since the two languages
were close, they had to be separated recently.   I find this illogical,
since they only appear close because of our knowledge of their linguistic
history.   The two languages as they actually appear are nowhere near as
close as has been suggested.

Peter


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 10 16:42:15 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:42:15 -0600
Subject: Ventris-Schele Mycenaean-Mayan Exhibition  OPEN MARCH 9-AUG 1 @
 Benson  Rare Books
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.104215.0600.>

[ Moderator's note:
  I received the following at my personal e-mail address, but I think it's
  clearly intended for the IE list.  If not, I hope Carol Justus will forgive
  me!
  --rma ]

Dear Rich,

Just so I don't forget to forward this, I have done so in its entirety, but
probably only parts will be of interest to the IE List. In any case, here
is all the info!

Best,  Carol

>Delivered-To: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu
>Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 22:22:51 -0600
>From: tpalaima at mail.utexas.edu (Tom Palaima)

>It is a great pleasure to announce that the exhibition:

>Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Writing: The Parallel Lives of Michael
>Ventris and Linda Schele and the Decipherment of Mycenaean and Mayan
>Writing

>is now installed in the Benson Latin American Library Rare Books Collection
>in Sid Richardson Hall. The show will run March 9-August 1, and will
>overlap with the Maya Meetings which start tomorrow and the 11th
>International Mycenological Colloquium which will be held in the Thompson
>Conference Center May 7-13.

>The superb curatorial skills and tremendous hard work of Elizabeth Pope and
>Kent Reilly, most recently in the crucial stretch drive, have made for an
>exhibition that has accomplished what we three hoped for.  If you visit the
>show, you will be afforded an insider perspective on the collective
>intellectual and human process of decipherment that even most experts,
>including ourselves, have never had before.  The three Metropolitan Linear
>B tablet casts, made in 1913 from originals in the Ashmolean Museum,
>Oxford, and on loan to us, are beautifully displayed and linked to
>scholarly materials elsewhere in the show.  The same is true for Schele's
>Mayan inscriptions.

>Thanks once again to Chris Williams and Kevin Pluta for many long hours of
>work at computer scanning, image manipulation and text layout.  We want
>particularly to thank again Juliana Asreen, Martha Dillon and Tommy on the
>presses at UT printing for the exquisite design and excellent production
>quality of posters and catalogue.  Thanks also to the staff of the Benson
>and especially to Jane Garner for help throughout.

>Please visit our web site for further information. The show is also
>featured on the site for the UT General Libraries.

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/cipem/exhib

>and then click on AN EXHIBITION.

>There is also a link through:

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp.

>Please do pay the show a visit. You will do honor to a former great UT
>professor of Art and Art History, Linda Schele, and a UT adjunct professor
>of Classics and soon to be recipient of the gold medal for lifetime
>achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America, Emmett L.
>Bennett, Jr.

>Tom Palaima

>*******************************************
>Thomas G. Palaima
>Dickson Centennial Professor of Classics
>Director, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory
>WAG 123 (C3400)  University of Texas at Austin
>Austin, TX 78712-1181

>512 471-5742  fax 512 471-4111
>e-mail: tpalaima at mail.utexas.edu
>-OR-   pasptgp at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu

>PASP produces the revived
>*Studies in Mycenaean Inscriptions and Dialect* (now edited by
>Peter van Alfen).  VISIT:
>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp

>TGP coedits *Minos*, the journal of early Greek and Aegean
>linguistics scripts, and  texts.

>Please send submissions, pertinent offprints and books for review
>to the above address.

>The 11th International Mycenological Colloquium sponsored
>by the Comiti International Permanent pour les Itudes
>Myciniennes (CIPEM: a UNESCO Committee) will meet in
>Austin, TX May 7-13, 2000.  For more information, VISIT:

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/cipem

>>From March 9-August 1 in the Benson Library Rare Book Collection,
>SRH 1.101 UT Austin PASP is sponsoring an exhibition entitled:

>"Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Writing"

>which focuses on the decipherment of Mycenaean (1400-1200
>B.C.E.) and Mayan (11 B.C.E.-1250 C.E.) writing.

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/cipem/exhib
>*******************************************


From sarima at friesen.net  Sat Mar 11 01:09:29 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 17:09:29 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <008001bf8891$a4fad280$7cd31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.170929.0800.>

At 12:02 AM 3/8/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>At a time long ago, in an Urheimat far away . . .

>When PIE had only one vowel, /a/ . . .

This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

>[PR]

>So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/ and
>/a:/?

Most would call this stage pre-PIE, or something like that, not plain PIE.

[And I would suspect he is saying it had only two non-high vowels, which is
slightly different].

>And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
grammatical.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From varny at cvtci.com.ar  Sat Mar 11 03:05:22 2000
From: varny at cvtci.com.ar (Vartan Matiossian)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 00:05:22 -0300
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.000522.0300.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 2:00 AM

> -- my own guess would be that Phrygian, Armenian and Hellenic were, in
> origin, part of the same dialect-cluster and simply share a lot of late
> isoglosses.  Thracian we simply don't know enough about to say.

Views on this subject are very contradictory, but the consensus reached
during the last years seems to point that there was a Greek-Armenian dialect
cluster (perhaps Indo-Iranian-Greek-Armenian), and that Phrygian had not
genetical relation with Armenian. A well-balanced study of this is V. Orel's
article ("The Position of Phrygian, Annual of Armenian Linguistics, vol. 14,
1993)

Regards,
Vartan Matiossian
Casilla de Correo 2, Suc. 53
1453 Buenos Aires
Argentina
varny at cvtci.com.ar


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Mar 11 09:24:07 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 04:24:07 EST
Subject: On the Horse in Italy, pt 1
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.042407.EST.>

In a message dated 3/9/2000 4:35:46 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>Let me concentrate on the word for horse in Latin: equus.
>Where do you think it comes from? Let me assume that you accept the reality
>of PIE - if you don't, it is difficult to continue any kind of debate. So -
>I can think of four possibilities:

>Equus is derived linearly, with one generation of speakers following
>another, from a PIE word reconstructed by linguists as *ek^uos.
...[snipped]
>Now, if this etymological explanation is correct, the
>word *ek^uos or its linear descendants all the way to 'equus' must have
>existed at all stages in the development of PIE > Latin, as - before the
>invention of writing and written traditions - there was no way for words to
>disappear and then reappear in a language, unless by borrowing (for which
>see later).

>If this was the case, the word must have referred to something, presumably
>to a horse-like creature. The problem is that there is no evidence of
>horses, wild or domesticated, in Italy before the Polada culture (ca. 2600
>BC, if I am not mistaken).  If Renfrew's Indo-Europeans arrived in Italy
>around 5000 BC, or even earlier, they presumably encountered no horses
>there....

>The only weakness in this argument is that maybe horses were present in
>Italy at the time, we have just found no evidence for them. I ask
>archaeologists: is this likely? Italy is well covered by archaeological
>sites from many eras.

Let's stop here.

I'd like to address borrowing and other such things in another post.  If I
may, I'd just like to address this issue of the horse in Italy here.  I don't
have my best references with me, but I think I have enough to make it clear
what the problem is with this sort of quick-shot analysis.

1. I can't contradict the statement that earliest identifiable horse
(caballus equus) bones date to 2600BC.  (Polada, I believe, comes a millenium
or a half later.)  I'll assume that's true for the area that today
constitutes mainland Italy.

2. HOWEVER, what's also important here is what is going on in the areas
immediately adjacent to Italy by land or sea.

Note that agriculture or agriculturalists do NOT simply arrive from across
the Adriatic and then go into isolation.  There is in fact a steady record of
exchange going on throughout the period from roughly 6000BC - 2000BC -
especially back AND forth between Iberia, Italy, the Balkan peninsula and
North Africa.  Just after 4000BC, for example, metallurgy has not only come
to Sardinia but also advanced early into making arsenical bronze.  From the
west, there is evidence that the domesticated poppy - originating in western
Europe - has moved east across Italy and the Mediterranean.

3. The fact that these areas were in regular contact is important to this
whole issue of <equus>.  Because the absence of direct evidence of the
domesticated or the wild horse would not necessarily MEAN LACK OF AWARENESS
OF THE HORSE.  Horsehide - for example - simply does not preserve as an
artifact well in the European climate.  (And up until the horse was
domesticated, it's main use to these humans would have been in the form of
by-products.)

How would these early Italians know about the horse?  The same way and from
the same places that they learned of copper smelting, poppy seeds or other
things not 'native' to the area.

4. The odd assumption made in most arguments concerning the horse that it was
not present in most areas in mainland Europe prior to domestication.  But
even in Greece, for example, the evidence at Franchthi Cave shows that the
wild horse was the main diet of its occupants into the mesolithic -
@8000-7000BC - when it is suddenly replaced by other things, including the
red deer.  The disappearance of the wild horse from many areas in Europe is
often attributed to climatic change, though it is clear that there was a
certainly over-hunting.  Whole herds of wild horses have been found driven
off cliffs in late paleolithic sites.

What's important here however is that there is clear evidence that the "true"
wild horses did not disappear from Europe west of the Ukraine after 6000BC.

5. In fact, there is strong evidence that the wild horse survived and thrived
in the many areas in Europe throughout this period.

In The Przewalski Horse: Morphology, Habitat and Taxonomy, Colin P. Groves
describes the process of identification of wild versus the domesticated equid
that have been developed over the years.  This paper is on the web and very
much worth reading.
(http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/cg_przewalski_horse.htm)  What is clear
from it is that wild horse strains were not only preserved in northcentral
Europe, but that even in Roman times there were identifiably wild (non-equus
caballus) horses in Iberia, North Africa, Germany, Poland and possibly
southern France (the Camargue delta region).

6.  And it should be said that although the evidence is that the horse was
first domesticated in the Ukraine, there is very strong evidence that it was
also domesticated not much later in other parts of Europe.

The evidence seems to strongly suggests multiple origins, "with Central Asia,
Eastern, Central and South-Western Europe being more or less independent
regions of domestication" :

Here again is an abstract entitled The Domesticafion of the Horse by Dr.
Norbert Benecke (from an Abstracts of papers presented at the 30th
WAHVM-congress, 9-12 September 1998 ):
"On the basis of subfossil bone remains, archaeological findings and artistic
representations the current state of research concerning the domestication of
the horse is discussed. New osteometric data from Early and Middle Holocene
wild horses, as well as from early domestic horses, support the assumption of
a polytope origin of the domestic horse, with Central Asia, Eastern, Central
and South-Western Europe being more or less independent regions of
domestication. In all those areas the domestication of the horse took place
within agrarian societies or at least in contact with them....

In Central and South-Western Europe the controlled keeping and breeding of
horses started around 3000 B.C. One of the oldest Neolithic cultures in
Central Europe with unambiguous evidence for the presence of domestic horses
is the Bernburg Culture...."

(Bernburg is BTW a middle TRB culture (3800-3200BC) located about 300 miles
as the crow flies from the modern Italian border.)

7. Evidence of wild horse domestication in Iberia is extensive.  Here are
some excerpts:
"The Origins of the Lusitano Horse by Juan Valera-Lema, Ph.D.
Archaeological evidence in the Iberian Peninsula, modern day Spain and
Portugal, indicates that the origins of the Lusitano horse date back the form
of its primitive ancestor, the Sorraia breed.... The Sorraia is believed to
have developed from crosses between native Iberian Proto Draft Horses (Equus
Caballus Caballus of Western Europe) and ancient strains of Oriental/North
African horses.
The Sorraia remained isolated for several millennia in the southern part of
Iberia, the Alentejo and Andalusian regions of modern Portugal and Spain.
Noted Portuguese historian Mr. Ruy d'Andrade suggested that by the Neolithic
period (@4000 B.C.) the native tribes of the area may have used horses in
war."

"Dr. d'Andrade's extensive studies documented the Sorraia horse as a direct
descendant of one of the four forms of primeval wild horses from which all
our domestic breeds derived, namely form III, which inhabited the south of
the Iberian peninsula. That the Sorraia represents the indigenous South
Iberian horse was acknowledged by the other premier prehistorians of the
horse, Speed (Scotland), Etherington (Scotland), Ebhardt (Germany),
Skorkowski (Poland), Zeeb (Germany) and Schaefer (Germany).... Paintings of
horses on the cave walls at La Pileta, Spain, dated between 30,000 and 20,000
B.C., already show the subconvex heads and arched necks typical of
Andalusians, Lusitanos and their ancestor, the Sorraia, as do ancient
sculptures.... However, man-made Iberian breeds have in their veins, besides
some non-Iberian blood, that of another kind of wild equid also indigenous to
the Iberian peninsula: the Garrano, a wild pony inhabiting the mountainous
regions in the north."

8. Across north western and central Europe, a slightly different wild horse
has been identified.  The distinction is made between "the lighter, more
refined Tarpan of Eastern Europe and the Ukranian Steppes, which is
exemplified by the famous herd maintained at Popielno in Poland; and the
heavy, slow-moving horse of the northern European marshlands known as Equus
silvaticus, from which our heavy horse breeds derive...  (Horse Type 4, while
smaller than the others, was much more refined, with a concave profile and
high-set tail. It came from western Asia and its present equivalent is the
Caspian pony. It is postulated as the prototype Arabian.)"

Perhaps, 600 miles as the crow flies north from the modern Italian border,
these European wild horses were obviously around just BEFORE the
domestication process began and were even a part of the Danish diet at the
time - just as agriculture was being adopted.  "During the Atlantic period,
7000-3900 BC, the sea level rose so much that the northern parts of Denmark we
re divided into islands, and deep fiords cut into the landscape. A dense
forest dominated by limetrees spread across the land. The population was
found mostly near the coasts and lived on fish and shellfish, supplemented by
hunting... Settlements were often situated near the edges of lakes which have
since become bogs. In the east of Denmark, the peat in these bogs has
preserved a rich variety of weapons and tools, bones from slaughtered
animals, including bison, wild horses, elk and aurochs...."

9. There is also evidence about wild horses being present in the area of the
Danube basin and North Africa at this time that I will get to later.

It should be evident from the above that even if we assume that there were no
wild or domesticated horses in Italy until 2600BC, there is still very good
evidence that there were plenty enough wild horses - as well as horses in the
process of being domesticated - quite near-by.  In my next post, I'll give
some evidence that Italy was in contact with this areas throughout the period
from 6000- 2600BC.

I should say that I - like some others on this list - do not necessarily
agree with Renfrew that IE came to Italy with Cardial Ware (@6000-5500BC).
Cardial Ware culture is not Bandkeramik and shows evidence of influences
outside the Balkans and Anatolia.  But for the sake of this matter, I'm
assuming IE was in Italy from that early neolithic period.

One more thing I noticed in passing:
g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>So: what did *ek^uos refer to? Either a mythical beast, or the
>donkey (were there actually donkeys around?), or maybe the sheep or the cow?

>I don't like any of these explanations, and I find it hard to believe that
>when the pre-Latins encountered the horse after 2600 BC, they pointed at it
>and said: aha, here is this mythical beast that our ancestors in Anatolia
>called 'equos', nice to find it again after so many millennia.

With regard to:
---here is this mythical beast that our ancestors in Anatolia called
'equos'...

I believe there is no real evidence of <ekwos> as a native word in any of the
Anatolian (Hittite, Luwian) languages.  So it is quite possible that their
Anatolian ancestors called it something borrowed, like <onus>.

What <ekwos> actually meant 7000 years ago - 4000 years before it is first
attested - is another matter that I will try to get to.

Regards,
Steve Long


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar 11 03:49:46 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 03:49:46 -0000
Subject: i/u as original vowels [was "centum"/"satem" exceptions]
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.034946.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 6:44 AM

> At 12:11 AM 3/5/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
 <snip>

[PRp]

>> Unless you can produce an acceptable minimal pair contrasting *e/*o, I
>> believe the question of phonemicity remains open.

[SF]

> Phonemic status does not really require the existence of strict minimal
> pairs, just semantic distinction in the absence of phenetic conditioning
> factors.  Minimal pairs are merely a *sufficient* condition, not a
> necessary one.

[PR]

It is the "absence of phonetic conditioning factors" that would be the
problem for me. In the examples you cited, it seems that the augment (*e'-)
and the difference between an CVC with closed as against a CVC- with open
syllable would constitute (at least, potential) conditioning factors.

<snip>

>> [SFp]

>>> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two
>>> distinct roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an
>>> e-grade at all (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

<snip>

[SF]

> Pokorny list both of them as one root: "bh(e)reu: bh(e)ru(:)".  It starts
> on page 143 in my printing.  The root *bheru is under subheading A., and
> the root bhreHu is under subheading B.

[PR]

Well, if I understand your point, I would have to say that the root in
question seems to be a very obvious derivation of 2. *bher-, listed on p.
132 --- extended by *-ew-. As for the "*u appear(ing) not to be associated
with an e-grade", surely the o-grade in Greek phoruto's suffices for
establishing that the initial consonant cluster is the result of reduction
due to stress-accent rather than original.

Also, one might notice Greek phre'ar where the *-u- is clearly treated like
a *-w-, and incidentally shows something close to an e-grade.

>> [SFp]

>>> There is *uper "over, above".

>> [PRp]

>> If one notates it as Pokorny does, namely *upe'r, the problem is
>> simplified:  **wepe'r -> *upe'r.

[SF]

> The problem is that this assumes the conclusion.  No trace of any such
> thing as **wepe'r is found anywhere.  This is my complaint: reconstructing
> an *e for the *sole* reason of avoiding "bare" *u and *i as vowels.

[PRp]

>> There are many examples of *weC- becoming *uC-: e.g.
>> *wep-:*wo/o:p-:*up-, 'water'.

[SF]
> Certainly there are.  But just because something is *common* doesn't make
> it *universal*.

[PR]

What distinguishes *upe'r from *wep- is that, apparently, the stress-accent
could shift to a subsequent syllable created by inflection, leaving the
first syllable in zero-grade (*wp- > *up-).

With *upe'r, apparently no subsequent suffix could occasion a
re-stress-accentuation of the first syllable, so that zero-grade would be
permanent.

I would not be a bit surprised if it turned out that *upe'r(i) was a -r(o/i)
derivation from 2. *wep-, 'throw, strew' (cf. Latvian vepris, 'boar').

<snip>

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From xdelamarre at siol.net  Fri Mar 10 19:47:49 2000
From: xdelamarre at siol.net (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 20:47:49 +0100
Subject: Celtic word for horse
In-Reply-To: <7e.1fac1df.25f7393c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.204749.0100.>

There are more than two words for horse in Celtic :

- _epos_ : Gaulish PNN, _Epos, Epo-sognatos, Epo-meduos_ , O.Ir. _ech_ etc.

- _marcos_ : _marcan_ acc. (Pausanias), and the LNN _Marco-durum,
Marco-magus_, O.Ir. _marc_, W. _marh_ etc. ; connections only with
Germanic, OHG _meriha_, ON _marr_ etc.

- _uore:dos_ : Gaul. _ueredus_, Gallo-Latin _para-ueredus_ (> palfrey,
Pferd etc.), W. _gorwydd_ ; < _*upo-reid(h)o-

- _caballos_ : Gallo-Latin _caballus_, PNN _Caballos, Ro-cabalus_ etc.,
OIr. _capall_, W. _ceffyl_ etc. Prob. 'Wanderwort'

- _mandu-_ : PNN _Catu-mandus_, Mandu-benos_, LNN _Mandu-essedum_ etc.,
Latin (< Gaul.) _mannus_ 'poney' ; some "Illyrian" connections.

For those interested in the various designations of the horse in Celtic,
with their different functions :
- Joseph Loth, "Comptes-Rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles
Lettres", 43 (1925), 113 ss.
- Idem : "Revue Celtique" 44 (1927), 410.

X. Delamarre
Ljubljana


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Sat Mar 11 19:06:10 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 12:06:10 -0700
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
In-Reply-To: <45.16f62b9.25f5f223@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.120610.0700.>

Steve Long has doubts about the value of the Berlin and Kay color research,
but in my experience, I've found more value in their work that in the work
of others on the same line.  Sure, their work may not be perfect, but in the
absence of another system, that's the one we've got.  In my own work on
Panamint, instead of color swatches, I used photographs of local flora,
fauna, and geology to analyze the Panamint color system.  While I can't put
a Pantone color to it, there's still a visible different between the "red"
of a pronghorn antelope (pale to medium orange), the "red" of a beavertail
cactus blossom (pink), and the "red" of the iron ochre soil used to made
paint (brick red).  In Panamint, though, they're all ankapihty (y is barred
i) 'red'.

I'm still interested in finding out:

What basic color terms are reconstructable to PIE?
What basic color terms are reconstructable to PGermanic?
Has anyone ever looked at this?

I've looked in Buck, but am more interested in current specialist thinking.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 12 09:26:07 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 09:26:07 -0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.092607.0000.>

Stanley said:

>the non-present forms in Latin and Germanic (at least) are
> obviously heterogeneous in origin, on purely internal grounds.

I'm not so sure.

Proto-Germanic had a new formation for weak verbs, and in strong verbs the
pattern:
     present                 e grade
     preterite singular  o grade
     preterite plural      zero grade
     (and past participle zero grade, though that's not relevant here)

Later phonetic changes and analogical levelling have obscured the system
somewhat, and I admit there are problems, especially with class 6 verbs, but
I don't see that this is "obviously heterogeneous".   The system is based on
the IE pattern reflected in Greek and I-I perfect.  Even the
preterite-presents could all go back to the perfect, I think.

The Latin system does show different formations, but we come to it with
Indo-European eyes, and see in it traces of what we know from Greek and I-I.
In Greek and I-I we are happy to have different formations of the same
tense, without saying that they must originally have been different tense
systems, e.g. the reduplicated aorist, the -s- aorist, the root aorist.....
We can accept that there was more than one way of forming that tense.   This
is why I prefer to think of various morphological options in PIE, perhaps
with differences or nuances (as with all the various present formations),
and of course the tense structures we can recover even for PIE - but these
are not necessarily those of Greek and I-I.   These were combined into new
tense structures somewhat differently in different parts of the PIE world.

So it is a question of how we interpret Latin's "obviously heterogeneity" -
and I do not believe that on purely internal grounds Latin compels us to
believe that the different formations were different tenses with different
meanings.

(a) Latin overwhelmingly shows -s- on consonant stems, -ui/vi on vowel or
laryngeal stems.
(b) Relics of other formations are also to be found, e.g:
   (i) reduplication with zero grade.   Is this aorist (as it could be in
Sanskrit) or perfect singular generalised to the plural?   The only
difference in PIE would be the endings, a difference entirely lost in Latin.
If you say it is aorist, you say it is not a different tense system from the
Latin -s- forms;  if you say it is perfect, then you say it is different.
I think this is reading into Latin what we know from elsewhere, rather than
using "purely internal" arguments.
   (ii) long vowel, often from secondary origins (e.g. se:di from se-sd-ai
or la:vi from lav at vai), but not always secondary.   This is rare in Greek &
I-I, so often gets overlooked.  It is found in the Germanic class 6 verbs.
I don't think you want to claim that this is also a new tense system.   So
do we simply put it with the aorists, saying it's another form but not a new
tense?   On purely internal grounds in Latin, I don't think we can claim
anything.

Hope that helps clarify my reservations.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 11 20:57:40 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 20:57:40 -0000
Subject: Latin word formation
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.205740.0000.>

de-bil-is

How about   de:mens?
Or deliciae = gutter?   < de: + liqu- + ia

You say debilis is de: + nominal root + suffix.   Could it be from a
different route?   de: + verbal root  + deverbative ending?

Peter


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun Mar 12 14:49:04 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 09:49:04 -0500
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.094904.0500.>

I would like to take the liberty to quote from my forthcoming book " Common
Slavic Nominal Morphology: A New Synthesis"

Certain authors (Milewski1932. "Rozwój fonetyczny wyglosu praslowianskiego".
Slavia 11: 250,255; Galabov 1973. "Urslavische Auslautprobleme". Wiener
Slavistisches Jahrbuch, 20: 11-17.) have reconstructed the
passive/deponent -r ending for Slavic

Chapter 4, fn. 10, p. 106 In this context it has not been remarked that the
reconstruction of *-r for verbs in Slavic would have interesting
implications for IE studies: so far only Celtic, Italic, Tocharian and
Anatolian have been attested with these forms, and they are quoted as a
classic case of an archaism retained by peripheral dialects (most recently,
Sihler 1995: 472-74).

Robert Orr

[ moderator snip ]


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu Mar  9 10:03:58 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 10:03:58 +0000
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion (4)
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.100358.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

>  15.  The use of mere suspicion to exclude items,
>  or of occurrence in neighboring languages,
>  even when absent from the closest relatives of the
>  neighboring languages which are not proximal to the
>  language of focus (Basque).

Of course.  If there exists good reason to suspect that a given Basque
word *might* be borrowed, then it must be excluded from my list.
It would be potentially disastrous for me to include in my list
words which are not of native origin.

>  Trask writes, concerning "bill" (of bird) that the form
>  <moko>, variant <mosko> may possibly qualify on his other
>  criteria, but continues:
>
>  >But the widely held belief in a
>  >Romance origin will probably disqualify it.
>
>  A belief, no matter how widely held, should not be
>  considered relevant at all.  Evidence is relevant.
>  Perhaps Trask had some which he did not mention
>  because it did not seem germane or important at the moment.

Very many Vasconists and Romanists have looked at the Basque word
and said "This looks to me like a probable loan from Romance."
Even if I don't agree -- and in this case I probably don't --
I can't simply wave away a body of informed judgement.
If lots of specialists suspect the word of being borrowed, then,
unless I have good counter-evidence -- which I don't -- I must
exclude the word from my list.

Lloyd, in constructing my list, I must *always* err on the side
of caution.  Over-cautiously excluding some genuinely native
Basque words is not a problem for me.  But wrongly including
some borrowed words will have grave consequences.

Isn't this obvious?

If it's not, consider an analogy.

Suppose there exist a large number of paintings which are associated
with the great 14th-century Italian painter Pintore.  An art historian
is sure that many of these paintings, perhaps most, are not the work
of Pintore at all, but of his students and imitators.  But he's not
sure which are genuine.  So, how will he proceed?

I suggest he will proceed as follows.  He will sift through the
paintings and try to pick out the ones for which he can find the
*strongest* evidence that Pintore painted them.  Having identified
the (rather small) number of paintings which he feels are almost
certainly Pintore's own work, he will examine these in order to
identify, as explicitly as possible, the distinguishing features
of Pintore's work.  Having done so, he will then turn to the much
larger number of remaining paintings, and compare the features of
each in turn with the now known features of Pintore's work.  In this
way, he will be able, if all goes well, to identify further genuine
Pintore works which he had at first excluded, and also to determine
that the rest of the paintings, which fail to show the required
features, are not by Pintore.

Doesn't this make sense?  But this is *exactly* what I'm doing with
my Pre-Basque words.

Lloyd, it appears that you would protest volubly about our historian's
procedure, and demand instead that his initial list of best candidates
should be greatly expanded to include *all* paintings which might
*possibly* be Pintore's works.  Isn't that what you're demanding
of me?  And can't you see that such a procedure would be disastrous?

>  But this may possibly go along with
>  Trask's exclusion of items which occur *only*
>  in Iberian Romance and in Basque.

I exclude every Basque word shared with *any* language known to have
been in contact with Basque.  There is no earthly reason to make an
exception for Ibero-Romance -- which, after all, is the source of a huge
proportion of the loan words in Basque.

>  For such a distribution of attestations, lacking any other evidence,
>  I think standard linguistic methodology dictates a conclusion
>  that the item was in early Basque and borrowed into Romance,
>  rather than the other way round;

"Standard linguistic methodology" dictates no such thing.

In North America, we can cite a number of words which are found
in Algonquian languages, and also found in English, but not found
in any other North American languages.  Your "standard methodology"
would force the conclusion, then, that words like 'raccoon' and
'woodchuck' are English words borrowed into Algonquian.

Standard linguistic methodology, as I understand it, involves
scrutinizing all the available evidence and drawing conclusions
accordingly.  And, in the example of Basque and Ibero-Romance, this
procedure leads, in virtually every case in which a conclusion can
be drawn, to the conclusion that the word in question is a Romance
word borrowed into Basque.

>  or else perhaps in a "substrate", borrowed into both Ibero-Romance
>  and Basque, but with no reason to prefer this second explanation.
>  As has been pointed out by careful historical linguists,
>  supposed substrates should not be appealed to without direct
>  evidence of their existence, they are a wildcard.

Well, we agree about something.

>  16.  In addition to all the other restrictions, there is an implicit one
>  against verbs, because

>  >1. No ancient Basque verb is monomorphemic.
>  >A native verbal root is a bound morpheme,
>  >and hence no ancient verb will make my list.

>  While there is certainly nothing wrong with Trask seeking
>  the canonical forms of native ancient monomorphemic
>  lexical items, it would be appropriate to join any conclusions
>  drawn with the point that of course no verbs are included at all.
>  So the validity of any conclusion becomes yet again more
>  narrowly limited.

This is a bizarre comment.

Lloyd, I am expressly interested in studying the phonological forms
of Pre-Basque lexical items which are *monomorphemic*.  That's the
objective.  Got that?

Now, it is true that ancient Basque verbs are *never* monomorphemic.
*All* word-forms involving ancient verbs are polymorphemic.
So, verb-forms (and verbs) fail to be included in my study.

Why does this bother you?  And it what sense does this outcome
make my study "yet again more narrowly limited"?

Complaining that a study of monomorphemic lexical items fails
to include polymorphemic verb-forms is rather like complaining
that a study of mammals fails to include fish.  Now isn't it?

>  Trask has been explicit about this fact of Basque verbs
>  this is really a point about evaluating
>  whether the results of Trask's criteria can be representative
>  of an interesting portion of Basque.

Lloyd, I am not concerned here with your definition of "an interesting
portion of Basque", whatever that may be.  I am only concerned with
monomorphemic lexical items.

When I announce clearly that I am interested in studying monomorphemic
lexical items, and nothing else, you have no business complaining
"Hey, Traskie -- you're going badly wrong because you're ignoring
polymorphemic word-forms, which I happen to like."

>  Every restriction of
>  course reduces the range of any conclusions.  The exclusion
>  of verbs also does so, whether specified explicitly or not.

So.  In my study of monomorphemic lexical items, every time I
decide to exclude a class of polymorphemic word-forms, I am being
foolish, and I am ruining the validity of my results.  Uh-huh.

Say, Lloyd -- in your student days, did you do a course in logic?
How did you get on with it?  ;-)

>  It is well known that verbs can have different canonical forms
>  from non-verbs, in some languages, so it is important to point
>  out very prominently this kind of exclusion of verbs,
>  if one is studying canonical forms.
>  I do not wish to claim more on this point than literally just that.

I have already said publicly that ancient Basque verbs are never
monomorphemic and that they will therefore not be included in my list.
Isn't this good enough?

What do you want me to do, Lloyd -- buy air time on CBS? ;-)

>  17.
>  This is in one sense not a new criterion,

Unsurprising, since none of the last 16 was a new criterion, either. ;-)

>  but in another sense it is, and it is convenient to refer to it
>  with a new number.  It is an example of one noted long ago.
>  Range of distribution among dialects should be *relative to* the
>  number of dialects which can be included in the sample.

The number of Basque dialects included in my sample is not one of
the more vexing issues facing me.  I count *all* of them.

>  One reason a dialect cannot be included is that no word was
>  recorded for the concept in question.

But this is no reason for excluding the dialect.  My solution to the
relative paucity of data for the smaller and less well-studied
dialects is to group these with other dialects into larger assemblies,
which I then count as single dialectal entities.

>  Another reason, almost the same one in effect,
>  is that a loanword has replaced whatever the dialect would have
>  had otherwise.

No doubt, but there's nothing I can do about this, so I don't
worry about it.

>  The last point is what makes this item a new item.

Er -- yes, I guess.  So?

>  Trask writes:
>
>  >For example, 'pine tree' is the Latino-Romance loan <pinu>
>  >almost everywhere, while the eastern dialect Roncalese has <ler>
>  >and its neighbor Zuberoan has <leher> in some varieties.
>  >It is highly possible that <leher> ~ <ler> represents an indigenous
>  >word displaced almost everywhere by the loan word,
>  >but I can't be sure of this, and the word does not qualify for
>  >inclusion.

>  Admittedly any item could be better if attested in more rather than
>  fewer dialects, but in this case, the form <leher> ~ <ler>
>  is attested in 100% of the dialects where there is no loanword <pinu>.
>  100% is a rather high number.  Very different from a case in which
>  a non-loanword is attested in place of <pinu>.

Sorry; not so.  The word <pinu>, in its eastern variant <pino>, is
found in Zuberoan as elsewhere.  Only in the southern varieties of
Zuberoan do we find <leher> instead of -- or perhaps alongside;
don't know -- <pino>.

Anyway, I find this reasoning diabolical, I'm afraid.

The Basque word <badia> 'bay' is recorded nowhere but in the local
Bizkaian variety of the town of Lekeitio.  This word is therefore
found in 100% of the local varieties which have it.  So what?

>  The problem of criteria for the "best",
>  but not really meaning the "best", recurs here.

I know perfectly clearly what I mean by "the best candidates".
And a word attested only in one small corner of the country does
not qualify.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 10 04:20:53 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 23:20:53 EST
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.232053.EST.>

In a message dated 3/9/2000 10:04:12 PM, edsel at glo.be wrote:

>Persian craftsmen, architects etc. played an important role in what is now
>perceived as expressions of 'Arab' or Muslim material culture. The most
>likely place to find these people during the Middle Ages would be the Arab
>occupied part of Spain, and nowhere else.

Just a note.  In Faust's Metropolis, the author mentions the find of over
1000 Arab coins in the old Slavic Wendish town under Berlin (the dates would
be around 900AD I think.)  Though this doesn't necessarily prove the presence
of tradespeople, it does prove the presence of trade.  And one might follow
the other, if not in form of architects, then in the perhaps in the form of
shoemakers.

Regards,
Steve Long


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri Mar 10 10:25:32 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:25:32 +0000
Subject: Logical Gap
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.102532.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

[snip]

> Here is an example of an exclusion which is an indirect consequence,
> not explicitly stated in a set of criteria, yet a real exclusion nonetheless.
> None of Trask's criteria refer explicitly or directly to verbs,
> yet given the structure of Basque, in which as I understand Trask
> no verbal word is monosyllabic (though verbal *roots* are),
> his criteria do end up excluding all verbs.

In modern Basque, a few non-finite forms of a few verbs are monosyllabic.
But it is clear that, in every case, the forms were originally
polysyllabic, and that their monosyllabic modern forms result from
regular changes.

So, historically, no ancient Basque verb-forms are ever monosyllabic, yes.
But why is this relevant?  My criteria say nothing about the number
of syllables.

More importantly, no ancient Basque verb-form is ever monomorphemic.
Since I am expressly looking only at monomorphemic lexical items,
then, yes, it follows that all verbs will be excluded.  Why should
this bother anybody?  Why should anyone be concerned that a list of
monomorphemic lexical items excludes a set of polymorphemic word-forms?

> In this case, we only need a single criterion, monosyllabicity of the word,
> to end up excluding all verbs.

No: monomorphemic structure is what excludes verbs.  Monosyllables are
not excluded, and quite a few monosyllables will make it into my list,
because they satisfy my criteria.

> Yet "monosyllabicity of the word"
> is a criterion which nowhere mentions anything directly related to
> "verb".  The exclusion is indirect, because of something else,
> a fact of verb structure (specific to, though not unique to, Basque).

Verbs are excluded, yes, because they never appear as monomorphemic
lexical items -- and it is monomorphemic lexical items I'm looking at.

> In the case of a criterion based on early attestation,
> there is nothing referring explicitly to excluding any particular
> strata of vocabulary or individual lexical items,
> yet an indirect consequence is that any strata of vocabulary
> which are selectively disfavored for written attestation,
> or any individual lexical items so disfavored,
> will be statistically excluded.

I'm not sure what Lloyd means here by 'strata'.  Normally, when we
talk about strata in a lexicon, we mean groups of words which have
entered the language at different times.  And, of course, the whole
point of my list is to get back to the earliest recoverable stratum
in the Basque lexicon, and hence to exclude all words which have
entered the language more recently.  So, excluding particular strata
is exactly what I'm up to.

But I suspect Lloyd has something else in mind when he mentions
'strata' -- perhaps something like 'words exhibiting particular
types of formation' or 'words in particular semantic domains'.
However, if such words fail to be native, ancient and monomorphemic --
as indeed they often do -- then they don't belong in my list.

> So it can happen, through using a combination of criteria,
> that several strata of vocabulary end up being excluded *statistically*
> (all I have ever claimed) by Trask's criteria.
> Since most of us know independently of Trask's criteria
> that most or all living languages contain vocabulary of such strata,
> it would normally be considered appropriate to include some of them
> as candidates for reconstruction of any pattern which is expected
> to have any sort of general validity for the language.
> ("general" does not mean "universal").

Not so, I'm afraid.

Again, the suggestion is that native and ancient words of *particular*
phonological structure have, for some reason, either failed to survive or
failed to be recorded.  And I still can't see any reason to worry about
this.

> And any set of criteria which had the effect, direct or
> indirect, of excluding such vocabulary strata systematically
> (statistically), would be judged as a poor set of criteria.

No.

If I'm interested in the most ancient stratum of native monomorphemic
lexical items -- as I am -- then criteria that have the effect of
excluding everything else strike me as a pretty good set of criteria.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From sarima at friesen.net  Mon Mar 13 06:20:11 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 22:20:11 -0800
Subject: the Bear and the north star
In-Reply-To: <b9.14d0830.25f8a736@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.222011.0800.>

At 02:05 AM 3/9/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>I wrote:
>>>And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
>>>bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
>>>artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
>>>north star.

>In a message dated 3/6/2000 7:19:25 PM, sarima at friesen.net wrote:
>>Umm, there is a problem with that: Polaris was NOT the pole star in Homer's
>>day!  In fact it wasn't even the pole star in Roman times!
> ...

>located near the north celestial pole, it is called the North Star....  The
>current North Star, Polaris, is in Ursa Minor as was it's predecessor,
>Kochab."

Ah, that is the key point.  I was not sure that the previous North Star had
also been in the Ursae.

>afterward would have been well on its way into the region of Bootes (the
>herdsman) and the adjacent Ursae.  (BTW, Bootes contains Arcturus, Gr.,
>"guardian of the bear".)  By 1200BC, the celestial pole would entered the
>Ursae region and the pole star would have been found there.

Which is plenty early to be the namesake of the Arctic, as suggested.

>And, by Hellenic times, the Greek super-geometrists were referring to the
>pole-star with scientific precision, some using the term "polos" (LS:
>"pole-star, Eratosth. Cat.2.")  By 300BC, one of them - Pythias - had even
>established that neither celestial axis nor "pole star" were fixed.

I never doubted the Greeks had the celestial pole located properly.  That
pretty much goes without saying.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Mon Mar 13 09:03:23 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:03:23 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <dd.22678e0.25f8a9b7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.100323.0100.>

>>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>>>-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

>>You obviously were around.>>

>-- what alternative subsistence strategies do you find more credible?
>Hunting and gathering, or selling insurance door-to-door?

I only take issue with what I understood as a rather pronounced denial of
any hunting activity among them from your side. Being a farmer and
pastoralist does not *exclude* knowing how to hunt (and to gather) and
doing this from time to time. Even being an insurance salesperson or an
Indo-Europeanist doesn't.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Mon Mar 13 16:48:01 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:48:01 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <77.2134cc6.25f96f0f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.094801.0700.>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>> There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
>> 'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late term to
>> develop in color vocabulary.

[Joat Simeon wrote]

> -- ah, my fault.  I should have been clearer.  I think it's entirely academic
> and pointless to distinguish between "primary" and other color terms.

Berlin and Kay have a very precise meaning for "basic" (not "primary", which
is a term of optics representing Red, Yellow, and Blue only, as opposed to
"secondary", which is a term for Orange, Green, and Purple).  A "basic"
color term is one that is not derived from another word and not borrowed
from another language.  As far as your charge of "academic", that's what
linguistics is really all about--looking at the details and giving accurate
representations of what we find.  While controversial in some aspects,
Berlin and Kay's work has proven more useful than not in my experience.
Since you weren't familiar with their term "basic", I suggest you read their
work first:

B. Berlin and P. Kay.  1969.  Basic Color Terms.  Berkeley:  University of
California Press.

> We say "orange"; the word is derived from the fruit, not vice-versa; is
> "orange" then a "primary" color term, or not?

"Orange" is not a basic color term in Modern English, since it is still
recognized as being the color of the fruit.  Once that association has been
lost, that is, once the fruit is called "bonzo", then we can consider
"orange" a basic color term.  "Brown" is a good example (assuming for the
sake of argument, of course, that "brown" is derived from "bruin" [or some
such history]).  Since "bruin" is on the way out in Modern English, "brown"
is moving into the realm of a basic color term.  "Orange" fits into that
large class of non-basic color terms like "pink", "violet", "indigo",
"russet", "brick red", "lemon yellow", "sky blue", and "rose".  The basic
color terms in Modern English (according to my own reckoning) are "white",
"black", "red", "yellow", "green", "blue", "purple", and "gray".  "Brown" is
moving into this class, but since we still have "bruin" in our language,
it's not quite there yet.  "Pink" is closer to being a basic term than
"orange", since only gardeners recognize "pink" as a name for a member of
the genus Dianthus.

> Who cares?  Likewise, PIE seems to have had a term for "bay-colored horse".
> If its speakers then referred to other things of similar color as "bay", so
> what?

Since there is no evidence that "bay" was ever used as anything other than a
part of the word for "bay horse" or, as horsemen say, "bay", (not
"bay-colored horse", no one says that), it cannot be considered a color term
at all, but only a specific marker for horse type.  Neither "bay" nor any
other "horse color", like "pinto", "dun" and "paint", can be applied to any
other creature or inanimate object.

Academic?  Of course it is.  Does it have any relevance when you buy a plum
shirt with tan pants and russet socks?  No.  Does it have relevance for our
understanding of language change and evolution.  Absolutely.  Here's another
good source for what we're talking about.

M.J.P. Nichols.  1980.  "Renewal in Numic Color Systems," American Indian
and Indoeuropean Studies.  Mouton.  Pp. 159-167.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Mon Mar 13 08:14:19 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 03:14:19 -0500
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.031419.0500.>

[ moderator snip ]

> btw: regarding Thracian, there's an extensive website linking it to
>Balto-Slavic. Given that I know even less about Thracian than the miniscule
>amount that I know about Phrygian, I'd like to hear from someone better
>informed

What's the URL of that website?

Robert Orr


From jrader at m-w.com  Mon Mar 13 08:51:40 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 08:51:40 +0000
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.085140.0000.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:

> In the age of 'globalization', even French or German are "small" languages,
> of declining usefulness.  A fifth of the entire human race can speak English,
> and the percentage increases rapidly.  Meanwhile half the languages spoken in
> 1900 AD are extinct, and half the languages spoken in 2000 AD are moribund
> (no longer learned by children).  This is all to the good.

"All to the good"??  I think this is very much a minority opinion
among linguists and those interested in languages and what they tell
us about Homo sapiens.  In any event, the whole issue is very much
off the topic of Indo-European, and I think that our very tolerant
moderator ought to ask that it be dropped.

Jim Rader


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon Mar 13 08:21:29 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 08:21:29 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.082129.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2000 1:09 AM

> At 12:02 AM 3/8/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> At a time long ago, in an Urheimat far away . . .

[PRp]

>> When PIE had only one vowel, /a/ . . .

[SF]

> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
> exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

[PR]

I do not suppose that this was a stable situation. But, as I have written
before, that does not, in my opinion, mean that it could not have occurred
briefly.

Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a combination
of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

>> [PRp]

>> So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/
>> and /a:/?

[SF]

> Most would call this stage pre-PIE, or something like that, not plain PIE.

> [And I would suspect he is saying it had only two non-high vowels, which is
> slightly different].

[PR]

Well, call it pre-PIE if you like. I was only trying to avoid the "N" word.

I wait to see what Miguel says.

[PRp]

>> And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

[SF]

> Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
> grammatical.

[PR]

Of which I have yet to see convincing examples.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Mon Mar 13 16:45:58 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:45:58 -0700
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000309060833.00991700@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.094558.0700.>

[Stanley Friesen wrote]

> Or the now-extinct Quagga.  (I think this unlikely, as there seems to be a
> linguistic tendency to keep the striped equines distinct from the plain
> one, but it is possible).

This is even more unlikely since the range of the quagga has always been
limited to the extreme part of southern Africa.  Most modern taxonomists
have reached a consensus that the quagga is simply the southernmost
subspecies of the Plains Zebra (Equus burchelli) which includes all the
zebras of East Africa except the Grevy's Zebra (Equus grevyi) of Ethiopia
and Somalia.  (There is a third zebra, the mountain zebra (Equus zebra),
that only occurs in southern Africa.)  Although the current edition of
Walker lists Equus quagga as a separate species, the text clearly indicates
that this is not the consensus opinion.  However, what is clear is that the
quagga's range never extended outside the southernmost part of Africa.
Grevy's zebra, however, probably extended as far north as Egypt until as
recently as 3500 BP.  The word 'quagga' itself is from Afrikaans which is
from Xhosa and probably ultimately from one of the Khoisan languages (since
the word starts with a click in Xhosa).

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
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From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:13:06 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:13:06 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.191306.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>I don't know what you are referring to as far as "trees and wild animals" go.

-- the PIE lexicon has no terms for many familiar Mediterranean plants and
animals.  This would be extremely odd, if the language had originated in the
Mediterranean area.

The vocabulary for these items is comprised of non-IE borrowings in the
relevant languages.  Eg., Greek uses loan-words for cypress, laurel,
chestnut, and olive, among others.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:13:57 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:13:57 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.191357.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
>from literature appearing before or about1920:

-- what earthly relevance does this stuff from the prehistory of archaeology
to do with us?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:20:00 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:20:00 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.192000.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>especially if you don't find words like <kwelo> and <ekwos> in Anatolian -
>which you don't.

-- sorry, I'm afraid there is a reflex of *ekwos is Anatolia -- specifically,
Luvian "azuwa", horse, (and Lycian "esbe", "horse"); cognate with Lithuanian
"asvienis', etc.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:23:37 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:23:37 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.192337.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>And basically you can find a reasonable explanation for why words referring
>to milk and land and horse and cow and yoke and sow and grain and field are
>often common in IE languages - those languages came with farming.

-- but many of those inventions -- the yoke, for instance, and the domestic
horse -- come long, long after the beginnings of agriculture.

So if the words are PIE, then PIE itself must come long, long after the
beginnings of agriculture.

QED.

>Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
>on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
>with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders

-- since this is precisely what happened in Iran and India, why do you find
it objectionable in Europe?  Do European farmers have some sort of inherent
superiority to Dravidian or Elamite ones?

>- done with such skill it would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all
>along.

-- well, no.  You see, if they'd been speaking PIE all along, the sound
changes would be profoundly different from what we in fact observe.

That's the whole point.  You've been steadfastly trying to ignore the
evidence.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Mar 13 21:11:58 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:11:58 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.161158.EST.>

>frank at uiowa.edu writes:

>Could someone spell out in more detail what these 'archaic characteristics'
>are? Or at least the most salient ones. >>

-- with respect to the Baltic languages, particularly the declension of the
noun and adjective, with seven cases, singular and plural, and preseveration
of the dual as well in some dialects.  This is almost completely unchanged
from PIE.

The Baltic verbal system is more innovative, but the PIE present tense is
well-preserved, and the future represents a PIE disiderative formation
revalued as a simple future.

There PIE lexicon is preserved to a really startling degree:  eg, *dubus ==>
dubus (deep), *gwous ==> guovs (cow), *h(1)rudh ==> rudas (red), etc.

The most archaic Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Old Prussian) are about as
close to PIE as some of the very first attested IE languages.  Conservatism
of a mind-boggling degree.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Mar 13 21:16:50 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:16:50 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.161650.EST.>

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing periphery"
>model?

-- not really, although you do have a point.  Eg., the Baltic languages (and
the Slavic) undergo satemization, a late development in the eastern IE
dialects.  What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup of PIE they
became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than Slavic.

That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The degree of
retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared to, say, Hittite.

There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other features in the
area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was historically attested).

>following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, Lithuania is the
>Urheimat.

-- I'd say it's _close_ to the Urheimat, relatively speaking.

If the Urheimat is the Ukraine, then it isn't very far to the Baltic.  And
once you're up in the Baltic forests, you're very much "out of the way".


From jose.perez3 at yucom.be  Tue Mar 14 00:11:45 2000
From: jose.perez3 at yucom.be (jose.perez3)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 01:11:45 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.011145.0100.>

>> From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
>> stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
>> which produces *e/*o variations.

> That is often said, but it needs to be elaborated for it to make
> sense.  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
> accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
> its development?  If it switched from stress accent to pitch
> accent (as suggested by zero grade everywhere and Vedic-Greek
> accentuation), how did the unstressed vowels that were to become
> o's by pitch accent survive the reduction caused by stress
> accent? Etcetera.

I'd be very thankful for anybody who has paid attention to the issue of tonal
and stress accent to elaborate on this subject, presenting some sound
information about how we think that IE differed from most modern European
languages in its accent.

Is there still anybody around there who thinks that most modern languages have
"stress accents"? Has anybody checked on this with expert phoneticians?

When I studied Classics, my teachers explained to me that Classical Latin had
stress accents but that they named them with "musical" terms because they were
"copying" Greek grammarians.

The problem is that to my (admittedly poorly trained) ears Modern Greek has a
tonal accent, so I don't see what has changed about that ever since Homer. All
Romance languages have tonal accents (pronounce any of them taking away any
stress from the accented sylables and the change of tone will still indicate
where it goes)... so how was Latin different from them?? The same applies to
modern Germanic and Slavic languages. In fact I'm still waiting to come across
the proverbial language with pitched non tonal accent to begin to fathom what
the whole story is about.

Could it be that comparative linguists pulled this rabbit out of the hat
without checking with phoneticians without realising that they might be rather
tone deaf?

Or am I still missing the obvious?

                    Joe


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Mon Mar 13 16:27:04 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:27:04 -0600
Subject: Edgar Polome and JIES
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.102704.0600.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following note was received at the list address.  With Carol Justus'
  kind permission, I am forwarding it unedited.

  Our heartfelt sympathies go out to Prof. Polomé's family and friends.

								Rich Alderson ]

Dear Rich,

This is an excerpt from summary messages that some of us have been sending
each other for a while now:

Edgar Polomé passed away yesterday at 1 p.m. at the M. D. Anderson Cancer
Clinic in Houston.

He had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in his shoulder in
late January, which led to amputation of shoulder and arm on Feb. 8. He was
apparently on the mend, via physical therapy, and his and Sharon's spirits
were high, when a week or so ago pneumonia set in; a CT scan on Friday
showed that the cancer had spread massively throughout both lungs, and
clusters of cancer cells were now trapping the pneumonia inside. He had a
tracheotomy operation the same day, but never fully regained consciousness.


I don't know how much you want to make public on the IE List, but you
probably do want to let people know, particularly if anyone had sent
correspondence to Edgar in the last 5-6 months. Much lay unanswered as we
all thought for a long time that he would be soon be taking care of things
himself.

James Mallory will now begin taking over as editor of the Journal of IE
Studies, but it may be a bit of time before correspondence that was sent to
Edgar gets answered. Roger Pearson, the Publisher, does have mss. that
Edgar had approved, and they will come out in the next issue or two. The
last issue appeared while Edgar was in the hospital, hence its lack of
proper proofing.

Carol


From tuitekj at ANTHRO.UMontreal.CA  Mon Mar 13 14:47:40 2000
From: tuitekj at ANTHRO.UMontreal.CA (Kevin Tuite)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:47:40 -0500
Subject: Edgar =?iso-8859-1?Q?Polom=E9?=
In-Reply-To: <7f.1b2b8c6.25fb6ab7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.094740.0500.>

Dear Colleagues,

I am passing on to you the following message which I received from a
Belgian friend. I join him and I am sure most of you in expressing my
regret at the passing of this gentlemanly scholar, one of the finest
comparativists of his generation.
Sincerely,
Kevin Tuite

Une grande figure du comparatisme indo-européen vient de disparaître.
Edgar Polomé est décédé avant-hier, le 11 mars.

D'origine belge, Edgar Polomé enseignait à l'Université du Texas
(Austin).  Il était, entre autres, l'éditeur du Journal of Indo-European
Studies.

**************************************************************
ATTENTION: NOUVELLE ADRESSE!!      tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca
(MESSAGES ENVOYÉS À LA VIELLE ADRESSE SERONT ACHEMINÉS)
Kevin Tuite                         514-343-6514      (bureau)
Département d'anthropologie         514-343-2494 (télécopieur)
Université de Montréal
C.P. 6128, succursale centre-ville
Montréal, Québec H3C 3J7      	   tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca
Notre site Web:	           http://www.fas.umontreal.ca/ANTHRO/
**************************************************************


From ALDERSON at toad.xkl.com  Wed Mar 15 19:51:42 2000
From: ALDERSON at toad.xkl.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 11:51:42 -0800
Subject: Brief interruption in list service
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.115142.0800.>

Postings to the Indo-European and Nostratic mailing lists will not be sent out
between Thursday, 16 March 2000, and Monday, 20 March 2000, while I attend the
colloquium at the University of Richmond on the topic of "Greater Anatolia and
the Indo-Hittite Language Family".

If any list members are attending, perhaps we can arrange to meet for dinner
Saturday evening.

								Rich Alderson
								list owner and
								moderator


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 10:28:18 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 05:28:18 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.052818.EST.>

[ Moderator's note:
  This message, and the next on the same subject, will be the last of this
  discussion on the list.  Those who wish to discuss further the issues raised
  by Mr. Stirling should do so in private e-mail.
  --rma ]

>jrader at m-w.com writes:

>and I think that our very tolerant moderator ought to ask that it be dropped.

-- no problem.  Although when one thinks of it, the pre-neolithic situation
in Europe was probably much like that in Eastern North America when Europeans
arrived;  dozens of language families, hundreds of separate languages, many
covering quite small areas.

Now there are only Indo-European, Uralic and Basque; with Indo-European
overwhelmingly predominant.


From plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA  Tue Mar 14 05:14:47 2000
From: plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA (Plourde Eric)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 00:14:47 -0500
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
In-Reply-To: <c5.2b0186d.25f9749c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.001447.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following message addresses a number of issues brought up in a recent
  post by S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com); nothing further on those issues
  will be posted to the list.  However, a comment in the final paragraph takes
  us beyond those issues, and back to Indo-European issues, and I will welcome
  further discussion *of that paragraph only*.
  --rma ]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2000 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>> edsel at glo.be writes:

>> That's a complete misunderstanding. There is huge difference between
>> learning another language for practical reasons (or in more modern times:
>> out of interest in other cultures, religion or what have you) and being
>> forced to abandon one's own language (and inevitably:culture).

> -- "abandon" is a value-judgement; it would be equally (or more) accurate to
> speak of "acquiring" a new culture.

> Eg., I have a friend who's Japanese-Canadian, second generation.  She knows
> maybe 6 words of Japanese (fewer than I do) and is married to someone whose
> parents came from Lancashire.  Has she 'abandoned' a language and culture
> which is somehow uniquely 'hers'?  Of course not; she has a perfectly good
> language -- English -- and a perfectly good culture -- "Overseas European",
> samesame as the rest of us.

Your "Japanes-Canadian" friend is then not Japanese, just Canadian. Depending
on how old she is, yes, she did not abandon her culture, but maybe her parents
or grandparents, if they lived in Canada during 1940's as Canadian citizens of
Japanese origin were sent to concentration camps for "reeducation" due to their
"treason". They did not have the right to vote from 1895 (like Chinese and
Natives of British Columbia, thelatterrecovering it in 1949 and on federal
level in 1960 only, 20 years after "white" women.) So she probably either did
not have a chance to learn Japanese from her parents, orshe was beaten for
speaking it, much like the Natives. And it is interesting to use "perfectly
good" to qualify English and Overseas European (whatever that means) because
these are value judgments based on your prejudices.

> Language and culture are not like skin color.  They're more like your
> clothes.  One can change, mix and match to suit the circumstances.  Many of
> my ancestors were Gaelic-speaking and wore the Great Kilt.  I'm
> English-speaking and wear trousers, and firmly of the conviction that Butcher
> Cumberland did Scotland a favor.

See, it is exactly the opposite. Humans use languages and they shape the way
you think, so language is not like clothing. It is true that most British,
USAns and Australians use skin color to segregate their societies (like South
Africa) but religion is a pretty stronger divider of society (REAL examples
would be the Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian languages that maintain dialectal
intelligibility, the differences being based on religion (Catholics, Orthodox
Christianity and Islam, respectively) and the alphabet used. Or, Hindi and
Urdu, that areshaped by Hinduism and Islam respectively, and use devenagari and
arabic script, respcetively.)

Another pretty strong prejudice is "doing Scotland a favor", by what?  Killing
the people? Like Jonhatan Swift "Why are Irish complaining they have nothing to
eat, they have a plentiful natural resource, they should eat their children." I
don't know what kind of favor that is.

>> It [language] is something that defines them.

> -- until they get a new definition.  Linguistic and ethnic identity are fluid
> and changeable, subjective in nature.

The only affirmation making sense until now.

> Eg., to take just one example, there's a community of over 1,000,000 people
> of South Asian (Indian) origin in South Africa, descended mainly from
> indentured workers brought in to cut sugar cane.  A large majority of them
> now use English as their native language.  How are they any worse off than if
> they were speaking Gujarati or Tamil?  A small language is a prison, under
> modern conditions.

Gujarati or Tamil are not "small languages". Also, they have a very deep
literary tradition that rivals English in many ways. The "South Asian"
community was defined along the lines of Apartheid (a Brown, maybe...) and they
were colonized by the British who viewed their languages as primitive and
useless...  This process was even more reinforced in South Africa, where the
white man was the epitome of "perfectly good" culture and language.

>> The fact is that ordinary people resent very much being treated as
>> somebody who can't speak properly.

> -- and then in most cases, shrug and get on with the job.  Eg., my father
> worked very hard as a young man to shed his Newfoundland accent. (A dialect
> which can get extremely impenetrable to Standard English speakers).  Standard
> English was more useful, so he learned it; just as my more remote ancestors
> shed Gaelic and Lallans -- or most of the ancestors of the inhabitants of
> Vienna shed various Slavic languages for German.

Your father used a variety of English developed on a Gaelic and Irish English
(what an oxymoron) substrate that was frowned upon and seen as "impure" and
"dissonant", and instead of others making the effort to understand him and the
other people that spoke it (I gather some still speak it) he was forced to
change his ways as Newfoundland was forced in the Canadian Federation.

>> That's what happens when the original language loses its critical mass and
>> becomes the language of a minority: it is then beyond salvation in most
>> cases.

> -- a "minority" where?  Minority/majority status is a product of the size of
> the sphere of interaction, which in turn these days is a product of
> technological development.

If you are one of those people blinded by M. McLuhan's empty digression about
"medium is the message" and "dans ce cas les primitifs sont cuits". You mustnot
forget that, why is there a predominance of English on computers and Internetis
that the software creators were too stupid to invent a way to display other
fonts or characters right away.

> A small language could get along quite well when most people were illiterate
> peasants who rarely left their villages.  The local patois was as useful --
> more useful -- than a larger national language.

That is in the same state of mind as Marshall McLuhan's implicit belief
that languages "evolve" with technology, but so is not the case. Most of the
"illiterate" peasants (and what of the hunters-gatherers) that dot India's
countryside can use at least two languages, and normal  people in central Asia
until the 20th century could use an average three or even four.

> In the age of 'globalization', even French or German are "small" languages,
> of declining usefulness.  A fifth of the entire human race can speak English,
> and the percentage increases rapidly.  Meanwhile half the languages spoken in
> 1900 AD are extinct, and half the languages spoken in 2000 AD are moribund
> (no longer learned by children).  This is all to the good.

I was laughing at the entire letter until I read the last paragraph. This kind
of thought is quite typical of someone who either has a serious inferiority
complex because he cannot use more than one language (like 80% of the planet)
or he is flaunting a kind of linguistic "Manifest destiny" where English will
become the only language on Earth and then it,s going to be Heaven on earth.
Yeah, right.

I guess either you really wanted to provoke, or you just really do nothave a
clear picture of the global stateof languages. Sure, English is gaining ground,
but what kind of English will it be? Some people are already complaining about
the "weird English" used by foreigners or the immigrant children whose first
words are swearing words...

PIE was probably never a unified, unique language, sure, there is nothing
provocative about that hypothesis. But the people who used the IE langages were
probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their culture (and
languages) on the others. How else would they havespread so quickly? How
Scythians and the Germanic tribes were depicted? In the war between Sparta and
Athens, who won? The city of belligerance and cruelty orthe city of democracy
and tolerance? You know the answers.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 14 05:49:12 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 07:49:12 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.074912.0200.>

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Dr. John E. McLaughlin wrote:

<snip>
> Since there is no evidence that "bay" was ever used as anything other than a
> part of the word for "bay horse" or, as horsemen say, "bay", (not
> "bay-colored horse", no one says that), it cannot be considered a color term
> at all, but only a specific marker for horse type.  Neither "bay" nor any
> other "horse color", like "pinto", "dun" and "paint", can be applied to any
> other creature or inanimate object.

You mean a pinto bean is really a horse? :)  Just joking, John, and I take
your point.  But I do think you have overstated it.  Horse colors do get
transferred (practically any term can be transferred), but usually with
the marker '-colored' attached (e.g., 'dun-colored', 'roan-colored').  The
problem is that 'pinto' and 'paint' are not colors but refer to patterns
of markings.  And a pinto bean and a pinto horse both have mottled colors.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.if


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 10:30:53 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 05:30:53 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.053053.EST.>

>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>Being a farmer and pastoralist does not *exclude* knowing how to hunt (and
>to gather) and doing this from time to time.  >>

-- ah, I should have added the "predominantly" instead of assuming it.


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar 16 04:31:00 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:31:00 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.233100.0500.>

At 09:48 13/03/00 -0700, you wrote:

>[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>>> There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
>>> 'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late
>>> term to develop in color vocabulary.

>[Joat Simeon wrote]

>> -- ah, my fault.  I should have been clearer.  I think it's entirely
>> academic and pointless to distinguish between "primary" and other color
>> terms.

>Berlin and Kay have a very precise meaning for "basic" (not "primary", which
>is a term of optics representing Red, Yellow, and Blue only, as opposed to
>"secondary", which is a term for Orange, Green, and Purple).

[Ed]
I suppose you mean magenta, yellow and cyan, the primary colores if you
consider subtractive color mixing, like in printing (one layer over another
on white paper, masking part of the spectrum). Together they give black.
Otherwise, the primary colors (for additive mixing, like TV, i.e. adding
light from three sources) are red, green, blue. Together they give white.

Just to keep things clear.

Ed. Selleslagh

Dr. Ir. Eduard Selleslagh (in Spain)
E-03189	Orihuela-Costa (Alicante)
España
Phone: +34-96.676.04.37	E-Mail: edsel at glo.be


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Mar 14 16:07:35 2000
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:35 -0600
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.100735.0600.>

[snip]

	Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
"berry"?

>Since there is no evidence that "bay" was ever used as anything other than a
>part of the word for "bay horse" or, as horsemen say, "bay", (not
>"bay-colored horse", no one says that), it cannot be considered a color term
>at all, but only a specific marker for horse type.  Neither "bay" nor any
>other "horse color", like "pinto", "dun" and "paint", can be applied to any
>other creature or inanimate object.
[snip]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 15 02:24:17 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 18:24:17 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.182417.0800.>

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, John McLaughlin (mclasutt at brigham.net) wrote:

> "Orange" is not a basic color term in Modern English, since it is still
> recognized as being the color of the fruit. ...  "Brown" is moving into this
> class, but since we still have "bruin" in our language, it's not quite there
> yet.  "Pink" is closer to being a basic term than "orange", since only
> gardeners recognize "pink" as a name for a member of the genus Dianthus.

This is certainly a matter of dialect or idiolect:  For me, all three are basic
in the B&K sense.  As a child, I learned that the fruit was called "an orange"
because it *was* orange, I never associated "brown" with "bruin" (an adult
learned term), and I had a pink shirt and necktie (with Davy Crockett on it)
that was my favourite thing to wear when I was three.  Even as an occasional
gardener, "pinks" are called that because they are...

								Rich Alderson


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Mar 15 06:52:08 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 01:52:08 EST
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.015208.EST.>

In a message dated 3/13/2000 10:55:36 AM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

>Steve Long has doubts about the value of the Berlin and Kay color research,
>but in my experience, I've found more value in their work that in the work
>of others on the same line.  Sure, their work may not be perfect, but in the
>absence of another system, that's the one we've got.

Just a note on this. My doubts about Berlin & Kay are not singular, as I
pointed out with citations in my earlier post.  Ther has been some very heavy
duty criticisms of B&K.  And at the core of many of those doubts, there's
also the question of what it is exactly that the "system" does.

It should be pointed out that in their original study, B&K found that by far
most of the languages they studied DID NOT have a full complement of the
basic color terms.

Of 98 languages, nine only had terms for black and white and 47 languages
only had four "basic color terms."  And a whopping 65 did not even make it to
"stage VI" and therefore did not have a "BCT" for "brown."  ( The description
of these languages "lacking" a full complement include "New Guinea, Congo,
South India, Amerindian, African, Pacific, Australian Aboriginal, South
India, African, Philippine, Polynesian, Sumatra, Eskimo" - and of course my
favorite, Homeric Greek.)

Now, it seems reasonable to me to ask what this may prove about the above
languages.  Is it that they had no way of communicating that an object was
certain colors - so that one speaker of these languages would NOT immediately
know what color the other was referring to?  Even if they lack a BCT for that
color?

That is unlikely.  My quess is that all or most of these languages permitted
their speakers to refer to and communicate regarding a specific color without
suffering much due to the absence of a "basic color term" for that color.

If I told you that something was the color of "mud" - we might have no word
for dark brown, but you would know what color to look for.  If
"looks-like-mud" became our regular word for dark brown and "looks-like-a
tanned-hide" became our regular word for light brown, we still might not have
a word for "brown" in general, but we might get along just dandy anyway.

In actuality, what B&K seem to be asking is whether a language has a word for
B&K's definition of brown - a specific arc of nanometers on the color
spectrum.

My guess is that these languages had very effective ways of communicating
about colors.  I'm mindful of something Mr. Stirling wrote:

<<-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
perhaps?>>

Quite obviously, the world can be a very brown place depending on location
and season.  Are we to assume that these languages in their state of
"evolution" (B&K's term) never had occasion to refer to the colors of all the
basic brown things out there - from dirt and wood and cooked meat to the hide
color of many if not most animals?  I suspect that everything could be
described in terms of color attributes, but that they just didn't match B&K's
grouping of colored attributes. (Cf., the typical Roman precision in "color
inter aquilium candidumque".)

What B&K were apparently doing was rating languages on whether they had
generalized a variety of colored attributes under a specific set of names.
And that specific set of names - "basic color terms" - refers not so much to
the evolution of the language as it does to the evolution of the science and
technology of color - where the color spectrum - along with white and black -
divide up neatly into just about 11 bands of visible light.  This is a recent
idea.

So, going back to the question of what it is exactly that the "system" does?

>From this point of view, it seems to be a way of accounting for why some
languages just do not seem to match our modern technical system of color
names.  And why some languages more or less do not match our system of
dividing up colors.

And the answer is "evolution."  This explanation for the relative absence of
matching "modern" categorizations in "non-westernized" languages, however,
can be seen from one perspective as both anachronistic and artificial and
therefore basically uninformative.

Regards,
Steve Long


From georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl  Tue Mar 14 09:05:09 2000
From: georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:05:09 +0100
Subject: Latin word formation
In-Reply-To: <008001bf8c05$ea7dc7a0$995d01d5@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.100509.0100.>

>de-bil-is

>How about   de:mens?

Doesn't really qualify, 'cause there's no -e/os suffix.

>Or deliciae = gutter?   < de: + liqu- + ia

Could qualify, but I'm not sure about the etymology. And, it's a verbal
root, s.b.

>You say debilis is de: + nominal root + suffix.   Could it be from a
>different route?   de: + verbal root  + deverbative ending?

Which verbal root then ?
Communis opinio seems to be that the root is *be/ol- "power" athl., skt.
bali-, slav. bolIjI (ru. bol'she).
Actually, I don't believe this, and I'm looking for an alternative, but
first of all I'm trying to ascertain that, in the traditional scenario, the
word formation is really so odd as it seems to me.

Thanks for the input.

St.

Dr. Stefan Georg
home:
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-691332+
Georg at home.ivm.de

work:
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/vtw/Georg/Georg.html


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 14 10:17:31 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 15:47:31 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.154731.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, 10 March, 2000 12:28 PM

> In a message dated 3/9/2000 4:35:46 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory). After
>> all, any word in a language can be a loanword, therefore - in principle -
>> the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>> various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>> language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>> roots. The main question is: HOW LIKELY is it that such borrowings /
>> derivations happened independently from each other, often in languages far
>> removed from each other?

> No, I'm sorry.  This must be a misunderstanding.  The main question has not
> been HOW LIKELY?  The main question is WHEN?  When did the words enter the
> languages?

My main argument is based on the WHEN question - both absolute timing
(horses are not attested in Italy before 2600 BC, therefore there was no
word for them), and relative timing (horses were attested quite a bit after
cows were in much of Europe and in the Middle East, therefore the word for
horses also came later into whatever languages were used there at the time,
or - alternatively - there was language replacement).

The HOW LIKELY question enters the picture if someone claims that, say,
*kwekwlos was applied to the wheel independently in two different IE
languages, quite distant from each other in space.

> I'd like to address just this part before I go onto the case of the Italian
> horse.

> g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

> I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
> from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of the horse
> was @2000BC.  The cow about 3000BC in the Near East, 2000BC in Europe.  The
> discovery of metal working made the wheel possible in the Near East about
> 2500BC.  When that Near East technology reaches the IndoEuropean homeland
> about 2000BC, it sets off the invasions of the "Indoeuropeans" in 1600BC when
> they enter Greece and India and the Near East.  All culminating in 1125BC
> with the fall of Troy.

What used to be is not really relevant. I am trying to use archaeological
dates from the most recent literature that I can find. If you have better
data acceptable to the archaeological "communis opinio", I shall certainly
be prepared to consider them.

> The above would STILL disprove Renfrew.  If any of those dates were still
> true.

> The problem is that they are not still true.   And the dates have moved
> backward in time.  And that makes Renfrew's hypothesis more likely.  And what
> was described above less likely.

>> the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>> various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>> language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>> roots.

> But 'native' or 'borrowed' isn't really the first question as far as Renfrew
> goes.  The dates are first thing you have to address.  I don't know what you
> are referring to as far as "trees and wild animals" go.

For trees, see Indo-European Trees by Friedrich (I don't have the
bibliographic data in front of me). For various wild animals in the North
Pontic area, including fish, Mallory wrote several articles in JIE. Both of
these sources look to me pretty consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. If
someone would analyze the flora and fauna of Anatolia around 6500 BC, it
would be interesting to see how the names in various IE languages for the
various plants and animals found in Anatolia fit in with Renfrew's theory,
and eventually to see which theory fits in better with the biological facts.

> But all the rest of
> those things NOW date pretty well in the range for Renfrew's hypothesis -
> especially if you don't find words like <kwelo> and <ekwos> in Anatolian -
> which you don't.

> And basically you can find a reasonable explanation for why words referring
> to milk and land and horse and cow and yoke and sow and grain and field are
> often common in IE languages - those languages came with farming.

I specifically excluded words for cow, sow and grain. I assume that there
were words for these concepts among neolithic farmers, so their presence in
IE languages says nothing about PIE speakers except that they were familiar
with agriculture. 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
hunter gatherers not have words for them?

The word for 'horse' is of course the crux of my argument.

> Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
> on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
> with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who had
> a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed with
> roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to pop
> that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every meaning and
> sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such skill it
> would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

I find this very unclear. I can't even figure out whether you favour Renfrew
or Gimbutas in the above text.

What I find reasonable as a theory is Gimbutas's: the farming population of
much of Europe switched language because it was conquered by a horse-riding,
warlike elite who imposed its hero-worshipping ideology on it. A bit like
what the Hungarians did to the Slavic and other inhabitants of Hungary after
895 AD, or what the Turks did to the various inhabitants of Anatolia in
post-Classical times. The basic ethnic composition of both of these areas
remained pretty much the same, I believe, yet there was a language shift,
with plenty of substratal influence.

Even Renfrew does not deny that such changes are possible: he calls them
"elite dominance". He just does not believe that the Indo-Europeanization of
Europe was due to it.

> Those are the two scenarios I have been given so far.

> g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

> Conversely, given the above, it's equally hard to see what kind of additional
> evidence you would need to consider Renfrew's dates possible.

Renfrew himself has modified his theory, and in my view his latest article
is more worthy of a linguistic investigation than his previous attempts.
["Time depth, convergence theory, and innovation in Proto-Indo-European:
'Old Europe' as a PIE linguistic area" (JIES 27 (3-4): 258-293)]. In
particular, he allows for the possibility of the following:

1. Proto-Italic might have been introduced overland from the north or
northwest, rather than by sea from the east (p.282).

2. There might have been a pre-Greek IE "adstratum" in Greece, subsequent to
which there were "ties between Greek and its sister languages in the Balkan
continuum at the end of phase II" (p.279). This to me implies at least two
layers of IE in Greece, the latter of which having strong ties with the
North.

These two modicications already bring Renfrew closer to linguistic
acceptability, and I would certainly love continuing this debate.

All the best,
Gabor


From jrader at m-w.com  Tue Mar 14 09:54:43 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:54:43 +0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.095443.0000.>

>The word 'quagga' itself is from Afrikaans which is
> from Xhosa and probably ultimately from one of the Khoisan languages (since
> the word starts with a click in Xhosa).

> John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> mclasutt at brigham.net

Small point of correction here, but the earliest attestations of
<quagga>  (spelled <quacha>, <quayha>, etc.) occur in the written
Dutch of Cape Colony beginning in 1691--see G.S. Nienaber's
_Hottentots_ (Pretoria, 1963) for documentation.  The word was
picked up by English zoological writers in the late 18th century--see
documentation in _A Dictionary of South African English_ (DSAE). The
word must have been borrowed directly from a Khoikhoi or San
language, not Xhosa, given that Europeans were only minimally in
contact with the Xhosa at this time.  DSAE gives the Xhosa word as
<iqwarha>, undoubtedly a Khoisan borrowing, but not the source of the
English word.

Jim Rader


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Mar 15 12:28:08 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:28:08 +0200
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <d4.21a29c6.25feb4c2@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.142808.0200.>

On Mon, 13 Mar, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>>Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing
>>periphery" model?

>-- not really, although you do have a point.

I guess my real point was that if it is so simple surely someone
would have cottoned on to it a lot sooner:  All you have to do is
find the most conservative IE language and, if it is free from
significant substratum influences, then hey presto, there is the
IE Urheimat.

"Innovative core -- archaizing periphery" is really an expression
of the wave model of linguistic change and, of course, the "core"
and "periphery" can be different for each change.  The wave model
says that linguistic change spreads like the waves from an object
dropped in a liquid, gradually dying out with increasing distance
from the center.  Thus there will be a core or central area where
the change is complete, transitional areas where the change is
less complete, and relic areas that the change does not reach at
all.  And, as I said, how this model applies depends on where the
particular change started so there is nothing about the Urheimat
that *has* to make it the most innovative or the most
conservative with respect to the proto-language.

>Eg., the Baltic languages (and the Slavic) undergo satemization,
>a late development in the eastern IE dialects.

A slight terminological quibble:  You can't say that satemization
was a development in the eastern IE dialects because Tocharian
didn't undergo it.  What you have to say is that the core area
for satemization was I-Ir. and that the easternmost "dialect" of
IE (Tocharian) was already isolated from this core area when this
change took place (i.e., was no longer part of the IE dialect
continuum).

>What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
>the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup
>of PIE they became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than
>Slavic.

The evidence fairly clearly shows that both Baltic and Slavic
were transitional areas in both the satemization (palatal
assibilation) and RUKI palatization changes that had their core
in I-Ir (although RUKI is more generalized in Slavic than in
Baltic).  Essentially all this shows is that Baltic and Slavic
were still in fairly close contact with I-Ir. in contrast to
Greek, Italic, Germanic and points west which were not affected
at all by these changes (relic areas).  In short, all the other
IE stocks have already broken off or are simply out of range
(which is not quite the same thing as they could still be at the
other end of a dialect continuum) before this change.  And
conservatism after this point indicates that the language was
consistently a relic area in further changes originating in the
dialect continuum

Expressed in terms of a tree model, it sounds very much like a
scenario that Steve Long proposed:  At any node on the tree,
there is a non-innovating branch and other branches.  If we follow
the non-innovating branch from each node, at the bottom of the
tree we arrive at a language that is practically identical to PIE
(in this case, Lithuanian).  Now everyone said 'no, no, that
can't be right because actually all branches innovate, just in
different ways.'  The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue
against this.  Nodes in a tree must be based on some comparative
linguistic information.  The only such information that is useful
is some innovation that appears in one branch and not in the
other.  Shared retentions don't propagate either as waves or
trees.  They just stay where they were left, like a well-trained
dog.  Of course the fact that Lithuanian was always on the
non-innovating branch (or least innovative branch if you prefer)
after satemization and RUKI (and only partly on the innovating
branch even there; sort of holding on to the end of the branch
with one paw) says nothing about where it was located
geographically.

Now someone is going to say that it's against the law of averages
for Lithuanian to have always been on the non-innovating branch.
And of course it is.  But the point is that *something* has to
be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.  It is equally
against the law of averages for a team or an individual to win a
single elimination tournament; but someone always does.  In the
IE superbowl, Lithuanian is apparently the winner.  But that
still doesn't say anything specific about where it started out
geographically.

>That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The
>degree of retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared
>to, say, Hittite.

Yes, absence of substratum influences would be useful in showing
either (a) the language was in its original home, (b) the
language moved into a previously uninhabited area, (c) the
language does not accept loanwords, or (d) the speakers of the
language drove off or killed all the original inhabitants before
there was any significant linguistic contact.  But is it clear
that there is no substratum influence?  There are a number of
Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a considerably larger number
of Baltic loanwords in Balto-Finnic.  Looks like about what one
would expect if Baltic were a superstratum language over Western
Finnic.  Just because there wasn't an unknown substratum, as
there apparently was in Germanic, that provided a lot of words of
unknown origin to the language doesn't mean that there wasn't
some substratum.

>There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other
>features in the area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was
>historically attested).

Again, useful for indicating that (a) the language was in its
original home, (b) the language moved into a previously
uninhabited area, (c) the speakers of the language
systematically renamed or calqued all river names in their own
language, or (d) the speakers of the language drove off or killed
all the original inhabitants before they could learn the original
names of the topographical features (i.e., no period of
linguistic contact).

I'm not trying to be difficult just for the sake of being
difficult, but rather to point out that while what you propose is
an arguable hypothesis, there are a lot of other arguable
hypotheses that have to be falsified before it could be accepted
as *the* hypothesis.  That is the problem with historical
linguistics in prehistory.  Genes don't equate to language on a
one-to-one basis; material culture doesn't equate to language on
a one-to-one basis.  The only thing that identifies language on a
one-to-one basis is written remains (that can be read) and once
you have that, you aren't in prehistory anymore.

>>following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion,
>>Lithuania is the Urheimat.

>-- I'd say it's _close_ to the Urheimat, relatively speaking.

So would I, but it's all a question of what it's relative to.
I'd say it's definitely closer to the Urheimat than the fringes
of the Gobi Desert are.

>If the Urheimat is the Ukraine, then it isn't very far to the
>Baltic.  And once you're up in the Baltic forests, you're very
>much "out of the way".

Tell me about it :)

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Mar 14 12:02:30 2000
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 12:02:30 +0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.120230.0000.>

-- Begin original message --

> From: "jose.perez3" <jose.perez3 at yucom.be>

> I'd be very thankful for anybody who has paid attention to the issue of tonal
> and stress accent to elaborate on this subject, presenting some sound
> information about how we think that IE differed from most modern European
> languages in its accent.

> Is there still anybody around there who thinks that most modern languages
> have "stress accents"? Has anybody checked on this with expert phoneticians?

> When I studied Classics, my teachers explained to me that Classical Latin had
> stress accents but that they named them with "musical" terms because they
> were "copying" Greek grammarians.

> The problem is that to my (admittedly poorly trained) ears Modern Greek has a
> tonal accent, so I don't see what has changed about that ever since Homer.
> All Romance languages have tonal accents (pronounce any of them taking away
> any stress from the accented sylables and the change of tone will still
> indicate where it goes)... so how was Latin different from them?? The same
> applies to modern Germanic and Slavic languages. In fact I'm still waiting to
> come across the proverbial language with pitched non tonal accent to begin to
> fathom what the whole story is about.

> Or am I still missing the obvious?

>                     Joe

-- End original message --

Possibly the last ;-)

The thing about a stress accent is not that it is not realized by pitch/tone
change (possibly in combination with other features such as length and
loudness), but that it doesn't matter at all what the direction or level of the
pitch is. Or, to put it another way, pitch DIRECTION (contour) or pitch LEVEL
is not lexically contrastive. In languages like English, in CITATION forms,
lexical stress is realized by falling tone. But the same lexeme may well have
rising, level, fall-rise tone, whose starting point may be high or low, in a
particular utterance context. The shape of the pitch contour is determined at
the phrase, sentence, or possibly discourse level. All that is determined
lexically is which syllable bears 'accent'. In this respect Classical Latin,
Modern Greek and English are alike, along with most other European languages.
Ancient Greek is described as pitch-accented because there was a possible
contrast on long vowels between 'acute' (realized as 'grave'in some contexts,
an element of 'tone sandhi') and 'circumflex'. But even here, in an alternative
moraic analysis, there would be only one 'accent' which might fall on the first
or the second mora of a long vowel, to give circumflex and acute respectively.

This is aimed at your general linguistic query. It's not clear to me what
accent system is plausible for late PIE, though I guess some IE alternations,
such as full-grade/zero-grade alternations and Verner's law only make sense in
stress systems. I don't think it's easy to make sense of e/o alternations via
either stress or pitch (which is not to say it's impossible).

Max Wheeler

______________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON BN1 9QH, G.B.

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975 Fax: +44 (0)1273 671320 Email: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
______________________________________________________________


From xiang at free.fr  Tue Mar 14 13:01:18 2000
From: xiang at free.fr (Guillaume JACQUES)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:01:18 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.140118.0100.>

> The problem is that to my (admittedly poorly trained) ears Modern Greek has a
> tonal accent, so I don't see what has changed about that ever since Homer.
> All

First of all, modern greek, if I am not mistaken, lost vocalic length. In
ancient greek you had in fact just one accent (high pitch) but it could fall on
the first or on the second mora of a long vowel so you had rising and falling
long vowels.  I don't quite understand the way you use 'tonal' accent. Aren't
you mistaking pitch and intensity ?  In French, for example, (very roughly) we
have an accent of intensity and length on the last syllable of a phonological
word, and a high pitch on the *first* syllable of a word (unless it is a
grammatical word).  Of course in many languages, the three factors : intensity,
pitch and length (as well as a difference in formants; the unstressed syllable
tend to be centralised, to have a lower F2 and a higher F1).may be mixed up.  I
think you should listen to Lithuanian or South Slavic dialects if you want an
idea of a pitch accent language. And, of course, I think you should listen to
asian tonal languages. If think that greek rising accent (as in hEgemO/n
"chief") sounded much like a rising tone and the falling accent (as in ei~mi "I
go", timO~ "I fear"). But greek pitch accent was only superficially similar to
asian tone languages because it had just one tonal feature.

Guillaume


From simona_klemencic at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 14 16:09:33 2000
From: simona_klemencic at hotmail.com (Simona Klemencic)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 16:09:33 GMT
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.160933.GMT.>

To Jose Perez:

If I've got you right you are saying that the stress accent doesn't really
exist? Maybe I can add something here as a native speaker of a language in
which both, stress and tonic accent exist. Namely, in Slovene (Slovenian)
one part of the speakers (mostly Lower and Upper Carniola) still speak in
the tonic (musical) way of accentuation, inherited from the Common Slavic
language. The others have lost it; we speak the dinamic/stress version of
Slovene. There's an obvious difference. In the melodic accentuation,
different tonemes can change the meaning of a word - for example: "peta"
with a circumflexed e means 'a heel' while "peta" with an acuted e means
'sung'. I think this is the whole point of the melodic accent while we
others cannot even hear these differences.

Greetings,
Simona Klemencic


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed Mar 15 00:30:35 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 01:30:35 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <000001bf8d4a$22e088e0$72ae08d4@joseperez3>
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.013035.0100.>

On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, jose.perez3 wrote:

>>> From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> [...9  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
>> accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
>> its development?  [...]

> I'd be very thankful for anybody who has paid attention to the issue of tonal
> and stress accent to elaborate on this subject, presenting some sound
> information about how we think that IE differed from most modern European
> languages in its accent.
[...]

I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
"prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).
   Why must that be so?
   A. HIGH PITCH is secured for PIE by:
      A.1. The Sanskrit term uda:tta 'elevated' used of the prominent
           syllable in Vedic.
      A.2. Greek grammarians' report of a manifestly higher pitch on the
           prominent syllable.
      A.3. In Balto-Slavic, a short diphthong (and a short vowel) has
           falling tone, whereas as long diphthong (and an old long
           vowel) has rising tone: The prominence is on the
           beginning of the last full-vowel mora of a syllable. That
           can be achieved only by assigning high pitch to the most
           prominent part of the syllable.
      A.4. The Slavic, after many changes, the basic accent habit remain
           the same: There is high pitch on the formerly prominent
           syllable in Stokavian Serbocroatian, even after the stress
           itself has been retracted (to the preceding syllable)
	   from the syllable still accented in Cakavian and Russian.
   B. STRESS on the same segment is secured by:
      B.1. The stress accent of Pashto which basically falls on the
	   same syllable as the Vedic uda:tta.
      B.2. The stress accent of Modern Greek which is still on the
           syllable accented in Ancient Greek.
      B.3. The stress of Russian and Cakavian which falls on the syllable
	   carrying high pitch in Stokavian.
      B.4. The Hittite plene writing of originally short vowels in
           accented position, which points to volume, not pitch. The
           effects on the consonantism which is reduced after long
           vowels are the same in Luvian and Lycian as in Hittite.
      B.5. The Lydian vowel reductions in unaccented position observed
           by Eichner.
      B.6. The loss of unaccented vowels in Albanian numerals where
           reductions appear to have taken place so early that the
           relevant accent was still that of PIE, while in the bulk
           of the vocabulary reductions postdate a more automatic
           accent assignment.

There are certainly other indications, but this will suffice to show that
the two features (high pitch and stress) went together in PIE already.

Jens


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 15 02:39:39 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 18:39:39 -0800
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <000001bf8d4a$22e088e0$72ae08d4@joseperez3> (jose.perez3@yucom.be)
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.183939.0800.>

On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Jose Perez (jose.perez3 at yucom.be) wrote:

> Is there still anybody around there who thinks that most modern languages
> have "stress accents"? Has anybody checked on this with expert phoneticians?

Well, 26.5 years ago I studied phonetics with Ilse Lehiste, author of a book
entitled _Suprasegmentals_, who taught us that stress accents involved all of
pitch, amplitude, and duration, thereby differing from pitch or tone (which are
not the same thing, by the way:  Greek and Vedic, Lithuanian and South Slavic,
had or have *pitch*, not *tone*, accents).

Several years later, I did a year of experimental phonetics, including work on
stressed vs. unstressed syllables that was published in the Chicago Linguistics
Society volume for 1978.

> Could it be that comparative linguists pulled this rabbit out of the hat
> without checking with phoneticians without realising that they might be
> rather tone deaf?

Prof. Lehiste is also known as the co-author, with the late Robert Jeffers, of
_Principles and Methods for Historical Linguistics_; before her graduate work
in phonetics, she obtained a D. Phil. in historical linguistics at Hamburg.

> Or am I still missing the obvious?

								Rich Alderson


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed Mar 15 21:01:08 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 21:01:08 -0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.210108.0000.>

Joe said:

>Is there still anybody around there who thinks that ...  modern languages have
>"stress accents"?

This is new to me, Joe, and a little puzzling.   English intonation patterns
do seem to involve a greater forcefulness of articulation on the syllabic
peak we call "stressed", while the pitch can be level, higher, or lower.
Am I deceived here?   Furthermore, you seem to be denying the validity of
this, and also the validity of the opposite point of view,  when you suggest
there is no such thing as "pitched non-tonal accent".    So I feel puzzled,
both by your logic, and because I believe some languages, such as Swedish,
have a fixed pitch pattern for words, without which the word is not
understood.

>  When I studied Classics, ...

You seemed in that paragraph to be denying that the Greek and Latin accents
were different.   They certainly function very differently, precisely in
line with the old ideas concerning "stess" and "pitch" accents.   Latin
accent causes syncope, Greek does not;  Latin accent becomes related to
metre (producing effects of syncopation or coincidence), Greek accent is
totally irrelveant to metre;   Latin has early non-syllabic count verse with
a regular number of accented syllables (like the old Anglo-saxon verse) but
Greek only ever shows syllable-count verse (like modern Romance languages),
and so on.

> Modern Greek ...

Greek (according to the usual theory) lost the pitch accent sometime in the
last centuries BC, and developed a stress accent - hence:
    (a) the need for accents to be marked.   You know that Greek - even
Modern Greek - preserves the accent in the same position, so why was there a
need to mark the accent, if its position was known, unless there was other
information being indicated - such as the three-fold distinction in pitch
pattern?
   (b) The Greeks themselves were now using the old musical terminology for
their new stress accent - The Romans simply borrowed the terms, and used
them precisely as the Greeks were doing.

But I am only repeating what I have never before heard questioned - so
please tell us more, Joe.

Peter


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 15 05:53:02 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:53:02 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005201bf8cc5$3ab8d1a0$6fc71a3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.215302.0800.>

At 08:21 AM 3/13/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>[SF]

>> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
>> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
>> exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

>[PR]

>I do not suppose that this was a stable situation. But, as I have written
>before, that does not, in my opinion, mean that it could not have occurred
>briefly.

Only if you can show even *one* language today with only one phonemic
vowel.  If NO modern language has only one vowel, then this must be taken
as a true, absolute  universal.  If it is an absolute universal, then, yes,
it *must* be excluded, even as a transitory phase.

>Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a combination
>of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

Derivationally and historically, yes.  But synchronically within the
language, 'e' and 'o' are true phonemic vowels.  (Actually, so are 'i' and
'u', if I remember my Sanskrit correctly).

The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
any less phonemic in the current language.

>Well, call it pre-PIE if you like. I was only trying to avoid the "N" word.

It is a standard use of terminology.  An internally reconstructed stage
earlier than a basic proto-language is prefixed with "pre-".

>[SF]

>> Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
>> grammatical.

>[PR]

>Of which I have yet to see convincing examples.

Umm, what sort of example would you expect?  The shift **a: > *o would have
been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
universal.  By the very nature of the hypothesis no *direct* trace would be
left - ALL of the old a:s would have gone over into o's, resulting in an
alternation between *e and *o where there had formerly been one between **a
and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o alternation *is* the example.

And that particular change is well attested in later languages.  It
happened between Old English and Modern English, for instance.  OE /sta:n-/
became Modern English 'stone', but the short vowel, as seen in my name,
remained low and unrounded.

[The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 15 01:18:46 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 17:18:46 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000310170528.009b0c40@mf.mailbank.com> (message from
 Stanley Friesen on Fri, 10 Mar 2000 17:09:29 -0800)
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.171846.0800.>

On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
> exist.

As far as I know, the only two languages ever analyzed as having only one
vowel, Abaza and Kabardian, have both been shown to have been mis-analyzed, and
both have two vowels, /a/ and /i-/.  (I believe I have the correct "ASCII IPA"
for [+ high, -back, -front, +vocalic], i. e. "barred i".)

								Rich Alderson


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Wed Mar 15 12:30:47 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 07:30:47 -0500
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.073047.0500.>

Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a
> combination of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

When JER suggested Sanskrit as an ``almost'' example several months ago,
I looked for exceptions. I gave up because it is hard to do searches
like these without a comprehensive word list (one exists, but I don't
have access to it). But I am doubtful because pairs of type viyukta
(unyoked) and vyukta (vi + (vac+ta), explained) must have existed even
if I am unable to point to them on demand in RV.

We can try to use accent to distinguish them, but then we run into the
problem of how vyukta was actually pronounced (it seemed to have varied
over time and space).

There is a good reason why searches for universals and universal
tendencies is done on living languages.


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Tue Mar 14 17:19:01 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 11:19:01 -0600
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.111901.0600.>

Following up a longer discussion, but with special reference to PIE vowel
alternation, the perfect,and Germanic:

>Stanley said:

>>the non-present forms in Latin and Germanic (at least) are
>> obviously heterogeneous in origin, on purely internal grounds.

>I'm not so sure. ( - Peter)

>Proto-Germanic had a new formation for weak verbs, and in strong verbs the
>pattern:
>     present                 e grade
>     preterite singular  o grade
>     preterite plural      zero grade
>     (and past participle zero grade, though that's not relevant here)

>Later phonetic changes and analogical levelling have obscured the system
>somewhat, and I admit there are problems, especially with class 6 verbs, but
>I don't see that this is "obviously heterogeneous".   The system is based on
>the IE pattern reflected in Greek and I-I perfect.  Even the
>preterite-presents could all go back to the perfect, I think.

The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek oi~da,
i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb paradigm would
seem to be that between the singular and plural as in Gothic wait, witum.
In Hittite this vowel alternation is exemplified by verbs like kuenzi,
kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the
third person plural is zero grade as opposed to other full grade persons.
Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
not originally.

People like Neu, Meid, and Polomé see the Germanic preterite-presents, like
the Hittite situation, as older (adducing lexical and other arguments).
Bridget Drinka's study of the sigmatic aorist in IE (JIES monograph 13) and
subsequent studies adduces a lot of evidence that the -s- aorist is
secondary (internally in Greek it is, for example, beside older root
aorists), and that the Latin verbal system without productive e:o aspectual
distinctions shows an archaism independent of what would then be a
Greek-Armenian-I-I common innovation.

The Germanic strong verb preterites are particularly important here.
Although their singular-plural ablaut pattern may well be old, to the
extent that it is similar to the clearly old preterite-present pattern, the
present e-grade forms may be just as innovating as Greek eidomai, eido:
'see', back formed from old oida 'know' (internal Greek evidence argues
that this form for Greek 'see' is new).

Carol Justus


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 15 05:34:57 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:34:57 -0800
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <008701bf8c05$f2accfc0$995d01d5@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.213457.0800.>

At 09:26 AM 3/12/00 +0000, petegray wrote:
>I'm not so sure.

>Proto-Germanic had a new formation for weak verbs, and in strong verbs the
>pattern:
>     present                 e grade
>     preterite singular  o grade
>     preterite plural      zero grade
>     (and past participle zero grade, though that's not relevant here)

>Later phonetic changes and analogical levelling have obscured the system
>somewhat, and I admit there are problems, especially with class 6 verbs, but
>I don't see that this is "obviously heterogeneous".   The system is based on
>the IE pattern reflected in Greek and I-I perfect.  Even the
>preterite-presents could all go back to the perfect, I think.

That is certainly the *majority* case.  But there are just enough irregular
verbs with remnants of the 'aorist' in Germanic languages to require its
prior existence in some predecessor of Proto-Germanic.  (I seem to remember
even having run across a handful of s-aorists).

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 15 05:30:15 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:30:15 -0800
Subject: i/u as original vowels [was "centum"/"satem" exceptions]
In-Reply-To: <00a601bf8b0d$b17c1cc0$4ec71a3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.213015.0800.>

At 03:49 AM 3/11/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>[PR]

>It is the "absence of phonetic conditioning factors" that would be the
>problem for me. In the examples you cited, it seems that the augment (*e'-)
>and the difference between an CVC with closed as against a CVC- with open
>syllable would constitute (at least, potential) conditioning factors.

Which is why one chooses verbs with an initial consonant cluster, so the
augment does not significantly change the syllable structure.

[Also, I have heard there is some possibility that the augment was
optional, in which case it would not have made a very effective
conditioning for the root vowel: but I am not sure of the status of this
possibility].

><snip>

>>> [SFp]

>>>> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two
>>>> distinct roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an
>>>> e-grade at all (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

><snip>

>[SF]

>> Pokorny list both of them as one root: "bh(e)reu: bh(e)ru(:)".  It starts
>> on page 143 in my printing.  The root *bheru is under subheading A., and
>> the root bhreHu is under subheading B.

>[PR]

>Well, if I understand your point, I would have to say that the root in
>question seems to be a very obvious derivation of 2. *bher-, listed on p.
>132 --- extended by *-ew-. As for the "*u appear(ing) not to be associated
>with an e-grade", surely the o-grade in Greek phoruto's suffices for
>establishing that the initial consonant cluster is the result of reduction
>due to stress-accent rather than original.

It isn't the vowel before the 'r' that matters in this example.  It is the
absence of one before the 'u'.  (Note, even breHu has a *consonant* before
the 'u').

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Wed Mar 15 22:15:28 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 17:15:28 -0500
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel
 andDating P...
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.171528.0500.>

<JoatSimeon at aol.com> wrote:
> -- as an experiment, why not compare a few sentences?  Say:

The trouble is that we don't have exact semantic matches sufficiently
often to do this. For example, what is the equivalent of ``sacrifice''
in Sanskrit? There is `yaj' which really meant `worship' or `honor' as
indicated both by syntax and meaning of cognates in Avestan and Greek.
Then there is `hu' which meant `pour' and more specifically `offer into
the fire'. I am not sure that anyone today can tell which Sanskrit
speakers from 3000 years ago would have selected if they knew Modern
English connotations of `sacrifice' (possibly neither) .  Anyways, here
are my translations into Sanskrit. I will not attempt Greek.

> "I sacrificed a hundred cattle to the gods."

devebhyas' s'atan" gava:m ajuhavam'  OR `deva:n~ chatena gava:m ayaje

> "Our powerful and mighty heroes siezed the land of their enemies."

This is even harder: `powerful' and `mighty' are rather close in meaning
and `hero' is a bit problematic. My best try is:

  asmadi:ya:s' s'aktimanto balavantas' s'u:ra:h. ks.etram ari:n.a:m
a:gr.bhn.an
[For later Sanskrit, change gr.bh- to gr.h]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 15 17:32:05 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 17:32:05 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.173205.0000.>

Dear Indo-Europeanists:

In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
"laryngeal".

Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
of H".

I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
relationship.

Anyone know of a few more?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com
(501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA
WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/
and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html
"Veit ek, at ek hekk, vindga meiði, nætr allar níu,
geiri undaðr . . . a þeim meiði er mangi veit
hvers hann af rótum renn." (Hávamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar 16 13:31:22 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 08:31:22 -0500
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
In-Reply-To: <9e.21b2387.25f9d225@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.083122.0500.>

At 23:20 9/03/00 EST, you wrote:
>In a message dated 3/9/2000 10:04:12 PM, edsel at glo.be wrote:

>>Persian craftsmen, architects etc. played an important role in what is now
>>perceived as expressions of 'Arab' or Muslim material culture. The most
>>likely place to find these people during the Middle Ages would be the Arab
>>occupied part of Spain, and nowhere else.

>Just a note.  In Faust's Metropolis, the author mentions the find of over
>1000 Arab coins in the old Slavic Wendish town under Berlin (the dates would
>be around 900AD I think.)  Though this doesn't necessarily prove the presence
>of tradespeople, it does prove the presence of trade.  And one might follow
>the other, if not in form of architects, then in the perhaps in the form of
>shoemakers.

>Regards,
>Steve Long

[Ed]
This is very remarkable to say the least.  Maybe these coins were obtained
somehow (trade, battles?) from neighboring Slavs in contact/conflict  with
non-Arab Islamic neighbors like the Turks e.g.? Almost anything is
possible, but Persian craftsmen usually stayed within the Islamic world.

Ed. .Selleslagh

Dr. Ir. Eduard Selleslagh (in Spain)
E-03189	Orihuela-Costa (Alicante)
España
Phone: +34-96.676.04.37	E-Mail: edsel at glo.be


From bao at cphling.dk  Tue Mar 21 12:36:30 2000
From: bao at cphling.dk (Birgit Anette Olsen)
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 13:36:30 +0100
Subject: Conference in Copenhagen
Message-ID: <TUE.21.MAR.2000.133630.0100.>

Dear fellow Indo-Europeanists,

We are currently investigating the possibilities of
arranging a minor conference in Copenhagen on the
subject: "Structure and Growth of the Indo-European
Word - registration and analysis" (probably October
2oth - 22th 2000). So far nothing is really settled,
but in order to convince our Faculty that this is
actually worthwhile considering, and that it would be
a good idea to give us a little money to cover the
costs, we need to know whether there is a genuine
interest in the matter or not. The plans so far would
include a couple of days on the subject of IE word
formation (nominal and verbal), preferably covering
a wide range of IE languages/branches, and a session
(perhaps one afternoon) dedicated to the question of
registration of the material (handbooks, lexical works
etc.). So, please, let us know what you think about it -
if you have any good ideas and plans, and if you would
consider coming. The deadline for applying for funds is
the first of April, so please don't hesitate.

Looking forward to reading your reactions -

Birgit Olsen.


From bhrghowidhon at galactica.it  Fri Mar 17 16:53:02 2000
From: bhrghowidhon at galactica.it (Guido Borghi)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 08:53:02 -0800
Subject: Congresso: "Verbo indoeuropeo"
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.085302.0800.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following was sent to my personal mail address.  I am passing it on to
  the list for wider distribution.
  --rma ]

     (Ich bitte um Entschuldigung, wenn folgendes auf Italienischem
geschrieben ist. Ich hoffe dass trotzdem man alles leicht verstehen koenne)

    Il Dipartimento di Scienze Glotto-Etnologiche dell'Universita' di
Genova ha previsto di organizzare, per il giorno 18 aprile 2000, un
seminario di studi sul tema:

    Il verbo indoeuropeo.

    Sono previste sette relazioni, della durata di venticinque minuti
ciascuna, dedicate a settori linguistici particolari nell'ambito
dell'argomento generale. I relatori saranno:

Ore 10.00-12.00:

Paolo DI GIOVINE,	Per una riconsiderazione delle categorie funzionali e
			flessionali del verbo indoeuropeo
Romano LAZZERONI,	Diatesi e modalita' nel sistema verbale sanscrito
Onofrio CARRUBA,	Il verbo nelle lingue anatoliche
Aldo Luigi PROSDOCIMI,	Il verbo italico (e latino)

Ore 12.00-12.30:	Discussione

Pausa pranzo

Ore 15.00-16.30:

Filippo MOTTA,		La sintassi delle forme verbali nel celtico antico
Giancarlo BOLOGNESI,	Il verbo armeno
Guido MICHELINI,	I tratti arcaici del verbo delle lingue baltiche


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 15 22:15:34 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 22:15:34 -0000
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.221534.0000.>

Dear Eric and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Plourde Eric" <plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA>
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 5:14 AM

<snip>

[EP]

> PIE was probably never a unified, unique language, sure, there is nothing
> provocative about that hypothesis. But the people who used the IE langages
> were probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their culture
> (and languages) on the others.

[PR]

To characterize IE-speakers as "very violent and bloodthirsty" implies that
they can legitimately be contrasted with speakers of other languages who
were *only* violent, or even less violent.

I frankly think this is an entirely unwarranted assumption. I know of no
people in history (let alone, pre-history) that has not, when the occasion
presented itself, acted ruthlessly, violently, and bloodthirstily.

I believe your characterization smacks of the dubious theories of the late
Lithuanian feminist Gimbutas, and has more psychological than archaeological
content.

[EP]

> How else would they have spread so quickly? How Scythians and the Germanic
> tribes were depicted? In the war between Sparta and Athens, who won? The city
> of belligerance and cruelty or the city of democracy and tolerance? You know
> the answers.

[PR]

I would think that anyone who has been participating in the discussion on
this list might be able to think of a number of scenarios in which a
language might spread quickly in addition to a pre-historic Kulturkampf.

By the way, you may characterize Athens as the city of democracy if you
wish. I would characterize it as the city of moral, ethical, and financial
corruption.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar 17 10:33:35 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 05:33:35 -0500
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.053335.0500.>

> [ Moderator's note:
>   The following message addresses a number of issues brought up in
> a recent  post by S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com); nothing further
> on those issues will be posted to the list.  However, a comment in the
> final paragraph takes us beyond those issues, and back to
> Indo-European issues, and I will welcome further discussion *of that
> paragraph only*.  --rma ]

I agree that the topic is minefield and may not be suitable, but I am
not sure if that is possible to discuss only the issues in the cited
para: After all, the question is whether the examples given so far can
be used as models for PIE spread.

"Plourde Eric" <plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA> wrote:
> [...] But the people who used the IE languages were
> probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their
> culture (and languages) on the others. How else would they have
>spread so quickly? How Scythians and the Germanic tribes were
> depicted?

Just how quickly did PIE spread? How can we know given the
uncertainties about the PIE homeland, the time of split, and the time
of disappearance of non-PIE languages?

How do we know where PIE speakers stood on the scale of
bloodthirstiness? And just how do we set up this scale: By the number of
bodies excavated from conquered areas? And what is that count? and so
on.

And how does bloodthirstiness help in spreading a language? There have
been bloodthirsty (from the point of view of the conquered: Alexander
was supposedly magnanimous, but that is not what Zoroastrians said)
conquerors such as Genghis Khan who did not manage to impose their
language on even a third of their conquered lands.

The models for `imposing' languages that have been given all seem to
depend on schools and other such institutions, which were compulsory for
the subject peoples. Are we to assume that PIE speakers had the same
setup?

The whole thread seemed to me to be pointless. The examples given in the
last 15 years for the spread have been cases of slow absorption via
client-patron relation into an open hierarchical society, not forceful
imposition via the sword (which seems to have been limited to religion
before 1500 CE).


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar 16 20:51:27 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 15:51:27 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.155127.EST.>

In a message dated 3/16/00 12:29:13 AM Mountain Standard Time,
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

<< "Innovative core -- archaizing periphery" is really an expression
 >of the wave model of linguistic change and, of course, the "core"
 >and "periphery" can be different for each change.  The wave model
 >says that linguistic change spreads like the waves from an object
 >dropped in a liquid, gradually dying out with increasing distance
 >from the center.  Thus there will be a core or central area where
 >the change is complete, transitional areas where the change is
 >less complete, and relic areas that the change does not reach at
 >all.  And, as I said, how this model applies depends on where the
 >particular change started so there is nothing about the Urheimat
 >that *has* to make it the most innovative or the most
 >conservative with respect to the proto-language.

 >Eg., the Baltic languages (and the Slavic) undergo satemization,
 >a late development in the eastern IE dialects.

 >A slight terminological quibble:  You can't say that satemization
 >was a development in the eastern IE dialects because Tocharian
 >didn't undergo it.  What you have to say is that the core area
 >for satemization was I-Ir. and that the easternmost "dialect" of
 >IE (Tocharian) was already isolated from this core area when this
 >change took place (i.e., was no longer part of the IE dialect
 >continuum).

-- you're quite right about that.  I had forgotten about Tocharian.

 >What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
 >the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup
 >of PIE they became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than
 >Slavic.

> The evidence fairly clearly shows that both Baltic and Slavic
> were transitional areas in both the satemization (palatal
> assibilation) and RUKI palatization changes that had their core
> in I-Ir (although RUKI is more generalized in Slavic than in
> Baltic).  Essentially all this shows is that Baltic and Slavic
> were still in fairly close contact with I-Ir. in contrast to
> Greek, Italic, Germanic and points west which were not affected
> at all by these changes (relic areas).  In short, all the other
> IE stocks have already broken off or are simply out of range
> (which is not quite the same thing as they could still be at the
> other end of a dialect continuum) before this change.  And
> conservatism after this point indicates that the language was
> consistently a relic area in further changes originating in the
> dialect continuum

-- this seems to be a terminological problem here.  That's pretty much what I
was trying to say.  Pardon the infelicities of expression!

>The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue
>against this.

-- it's a matter of degree.  Lithuanian certainly changed far less; but it
still changed.

>But the point is that *something* has to
>be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.  It is equally
>against the law of averages for a team or an individual to win a
>single elimination tournament; but someone always does.  In the
>IE superbowl, Lithuanian is apparently the winner.  But that
>still doesn't say anything specific about where it started out
>geographically.

-- however, it's not just Lithuanian.  Apart from the other Baltic languages,
there's the example of Slavic  -- which, while not quite as conservative, is
still notably so.

>But is it clear that there is no substratum influence?  There are a number of
>Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a considerably larger number of Baltic
>loanwords in Balto-Finnic.  Looks like about what one would expect if Baltic
>were a superstratum language over Western Finnic.  Just because there wasn't
>an unknown substratum, as there apparently was in Germanic, that provided a
>lot of words of unknown origin to the language doesn't mean that there wasn't
>some substratum.

-- its a question of degree.  There are certainly substrata in Baltic, but
not to nearly the same degree as in Germanic.  The number of lexical items
which can be traced to PIE is proportionately much larger and Baltic that in,
say, Germanic or Greek.

 >There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other
 >features in the area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was
 >historically attested).

>Again, useful for indicating that (a) the language was in its
>original home, (b) the language moved into a previously
>uninhabited area, (c) the speakers of the language
>systematically renamed or calqued all river names in their own
>language, or (d) the speakers of the language drove off or killed
>all the original inhabitants before they could learn the original
>names of the topographical features (i.e., no period of
>linguistic contact).

-- one has to make a balance of probabilities in these cases. Even the case
of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, which is about as complete a case of
linguistic replacement as exists in the historical record, not all the river
and place names were changed.  River names in particular seem to persist.


From jrader at m-w.com  Thu Mar 16 09:45:11 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 09:45:11 +0000
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PI
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.094511.0000.>

>[S.M. Stirling:]
> >That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The
> >degree of retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared
> >to, say, Hittite.
> [Robert Whiting:]
> Yes, absence of substratum influences would be useful in showing
> either (a) the language was in its original home, (b) the
> language moved into a previously uninhabited area, (c) the
> language does not accept loanwords, or (d) the speakers of the
> language drove off or killed all the original inhabitants before
> there was any significant linguistic contact.  But is it clear
> that there is no substratum influence?  There are a number of
> Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a considerably larger number
> of Baltic loanwords in Balto-Finnic.  Looks like about what one
> would expect if Baltic were a superstratum language over Western
> Finnic.  Just because there wasn't an unknown substratum, as
> there apparently was in Germanic, that provided a lot of words of
> unknown origin to the language doesn't mean that there wasn't
> some substratum.

I'm sure there are people on the list who can comment much more
learnedly than me on the matter, but isn't the presence of adessive
and illative cases in Old Lithuanian, through agglutination of
postpositional <-p(i)> and <-na> onto existing case endings, a fairly
obvious candidate for Finnic substratal influence?  Another candidate
would be the fixing of dynamic stress--or "ictus" in Stang and
others' terminology--on the first syllable in Latvian and northern
dialects of Lithuanian, at the same time that some original Baltic
accentual distinctions were maintained.   (On the other hand, Livonian,
the Finnic language most intimately in contact with Baltic, developed
lexical tones of a Baltic type--otherwise quite uncharacteristic of
Uralic languages.)  Of course, on a simple typological basis, the
Baltic languages are the most Uralic-like of the modern I-E
languages, because case endings are so crucial in expressing
grammatical relations.  If Baltic had gone the route of most other
I-E languages and suffered severe final-syllable attrition, it would have
been forced to become less Uralic-like morphosyntactically.

Jim Rader


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 09:34:09 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 09:34:09 -0000
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.093409.0000.>

Robert posted a long email about Lithuanian, non-innovation, and the
Ur-heimat, and I do not wish to question any of his conclusions.   There is,
however, a small point of logic, ultimately quite trivial.   Anyone with
sense will read no further, and if I had any, I wouldn't make this quibble.

He said:
> Now someone is going to say that it's against the law of averages
> for Lithuanian to have always been on the non-innovating branch.
> And of course it is.  But the point is that *something* has to
> be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.

At each node, on that model, there will be a non-innovating branch, but it
is not necessary that it is always one and the same branch which does not
innovate.   Hence the significance of the surprising fact that Lithuanian
has at each node been the non-innovator.    This allows us to conclude what
you so poignantly express in your last comment - it's a long way away from
anywhere.

Peter


From mcalamia at hotmail.com  Thu Mar 16 06:05:48 2000
From: mcalamia at hotmail.com (Maria Anna Calamia)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 22:05:48 PST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.220548.PST.>

bay leaves turn brown when they are dried.

>From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>Subject: RE: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
>Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:35 -0600

>	Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
>something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
>"berry"?

[ moderator snip ]


From lieven.marchand at just.fgov.be  Thu Mar 16 08:58:30 2000
From: lieven.marchand at just.fgov.be (Lieven Marchand)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 08:58:30 +0000
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.085830.0000.>

Dr. John E. McLaughlin writes:
 > "Brown" is a good example (assuming for the sake of argument, of
 > course, that "brown" is derived from "bruin" [or some such history]).
 > Since "bruin" is on the way out in Modern English, "brown" is moving
 > into the realm of a basic color term.

What's the story with bruin/brown in English?

bruin is the word for brown in Dutch and according to Merriam-Webster
bruin in English is an (obsolete?) word for bear borrowed from the
Middle-Dutch animal fable "Van den vos Reynaerde". Also according to
M-W brown has the following etymology:
Middle English broun, from Old English brun; akin to Old High German
brun brown, Greek phrynE toad while the entry for bear states:
Middle English bere, from Old English bera; akin to Old English brun
brown.

The two words bear and brown were distinct in Reynaerde:
Dies was die coninc sciere beraden
Dat hi dus sprac te Bruun den beere:

I think at least in Dutch bruin is a basic color term.

Lieven Marchand


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu Mar 16 12:54:24 2000
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 07:54:24 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.075424.0500.>

Rick McCallister wrote:

> Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
> something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
> "berry"?

I am reasonably certain that both E. -bay- and Spanish -bayo- are from
Latin -badium-.

--
Hyge sceal the heardra, heorte the cenre,
mod sceal the mare, the ure maegen lytlath.
                            --- The Battle of Maldon


From r.piva at bluewin.ch  Thu Mar 16 16:01:20 2000
From: r.piva at bluewin.ch (renato piva)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 18:01:20 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.180120.0200.>

Rick Mc Callister schrieb:

>         Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
> something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
> "berry"?

No. The adjective comes from ancient French bai < lat. badius, a word used by
Varro, but also known as an Oscan family name (Badius); according to Meillet,
Irish has buide «yellow».

R. Piva


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:34:58 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:34:58 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <200003150224.SAA14316@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103458.0700.>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>> "Orange" is not a basic color term in Modern English, since it is still
>> recognized as being the color of the fruit. ...  "Brown" is moving into this
>> class, but since we still have "bruin" in our language, it's not quite there
>> yet.  "Pink" is closer to being a basic term than "orange", since only
>> gardeners recognize "pink" as a name for a member of the genus Dianthus.

[Rich Alderson wrote]

> This is certainly a matter of dialect or idiolect:  For me, all three are
> basic in the B&K sense.  As a child, I learned that the fruit was called "an
> orange" because it *was* orange, I never associated "brown" with "bruin" (an
> adult learned term), and I had a pink shirt and necktie (with Davy Crockett
> on it) that was my favourite thing to wear when I was three.  Even as an
> occasional gardener, "pinks" are called that because they are...

This is, indeed, the tricky part of identifying basic color terms versus
non-basic terms.  When looking at the historic evidence, it is usually safer
to say that color terms are derived from other terms vastly more often than
the other way round.  (Although as I write this, I just heard a narrator on
the History Channel say, "...into the wild blue" and I also recall the basic
American terms of racial identification, "blacks" and "whites".)  As with
most language descriptions, we cannot rely on idiolects (unless, of course,
we're dealing with the "last speaker"), but must average things out.  On a
scale from most "colorified" to least, I would say that "pink" is the
farthest along ("pink" as a member of the genus Dianthus is a much older
usage than "pink" as a color), "brown" comes next (the "Bruins" of UCLA keep
that word alive), and "orange" is the least "colorified".  Ultimately, since
we're dealing with a diachronic process anyway, synchronic judgments of what
we learn first as a child, or what our level of familiarity with the
non-color word is, are irrelevant to the issue of what are the basic color
terms of Modern English.  If the source word is still extant in the
language, then the color term isn't basic yet.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:34:52 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:34:52 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.20.0003140736340.25270-100000@vesuri.Helsinki.FI>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103452.0700.>

[Bob Whiting wrote]

> You mean a pinto bean is really a horse? :)  Just joking, John, and I take
> your point.  But I do think you have overstated it.  Horse colors do get
> transferred (practically any term can be transferred), but usually with
> the marker '-colored' attached (e.g., 'dun-colored', 'roan-colored').  The
> problem is that 'pinto' and 'paint' are not colors but refer to patterns
> of markings.  And a pinto bean and a pinto horse both have mottled colors.

Bob, you're quite right, and that underscores why horse colors cannot be
considered as "basic" color terms in Berlin and Kay's definitions.  The fact
that you can't have a "dun coat", but can have a "dun-colored coat"
illustrates the horse-associated nature of these colors.  "Roan" is actually
a little broader in scope (compare the sable antelope (Hippotragus niger)
which is black, the extinct blue buck (Hippotragus leucophaeus), and the
roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus), all of subsaharan Africa).  Another
unique characteristic of these horse colors, is that they really can't be
associated with products that are not animals or derived from animals, such
as leather, wool, horsehair things, and other animals.  I'm not sure which
came first--pinto bean or pinto horse.  They're probably independent uses of
the adjective "pinto".

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:34:55 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:34:55 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.19991207132903.2d4f6382@online.be>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103455.0700.>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>> Berlin and Kay have a very precise meaning for "basic" (not "primary", which
>> is a term of optics representing Red, Yellow, and Blue only, as opposed to
>> "secondary", which is a term for Orange, Green, and Purple).

> [Ed]

> I suppose you mean magenta, yellow and cyan, the primary colors if you
> consider subtractive color mixing, like in printing (one layer over another
> on white paper, masking part of the spectrum). Together they give black.
> Otherwise, the primary colors (for additive mixing, like TV, i.e. adding
> light from three sources) are red, green, blue. Together they give white.

> Just to keep things clear.

You're quite right about other color systems.  When you're talking about
color mixing in printing (magenta, cyan, yellow) or blending light (red,
green, blue), you're quite right.  The traditional color palette, however,
is based on paint mixing.  This the old red, yellow, blue primary color
scheme.  What was a simple issue thirty years ago is now much more
complicated with computer display color issues interfering with painting and
printing.  In discussing Berlin and Kay, it is more useful (IMHO) to stick
with the painting palette since those colors (red, blue, and yellow) also
are the first three color words to develop after white and black.  Of course
these color terms represent a range of colors and not just single values,
but the center of the range is usually always within the range we would call
'red', 'blue', and 'yellow'.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:43:30 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:43:30 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <4b.1ae4bbe.25f58a77@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.014330.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>> G&I give walwa-, walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian
>> walwa-, but that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not
>> aware of a development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes). >>

>-- Mallory & Adams seem to think it's credible.

On what grounds?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Mon Mar 20 16:12:09 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 16:12:09 GMT
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <MON.20.MAR.2000.161209.GMT.>

Hereinafter ! 2 3 are the laryngeals. Greek w = digamma.

As regards possible euphemisms:-
  The PIE literal for "bear" is said to be {2rksos}; but I read that its
Hittite form {hartaggas} means "predator", i.e. yet another descriptor.
  In Ancient Greek I have come across:-
  wolf: PIE {wlqwos} > Greek {lukos}, not the expected **{wlapos} or similar;
distortion to associate with {luk-} = "light" (= illumination)?
  shark: {selakhos}, compare (selas} = "beam of light".
  lion: {lewo:n} : compare {loweo:} = "I wash".
  PIE {wlqwos} sounds suspiciously like someone imitating a wolf howling,
perhaps as a yet older euphemism?
  hare (not a dangerous animal but a subject of many superstitions): compare
words {has-} = "grey", and more recent replacement words in Irish etc.


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:35:00 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:35:00 -0700
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
In-Reply-To: <8c.1bc27f0.26008d18@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103500.0700.>

Steve Long wrote a long reply to my last posting about color terms, but we
are actually saying very similar things.  Steve states that just because a
language doesn't have a word for 'brown', it doesn't mean that they can't
see brown or have no brown in their environment or just never talk about
brown things.  He used an excellent example in citing, "It's the color of
mud."  Another example would be, "It's mud red" (in languages without a
basic term for 'brown', brown things generally fall into either the 'red'
range or the 'yellow' range).  I completely agree with Steve on this.

Secondly, Steve asks what the Berlin and Kay work means in terms of defining
a spectrum and he disagrees with defining color terms in other languages by
reference to the way that English breaks up the spectrum.  Here we have a
slight difference of opinion.  Steve seems to object to using 'red',
'yellow', 'blue', etc. to "translate" foreign basic color terms because they
imply a specific English-based range of the spectrum and eliminate colors
that include other parts of the spectrum.  I agree with the difficulty of
defining, say, the range of the spectrum that falls under Panamint ankapihty
(y is barred i) using only the English term 'red'.  Ankapihty includes
colors from dark yellow through orange and red into a medium purple, but we
have no word for that range in English.  However, we can locate the general
spectral range where the "center of balance" is.  That center is in the
range we call 'red'.  Obviously, a dictionary should list the range of
colors and not just the central color.  Indeed, I've run informal tests on
English speaking students in some of my Language and Culture courses.  I'd
hand them a color wheel and ask them to mark on the wheel the primary and
secondary colors 'red', 'yellow', 'orange', etc.  While the center of each
color covered the typically associated spectral range, the boundaries
differed on every wheel.  In fact, my wife and I have a fundamental
difference in what we call "pure red".  My wife identifies a dark scarlet as
"pure red" while I identify a bright crimson as "pure red".

The value of the Berlin and Kay system is not in the specific spectral
identifications it wants to make, but in the identification of color centers
in the whole spectral range by means of basic color terms that are neither
borrowed nor derived within the extant language.  The value is in looking at
the order in which the linguistic system divides the entire spectrum into
(excluding white and black) one to eight or so pieces.  It also allows us to
look at the naturalness of reconstructed systems.  A reconstruction that has
'red', 'yellow', and 'grue' (green and blue), for example, is much more
probable than a system that has 'pink', 'violet', and 'orange'.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 01:07:06 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 02:07:06 +0100
Subject: Hittite walwa 'lion' WAS: Bears and why they are mostly...
In-Reply-To: <2000Mar9.223643@AN3039.spb.edu>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.020706.0100.>

alex at AN3039.spb.edu (Alexander S. Nikolaev) wrote:

>	As to the shape of this putative PIE lexeme, hittite walwa
>	posits a lot of difficulties. I know of a hypothesis,
>	which i find attractive, but the text can hardly be accessible
>	to any of the list members  (it appeared in the
>	"Jazgulamskij sbornik", St-Petersburg, 1996 and belongs to A.
>	Ryko). I am taking the liberty to outline it briefly, as it
>	is of interest. A "broken reduplication", suggested by G&I,
>	is an extremely rare type, if exists at all.
>	That is why the author suggests to reconstruct the word as
>	a o-grade nominal formation from the root *welw/wlew, which
>	om its part can be an w-enlarged root *wel- 'to tear' (some
>	of the other PIE roots with the same shape *wel-, such as 'to
>	see', 'to deceive', 'hair'  are compelling candidacies, too. -
>	- why not trace wl.-kw-os to the same root, whatever it might
>	be? And what is gr. alo:pe:ks then?)
>	The initial *w- in this Schwebeablauting root can be proved
>	with the help of the greek material, cf. e.g.
>		Tro:es de {F}leiousin eoikotes o:mophagoisi
>	"de", which stands in the beginning of the 2nd foot, should form a long
>	syllable, and the length is caused by the dygamma, which
>	closes the syllable.
>
>	Any comments?

Interesting, but how to explain the loss of w- in Latin (if not
from Greek), Germanic/Slavic (if not from Latin) or Tocharian
[hmm, in Toch., *wla:nt- gives both nom. <walo> and acc.
<la:nt>].  And what about the extra-IE parallels (none of which
show initial w-)?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 16 04:11:07 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 04:11:07 -0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.041107.0000.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen" <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 12:30 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).
>    Why must that be so?
>    A. HIGH PITCH is secured for PIE by:
>       A.1. The Sanskrit term uda:tta 'elevated' used of the prominent
>            syllable in Vedic.
>       A.2. Greek grammarians' report of a manifestly higher pitch on the
>            prominent syllable.
>       A.3. In Balto-Slavic, a short diphthong (and a short vowel) has
>            falling tone, whereas as long diphthong (and an old long
>            vowel) has rising tone: The prominence is on the
>            beginning of the last full-vowel mora of a syllable. That
>            can be achieved only by assigning high pitch to the most
>            prominent part of the syllable.
>       A.4. The Slavic, after many changes, the basic accent habit remain
>            the same: There is high pitch on the formerly prominent
>            syllable in Stokavian Serbocroatian, even after the stress
>            itself has been retracted (to the preceding syllable)
>    from the syllable still accented in Cakavian and Russian.
>    B. STRESS on the same segment is secured by:
>       B.1. The stress accent of Pashto which basically falls on the
>    same syllable as the Vedic uda:tta.
>       B.2. The stress accent of Modern Greek which is still on the
>            syllable accented in Ancient Greek.
>       B.3. The stress of Russian and Cakavian which falls on the syllable
>    carrying high pitch in Stokavian.
>       B.4. The Hittite plene writing of originally short vowels in
>            accented position, which points to volume, not pitch. The
>            effects on the consonantism which is reduced after long
>            vowels are the same in Luvian and Lycian as in Hittite.
>       B.5. The Lydian vowel reductions in unaccented position observed
>            by Eichner.
>       B.6. The loss of unaccented vowels in Albanian numerals where
>            reductions appear to have taken place so early that the
>            relevant accent was still that of PIE, while in the bulk
>            of the vocabulary reductions postdate a more automatic
>            accent assignment.

> There are certainly other indications, but this will suffice to show that
> the two features (high pitch and stress) went together in PIE already.

I do not wish to dispute the particular examples you have given but I would
like to call attention to the fact that stress and tone do *not* necessarily
go together in English.

In a sentence like: "I have the receipt", the final syllable has
stress-accent and falling tone.

In my opinion, the original function of stress was to delimit phrases while
the original function of tone was to delimit sentences.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From xiang at free.fr  Thu Mar 16 10:15:57 2000
From: xiang at free.fr (Guillaume JACQUES)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:15:57 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.111557.0100.>

> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the other
less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to assume IE had
both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence indicates PIE
had a pitch accent.

Guillaume


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Thu Mar 16 17:31:50 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:31:50 -0600
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.113150.0600.>

The following is an abstract from the recent meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistic Society (Feb. 18-21, 2000) titled "On the Accented/Unaccented
Distinction in Western Basque and the Typology of Accentual Systems" by
Jose Ignacio Hualde, Rajka Smiljanic and Jennifer Cole. Its contents
relates to the discussion at hand.

http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/abstracts/0010.pdf

The program of the conference and other abstracts can be found at:
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/BLS26.html

Regards,
Roz Frank


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:22:35 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:22:35 -0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.102235.0000.>

Thank you, Jens for you posting on stress and tone accents.

You use the stress accents of some modern languages, such as Greek, to argue
that PIE must have had stress.   Does this argument necessarily follow?

(a) Isn't the old argument also possible, that the accent in Greek has
changed from pitch to stress? (and presumably therefore also possible in the
other languages that you mention)

(b) There are no indications of stress accent in Classical Greek, neither in
the grammarians, nor in what the accent does to the phonology, metre, or
anything else.   See W Sidney Allan Vox Graeca.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 16 05:27:33 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 05:27:33 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.052733.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 5:53 AM

> At 08:21 AM 3/13/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> [SFp]

>>> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
>>> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
>>> exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

>> [PRp]

>> I do not suppose that this was a stable situation. But, as I have written
>> before, that does not, in my opinion, mean that it could not have occurred
>> briefly.

[SF]

> Only if you can show even *one* language today with only one phonemic
> vowel.  If NO modern language has only one vowel, then this must be taken
> as a true, absolute  universal.  If it is an absolute universal, then, yes,
> it *must* be excluded, even as a transitory phase.

[PR]

I cannot believe that you will maintain this position upon reflection. No
"modern" bird has the wingspan of a pterodactyl but that certainly does not
mean that no bird can ever have had such a wingspan.

As for "(true) absolute unversal(s)", I do not know of any in linguistics or
any other field. I enjoyed Plato myself but I think it is a mistake to take
him seriously.

[PRp]

>> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a combination
>> of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

[SF]

> Derivationally and historically, yes.  But synchronically within the
> language, 'e' and 'o' are true phonemic vowels.  (Actually, so are 'i' and
> 'u', if I remember my Sanskrit correctly).

[PR]

Well, let us be a bit more precise. Old Indian [a]+[y] does *not* become /e/
rather it becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] does *not* become /o/ rather it
becomes /o:/. Careful notation distinguishes between long and short vowels
although, in theory, I suppose there is no problem writing [o] so long as
everyone knows that this indicates a long vowel  /o:/.

Now, I suppose that opinions can reasonably differ on the (interesting?)
following question:

I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
/o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat
these sounds as diphthongal.

But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian? Or the simple /o/.

It does not exist so far as we can determine.

I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
/w/; and, as they have no existence outside of these conditioned
environments, they cannot be considered phonemes, whether they retained
their earliest diphthongal character or not.

[SF]

> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
> the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
> any less phonemic in the current language.

[PR]

Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

[PRp]

>> Well, call it pre-PIE if you like. I was only trying to avoid the "N" word.

[SF]

> It is a standard use of terminology.  An internally reconstructed stage
> earlier than a basic proto-language is prefixed with "pre-".

[PR]

Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If
it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

>> [SF]

>>> Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
>>> grammatical.

>> [PRp]

>> Of which I have yet to see convincing examples.

[SF]

> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?

[PR]

True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
undisputed in any other language.

[SF]

> The shift **a: > *o would have
> been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
> universal.  By the very nature of the hypothesis no *direct* trace would be
> left - ALL of the old a:s would have gone over into o's, resulting in an
> alternation between *e and *o where there had formerly been one between **a
> and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o alternation *is* the example.

[PR]

I do not think I am the only reader who will find this dizzyingly circular.

The fact of e/o alternation "proves" an a/a: alternation?

Hmmh?

And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
certain accentual/tonal conditions?

[SF]

> And that particular change is well attested in later languages.  It
> happened between Old English and Modern English, for instance.  OE /sta:n-/
> became Modern English 'stone', but the short vowel, as seen in my name,
> remained low and unrounded.

> [The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

[PR]

Certainly very interesting. But your example certainly does not mean that we
should expect OE *sa:wian for ME sew (/so:/) when seowian is attested, does
it?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:34:43 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:34:43 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <008001bf8891$a4fad280$7cd31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.013443.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>The stress-accented syllable with /a'/  (which might have induced to become
>/a:'/), then became /a(:)*/, with the asterisk indicating a high-tonal
>accent, when tonal accent supplanted stress-accent.

>Sanskrit reflects this stage.

Aren't you forgetting the law of the palatals?

Sanskrit, too, went through a stage with /e/.

><snip>

>So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/ and
>/a:/?

>And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

There are a number of roots containing *o that show no trace of
e/o apophony (nor evidence for *h3).  Unfortunately, my active
command of PIE vocabulary is very poor...  First one that comes
to mind is *pot(i)- (perhaps < **pa:t(n^)-) and its derivative
(?) *nepot- (**na-pa:t-).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA  Thu Mar 16 15:47:21 2000
From: plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA (Plourde Eric)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:47:21 -0500
Subject: pre-IE k > H
In-Reply-To: <004e01bf8ea4$63efbda0$8ad21b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.104721.0500.>

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Dear Indo-Europeanists:

> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
> "laryngeal".

> Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
> as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
> of H".

> I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
> another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
> relationship.

> Anyone know of a few more?

Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish) when
it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples (including
the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 17 18:04:24 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:04:24 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.120424.0600.>

Annelies Kammenhuber never really endorsed the laryngeal theory because of
words where one scribe might use a sign with a 'k' equivalent where others
usually used the Hittite 'h' that confirmed Saussure's hypothesis. I don't
have a list of such words, but someone may.

Hittite scribes, of course, were not all native speakers of Hittite, nor
were Hittite texts written in a monolingual context. (I think someone
mentioned six written languages at Hattusa; there were seven, but you might
argue for losing Sumerian since it was only written, not spoken. But
Palaic, both dialects of Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, Akkadian, and Hittite
certainly were, even if Hattic died out in the early years.) Without
abandoning the laryngeal theory, such scribal variants as those between k
and h may have their own tale to tell.

Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the details of the
Romance languages, took a position often reduced to the slogan "every word
has its own history" because he found so many explanations for exceptions
to regular sound correspondences. While both the laryngeal theory and the
Neogrammarian principle of sound correspondence remain landmarks in the
science of language, competing forces have not been systematically factored
in for IE in much depth. In this context the Hittite k ~  h alternation,
for example, has not been systematically accounted for. This has left
Greenberg some room for working with the pre-IE system of sounds. It would
be interesting to do for IE what Malkiel did for Romance linguistics,
namely to amass some data on the anomalies, especially if they turned out
to show sub-systematicity beyond what the 19th century did so well. We are,
after all, in the 21st century! Pat's question is not a bad one.

Carol

>Dear Indo-Europeanists:
>
>In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
>"laryngeal".

>Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
>as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
>of H".

>I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
>another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
>relationship.

>Anyone know of a few more?

>Pat


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 17 08:20:32 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 03:20:32 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.032032.EST.>

g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>> The main question is: HOW LIKELY is it that such borrowings /
>> derivations happened independently from each other,...

I wrote:

>>The main question has not been HOW LIKELY?  The main question is WHEN?
>>When did the words enter the languages?

In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>My main argument is based on the WHEN question -
>both absolute timing
>(horses are not attested in Italy before 2600 BC, therefore there was no
>word for them)

Yes, but that date is artificial, because of your assumptions. There is lots
of evidence of horses - both wild and domesticated - across northern, western
and eastern Europe and North Africa before this date.  You're presuming that
lack of evidence of the horse in the vicinity before a certain date where
Latin was spoken means lack of knowledge of the horse before that date.

By the same token, because we have no evidence of lions anywhere near Britain
since the pleistocene, there should not be a word for lion in English.

Horses did not fall out of thin air.  And unless you are claiming some
extraordinary isolation for the Italian peninsula - something that is
thoroughly contradicted by the evidence - there are good reasons to think
this date is inappropriate for establishing knowledge of or a word for the
horse.

There are parts of France and England where no evidence of iron, horses or
even textiles have been found that are datable before 1800AD.  You can
certainly use that evidence to suggest that no words for iron, horses or
textiles can be expected in the local vocabularies.  But the dating and the
localization are artificial and your conclusions would be false.

g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

I replied:

>> I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
>> from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of the
>> horse was @2000BC.

g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>What used to be is not really relevant....

Wait a second.  You said it was hard to see what evidence would disprove
Renfrew.  I gave you what evidence would disprove Renfrew.  And you say it's
not really relevant.

g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>I am trying to use archaeological
>dates from the most recent literature that I can find.

But you are actually using selective evidence.  The date of the horse in
Italy applies neither to your own idea of the PIE homeland nor to the date of
the horse in that location.  Evidence of the so-called 'true horse' has been
dated as early as 4300BC in the middle Ukraine.  Evidence of wild horses of
any type (a prerequisite for domestication) can be found between that
location and Italy throughout that period.

You are making an assumption and that assumption is neither archaeological
nor linguistic.  You are assuming that the word for a horse cannot be present
in a language unless horses are also present.

If IE speakers entered Italy well before 2600BC, there is absolutely NOTHING
to necessitate their having horses with them.  Jarred describes in Guns,
Germs and Steel just how inefficient keeping horses can be.  The standard
burial wagon of the pre-3000BC period in central and eastern europe is drawn
by an ox.  Even before wheeled transport, the ox would have provided better
cartage.  The rather small tarpan-related domesticated horse of the period
may not have been particularly useful in hauling and probably were not
particularly rideable.  As opposed to the steppes where sufficient pasturage
and range would have been available, the terrain of the Italian peninsula
would have made horse-rearing undesirable and inefficient for either the
purposes of meat or milk.

So once again knowledge of the horse and a word for the horse did not make
the horse either desirable or a necesssary presence.  There is more than
sufficient evidence of contact between Italy and areas where the horse was
present well before 5500BC for the horse to be neither a mystery or a dim
memory.

<<For trees, see Indo-European Trees by Friedrich (I don't have the
bibliographic data in front of me). For various wild animals in the North
Pontic area, including fish, Mallory wrote several articles in JIE. Both of
these sources look to me pretty consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. If
someone would analyze the flora and fauna of Anatolia around 6500 BC, it
would be interesting to see how the names in various IE languages for the
various plants and animals found in Anatolia fit in with Renfrew's theory,
and eventually to see which theory fits in better with the biological facts.>>

This is mainly pure fantasy.  The very notion that a species unique to the
Caspian region 8-5000 years ago can be identified with a word in documented
IE languages a thousand miles away and 4000 years later is just absurd.  Any
name for flora in one region could just as easily be applied to similar flora
in another region - this has happened constantly throughout history.  Maize
is corn in American English and prairie dogs are not dogs and groundhogs are
not hogs.  And yes there were salmon or something that could be called salmon
just about everywhere.

<<I specifically excluded words for cow, sow and grain. I assume that there
were words for these concepts among neolithic farmers, so their presence in
IE languages says nothing about PIE speakers except that they were familiar
with agriculture. 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
hunter gatherers not have words for them?

Saying that PIE speakers were familiar with agriculture is actually saying a
lot.  Those words are often enough reconstructed back to PIE - why would a
small, warlike elite on horses off the steppes need to teach a continent full
of farmers a whole new set of words for farming? Especially since those
steppe types don't appear to have known that much about any thing more than
horse and sheep breeding and nothing about the kind of farming that was done
in central and western Europe?

<<The word for 'horse' is of course the crux of my argument.>>

I don't think so.  I think you mean <ekwos>.  Which is not the only word for
horse and didn't even necessarily always mean horse.

<<What I find reasonable as a theory is Gimbutas's: the farming population of
much of Europe switched language because it was conquered by a horse-riding,
warlike elite who imposed its hero-worshipping ideology on it. A bit like
what the Hungarians did to the Slavic and other inhabitants of Hungary after
895 AD, or what the Turks did to the various inhabitants of Anatolia in
post-Classical times.>>

Yeah, well.  What's unreasonable about all that is that most of Europe
appears to never have been exposed to those horse-riding war-like elitists.
"Kurgan" barely puts a dent in central Europe and never reaches western
Europe.  Near the Danube and up in Poland, it seems your war-like elite
abandon their horses for sheep and take over over-salinized fields abandoned
centuries before by the earlier population.  Since there is no evidence of
either horse-back riding or chariots in most of Europe before 1800BC, this
elite is either charging around in horse-drawn ox-carts or dragging their
steeds behind them.  Meanwhile, "the farming population of Europe" has
already mastered traction enough to build megalith graves for whomever their
non-heros were, mastered metal making and produced formidable metal axes and
equally formidiable obsidian spear and arrow-heads, begun by 3800BC to
fortify encampments and make war on one another in the west, already built
what Zwiebel called the largest buildings in the world at the time,
apparently generated sufficient surpluses to create an elite of their own and
bury them accordingly - but not in the kurgan-style, have a pretty well
developed trade network across Europe and into the Near East where they may
have been exposed to Gilgamesh style war-like elitists as well as the wheel -
which they also apparently introduced to their eastern neighbors.  And
increase the population of Europe by as much as100 times depending on the
location.

The neolithic population of Europe probably had a richer language - certainly
in terms of a wide variety of technical areas, including metalurgy, farming,
sea-going, building, vehicle construction, animal husbandry and tool and
weapon making - than any culture that appears on the European Steppes before
2000BC.  Most of these items appear in IE languages with no sign of a
substrate or with signs of importation from the Near East.  My best guess is
that if any elite did come off the steppes, they went the way of most elites,
they were swallowed up.

Also as Lehmann points, Gimbutas' theory suffers from a lack of available
personnel.  There were just too few with too little - the steppes are
underpopulated and underarmed before 2000BC.  A big difference from the Turks
and Maygars.

>> Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
>> on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
>> with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who
>> had a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed with
>> roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to pop
>> that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every meaning
>> and sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such skill it
>> would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

>I find this very unclear. I can't even figure out whether you favour Renfrew
>or Gimbutas in the above text.

I was being sarcastic in the above text.  The scenario - a Gimbutian one - is
ludicrous.

Regards,
Steve Long


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar 17 10:30:11 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 05:30:11 -0500
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.053011.0500.>

"Gábor Sándi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
> hunter gatherers not have words for them?

If `milk' is not derived from `mother's milk', why would those who do
not use milk have a word for it? Isn't that the whole point of dating by
the ``secondary products revolution''?


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:10:46 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:10:46 -0000
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel
 andDating P...
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.101046.0000.>

>> -- as an experiment, why not compare a few sentences?

> The trouble is that we don't have exact semantic matches sufficiently
> often to do this.

Doesn't that answer the question immediately?   Lexicon is part of language,
if we are talking about readability.

Peter


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Mon Mar 20 15:55:20 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 15:55:20 GMT
Subject: Black Sea Flood; was: non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <MON.20.MAR.2000.155520.GMT.>

Hans Holm <Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de> wrote:-

RD>Ryan and Pitman had not yet published their Black Sea Flood discovery.

> The black sea, or, more exact, its northwestern part, was 'flooded' in the
> middle of the 5th millennium BC, according to my information.

RD>Now that flood will have to be taken into account by anyone
RD>speculating how the community that gave us PIE could have been severed
RD>from the community that gave us PA.

>..< According to this time depth I would find it difficult if not daring
> to draw connections in favour of any theory of IE diversification.

(1) Please what are the bibliographic (ISBN etc) or scientific paper
references to any published books and papers on the Black Sea Flood theory?

(2) I suspect that this language discussion depends on how much more
communication there was between the steppes and Anatolia before the Black Sea
flood, If the deeper parts of the Black Sea were occupied by a big lake, or by
a deep dry furnace-hot salt-floored sink, then there may not have been much
more routine language contact across the Black Sea than there is now.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 09:24:29 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 09:24:29 -0000
Subject: Latin word formation
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.092429.0000.>

>> How about   de:mens?

> Doesn't really qualify, 'cause there's no -e/os suffix.

The original asker asked for any de: + nominal root forms.

>> You say debilis is de: + nominal root + suffix.   Could it be from a
>> different route?   de: + verbal root  + deverbative ending?

> Which verbal root then ?

Habeo has been suggested.   We know de+habeo > de:beo.  (Plautus still has
dehibeo).

My point was made because the original asker found de+ nominal root odd.  I
wanted to query why it had to be a nominal root in debilis.   That
assumption is made perhaps only because of the suggested links to Sanskrit
and Slavic.  But you are right, the next question is whether we have any
evidence for a verbal root that could give de-bil-is or de-bi-lis.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 01:16:07 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 02:16:07 +0100
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01b4f40bef7991@[128.83.251.71]>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.021607.0100.>

cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
>preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek oi~da,
>i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb paradigm would
>seem to be that between the singular and plural as in Gothic wait, witum.
>In Hittite this vowel alternation is exemplified by verbs like kuenzi,
>kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the
>third person plural is zero grade as opposed to other full grade persons.
>Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
>not originally.

Hittite does have e/a alternation in some verbs of the
hi-conjugation, with <e> in the plural, <a> in the singular.
E.g. sakhi, sakti, sakki, [*sekweni], sekteni (sakteni),
[*sekkanzi] "to know" (similarly in the past tense).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Mon Mar 20 17:56:02 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 12:56:02 -0500
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <MON.20.MAR.2000.125602.0500.>

"Carol F. Justus" <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu> wrote:

> The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
> preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek
> oi~da, i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb
> paradigm would seem to be that between the singular and plural
> as in Gothic wait, witum. In Hittite this vowel alternation is
> exemplified by verbs like kuenzi, kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi
> 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the third person plural is zero
> grade as opposed to other full grade persons. Hittite does not
> have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
> not originally.

Firstly, from grammaticalization theory point of view, deriving Germanic
peterite-presents from PIE perfect is unremarkable: RV and Greek suggest
that the perfect originally had a resultative meaning (for RV, Macdonell
and Renou say that this was still the main meaning). Now resultatives
can develop into a perfect as in English by losing the idea of the state
being present or, by losing the component of event that produced the
result, can come to denote a present state. It can also happen that one
happens with some verbs and the other with other verbs. Both Vedic
(veda, da:dha:ra, di:dha:ya, ...) and Greek have examples where the
perfect implies only a present state (and so must be translated by a
present). [And in RV, whether the perfect is translated by a present
perfect or a present depends on context.] On the other hand perfect can
evolve into a (perfective) past as in modern French or German. Bybee et
al, ``The evolution of grammar'', give enough examples of these that it
should not surprise us. [Bybee et al suggest evolution from a
resultative as the solution for the preterite-presents of Germanic,
apparently unaware that this is the traditional explanation.]

Turning now to the vowel grade: The traditional reconstruction is that
the e/zero alternation was in the root present/aorist while the o/zero
alternation was in the perfect [for those who do not assume that
reduplication was obligatory.] Hittite would seem to support the idea
that e-grade in singular present/aorist is old. I don't understand how
this can be used to claim that e-grade in the present in Germanic is an
innovation. The question is just about the vowel grade in the perfect
singular, or looking at it differently, whether the same root could both
have a present and a perfect. Germanic preterite-presents are not enough to
deny that.

The only thing that remains is the relation to the hi-conjugation of
Hittite: Two avenues are possible here: We can argue, as Szeremneyi
does, that this is a purely Hittite innovation starting from the PIE
perfect. Or the traditional PIE perfect may have been a resultative
built using a stative formation, in which case reduplication and/or the
o-grade may have been to give a specifically resultative meaning. [If
so, then it is o-grade that is new, not the e-grade in the present.] I
am not sure that we have conclusive evidence for one over the other.
Anyway, I remain skeptical of zero past vs marked non-past, and so
of -ha being past of stative. Anyway, it is hard to see how past stative can evolve into a resultative (which refers to >present<
state).

[Perhaps I should explain the terminology a bit: A stative simply says
that a state exists, while a resultative says that a state exists due to
a past event. ``This branch is bent'' is statitive while ``this branch
has become bent'' is resultative.]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:09:39 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:09:39 -0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.100939.0000.>

Stanley said:

> there are just enough irregular
> verbs with remnants of the 'aorist' in Germanic languages to require its
> prior existence in some predecessor of Proto-Germanic.  (I seem to remember
> even having run across a handful of s-aorists).

I would be interested in examples, if you can remember them.   In
particular, I have read in JIE the assertion that there is no s aorist in
Germanic, so counter-examples would be fun.

Thanks
Peter


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu Mar 16 13:56:34 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 13:56:34 +0000
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.135634.0000.>

Just a brief interjection here.  Corominas, as I understand him, does
*not* propose that any Persian cobblers traveled to Europe.  Instead,
he proposes only stimulus diffusion: that is, he proposes that artefacts
and techniques for making them diffused from Persia through the
Mediterranean, along with names for some of these.

However, whatever one may think of Corominas's account, it is
irrelevant to the point that started this thread.  Basque <hanka>
and <zanko> are borrowed from Romance, as shown clearly by their
forms.  Where the Romance words came from is a wholly different
issue.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From HSTAHLKE at gw.bsu.edu  Thu Mar 23 14:28:36 2000
From: HSTAHLKE at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 09:28:36 -0500
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.092836.0500.>

>>> xiang at free.fr 03/16/00 05:15AM >>>

>> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
>> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
>> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
>> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
>> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

> I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
> accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the
> other less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to
> assume IE had both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence
> indicates PIE had a pitch accent.

A pitch accent can also turn into a lexical tone system as has happened in
Niger-Congo, where Bantu and Mande preserve pitch accent while western
Benue-Congo, Kwa, and Kru have a lot of lexical tone.  I'm curious what it was
about PIE pitch accent that none of the dialects became lexical tone languages.

Herb Stahlke


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu Mar 23 16:42:14 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 17:42:14 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <38D0B45C.129DC1A4@free.fr>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.174214.0100.>

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Guillaume JACQUES wrote:

[Quoting me (JER) on pitch and stress in IE]

>> [...] In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
>> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
>> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

> I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
> accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the
> other less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to
> assume IE had both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence
> indicates PIE had a pitch accent.

Fine, they do point to a pitch accent, but later stages show stress in the
same position, and so does the IE ablaut for an _earlier_ period. Does the
vanishing of unaccented short vowels in pre-PIE not count for anything in
discussions about the nature of the PIE accent? I would say, if there was
stress before we find pitch, and there is also stress after the pitch
period, the most reasonable inference would be that there was stress also
at the time of the pitch accent? There was stress before PIE, and stress
after PIE, why not _in_ PIE?

Jens


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Mar 23 17:45:25 2000
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 11:45:25 -0600
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <002101bf8f46$c1f36620$d8c407c6@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.114525.0600.>

I believe you're right regarding bayo --but you should have sent me that
post before I hit the send button :>

>Rick McCallister wrote:

>> Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
>> something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
>> "berry"?

>I am reasonably certain that both E. -bay- and Spanish -bayo- are from
>Latin -badium-.

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar 24 15:36:31 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:36:31 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <006f01bf8f08$6aab8840$6f9f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.073631.0800.>

At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>As for "(true) absolute unversal(s)", I do not know of any in linguistics or
>any other field. I enjoyed Plato myself but I think it is a mistake to take
>him seriously.

Let's put it this way: the rarer something is among living languages, the
more evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language.

>I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
>transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
>/o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat
>these sounds as diphthongal.

>But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian? Or the simple /o/.

>It does not exist so far as we can determine.

>I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
>/w/; and, as they have no existence outside of these conditioned
>environments, they cannot be considered phonemes, whether they retained
>their earliest diphthongal character or not.

When the diphthongal character is lost, so is the *conditioning*
*environment*.  Thus at that point they do indeed become independent
phonemes, namely /e:/ and /o:/.   This is standard phonology.  New sounds
become phonemic when the conditioning factor is lost.  (Now this does
produce an unusual situation of a language with more contrasts in it long
vowel system than its short, but that is not unheard of, and Sanskrit is
far better attested than many living languages, so it is hardly
reconstructed anyhow].

>[SF]

>> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
>> the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
>> any less phonemic in the current language.

>[PR]

>Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

I am not sure what your point here is.  I was just pointing out that being
*derived* diachronically is not sufficient reason to deny *synchronic*
phoneme status, and gave an example of that.

>[PR]

>Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If
>it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
other name is available for it.

>[SF]

>> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?

>[PR]

>True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>undisputed in any other language.

Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
even in living languages.  To show some sound difference is not phonemic
you have to show that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it
is not *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of the
best texts on phonology.

The *origin* of */o/ can be argued for PIE, but the very fact that it *can*
be argued is strong evidence that at *that* time it was already a distinct
phoneme.  If it were an allophone of */a/ then the conditioning factors
*still* should be visible, and apply uniformly to all cases.  It is the
fact that there are too many environments in which */o/ occurs, with no
identifiable commonality, that makes the sound a phoneme.

>[SF]

>> The shift **a: > *o would have
>> been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
>> universal.  By the very nature of the hypothesis no *direct* trace would be
>> left - ALL of the old a:s would have gone over into o's, resulting in an
>> alternation between *e and *o where there had formerly been one between **a
>> and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o alternation *is* the example.

>[PR]

>I do not think I am the only reader who will find this dizzyingly circular.

>The fact of e/o alternation "proves" an a/a: alternation?

I NEVER said that.  I was just pointing out that the lack of a direct
example in PIE does not *refute* the hypothesis, as such is not expected.

To put it another way: we have in PIE what can be viewed as the expected
result of a regular sound change, so it regularity is hardly evidence
*against* a sound change.

Certainly other evidence is needed.  My preference for that hypothesis is
based simply on the fact that it is the only origin model for /o/ in PIE I
have yet seen that has actually been *observed* to occur in other languages
(English, for example).

Other alternatives include that the /o/ is ancient, and inherited from the
preceding proto-language (e.g. Nostratic).  If it turns out that the
/e/-/o/ distinction in PIE corresponds regularly to some vowel quality
distinction in a wider group of languages, then inheritance is supported.
(Now, at present no such evidence is forthcoming, and I would be surprised
if it were, as /o/ looks recent to me in PIE as reconstructed).

>And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
>certain accentual/tonal conditions?

Because nobody has come up with a consistently applicable set of such
conditions that can explain all of the occurrences of /o/ in PIE.

>[PR]

>Certainly very interesting. But your example certainly does not mean that we
>should expect OE *sa:wian for ME sew (/so:/) when seowian is attested, does
>it?

Umm, where do you get that?

You seem to keep turning what I say around and making the implication go
the opposite direction from anything I ever said.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar 24 15:41:28 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:41:28 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <38D13AF9.A581820E@stratos.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.074128.0800.>

At 02:50 PM 3/16/00 -0500, Brian M. Scott wrote:

>> [The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

>Eh?  Surely it's a transferred locative surname, from OE
><sta:n-le:ah> (or its dat. sing.).

Possibly.  I was just going by what I had been told the name meant, from
name books.
[Stony Wood is certainly a reasonable source also].

>   There's no shortage of
>compound place-names in which OE <sta:n-> has become PDE
><Stan-> /st&n-/; I take it that these are the result of
>early ME shortening of the vowel before consonant groups.

Either way, this is the cause of the difference.  The name clearly contains
a shortened vowel, whatever its source.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar 24 15:46:35 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:46:35 -0800
Subject: Black Sea Flood; was: non-Anatolian PIE
In-Reply-To: <6D92373776B@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.074635.0800.>

At 03:55 PM 3/20/00 +0000, Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>(1) Please what are the bibliographic (ISBN etc) or scientific paper
>references to any published books and papers on the Black Sea Flood theory?

I seem to remember it being mentioned in Scientific American a few months back.
[It could also be Natural History magazine, or even Science News].

Certainly there were extensive human settlements in what is now sea bottom.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 16 05:43:28 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 05:43:28 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.054328.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 1:18 AM

> On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

>> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
>> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
>> exist.

[RA]

> As far as I know, the only two languages ever analyzed as having only one
> vowel, Abaza and Kabardian, have both been shown to have been mis-analyzed,
> and both have two vowels, /a/ and /i-/.  (I believe I have the correct "ASCII
> IPA" for [+ high, -back, -front, +vocalic], i. e. "barred i".)

[PR]

Based on my reading of Greenberg's new book, I would have no problem
accepting a stage of (Pre-)PIE vocalic height alternation that had /a/ [+
low, -back, -front, +vocalic] and /i-/ [+ high, -back, -front, +vocalic],
but eventually resolving to /a/ as in Old Indian.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu Mar 16 13:55:00 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:55:00 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <001401bf8ecc$21f5e960$9b71fe8c@lucent.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.145500.0100.>

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

> []
> When JER suggested Sanskrit as an ``almost'' example several months ago,
> I looked for exceptions. I gave up because it is hard to do searches
> like these without a comprehensive word list (one exists, but I don't
> have access to it). But I am doubtful because pairs of type viyukta
> (unyoked) and vyukta (vi + (vac+ta), explained) must have existed even
> if I am unable to point to them on demand in RV.

> We can try to use accent to distinguish them, but then we run into the
> problem of how vyukta was actually pronounced (it seemed to have varied
> over time and space). []

Well, if there was no difference between the two words, it does not matter
how we write them. If there was, one may just write /vyyvkta/ and /vyvkta/
in accordance with the morphemic analysis, the former giving a reading
[viyukta], the latter, [vyukta], by the rule demanding that you begin from
the end of the word and syllabify every sonant not already having a
syllabic neighbor (that was also the PIE rule). A few subrules should be
added allowing specific sonant clusters (as for PIE), as here vyu-, not
+uyu-. It is not absolutely flawless for synchronic Sanskrit, given the
interesting syllabifications caused by laryngeals that have later
vanished. But if it is used to _recover_ the stage with segmental
laryngeals still around, it works remarkably well. That even demands such
pairs as vra- : ura- to be posited as /vra-/ and /vrHa-/, and the adj.
uru- as /vrH-v-/, just as Avest. vouro- shows it really was. For urV-, one
might even contemplate a synchronic notation /vrrV-/ which, with an
Edgerton-style development of syllabic + asyllabic shape of the same
sonant would give what we find. Typologically that may even be preferable,
for there is no guarantee that the old stage with laryngeals intact is not
in fact _so_ old that the monotonous /a/ was still the original triad /e/
: /a/ : /o/. In any case, it works best in cyberspace.

Jens


From BMScott at stratos.net  Thu Mar 16 19:50:17 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:50:17 -0500
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.145017.0500.>

> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?  The shift **a: > *o would have
> been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
> universal.  [...]

> And that particular change is well attested in later languages.  It
> happened between Old English and Modern English, for instance.  OE /sta:n-/
> became Modern English 'stone', but the short vowel, as seen in my name,
> remained low and unrounded.

> [The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

Eh?  Surely it's a transferred locative surname, from OE
<sta:n-le:ah> (or its dat. sing.).  There's no shortage of
compound place-names in which OE <sta:n-> has become PDE
<Stan-> /st&n-/; I take it that these are the result of
early ME shortening of the vowel before consonant groups.

Brian M. Scott


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Fri Mar 17 04:21:55 2000
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 22:21:55 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.222155.0600.>

Pat Ryan wrote:

>In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=3DIE or early IE k became a
>"laryngeal".

>Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
>as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
>of H".

>I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
>another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
>relationship.

I haven't seen Greenberg's book, but this is strange, since IE languages
are full of words with initial k- (k'-).  Any such change would have to have
been very rare.  And would there have been a conditioning factor?  Hard to find
one with so few examples (impossible, of course, if there's only one).

If there were any connection (unlikely, I think), one might think rather of a
"hardening" of laryngeals to a velar stop, perhaps in sandhi -- since final
laryngeals were common enough, one could consider whether /-VH HV-/ was
realized as [-Vk kV-], the second word then being reanalyzed as /kV-/.  That,
at least, could have a certain phonetic plausibility.  But please, folks, this
is *highly* speculative, and unless several more plausible examples can be
found, it isn't worth the phosphors it is written on.


Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at memphis.edu                    University of Memphis


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Fri Mar 17 02:14:54 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:14:54 -0500
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.211454.0500.>

There's also the complex represented by, e.g., Lithuanian ozys, Russian koza
(goat)

But I'm not sure there are any more.

Robert Orr

and the costa/os complex is really idiosyncratic!

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com>
Date: Thursday, March 16, 2000 8:27 AM

Dear Indo-Europeanists:

In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
"laryngeal".

Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
of H".

I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
relationship.

Anyone know of a few more?

Pat


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:07:56 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:07:56 -0000
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.100756.0000.>

Thanks for your reply, Carol.   I think there are some points which are
either confusing or confused, and I hope you can clarify.

Carol said:

>The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
>preterite-presents

(me:)

I disagree - it is not just the preterite-presents.    All the strong
perfects in classes 1 to 6 show exactly the same pattern as the oldest
perfects preserved in Greek and I-I, namely o grade singular, zero grade
plural.   Whereas Greek generalised the o grade for most verbs, I-I and
Germanic did not.

Carol said:

>Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
>not originally.

There is no e:o alternation in the perfect.  If were you meaning the e grade
presents, Germanic certainly has those.

Carol said:

>Bridget Drinka's study of the sigmatic aorist ...

There is no relic of the sigmatic aorist in Germanic.

Carol said:

>the -s- aorist is secondary (internally in Greek it is ...

It cannot be totally internal to Greek - there are traces of it from Celtic
through Latin etc round  to Baltic,and it is highly productive in I-I.   I
guess you mean that it is a later development at a stage when PIE was
already beginning to break up.  If that's the case, it seems irrelevant to
Germanic and I am no longer sure what you were trying to argue.

Carol said:

>the Latin verbal system [is] without productive e:o aspectual
>distinctions.  [this ]shows an archaism ...

Traces of the o grade perfects remain (e.g. the long u: perfects, mostly <
*-ou-), but even if they did not, it would be difficult to argue that Latin
showed an archaism here, rather than a generalisation of the plural zero
grade to the singular.   (The zero grade is widespread in Latin perfects,
and there is a e:zero present:perfect pattern.)   The word "productive"
might be misleading here too.   The only productive perfect in Latin, at the
time we know Latin, is the -v/u- form;  all the others are relics.

Carols said:

>The Germanic strong verb preterites ...  their singular-plural ablaut
>pattern ... is similar to the ... preterite-present pattern,

Do you mean that both have zero grade in the plural?

>the present e-grade forms may be just as innovating

The present e forms in Germanic are no more innovating - or just as much
innovating - as they are in all the other IE languages that show them.   I
guess you don't mean that they developed independently in all those IE
dialects - so what do you mean?   That they were a development at a later
stage of PIE?   Then you are not really saying anything about Germanic at
all.

Carol said:

>Greek eidomai, eido:  'see', back formed from old oida 'know' (internal
>Greek evidence argues that this form for Greek 'see' is new).

But again, not new within Greek, but developed while the PIE dialects were
in touch.   This verb occurs with the meaning "see" and a present in e grade
in Latin, Greek, Armenian, I-I.   Surprisingly for your argument, it does
not occur in Germanic!  So I am rather unclear what you are actually saying.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:36:30 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:36:30 +0100
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000314213134.009e1660@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.013630.0100.>

Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>That is certainly the *majority* case.  But there are just enough irregular
>verbs with remnants of the 'aorist' in Germanic languages to require its
>prior existence in some predecessor of Proto-Germanic.  (I seem to remember
>even having run across a handful of s-aorists).

Do you recall the details?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:42:55 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:42:55 +0100
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
In-Reply-To: <006f01bf8c32$1ded2f00$982467d1@roborr.uottawa.ca>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.014255.0100.>

colkitto at sprint.ca wrote:

>Certain authors (Milewski1932. "Rozwsj fonetyczny wyglosu praslowianskiego".
>Slavia 11: 250,255; Galabov 1973. "Urslavische Auslautprobleme". Wiener
>Slavistisches Jahrbuch, 20: 11-17.) have reconstructed the
>passive/deponent -r ending for Slavic

Could you give a brief hint about the Slavic forms in question (I
suffer from mild bibliothecophobia)?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA  Thu Mar 23 05:21:54 2000
From: plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA (Plourde Eric)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:21:54 -0500
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
In-Reply-To: <003801bf8ffd$0b861e20$6071fe8c@lucent.com>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.002154.0500.>

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

>> [ Moderator's note:
>>   The following message addresses a number of issues brought up in
>> a recent  post by S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com); nothing further
>> on those issues will be posted to the list.  However, a comment in the
>> final paragraph takes us beyond those issues, and back to
>> Indo-European issues, and I will welcome further discussion *of that
>> paragraph only*.  --rma ]

> I agree that the topic is minefield and may not be suitable, but I am
> not sure if that is possible to discuss only the issues in the cited
> para: After all, the question is whether the examples given so far can
> be used as models for PIE spread.

> "Plourde Eric" <plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA> wrote:

>> [...] But the people who used the IE languages were
>> probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their
>> culture (and languages) on the others. How else would they have
>>spread so quickly? How Scythians and the Germanic tribes were
>> depicted?

> Just how quickly did PIE spread? How can we know given the
> uncertainties about the PIE homeland, the time of split, and the time
> of disappearance of non-PIE languages?

> How do we know where PIE speakers stood on the scale of
> bloodthirstiness? And just how do we set up this scale: By the number of
> bodies excavated from conquered areas? And what is that count? and so
> on.

Impossible to count, I agree. I think that the last comment from my part was
totally uncalled for. I was reacting rashly to an opinion that I have found too
often even in scientific spheres. I should have kept those last thoughts for
myself.

> And how does bloodthirstiness help in spreading a language? There have
> been bloodthirsty (from the point of view of the conquered: Alexander
> was supposedly magnanimous, but that is not what Zoroastrians said)
> conquerors such as Genghis Khan who did not manage to impose their
> language on even a third of their conquered lands.

On that matter it is difficult to apply any model except the assumption that
something very specific triggered the kind of "bush fire" spread of IE. I think
that Mrs. Gimbutas' model is too simplistic (like my affirmation) and the
spread could have varied in speed and magnitude and even slowed in some areas
for various reasons (climate (Finno-Ugric), inaccessiblity (Caucasic and
Basque?)  but the two conquerors mentioned in the preceding paragraph were
quick to adopt the local customs (marrying local "princesses" and maintaining
institutions). It is possible that the quick spread of IE languages could have
been similar to the conquest of Anatolia by Turks, who replaced the cultural
elements while most of the genetic and physical elements were left almost
intact.

> The models for `imposing' languages that have been given all seem to
> depend on schools and other such institutions, which were compulsory for
> the subject peoples. Are we to assume that PIE speakers had the same
> setup?

> The whole thread seemed to me to be pointless. The examples given in the
> last 15 years for the spread have been cases of slow absorption via
> client-patron relation into an open hierarchical society, not forceful
> imposition via the sword (which seems to have been limited to religion
> before 1500 CE).

This last statement is highly debatable but is completely outof the subject so
I will refrain from commenting. I think in that matter of contact of languages,
the comparative or reconstructive (paleolinguistic) models have shown their
limitations. We should apply other models, like the ones currently being
generated in the "sphere" of creolistics, among others.


From lmfosse at online.no  Thu Mar 23 10:55:25 2000
From: lmfosse at online.no (Lars Martin Fosse)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 11:55:25 +0100
Subject: SV: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.115525.0100.>

Vidhyanath Rao [SMTP:rao.3 at osu.edu] skrev 17. mars 2000 11:34:

> The whole thread seemed to me to be pointless. The examples given in the
> last 15 years for the spread have been cases of slow absorption via
> client-patron relation into an open hierarchical society, not forceful
> imposition via the sword (which seems to have been limited to religion
> before 1500 CE).

There are obviously a large number of ways that a language may spread. The
relationship you mention is just one of several possible models. But I think
that it would be unfair to say that languages are spread through the sword
alone. If anything, that would only be the first part of the process: get
political control of an area. After that, the language of the dominating group
might more or less force itself upon the conquered. Example: English in North
America, Spanish or Portuguese in Latin America. Sometimes, a language or
culture is targeted for extinction by the political authorities: Basque in
Spain (now in revival), the Sami language of Norway (now in revival, the Sami
people having received a public excuse from the prime minister for the
Norwegianization policies of yesterday), Breton in France (perhaps in revival),
Welsh in Wales (aggressively in revival, I believe), Irish in Ireland.

There do not seem to be any ironclad rules about how languages spread. What we
can observe are certain trends, but we need empirical or historical data to say
with any degree of exactitude how such shifts actually occur and why they
occur. Sometimes, the conqueror gives up his language: Mongols in China,
French-speaking Norsemen in England. So for every example, there is a
counter-example. We cannot not used observed data an extrapolate to other less
well known situations with any degree of certainty. Until empirical data are
available, there will always be an element of uncertainty involved.

Best regards,
Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Norway
Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 17 08:22:06 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 03:22:06 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.032206.EST.>

In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>The HOW LIKELY question enters the picture if someone claims that, say,
>*kwekwlos was applied to the wheel independently in two different IE
>languages, quite distant from each other in space.

I just wanted to make a SEPARATE point about this HOW LIKELY question and how
it is guaranteed to get us nowhere.

FOR EXAMPLE:
Does HOW LIKELY apply if someone claims that they can know what a
reconstructed word like *kwekwos meant before it was ever attested -
as if someone could actually deduce what 'drive' once meant from only knowing
its current application to data storage devices?

Does the HOW LIKELY question apply when someone assumes that two different IE
languages could have once been the same language in the same place and then
separate and MAGICALLY become "quite distant from each other" without the
intermediate step (required of most phenomenon in this physical universe) of
first being close-by - and at that point very amenable to contact and
linguistic exchange?

What question applies if someone assumes that *kwekwos even existed in PIE
when there's no direct evidence at all that it was ever even present in half
of the known IE languages?

Obviously, "HOW LIKELY" can be used in a question that can be as loaded as
Nathan Detroit's favorite pair of dice.  But of course when that question is
rephrased to reveal hidden assumptions, we can start to see the tabulations
of "likeliness" change and change drastically.

How likely is it that the unattested *kwekwlos was applied to the wheel
independently in two different IE languages, [alledgedly] quite distant from
one another" and therefore alledgedly not in contact?  If by that you mean,
how likely is it that two peoples speaking very similar languages with the
same word for something circular would both independently describe the wheel
as being circular -  well, the better question is probably: why wouldn't they?

Regards,
Steve Long


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Fri Mar 24 02:49:11 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:49:11 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <14544.40803.948468.468401@orthanc.roj.just.fgov.be>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.194911.0700.>

[Lieven Marchand wrote]

> What's the story with bruin/brown in English?

> bruin is the word for brown in Dutch and according to Merriam-Webster
> bruin in English is an (obsolete?) word for bear borrowed from the
> Middle-Dutch animal fable "Van den vos Reynaerde". Also according to
> M-W brown has the following etymology:
> Middle English broun, from Old English brun; akin to Old High German
> brun brown, Greek phrynE toad while the entry for bear states:
> Middle English bere, from Old English bera; akin to Old English brun
> brown.

Thanks for the correction about 'bruin'.  I think that once we take 'bruin'
out of the picture, then 'brown' in Modern English has clearly become a
basic color term.

> The two words bear and brown were distinct in Reynaerde:
> Dies was die coninc sciere beraden
> Dat hi dus sprac te Bruun den beere:

> I think at least in Dutch bruin is a basic color term.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From r.clark at auckland.ac.nz  Fri Mar 24 06:47:33 2000
From: r.clark at auckland.ac.nz (Ross Clark)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:47:33 +1200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.184733.1200.>

>>> "Dr. John E. McLaughlin" <mclasutt at brigham.net> 03/17 6:34 AM >>>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>As with most language descriptions, we cannot rely on idiolects (unless, of
>course, we're dealing with the "last speaker"), but must average things out.
>On a scale from most "colorified" to least, I would say that "pink" is the
>farthest along ("pink" as a member of the genus Dianthus is a much older usage
>than "pink" as a color), "brown" comes next (the "Bruins" of UCLA keep that
>word alive), and "orange" is the least "colorified".  Ultimately, since we're
>dealing with a diachronic process anyway, synchronic judgments of what we
>learn first as a child, or what our level of familiarity with the non-color
>word is, are irrelevant to the issue of what are the basic color terms of
>Modern English.  If the source word is still extant in the language, then the
>color term isn't basic yet.

But what is this "diachronic process" if not one of progression from
non-basic to "basic" (better I think would be "abstract") colour term? And how
else are we to decide when it has happened except by considering how actual
speakers understand these words? For me, "bruin" is a name for a bear, or an
alternative word for bear (beloved of journalists). It has *nothing to do*
with the word or the colour "brown". I am sure there are many English speakers
who don't even know the word "bruin". For me and for them "brown" is,
therefore, basic. I can't see how Berlin & Kay's criteria make any sense
except, ultimately, in those terms. And that is what disturbs me about their
cross-linguistic sample, given that their sources of data are so limited in
many cases. If English were a language spoken by a few thousand people on a
Pacific island, known to B & K only through a dictionary, they would have
looked at "pink" and "orange" (at least), and disqualified them because of the
flower and the fruit. And I think they would have been wrong.

Ross Clark


From BMScott at stratos.net  Fri Mar 24 04:30:20 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 23:30:20 -0500
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.233020.0500.>

petegray wrote:

> [Bob Whiting] said:

>> Now someone is going to say that it's against the law of averages
>> for Lithuanian to have always been on the non-innovating branch.
>> And of course it is.  But the point is that *something* has to
>> be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.

> At each node, on that model, there will be a non-innovating branch, but it
> is not necessary that it is always one and the same branch which does not
> innovate.   Hence the significance of the surprising fact that Lithuanian
> has at each node been the non-innovator.  [...]

I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

At each node you start afresh, so it's not really meaningful
to speak of 'one and the same branch'.

Brian M. Scott


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Mar 24 13:01:41 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:31:41 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.183141.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, 17 March, 2000 1:50 PM

> In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>> My main argument is based on the WHEN question - both absolute timing
>> (horses are not attested in Italy before 2600 BC, therefore there was no
>> word for them)

In a message dated 3/23/2000, X99Lynx at aol.com replied:

> Yes, but that date is artificial, because of your assumptions. There is lots
> of evidence of horses - both wild and domesticated - across northern, western
> and eastern Europe and North Africa before this date.  You're presuming that
> lack of evidence of the horse in the vicinity before a certain date where
> Latin was spoken means lack of knowledge of the horse before that date.

> By the same token, because we have no evidence of lions anywhere near Britain
> since the pleistocene, there should not be a word for lion in English.

> Horses did not fall out of thin air.  And unless you are claiming some
> extraordinary isolation for the Italian peninsula - something that is
> thoroughly contradicted by the evidence - there are good reasons to think
> this date is inappropriate for establishing knowledge of or a word for the
> horse.

> There are parts of France and England where no evidence of iron, horses or
> even textiles have been found that are datable before 1800AD.  You can
> certainly use that evidence to suggest that no words for iron, horses or
> textiles can be expected in the local vocabularies.  But the dating and
> the localization are artificial and your conclusions would be false.

g_sandi at hotmail.com (3/24/00) replies:

Horses were present in northern, western and eastern Europe in neolithic
times, but were absent in the Balkans and on the Italian peninsula. They
were absent completely, unless you can offer me archaeological data to the
contrary. Getting around in those times was very difficult, and knowledge of
distant animals (and distant could have meant as little as 100 miles)
unlikely. This is my belief, of course you may think whatever you wish. In
any case, horses such as they existed in northern Europe were small, not
very remarkable animals, how could a well-characterized word like *ekwos
with a definite meaning survive for thousands of years among the supposed IE
inhabitants of Italy?

The analogy with lions is, in my view, false. Writing about and pictures of
lions had circulated in Europe widely since Roman times. In addition, feudal
kings often had them in their courts and sent them to each other as gifts -
if my memory serves me well, lions and tigers are offered as gifts at the
beginning of the Chanson de Roland. Has anyone found a single statuette or
picture of a horse from anywhere in Italy ca. 3500 BC?

> g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>>>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>>>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

> I replied:

>>> I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I
>>> pulled from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of
>>> the horse was @2000BC.

> g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>> What used to be is not really relevant....

> Wait a second.  You said it was hard to see what evidence would disprove
> Renfrew.  I gave you what evidence would disprove Renfrew.  And you say it's
> not really relevant.

Since the evidence you offer is, according to yourself, outdated, why I
should I spend any time looking at it?

> g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>> I am trying to use archaeological
>> dates from the most recent literature that I can find.

> But you are actually using selective evidence.  The date of the horse in
> Italy applies neither to your own idea of the PIE homeland nor to the date
> of the horse in that location.  Evidence of the so-called 'true horse' has
> been dated as early as 4300BC in the middle Ukraine.  Evidence of wild horses
> of any type (a prerequisite for domestication) can be found between that
> location and Italy throughout that period.

What is my own idea of the PIE homeland? I said that I favour Gimbutas's,
but I am willing to look at Renfrew's, especially if I consider his latest
modifications.

What evidence of wild horses can you offer between the middle Ukraine and
Italy around 4300 BC? Draw a straight line: where? In the Carpathian basin?
In the northern Balkans? In the Alps?

According to my readings, wild horses were widespread at the time on the
North European plain: roughly today's Benelux, northern Germany, Poland and
further east. Small pony-like animals, the topic of everyday conversation
among peasants in Tuscany, according to you.

> You are making an assumption and that assumption is neither archaeological
> nor linguistic.  You are assuming that the word for a horse cannot be
> present in a language unless horses are also present.

> If IE speakers entered Italy well before 2600BC, there is absolutely NOTHING
> to necessitate their having horses with them.  Jarred describes in Guns,
> Germs and Steel just how inefficient keeping horses can be.  The standard
> burial wagon of the pre-3000BC period in central and eastern europe is drawn
> by an ox.  Even before wheeled transport, the ox would have provided better
> cartage.  The rather small tarpan-related domesticated horse of the period
> may not have been particularly useful in hauling and probably were not
> particularly rideable.  As opposed to the steppes where sufficient pasturage
> and range would have been available, the terrain of the Italian peninsula
> would have made horse-rearing undesirable and inefficient for either the
> purposes of meat or milk.

> So once again knowledge of the horse and a word for the horse did not make
> the horse either desirable or a necesssary presence.  There is more than
> sufficient evidence of contact between Italy and areas where the horse was
> present well before 5500BC for the horse to be neither a mystery or a dim
> memory.

See above for my comments. Contacts with northern Europe notwithstanding, I
don't believe that the horse was known in Italy at the time in any way. I
guess we'll just have to disagree.

> <<For trees, see Indo-European Trees by Friedrich (I don't have the
> bibliographic data in front of me). For various wild animals in the North
> Pontic area, including fish, Mallory wrote several articles in JIE. Both of
> these sources look to me pretty consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. If
> someone would analyze the flora and fauna of Anatolia around 6500 BC, it
> would be interesting to see how the names in various IE languages for the
> various plants and animals found in Anatolia fit in with Renfrew's theory,
> and eventually to see which theory fits in better with the biological
> facts.>>

> This is mainly pure fantasy.  The very notion that a species unique to the
> Caspian region 8-5000 years ago can be identified with a word in documented
> IE languages a thousand miles away and 4000 years later is just absurd.  Any
> name for flora in one region could just as easily be applied to similar flora
> in another region - this has happened constantly throughout history.  Maize
> is corn in American English and prairie dogs are not dogs and groundhogs are
> not hogs.  And yes there were salmon or something that could be called salmon
> just about everywhere.

I am talking about good fits and less good ones. I know that names for
animals and plants can be changed, lost and transferred. In fact, some of
the biological data do not provide good evidence for the Kurgan hypothesis:
if *bhbgos meant "beech", it is curious that the beech tree is absent from
the north Pontic area (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in
Mallory and Adams). So make it a late wandering-word - which is how I would
explain the *ekwos word, were I to advocate Renfrew's theory. Unlike you, I
don't accuse those I disagree with of advocating pure fantasy.

> <<I specifically excluded words for cow, sow and grain. I assume that there
> were words for these concepts among neolithic farmers, so their presence in
> IE languages says nothing about PIE speakers except that they were familiar
> with agriculture. 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
> hunter gatherers not have words for them?

> Saying that PIE speakers were familiar with agriculture is actually saying
> a lot.  Those words are often enough reconstructed back to PIE - why would a
> small, warlike elite on horses off the steppes need to teach a continent
> full of farmers a whole new set of words for farming? Especially since those
> steppe types don't appear to have known that much about any thing more
> than horse and sheep breeding and nothing about the kind of farming that was
> done in central and western Europe?

Why shouldn't they? When people switch languages, they may adopt the words
of the new language, whether they mean "mother" or "yoke". Of course, they
may also keep some of the old words from the substratum language - French
has a number of agricultural terms from Gaulish, even though there were
perfectly good Latin terms for the concepts.

How do you know what those old steppe types knew about? If you can believe
that Italian peasants had a word for ponies living thousands of kilometres
away, why could the Kurgan people not know about yokes and plows?

> <<The word for 'horse' is of course the crux of my argument.>>

> I don't think so.  I think you mean <ekwos>.  Which is not the only word for
> horse and didn't even necessarily always mean horse.

What on earth did it mean?

In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE. If
Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

> <<What I find reasonable as a theory is Gimbutas's: the farming population of
> much of Europe switched language because it was conquered by a horse-riding,
> warlike elite who imposed its hero-worshipping ideology on it.  A bit like
> what the Hungarians did to the Slavic and other inhabitants of Hungary after
> 895 AD, or what the Turks did to the various inhabitants of Anatolia in
> post-Classical times.>>

> Yeah, well.  What's unreasonable about all that is that most of Europe
> appears to never have been exposed to those horse-riding war-like elitists.
> "Kurgan" barely puts a dent in central Europe and never reaches western
> Europe.  Near the Danube and up in Poland, it seems your war-like elite
> abandon their horses for sheep and take over over-salinized fields abandoned
> centuries before by the earlier population.

You made your point. The first Kurgan conquests could have been like my
initial scenario, followed by the combined strength of civilizations with
the Kurgan elite and "Old European" peasanty. Lots of holes even there in
the argument, but there are plenty of holes in Renfrew as well. There are
some (like Makkay, I believe) who don't believe that the LBK people are in
any way derived from the Balkan neolithic - there is little direct evidence.
And if Vinca is IE, but LBK isn't, how did IE spread so wide?

> Since there is no evidence of
> either horse-back riding or chariots in most of Europe before 1800BC, this
> elite is either charging around in horse-drawn ox-carts or dragging their
> steeds behind them.  Meanwhile, "the farming population of Europe" has
> already mastered traction enough to build megalith graves for whomever
> their non-heros were,

Now wait a minute - the megalith builders are pretty much restricted to the
Atlantic seabord. Their supposed mastery of traction could hardly be
projected to provide defence against Kurgans in Central Europe.

> mastered metal making and produced formidable metal axes and
> equally formidiable obsidian spear and arrow-heads, begun by 3800BC to
> fortify encampments and make war on one another in the west, already built
> what Zwiebel called the largest buildings in the world at the time,
> apparently generated sufficient surpluses to create an elite of their own
> and bury them accordingly - but not in the kurgan-style, have a pretty well
> developed trade network across Europe and into the Near East where they
> may have been exposed to Gilgamesh style war-like elitists as well as the
> wheel - which they also apparently introduced to their eastern neighbors.
> And increase the population of Europe by as much as100 times depending on the
> location.

> The neolithic population of Europe probably had a richer language -
> certainly in terms of a wide variety of technical areas, including metalurgy,
> farming, sea-going, building, vehicle construction, animal husbandry and tool
> and weapon making - than any culture that appears on the European Steppes
> before 2000BC.  Most of these items appear in IE languages with no sign of a
> substrate or with signs of importation from the Near East.  My best guess
> is that if any elite did come off the steppes, they went the way of most
> elites, they were swallowed up.

> Also as Lehmann points, Gimbutas' theory suffers from a lack of available
> personnel.  There were just too few with too little - the steppes are
> underpopulated and underarmed before 2000BC.  A big difference from the
> Turks and Maygars.

It's the Magyars, thank you. I have some figures, though not at hand, on how
few Magyars there might have been when they (we?) came through the
Carpathians in 895. They had a pretty good military organization, excellent
fighting skills and a belief in their own abilities and in their right to
conquer whatever territory they chose. Like the British and French in North
America, and the Iberians in Latin America later on, all of them seriously
outnumbered by the native Americans.

>>> Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
>>> on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
>>> with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who
>>> had a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed
>>> with roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to
>>> pop that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every
>>> meaning and sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such
>>> skill it would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

>> I find this very unclear. I can't even figure out whether you favour Renfrew
>> or Gimbutas in the above text.

> I was being sarcastic in the above text.  The scenario - a Gimbutian one - is
> ludicrous.

I don't think that Renfrew is ludicrous - just less likely, that's all.
Name-calling is not necessarily a good scientific practice.

All the best,
Gabor


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar 24 13:18:01 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 14:18:01 +0100
Subject: Latin word formation
In-Reply-To: <000501bf90ed$a38ae160$794a063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.141801.0100.>

>>> How about   de:mens?

>> Doesn't really qualify, 'cause there's no -e/os suffix.

>The original asker asked for any de: + nominal root forms.

As the original asker, I think I have to make my point a bit clearer
(though the point is that I don't really have a point).

Some current etymologies of Lat. /de:bilis/ segment the word as de:- +
be/ol + e/os, in order to, as you rightly observe, justify the
Latin-Slavic-Sanskrit etymology (based on the root *be/ol- "strength". I
was wondering, whether this *exact* pattern has any good parallels in
Latin, Celtic (where de:- is prominent) or probably elsewhere. de:mens
shows only parts of the pattern, whereas the de:bilis <
*de:habilis-etymology has de:- + hab + Lat. ilis (< *-ele/os), and it is at
the moment unclear to me whether this (old) etymology is the better
alternative.

For the time being I'm content with the fact that the segmentation
de:-bil-is may help to find a Sanskrit-Slavic etymology of this word, but
that it leaves us with a slightly odd (minor, marginal, or maybe even
unheard of) derivational pattern for Latin. That was my question, and my
thanks for your input.



Stefan

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 24 15:19:38 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 09:19:38 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.091938.0600.>

>On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Dear Indo-Europeanists:

>> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
>> "laryngeal".

[ moderator snip ]

>Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
>for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish) when
>it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples (including
>the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples

I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

Carol Justus


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 24 16:06:44 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 10:06:44 -0600
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.100644.0600.>

>cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>>The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
>>preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek oi~da,
>>i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb paradigm would
>>seem to be that between the singular and plural as in Gothic wait, witum.
>>In Hittite this vowel alternation is exemplified by verbs like kuenzi,
>>kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the
>>third person plural is zero grade as opposed to other full grade persons.
>>Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
>>not originally.

>Hittite does have e/a alternation in some verbs of the
>hi-conjugation, with <e> in the plural, <a> in the singular.
>E.g. sakhi, sakti, sakki, [*sekweni], sekteni (sakteni),
>[*sekkanzi] "to know" (similarly in the past tense).

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl

Quite right. It was the second person plural which had both forms (See the
1981 study: Nr. 7, Lfg. 10 of Kammenhuber's Materialen zu einem
hethitischen Thesaurus which includes all forms attested in texts known). A
major reason for doing exhaustive studies of Hittite 'know' and other verbs
such ak(k)-/ek(k)- 'eat' was to explore the ablaut types in Hittite that
differed from e.g., es-/as- 'be'. At that time I noted (pp. 14-16 on
etymology) just a few etymological relations. The major one was the
comparison with the singular:plural alternation of the old perfect (véda:
vidmá, wait:witum etc.) suggesting that Hittite 'know' might be
grammatically cognate, albeit not formally cognate, with the IE pattern.

An oddity which looked even older was the one with Latin sum, sumus, sunt:
es, est, estis that had a parallel in Hittite uhhi, umeni, uwanzi : auti,
auszi, aummeni, autteni 'see'. Then (as now) there were phonological
explanations for the 'sum' set, but the fact that Hittite 'see' showed such
a similar patterning raised questions in my mind as to whether the
phonological explanation of the Latin forms might not be ad hoc, that these
two (independent?) groupings of a 1sg, 1pl, and 3pl together with zero
grade-like forms as opposed to 2sg, 3sg, and 2pl full grade forms might not
reflect something almost totally lost to us.

In that context the sg:pl alternation looked like a reanalysis or leveling
of an older pattern on a basis (sg vs. pl) that we still understand.
Hittite sak(k)-/sek(k)- forms from texts then known are (1981:4-13):

Prs. Indic.
(variants are not noted unless the vocalism differed)
1s saggahhi,           Imperative / voluntative seggallu
2s sakti, sekti        Imper. sak(i)
3s sakki               Imper. sakdu, sakku
1p sekkueni
2p sakteni, sekteni
3p sek(k)anzi

Preterite Indicative
1s saggahhun
2s sakta
3s sakkis, sekta, sakta
1p sekkuen
2p sakten               Imperative sekten,[s]akten
3p sakkis, sekta, sakta Imperative sekkandu

Participle
SG sekkan-   PL  sakkanta (acc. neuter), sekkandus, sakkandus (acc. common)

The vowel alternation for 'know' ( sak(k)-/sek(k)-) is just about the
opposite of 'be' (es-/as-), barring, of course, the interesting 2pl
variants and the reversal with the participle. From this vantage point, and
the fact that Hittite third plural often contrasts in vowel variant with
all the other persons (esmi, essi, eszi, esmeni, esteni, asanzi and with
kuen- / kunnanzi etc.), when we see that the Greek, Sanskrit, and German
perfect has a regular sg:pl alternation (veda, vettha, veda vs. vidma,
vida, vidur), it looks like a sg:pl leveling, but an old one that got
shared with Germanic (of course we only have one pl form in Germanic, as
Gothic witum is 1p, 2p, and 3p).


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar 24 21:20:28 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 16:20:28 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.162028.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>What question applies if someone assumes that *kwekwos even existed in PIE
>when there's no direct evidence at all that it was ever even present in half
>of the known IE languages?

-- the general rule is that if there are cognates in more than three
otherwise unrelated and geographically widely separated branches of IE., it's
a PIE word.

Are you objecting to the existance of historical linguistics again?

Or is this a selective memory slip, as when you stated there was no reflex of
*ekwos in Anatolian?

*Kwekwlos:  reflexes in Germanic, Phrygian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Tocharian,
Celtic, Baltic.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Mar 24 18:52:20 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:52:20 -0000
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.185220.0000.>

Dear Steve and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2000 8:22 AM

> In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

 <snip>

> How likely is it that the unattested *kwekwlos was applied to the wheel
> independently in two different IE languages, [alledgedly] quite distant
> from one another" and therefore alledgedly not in contact?  If by that you
> mean, how likely is it that two peoples speaking very similar languages with
> the same word for something circular would both independently describe the
> wheel as being circular - well, the better question is probably: why wouldn't
> they?

[PR]
I have been following this interesting discussion from the sidelines.

I would like to offer a couple of ideas in this context:

1) I believe the root of *kwekw-lo- should be emended to *k^wek^w-lo- on the
strength of the palatal responses in Old Indian;

2) I believe the root **k^wel- is related to **k^wej6-, and that the common
semantic factor is 'curl';

3) I believe that it is likely that **k^wek^w-lo-, based on its proposed (by
me) semantics, refers to the spoked wheel, the integral part of which is the
felloe, 'curled around' the spokes;

4) Since solid wheels preceded spoked wheels, and certainly presumably were
the wheels used for the ox-carts of the roaming Indo-Europeans, and were not
semantiacally appropriate for a term like **k^wek^w-lo-, it would seem to me
that the term should be put into a time context at which *spoked* wheels are
attested.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Thu Mar 16 04:52:35 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:52:35 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.235235.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following posting is edited from two versions submitted by Mr. Colkitto,
  each with some problems.  I am taking the liberty of posting this edited
  version so that the discussion can continue.
  --rma ]

>> Could someone spell out in more detail what these 'archaic characteristics'
>> are? Or at least the most salient ones. >>

> -- with respect to the Baltic languages, particularly the declension of the
> noun and adjective, with seven cases, singular and plural, and preseveration
> of the dual as well in some dialects.  This is almost completely unchanged
> from PIE.

> The Baltic verbal system is more innovative, but the PIE present tense is
> well-preserved, and the future represents a PIE disiderative formation
> revalued as a simple future.

> There PIE lexicon is preserved to a really startling degree:  eg, *dubus >
> dubus (deep), *gwous > guovs (cow), *h(1)rudh > rudas (red), etc.

> The most archaic Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Old Prussian) are about as
> close to PIE as some of the very first attested IE languages.  Conservatism
> of a mind-boggling degree.

This argument has already been played out in Baltic and Slavic studies.  The
term "archaic" in linguistics should be used with extreme caution.  Once again,
I am taking the liberty of quoting myself (pp. 91-94)

3.7 Slavic and Baltic: Relative Degrees of `Archaism'

Although at first sight Baltic appears far more `archaic' than Slavic; in fact,
certain scholars have even advocated using Baltic, especially Lithuanian, data
as a check on CS reconstructions (see especially Otkupšcikov 1974, 1983,
Jasanoff 1983a: 142, although for criticism of this view see, e.g., Stankiewicz
1988), this generalisation needs some clarifying in at least two respects.

3.7.1 Defining `Archaic'

In historical linguistics (and probably in other related fields) the terms
`more archaic' and `less archaic' need some quantifying.  To take one fairly
obvious, albeit extreme, example, probably no scholars would rate English as
`more archaic' than German overall, and yet for certain features, in phonology,
morphology, and syntax, this is an fair statement, e.g.,

1) The preservation of Gc þ in English as opposed to its loss in German,
e. g., E three - Ge drei < CG *þrij-.

2) The related preservation of unshifted Gc t, d in English as opposed to their
development to c (orthographic z), t under the Second Sound Shift in German,
e.g., E ten - Ge zehn (< CG *tehun).

3) The preservation of IE w in English as opposed to its development to v in
German, e.g., E win - Ge (ge)winnen [(ge)vinen].

4) The preservation of a three-fold alternation in certain Gc Class I strong
verb paradigms, e.g., E drive (< IE *-ei-) - drove (< IE *-oi-) - driven (< IE
*-i-), as opposed to Ge treiben (< IE *-ei-) - trieb - getrieben (the
generalisation of the reflex of CG *-i-).

5) The failure of English to develop HAVE-constructions such as Ge Ich habe
Hunger `I have hunger' "I am hungry".

6) The preservation of 1st sg am in English as opposed to its loss in German.

7) The preservation of certain lexical items from Common Germanic (and IE) in
English as opposed to their loss in German, e.g., E tree, choose, ask.

Of course, it would be very easy to think of far more examples where German
preserves archaisms where English has innovated, especially when dialectal
materials are considered; the point here is that `more archaic' and `less
archaic' are relative terms, to be used with a degree of caution.  Within
Slavic, Russian may be seen as `more archaic' than Polish with regard to
certain syntactic constructions and lexical items (Orr 1992), whereas from the
point of view of the evolution of gender Polish may be said to be more archaic
in some respects than Russian (cf. Slobin 1985: 1194, 1216; Weiss 1993:
99-101). Manczak 1991: 74-76 makes a similar proposal regarding the oft-cited
status of Sardinian as the most archaic Rmc language.  This perception of
Sardinian is based on the fact that it preserves the original Italian velars
before front vowels; Manczak, however, shows that from the point of view of the
lexicon, standard Italian is actually more archaic than Sardinian.

3.7.2 Defining `Baltic'

`Common Slavic', `West Baltic', and `East Baltic' are relatively
straightforward concepts; `Balto-Slavic' is much less so; but the problems in
reconstructing `Common Baltic' are immense.  In fact, it has even been
suggested that Slavic is originally a type of `West Baltic' (Zeps 1984), cf.
also Ivanov and Toporov 1961; Toporov 1988.

At this stage it might be advisable to summarise the points where Slavic may be
said to be `more archaic' than Baltic in the nominal declension.  In most of
them it will be noted that Slavic disagrees with only a part of Baltic in many
forms.  Some will necessarily be contentious, cf. especially (6), (7), (8).

1) The preservation of the neut in Slavic as opposed to its loss over most of
Baltic; in this context it is startling, that Lithuanian, which is usually
taken as the most `archaic' form of Baltic, has almost completely lost the
neut, while Old Prussian has preserved it (but see Schmalstieg 1992).

2) The related restoration of the IE anim/inanim distinction (see 3.2.3, and
Kry ko 1994: 198).

3) The preservation of a neut *s-stem paradigm in Slavic as opposed to its
near-loss in Baltic, e.g., OCS slovo `word' - gen sg slovese.

4) The preservation of a * -stem paradigm in Slavic as opposed to its loss in
Baltic, e.g., OCS svekry `mother-in-law'- gen sg svekru ve;

5) The more recent survival of length in the nom sg form of the fem * -stems in
Slavic than in Baltic, cf. OCS raka `hand'< *rank ; Lith rankà `hand' <
*ranka would have developed into *ranko without shortening, and we might refer
to the fem *a-stems in Lithuanian, as in Germanic.  It should be noted,
however, that here Old Prussian agrees with Slavic against East Baltic, cf.
Lith galvà `head'; Latvian galva id < *- as opposed to OPr galv id; OCS glava
id < *- ;

6) The failure of Slavic to develop the postposition *-en as an affix, cf. OCS
syn x ; Lith s nuosè `son' loc pl, Old Lith -su.

7) The development of a gen pl form in Baltic which may reflect *- m as opposed
to the lack of any such form in Slavic.

8) The greater extension of *-m as an acc marker in Baltic than in Slavic.

9) Finally, one might also cite the fact that while extra cases have emerged in
both Baltic and Slavic, Lithuanian might be said to have carried this
development further, see Stang 1966: 228-32, e.g., galvà `head'; acc sg
gálv , illative sg galvõn, gen sg galvõs, allative sg galvõsp, loc sg
galvojè adessive sg galváip; within Slavic, Russian might be said to have
developed new cases in the Gen-2 and Loc-2, cf. Jakobson 1932, 1958.  In any
event, this point only serves to highlight the difficulty of categorising whole
groups of languages as `more or less archaic'; one part of Baltic (Latvian) may
have lost cases (or failed to develop extra ones).

(references available off lst)

Robert Orr


From alderson at netcom.com  Sat Mar 25 02:28:58 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:28:58 -0800
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.20.0003151425040.21185-100000@vesuri.Helsinki.FI>
 (message from Robert Whiting on Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:28:08 +0200
 (EET))
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.182858.0800.>

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote regarding
the conservative nature of Lithuanian:

> Expressed in terms of a tree model, it sounds very much like a scenario that
> Steve Long proposed:  At any node on the tree, there is a non-innovating
> branch and other branches.  If we follow the non-innovating branch from each
> node, at the bottom of the tree we arrive at a language that is practically
> identical to PIE (in this case, Lithuanian).  Now everyone said 'no, no, that
> can't be right because actually all branches innovate, just in different
> ways.'  The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue against this.  Nodes in
> a tree must be based on some comparative linguistic information.  The only
> such information that is useful is some innovation that appears in one branch
> and not in the other.  Shared retentions don't propagate either as waves or
> trees.  They just stay where they were left, like a well-trained dog.  Of
> course the fact that Lithuanian was always on the non-innovating branch (or
> least innovative branch if you prefer) after satemization and RUKI (and only
> partly on the innovating branch even there; sort of holding on to the end of
> the branch with one paw) says nothing about where it was located
> geographically.

The problem is that there is *no* IE language without significant innovations
vis-a-vis all the others.  Lithuanian is conservative in its *retention* of the
nominal case system (for the most part--though it loses one and adds a couple
based on a Finnic model), but it is innovative in the verb; which counts more
heavily?

Further, if we look at the *phonology*, Lithuanian is extremely innovative:  It
merges the voiced plain and voiced aspirate series of stops, it has contrastive
palatalized and non-palatalized series of obstruents, it merges *o(:) and *a(:)
and otherwise disturbs the vowel system, and it moves the IE accent from the
center of the word to the ends.  So now tell me how conservative it is.

There is *no* branch on the tree that can be labeled "non-innovating", and we
do ourselves a disservice as linguists, and a greater one to the non-linguists
looking to us for guidance, by pretending that there is.

								Rich Alderson


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Mar 25 10:28:03 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 05:28:03 -0500
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.052803.0500.>

"Brian M. Scott" <BMScott at stratos.net> wrote:
> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
> leaf of the tree.

You >may< come to a leaf that is non-innovating for all >branch
determining< innovations. A branch might innovate without splitting
further. Also the non-innovating branch might go extinct, while other
branches continue to split.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Mar 27 03:19:35 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 22:19:35 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.221935.EST.>

In a message dated 3/24/2000 10:04:49 PM, BMScott at stratos.net wrote:

>Start at the root, and at each node
>follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
>the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

>At each node you start afresh, so it's not really meaningful
>to speak of 'one and the same branch'.

Actually one would not start afresh at each node.  IF your "branch-offs" only
mark a limited set of innovations at each node, then those innovations in
theory will not be found in the last chronological residue of the
non-innovating language/languages.

There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying anything new
happened in that non-innovating residue.  Only certain innovations are
determinative at each node.  Other innovations don't count, just as
retentions don't count.

So the "node" ONLY represents languages in which the defining innovations
occur.  There is nothing 'new' in the other languages that can mean there is
a 'fresh start' at such points for those languages.  They are treated
precisely as if they were made up entirely of retentions.  The fact that they
may be changing internally is irrelevant to this kind of methodology, because
these changes have not been designated in any of the nodes.

(I have brought up in the past that there are taxonomic methods used in some
areas of evolutionary theory that do measure the relative quantative variance
in biological morphology and do use it as a narrow measure of chronological
relatedness, mutation or parallel adaptiveness.  These methods in effect use
both retentions and even minor innovations to guess the number of generations
separating filials from parentals.  In this kind of analysis, ANY and ALL
innovations (or lack of retentions) are used to measure something like
relatedness.  The starting assumption is that all progeny should be identical
to the parent in all forms and in every filial generation.  Quantitative
variances in effect yield rates of mutation or other effecting factors.

In this kind of analysis, you may in some ways be "starting fresh" at each
new F generation.)

>It is equally true that if you always follow
>the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

Well, it is interesting to some of us.  Because it means that the methodology
yields an IE language or set of IE languages which innovated nothing - within
the scope of the innovations that were used earlier to differentiate all the
other IE languages.  Depending on whether you call something an innovation or
retention can of course completely change the identification of that language
which 'innovated nothing.'

Regards,
Steve Long


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Mon Mar 27 14:58:11 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:58:11 +0300
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <4d.2228bbd.2602a34f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.175811.0300.>

On Thu, 16 Mar, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 3/16/00 12:29:13 AM Mountain Standard Time,
>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

<snip>

[quoting JoatSimeon at aol.com on 13 Mar]
>>>What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
>>>the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup
>>>of PIE they became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than
>>>Slavic.

>> The evidence fairly clearly shows that both Baltic and Slavic
>> were transitional areas in both the satemization (palatal
>> assibilation) and RUKI palatization changes that had their core
>> in I-Ir (although RUKI is more generalized in Slavic than in
>> Baltic).  Essentially all this shows is that Baltic and Slavic
>> were still in fairly close contact with I-Ir. in contrast to
>> Greek, Italic, Germanic and points west which were not affected
>> at all by these changes (relic areas).  In short, all the other
>> IE stocks have already broken off or are simply out of range
>> (which is not quite the same thing as they could still be at the
>> other end of a dialect continuum) before this change.  And
>> conservatism after this point indicates that the language was
>> consistently a relic area in further changes originating in the
>> dialect continuum

>-- this seems to be a terminological problem here.  That's
>pretty much what I was trying to say.  Pardon the infelicities of
>expression!

Yes, I would say that this is pretty much a difference of
terminology as I simply tried to restate the proposition in terms
of a wave model.  But there is one difference, which may still be
terminological, but is nonetheless a difference.  You said that
Baltic and Slavic "_were_ in the 'innovative core'", while I said
that they "were still in fairly close contact" with it and were
transitional areas for the particular changes we were talking
about.  Whether the difference between being 'in the core' or
being 'on the edge' of it is significant or not does not seem to
be worth arguing about (sort of like "once you are in the forest,
can you go further in or can you only go out?"), but, as you say,
it's a matter of degree.

>>The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue against this.

>-- it's a matter of degree.  Lithuanian certainly changed far
>less; but it still changed.

Of course it changed.  Change is not just a linguistic universal,
it is a universal universal.  That is to say that it has to do
with the way the universe works -- everything changes.   This is a
by-product of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  What would be
truly remarkable would be if Lithuanian had not changed at all.

And as for it's being a matter of degree, again, of course it's a
matter of degree.  Anything that isn't a binary opposition
(yes/no, on/off, 0/1) is a matter of degree.  But if we are
talking about a binary branch at a node defined by an innovation
on one branch and a lack of innovation on the other, then it is
not a matter of degree.  It is a binary opposition.  Now what
happens on the individual branches after the bifurcation is beyond
our control.  The less innovative branch may suddenly take it
into its head to innovate like mad without branching again while
the innovating branch may suddenly become very conservative.

Again, we are not saying different things here, we are saying the
same thing differently.  Lithuanian was obviously on the
innovative branch of the node that is defined by palatal
assibilation and RUKI but after this change this branch seems to
have become very conservative (Sanskrit, Slavic, Baltic).  By
contrast, the non-innovative branch of this node subsequently
underwent such extensive innovations as to take any of its
members out of the running for the most archaic surviving IE
language.  This has made the branch that actually innovated the
more conservative by default.  But this status only lasts until
the next bifurcation and then it starts afresh from the new node.
It must be remembered that not only are Sanskrit, Slavic, and
Baltic on the innovating branch of the palatal assibilation node,
but so are Armenian and Albanian, which are not particularly noted
for their conservatism.

Finally, it must be remembered that the changes that define nodes
may be in different areas (phonology, morphology, syntax, or
semantics [lexicon]) and so not every node will affect a given
area.  Lithuanian's claim to great archaism lies mostly in noun
morphology (especially in the number of cases and the forms of
the endings and in a number of particularly archaic looking
lexical items).  There may be other languages that are more
archaic in other areas.

>>But the point is that *something* has to be; if not Lithuanian,
>>then something else.  It is equally against the law of averages
>>for a team or an individual to win a single elimination
>>tournament; but someone always does.  In the IE superbowl,
>>Lithuanian is apparently the winner.  But that still doesn't say
>>anything specific about where it started out geographically.

>-- however, it's not just Lithuanian.  Apart from the other
>Baltic languages, there's the example of Slavic -- which, while
>not quite as conservative, is still notably so.

Again, we are not saying different things.  The node that
produced Lithuanian from the other Baltic languages would have
been in the branch that was less innovative from the previous
node (actually, one of the other Baltic languages, like Old
Prussian or Curonian, may have been even more conservative, but
since little or nothing of them survive it is not possible to
say).  Similarly, the node that produced Baltic on one branch and
presumably Slavic on the other (assuming a Balto-Slavic unity,
which is not universally accepted) would have again been on the
least innovative branch of the next higher node producing the
observed effect of two conservative branches with one slightly
less conservative than the other.  But again (or still) this
doesn't say anything specific about where they started out
geographically except that Baltic was always in close proximity
to Slavic.

>>But is it clear that there is no substratum influence?  There
>>are a number of Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a
>>considerably larger number of Baltic loanwords in Balto-Finnic.
>>Looks like about what one would expect if Baltic were a
>>superstratum language over Western Finnic.  Just because there
>>wasn't an unknown substratum, as there apparently was in
>>Germanic, that provided a lot of words of unknown origin to the
>>language doesn't mean that there wasn't some substratum.

>-- its a question of degree.  There are certainly substrata in
>Baltic, but not to nearly the same degree as in Germanic.  The
>number of lexical items which can be traced to PIE is
>proportionately much larger and Baltic that in, say, Germanic or
>Greek.

Here, I am less inclined to see it as a matter of degree,
especially as the claim was originally stated "That's where the
absense of substratal influence comes in." If the absence of
substratum influence is important, then surely the presence
of a non-trivial amount of it changes the situation.  But the
presence of more archaic lexical items and fewer obvious
substrate borrowings could equally well be a result of the
refusal of the language to accept loans as of its still being
in its original home.  German, for example, for some considerable
time simply refused to accept loan words or neologisms unless
they blended seamlessly with German phonology, preferring to
calque them instead when absolutely necessary (e.g., Eng.
exposition, Ger. Ausstellung; Eng. rhinoceros, Ger. Nashorn).
English, on the other hand, just gobbles up loanwords and
neologisms regardless of whether they violate English
phonotactics or not (e.g., aardvark, gnu, syzygy).  This is
simply not a function of how close these respective languages are
to their original homelands.

If we didn't have a historical record of the situation, the
argument of conservatism plus lack of substratum influence could,
other things being equal, be used to claim that Iceland is the
original Scandinavian homeland.

>>>There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other
>>>features in the area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was
>>>historically attested).

>>Again, useful for indicating that (a) the language was in its
>>original home, (b) the language moved into a previously
>>uninhabited area, (c) the speakers of the language
>>systematically renamed or calqued all river names in their own
>>language, or (d) the speakers of the language drove off or killed
>>all the original inhabitants before they could learn the original
>>names of the topographical features (i.e., no period of
>>linguistic contact).

>-- one has to make a balance of probabilities in these cases.
>Even the case of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, which is
>about as complete a case of linguistic replacement as exists in
>the historical record, not all the river and place names were
>changed.  River names in particular seem to persist.

Yes, river names seem to be particularly persistent.  But it must
be kept in mind that, in non-literate societies, linguistic
contact is essential for the transfer of any linguistic
information.  Unless a language has been recorded somehow, that
language exists only in the minds of its speakers.  When the last
speaker of a language dies, unless the language is recorded
somehow, that language is gone forever.  There is no hope of
recovering it through DNA analysis of the remains of its speakers
or archaeological excavation of their material culture.  The only
hope of recovering it is time travel with a camcorder, not yet a
serious option.

Now one way that a language can be recorded (albeit imperfectly)
is through loanwords in a surviving (at least surviving until it
can be recorded) language.  If there are such loanwords that do
not fit the normal patterns of a language and that cannot be
identified as coming from any known language, we can postulate
contact with an otherwise unknown language.  If there are no such
loanwords, however, we can only say that there are no such
loanwords.  Negative evidence cannot be used to construct
specific scenarios.  Negative evidence only means that there is
no evidence.  Negative evidence could mean that there was no such
language, that there was no linguistic contact (bilingual
speakers), or that the second language simply refused to accept
loanwords (or possibly even consciously purged them at a later
date).  Each of these scenarios will be identically represented
in the evidence:  no loanwords.

Making a balance of probabilities is fine so long as you know
what all the probabilities are.  But a balance of probabilities
doesn't tell you what happened, it only tells you what is likely
to have happened.  And if history is "was eigentlich geschah"
that is not quite good enough (although it is done regularly).
Using a balance of probabilities on historical events that have
already happened and claiming that it has to represent what
actually happened is simply a misuse of probability.  Probability
is used to predict the outcome of multiple events in the future
based on the number of possible outcomes and the relative
frequency with which the possible outcomes can occur.  But even
when used correctly for this purpose, probability still doesn't
tell you what is going to happen in a single event, only that the
distribution of the outcomes of multiple events will accord with
the probabilities.  The laws of probability have no memory of
previous events.  Otherwise, the chance of heads with a fair coin
being 1:2, two tosses of the coin would guarantee one head -- and
it ain't so.

If you look at the paramutual odds and see that the favorite is
listed at 1:3 and Beetlebomb is listed at 200:1, that means that
the people who make a living giving odds on horse races think
that the favorite is 600 times more likely to win the race than
Beetlebomb, or expressed another way, if the race were to be run
600 times, the favorite would win 599 times and Beetlebomb would
win once.  But the race isn't going to be run 600 times, it is
only going to be run once.  And if Beetlebomb has a legitimate
chance of winning the race once in 600 times, there is nothing
in the laws of probability that says that that once can't be the
first (and only) time that the race is run.  If it is, then the
rules of probability just say that the next 599 times the race
is run, the favorite should win every time.  So long shots do
come in (sometimes) and the favorite doesn't always win.

So it is with historical events (including historical
linguistics).  There is only one event and it is possible,
depending on the circumstances, for a long shot to come in (cf.
the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588).  So in looking at
events for which there is no historical record, saying that it
is likely for a certain event to have had a certain outcome does
not prove that it did have that outcome unless it is impossible
to have had any other outcome.  In eliminative induction only the
impossible can be eliminated.  The merely improbable can still be
the truth.

Now there is nothing wrong with saying that the most likely
outcome is the most likely to have happened (in fact, it is sort
of a truism, or at least a definition of 'most likely').  But it
must be kept in mind that doing this is what is known as a
"purely hypothetical" solution.  The solution relies on the
hypothesis that the most likely outcome is what actually
happened.  But in much of history, and particularly in
prehistory, purely hypothetical solutions are the only ones that
are available.  And in such cases, purely hypothetical solutions
are frequently not marked as such.

So, once again, I don't say that it is an unreasonable
explanation that the Balto-Slavic homeland is very near the
IE Urheimat.  I just say that it is a purely hypothetical one
and therefore not necessarily the correct one.  I don't say it
can't be right, I just say it doesn't have to be right, and as
long as we are agreed on this, then there is no dispute about
the hypothesis.

But I do dispute the contention that linguistic conservatism or
archaism per se is an indication of proximity to the Urheimat.
There are too many counterexamples of conservative and archaic
languages that have moved from their original location and are
now surrounded by heterochthonous languages where the archaism or
conservatism is a result of a phenomenon known as "language
loyalty" that resists the influence of foreign languages (or any
kind of change) in order to retain the speakers' linguistic (and
hence ethno-cultural) identity.  By contrast, the languages that
have "stayed at home" are not subject to similar pressures and
are more free to innovate, to follow linguistic fads, and to
experiment with more expressive modes of speech.

These different pressures are one of the things that contributed
to the "archaizing periphery -- innovative core" model, but it
can be seen here that, unlike wave model of linguistic change,
the core and the periphery are subject to different but
counterbalancing pressures.  The periphery is subjected to
influences from outside languages but tends to resist them
because of language loyalty, while the core is not subjected to
outside linguistic influences but has no need to adopt a
conservative stance in self-defense of its linguistic identity.
The response to these various pressures tends to be governed by
sociological factors (prestige, intragroup bonding, desire for
novelty or for the familiar, etc.) rather than by purely
linguistic ones, so geographical location with respect to the
homeland doesn't have anything specific to say about whether a
language is going to be archaizing or innovative.

Once again, I don't say that the archaic nature of Lithuanian
speaks *against* its being at or close to the Urheimat.  I just
don't think that it necessarily has anything to say *for* it
either.  As Brian Scott pointed out (23 Mar), if we have a tree
of binary nodes (admittedly, an oversimplification), if we follow
the least innovative branch from each node (however we choose to
measure "least innovative", assuming that we can, and even
assuming that we can tell the difference between the archaism and
the innovation) then we will eventually reach a branch that
contains the language that is the most archaic.  We have to.
Similarly, if we always follow the most innovative path we will
reach a branch that contains the most innovative language.  We
have to.  The most innovative and the least innovative languages
*have* to be there, but I don't think that the fact that they are
there means that they *have* to tell us where these languages
started out with relation to the Urheimat.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From sarima at friesen.net  Sat Mar 25 05:46:04 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 21:46:04 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <20000324130240.64110.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.214604.0800.>

At 06:31 PM 3/24/00 +0530, Gábor Sándi wrote:
>I am talking about good fits and less good ones. I know that names for
>animals and plants can be changed, lost and transferred. In fact, some of
>the biological data do not provide good evidence for the Kurgan hypothesis:
>if *bhbgos meant "beech", it is curious that the beech tree is absent from
>the north Pontic area (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in
>Mallory and Adams).

Does this take into account changed distributions of the tree in ancient
times?  The climate has changed substantially since circa 4000 BCE.  Tree
distributions will have changed.

>In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE. If
>Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
>nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
>this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
>technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

It would have to be loan-translation, to account for the phonetic facts.
(As in, e.g. German 'Fernsehen' from Anglicized Latin 'television').

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar 25 10:40:26 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 10:40:26 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.104026.0000.>

Dear Gabor and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabor Sandi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 1:01 PM

[ moderator snip ]

> In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE.
> If Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
> nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
> this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
> technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

[PR]
I wonder how productive it is to adopt arguments from non-linguists that
seem to have little likelihood of being accepted by linguists.

I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

On the other hand, it, at least, appears possible that **H(1)o:k^u'-s
*might* be derived from *H(1)ek^uo-s although the lengthened vowel is a
problem.

Secondly, it is generally more likely that an adjective ('fast') was derived
from a noun ('horse') than the reverse --- particularly in view of the early
relative paucity of adjectives, and the existence of terms like
**k^(h)e:i-to- [my emendation]  (*ke:i-to-), 'fast'.

 <snip>

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Sat Mar 25 08:02:54 2000
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 02:02:54 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.020254.0600.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following material is quoted from a message posted on 16 March 2000 by
  Eric Plourde (plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA).  I apologize for not having
  added the citation to Carol Justus' response from which it is taken here.
  --rma ]

>>On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> Dear Indo-Europeanists:

>>> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>>> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
>>> "laryngeal".

>[ moderator snip ]

>>Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
>>for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish)
>>when it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples
>>(including the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples

Carol Justus wrote:

>I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
>happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
>Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

Absolutely!  Moreover, it is essential to separate a regular phonetic change
(k- > h- in Hungarian and Germanic) from a sporadic change, such as the
proposed k- > H-.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at memphis.edu                    University of Memphis


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar 25 11:03:57 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 11:03:57 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.110357.0000.>

Dear Carol and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Carol F. Justus" <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:19 PM

[ moderator snip ]

[ Moderator note:
  The following was quoted by Carol Justus from a posting by Eric Plourde
  (plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA) on 16 March 2000.  My apologies for not
  having added the citation information before.
  --rma ]

>> Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
>> for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish)
>> when it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples
>> (including the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples

[CJ]
> I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
> happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
> Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

[PR]
It is, of course, vital.

Although I can find much in Greenberg's book to praise, I suspect this
suggestion of his will reveal itself as poorly conceived --- perhaps based
on something as ethereal as Hittite [h].

I believe the fundamental problem here is a reluctance to assume different
origins for morphemes that semantically were closely related and merged.

Greenberg suggested that IE feminine -*(i)H(2)a: might be derived from
*-(i)ko, a formant used in various language as a diminutive (p. 166).

Based on my research, in addition to a formant that would appear in IE as
*ke/o ('child'), there is another formant, *H(2)e/o (better, **-a:, I
believe), with the basic meaning 'hollow', which, for obvious reasons,
became a designation of females based on sexual characteristics, and was
used as a feminine formant.

The reason for my original question was that I consider this suggestion of
his highly unlikely, and  that the variant forms for 'bone' etc. have
another better explanation.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon Mar 27 01:29:04 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 01:29:04 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.012904.0000.>

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2000 4:21 AM

> Pat Ryan wrote:

>> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=3DIE or early IE k became a
>> "laryngeal".

>> Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
>> as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
>> of H".

>> I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
>> another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
>> relationship.

[LC]

> I haven't seen Greenberg's book, but this is strange, since IE languages are
> full of words with initial k- (k'-).  Any such change would have to have been
> very rare.  And would there have been a conditioning factor?  Hard to find
> one with so few examples (impossible, of course, if there's only one).

> If there were any connection (unlikely, I think), one might think rather of a
> "hardening" of laryngeals to a velar stop, perhaps in sandhi -- since final
> laryngeals were common enough, one could consider whether /-VH HV-/ was
> realized as [-Vk kV-], the second word then being reanalyzed as /kV-/.  That,
> at least, could have a certain phonetic plausibility.  But please, folks,
> this is *highly* speculative, and unless several more plausible examples can
> be found, it isn't worth the phosphors it is written on.

[PR]

We are in complete agreement. I was asking for other examples from
list-members to so if I could imagine Greenberg's suggestion as more
plausible.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Mar 25 10:24:00 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 05:24:00 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.052400.0500.>

> But what is this "diachronic process" if not one of progression from
> non-basic to "basic" (better I think would be "abstract") colour term?

This made me wonder if we also need to worry about cyclical evolution:
Can a non-abstract color word replace an abstract color word? What does
that say about the B & K classification?


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 26 08:20:12 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 09:20:12 +0100
Subject: Hittite walwa 'lion' WAS: Bears and why they are mostly...
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.092012.0100.>

>> The initial *w- in this Schwebeablauting root can be proved
>> with the help of the greek material, cf. e.g.
>> Tro:es de {F}leiousin eoikotes o:mophagoisi

Unreliable, unless the digamma is required in many or most occurrences of
this  word.  Lengthening before a resonant had become an unexplained
phenomenon in epic poetry, so it spread to words where it did not originally
belong.

Unfortunately I have no Homeric concordance, so can't check.

Peter


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Sat Mar 25 12:36:15 2000
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 07:36:15 -0500
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
In-Reply-To: <11.1e262cd.2603452e@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.073615.0500.>

On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 03:22:06AM -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
	. . .
> How likely is it that the unattested *kwekwlos was applied to the wheel
> independently in two different IE languages, [alledgedly] quite distant from
> one another" and therefore alledgedly not in contact?  If by that you mean,
> how likely is it that two peoples speaking very similar languages with the
> same word for something circular would both independently describe the wheel
> as being circular - well, the better question is probably: why wouldn't they?

In modern times two countries speaking the _same_ language as well
as having very close economic and cultural contacts have developed
different words for new technology:

	wrench		- spanner
	elevator	- lift
	hood		- bonnet
	truck		- lorrie
	streetcar	- tram
	tube		- valve
--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Mar 26 07:45:55 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 02:45:55 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.024555.EST.>

In a message dated 3/25/2000 12:55:59 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>Are you objecting to the existance of historical linguistics again?

Definitely not.  But I sure have problems with YOUR version of historical
linguistics.

>-- the general rule is that if there are cognates in more than three
>otherwise unrelated and geographically widely separated branches of IE., it's
>a PIE word.

I don't know how three IE languages can be "otherwise unrelated."  Is this
another one of the special concepts in your version of historical linguistics?

With regard to "geographically widely separated" - I have no idea how those
languages could always be "widely separated" and still have been once the
same language.  There must have been an interim time.  What I wrote was:

<<Does the HOW LIKELY question apply when someone assumes that two different
IE languages could have once been the same language in the same place and then
separate and MAGICALLY become "quite distant from each other" without the
intermediate step (required of most phenomenon in this physical universe) of
first being close-by - and at that point very amenable to contact and
linguistic exchange?>>

<<Or is this a selective memory slip, as when you stated there was no reflex of
*ekwos in Anatolian?>>

I think the memory slip is yours.  No known word in Hittite.  As has been
pointed out many, many, many times on this list, the Luwian 'asuwa' looks to
be a IIr or Mitanni-Aryan borrowing, unless you assume some kind of special
Luwian satemization that could yield *-kw > sw.  (I don't know how Miguel
explains the a-.)

In any case, there is NO clear evidence that Anatolian had *ekwos as the
native word for horse.  Except in your version of historical linguistics, of
course.

<<*Kwekwlos:  reflexes in Germanic, Phrygian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Tocharian,
Celtic, Baltic.>>

*Telephone: reflexes in all IE languages.  Give me a break.

Steve Long


From hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu  Sun Mar 26 04:29:58 2000
From: hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 23:29:58 -0500
Subject: Typology and the phonetics of laryngeals
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.232958.0500.>

In the various IE handbooks, I've seen a number of phonetic solutions proposed
for the problem of what the laryngeals were phonetically, but all of them look
like typologically odd sets of sounds given standard reconstructions for PIE.

In the '70s and '80s, phonological typology was called on pretty heavily to
motivate the glottalic hypothesis for PIE.  I'm puzzled about the near absence
of application of typology to the question of what the phonetic values of the
laryngeals might have been.

Have I missed obvious sources?  Has there been discussion of the typology of
laryngeals?

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 26 10:20:07 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 11:20:07 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.112007.0100.>

Jens said:
> There was stress before PIE, and stress
> after PIE, why not _in_ PIE?

I find this argument more persuasive than your earlier ones, Jens, but we
are still left with the evidence of Greek, which does not appear to have had
a stress accent until well after the classical period.   Sanskrit accent is
also described as pitch, but I know the details less well, and cannot argue
that stress is precluded by the evidence, the way I would wish to for Greek.
I know that the Sanskrit grammarians use only pitch terms, not stress, and
that there is no sign of the stress effects on adjacent syllables that we
would expect to find with a stress accent.

If these two languages did indeed have no stress accent, then your logic
seems shakier - it is not necessarily true that the PIE stress accent
continued unabated from the earliest time.

Peter


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Mar 27 18:27:01 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:27:01 +0200
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.202701.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Herb Stahlke" <HSTAHLKE at gw.bsu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 4:28 PM

>>>> xiang at free.fr 03/16/00 05:15AM >>>

>>> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
>>> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
>>> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
>>> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
>>> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

>> I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
>> accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the
>> other less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to
>> assume IE had both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence
>> indicates PIE had a pitch accent.

> A pitch accent can also turn into a lexical tone system as has happened in
> Niger-Congo, where Bantu and Mande preserve pitch accent while western
> Benue-Congo, Kwa, and Kru have a lot of lexical tone.  I'm curious what it
> was about PIE pitch accent that none of the dialects became lexical tone
> languages.

> Herb Stahlke

[Ed]
Without pretending to prove anything, I would like to add some information:

Contrary to Castilian stress accent marking, Valencian Catalan uses two
different diacritics to mark stress: acutus for a rising pitch on the stressed
syllable, gravis for the descending pitch: València (e-gravis), but: Gandía
(i-acutus). Maybe Miguel Carrasquer can tell us more about Catalan
accentuation.

This pitch is not lexical, only contextual in relation with the stressed
syllable; only the position of the stress may have lexical implications, like
in English, e.g. ((a) record, (to) record).

Ed.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 26 08:44:10 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 09:44:10 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.094410.0100.>

>>> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a
>>> combination of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

What began as a cautious statement which allowed for exceptions has now
apparently become dogma.   There are counter-examples within Sanskrit.
For example
(a) Rigveda 1:35:5 has hiatus in pra-ugam.   The u vowel cannot be taken as
a vocalic form of w, nor can a-u be considered here as [a +w].
(b) in Rigveda 1:1:9 the written svastaye must be scanned (and therefore was
pronouned) as su-astaye.   This is not uncommon, and affects some forms with
written -y- as well.
(c) The wise suggestion that vi-yukta should be distinguished from vyukta
(vi+vac).

So the analysis of Sanskrit as a one vowel language is not totally true.

> Old Indian [a]+[y] becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] becomes /o:/.

On the one vowel theory of Sanskrit, these combinations cannot exist.
[a+i]> /e:/, and [a+u} > /o:/.   [y] and [w] occur before vowels, and remain
after [a].  For example, the aorist of the root yuj (yoke) is ayuji.

y is very rare before a consonant in Sanskrit, and perhaps only in -yy-
and -yv-.
Furthermore, how would you explain -e:y-?

> But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian?    It does not
> exist so far as we can determine.

Yes it does - the law of palatalisation:  Kwe > ca, kekara > cakara etc.

> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
> preceding /j/ etc

Very far from obvious, as there are so many counter-examples.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon Mar 27 02:12:10 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 02:12:10 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.021210.0000.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:36 PM

> At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> As for "(true) absolute unversal(s)", I do not know of any in linguistics
>> or any other field. I enjoyed Plato myself but I think it is a mistake to
>> take him seriously.

[SF]

> Let's put it this way: the rarer something is among living languages, the
> more evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language.

[PRp]

>> I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
>> transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
>> /o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly
>> treat these sounds as diphthongal.

>> But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian? Or the simple
>> /o/.

>> It does not exist so far as we can determine.

>> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>> preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
>> /w/; and, as they have no existence outside of these conditioned
>> environments, they cannot be considered phonemes, whether they retained
>> their earliest diphthongal character or not.

[SF]

> When the diphthongal character is lost, so is the *conditioning*
> *environment*.  Thus at that point they do indeed become independent
> phonemes, namely /e:/ and /o:/.   This is standard phonology.  New sounds
> become phonemic when the conditioning factor is lost.  (Now this does
> produce an unusual situation of a language with more contrasts in it long
> vowel system than its short, but that is not unheard of, and Sanskrit is
> far better attested than many living languages, so it is hardly
> reconstructed anyhow].

[PR]

Well, if you will forgive me for saying so, I think you have completely
missed the point of the question.

We are talking about whether Old Indian *at one point* had basically a one
vowel system.

I think the facts make obvious that there was a time, however brief, when
Old Indian had only /a/ as a vowel, with [ay] and [aw] on the way to
becoming /ai/ -> /e:/ and /au/ -> /o:/.

Above you wrote: "the rarer something is among living languages, the more
evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language."

If that is your position, why not put it in practice on all questions under
consideration?

Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
(giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

>> [SFp]

>>> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
>>> the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
>>> any less phonemic in the current language.

>> [PRp]

>> Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

[SF]

> I am not sure what your point here is.  I was just pointing out that being
> *derived* diachronically is not sufficient reason to deny *synchronic*
> phoneme status, and gave an example of that.

[PR]

I confess I do not have any idea about what "*derived* diachronically" is
supposed to mean.

I am talking about a *synchronic* situation during which Old Indian had /a/,
/ay/, and /aw/.

>> [PRp]

>> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>> if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE.  If
>> it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

[SF]

> Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
> the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
> descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
> Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
> has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
> other name is available for it.

[PR]

Well, something has been lost in translation here. You mentioned Pre-IE, I
thought, not Pre-PIE.

>> [SF]

>>> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?

>> [PR]

>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>> undisputed in any other language.

[SF]

> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
> even in living languages.

[PR]

You assertion by itself does not convince me.

Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
in a minimal pair?

[SF]

> To show some sound difference is not phonemic
> you have to show that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it
> is not *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
> then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of the
> best texts on phonology.

[PR]

Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
phoneme from it?

[SF]

> The *origin* of */o/ can be argued for PIE, but the very fact that it *can*
> be argued is strong evidence that at *that* time it was already a distinct
> phoneme.  If it were an allophone of */a/ then the conditioning factors
> *still* should be visible, and apply uniformly to all cases.  It is the
> fact that there are too many environments in which */o/ occurs, with no
> identifiable commonality, that makes the sound a phoneme.

[PR]

Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept this
basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

>> [SFp]

>>> The shift **a: > *o would have been a regular phonetic change, and thus
>>> would have been essentially universal.  By the very nature of the
>>> hypothesis no *direct* trace would be left - ALL of the old a:s would have
>>> gone over into o's, resulting in an alternation between *e and *o where
>>> there had formerly been one between **a and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o
>>> alternation *is* the example.

>> [PRp]

>> I do not think I am the only reader who will find this dizzyingly circular.

>> The fact of e/o alternation "proves" an a/a: alternation?

[SF]

> I NEVER said that.  I was just pointing out that the lack of a direct
> example in PIE does not *refute* the hypothesis, as such is not expected.

[PR]

Proposing a hypothesis is not particularly valuable if no evidence can be
brought to support it.

[SF]

> To put it another way: we have in PIE what can be viewed as the expected
> result of a regular sound change, so it regularity is hardly evidence
> *against* a sound change.

> Certainly other evidence is needed.  My preference for that hypothesis is
> based simply on the fact that it is the only origin model for /o/ in PIE I
> have yet seen that has actually been *observed* to occur in other languages
> (English, for example).

[PR]

So, you consider that a chain shift was going on in IE?

What are the some of the other details? Other shifts?

[SF]

> Other alternatives include that the /o/ is ancient, and inherited from the
> preceding proto-language (e.g. Nostratic).  If it turns out that the
> /e/-/o/ distinction in PIE corresponds regularly to some vowel quality
> distinction in a wider group of languages, then inheritance is supported.
> (Now, at present no such evidence is forthcoming, and I would be surprised
> if it were, as /o/ looks recent to me in PIE as reconstructed).

[PRp]

>> And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
>> certain accentual/tonal conditions?

[SF]

> Because nobody has come up with a consistently applicable set of such
> conditions that can explain all of the occurrences of /o/ in PIE.

[PR]

I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
transferred to another syllable.

>> [PRp]

>> Certainly very interesting. But your example certainly does not mean that
>> we should expect OE *sa:wian for ME sew (/so:/) when seowian is attested,
>> does it?

[SF]

> Umm, where do you get that?

> You seem to keep turning what I say around and making the implication go
> the opposite direction from anything I ever said.

[PR]

I believe it was your point that OE /a:/ shows up as Modern English /o:/.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Mon Mar 27 10:03:05 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 12:03:05 +0200
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <v01540b03b50139dd2620@[128.83.154.7]>
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.120305.0200.>

cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>A major reason for doing exhaustive studies of Hittite 'know' and other verbs
>such ak(k)-/ek(k)- 'eat' was to explore the ablaut types in Hittite that
>differed from e.g., es-/as- 'be'. At that time I noted (pp. 14-16 on
>etymology) just a few etymological relations. The major one was the
>comparison with the singular:plural alternation of the old perfect (vida:
>vidma, wait:witum etc.) suggesting that Hittite 'know' might be
>grammatically cognate, albeit not formally cognate, with the IE pattern.

>An oddity which looked even older was the one with Latin sum, sumus, sunt:
>es, est, estis that had a parallel in Hittite uhhi, umeni, uwanzi : auti,
>auszi, aummeni, autteni 'see'. Then (as now) there were phonological
>explanations for the 'sum' set, but the fact that Hittite 'see' showed such
>a similar patterning raised questions in my mind as to whether the
>phonological explanation of the Latin forms might not be ad hoc, that these
>two (independent?) groupings of a 1sg, 1pl, and 3pl together with zero
>grade-like forms as opposed to 2sg, 3sg, and 2pl full grade forms might not
>reflect something almost totally lost to us.

>In that context the sg:pl alternation looked like a reanalysis or leveling
>of an older pattern on a basis (sg vs. pl) that we still understand.

That's an interesting possibility.  However, it is difficult to
see what 1sg, 1pl and 3pl might have had in common from an
accentual point of view.  The singular/plural split, on the other
hand, makes good sense in that respect: the plural forms had one
extra syllable ("plural" *-en-), which may have caused the accent
to shift one syllable to the right.

Also, if *o derives from **a:, as I have proposed, the Hittite
a/e ablaut in the hi-conjugation can be seen as old, and be
derived by the rule that unaccented *a: (in the plural) is
shortened to *a (> *e), while accented *a: (in the singular)
remains and becomes *o (Hitt. /a/).  Shortened *e in the plural
may have attracted the accent secondarily in Hittite (so it
remained as /e/), while in the other IE languages it may have
stayed unaccented and therefore suffered further reduction to
zero (o/zero Ablaut in the PIE perfect).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Sun Mar 26 10:41:15 2000
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 13:41:15 +0300
Subject: Horses
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.134115.0300.>

It might be worth pointing out that bones of wild horses have been found
in neolithic levels at both Çatal Höyük and Asikli Höyük in recent
years. This came as a surprise to many of us and should be a warning
against the use of negative evidence.

It is also clear that horses (as opposed to onagers or what ever) appear
on some of the Çatal murals. So far as I know, horse bones and skulls
have not yet been recognised as components in the plastered wall
decorations at Çatal (in contrast to cattle, foxes, vultures and so
forth).

The neolithic peoples of the Anatolian plateau would have had word(s)
for horses since they both ate them and painted them. Archaeological
evidence is not (yet) able to tell us what language(s) those words
belonged to.

It is now necessary to re-examine the few horse bones from Bronze Age
sites in Anatolia to see if the animals were domesticated (often
assumed) or whether there were small wild populations on the plateau as
late as the Third Millennium BC.

It has always seemed to me striking that the Assyrian Colony trade used
donkeys and not horses (or mules).

Best,
Geoff
--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From lmfosse at online.no  Mon Mar 27 19:46:08 2000
From: lmfosse at online.no (Lars Martin Fosse)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 21:46:08 +0200
Subject: An etymological question
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.214608.0200.>

Dear members of the list!

I am just reading a book where the author claims that Latin ars/artis and ritus
(with the English derivative ritual) are etymologically related to Skt. .rta
(as in the Vedic cosmic principle). I do not have the opportunity to check this
where I am, so I would appreciate any comments on the matter.

Best regards,
Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Norway
Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 01:35:17 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:35:17 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <6D96A987B3F@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk> (mclssaa2@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.173517.0800.>

On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Anthony Appleyard (mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk) wrote:

> As regards possible euphemisms:
[...]
> wolf: PIE {wlqwos} > Greek {lukos}, not the expected **{wlapos} or similar;
> distortion to associate with {luk-} = "light" (= illumination)?

There would have been a sonority-linked interchange between [ulkwos] and
[wl.kwos] in PIE; this easily feeds into the attested Greek metathesis--
and provides an environment for Cowgill's Law (labiovelar loses labiality
in the environment of a high round vowel, so there is no need to look for
a connection to *leuk-.

								Rich Alderson


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Mar 28 01:36:19 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 03:36:19 +0200
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <002401bf9646$a061bbe0$2fd31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.033619.0200.>

"proto-language" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
>deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

>On the other hand, it, at least, appears possible that **H(1)o:k^u'-s
>*might* be derived from *H(1)ek^uo-s although the lengthened vowel is a
>problem.

If we assume an adjective stem *h1ek^u- ( ~ *h1o:k^u-),
*h1ek^u-o- certainly looks like a definite/substantivized
adjective ("the fast one"), derived with -o-.

>Secondly, it is generally more likely that an adjective ('fast') was derived
>from a noun ('horse') than the reverse --- particularly in view of the early
>relative paucity of adjectives, and the existence of terms like
>**k^(h)e:i-to- [my emendation]  (*ke:i-to-), 'fast'.

Notwithstanding the fact that six of the terms for "horse" listed
in C.D. Buck's dictionary (alogo, horse, hengst, arklys, z^irgas
and haya-) are adjectival or at least eptithetical in origin.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 04:25:00 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:25:00 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000324214024.00ae98e0@mf.mailbank.com> (message from
 Stanley Friesen on Fri, 24 Mar 2000 21:46:04 -0800)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.202500.0800.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

> At 06:31 PM 3/24/00 +0530, G\341bor S\341ndi wrote:

>> (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in Mallory and Adams).

> Does this take into account changed distributions of the tree in ancient
> times?  The climate has changed substantially since circa 4000 BCE.  Tree
> distributions will have changed.

I have not looked at Mallory and Adams, but since we tend to put into encyclo-
paedic form material gathered by others, I would expect that they have relied
on Paul Friedrich--and he certainly *did* look at fossil pollen reports and the
like for his maps of ancient tree distribution.

								Rich Alderson


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 28 05:13:46 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 10:43:46 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.104346.0530.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Saturday, 25 March, 2000 11:16 AM

At 06:31 PM 3/24/00 +0530, Gabor Sandi wrote:

>> I am talking about good fits and less good ones. I know that names for
>> animals and plants can be changed, lost and transferred. In fact, some of
>> the biological data do not provide good evidence for the Kurgan hypothesis:
>> if *bhbgos meant "beech", it is curious that the beech tree is absent from
>> the north Pontic area (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in
>> Mallory and Adams).

> Does this take into account changed distributions of the tree in ancient
> times?  The climate has changed substantially since circa 4000 BCE.  Tree
> distributions will have changed.

[From GS]

Mallory and Adams do talk at length about the gepgraphical spread of the
beech in Europe since the last Ice Age, with the information taken in part,
presumably, from Friedrich. Unfortunately, the information on the map in
Mallory and Adams does not correspond very well to what is written in the
text - but, in any case, it is clear that aside from a corner of the Crimea,
the beech was absent from the north Pontic area during the 5th-4th millennia
BC, and therefore from the PIE core area as defined by Gimbutas and Mallory.

>> In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE.
>> If Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
>> nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
>> this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
>> technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

> It would have to be loan-translation, to account for the phonetic facts.
> (As in, e.g. German 'Fernsehen' from Anglicized Latin 'television').

I don't understand why the speakers of PIE (or of a later IE language) at
some stage couldn't have used normal derivational processes for this
development, without any reference to another language. After all, they
domesticated the horse (even Renfrew would probably admit that the horse was
domesticated by IE speakers).

This is a quibble, but 'television' is hardly Latin. It is a "barbaric"
combination of the Greek prefix "tele-" (far) and the Latinate
English/French "vision" (presumably borrowed during the Renaissance). The
Latin word was "visio", with all other cases formed on the stem vision-.

Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
"television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
are there?

Cordially,
Gabor Sandi  g_sandi at hotmail.com


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 28 09:36:07 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 15:06:07 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.150607.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: proto-language <proto-language at email.msn.com>
Sent: Saturday, 25 March, 2000 4:10 PM

> Dear Gabor and IEists:

[ moderator snip ]

> [PR]
> I wonder how productive it is to adopt arguments from non-linguists that
> seem to have little likelihood of being accepted by linguists.

[GS]
By non-linguists, do you mean me or Gimbutas? I am a linguist - whether a
good one or not is not for me to say. Gimbutas's arguments are based on
archaeology, as well as a certain amount of theorizing that goes along with
any innovative scientific thinking. There are many linguists who accept the
Kurgan hypothesis - probably more than those who reject it outright.

> I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
> deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

[GS]

Sorry, of course I meant *H(1)o:k^us, *H(3)ek^uos would have resulted in
*H(3)ok^uos.

I am not too happy about the unusual length, or even the particular ablaut
grades either. But so much of ablaut variation is unpredictable that I would
not exclude this particular development. Neither would I oppose vehemently a
semantic development like "horse-like" > "fast, quick". My main point is
that *ekwos could be the result of internal derivational processes within
PIE, and there does exist a reconstructable root that could - in theory - be
related to it.

[ moderator snip ]


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 02:26:54 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 18:26:54 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <006f01bf8f08$6aab8840$6f9f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.182654.0800.>

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> Well, let us be a bit more precise. Old Indian [a]+[y] does *not* become /e/
> rather it becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] does *not* become /o/ rather it
> becomes /o:/. Careful notation distinguishes between long and short vowels
> although, in theory, I suppose there is no problem writing [o] so long as
> everyone knows that this indicates a long vowel /o:/.

Let's be careful with notations here:  [] indicate *phonetic* claims, while //
indicate *phonemic* claims.  It is  /ay/ that becomes /e:/, not [ay] or [ai];
mutatis mutandis, the same holds for the relationship between /aw/ and /o:/.

> I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least transitorily,
> have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and /o:/ like English
> /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat these sounds as
> diphthongal.

Indic *a = /a/ is phonetically [@], by which I mean a mid-central unrounded
vowel, not a reduced vowel.  This is often written in (American) phonology
texts with the inverted lowercase <v> symbol (cf. Laduslaw & Pullum, _Phonetic
Symbol Guide_, 2nd edition).  The sound of the collocations [@i] and [@u] are
familiar to those who have heard Canadian speakers from southern Ontario or
US speakers from the Tidewater region of Virginia, and their transition to
[e:] and [o:] is a simple matter of coloring of [@] and lowering of [i]/[u] by
the processes well-described by Patricia Stampe in papers published in the Ohio
State Working Papers in Linguistics in the mid-1970s.  There is no need for
them *ever* to have been [ei] and [ou]--though that is not ruled out.

> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
> preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding /w/;

Impossible, if you truly mean the notation you are using.  I think you mean
that [e] and [o] are allophones of /a/, but by the time we are speaking of
Indic, those relationships simply do not exist in the sense you intend.

> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before'; if
> a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If it
> is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

Because that makes claims about relationships which are not recoverable via the
method in question, internal reconstruction.  And the usual collocation is
"pre-IE" rather than "pre-PIE", though the latter is not really a solecism.  If
the results obtained by means of internal reconstruction can be correlated with
the results of Nostratic-level comparative reconstruction, we then have the
Nostratic equivalent of Kuryl~owicz's affirmation of the Saussurean _coe'ffi-
cients sonantiques_ in Indo-European, and Indo-Europeanists would have to then
reconsider very strongly their opposition to some version of Nostratic.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 03:36:50 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:36:50 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000324071048.00adeb30@mf.mailbank.com> (message from
 Stanley Friesen on Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:36:31 -0800)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.193650.0800.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

> At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>> if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If
>> it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

> Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
> the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
> descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
> Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
> has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
> other name is available for it.

Actually, the timeframe for pre-IE is *not* set with regard to Nostratic (for
whichever value of "Nostratic" one wishes to assume):  Internal reconstruction
is as strictly timeless as comparative reconstruction in its results.

As an example of what can be done by IR, I have been told that the alternations
between fricatives or affricates of various stripe and velars are transparent
enough in the Slavic languages that a clever linguist could eliminate all of
them through internal reconstruction--and would end up with a set of pre-forms
that would be incorrect for the Proto-Slavic stage that we reconstruct using
the comparative method.

The two methods must be used in conjunction, and with great care.

								Rich Alderson


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Tue Mar 28 09:35:46 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 11:35:46 +0200
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005a01bf9791$dcfd40a0$c99f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.113546.0200.>

Pat Ryan asks:

>Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
>(giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
>a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
>the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
>allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

>If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

Pashto

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Mar 28 14:33:27 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 15:33:27 +0100
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.153327.0100.>

Pat Ryan writes:

>>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>>> undisputed in any other language.

> [SF]

>> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
>> even in living languages.

> [PR]

> You assertion by itself does not convince me.

> Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
> in a minimal pair?

Easy.  English /h/ and [eng] -- the velar nasal, as in 'sing' -- do not
form even a single minimal pair.  They can't, because they are in
complementary distribution: broadly, /h/ only occurs syllable-initially,
while [eng] only occurs syllable-finally.  But we still count them as
two phonemes, and not as allophones of a single phoneme, since their
degree of phonetic similarity is so low.

The existence of minimal pairs may be a *sufficient* condition to
establish a phonemic contrast, but it is not a *necessary* condition.
Even when phones are phonetically similar, we can consider assigning
them to a single phoneme only when their distribution can be stated
by rule.  If we can't state their distribution by rule, then we can't
put them into a single phoneme, even if there are no minimal pairs.

In fact, minimal pairs are very hard to come by for the English [esh] /
[ezh] contrast.  All the minimal pairs I can think of are marginal for
one reason or another.

	obscure, archaic or elevated words:

		'ruche' / 'rouge'
		'leash' / 'liege'

	words of obvious foreign origin:

		'show' / 'zho'

	made-up words:

		'mesher' / 'measure'

	proper names, or derivatives of these:

		'Asher' / 'azure'
		'Aleutian' / 'allusion'
		'Confucian' / 'confusion'
		'shock' / 'Jacques'

There is one minimal pair that works for most of my British students:

	'assure' / 'azure'

But this doesn't work at all in my American accent, since I stress
'azure' on the first syllable -- a pronunciation that invokes giggles
or scowls from my students.

However, even if not one of these marginal pairs existed, it would
not be difficult to show that [esh] and [ezh] are distinct phonemes
in English.  That's because we have near-minimal pairs.  The following
work in my accent, and probably most of them work in all accents:

	'kosher' / 'closure'
	'vacation' / 'occasion'
	'thresher' / 'treasure'
	'fission' / 'vision'
	'nation' / 'equation'
	'masher' / 'azure'
	'pressure' / 'pleasure'
	'condition' / 'precision'
	'contrition' / 'derision'
	'motion' / 'erosion'
	'commotion' / 'corrosion'	
	'fuchsia' / 'fusion'
	'inflation' / 'invasion'
	'solution' / 'delusion'

Clearly, the choice of [esh] or [ezh] cannot be governed by rule.
In fact, there is probably no more economical way to account for
the distribution of these two sounds than to give lists of the
words containing them.  This observation is enough to establish
thet they must be distinct phonemes -- even if we have no minimal
pairs.

> [SF]

>> To show some sound difference is not phonemic
>> you have to show that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it
>> is not *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
>> then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of the
>> best texts on phonology.

>  [PR]

>  Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
>  phoneme from it?

I suggest the following:

Francis Katamba (1989), An Introduction to Phonology, London: Longman.
pp. 22-23.

Katamba cites the example of the African language Ewe, in which it is
apparently difficult to find minimal pairs for /f/ and /v/, even though
the two appear in near-minimal pairs with such a distribution that the
choice between them is impossible to state by rule.

> [PR]

> Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
> in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
> with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept this
> basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

This is *a* method of establishing phonemes.  But it is not *the only*
method of establishing phonemes.  If the distribution of two sounds
cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single
phoneme.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 02:38:51 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 18:38:51 -0800
Subject: linguistic maxims [was Re: pre-IE k > H]
In-Reply-To: <v01540b04b4f81e6abea7@[128.83.168.180]> (cjustus@mail.utexas.edu)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.183851.0800.>

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Carol Justus (cjustus at mail.utexas.edu) wrote in passing:

> Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the details of the
> Romance languages, took a position often reduced to the slogan "every word
> has its own history" because he found so many explanations for exceptions to
> regular sound correspondences.

Doesn't this particular maxim date back to Hermann Paul and the beginnings of
dialect geography--on which Schmidt based his proposal of the _Wellentheorie_?

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 03:48:29 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:48:29 -0800
Subject: TeX notation in e-mail [was Re: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions]
In-Reply-To: <005601bf95c2$16aa0b20$a0d31b3f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.194829.0800.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> 1) I believe the root of *kwekw-lo- should be emended to *k^wek^w-lo- on the
> strength of the palatal responses in Old Indian;

I'm really not sure what you mean by the collocation <k^w>:  If *I* wrote it,
it would be a TeX-style notation indicating a superscript <w>--that is, the
labiovelar.  Is this what you mean?  It is, of course, the correct notation
for the word reconstructed on the basis of Skt. _cakras_, Gk. _kuklos_, Eng.
_wheel_, etc.

Or do you mean to indicate a palatal *k', in which case the evidence is very
much against you?

Many of the people writing on this list are often sloppy with regard to the
writing of labiovelars (as in *{k^w}e{k^w}los) vs. clusters of palatal+*w (as
in *ek'wos "horse").  If we were all careful to write in a (somewhat modified)
TeX-style, as I have noted in the past, this sort of question would not arise.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 04:11:26 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:11:26 -0800
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <36.3b91cb2.26102d47@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.201126.0800.>

On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying anything new
> happened in that non-innovating residue.  Only certain innovations are deter-
> minative at each node.  Other innovations don't count, just as retentions
> don't count.

Every innovation counts.

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 28 06:08:19 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 01:08:19 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.010819.EST.>

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>You said that Baltic and Slavic "_were_ in the 'innovative core'", while I
>said that they "were still in fairly close contact" with it and were
>transitional areas for the particular changes we were talking about.

-- I would agree with this, on the whole.  To be precise, my guess would be
that Balto-Slavic was in contact with Proto-Indo-Iranian on the east and
Proto-Germanic on the west; that is, that its relative geographical position
-- if not absolute location -- in the IE spectrum was consistent from the
time of the first break-up of the PIE linguistic continuum down to the
historic era, with respect to these dialect-clusters.  When we first get
written records, I-Ir and Slavic were in contact, and ditto Baltic and Slavic
and both with Germanic.

Of course, this brings up the question of how far back there was a meaningful
degree of differentiation between these "entities", _except_ of course that
with the advantage of hindsight we can say that one cluster was going to move
in a direction which eventually produced, say, Proto-Germanic.

Since, for example, some of the innovations that define Proto-Germanic seem
to be quite recent -- Iron Age, judging by the development of the Celtic
loanwords for things like iron technology and some social terminology like
"king" or "servant" -- what would be the distinction between
pre-proto-Germanic and pre-Balto-Slavic in, say, 1500 or 2000 BCE?

Not a question that can be settled, of course, but interesting to
contemplate.  (My own guess would be "not much".)

>but after this change this branch seems to have become very conservative
>(Sanskrit, Slavic, Baltic).

-- here I would disagree, to a certain extent.  Baltic and Slavic yes; but
Indo-Iranian, no.  After all, Sanskrit appears conservative precisely because
the version we have was fossilized as a "learned" and liturgical language,
rather like Latin.  Its forms date from a very early period, analagous to
that of our Mycenaean and Hittite records.

As a _spoken_ language, the Sanskrit of the earliest Vedas is usually
assigned a second-millenium BCE date; and certainly the (admittedly scanty)
remains of Indo-Aryan from the Mittannian sources would support that, since
they're datable to around 1500 BCE or a little later.

Thus if we compare our reconstructed PIE with Sanskrit (1200 BCE) and
contemporary Lithuanian (2000 CE) we get a roughly comparable degree of
innovation... but 3000 years + more time between PIE and Lithuanian than
between PIE and Rig-Vedic Sanskrit.

When we compare contemporary Lithuanian with contemporary Indo-Iranian
languages -- with Urdu, say, or modern Farsi -- the Baltic example looks to
be in another category altogether!

>(actually, one of the other Baltic languages, like Old Prussian or Curonian,
>may have been even more conservative, but since little or nothing of them
>survive it is not possible to say).

-- very true; entropy strikes again.  On the other hand, if you run Latvian
backward, you get a proto-language very much like Lithuanian!   Plus, of
course, we know that much of the territory now occupied by Latvian was
originally Uralic.

>But again (or still) this doesn't say anything specific about where they
>started out geographically except that Baltic was always in close proximity
>to Slavic.

-- not definitively, no.

However, at the earliest historic attestation, Baltic was directly north of
Slavic and Slavic extended from east of the Vistula into the forest-steppe of
the Ukraine.  The relationship of Baltic and Slavic and the lack of
identifiable substrata other than some influence from Uralic _and_ the
presence of Baltic river-names in the eastern and northeastern areas later
colonized by Slavic (Russian and Beorussian particularly) would argue that
they had occupied both this relative position _and_ their respective actual
territories for a very, very long time.

>But the presence of more archaic lexical items and fewer obvious substrate
>borrowings could equally well be a result of the refusal of the language to
>accept loans as of its still being in its original home.

-- quite true; we know, for example, that Anglo-Saxon ended up in England due
to migration and supplanted a Brythonic-Celtic language (and Latin), but you
couldn't prove it by linguistics alone.  11th-century Anglo-Saxon, the Wessex
dialect specifically, was still an extremely ordinary West Germanic language
and probably fully mutually comprehensible with its near kin in the Low
Countries.  It was still marginally mutually comprehensible with
Scandinavian, for that matter.   And there were very few Celtic loan-words --
about 12, if I remember correctly.

So the archaism and lack of non-IE loanwords in the Baltic languages _by
itself_ would not be a firm indication of anything, as you say.  However,
when taken in _combination_ with other factors, we're in somewhat different
territory.

Eg., Anglo-Saxon/Old English is geographically peripheral to the main mass of
the Germanic languages, with salt water in between, and there -are- a number
of Celtic place-names in its territory, increasing in number as you move
west.  Even if one knew nothing about the history prior to 1000 CE, you'd
still have enough for an informed guess that Anglo-Saxon was a fairly recent
offshoot of the main Germanic zone. (And, taking in similar evidence from the
Continent, that Germanic in general had been expanding at the expense of
Celtic and Romance.)

>English, on the other hand, just gobbles up loanwords and neologisms
>regardless of whether they violate English phonotactics or not (e.g.,
>aardvark, gnu, syzygy).  This is simply not a function of how close these
>respective languages are to their original homelands.

-- true; although, of course, we know that German is much closer
geographically to the proto-Germanic _urheimat_.

Interestingly enough, English only became exceptionally open to loan-words
after the Norman Conquest.  Prior to that, Old English was notably resistant
to foreign lexical influence.

>If we didn't have a historical record of the situation, the argument of
>conservatism plus lack of substratum influence could, other things being
>equal, be used to claim that Iceland is the original Scandinavian homeland.

-- good point.

Although there, we know that there was no prior population -- and my original
argument was that Baltic probably entered an area not far away from the
_urheimat_ ... _and_ one which was very thinly populated.  (What's now the
eastern part of the Baltic was late being neolithicized, if memory serves me
correctly.)

>Negative evidence cannot be used to construct specific scenarios. Negative
>evidence only means that there is no evidence.

-- it's not demonstrative, as positive evidence is.  However, I think it can
be legitimately used _in conjunction_ with other supporting evidence to say
that one of a number of alternative explanations is more likely than another.

As Holmes said, the crucial thing was what the dog did in the night.  When
Watson pointed out that the dog had done nothing in the night, he replied:
"Exactly."


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 28 13:41:37 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 16:41:37 +0300
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <004201bf9646$623b6500$8f70fe8c@lucent.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.164137.0300.>

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

> "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott at stratos.net> wrote:

>> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
>> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
>> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
>> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>> leaf of the tree.

> You >may< come to a leaf that is non-innovating for all >branch
> determining< innovations. A branch might innovate without splitting
> further. Also the non-innovating branch might go extinct, while other
> branches continue to split.

All true, but there will >still< be a minimal path from the top of the
tree to some leaf that represents a surviving language.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue Mar 28 20:03:04 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 21:03:04 +0100
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.210304.0100.>

> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
> leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
> the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
> these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

Yes - you're right!

Does this raise questions about the validity of this particular tree
structure?    How far does this mirror reality - are we really saying that
in any dialect group there must of necessity be one dialect that never
innovates?   That's what the tree - in this form - implies, and it is
clearly untrue of real life.   Or is it only a result of the fact that we
select certain innovations (those that create distinctions) and ignore
others (those within a group already distinct)?

Peter


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 28 15:13:57 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:13:57 +0300
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <200003250228.SAA08350@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.181357.0300.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote
> regarding the conservative nature of Lithuanian:

>> Expressed in terms of a tree model, it sounds very much like a scenario
>> that Steve Long proposed:  At any node on the tree, there is a
>> non-innovating branch and other branches.  If we follow the
>> non-innovating branch from each node, at the bottom of the tree we
>> arrive at a language that is practically identical to PIE (in this
>> case, Lithuanian).  Now everyone said 'no, no, that can't be right
>> because actually all branches innovate, just in different ways.'
>> The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue against this.  Nodes in
>> a tree must be based on some comparative linguistic information.  The
>> only such information that is useful is some innovation that appears
>> in one branch and not in the other.  Shared retentions don't
>> propagate either as waves or trees.  They just stay where they were
>> left, like a well-trained dog.  Of course the fact that Lithuanian
>> was always on the non-innovating branch (or least innovative branch if
>> you prefer) after satemization and RUKI (and only partly on the
>> innovating branch even there; sort of holding on to the end of
>> the branch with one paw) says nothing about where it was located
>> geographically.

> The problem is that there is *no* IE language without significant
> innovations vis-a-vis all the others.  Lithuanian is conservative in
> its *retention* of the nominal case system (for the most part--though
> it loses one and adds a couple based on a Finnic model), but it is
> innovative in the verb; which counts more heavily?

> Further, if we look at the *phonology*, Lithuanian is extremely
> innovative:  It merges the voiced plain and voiced aspirate series of
> stops, it has contrastive palatalized and non-palatalized series of
> obstruents, it merges *o(:) and *a(:) and otherwise disturbs the vowel
> system, and it moves the IE accent from the center of the word to the
> ends.  So now tell me how conservative it is.

> There is *no* branch on the tree that can be labeled "non-innovating",
> and we do ourselves a disservice as linguists, and a greater one to
> the non-linguists looking to us for guidance, by pretending that there
> is.

1) Yes, there is no such thing as a language that has not innovated.

2) Yes, it is likely that some areas of a language will innovate more than
others.

3) Yes, there is no branch of the tree that can be labeled
"non-innovating". (But there are branches at nodes that can be labeled
non-innovating.)

But there is a minimal path through the tree that when followed to the
bottom will find the language that is closest to the parent.  It is not as
simplistic as I originally expressed it (and Steve Long went astray when
he assumed that a non-innovating branch from a node never innovated again
until the next node), but we had a lengthy discussion about this last
August, started by Jon Patrick, under the subject of "Principled
Comparative Method - a new tool".  How the minimal path is calculated was
the essence of the thread and the specific application reported involved
only phonology, but it should be applicable to other areas of language as
well.

Now 2) above says that the minimal path for one area of language may
not (probably won't) be the same as for another.  But then one can just
award prizes by areas or average the path lengths for the areas to find
an overall winner.

But if it is possible to quantify the amount of change along each path,
then unless *every* IE language has innovated *precisely* the same amount
(down to the last decimal point) there must be a minimal path through
the tree.  There *must* be.  1) and 3) above just say that there will be
no path of length 0 in any given area (although there could be for a
specific character).

Personally, I think we do a disservice to linguistics when we say that
linguistic data can't be quantified so there is no point in trying.  It
gives the people who turn to linguists for guidance the idea that
linguists are simply innumerate.  While I feel that there are some
categories of linguistic data that are not readily subject to
quantification (particularly semantic change), there are others that are
(particularly phonological change), and what can be learned from these
quantifications should be pursued for what it may teach us about some of
the conclusions that have been arrived at by intuition.  Our tools aren't
that good yet that we can afford to ignore potential improvements.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Mar 28 04:22:48 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:22:48 -0800
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
In-Reply-To: <4b.227bee2.260f1a33@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.202248.0800.>

At 02:45 AM 3/26/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 3/25/2000 12:55:59 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>> -- the general rule is that if there are cognates in more than three
>> otherwise unrelated and geographically widely separated branches of IE.,
>> it's a PIE word.

>I don't know how three IE languages can be "otherwise unrelated."  Is this
>another one of the special concepts in your version of historical linguistics?

It means "not having a more recent common ancestor than PIE itself". (Or,
at least that no such more recent ancestor is *demonstrable* using
comparative methods).

>With regard to "geographically widely separated" - I have no idea how those
>languages could always be "widely separated" and still have been once the
>same language.

Nobody denies this.  The "widely separated" applies to the time of earliest
attestation.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 28 06:20:38 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 01:20:38 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.012038.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Definitely not.  But I sure have problems with YOUR version of historical
>linguistics.

-- well, since mine is taken straight from the textbooks...

>I don't know how three IE languages can be "otherwise unrelated."  Is this
>another one of the special concepts in your version of historical
>linguistics?

-- French and Italian are both IE languages.  French and German are both IE
languages.  But French and German are "otherwise unrelated" while French and
Italian are related by both being Romance languages.

Is this clear now?

Hence, if we have cognates in, say, Hittite, Tocharian, and Celtic, we can
assume a PIE origin for the word.  (Note the distinction between "cognate"
and "loanword"; this seems to be a perennial problem of yours.)

>I think the memory slip is yours.  No known word in Hittite.

-- Luwian "azuwa", and Lycian "esbe".

>*Telephone: reflexes in all IE languages.  Give me a break.

-- no breaks as long as you fail to understand the difference between
"cognate" and "loanword", I'm afraid.


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 04:30:19 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:30:19 -0800
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
In-Reply-To: <4b.227bee2.260f1a33@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.203019.0800.>

On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> As has been pointed out many, many, many times on this list, the Luwian
> 'asuwa' looks to be a IIr or Mitanni-Aryan borrowing, unless you assume some
> kind of special Luwian satemization that could yield *-kw > sw.

Interestingly enough, there were references to Luwian (and Southern = Western
Anatolian in general) as "satem" at the Greater Anatolia colloquium, though
others did not necessarily accept this characterization--but the assibilation
of *k' was not disputed.

								Rich Alderson


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Mar 28 16:12:38 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 17:12:38 +0100
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.171238.0100.>

Steve Long writes:

> Does the HOW LIKELY question apply when someone assumes that two different IE
> languages could have once been the same language in the same place and then
> separate and MAGICALLY become "quite distant from each other" without the
> intermediate step (required of most phenomenon in this physical universe) of
> first being close-by - and at that point very amenable to contact and
> linguistic exchange?

Nothing magical about it.  It is perfectly possible for a single
speech community to split abruptly into two or more widely separated
groups, for example because of migration or because of the intrusion
of a different group into the middle of the territory.  Norwegian
and Icelandic is perhaps a nice case in point, but there are lots of
others.  Athabaskan, for example.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 28 05:20:16 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 00:20:16 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.002016.EST.>

>colkitto at sprint.ca writes:

>In historical linguistics (and probably in other related fields) the terms
>`more archaic' and `less archaic' need some quantifying.  To take one fairly
>obvious, albeit extreme, example, probably no scholars would rate English as
>`more archaic' than German overall, and yet for certain features, in
>phonology, morphology, and syntax, this is an fair statement.

-- true, but not really relevant.  All languages conserve; all languages
innovate.  The overall degree of either is obviously what we mean when we
refer to a _language_ as conservative or innovating.

I don't think anyone would deny that Lithuanian taken as a whole shows less
innovation vs. a vs. PIE than, say, Polish; and that both show less than,
say, any Germanic language.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue Mar 28 20:16:56 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 21:16:56 +0100
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.211656.0100.>

[On English as
`more archaic' than German, alleged to be a "fair statement"]

Robert's main point is clearly right, namely:
>the point here is that `more archaic' and `less archaic' are relative
>terms, to be used with a degree of caution.

So this is merely a note on some details and trivia:

>3) The preservation of IE w in English as opposed to its development to v in
>German, e.g., E win - Ge (ge)winnen [(ge)vinen].

Both are developments from an original consonantal u.   The English sound is
much more consonantal than the Latin, and probably more so than the IE.   So
if German and English both develp the sound, I am not certain we can say one
development is more archaic than the other.

>4) The preservation of a three-fold alternation in certain Gc Class I strong
>verb paradigms, e.g., E drive (< IE *-ei-) - drove (< IE *-oi-) - driven (<
>IE *-i-), as opposed to Ge treiben (< IE *-ei-) - trieb - getrieben (the
>generalisation of the reflex of CG *-i-).

Again, both are generalisations.   PIE perfect and proto-Germanic preterite
had singular *-oi-, plural *-i-*.   English generalised the singular, German
the plural.   Why should one generalisatoin be called more archaic than the
other?

>6) The preservation of 1st sg am in English as opposed to its loss in German.

English has 1st sg "be" or even (I believe) "bin" in non-standard dialects.
What does non-standard German have?

>7) The preservation of certain lexical items from Common Germanic (and IE) in
>English as opposed to their loss in German, e.g., E tree, choose, ask.

The same is true the other way round.

Peter


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Tue Mar 28 16:05:02 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 10:05:02 -0600
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.100502.0600.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl

>cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>>A major reason for doing exhaustive studies of Hittite 'know' and other verbs
>>such ak(k)-/ek(k)- 'eat' was to explore the ablaut types in Hittite that
>>differed from e.g., es-/as- 'be'. At that time I noted (pp. 14-16 on
>>etymology) just a few etymological relations. The major one was the
>>comparison with the singular:plural alternation of the old perfect (vida:
>>vidma, wait:witum etc.) suggesting that Hittite 'know' might be
>>grammatically cognate, albeit not formally cognate, with the IE pattern.

>>An oddity which looked even older was the one with Latin sum, sumus, sunt:
>>es, est, estis that had a parallel in Hittite uhhi, umeni, uwanzi : auti,
>>auszi, aummeni, autteni 'see'. Then (as now) there were phonological
>>explanations for the 'sum' set, but the fact that Hittite 'see' showed such
>>a similar patterning raised questions in my mind as to whether the
>>phonological explanation of the Latin forms might not be ad hoc, that these
>>two (independent?) groupings of a 1sg, 1pl, and 3pl together with zero
>>grade-like forms as opposed to 2sg, 3sg, and 2pl full grade forms might not
>>reflect something almost totally lost to us.

>>In that context the sg:pl alternation looked like a reanalysis or leveling
>>of an older pattern on a basis (sg vs. pl) that we still understand.

>That's an interesting possibility.  However, it is difficult to
>see what 1sg, 1pl and 3pl might have had in common from an
>accentual point of view.  The singular/plural split, on the other
>hand, makes good sense in that respect: the plural forms had one
>extra syllable ("plural" *-en-), which may have caused the accent
>to shift one syllable to the right.

>Also, if *o derives from **a:, as I have proposed, the Hittite
>a/e ablaut in the hi-conjugation can be seen as old, and be
>derived by the rule that unaccented *a: (in the plural) is
>shortened to *a (> *e), while accented *a: (in the singular)
>remains and becomes *o (Hitt. /a/).  Shortened *e in the plural
>may have attracted the accent secondarily in Hittite (so it
>remained as /e/), while in the other IE languages it may have
>stayed unaccented and therefore suffered further reduction to
>zero (o/zero Ablaut in the PIE perfect).

Oops! I just noticed that I incorrectly translated 'eat' for Hittite
ak(k)-ek(k)- 'drink' in my earlier message. It was a lapse conditioned by
the fact that 'eat' is another one that ablauts in Hittite.

If the Hittite /a/ of 'know' corresponds to Greek perfect /o/, then it
corresponds nicely with the perfect meaning often associated with 'know'.
Are you suggesting that Greek perfect /o/ was also originally **a? Is **a
different from *a and hence responsible for the Latin and Greek distinction
between /a/ and /o/?

Besides the clearly relic pattern of Hittite 'see' (comparable with Latin
sum), Hittite has the a/e pattern of 'know' (/e/ only in the 2pl) but also
the pattern e/a of 'be' (/a/ only in the 3pl). Are you suggesting that
these are two different accentual patterns.

I don't recall what Craig Melchert (book 1994?) and Sara Kimball (various
articles with her book appearing any day now in Meid's Innsbruck series)
have done with these, although I do know that Sara has incorporated the
evidence from plene writings in Hittite as evidence for PIE accentual and
length correspondences.

Carol Justus


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Tue Mar 28 17:02:53 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 17:02:53 GMT
Subject: Brahui
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.170253.GMT.>

Brahui is a Dravidian language spoken in a most unexpected place ::
Baluchistan, which is a northwest part of Pakistan. Such an outlier weighs
on the history of the IE-descended and other languages in the area. I have
heard two theories re Brahui:-

(1) It is a valuable relic of a time when Dravidian was spoken over much of
India.
(2) The Brahui-speakers are descended from soldiers that were raised in
Dravidian South India fairly recently and dumped in Baluchistan when no longer
needed. As such, their language is irrelevant here.

Which is true?

How much is Dravidian related to Elamite, as I have heard ideas of?

Where does the word "Dravidian" come from?

As regards the idea that the language of the Indus valley civilization was
Dravidian, I read once that:-
  (1) Two Indus Valley gambling dices were found, and on their faces were
pictures of things whose names resembled the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 in Dravidian.
  (2) Over time more and more Dravidian words get into Indian Sanskrit
writings, but no more in the Andhra period and after, as if that is when the
lower castes in the north of India finally forgot their old Dravidian
languages.

What is usual opinion about this?


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 28 17:26:04 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 20:26:04 +0300
Subject: pre-IE k > H
In-Reply-To: <01JNFLGJFYGI9TUE07@LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.202604.0300.>

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000 CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU wrote:

<snip>
> Carol Justus wrote:

>> I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
>> happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
>> Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

> Absolutely!

Actually it isn't.  The writing of Hittite /h/ with the diacritic is just
a historical accident.  Hittite cuneiform was adapted from Akkadian
cuneiform.  In Akkadian, the only h-type sound is etymologically /x/, and
the transliteration system devised for Akkadian reflects this. (In writing
foreign words and names, the Akkadian h-type signs are often used for a
wide range of laryngeals [h, he, ayin, ghain].) However, the Akkadian
signs for this were adapted from Sumerian and we don't really know what
h-type sound Sumerian had (but most suspect that it was plain /h/).
Since Akkadian was the first of the cuneiform languages to be read, the
h-type signs were written with the h with diacritic that is used to
transcribe the etymologically equivalent sound (/x/) in Arabic.  Again, we
don't know what the h-type signs represent in Hittite since the sound is
not preserved in any other IE languages, but the transliteration system
for Hittite simply uses the values of the signs that were established in
Akkadian because the transliteration system is supposed to be a one-to-one
mapping of cuneiform signs to the latin script (i.e., no interpretation is
allowed and arbitrary changes to the sign values are not permitted).  So
the diacritic on the h has no particular significance for Hittite or IE
phonology.  It is only significant in identifying cuneiform signs, and
since Akkadian has only one h-type sound, the diacritic is often dropped
in publications to save typesetting costs and trouble since there is
nothing else that it can be confused with.  But the value of the
Hittite sound represented by the cuneiform cannot be extrapolated from
the Akkadian value except to conclude that it is some kind of laryngeal.

This being the case, Carol is still quite right in saying that
k > laryngeal is better terminology than k > h.  But it has nothing
to do with the diacritic under the h.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Mar 28 21:36:57 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 23:36:57 +0200
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <003b01bf981a$1245d000$b301703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.233657.0200.>

"Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

>Contrary to Castilian stress accent marking, Valencian Catalan uses two
>different diacritics to mark stress: acutus for a rising pitch on the stressed
>syllable, gravis for the descending pitch: Valhncia (e-gravis), but: Gandma
>(i-acutus). Maybe Miguel Carrasquer can tell us more about Catalan
>accentuation.

As far as I know, Catalan has nothing but a stress accent.  The
orthographic accent is used to mark "unusually" stressed
syllables (according to a system of diacritic-avoidance in
general not unlike that of Castilian, although different in most
of the details [e.g. it's Valencia and Gandi'a in Castilian, but
Vale`ncia and Gandia in Catalan]).  The letter "a" is always
marked with a grave, the letters "i" and "u" invariably with an
acute, while "e" and "o" are marked with one or the other,
depending on the quality of the vowel (/e/ ~ /E/, /o/ ~ /O/).  As
far as Valencian goes, [e] and [E] are not phonemes (not sure
about [o] and [O], but I could look it up if anybody is
interested), so strictly speaking Val`encia might as well be
Vale'ncia, in Valencian that is.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 29 02:05:57 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:05:57 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005a01bf9791$dcfd40a0$c99f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.180557.0800.>

On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
> formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
> transferred to another syllable.

The *pitch* accent, not the *stress* accent, at least if you are having
recourse to Lehmann's theory of the vowel system.

								Rich Alderson


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 29 04:56:03 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 20:56:03 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005a01bf9791$dcfd40a0$c99f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.205603.0800.>

At 02:12 AM 3/27/00 +0000, proto-language wrote:

>We are talking about whether Old Indian *at one point* had basically a one
>vowel system.

>I think the facts make obvious that there was a time, however brief, when
>Old Indian had only /a/ as a vowel, with [ay] and [aw] on the way to
>becoming /ai/ -> /e:/ and /au/ -> /o:/.

I maintain that at that time it *also* had /u/ and /i/, making it a *three*
vowel system.  Indeed, in Sanskrit it is probably harder to maintain that
/u/ and /w/ are allophones than it was in PIE (and likewise /i/ and /y/).

>Above you wrote: "the rarer something is among living languages, the more
>evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language."

>If that is your position, why not put it in practice on all questions under
>consideration?

>Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
>(giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
>a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
>the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
>allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

1) Sanskrit is NOT RECONSTRUCTED, so the rule does not apply.

2) I believe it is more adequately described as: /a/, /a:/, /e:/, /i/,
/i:/, /o:/, /u/, /u:/.

3) I am fairly certain there are other somewhat similar languages.  (My
reference that has the vowel system survey is buried, and not currently
accessible, so I cannot immediately name any).

>If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

If I manage to find my vowel survey text, I will.

>>> [SFp]

>>>> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived*
>>>> from the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel
>>>> quality any less phonemic in the current language.

>>> [PRp]

>>> Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

The vowel difference between those words *started* as an allophonic one,
and developed separately later.

>I am talking about a *synchronic* situation during which Old Indian had /a/,
>/ay/, and /aw/.

and /i/ and /u/ and /a:/ and /i:/ and /u:/.

[PR]

>Well, something has been lost in translation here. You mentioned Pre-IE, I
>thought, not Pre-PIE.

If so, then it was a typo.  The term is indeed Pre-PIE.  (Check some of
Lehman's work, for instance, which even uses Pre-Pre-PIE).

[SF]

>> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
>> even in living languages.

>[PR]

>You assertion by itself does not convince me.

>Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
>in a minimal pair?

Most of my old basic linguistics texts are also inaccessible. But if I
remember correctly English is particularly rife with that situation.

Remember, there is a combinatorial problem: to fulfill your requirement you
must have a minimal pair for *every* pair of comparable sounds.  Even
allowing that vowels and consonants cannot really be paired, this still
makes for an amazing number of necessary pairs for English, or even High
German.

English, depending on the dialect, has between 9 and 11 simple vowels (not
counting diphthongs), requiring around 100 minimal pairs just for the basic
vowels alone!  Then there are at least 21 consonants, 23 if one counts
/dz^/ and /tc^/, 24 if one adds the glottal stop, requiring 441 to 576
minimal pairs.  So, English would require at least 522 minimal pairs (605
in some dialects), even keeping vowels and consonants separate.  If one has
to distinguish each vowel from each consonant with a minimal pair (which
your strict rule would require), one would need 900 to more than a thousand!

I seriously doubt one can come up with even 500 minimal pairs in English.

>[PR]

>Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
>phoneme from it?

If you will volunteer to come over and sort my library :-)

>[PR]

>So, you consider that a chain shift was going on in IE?

The change of /a:/ to /o/ is not necessarily a chain shift!

Indeed, if there had previously been no mid-back vowel, there is no need
for any further shifts at all.

>[PRp]

>>> And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
>>> certain accentual/tonal conditions?

Because:

a) nobody has ever produced a set of tonal and accentual conditions that
actually explains all of the /o/'s in PIE.  (I.e. no sufficient set of
conditioning factors has ever been proposed).

b) it is phonetically unlikely: I cannot think of any other well-attested
case of rounding being conditioned strictly be tone or accent.

[Note, a phonemic /o/, even originating mainly from older /a:/, need no
longer have a  visible set of conditioning factors, due to phonetic change
and analogical extension].

>[SF]

>> Because nobody has come up with a consistently applicable set of such
>> conditions that can explain all of the occurrences of /o/ in PIE.

>[PR]

>I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
>formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
>transferred to another syllable.

It fails to cover some of the cases, especially in the perfect and deverbal
nouns, and it requires some variances in the "reconstructed" accent in
regard to the endings to make it work.

[Believe me, I have tried to make a complete inflectional model in which
this works, but the moment one gets into details, it breaks down: unless
one uses circular reasoning to postulate a shift in accent when no evidence
except the /o/ point to it].

>[SF]

>> Umm, where do you get that?

>> You seem to keep turning what I say around and making the implication go
>> the opposite direction from anything I ever said.

>[PR]

>I believe it was your point that OE /a:/ shows up as Modern English /o:/.

Yes, but I *never* said that *all* ME /o:/ come from OE /a:/!
[Any more than all PIE /o/ would come from /a:/, some would come from H3,
and some might come from loss of nearby -u or ^w (aka umlaut)].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 22:49:26 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 22:49:26 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.224926.0000.>

Dear Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 9:35 AM

Pat Ryan asks:

>> Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
>> (giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
>> a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
>> the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
>> allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

>> If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

> Pashto

 [PR]

I have no ready means of information on Pashto so would you mind if I
enquire:

1) does Pashto have any long vowels beside /e:/ and /o:/?

2) in Pashto, are /e:/ and /o:/ derivable from earlier /Vi/ and /Vu/?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 30 00:59:51 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 00:59:51 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.005951.0000.>

Dear Pete and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 8:44 AM

[PRp]

>>>> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a
>>>> combination of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

[PG]

> What began as a cautious statement which allowed for exceptions has now
> apparently become dogma.   There are counter-examples within Sanskrit.
> For example
> (a) Rigveda 1:35:5 has hiatus in pra-ugam.   The u vowel cannot be taken as
> a vocalic form of w, nor can a-u be considered here as [a +w].

[PR]

In the context of the previous postings, I suggested that Old Indian /i/ and
/u/ were vocalic allophones of /y/ and /w/ in avocalic situations,

To what IE root do you propose to attribute [-ugam]?

As far as your example is concerned, I think we both know that if the IE
root were *preug-, the resulting Old Indian would be **pro:g-.

Is it unreasonable to suppose that [a-u-] is handled differently than
[-au-]?

[PG]

> (b) in Rigveda 1:1:9 the written svastaye must be scanned (and therefore was
> pronouned) as su-astaye.   This is not uncommon, and affects some forms with
> written -y- as well.

[PR]

And what problem does this present for my hypothesis? Pokorny suggest that
*su- is a zero-grade of *swe-. Is that so palpably wrong?

[PG]

> (c) The wise suggestion that vi-yukta should be distinguished from vyukta
> (vi+vac).

[PR]

I do not see this as having a bearing on the problem either.

[PG]

> So the analysis of Sanskrit as a one vowel language is not totally true.

[PR]

We have to distinguish --- and I believe you are not --- the proposition
that "Sanskrit is a one vowel language" from what *I* am proposing: "Old
Indian has one phonemic vowel".

[PRp]

>> Old Indian [a]+[y] becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] becomes /o:/.

[PG]

> On the one vowel theory of Sanskrit, these combinations cannot exist.
> [a+i]> /e:/, and [a+u} > /o:/.   [y] and [w] occur before vowels, and remain
> after [a].  For example, the aorist of the root yuj (yoke) is ayuji.

[PR]

Please see above.

As for your example, the /y/ in ayuki is before /u/, hence not vocalic.

[PG]

> y is very rare before a consonant in Sanskrit, and perhaps only in -yy-
> and -yv-.

[PR]

And is it your opinion that [-yy-] was pronounced /-yy-/? Or was it possibly
/-iy-/?

[PG]

> Furthermore, how would you explain -e:y-?

[PR]

as from *-eHey- or *-Hey-.

[PRp]

>> But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian?    It does not
>> exist so far as we can determine.

[PG]

> Yes it does - the law of palatalisation:  Kwe > ca, kekara > cakara etc.

[PR]

I have addressed this in another posting which should be dstributed before
this is.

[PRp]

>> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>> preceding /j/ etc

[PG]

> Very far from obvious, as there are so many counter-examples.

[PR]
Sorry, cannot agree that you have furnished them.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 22:42:44 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 22:42:44 -0000
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.224244.0000.>

Dear Larry and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Trask" <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 2:33 PM

[PRp]

>>>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>>>> undisputed in any other language.

<snip>

[LT]

>>> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
>>> even in living languages.

>> [PRp]

>> Your (SF's) assertion by itself does not convince me.

>> Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
>> in a minimal pair?

[LT]

> Easy.  English /h/ and [eng] -- the velar nasal, as in 'sing' -- do not
> form even a single minimal pair.

[PR]

Now I am really confused. I would have thought that /h/ could be established
by many minimal pairs like [her] / [per] and /ng/ by many minimal pairs like
[bang] / [ban], along the lines of your dictionary's: "The existence of such
a pair demonstrates conclusively that the two segments which are different
must belong to two different phonemes."

I really do not see where phonotactics has much to do with the question
since there is no phonological similarity.

[LT]

> They can't, because they are in
> complementary distribution: broadly, /h/ only occurs syllable-initially,
> while [eng] only occurs syllable-finally.  But we still count them as
> two phonemes, and not as allophones of a single phoneme, since their
> degree of phonetic similarity is so low.

> The existence of minimal pairs may be a *sufficient* condition to
> establish a phonemic contrast, but it is not a *necessary* condition.

[PR]

So what other condition is "*sufficient*" to establish a phonemicity?

[ moderator snip ]

>> [PRp]

>> Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
>> in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
>> with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept this
>> basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

[LT]

> This is *a* method of establishing phonemes.  But it is not *the only*
> method of establishing phonemes.  If the distribution of two sounds
> cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single
> phoneme.

[PR]

Ah, a diplomatic answer.

Well, a rule that has been proposed to account for IE /o/ is that it results
when the (tonal-/stress) accent of an /e/ is shifted to another syllable.

Additionally of interest is that no IE verbal root seems to contain /o/.

So, applying your insight, is IE /o/ a phoneme or not?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Thu Mar 30 18:00:45 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 21:00:45 +0300
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
In-Reply-To: <E12Zx3g-0002Yg-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.210045.0300.>

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Larry Trask wrote:

> Pat Ryan writes:

>>>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>>>> undisputed in any other language.

<snip of lots of stuff>

> The existence of minimal pairs may be a *sufficient* condition to
> establish a phonemic contrast, but it is not a *necessary* condition.
> Even when phones are phonetically similar, we can consider assigning
> them to a single phoneme only when their distribution can be stated
> by rule.  If we can't state their distribution by rule, then we can't
> put them into a single phoneme, even if there are no minimal pairs.

<snip of lots more stuff>

>> [SF (= Stefan Georg)]

[ Moderator's note:
  "SF" is Stanley Friesen rather than Stefan Georg.
  --rma ]

>>> To show some sound difference is not phonemic you have to show
>>> that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it is not
>>> *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
>>> then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of
>>> the best texts on phonology.

<snip of still more stuff>

>> [PR]

>> Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
>> in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
>> with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept
>> this basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

> This is *a* method of establishing phonemes.  But it is not *the only*
> method of establishing phonemes.  If the distribution of two sounds
> cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single
> phoneme.

I would say that even a minimal pair is not a sufficient condition to
establish two sounds as separate phonemes.  The distribution by rule
takes precedence.  Take the English minimal pair

         'thigh'  /  'thy'

         (the pair 'thistle'  /  'this'll' [contraction of 'this will']
         is clearly marginal)

Most people would not insist on phonemic status for both [th] and [dh] in
English on the basis of this minimal pair (although some would doubtless
claim that there has been a phomemic split similar to what occurred with
/s/ and /z/).  This is because otherwise the sounds are in complementary
distribution, [dh] occuring in voiced environments and in deictic words
and pronouns, [th] otherwise.  Thus it is not only as Larry says "If the
distribution of two sounds cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be
assigned to a single phoneme," but also 'If the distribution of similar
sounds can be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to separate
phonemes.'

Minimal pairs are a shortcut to finding phonemes, but contrastive
environments are a clincher.  As in the comparative method and
internal reconstruction, similar items that are in complementary
distribution are usually aspects of the same thing.  But believe it
or not, linguists will still disagree on the phonemic status of sounds
and different analyses may result in different numbers of phonemes
claimed for a particular language.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 29 05:06:17 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 21:06:17 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <20000328054458.82303.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.210617.0800.>

At 10:43 AM 3/28/00 +0530, Gábor Sándi wrote:

>Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
>"television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
>are there?

Actually, I can think of several (my German is a bit rusty, so I may have
some morphemes wrong): "Ansichtwerfer" (= "picture transmitter") seems
reasonable.  Some derivative of the word for 'radio', say "picture-radio"
would also work.  Or one could have "movie-box" or "picture-box", or ...

[Well, I switched to English, but I think the idea is clear].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Mar 28 23:27:45 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 23:27:45 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.232745.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 1:36 AM

> "proto-language" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>> I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
>> deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

>> On the other hand, it, at least, appears possible that **H(1)o:k^u'-s
>> *might* be derived from *H(1)ek^uo-s although the lengthened vowel is a
>> problem.

[MCV]

> If we assume an adjective stem *h1ek^u- ( ~ *h1o:k^u-),
> *h1ek^u-o- certainly looks like a definite/substantivized
> adjective ("the fast one"), derived with -o-.

[PR]

Yes, I think it possible that *H(1)ek^-ew- (verbal) could first become
*H(1)e'k^-u- (nominal), and then become *H(1)ok^-u'- (adjectival), and
finally *H(1)o:k^u'- with expressive (vr.ddhi) lengthening.

And from *H(1)ek^-w-e'-s (nominal), the nominal form we find,
*H(1)e'k^w-o-s.

I would be inclined to consider the basal form a combination of *H(1)e- +
*k^(y)e(:)u-, either a form derived from *ke:i- or an alternate form of the
same root, *ke:u-, seen in its s-mobile from: *s-k^e/e:u-.

I think it might even be possible to ultimately reconstruct **k^(h)e-H(1)e-,
'**run away'; **k^(h)e(-H(1)e)-w-, '**speed up (away), cause one's self to
start running (away)'); **k^(h)e-ye-, '**fast', with the initial *H(1)e-
representing 'away', somewhat redundantly.

[PRp]

>> Secondly, it is generally more likely that an adjective ('fast') was
>> derived from a noun ('horse') than the reverse --- particularly in view of
>> the early relative paucity of adjectives, and the existence of terms like
>> **k^(h)e:i-to- [my emendation] (*ke:i-to-), 'fast'.

[MCV]

> Notwithstanding the fact that six of the terms for "horse" listed
> in C.D. Buck's dictionary (alogo, horse, hengst, arklys, z^irgas
> and haya-) are adjectival or at least epithetical in origin.

[PR]
That is certainly a good point diachronically.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Mar 28 23:56:25 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 23:56:25 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.235625.0000.>

Dear Gabor and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabor Sandi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 5:13 AM

<snip>

> Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
> "television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
> are there?

Lautbildfernsendungempfangsschirmwerk?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 00:02:19 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 00:02:19 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.000219.0000.>

Dear Gabor and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabor Sandi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 9:36 AM

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: proto-language <proto-language at email.msn.com>
> Sent: Saturday, 25 March, 2000 4:10 PM

>> Dear Gabor and IEists:

> [ moderator snip ]

>> [PRp]
>> I wonder how productive it is to adopt arguments from non-linguists that
>> seem to have little likelihood of being accepted by linguists.

> [GS]
> By non-linguists, do you mean me or Gimbutas? I am a linguist - whether a
> good one or not is not for me to say.

[PR]

I had no intention of questioning your credentials or competency.

[GS]

> Gimbutas's arguments are based on
> archaeology, as well as a certain amount of theorizing that goes along with
> any innovative scientific thinking. There are many linguists who accept the
> Kurgan hypothesis - probably more than those who reject it outright.

[PR]

My problem with Gimbutas is not the Kurgan Hypothesis per se but the
extraneous ideological interpretation she attached to the bare
archaeological facts.

[PRp]

>> I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
>> deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

> [GS]

> Sorry, of course I meant *H(1)o:k^us, *H(3)ek^uos would have resulted in
> *H(3)ok^uos.

[PR]

For whatever it might be worth, this was my point.

[GS]

> I am not too happy about the unusual length, or even the particular ablaut
> grades either. But so much of ablaut variation is unpredictable that I would
> not exclude this particular development. Neither would I oppose vehemently a
> semantic development like "horse-like" > "fast, quick". My main point is
> that *ekwos could be the result of internal derivational processes within
> PIE, and there does exist a reconstructable root that could - in theory - be
> related to it.

[PR]

See my answer to Miguel. I have no problem with anything you have written
here.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar 29 12:40:53 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 14:40:53 +0200
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.144053.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gábor Sándi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 7:13 AM

[snip]

> Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
> "television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
> are there?

> Cordially,
> Gabor Sandi  g_sandi at hotmail.com

[Ed]

If I'm not mistaken, Icelandic uses 'skónwarp' (or something like that -
Nordic specialists, correct me) with roots meaning 'shine' ('project'?) and
'cast' respectively. This refers to the transmitter (like 'broadcast' in
English), not the receiver as in German. Just a matter of point of view of the
observer.

Ed. Selleslagh


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Mar 29 12:52:44 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:52:44 +0300
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <00dc01bf98f3$df2ce700$6852063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.155244.0300.>

On Tue, 28 Mar, petegray <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

[quoting Brian M. Scott]

>> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
>> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
>> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
>> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>> leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
>> the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>> these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

>Yes - you're right!

>Does this raise questions about the validity of this particular
>tree structure?    How far does this mirror reality - are we
>really saying that in any dialect group there must of necessity
>be one dialect that never innovates?   That's what the tree - in
>this form - implies, and it is clearly untrue of real life.   Or
>is it only a result of the fact that we select certain
>innovations (those that create distinctions) and ignore others
>(those within a group already distinct)?

Yes, he is right, but he is also not right (and since he was
defending a position that I had taken originally, I was also both
right and not right).  He is right if you only consider the
behavior of the tree at the nodes.  But he is not right if you
cansider what may happen along the branches as well.  In my
original statement of the process, I conflated two steps.

While a tree node typically represents a binary opposition
between innovation and non-innovation, there is nothing that
requires that the non-innovating branch coming out of the node
has to be the least innovative branch by the time that the next
node is reached or even at the end of the branch if it never
branches again.  I think that this is the point that you were
trying to raise with your original post on this matter.  So you
(meaning I) cannot simply use the non-innovating branch out of a
node to determine which is ultimately the least innovative branch
and this is the point that I did not make clear originally.  The
example of Lithuanian itself exemplifies this since it was at one
point on the innovative branch of a node.  Now it would be
possible to design a tree so that Lithuanian would always be on
the non-innovating branch (this would mean that you couldn't use
palatal assibilation or RUKI palatization to define a node), but
this would be manipulating the data to produce the desired result;
the exact equivalent of using binary choices to force a card on
the subject in a magic trick.

Therefore it is not true that there must of necessity be one
dialect that never innovates.  In fact, it is extemely unlikely
that there would ever be a dialect that never innovates.  If
there is, it is not a living language.  But unless there is some
law that says that all languages have to innovate exactly the
same amount over time, there must be a minimally innovated
dialect.  I do not think that there is such a law; if there were,
glottochronolgy would work.  In the absence of such a law then
dialects are free to innovate as they will, and, barring an
astronomical amount of coincidence, some dialect will innovate
less than all the others.

It is my contention that this least innovative dialect will be at
the end of the path through the tree from the top to the bottom
that has the lowest total number of innovations on it.  Again, it
is my contention that, unless all languages must innovate to
exactly the same extent, there must be such a minimal path
through the tree.  Saying that this path can be found by
following the non-innovating path from each node is not strictly
speaking true (It might be, but it doesn't have to be).  It may
not even be on the least innovative branch between one node and
the next.  But if you add up all the innovations (perhaps as
number of rule applications necessary to derive new forms from the
old) for each path through the tree, one of these paths will be
minimal.

Yes, trees do not reflect real life.  Only part of our
information can be displayed with a tree.  The tree will look
different depending on which part of our information we choose
to display.  Nodes are customarily defined by innovations found
on one branch out of the node and not on the other since it is
only shared innovations that define linguistic groupings within
a larger group.  Innovations that do not result in branching are
generally not accounted for in trees.  But trees are still useful
for visualizing certain relationships even if they do not
correspond to reality (rather like the planetary model of the
atom).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 19:12:24 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:12:24 -0000
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.191224.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 4:11 AM

> On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

>> There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying anything new
>> happened in that non-innovating residue.  Only certain innovations are
>> determinative at each node.  Other innovations don't count, just as
>> retentions don't count.

> Every innovation counts.

[PR]

For a (IMHO) very lucid discussion of the principles invloved in trees, I
think some list-members might enjoy:

Family Evolution, Language History and Genetic Classification by Ilia Peiros

in

Historical Linguistics & Lexicostatistics, edited by Vitaly Shevoroshkin and
Paul Sidwell

In addition, there are good discussions of glottochronology and
lexicostatistics.

A bonus is a convenient collection of attested Palaeo-European vocabulary.

And no, I have no motive but interest in recommending it.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar 29 13:40:08 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:40:08 +0200
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.154008.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Whiting" <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 5:13 PM

[snip]

> Personally, I think we do a disservice to linguistics when we say that
> linguistic data can't be quantified so there is no point in trying.  It
> gives the people who turn to linguists for guidance the idea that
> linguists are simply innumerate.  While I feel that there are some
> categories of linguistic data that are not readily subject to
> quantification (particularly semantic change), there are others that are
> (particularly phonological change), and what can be learned from these
> quantifications should be pursued for what it may teach us about some of
> the conclusions that have been arrived at by intuition.  Our tools aren't
> that good yet that we can afford to ignore potential improvements.

> Bob Whiting
> whiting at cc.helsinki.fi

[Ed]

The problems is of course the near-absence of people with advanced statistics
skills in linguistics (fortunately there are some exceptions on this list - I'm
NOT one of them).

I think programs based on fuzzy-set theory that are used to do multidimensional
statistical analysis on things that are as difficult to quantify as political
tendencies or market analysis (locating 'cliques' in the jargon) could be very
useful in detecting clusters of linguistic traits and quantify their closeness/
distance. Apparently some research has been done in this direction (e.g. on
Chinese dialects), but I'm not aware of the use of existing marketing research
tools (software) in linguistics. Does anyone know more?

Ed. Selleslagh


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Mar 29 14:39:08 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 09:39:08 EST
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.093908.EST.>

In a message dated 3/29/2000 3:38:01 AM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi wrote:

>(and Steve Long went astray when
>he assumed that a non-innovating branch from a node never innovated again
>until the next node),

Quick note:

In this matter, Steve Long never, ever 'went astray.'

Steve Long (with admirable patience and civility) kept (and keeps) pointing
out that if you are defining your tree in terms of ONLY CERTAIN 'shared
innovations', then those 'other' innovations in the non-innovating branch are
not in the data and NOT represented in your tree.  Remember that, like other
cladistic modeled trees, the UPenn tree being discussed was entirely built on
(in form at least) a narrowed sample of 'data' and therefore ENTIRELY
excluded from the tree those innovations you are referring to.

Steve Long did and does walk the true path.

with admirable patience and civility,
Steve Long


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 29 23:44:35 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:44:35 -0800
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.20.0003281645530.13623-100000@vesuri.Helsinki.FI>
 (message from Robert Whiting on Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:13:57 +0300
 (EET DST))
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.154435.0800.>

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote:

> Personally, I think we do a disservice to linguistics when we say that
> linguistic data can't be quantified so there is no point in trying.  It gives
> the people who turn to linguists for guidance the idea that linguists are
> simply innumerate.  While I feel that there are some categories of linguistic
> data that are not readily subject to quantification (particularly semantic
> change), there are others that are (particularly phonological change), and
> what can be learned from these quantifications should be pursued for what it
> may teach us about some of the conclusions that have been arrived at by
> intuition.  Our tools aren't that good yet that we can afford to ignore
> potential improvements.

Agreed.

The issue I have is with the terminology "innovating" vs. "non-innovating":
*This* is what I think is misleading to a number of non-linguists, who do not
see "non-innovating" as equivalent to "not innovating in the same way".  *I'm*
not altogether comfortable with it in that meaning myself, and I understand
what is meant by it.

								Rich Alderson


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar 29 13:09:50 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:09:50 +0200
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.150950.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 10:16 PM

> [On English as `more archaic' than German, alleged to be a "fair statement"]

[snip]

>> 6) The preservation of 1st sg am in English as opposed to its loss in
>> German.

> English has 1st sg "be" or even (I believe) "bin" in non-standard dialects.
> What does non-standard German have?

[snip]
> Peter

[Ed]

I don't know about non-standard German dialects having anything else than 'Ich
bin', but I can inform you about Dutch, closely related to both English and
German:

Standard: ik ben, jij bent (in Flanders, and archaic, often :gij zijt, actually
a plural), hij/zij is; pl.: wij zijn, jullie zijn (Fl. and arch. often: gij
zijt), zij zijn. In Antwerp and other Brabant dialects: 1st sg. ik zijn
(actually a plural), and in various Holland-Dutch dialects 1st/2nd/3rd pl.
wij/jullie/zij benne(n) (actually a 'fabricated' plural of 'ben').

As you can see, a lot of permutations among the three (actualy two original
ones) roots 'is'/'zijn'/'be'. Like in all Germanic, and IE in general.

Ed. Selleslagh.


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 29 23:52:20 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:52:20 -0800
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
In-Reply-To: <29.2f7bc98.26119b10@aol.com> (JoatSimeon@aol.com)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.155220.0800.>

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com) wrote:

> I don't think anyone would deny that Lithuanian taken as a whole shows less
> innovation vs. a vs. PIE than, say, Polish; and that both show less than,
> say, any Germanic language.

Unless, for example, some version of the "New Look" is correct and Germanic and
Armenian are the most conservative with respect to the stop system rather than
highly innovative.

								Rich Alderson


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Thu Mar 30 19:34:56 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 13:34:56 -0600
Subject: linguistic maxims [was Re: pre-IE k > H]
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.133456.0600.>

>On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Carol Justus (cjustus at mail.utexas.edu) wrote in passing:

>> Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the details of the
>> Romance languages, took a position often reduced to the slogan "every word
>> has its own history" because he found so many explanations for exceptions to
>> regular sound correspondences.

>Doesn't this particular maxim date back to Hermann Paul and the beginnings of
>dialect geography--on which Schmidt based his proposal of the _Wellentheorie_?

>                                                                Rich Alderson

Quite right. This has a long tradition, but Malkiel did a particularly
thorough job of examining the details for the Romance languages, including
stages that are still spoken and earlier stages with textual histories. One
does cannot always extend the experience of one language to another, of
course.


From jbisso at voila.fr  Wed Mar 29 16:54:58 2000
From: jbisso at voila.fr (Jacques Bisso)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 18:54:58 +0200
Subject: Chaque mot a son histoire
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.185458.0200.>

Rich Alderson wrote:

>On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Carol Justus (cjustus at mail.utexas.edu)
>wrote in passing:

>>Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the
>>details of the Romance languages, took a position often
>>reduced to the slogan "every word has its own history"
>>because he found so many explanations for exceptions to
>>regular sound correspondences.

>Doesn't this particular maxim date back to Hermann Paul
>and the beginnings of dialect geography--on which Schmidt
>based his proposal of the _Wellentheorie_?

In speaking, Malkiel almost always attributed this maxim to the "father"
of dialect linguistics, Jules Gillieron. Here is what Iorgu Iordan (and
John Orr) has to say about it: "The realities of language, however, as
they are revealed in the studies of Gillieron and his disciples, prove
that there can be no talk of applying a phonetic norm to a series of
words, because we never find two words identically situated. Words which
at first sight seem to share the same conditions show themselves, in
fact, to have each a life of its own, different, to a greater or lesser
degree, from that of all the rest. This is the inwardness of another
fundamental principle of the Gillieronian doctrine, mainly, that every
word has its own history -- 'chaque mot a son histoire'." [Iordan-Orr.
1970. An Introduction to Romance Linguistics. p. 170.]

According to Elcock: "The principle that each word has its own
individual history, implicit in the teaching of Gillieron and formulated
in print by his pupil Karl Jaberg, now commands almost universal
acceptance." [W. D. Elcock. 1975. The Romance Languages. p. 164.]

Malkiel writes: "The dictum 'Chaque mot a son historie' has customarily
been ascribed, by friend and foe alike, to Jules Gillieron [...] This
widespread belief in Gillieron's authorship involves a dual
oversimplification. On the one hand, Gillieron, admittedly an
indefatigable toiler and a man endowed with an unfailing flair for,
shall we say, 'detective' work in linguistic reconstruction but
certainly no outstanding theorist, relied heavily on the truly original
thinking of Schuchardt, to whom, characteristically, he dedicated -- on
the occasion of the revered master's seventieth birthday -- the first
collection of his pioneering essays." [Malkiel. 1964. "Each Word Has a
History of Its Own." in Glossa: A Journal of Linguistics. I:2, 1967, pp.
137-149. (also in Malkiel. 1983. From Particular to General Linguistics
: Essays 1965 - 1978.)] In this article, he goes on to investigate
Bloomfield's (!) acceptance of the dictum under discussion.

jim


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar 29 13:03:18 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:03:18 +0200
Subject: Brahui
In-Reply-To: <1B45430A36@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.150318.0200.>

>Brahui is a Dravidian language spoken in a most unexpected place ::
>Baluchistan, which is a northwest

southwest

>part of Pakistan.

>Where does the word "Dravidian" come from?

A hypersanskritization of /tamiZ/ (= Tamil)

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Wed Mar 29 16:43:22 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 16:43:22 GMT
Subject: English as a creole
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.164322.GMT.>

  "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott at stratos.net> wrote about inversion.

People who could write might well have learned to write with inversions as a
literary practice, so much by years of early schoolroom indoctrination that
they reproduced it in all their writing same as they learned non-phonetic
English spellings such as "trouble" instead of "trubble". A similar example is
the recent (and to me annoying) spread from officialese to wide common spoken
usage of "on an X basis" instead of the good old adverb-forming suffix "X-ly".


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 19:06:24 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:06:24 -0000
Subject: TeX notation in e-mail [was Re: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions]
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.190624.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 3:48 AM

> On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

>> 1) I believe the root of *kwekw-lo- should be emended to *k^wek^w-lo- on
>> the strength of the palatal responses in Old Indian;

[RA]

> I'm really not sure what you mean by the collocation <k^w>:  If *I* wrote it,
> it would be a TeX-style notation indicating a superscript <w>--that is, the
> labiovelar.  Is this what you mean?  It is, of course, the correct notation
> for the word reconstructed on the basis of Skt. _cakras_, Gk. _kuklos_, Eng.
> _wheel_, etc.

> Or do you mean to indicate a palatal *k', in which case the evidence is very
> much against you?

> Many of the people writing on this list are often sloppy with regard to the
> writing of labiovelars (as in *{k^w}e{k^w}los) vs. clusters of palatal+*w
> (as in *ek'wos "horse").  If we were all careful to write in a (somewhat
> modified) TeX-style, as I have noted in the past, this sort of question would
> not arise.

[PR]

Well, I should have been more careful, and additionally explained what I
meant explicitly.

I believe that the phoneme (/x/) which became IE *k<w>, the labiovelar,
appeared in that earlier language before /e/, /a/, and /o/.

I believe that palatal responses in Old Indian to IE *k<w>  are due *not* to
an earlier IE *k<w>e but rather to a previous /*xe/ as opposed to /*xa,o/.

I have adopted a notation of *k^<w> to indicate this phoneme though, of
course, I realize it is phonologically contradictory.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 19:56:07 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:56:07 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.195607.0000.>

Dear Bob and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Whiting" <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 5:26 PM

[ mdoerator snip ]

> But the value of the
> Hittite sound represented by the cuneiform cannot be extrapolated from
> the Akkadian value except to conclude that it is some kind of laryngeal.

> This being the case, Carol is still quite right in saying that
> k > laryngeal is better terminology than k > h.  But it has nothing
> to do with the diacritic under the h.

[PR]

I propose a minor correction.

/x/ is not a "laryngeal"; rather it is a dorsal fricative.

Also, since cuneiform had signs at its disposal that were VC, and these were
used in Ajjadian for syllables deriving from /?V/, e.g., I think the
presumption should be that [h] (with or without diacritical sub-hook)
represented /x/.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar 30 10:13:23 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 12:13:23 +0200
Subject: Neanderthal DNA
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.121323.0200.>

I would like to bring to your attention the 'feature of the week' in the most
recent issue of Nature (March 30, 2000): http://www.nature.com/nature/fow/
about Neanderthal DNA results. It is a series of good and balanced articles
that may have some bearing on the origin of language as we know it, and on the
out-of-Africa theory.

This may be somewhat beyond the scope of the list, but I am sure several
members will be interested.

Ed. Selleslagh


From alderson at netcom.com  Thu Mar 30 23:33:46 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 15:33:46 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <018101bf99e3$568a66c0$749f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.153346.0800.>

On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> We have to distinguish --- and I believe you are not --- the proposition
> that "Sanskrit is a one vowel language" from what *I* am proposing: "Old
> Indian has one phonemic vowel".

In any reasonable phonological theory, the two statements are equivalent.  What
do you think differentiates them?

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 30 17:35:32 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 17:35:32 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.173532.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 2:26 AM

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

[PRp]

>> Well, let us be a bit more precise. Old Indian [a]+[y] does *not* become /e/
>> rather it becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] does *not* become /o/ rather it
>> becomes /o:/. Careful notation distinguishes between long and short vowels
>> although, in theory, I suppose there is no problem writing [o] so long as
>> everyone knows that this indicates a long vowel /o:/.

[RA]

> Let's be careful with notations here:  [] indicate *phonetic* claims, while
> // indicate *phonemic* claims.  It is /ay/ that becomes /e:/, not [ay] or
> [ai]; mutatis mutandis, the same holds for the relationship between /aw/ and
> /o:/.

[PR]

Thank you for noticing that.

[PRp]

>> I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
>> transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
>> /o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat
>> these sounds as diphthongal.

[RA]

> Indic *a = /a/ is phonetically [@], by which I mean a mid-central unrounded
> vowel, not a reduced vowel.  This is often written in (American) phonology
> texts with the inverted lowercase <v> symbol (cf. Laduslaw & Pullum,
> _Phonetic Symbol Guide_, 2nd edition).  The sound of the collocations [@i]
> and [@u] are familiar to those who have heard Canadian speakers from southern
> Ontario or US speakers from the Tidewater region of Virginia, and their
> transition to [e:] and [o:] is a simple matter of coloring of [@] and
> lowering of [i]/[u] by the processes well-described by Patricia Stampe in
> papers published in the Ohio State Working Papers in Linguistics in the
> mid-1970s.  There is no need for them *ever* to have been [ei] and
> [ou]--though that is not ruled out.

[PR]

A good point. And, in view of examples like pra-ugam, probably very
pertinent.

[PRp]

>> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>> preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
>> /w/;

[RA]

> Impossible, if you truly mean the notation you are using.  I think you
> mean that [e] and [o] are allophones of /a/, but by the time we are speaking
> of Indic, those relationships simply do not exist in the sense you intend.

[PR]

Well, let me try again. Old Indian [e:] is an allophone of /a/ in an
environment preceding /j/; [o:] is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
preceding /w/. And yes, I do realize that closer in time, Ve:V could
contrast with VaV, imparting phonemic status to /e:/.

<snip>

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 30 18:15:33 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 18:15:33 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.181533.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 2:05 AM

> On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

>> I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
>> formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
>> transferred to another syllable.

[RA]

> The *pitch* accent, not the *stress* accent, at least if you are having
> recourse to Lehmann's theory of the vowel system.

[PR]
Correction accepted. Although, as we all know, the relationship of stress-
and tone-accents is gnarled.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar 31 05:37:41 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 07:37:41 +0200
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <015a01bf99d1$1df25aa0$749f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.073741.0200.>

>I have no ready means of information on Pashto so would you mind if I
>enquire:

>1) does Pashto have any long vowels beside /e:/ and /o:/?

Yes, a:, i:, u: are also present.

>2) in Pashto, are /e:/ and /o:/ derivable from earlier /Vi/ and /Vu/?

The sources of /o:/ include OIr. /a:/, /-aha-/ athl. (/au/ > /u:/
normally), whereas for /e:/, i-diphthongs are among the sources.

However, the Pashto vowel system is not *exactly* like the Sanskrit one, in
that it contains a phonemic schwa (which may be the short counterpart of
e:), which I overlooked, so for the parallel you were looking for, a
different language presents itself: Balochi

St.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Mar 31 19:14:50 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 20:14:50 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.201450.0100.>

> 1) Sanskrit ... is more adequately described as: /a/, /a:/, /e:/, /i/,
> /i:/, /o:/, /u/, /u:/.

Sanskrit also had short (!!) [e] and [o] as allophones of /e/ and /o/ before
a non-elided initial /a/ - according to MacDonell, A Vedic Reader, p20.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Mar 31 19:22:33 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 20:22:33 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.202233.0100.>

>> .. pra-ugam

> To what IE root do you propose to attribute [-ugam]?

Hyeug - to yoke.   Either the /y/ or the /H/ has caused hiatus here by
dropping out.   This means that your "rule" for the combination /a + u/ is
not always true.

>su-astaye.

The problem is again that your "rule" of consonant/vowel allophones doesn't
work and would need revising to cover cases like this.   Perhaps you can
revise it without trouble - but in its present form, a succession of two
vowels is not possible.

Peter


From alderson at netcom.com  Thu Mar 30 23:52:02 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 15:52:02 -0800
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
In-Reply-To: <015101bf99d0$3513ca80$749f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.155202.0800.>

On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote, responding
to Larry Trask's post of Tue, 28 Mar 2000:

>>> Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
>>> in a minimal pair?

> [LT]

>> Easy.  English /h/ and [eng] -- the velar nasal, as in 'sing' -- do not
>> form even a single minimal pair.

> [PR]

> Now I am really confused. I would have thought that /h/ could be established
> by many minimal pairs like [her] / [per] and /ng/ by many minimal pairs like
> [bang] / [ban], along the lines of your dictionary's: "The existence of such
> a pair demonstrates conclusively that the two segments which are different
> must belong to two different phonemes."

Of course they are established by those minimal pairs--but there is no minimal
pair involving *those* *two* *phonemes*.

In rabid American Structuralist writings, complementary distribution of two
apparent phonemes required that they be combined into a single phoneme with
two (or more) allophones--until it was pointed out that in English, [h] and [N]
were in complementary distribution ([h] only occurs word-initially, [N] word-
medially and -finally), and otherwise fit the minimal-pair requirement for
phonemehood, as you yourself note.  This led to the _ad hoc_ creation of the
requirement for "phonetic similarity" among all the allophones of a phoneme.
(I think Twaddell wrote that position paper--it's in Joos, _Readings in
Linguistics_, in any case.)

NB:  It's "phonetic", not "phonological", similarity that is required in this
phonological theory.

								Rich Alderson


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Mar 31 19:27:12 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 20:27:12 +0100
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.202712.0100.>

>....  But believe it
> or not, linguists will still disagree on the phonemic status of sounds
> and different analyses may result in different numbers of phonemes
> claimed for a particular language.

Interestingly, this has come up before on the list even with reference to
English - and in particular, the phonemicity of voiceless /w/ ("where" etc,
in some dialects) and c-cedilla in words like "hue".

If you want a minimal pair, I offer:   hue ~ who;  but even this does not
guarantee phonemic status for the initial sound in "hue".

Peter


From BMScott at stratos.net  Fri Mar 31 05:41:49 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 00:41:49 -0500
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.004149.0500.>

Robert Whiting wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Mar, petegray <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

> [quoting Brian M. Scott]

>>> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
>>> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
>>> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
>>> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>>> leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
>>> the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>>> these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

>> Yes - you're right!

[...]

> Yes, he is right, but he is also not right (and since he was
> defending a position that I had taken originally, I was also both
> right and not right).  He is right if you only consider the
> behavior of the tree at the nodes.

Yes, I was making a statement only about the structure
of binary trees.  I took it as obvious that there will
have been innovations along branches, so that the
'non-innovating' branch may in fact be nothing of the
kind.  I wish that I'd thought of generalizing to
weighted trees to get a more realistic result, though!

[Snip weighted trees and incompleteness of tree models; I
agree with all of it.]

To clarify one other point:

BMS:

>> At each node you start afresh, so it's not really meaningful
>> to speak of 'one and the same branch'.

Steve Long responded:

> Actually one would not start afresh at each node.  IF your
> "branch-offs" only mark a limited set of innovations at each
> node, then those innovations in theory will not be found in
> the last chronological residue of the non-innovating
> language/languages.

My statement that each node is a fresh start was in response
to the comment that 'it is not necessary that it is always one
and the same branch which does not innovate'.  Every minimal
path through the tree from the root to a leaf is a branch, so
every non-terminal node and edge lies on more than one branch,
and it is therefore not clear what can be meant by 'one and
the same branch' unless one has chosen a particular branch
beforehand.  From a tree-structural point of view each node
is the root of a subtree that does not depend on the ancestors
of that node, so you really do start afresh there.  This is
also true from a linguistic point of view, since change is
inevitable along every edge.

SL:

> There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying
> anything new happened in that non-innovating residue.

The data that I have in mind comprise everything known about
the IE languages.  This discussion at this point is (if I
understand it correctly) about their actual history as it
may be (partly) modelled by tree structures, not about the
methodological details of some particular tree construction.

Brian M. Scott


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 31 11:42:55 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:42:55 +0300
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <200003292344.PAA02747@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.144255.0300.>

On Wed, 29 Mar, Richard M. Alderson III <alderson at netcom.com>
wrote:

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote:

<snip>

>> Our tools aren't that good yet that we can afford to ignore
>> potential improvements.

>Agreed.

>The issue I have is with the terminology "innovating" vs.
>"non-innovating": *This* is what I think is misleading to a
>number of non-linguists, who do not see "non-innovating" as
>equivalent to "not innovating in the same way".  *I'm* not
>altogether comfortable with it in that meaning myself, and I
>understand what is meant by it.

Agreed again.  But innovating/non-innovating is a by-product of
the tree model, and I expect that most of us are not altogether
comfortable with the tree model either.  The tree model has
severe limitations and it is important to be aware of what these
limitations are.  Perhaps all trees should be required to have
a warning label something like "WARNING:  This tree does not
reflect reality except in certain narrow areas.  Do not try to
apply this tree to real life situations."  or "WARNING:  This
tree is an abstraction based on limited data.  Prolonged use
without constant reference to the data may be hazardous to your
mental health."

Even so, the tree model is still useful for certain things so it
can't really be dispensed with.  And anything that provides a
better model of the features that the tree doesn't, will probably
distort the features that are made clear by the tree, as well as
running the risk of being too complex to be comprehensible (e.g.,
isogloss maps or dialect geography).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 31 11:52:13 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:52:13 +0300
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <4a.357a36c.26136f8c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.145213.0300.>

On Wed, 29 Mar, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 3/29/2000 3:38:01 AM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi wrote:

>(and Steve Long went astray when he assumed that a
>non-innovating branch from a node never innovated again until the
>next node),

>Quick note:

>In this matter, Steve Long never, ever 'went astray.'

Sure you did, Steve.  You just don't know enough different things
yet to be able to realize it.  I'm still waiting for conclusion
jumping to become an Olympic event so you can come into your own :>

>Steve Long (with admirable patience and civility) kept (and
>keeps) pointing out that if you are defining your tree in terms
>of ONLY CERTAIN 'shared innovations', then those 'other'
>innovations in the non-innovating branch are not in the data and
>NOT represented in your tree.  Remember that, like other
>cladistic modeled trees, the UPenn tree being discussed was
>entirely built on (in form at least) a narrowed sample of 'data'
>and therefore ENTIRELY excluded from the tree those innovations
>you are referring to.

And this is fine, and as long as you stick to the tree and
realize that the tree does not model reality but only a limited
part of it, then you won't get into much trouble.  But defining
the tree to do certain things doesn't redefine real life.  And
when you start saying that the tree represents real life, then
you are going astray.  You did this when you posted on Sun, 5 Sep
1999

     That is the way this tree is set up.  Whatever is
     "innovating" gets a node and a name.  But there is always a
     non-innovating language left over, for the next node to
     innovate way from.  (Otherwise, Graeco-Armenian is
     innovating away from Italo-Celtic.)  So, node after node,
     there is a language that does not innovate.  Left over for
     the next node to innovate away from.

     The only node on that tree that represents a non-innovating
     language is marked PIE.  And this tree also posits a group
     of speakers who are always non-innovators, node after node.
     And because they are not the innovators, they remain PIE.
     Right down to the last node.  Unless of course they are the
     last node.

As far as the tree is concerned, this is correct.  This is the
way all trees are set up.  They are based on binary oppositions.
But in real life, there is no such thing as a "non-innovating"
language.  And when real life conflicts with the model then you
have to say that the model is wrong, not that real life is.  So I
will amend my previous statement and agree with you that you did
not go astray by saying that innovation in the tree only takes
place at the nodes; *in the tree*, this is true.  So you didn't
go astray until you assumed that the tree represents reality.

Now you seem to have gotten a glimmer of this reality because on
Thu, 9 Sep 1999 you posted:

     The "nodes" represent certain specific innovations.  The
     "non-innovating" language that is assumed in the Stammbaum
     is only "non-innovating" as to that limited group of
     innovations.  Otherwise, that language could be quite
     innovative, I suppose.

This is precisely the point at issue, and I couldn't have put it
better myself (except for leaving off the "I suppose" and
perhaps adding "at that point in time" after "... as to that
limited group of innovations").  However, you seem to have
abandoned this tentative insight into reality since, less than a
week ago, you were right back at it:

     Sun, 26 Mar 2000
     Well, it is interesting to some of us.  Because it means
     that the methodology yields an IE language or set of IE
     languages which innovated nothing - within the scope of the
     innovations that were used earlier to differentiate all the
     other IE languages.  Depending on whether you call something
     an innovation or retention can of course completely change
     the identification of that language which 'innovated
     nothing.'

Once again, there is no such thing as a language which "innovates
nothing" in real life.  It may look that way on the tree, but the
tree is not a model of real life.  It is only a convenient way of
representing how we group languages based on shared innovations.
Innovations that do not result in a branching are not accounted
for in the tree.  Even more dangerous is the fact that, in real
life, isogloss lines may connect branches of the tree (this will
be a result of wave-effect changes affecting dialects still in
contact).  If there are enough of these, a tree model may even
become impossible.

Even your qualification "innovated nothing - within the scope of the
innovations that were used earlier to differentiate all the other
IE languages" does not make this true because a language can
always pick up an earlier innovation that it missed later.  For
example, Latin is a "centum" language (par excellence), but guess
how French <cent> is pronounced.  Now this is not the same as the
original palatal assibilation, because it results from a
different process and not all French /k/ has become /s/ (it
depends on the following vowel sound), but it does show that you
can't classify languages as non-innovating even to this extext
because the same innovation is likely to turn up sometime later
on the "non-innovating" branch precisely because innovations that
do not result in branchings are not accounted for in the tree.

Most IEists would probably, as an intuitive conclusion, classify
Lithuanian as being at the end of the minimal path through the
tree at least in the area of noun morphology, but it is clear
that Lithuanian is not on the "non-innovative" path through the
tree.  Therefore the "non-innovative" path through the tree does
not necessarily lead to the least innovated language in real life
and hence the "non-innovative" path does not necessarily have any
significance in reality.

Now I admit my culpability in prompting this 26 Mar posting
because, while I wanted to give you credit for the idea that
there will be a "least innovative" language, I did not make it
unequivocally clear how the concept of a "minimal path" through
the tree differs from that of a "non-innovative' path through the
tree.  The minimal path (a path from the top of the tree to the
bottom that has the fewest total innovations on it) has to exist
in real life unless all languages on the tree have innovated to
exactly the same extent.  The "non-innovative" path only has to
exist in the tree.  Now it is possible that the two may coincide,
but it is not intuitively obvious that it is likely.  One could
probably construct a tree so that the "minimal path" and the
"non-innovative" path do coincide, but that would just be
stacking the deck (there is a certain amount of deck-stacking
that goes on in trees anyway) and it is not needed as proof of
the existence of the minimal path.

And my example of a single-elimination tournament was not
entirely apt, because while in both trees the action takes place
only at the nodes, the single-elimination tournament does model
real life while the linguistic tree does not.  In a
single-elimination tournament the winner at a node proceeds to
the next node.  If something happens to the winner before the
next node, the next node is simply forfeited to the survivor. The
loser at the previous node is not brought back to play.

So I plead guilty to having carelessly led you back to your
untenable earlier assumption that because there is a
"non-innovative" path through the tree there must be a language
out there somewhere beyond the tree that has not innovated a jot
or a tiddle since PIE, and I apologize for negligently
contributing to your confusion.  Just hold your thought of 9 Sep
1999 and you should be all right.  There will be a language out
there that has innovated least, but it won't necessarily have
always been on the non-innovative branch of a node in the tree.

>Steve Long did and does walk the true path.

Yes, but to where? :)  The road to Hell is paved with good
intentions.  And again, I am sorry for inadvertently leading you
down the true path to recidivism.

>with admirable patience and civility,

Yes, your civility is appreciated and may your patience be
rewarded with eventual enlightenment.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 31 12:14:14 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 15:14:14 +0300
Subject: Semantic alternatives (was Re: Dating the final IE unity,
 in particular the word for "horse")
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000328210154.00aeb280@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.151414.0300.>

At 10:43 AM 3/28/00 +0530, Gábor Sándi wrote:

>Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
>"television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
>are there?

There are lots and lots of semantic alternatives for just about
everything.  That's what makes a thesaurus so big.  It's also what makes
it possible for Ruhlen to reconstruct "Proto-World".  It's also what makes
crossword puzzles both possible and entertaining.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Fri Mar 31 07:51:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 07:51:00 GMT
Subject: "lumpers"
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.075100.GMT.>

Pat Ryan at march 31 wrote:

PR>For a (IMHO) very lucid discussion of the principles invloved in
PR>trees, I think some list-members might enjoy:

PR>Family Evolution, Language History and Genetic Classification by Ilia Peiros

PR>in

PR>Historical Linguistics & Lexicostatistics, edited by Vitaly Shevoroshkin and
PR>Paul Sidwell

PR>In addition, there are good discussions of glottochronology and
PR>lexicostatistics.

I would like to stress that no comparative linguist accepts any publication
combined with the names 'Shevoroshkin', Starostin, Bengtson, Ruhlen.....

These 'lumpers' do not have any competence in e.g. sound correpondences
nor in lexicostatistics at all.
Most list members discussing laryngeals in IE roots will not even react on
this 'recommendation'.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  1 03:30:47 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:30:47 EST
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.223047.EST.>

>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>cave-hibernating.

-- bears don't stand up when advancing; they stand up when making threat
displays, or trying to see what's going on.

When advancing -- aka 'charging' -- they run towards you, very very quickly,
with a very large mouth full of teeth wide open, making distressing sounds.

To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  1 03:32:10 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:32:10 EST
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.223210.EST.>

>sarima at friesen.net writes:

>This brings up a little hypothesis of mine: the principle origin of the
>thematic inflection of nouns (the o-stems) was via nominalization of
>adjectives. >>

-- well, it seems to be a common process.  Particularly when taboo-avoidance
was at work.


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Wed Mar  1 08:20:46 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:50:46 +0530
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.135046.0530.>

From: Gabor Sandi <g_sandi at hotmail.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Ante Aikio <anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi>
Sent: Thursday, 27 January, 2000 5:28 PM

[snip]

>> Flaunting my ignorance, I may perhaps ask the silly question: How can
>> you exclude that the Uralic homeland had a prehistory south of the Black
>> Sea? If Proto-Uralic was only one language when it split into the many
>> that have become known, can one really exclude that the speakers of that
>> language had earlier lived somewhere else? I'm not advocating that one
>> should make up all sorts of fanciful scenarios, far from it, but it just
>> could be playing a trick on us.

>In principle, it cannot be totally excluded. However, the idea of a P-U
>homeland south of the Black Sea would not be a very fruitful hypothesis,
>since it would only create a new, very difficult question to answer: why
>and how would the P-U speakers have migrated north to become
>hunter-gatherers in the taiga/tundra zone of northern Eurasia? There is
>no evidence suggesting that the P-U Urheimat would have been -outside- the
>area where U languages are spoken today.

 >- Ante Aikio

Well, our linguistic (I presume you to be Finnish, I am Hungarian) ancestors
must have migrated to the taiga/tundra zone from the south at one point,
seeing that the ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens were in Africa. I would
venture the guess that they were big game hunters, and as the ice sheets
moved north, the predecessors of Proto Uralic speakers followed the mammuth
and other large game to the north.

Just before the first offshoots of Proto-Uralic (the Samoyeds?) split off, I
agree that they must have lived somewhere north of the Black Sea/Caspian
area. Some of them might even have lived just north of the Black Sea, to be
pushed north by the more populous neolithic farmers moving into the area -
ancestors of the Sredni Stog, Tripolye etc. cultures.

Best wishes,

Gabor


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar  1 14:55:12 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 15:55:12 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.155512.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 4:50 PM

> Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de> wrote:

>>> to the south (with s-mobile)
>>> - bask    izen

>> So Basque is Indoeuropean, I see (try to inflect it, maybe it shows -r/-n
>> heteroclisis as well).

> Careful now, Basque *does* have -n/-r- "heteroclisis" of sorts
> (e.g. <egun> "day", <egur-aldi> "weather"[*]) and even one case
> of true -r/-n- heteroclisis (erg. <haur> oblique <hon-> "this").

> [*] Despite PII *ag^her, ag^hnas "day", I do *not* think that the
> Basque phenomenon can be equated with the PIE one.

[Ed]

Maybe this is not the right place, but I have this question that has been
nagging me for years: would Turkish 'g?n' for 'day' fit in here?

Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar  1 14:56:29 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 15:56:29 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.155629.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 5:47 AM

> In a message dated 2/27/2000 11:16:35 PM, edsel at glo.be wrote (re English
> syntax):

>> E.g. What would you
>> think of a sentence like *"I said clearly that "modern Afrikaans many of the
>> characteristics has of a creole"*...?

> Pennsylvania Dutch.

> Regards,
> Steve Long

[Ed]

No wonder: 1) Penn Dutch is actually Penn Deutsch (German); 2) The syntax of
(High) German and Dutch (and Low German) is 99% the same; the only big
grammatical difference is the almost complete loss of noun flection in Dutch
and Low German; 3) In Pennsylvania this sentence reflects both Dutch and German
syntax transposed into English.

Ed.


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Wed Mar  1 09:08:59 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:08:59 +0200
Subject: Borrowing verbs [was: Basque <ibili>]
In-Reply-To: <E12NuqX-00079T-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.110859.0200.>

[I wrote:]
>>  Saami has a huge amount of
>>  verbs borrowed from both Finnish and Scandinavian, and most of these are
>>  quite recent borrowings. They are without exception inflected according to
>>  the normal Saami inflectional paradigm. This even holds for new
>>  borrowings: a borrowed verb root that has not even been phonologically
>>  nativized gets Saami mood, tense, number and person suffixes attached to
>>  it quite regularly.

[Larry Trask:]
> Very interesting, and I thank you for the information.

> I presume, though, that the inflectional pattern of Saami is such that a
> foreign verb-stem can be readily absorbed and inflected.  In many other
> cases, the two languages involved have such different verbal morphologies
> that there is no way the borrowing language can inflect the borrowed
> verb-stem.  Arabic loans into Turkish are a good case in point: there is no
> earthly way that an internally inflected Arabic verbal root can be handled
> within the purely suffixing Turkish verbal morphology, which requires
> verb-stems to contain vowels.

The case of Arabic > Turkish is rather extreme, since Arabic roots are
non-continuous. But even great differences in phonotactic structure
(e.g. between Norwegian and Saami) do not hinder borrowing, if the roots
in both languages have a relatively consistent form throughout the
paradigm (i.e., they are not e.g. infixed, as in the case of Arabic).

Saami has complex morphophonemic alterations in its verb paradigms, but
even this is not a hindrance to borrowing verbs. Bisyllabic verb stems
borrowed from Finnish are usually nativized into Saami inflectional class
one, which has both qualitative and quantitative alterations affecting
first and second syllable vowels and medial consonants / consonant
clusters. On the other hand, Scandianvian loan verbs are often (but not
always) nativized into inflectional class three, which has no alterations.

You originally mentioned cases where verbs are borrowed as non-finite
forms and used with native auxiliaries. This kind of borrowing is not
even theoretically possible for Saami, since Saami has only one genuine
auxiliary (the negative verb) and one semi-auxiliary (leat 'to be, have,
exist etc.') whose syntactic use is limited in such a way that it cannot
be used to build constructions with borrowed non-finite verbal elements.

A perhaps interesting case of verb borrowing is found in Finnish, which
has lots of Proto-Scandinavian / Swedish loan verbs. Since borrowing
non-finite forms is not possible for Finnish either, Finnish has generally
nativized the verbs by adding a "verbalizing" suffix -a-/-?- to the
stem: e.g. Swedish m?la 'to paint' > Finnish maala-a-. The suffix goes
back to the PU factititve / causative dx *-ta- / *-t?-, but from a
synchronical point of view Finnish -a-/-?- is hardly more than a kind of
verb marker.

 Regards,

 Ante Aikio


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 09:18:56 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 10:18:56 +0100
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e0692f276e@[208.25.89.75]>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.101856.0100.>

>>>The I-H hypothesis I believe has Hittite < PIE.

>>Not at all.  In fact the very *form* of the word implies exclusion of
>>Anatolian from IE proper

>I'm puzzled by why the IE languages have come to be referred to as
>"Anatolian." What then do they call non-IE tongues like Hurrian?

Non-IE languages of Ancient Anatolia. We call Indic Indic, to the
disadvantage of Dravidian, and we call Baltic Baltic to the disadvantage of
Estonian.  There is no such thing as an ideal terminology. Sometimes we
have to use one name for two languages (Bulgarian, Chwarezmian, Udi aso.)

> (Or are
>non-IE languages other than Hurrian known in Anatolia?)

Hattic, Urartaean, Assyrian (Turkish ;-)

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From strand at sedona.net  Wed Mar  1 09:24:02 2000
From: strand at sedona.net (Richard F.Strand)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:24:02 -0000
Subject: Nuristani
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.092402.0000.>

Stephen Georg wrote:

>PS: as I just discover, your fine web-site contains some answers to my
>questions, and I'd like to recommend it for anyone interested. But maybe there
>are more features of N[uristani] lg. relevant for Aryan subclassification
>which could be mentioned ?

I'm glad that you found my website useful.  I am in the process of preparing
for my site a summary of the current phonological processes that distinguish
the speech of the diverse linguistic communities of the Nuristan region.
These processes provide some interesting insights into the development of
Nuristani and Indo-Iranian in general from PIE times, and I have prepared a
chart depicting this development.  For presentation on the Web this is a
labor-intensive task, so I beg your indulgence for a month or so until it
appears.

As for the distinctiveness of Nuristani within Indo-Iranian, we find in it
an intertwining of Iranian and Indo-Aryan processes; but the relative
chronological ordering appears to be:

proto-Aryan > Iranian > Indo-Aryan > Nuristani,

which is consistent with the hypothesis that the Nuristanis were ethnically
non-Aryas who were first overtaken by the proto-Aryan expansion, later swept
up in the Iranian sphere, migrated eastward into the Indo-Aryan sphere, only
to be expelled again by Iranian speakers (Afghans) into their present
homeland.  A simple Stammbaum obviously can't properly depict the
relationship of these languages.  Nuristani is best described as a
"satellite" to the Aryan (Iranian and Indo-Aryan) languages, rather than as
a "branch" of the Indo-Iranian group.

Nuristani before it ended up in Nuristan is as much defined by what it
avoided as by what it shared with its Indo-Iranian neighbors.  After it
shared an Iranian process of dentalizing lamino-alveolar affricates (< PIE
palatals), it avoided the simplification of the resulting dental affricates,
as happened in Iranian.  It avoided the harshening of *s after *u.  There
are possibly distinctive treatments of vocalic *rH (e.g., Kamviri /dra~g'aR/
'long', with close /a/ instead of expected open [vriddhied] /A/).  Stay
tuned to my website for more details.

Morphologically distinctive is the system of local adverbs, with suffixes
that seem to go back to PIE *-ro, *-no, *-mo indicating, e.g., in Kamviri,
specific location, nonspecific location, and expanse, respectively.  If the
former two suffixes are indeed those of the ancient heteroclites, their
local meanings in Nuristani may shed some light on the original distinctions
encoded in the ancient alternating *r/*n stems (*r = specific item on the
energy path [nom. & acc.] vs. *n =  indefinitely located item on the motion
path [oblique cases]).  *mo may have originally indicated an outward
expansion of the root action, as in Skt. bhu:mi 'earth'.  More details of
this system appear on my website.

>Some references would be welcome, too (post-Morgenstierne).

Check out the bibliography on my site, but not much new on the historical
position of Nuristani has been added beyond Morgenstierne's fundamental
contributions.

     Richard Strand

     Richard Strand's Nuristan Site
     http://users.sedona.net/~strand


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  1 13:22:03 2000
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:22:03 +0000
Subject: Etymological dictionaries
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.132203.0000.>

>> From: "jose.perez3" <inakistand at yucom.be>
>> Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 02:42:20 +0100

> [ moderator snip ]

>>      Final request: Ernout and Meillet's Dictionnaire itymologique de la
>> langue latine has been out of print for ages and my photocopies (yups!)
>> were never much good to start with. What shall I replace them with?

Ernout & Meillet is not out of print. It is available at 693.50 FF from Culture
Surf (http://www.culturesurf.com/rech.htm).

I bought a copy from them in October 1999.

Chantraine's Dictionnaire Etymologique de la Langue Grecque is also in print; 2
vols, 1444 FF, from Culture Surf. (I reckoned I couldn't afford Chantraine as
well, last October.)

Max Wheeler
____________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON BN1 9QH, G.B.

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975 Fax: +44 (0)1273 671320 Email: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
____________________________________________________________


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 07:52:57 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 07:52:57 -0000
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.075257.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 8:10 AM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>> *ulkwiha?

<MCV>
> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

<PR>
Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants in
combination, but how do we know?

Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 13:55:29 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 14:55:29 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <1a.ea8d26.25ecba1f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.145529.0100.>

>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>A number of Greek historians tell us the Celtic word for horse was <marka>,
>>never mentioning <equus> or <hippos> or any other name.

>-- wrong, and completely wrong at that.  Eg., the following Celtic words for
>"horse", deriving from *ekwos:

>Old Irish:  ech
>Gaulish:    epo (plus "equos", as the name of a month)
>Welsh       ebol (colt)

>You really should be more careful... 8-).

Excuse me, but do the Greek historians mention the Old Irish and Welsh
words ? I'd be surprised, if they did, so the statement above is not really
touched by your assertion that it is "completely wrong"  ...

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From jrader at m-w.com  Wed Mar  1 09:38:41 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:38:41 +0000
Subject: Celtiberian
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.093841.0000.>

Joseph Eska, in his succinct and useful review of some of the recent
literature on Celtiberian/Hispano-Celtic (posted 28 Feb), modestly
fails to mention his own contribution, _Towards an Interpretation of the
Hispano-Celtic Inscription of Botorrita_ (1989), published in the
Innsbrucker Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft series, and now out of
print, I believe.

Jim Rader


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Mar  1 14:48:35 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 08:48:35 -0600
Subject: Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.084835.0600.>

On recent etymological dictionaries, Lehmann's revision of Feist's Gothic
etymological dictionary (1986. A Gothic Etymological Dictionary ... Leiden:
Brill) lists everything that has a reflex in Gothic by Gothic word, with
good indices to the other languages and a fairly complete list of
references with all abbreviations resolved.

CFJ

[ moderator snip ]


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Mar  1 15:12:45 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:12:45 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.091245.0600.>

Is there some compelling reason for rejecting Edgar Polome's (JIES 22
[1994] 289-305] with references) linguistic arguments (based on earlier
studies as well) for an initial closer link between Germanic and Baltic,
but Slavic and Iranian, then a movement of Slavic closer to Baltic with
Germanic moving closer to Italic, then when Italic tribes moved south into
Italy, closer contact between Celtic and Germanic? This would not imply an
original unity but successive post-PIE areal contacts at different stages
of cultural development.

Carol Justus

>Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>>At 07:55 AM 2/23/00 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>>>Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>>>>[Though I actually question tracing B-S back to Corded Ware].

>>>G-B-S.

>>I am coming from the position of being unconvinced of the reality of
>>Germano-Balto-Slavic.  In fact I cannot consistently place Balto-Slavic in
>>the IE tree.  Depending on how I analyze it, it either comes out linked to
>>Germanic (as you suggest), or linked to the Greek and Indo-Iranian groups.

>Actually, I'm not suggesting a GBS genetic node.  I think
>Germanic "broke away" quite early on (while "Balto-Slavic" was
>still more or less undifferentiated eastern PIE).  Afterwards,
>Germanic and Balto-Slavic came into close areal contact (a "GBS
>Sprachbund", possibly in the Corded Ware period).  In fact, the
>opposite of what Ringe seems to be suggesting (GBS, later areal
>Gmc-Ital/Celt contacts).

>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Wed Mar  1 15:17:04 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:17:04 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.091704.0600.>

>>Ritualization of the death of an animal, asking its forgiveness when the
>>hunter is about to take its life, it not unusual in traditional cultures,
>>whether that animal be a bear or a rabbit.

>If *that* is the sort of rituals the IE horse rituals were, this would be
>meaningful.  But they do not have the structure of ritualized prayers for
>forgiveness - at least not *from* the horse.  (Some variants may have been
>supplications for forgiveness from Dye:us P'ter - but the horse's
>permission was not asked for).

The earliest attested IE prayers don't usually ask for forgiveness but are
more like Menelaos's prayer to Zeus for guiding his spear so that he will
kill Paris or Chryses' to Apollo to make Agamemnon's army pay for
Agamemnon's insults. Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence
forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

Carol Justus


From sonno3 at hotmail.com  Wed Mar  1 16:30:08 2000
From: sonno3 at hotmail.com (Christopher Gwinn)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:30:08 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.113008.0500.>

From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>

>> I consider Welsh (including its Latin component) to be pretty
>> solid linguistical evidence.

> -- of a Celtic language _in Wales_.  In the absence of written records, it
> would be virtually impossible to show that there had ever been such a
> language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor landscape
> features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few and
> often the product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western English
> rivers are called "Avon", which means... 'river'.

That is not entirely true - Brittonic elements in placenames (hills,
forests, towns, rivers) are present all throughout England (most of the
English cities even retain a modernized Romano-British name), though the
names are less common in the East as opposed to the West. The largest
percentage of Brittonic elements are in Western England, including
Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire as well as Shropshire,
Worcestershire, North East Herefordshire, Western Gloucestershire and, of
course, Devon and Cornwall. This Western area maintains Brittonic elemnts
even in smaller rivers and streams, brooks, villages, and homesteads and
even has names which are not from the Brittonic level, but rather from early
Welsh/Cornish


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Wed Mar  1 13:17:42 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:17:42 +0000
Subject: approach - methodology - history
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.131742.0000.>

Sorry if this is tangential, but the working behind some recent
proposition/assumptions on the list seems potentially (and maybe fatally)
flawed.  I tend to use as a working hypothesis the notion that the past was
in many respects (which we may well disregard as the result of a crude
pseudo-Darwinian approach picked up at an early stage in our education when
we we were also fed guff about mediaeval people thinking the world was
flat) the same as the present, and in particular that it was always
'modern', and that the effects of an event or series of events then are
likely to follow a pattern conforming to the effects of a similar event or
series of events now.  The assumption may be wrong in a specific case, but
it should require good evidence (which might be circumstantial) to overturn
it, and without the evidence an alternative should be no more than an
immediately weaker hypothesis.

At  04:56:20 UT 29 ii 2000 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
[>Miguel wrote:]
>>I consider Welsh (including its Latin component) to be pretty solid
>>linguistical evidence.

>-- of a Celtic language _in Wales_.  In the absence of written records, it
>would be virtually impossible to >show that there had ever been such a
>language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor >landscape
>features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few
>and often the >product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western
>English rivers are called "Avon", which >means... 'river'.

I think that this conflates two (or more) issues - why the rivers in the
west are called 'Avon', and the relations between the 'British' and the
'English'.

There is no a priori reason why the rivers in question should not have been
called 'the river' (ie abona/abana) by the 'British'.  It is common for
streams to be innominate, though the Avons are larger than mere rivulets,
brooks, becks or burns.  Some small lakes even - there was a proposal to
give a Lake District tarn the title 'Innominate Tarn' because it had
somehow not acquired a, or had lost an earlier,  name.  Of course, there
are cases of sounds being wrongly interpreted as _names_ (a bit of
reification there, perhaps) of a namable thing an inquirer wishes to know
the local/native name for.  But these are not mutually exclusive
situations.  [And there is a Welsh port called 'aberafan' - 'mouth of the
river' as well.  Perhaps it's an example of Major Major :-)]

The early dark age history of Wessex (and all the English rivers I can
think of called 'Avon' were at one time or another in Wessex) is obscure,
but it may well be an example of a British principality becoming Saxonised,
ie acquiring a North Sea rather than a Romanised cultural background.  The
founder of the dynasty had a Welsh name, and in some parts of its territory
there are few signs of any population displacement co-inciding with the
arrival of the 'English'.  Indeed in my part (which was snatched from
Wessex by Mercia in the mid-7th century) there is fair evidence for
cultural continuity, and for Welsh still being spoken in the 8th and 9th
centuries at some distance east of Offa's Dyke.  This contrasts with the
situation further north along the Welsh border, where Mercia defeated Powys
c. 635 CE and acquired the bulk of what is now Shropshire as a result.

And there is no reason to think that the 'English' did not know that
'abana/abona' (-> 'afan/afon') meant river.  The famous meeting between the
Celtic bishops and Augustine or his emissary took place not far from where
I am writing a generation after the region was added to Wessex, and I do
not imagine that the bishop of Aquae Sulis (or Corinium, Gleuum or
wherever) did not recognise in the first case what the 'English' were
calling the stream a few hundred metres from his episcopal seat.

There is a discussion by JRR Tolkein in his O'Donnell lecture
(unfortunately I do not have a copy to hand) of the role of the 'wealhstod'
(?sp), the person who served as an interpreter between Welsh speakers and
English speakers when one was needed, but we cannot be sure how
incomprehensible each group was to the other - the word is the title of an
official.

And the examples of the history of English spelling against it connection
with the sounds of the language give me qualms.

My understanding is that there was no systematic spelling in the time of
Chaucer, but that central government established its own standards during
the 15th century.  An individual's spelling might well remain idiosyncratic
until the 18th century, perhaps until Johnson's dictionary.  The problem of
the mismatch between the number of characters available and the number of
phonemes in English (and the phonemes themselves no doubt varied between
dialects as well as between idiolects) was never addressed, while habits
based on the 'little knowledge' which Pope declared 'a dangerous thing', eg
changing spelling more conforming with the pronunciation to one which
follows the believed history of the word (an example which comes straight
to mind is 'iland' being replaced by 'island' because of an alleged
connection with 'insula' -> 'isola/isle(ie ?le)'.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From ECOLING at aol.com  Wed Mar  1 16:30:35 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:30:35 EST
Subject: Polar Models vs. real-world Intermediates
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.113035.EST.>

I would much prefer that we were working on displaying
data of the difficult intermediate cases,
rather than fending off the theoretical pronouncements
of Trask that in essence deny the existence of real-world
intermediates.

The debate, as so often with Trask,
seems to be based mostly on definitions,
his polar oppositions instead of the reality of gradient intermediates.

For Altaic,
for Germanic within IE,
and for English descended from a partial fusion of Older English
     with a substantial morphological component from Norman French,
for Indo-Aryan (vocabulary and some morphology from PIE,
     much syntax and other morphology from Dravidian area
     especially at the contact fusion zones such as Konkani and Marathi,
     if I remember rightly),

the simpler polar oppositions are inadequate.
These are, despite Trask's denials, real-world cases,
whose intermediate status is most probably *known* at this point,
(though like all presentations of facts, not absolutely certain the best,
and subject to future revision).

In a message dated 3/1/2000 12:01:34 AM, Trask writes:

>All parties to the Altaic debate agree that there are just two
>possibilities: either Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are genuinely related
>within a single larger Altaic family, or they are not, and the obvious
>connections among them are merely the result of prolonged contact among
>unrelated families.  The parties differ as to which view they believe is
>the true one, but nobody I know of is arguing for any third view.

The statement above would be true if our conclusions were limited to
the two extremes, limited to the pure models.
But they need not be so limited,
not if our conclusions are to have mostly empirical content,
rather than mostly definitional non-empirical content.

Once we recognize that our models are not the same thing as reality,
and that there are intermediates and fuzzy edges in the real world,
it becomes possible to recognize in a particular case
that the truest answer we can give *may be*
that the real world was *intermediate* between two polar models.

The reality for the Altaic grouping
*might* have been that there were once independent languages,
or parts of their areas,
which were in such intimate and intense contact that they fused
into a single language continuum, describable imperfectly either
as a family tree (with strong areal differences) or
as a dialect network (with strong polar differentiations and overlapping).
Either of those phrasings clearly describes an intermediate.

Trask must I think reject at least a part of what is in the
immediately preceding paragraph, having to do with languages
fusing, because he writes:

>Middle English did not "inherit" these words at all:
>it *borrowed* them from Norman French.
>This is just the way the terms are used in linguistics.

Trask seems unwilling to recognize that the degrees of language
fusion can differ, and that there is no sharp boundary for the
appropriate use of the word "inherit".
Is there some unbiased view in which we can clearly say
that the descendants of the Norman conquerers did *not*
inherit language material from their ancestors, they only borrowed it?
At each stage of the process, they probably believed they
were inheriting, borrowing from English bit by bit.
Despite the recognized role of Norman French morphology in this
history? Despite the fact that modern English (and Middle English)
*use* parts of French word-formation morphology?
That morphology sits very deeply in the structure of modern English,
so deeply that "inherited" seems indeed an appropriate word
to describe the social situation, the psychological situation of
individual speakers, and the linguistic situation.

None of the above implies that the status of Old English and
Norman French are equal in the fusion.  But there was some kind
of fusion, more than simply borrowing of a few items of vocabulary.

That is why it is indeed dealing in "extreme" cases to compare
the borrowings of English from Indic, Chinese, and other sources.
It is a failure to recognize the gradient intermediate nature of the real
linguistic worlds that would class these as the same as the Norman
French component in the history of English.
The clarity of the simple models in *one* case
(polarly opposed "genetic" vs. "borrowing" in the case of
Chinese loanwords in English)
*can in no way* demonstrate any similar clarity in another case,
such as the interaction between Old English and Norman French.
The situations are so different in degree that the simple polar models
do not work for the case of English, which both
(a) emerged from the unequal fusion of the two, and
(b) emerged from the borrowing by one from the other.
BOTH statements (a,b) are true in a gradient real world,
and the denials of EITHER of them are false.
Saying so does not imply the absence of polar cases,
merely that polar cases *are* polar cases,
not fully appropriate to describing interemediates.

*

Noting the possibility of intermediates and demonstrating their
applicability to some particular cases of course decides
no empirical question  in any other particular cases.
Each case must be examined in its own right.

Whether a more intermediate model better applies to Altaic
is of course still an open question.
It may simply be that there has been insufficient analysis,
and that it may someday be discovered that one of the simpler,
more polar models actually does work quite well
(with certain extraneous factors then identified and segmented off).

Or it may be that the debate is an artificial one, sharpened by the
oversimplified models being used as the polar opposites in the debate.
Altaic, so far as we can reconstruct it from available data,
may be a dialect network which can be best analyzed using
neither pure tree nor pure dialect network models.
We may be unable to go deeper than that,
in which case we should state just that as our most responsible conclusion,
and claiming either polar model would be a less responsible conclusion.
BOTH polar parties to the current debates about Altaic
(the only two alternatives Trask considers) may be wrong.

Obviously, neither polar model is yet satisfying for Altaic,
which is why the debate continues!

Saying that the ultimate answer may be an intermediate
in no way says that people should stop investigating lines of
reasoning and sets of evidence which might more strongly support
a model closer to one of the polar models.
But the failure of either pole to satisfy in the case of Altaic
does suggest that we should use some frameworks
for displaying our data and results which recognize the possibility
of an intermediate as the closest to the truth.

Trask writes:

>Anyway, I can see absolutely no point in invoking hypothetical "substrates".
>If we have no hard evidence for the reality, and the nature, of a particular
>substrate in a particular case, then there is no point in raising the issue.

Certainly there is, if the point is to accumulate and display data
in such a way that evidence for a substrate or for "language area" sharing
or similar intermediate models can be recognized more easily when
it might be staring us in the face.  Excluding such possibilities
from the beginning is an unjustified bias against them.

*

One, but only one, possible outcome in such a case can be the
recognition of elements common between on the one hand
(a) one portion of a dialect network of a fused language area "F", or
(b) one polar focus of a fused language area "F"
(whichever view one takes of a fused language area)

and on the other hand a portion of a neighboring fused language area "G",
which suggests that fused language area "G" has as one of its components
something which is intermediate between being the effects of a dialect area
and the effects of a component language in fused language area "G".

(This is not what I think is most typically meant by "substrate",
but whether one uses that particular term or another
is not my concern here, the substantive facts are.)

In such a case, one might consider the possibility that there was once
a language "L", a part of which was fused into area "F"
and another part fused into area "G".
Absent such (or of course other external evidence which might support
one of the more polar models, clear genetics or clear borrowing),
we may simply remain with a "language area" as the best statement
of our results.

***
Trask writes:

[LA]
>>  To recognize that this is a possible situation
>>  for a proto-language,
>>  we must handle vocabulary and morphological
>>  distributions across *portions* of the dialect network of any
>>  proto-language in *at least* the frameworks of the following

[LT]
>Sorry, but this is putting the cart before the horse.
>
>We cannot identify any possible cases of variation within a proto-language
>before we have first identified the proto-language itself.

Unless the above is definitionally tautologous (and therefore without
empirical content, describing the status of a particular model not
the status of a real-world case),
I must reply that this is simply on its face wrong.

Much of the work on Altaic has consisted in doing both of these things
simultaneously, accumlating vocabulary distributions
as areal phenomena, and developing family-tree analyses.
Neither needs to precede the other.

Variation *within* a proto-language which is *not* demonstrably
linked to the genetic family-tree structure of the proto-language,
and which is *not* simply a demonstrable result of waves of borrowings,
may be discovered or recognized
*at the same time* as one is establishing a genetic tree or a dialect network
or other model as partially fitting that particular proto-language.

The two can proceed quite together, and in fact may reinforce each other.
The fact of some *partial* shared genetic origin must of course be assumed for
such a discourse to make sense.  But one need not know the answer
to any one part of it with complete assuredness at any one time.
Even a "final" conclusion, in the sense of the best a set of techniques
can do given a set of data available, may very well need to rest with
a conclusion that there was a proto-language, but
(a) what we can reconstruct from the evidence
     is not a uniform proto-language, and
(b) perhaps there never was a uniform proto-language.

Mr. Trask agrees that proto-languages need not be completely uniform.
I think by that, he is agreeing with the point being made here,
once we add modesty about the limitations of our techniques and conclusions.

Asking that the data relevant to studies of historical relationships
be assembled and visually displayed so far as possible
*independent of any conclusions one may wish to draw from such data*
is merely responsible common sense,
it is more conservative and careful than what Mr. Trask appears to be
advocating, which is to draw one kind of conclusion, then only to consider
questions (even some which might undermine that first conclusion)
within the limits imposed by that conclusion.

One important difference does come in just that, the ability to
carefully consider new data as evidence,
or even to consider previously known data from new perspectives, etc.
If we cannot see the data *except* restricted by a particular model,
especially a polarized model,
then the data which might lead to an eventual demonstration
that another model is required, also or in stead of a prevailing one,
simply cannot be gathered.  Each individual piece of data is ruled
out of order by the assumptions of the model if it is taken as representing
the reality with complete adequacy and no strain whatsoever.
So the fact that a number of pieces of data do converge on an alternative
synthesis will not be seen.
A classic case of Kuhnian resistance to changes of view in science.

***

Trask's definitional approach, referring to discussion of
English having more links to French than to Italian:

[3rd party]
>>  >They're not my terms; I didn't invent them -- they are standard
>>  >in historical linguistics textbooks.  But I agree with the
>>  >premise -- except that I wouldn't say "equally related"; I would
>>  >say "related at the same level."
>
[LA]
>>  I of course agree.
>
[LT]
>And so do I.
>
[LA]
>>  Perhaps our common reluctance to use the phrase
>>  "equally related" here is that it has a portion of its ordinary-language
>>  meaning,
>
[LT]
>Well, it shouldn't.  [snip]

That is not an adequate response.

Mr. Trask can of course try to tell others what they "should"
mean by terms, in his view,
but that is quite different from what I was doing,
describing what they *do* mean by terms.
*Including* those who use *genetically related* in a sense distinct
from borrowing, and who sometimes recognize
a more subtle 3rd distinction, such intimate contact that neither
simple genetic inheritance nor borrowing seem correct terms,
rather something in between the two.

If we are dealing only with simplistic models,
then of course a model can rule out fuzzy edges and rule out intermediate
cases, but that makes any such model less widely applicable in a real world
which actually contains such intermediates.
There is no justifiable burden-of-proof, by which we can somehow
magically know that one model is more true of a given
real-world case than another model *independent* of any actual evidence
(both models here assumed to be valid for some known languages).

***

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics
PO Box 15156
Washington, DC 20003


From jrader at m-w.com  Wed Mar  1 13:51:51 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 13:51:51 +0000
Subject: Borrowed verbs (Was: Basque <ibili>)
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.135151.0000.>

> At 09:46 AM 2/24/00 +0000, Larry Trask wrote:
>> is no way the borrowing language can inflect the borrowed verb-stem.  Arabic
>> loans into Turkish are a good case in point: there is no earthly way that an
>> internally inflected Arabic verbal root can be handled within the purely
>> suffixing Turkish verbal morphology, which requires verb-stems to contain
>> vowels.

>[Stanley Friesen:]
> Umm, what will get borrowed into Turkish is one of the "expanded" variants
> *with* its vowels, which will then be treated as a Turkish verb stem, and
> inflected according to the Turkish rules.

But this isn't what happens in Turkic, at least in Anatolian Turkish,
and I believe pretty much the same situation pertains in other,
particularly western Turkic languages, if to a lesser degree.  What
Anatolian Turkish does is combine a borrowed Perso-Arabic noun with
the verb <ed->, "do, make," which in these collocations is a
semantically empty auxiliary.  Hence, from <hareket> "motion,"
<hareket etmek> "to move"; <seyahat> "journey,"  <seyahat etmek> "to
travel," etc.  The same is done with nouns of European origin, e.g.,
<telefon etmek> "to phone, call on the telephone."  Turkish is almost
the paradigm of a language that does not borrow verbs.

On the other hand, I don't think I'd want to go as far as Larry Trask
in claiming that languages don't borrow verbs directly.  A
surprising number of Celtic and Germanic loans into French can only
be regarded as directly borrowed verbs, e.g., <briser> on the Celtic
side and <garder> and <garnir> on the Germanic side.  I once made a
list of other examples, but it's doubtless long lost....

Jim Rader


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 19:39:31 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 20:39:31 +0100
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000228190238.0098e510@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.203931.0100.>

>At 09:46 AM 2/24/00 +0000, Larry Trask wrote:
>>is no way the borrowing language can inflect the borrowed verb-stem.  Arabic
>>loans into Turkish are a good case in point: there is no earthly way that an
>>internally inflected Arabic verbal root can be handled within the purely
>>suffixing Turkish verbal morphology, which requires verb-stems to contain
>>vowels.

>Umm, what will get borrowed into Turkish is one of the "expanded" variants
>*with* its vowels, which will then be treated as a Turkish verb stem, and
>inflected according to the Turkish rules.

I confess that I don't know what an "expanded" variant of an Arabic root
is. What I do know, however, is that *every* Arabic verb form has vowels.
The triconsonantal root is a (necessary) abstraction, since for the lion's
share of Arabic verbs it is the three consonants which seem to be the only
*invariant* part of the verbal lexeme. But three consonants are no verb,
the "root" thus is a theoretical artefact, something like dehydrated coffee
actually.

Arabic verbal "roots" show up in Turkish mostly in the garb of verbal nouns
(in a wide variety of formations), accompanied by verbs of "doing" (el-,
eyle-, kIl-) or "becoming" (edil-, olun-)  in order to be "inflected".

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar  1 19:10:28 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 20:10:28 +0100
Subject: R and r
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.201028.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 9:20 PM

> Ed suggested a contrast in Classical Greek (rho / rho with spiritus asper or
> dasemon)?

> I cannot think of any words where there would such a contrast.  In the
> absence of such words, the presence or absence of the spiritus asper is
> purely mechanical, and therefore not phonemic, so there cannot be a phonemic
> contrast.   Some modern publications no longer even print the spiritus
> asper, since it is so predictable.

[Ed]

I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast: why would they
have invented this unobvious orthography in the first place? Note that
rho-sp.a. or the combination rho-rho-sp.a. occurs in the positions where you
could expect a 'fortis' R, very similar to the occurrence of rr in Spanish
(word-initially and in case of gemination), and the one in Portuguese. The
spiritus asper is strongly suggestive of some form of aspiration.

Specialists: 'what say you'?

Ed.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Mar  1 19:41:25 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 20:41:25 +0100
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <ab.10bac9a.25ecab74@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.204125.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>>>-- and currently around 800 million speaking Indo-European languages there,
>>>which if you add in Iran, eastern Anatolia and central Asia, comes to over 1
>>>billion.

>>That wasn't my point.

>-- well, it was my point.  The Indo-Iranian expansion into these areas was
>_later_ than the probable Indo-Europeanization of Europe, but comparable in
>scale... and demonstrably due to the infiltration of elements ultimately
>derived from the Eurasian steppe zone.  If Iran/India, why not Europe?

My point being: if Europe, why not India?

>>I consider Welsh (including its Latin component) to be pretty
>>solid linguistical evidence.

>-- of a Celtic language _in Wales_.  In the absence of written records, it
>would be virtually impossible to show that there had ever been such a
>language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor landscape
>features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few and
>often the product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western English
>rivers are called "Avon", which means... 'river'.

Evidence enough for Celtic in western England.

>>>-- not according to Cavalli-Sforza, who shows a wave of migration starting
>>>north of the sea of Azov and spreading throughout Europe.

>>Yes, *precisely* according to Cavalli-Sforza.

>-- he shows two migrations into Europe, one in the early neolithic from the
>south-east, and one in the late neolithic, from the east.

>How do you valorize the earlier one over the later?

I could look it up, but as I recall, the primary component
according to Cavalli-Sforza is the Anatolian one (besides the
"paleolithic" "native European" component).  The "steppe" genes
form one of several minor components.

>>How so?  The linguistic evidence confirms that there is a sizeable
>>Pre-Germanic substrate element, which fits exactly with the genesis of the
>>TRB culture in the area around Denmark.

>-- a pre-Germanic substrate in _Germanic_, not in the rest of the IE
>languages.

>In fact, Baltic and Slavic -- closely adjacent -- show the _least_ evidence
>of pre-IE substrates.

Exactly.

>>Early infiltration in the Baltic area fits with the PIE borrowings into
>>Uralic

>-- nonsense.  Much too far to the west.  There's virtually universal
>agreement that the Uralic languages dispersed from the _Ural_ area (that's
>why they're called "Uralic", of course)

The name "Uralic" of course doesn't prove a thing.  The
consensus, as far as one exists, is that the PFU homeland is well
west of the Ural mountains.  It stands to reason that Samoyedic
(and earlier possibly Yukaghir) split off from a Proto-Uralic
located in roughly the same area.  If anything, and depending on
the time-depth of Proto-Uralic, more to the south(-west), for
reasons of climate.

>>But linguistic information gives no absolute dates.  There's nothing about
>the "linguistic information" that "rules out" a date of 5500 BC.

>-- sure there is.  It's too early, unless we make radical assumptions about
>slow differentiation;

Nothing radical about it.  Based on the differentiation of the IE
languages as attested ca. 1500 BC (Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek
and Hittite), any date within the range 5500-3500 is absolutely
reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl.  Older or younger than that is
of course possible, but not terribly likely.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Mar  1 20:07:16 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 21:07:16 +0100
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000228193716.0098f360@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.210716.0100.>

Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>At 05:44 PM 2/25/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>But, let us approach this from another avenue.

>>1) What I believe we find in the earliest IE is one vowel, /*e/, which has a
>>conditioned variant , /*o/.

>Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
>differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
>conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

>It is possible that some pre-PIE language had such conditioned variation,
>but any such conditioning factor had disappeared by the time we reach the
>reconstructible time layers.  [One viable possibility is an old accent
>system as the conditioning factor, with conditioning destroyed by a shift
>in the accent pattern to the one reconstructed for PIE].

The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
[unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
/&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
(stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
(i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  1 20:36:17 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 12:36:17 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <9e.1b2a44a.25ecd76c@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.123617.0800.>

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> Going back to what all this was supposed to prove, what is supposedly
> "leaping off the page" is NOT IEness.  What is supposed (according to the
> original premise in this thread) to "leap off the page" is the time of
> separation.

I've gone back to the archives, because I couldn't believe what I read above.
The phrase "leap off the page" arose in the following context:

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com) wrote regarding the
proposal that PIE spread with the Neolithic agriculturalists such that the
(ancestors of the) Celts were in place by 4000BCE:

> The IE languages when first encountered are NOT DIFFERENTIATED ENOUGH to have
> bee separated by that depth of time!

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Mr. Long replied:

> Is this differentiation is quantifiable?  Are you sure it works in your
> favor?
> ...
> Following Renfrew, roughly 4000 years separates non-Anatolian PIE from
> Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin (500BC).  How
> 'differentiated' are those three languages?  On a scale of 1 to 10?

Now, to me, and apparently to Mr. Stirling, this is a challenge to state how
easily these three languages are recognized as being related to one another.
Nothing in the query stands out as asking for "the time of separation" of these
languages, just "can one look at them and say 'that no philologer could examine
them all 3, without believing them to have sprung from some common source'".
So that's the question we have been answering, and apparently wasting our time
in doing so, because that wasn't the question asked.

To continue, on Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Mr. Stirling responded to the query above:

> -- around 2.  About as different from each other as the Romance languages
> today -- in a stage where the similarities leap off the page and where some
> words and phrases are still mutually comprehensible.

While I might disagree with the numerical score (to me, a 2 would be something
like Vedic Sanskrit and Gathic Avestan), the characterization is about right--
if we remember to include the minor Romance languages and to concern ourselves
with spoken rather than formal written French.

The confusion continued when, on  Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Mr. Long responded in turn:

> This is interesting.   2000yrs from modern Romance language back to Latin?

> 2000 yrs from Myceanaean, Sanskrit and Latin back to what?

> PIE? Not likely.  Because even if Mycenean, Sanskrit and Latin were as
> 'undifferentiated' as is claimed above, this group hardly represents the full
> range of differences that ACTUALLY emerge out of the darkness of 4000 years
> ago, are they?

> Do the similarities between Latin and Hittite 'leap off the page" as you say?
> (Please recall how long it took for relationship to even be detected.)

I cannot say at this point what Mr. Stirling thought, because he declined to
answer the question in a posting made on Mon, 14 Feb 2000.

However, to me, this looks as if I understood the question above correctly,
because the next question is, is Hittite is similar enough to the above three
languages for the relationship to be obvious in the same way.  Stanley Friesen
seems to have thought much the same, based on his posting of Mon, 14 Feb 2000,
in which he answered in much the same fashion as did I.

Only now, in the light of Mr. Long's statement quoted at the start of this post
about what he meant with his question does the following paragraph from Mr.
Long's post of the 11th change how I would have formulated my answer to the
question about Thracian:

> And what does Hittite (for starters) add to the total 'differentiation'
> between the first attested PIE languages?  If 2000 years separates Latin and
> Sanskrit, Hittite should certainly add another 2000 years, wouldn't you say?

I would have said that Thracian provides *nothing* to our thoughts on the time
of separation of the IE languages, precisely because there is too little
material available to us to characterize the language as thoroughly as we have
the major languages.  Nor is Thracian being singled out in this:  For example,
take Albanian, which since it is attested so late and is so changed from the
protolanguage, contributes nothing to the dating of the breakup of PIE, or
Lithuanian, which is attested so late and is so *little* changed in many ways
that we cannot use it as evidence, either.

That is why I was excited by the idea of a *long* text in Thracian.  Behistun,
for example, qualifies as a text to get excited over.  For short texts like
those we have, only a bilingual is going to be of much use in getting things
started.

To quote the comedian Dennis Miller, "Of course, that's just my opinion.  I
could be wrong."

								Rich Alderson


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Mar  1 23:04:47 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 00:04:47 +0100
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <200002252237.OAA10978@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.000447.0100.>

"Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

>> What are the chances that the gap between Hittite and Classic IE languages
>> is actually much older?

>[ than 500 years or so, as stated by several posters, myself included ]

>What are the chances?  Not good.  Not zero, but not good.

>Yes, we have the example of the extreme conservatism of Old Lithuanian, but
>that is so unusual that we *do* make note of it.  Historical linguistics is,
>after all, a *historical* science, and so must make assumptions about such
>things as rates of change based on *historical* obversation of similar occur-
>rences--the development of the Romance languages from Latin, the development
>of modern English from Anglo-Saxon, and so on.

>In order for Hittite (and the other Anatolian languages) to have diverged from
>the rest of the Indo-European languages very much more than 1000 years earlier
>(my own outside estimate), we would have to reject the evidence for rates of
>change provided by all the historical obversations we can make and instead say
>that Old Lithuanian is the expected result, and *every* *single* *other* *IE*
>*language* underwent accelerated development.

Glottochronology, I think we all agree, is baseless, so I'm
afraid this is a matter of Sprachgefuehl, heuristics, and which
languages one knows/speaks well enough to compare (for me, that
would be, as far as speaking goes, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan,
English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and
Polish).

Anyway, for what it's worth, 500 years for me is Dutch and
Afrikaans, Spanish and Portuguese, good mutual intelligibilty.  I
think (Vedic) Sanskrit and (Mycenaean) Greek are further apart
than that.  I'd say Vedic Skt. and Gathic Avestan comes close to
about 500 years.  A thousand years or so (slightly more) is in
the neighbourhood of Slavic (e.g. Russian and Polish), reasonable
but far from perfect mutual intellegibility.  Two thousand years
is Spanish and Italian (i.e. the Italian dialects, not std.
Italian!) or French: structurally very similar, marginal mutual
intelligibility.  I'd say that's where Greek and Sanskrit fall.
Hittite and either M.Greek or V.Sanskrit for me is definitely
2000 years or more.  The languages are structurally further
apart, there is no mutual intelligibility to speak of.  Parallels
become more dubious here.  Dutch and Swedish?  Welsh and Irish?
Akkadian and Cl.Arabic?  Is that 2, 3 or 4 millennia?  Impossible
to tell...

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  1 20:46:33 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 12:46:33 -0800
Subject: Indo-Hittite Hypothesis
In-Reply-To: <200002290030.QAA06907@netcom.com> (alderson@netcom.com)
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.124633.0800.>

In reference to the UPenn papers, I wrote on Mon, 28 Feb 2000, in response to a
statement from Steve Long:

> Since the papers available on their website state that it was an unrooted
> tree to which they added rooting information, you appear to be accusing the
> group of deliberate falsehoods.  I'd be very careful of that, were I you.

It has since come to my attention that the authors do explicitly state that
they have intentionally created a rooted tree within the data, a statement I
had missed.

My apologies to Mr. Long and to the other readers for the above.

								Rich Alderson


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Wed Mar  1 19:01:20 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 19:01:20 +0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <18.145ad21.25ecb46a@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.190120.0000.>

At 12:34 am -0500 29/2/00, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>>petegray at btinternet.com writes:
>>English of a slightly earlier time (still intelligible today) shows good
>>similarities in person endings, eg: >>Thou hast, thou makest;  she hath,
>>she maketh
>>du hast,  du machst,   sie hat,  sie macht

>-- But the English of today -- and of the past few centuries -- uses much
>simpler forms:  You have, you >make, she has, she makes.  There's been a
>radical loss of inflection (not to mention the loss of >grammatical
>gender, the declension of the noun, the role of word order in forming
>sentences, etc.)

Some Englishes do retain certain of the earlier features.  The great sound
shift has not had universal effect, there is (or was) the relict of
14th/15th century English, called Yola, in Co Wexford, and some other
features remain (or did until the 1870 Education Act took its toll) in
local dialects.  Of course, these are not the high prestige forms which
presumably endure where the governmental system supports them and does not
collapse, so that they are disseminated widely within the population.

But 'thou' (as a workaday pronoun, rather than in fixed formulas) - in some
cases with the conjugated verb form - does survive.  I wonder whether the
use of the authorised version of the bible may have affected this, though I
would not expect a low status child saying 'thou hast' to be well received
in an educational system which elsewhere made use of the 'Welsh not' (a
kind of wooden thing to be placed on the neck of the latest child to speak
Welsh instead of English).  And an otherwise useful collection of
Worcestershire dialect forms by a Mrs Jessie Chamberlain (about whom I know
nothing beyond her name and what can be gleaned from her book) decries the
lower orders' pronunciation of 'Tenbury Wells' as 'Tembury Wells', ignoring
the strong likelihood that almost everyone would assimilate the 'n' to the
following 'b'.

>By way of contrast, early Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE
>features -- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.

Yes, but the functions of the aorist and perfect were different in each
language.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 22:24:29 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:24:29 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <18.14cdd25.25ede8e7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.232429.0100.>

>>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>>A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>>roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>>essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>>cave-hibernating.

>-- bears don't stand up when advancing; they stand up when making threat
>displays, or trying to see what's going on.

>When advancing -- aka 'charging' -- they run towards you, very very quickly,
>with a very large mouth full of teeth wide open, making distressing sounds.

>To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
>pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

Friends, have a look at some Siberian languages; the very fact that these
fellas can get *really nasty* is responsible for the fact that most people
who *really know* them   use some taboo word, lest the bloddy beast
understands its name and comes along to look at who's talking.
Zoo-goers may use descriptive names for our brown friends, forest-dwellers
aren't stupid enough to do that.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar  1 22:10:33 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:10:33 +0100
Subject: "name" - was: evidence for "Urheimat"
In-Reply-To: <200002291037.p2515@h2.maus.de>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.231033.0100.>

>SG>you probably mean /Chukchi/
>.. thank you so much. But I hate the //ch//. Just a personal tick.

So do I. When will we be able to read and write hachek'ed c-s and s-s on
e-mail ?

>SG>welcome to the beautiful land of Ruhlenistan
>.. excuse me for not to own any work of Ruhlen;-((

Together with my excuses for my  rather cutting remark (though I don't
promise that it won't happen again ;-) I'd like to say that this is
something you can be congratulated for, rather than something you'd have to
apologise for ;-)

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu Mar  2 00:55:27 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 01:55:27 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
In-Reply-To: <00b601bf8396$1d2bb540$4c01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.015527.0100.>

>[Ed]

>Maybe this is not the right place, but I have this question that has been
>nagging me for years: would Turkish 'g?n' for 'day' fit in here?

>Ed.

I started this with a joke, now I see us in the middle of a nostratic
discussion !

Well, I'd rule it out that /g?n/ (< k?n), originally "sun" has anything to
do with Basque /egun/, simply because a) no point has been made for any
kind of relationship between the two languages (nor will one be made, but
take this as my private opinion) and b) no physical contact has occured
between the respective populations during all of known history (and it
seems pretty unlikely for most of unknown history as well).
However, just to give this a slightly serious turn, a connection between
this Turkic word and an IE one has been seriously proposed (by A.
R?na-Tas). It has been theorized that the Turkic word might be a loan from
(some form of) Tokharian koM/kauM "id.". No, I'm not sure whether I believe
this. I believe in *some* LW from Tokharian in very early Turkic, but not
necessarily in this one, since any criteria to judge this particular case
seem to be lacking. At least for me at 1:51 a.m. ...

And, Ed, you can happily note in your calendar that on this very day this
question will stop doing what it has been doing to you for years, since the
internal history of the Turkic word (g < k) shows that what seems to be a
similarity (Tk. g- : basque -g-) is only a secondary one, brought about by
Oghuz initial sonorization (which happened no longer that at most 1k ago).

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 19:21:46 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 19:21:46 -0000
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.192146.0000.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 3:30 AM

>> proto-language at email.msn.com wrote:

>> A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>> roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>> essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>> cave-hibernating.

<JS>
> -- bears don't stand up when advancing; they stand up when making threat
> displays, or trying to see what's going on.

> When advancing -- aka 'charging' -- they run towards you, very very quickly,
> with a very large mouth full of teeth wide open, making distressing sounds.

> To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is
> a pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

<PR>
I wrote hastily, and I accept your correction of a bear's standing as a
threat display.

I guess the real point I wanted to make is that PIE adjectives, apparently
independent of verbal or nominal roots, are few.

I am not aware of a regular and consensually accepted derivational process
for converting an adjective to a noun in PIE --- although there are
recognized derivational processes for converting nouns to adjectives, and,
if one is willing to count participles as adjectives, adjectives from verbs.

Of course, 'destructive one' might be an appropriate name for a bear --- if
PIE-speakers could easily form such a word.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From panis at pacbell.net  Wed Mar  1 22:32:46 2000
From: panis at pacbell.net (John McChesney-Young)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 14:32:46 -0800
Subject: Jose Perez' questions [was: Re: *hwergh-, *hwerg- or *hwerk-?]
In-Reply-To: <20000228113903.96107.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.143246.0800.>

Although books go out of print (as we all know all too well), I ordered a
copy of Ernout-Meillet just last December from Culturesurf:

<http://www.culturesurf.com/culturesurf-bin/fiche_livre?type=1&donnee_appel=CULTURESURF&fisbn=9782252024911&id=21459936807952&l-auteur=ERNOUT+ALFRED>

Their current price is 693.50 FF (list is 730.00); at today's exchange
rates that's about $103, GBP 65.

Chantraine's dictionary is also listed by them in a couple of different
formats; the two-volume edition (if I understand it correctly) is 1444 FF;
$212, GBP 135.

They take credit card numbers via a secure server, and I received my
well-wrapped package three weeks from the time I placed my order.

John

(snip)

>>     Final request: Ernout and Meillet's Dictionnaire itymologique de la
>>langue latine has been out of print for ages and my photocopies (yups!)
>>were never much good to start with. What shall I replace them with?

John McChesney-Young  ** panis at pacbell.net **  Berkeley, California, USA


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar  2 16:57:42 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 17:57:42 +0100
Subject: 8-bit e-mail,
 again [was Re: "name" - was: evidence for "Urheimat"]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.175742.0100.>

[ Moderator survey at end of message -- please read ]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 11:10 PM

> >SG>you probably mean /Chukchi/
> >.. thank you so much. But I hate the file://ch//. Just a personal tick.

> So do I. When will we be able to read and write hachek'ed c-s and s-s on
> e-mail ?

[Ed Selleslagh]

Right now (using the right encoding or character set), the moderator
permitting, and if all members' systems could interpret it - quod non.

It works with most of my correspondents (using PC's and Macs running the most
common e-mail programs, with the right settings).

Ed.

[ Moderator's response:
  MIME goes through all the time, unmolested.  I've been "permitting" it for
  months, even though I cannot read large portions of certain writers' posts.
  But it *must* be in MIME format, and that's not a matter of my "permitting"
  it or not:  The system on which the Indo-European and Nostratic mailing lists
  reside uses 7-bit characters packed 5 to a 36-bit word for ASCII data (like
  electronic mail) and there is no way around that--it is built into the hard-
  ware as well as the operating system.

  There was a time when I translated the MIME constructs to TeX, because there
  was at least one subscriber whose system treated 8-bit data specially, and
  showed him Chinese characters instead of Latin-1, but he no longer receives
  the IE list, so I have not bothered with that for some time now.

  I doubt that I am the only person reading these lists who does not use some
  form of personal computer to do so, but perhaps I am mistaken.  I think it
  may be time for a survey.

  Let's keep this simple:  If and only if you read the messages posted by the
  Indo-European list using some tool *other than* a personal computer, please
  reply to this message stating what you are using.  For example, I would send
  the following:

	Xterm window to Tops-20 system with MM mail program
	Xterm window to SunOS system with GNU Emacs editor

  Those using Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Communicator, etc., need not
  respond.

								Rich Alderson
  ]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 22:09:37 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 22:09:37 -0000
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.220937.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 3:56 AM

> At 05:44 PM 2/25/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>> But, let us approach this from another avenue.

>> 1) What I believe we find in the earliest IE is one vowel, /*e/, which has a
>> conditioned variant , /*o/.

<SF>
> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
> differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
> conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

<PR>
Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

<SF>
> It is possible that some pre-PIE language had such conditioned variation,
> but any such conditioning factor had disappeared by the time we reach the
> reconstructible time layers.  [One viable possibility is an old accent
> system as the conditioning factor, with conditioning destroyed by a shift
> in the accent pattern to the one reconstructed for PIE].

<PR>
I agree that an older accentual system is a reasonable theory, which I also
agree is viable. So, if I understand correctly, you are proposing that this
older system predates PIE?

<SF>
> Note, when there is only one non-high vowel in a language, it is *always*
> best viewed as /a/, not /e/.  (It may have /e/ as an *allophone* in some
> environments, but its neutral allophone will always be low).

<PR>
I agree 100%. And it is /*a/ which I theorize preceded /*e,*o/ in what I
call the Pontic stage, which I believe preceded PIE. But I also believe the
non-phonemic status of the /*e,*o/ Ablaut suggests strongly that it
developed from a single predecessor. My best guess is that /*a/ developed
first into /*e/ in stress-accented positions while stress-unaccented /*a/
became /*0/. When the stress-accent was transferred from /*e/, the newly
stress-accented syllable had /*e/ while the (secondarily??) formerly
stress-accented syllable had /*o/. On this basis, I believe that no /*a/
existed in PIE except possibly as a result of a reduction of /*a:/ deriving
from a "laryngeal" + /*a/ in the Pontic (pre-PIE) stage.

<PRp>
>> 2) I believe with Benveniste that /*u/ and /*i/ are to be accounted as
>> avocalic instances of /*w/ and /*y/.

<SF>
> I can only accept this where there is good evidence of alternation with
> /*ue/ or /*eu/.  There are just too many cases where there *is* no such
> variation visible.  [The obvious examples are mostly inflectional ending
> and pronouns, but there are certainly others as well].

<PR>
Let us look at some of those examples. The strongest argument for this idea
is foreclosed to me because it involves the "N" word.

<SF>
> One *additional* reason for this is that languages without high vowels are
> exceeding rare in the world.  They are topologically marked - highly so.
> Typologically reasonable vowel systems include: /a/, /i/, /u/; /e/, /o/,
> /i/, /u/; and so on.  (There are a fair number of languages in which the
> high-back vowel is non-rounded, but there are reasons to reject that for
PIE).

<PR>
I think we must be careful about overvaluing typological facts. If the
Pontic stage of pre-PIE were the only language in all our knowledge to
employ a single vowel (even for a very short period), phonological rather
than typological considerations should influence more strongly. Typology,
generally, is a heuristic device, would you not agree?

<PRp>
>> 3) I also believe that all /*a/ and any long vowels are due to the presence
>> of "laryngeals", and that /*a(:)/ cannot exist in a syllable that did not
>> contain a "laryngeal" at some earlier stage.

<SF>
> I strongly suspect that this *is* the case.  [In a number of cases, I treat
> some words as later borrowings: words found only in Europe I do not treat
> as going back to PIE].

<PR>
So, we have found at least one common basis.

<SF>
> I am still struggling with the number and phonetic nature of the
> laryngeals.  In my own notes I generally, and tentatively, use H for H1, X
> for H2, and X^w for H3.   [I am fairly confident that the o-coloring
> laryngeal had to be labialized, since that fits so well with the PIE
> obstruents, and explains its phonetic effects so well].  If I were to
> accept the evidence for voicing in (some instances of) H3, I would probably
> want to add two more laryngeals, to make a more consistent set (that is I
> would tend towards both voiced and unvoiced variants of both H2 and H3).

<PR>
I fear a discussion of my ideas in this regard would take us too far afield.
I will save my comments on 'laryngeals' for another discussion but, if
anyone is interested, I have outlined my ideas in:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/comparison-AFRASIAN-3_schwa.htm

and

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/comparison-AFRASIAN-3_laryngeal.htm

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  1 22:26:53 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 22:26:53 -0000
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.222653.0000.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 5:43 AM

>> proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>> *ulkwiha?

<JS>
> -- Carl Darling Buck's _A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal
> Indo-European Languages_.  Old High German "mariha" is a reflex.

<PR>
Well, since I find no obvious reflexes of *ulkwiha in Pokorny, perhaps you
would share some examples from Buck (sorry, I do not have it myself) that he
believes are based on it.

OHG mariha is, I believe, does not exist in Pokorny, which has meriha from
*marko-. In any case, the usual derivation of OHG -ha would be IE -ko. Is
that not right?

<PRp>
>> Well, perhaps. But 'mustang' comes very close, does it not, to being a
>> 'wild horse'?

<JS>
> -- "feral horse", actually, rather than "wild".

> And it's a recent North American dialect term, borrowed from the Spanish
> "mestengo", meaning "a stray or ownerless beast".

<PR>
Actually, it is a term for "wild horse" according to AHD. And "feral" has
the principal meaning "existing in a wild or untamed state". Now, this *may*
but need not have the additional qualification "having reverted to such a
state from domestication" but that would only properly refer to the first
generation of horses. Subsequent generations would never have known
domestication.

The word is not restricted to any regional dialect in the United States
unless, of course, you consider American English a "dialect".

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Mar  2 18:56:18 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:56:18 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <007c01bf8353$29d7dc80$9ad31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.195618.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>> *ulkwiha?

><MCV>
>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

><PR>
>Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants in
>combination, but how do we know?

I merely assumed a transcription error (for h-sub_a or something
like that).

>Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

With i: < iH and u: < uH one never knows.  Or does one?  Let me
refer to Jens E. Rasmussen's article "IH, UH and RH in
Indo-European".  (Abstract: Greek, Tocharian and Armenian show
ih1/uh1 > i:/u:, ih2/uh2 > ya:, wa:, ih3/uh3 > yo:, wo:, with
exceptions).  Greek -ia(:) therefore points to *-ih2.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Thu Mar  2 19:53:00 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:53:00 -0800
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
In-Reply-To: <007c01bf8353$29d7dc80$9ad31b3f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.115300.0800.>

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com), following up a
query about a form in a Stirling post, wrote:

>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>> *ulkwiha?

> <MCV>
>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

> <PR>
> Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants in
> combination, but how do we know?

By "both formants", I'm assuming you mean your notion of *y and *H_2 as
feminine formations.  I won't address that.

> Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

> And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

Last question first:  Vowels are only lengthened with the loss of a *following*
laryngeal, so if the proto-form were ?*ul{k^w}i{H_2}e, the outcome would have a
short vowel *a, not a long *a:.  However, the suffix is *-i{H_2}, with no
trailing *-e.

For the remainder of this post, I am going to write just the numeric portion of
the TeX constructs {H_1}, {H_2}, and {H_3} to represent the e-, a-, and o-
coloring laryngeals.  This should make things easier to read without added
ambiguity.

The feminine-forming suffix *-i2 is reconstructed based on Skt. -i:, Gk. -ia,
etc.; Latin has extended the form with an additional suffix, -g-, as in
_stri:x, stri:gis_.  The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this
is one of the few places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel
developments: We find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing ?*ul{k^w}i1
or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a different outcome
in Greek.

								Rich Alderson


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Thu Mar  2 07:20:29 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:20:29 +0200
Subject: possessive [form of a] pronoun
In-Reply-To: <34.1f5bab4.25ed2e96@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.092029.0200.>

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

> It has taken some time to get to the bottom of the
> differences in the use of terminology here,
> but I think we have arrived:

> To summarize into its most succinct form:

> The relation:

> he :: his

> is from syntactic and semantic points of view
> essentially the same as the relation

> the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's

This is the man we met yesterday's book.
This is the book of the man we met yesterday.

This is his book.
This is the book of he.*

The two forms do not transform in the same way, therefore they are not
equivalent.  Even if it is claimed that the preposition 'of' requires
the objective case for which 'the man we met yesterday' cannot be marked,
the expression 'This is his book' still does not transform:

This is the book of him.*

The expression 'This is his book' only transforms to:

This is a book of his.

or

This is the book of his (that he lost).

Therefore:

the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's

as

his :: his

in this instance.

The English noun does not behave in the same way as the English pronominal
system (that's one way you can tell the difference).

You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.  Try
using 'my' and 'mine' or 'their' and 'theirs' and you will see the
difference.

This is my book.

This is a book of mine.

Try using 'the men we met yesterday' and 'they' in your analogy and see
how it works out.

This ends the argument as far as I am concerned.  Any responses will be
referred to this message (whether appropriate or not).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Thu Mar  2 08:21:36 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:21:36 +0200
Subject: PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and
 evidence from Uralic linguistics)
In-Reply-To: <01BF8307.D81F4180.fabcav@adr.dk>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.102136.0200.>

[Fabrice Cavoto wrote:]
(snip)
> As for the Uralic
> part, if the root itself is identical with IE, then the stem formation
> doesn't have to be. In the same way that IE has a productive *-men-suffix,
> Ural. has also different stem formations, more or less productive, and can
> simply have choosen another one, thus *-e.
(snip)

There is no reason to concider *-i (= your *-e) in PU *nimi 'name' a stem
formant. *-i is no known a PU morpheme, and *nim- couldn't even
theoretically be a PU morpheme, since all roots (except pronouns and the
two auxilaries) had to be of shape *(C)V(C)CV-.

[I wrote:]
> But you can't reconstruct PU *-? for this item: the reconstruction must be
> *nimi (= traditional *nime).

[Adam Hyllested asked:]
> Why are you reconstructing an *-i for traditional *-e ? From what I know,
> *-e > Finnish -i, whereas Finnish -e < *-eC.

[Fabrice Cavoto:]
> I don't see why neither. *-e and *-a seem to be needed,
> but I don't see why *-i.

My *-i doesn't contrast with *-e; I simply rewrite non-initial syllable
*i for traditional *e. For the reasons, see my parallel mail to the list.

Regards,

Ante Aikio


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Thu Mar  2 16:57:15 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:57:15 +0200
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e369934c48@[195.247.65.197]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.185715.0200.>

[ Moderator's note:
  Probably time to put this sub-thread to rest.
  --rma ]

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Stefan Georg wrote:

>> [Ed]

>> Maybe this is not the right place, but I have this question that has been
>> nagging me for years: would Turkish 'g?n' for 'day' fit in here?

>> Ed.

> I started this with a joke, now I see us in the middle of a nostratic
> discussion !

> Well, I'd rule it out that /g?n/ (< k?n), originally "sun" has anything
> to do with Basque /egun/, simply because a) no point has been made for any
> kind of relationship between the two languages (nor will one be made, but
> take this as my private opinion) and b) no physical contact has occured
> between the respective populations during all of known history (and it seems
> pretty unlikely for most of unknown history as well).  However, just to give
> this a slightly serious turn, a connection between this Turkic word and an IE
> one has been seriously proposed (by A.  R?na-Tas). It has been theorized
> that the Turkic word might be a loan from (some form of) Tokharian koM/kauM
> "id.". No, I'm not sure whether I believe this. I believe in *some* LW from
> Tokharian in very early Turkic, but not necessarily in this one, since any
> criteria to judge this particular case seem to be lacking. At least for me at
> 1:51 a.m. ...

<irony><big grin>
No, no, Stefan -- have you forgotten everything that Mark Hubey taught us?
Turkish /g?n/ (< k?n) is related to Sumerian ud by the good Dr. Tuna,
making use of a rule where Sumerian initial /u/ corresponds to Turk. /kV/
(except when it doesn't) and another rule whereby Sumerian final /d/
corresponds to Turk. /n/ (except when it doesn't).  That makes it really
tough to decide between Basque, Sumerian, or Toch. as the source of the
Turkic.  But this is doubtless looking at things backwords.  These forms
clearly show that Turkish is the original language just like Atat?rk said.
How else could these forms get into otherwise isolated languages?
</big grin></irony>

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar  2 17:13:54 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:13:54 +0100
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.181354.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 1:55 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> I started this with a joke, now I see us in the middle of a nostratic
> discussion !

> Well, I'd rule it out that /g?n/ (< k?n), originally "sun" has anything
> to do with Basque /egun/, simply because a) no point has been made for any
> kind of relationship between the two languages (nor will one be made, but
> take this as my private opinion) and b) no physical contact has occured
> between the respective populations during all of known history (and it seems
> pretty unlikely for most of unknown history as well).

> However, just to give this a slightly serious turn, a connection between
> this Turkic word and an IE one has been seriously proposed (by A.
> R?na-Tas). It has been theorized that the Turkic word might be a loan from
> (some form of) Tokharian koM/kauM "id.". No, I'm not sure whether I believe
> this. I believe in *some* LW from Tokharian in very early Turkic, but not
> necessarily in this one, since any criteria to judge this particular case
> seem to be lacking. At least for me at 1:51 a.m. ...

> And, Ed, you can happily note in your calendar that on this very day this
> question will stop doing what it has been doing to you for years, since the
> internal history of the Turkic word (g < k) shows that what seems to be a
> similarity (Tk. g- : basque -g-) is only a secondary one, brought about by
> Oghuz initial sonorization (which happened no longer that at most 1k ago).
>
> Dr. Stefan Georg

[Ed]

Sorry, I didn't want to start a discussion, and wasn't thinking of a
relationship (I'm quite convinced there isn't any) or a direct loan - maybe a
Wanderwort or a loan from a common source (via some IE maybe).

Your response is interesting, as it says that the Turkish word is from the name
of the sun; apparently the Basque word is also related to 'daylight', at least
according to some.  And Basque also voices many old k's. So the nagging
actually continues, but I won't loose any sleep over it - or stay up until 1:51
a.m :-).

Let's end it here. Thanks anyway.

Ed.


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Wed Mar  1 07:46:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 07:46:00 GMT
Subject: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.074600.GMT.>

On Wed, 1 Mar, Robert Whiting replied:

RW>all of which is quite beside the point (irrelevant).

RW>is the end of the matter.

RW>is an absolute

Please excuse my humble inquiries, thank You for these very polite, clear,
and inspiring lectures ...

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover.


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu Mar  2 10:14:25 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:14:25 +0100
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e320af2c59@[195.247.65.99]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.111425.0100.>

>Arabic verbal "roots" show up in Turkish mostly in the garb of verbal nouns
>(in a wide variety of formations), accompanied by verbs of "doing" (el-,

sorry,: et-

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu Mar  2 10:20:12 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:20:12 +0000
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.102012.0000.>

Roz Frank writes:

[on Basque <(h)anka> 'haunch', 'leg' (and other senses)]

>  There does seem to be a good case that could be made for <(h)anka> being
>  related to the French/Romance forms mentioned above and consequently a
>  recent borrowing.

Overpowering, I'd say.

>  But what is one to make of the Basque word <zango>
>  (<zanga-> in composition) that means 'leg, foot, calf' and its phonological
>  variant in <zanko, zankho> (<zanka-> in composition) with the same
>  meanings?

The word is <zanko> or <zanka> in Zuberoan, <zango> in the rest of the French
Basque Country, and usually <zanko> south of the Pyrenees, though <zango> in
High Navarrese.  The widespread presence of <zanko> in the south is clear
evidence of a late borrowing, since an inherited *<zanko> would have
developed regularly to *<zango> in the early medieval period -- as indeed
has happened in much of the north, in which this voicing process seems to
have persisted longer than elsewhere.  The combining form <zanka->, of course,
is perfectly regular in Basque.

The word variously means 'paw', 'foot', 'leg', 'calf', according to region,
with various transferred senses in places, such as 'track' (of a game animal)
and 'jack' (in cards).

The source of the word is clear.  It is the very widespread Romance word
which appears in Castilian Spanish as <zanca> 'calf', 'leg (of a bird)',
'shank', and, according to Corominas, also 'stilt'.  Castilian also has
an altered form <zanco> 'stilt'.  The same word occurs in Portuguese,
Mozarabic, Catalan, and perhaps elsewhere, with a range of senses
including 'wooden shoe', 'kind of sandal', and 'stilt', at least.
(I'm not sure if Italian <zampa> 'leg (of an animal)', 'paw', 'foot'
represents the same word or not.  Anybody know?)

This word is derived by Corominas from a late Latin <zanca> 'kind of shoe'
(no asterisk, according to Corominas).  And this he traces to Old Persian
<zanga-> 'leg', the source of modern Persian <zang> 'leg'.  He proposes
that the Persian word was carried west into Europe by cobblers, especially
since (he says) shoes were an eastern invention which passed into Europe
via Persia.

But, whatever you may think of Corominas's account, the loan status of
the Basque word is certain, and the origin is unlikely to be anything
other than the Romance word.

>  Are we to assume that 1) it that isn't related in anyway to
>  <(h)anka>;

It is assuredly not related.

>  2) that Euskera borrowed a French form and then added a sibilant
>  to it;

No.

>  3) that Euskera has two totally unrelated words, one borrowed and
>  the other native;

No.  Both borrowed from Romance.

>  or 4) that Euskera has two words, one clearly a recent
>  borrowing and yet another that derives from a deeper layer, i.e., a western
>  European substrate that gave rise to the Romance items as well.

If Corominas is right, the source is Persian, not an unknown European
substrate.

>  If one were
>  to choose the fourth alternative, it would provide a slightly different
>  source for the Old French <haunche> and one wouldn't have to rely only on
>  an unattested Germanic/Frankish form, but rather there would also be an
>  amply attested word field available for comparative purposes in Euskera.

Sorry.  Out of the question.  Anyway, even though the Frankish word is
unrecorded, its descendants in Dutch and Romance suffice to prove its former
existence.

It is curious that no native Basque word for 'leg' can be reconstructed.
If there ever was one, it has been lost beyond recovery.  But maybe the
native <oin> 'foot' once meant 'leg' as well.  This is a common state of
affairs in languages.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Thu Mar  2 10:38:26 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:38:26 +0000
Subject: misleading use of borrowed technical terms
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.103826.0000.>

Larry wrote:
>>Middle English did not "inherit" these words at all: it *borrowed* them
>>from Norman French. >This is >>just the way the terms are used in
>>linguistics.

And Lloyd responded:
>Trask seems unwilling to recognize that the degrees of language fusion can
>differ, and that there is no >sharp boundary for the appropriate use of
>the word "inherit".

Well, well, well.

Langauages (at least living ones) are acquired at the beginning of our
lives, mostly, and as a rule (unless we are deaf Nicaraguan kids) from
those around us.  We do not 'inherit' language (even if we are monoglot
Israelis, I suppose) in the same way as we inherit Aunt Emily's clock, ie
after she's shuffled off this mortal coil.

Languages continue to exist because as parents (&c) we pass on our speech
to our kids.  Not absolutely (unless we are consciously learning Sanskrit
under the bo tree, or 7th century Arabic), but substantially or in large
measure.  In some milieux, though, change is rapid - cf suppletion of
modern Indian languages in these islands by adult-learned English in the
case of non-speakers, or by school-learned English in the case of their
kids, and then fairly complete assimilation in later generations.  There
can be relicts, though: some Scottish Englishes, or rather their speakers,
can show inherited patterns traceable back to Gaelic.  There may be varied
mechanisms for this.

Modern English is spoken by people who acquired the language from earlier
speakers, and so on back to when the language in its then form was to found
presumably in the angle it gets its name from, at the mouth of the Elbe.
Not from people who spoke French.

And what on earth is 'partial fusion'?

But of course there is a terminological as well as an analytical and a
methodological dimension to this thread.  Hope I've not made it more futile.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Thu Mar  2 12:11:41 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 14:11:41 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <l03130302b4e348196ee5@[195.247.65.197]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.141141.0200.>

[Patrick Ryan:]

>A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>cave-hibernating.

[Joat Simeon:]
(snip)
>To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
>pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

[Stefan Georg:]
>Friends, have a look at some Siberian languages; the very fact that these
>fellas can get *really nasty* is responsible for the fact that most people
>who *really know* them   use some taboo word, lest the bloddy beast
>understands its name and comes along to look at who's talking.
>Zoo-goers may use descriptive names for our brown friends, forest-dwellers
>aren't stupid enough to do that.

But it is precisely the descriptive names that are created for taboo reasons.
E.g. Finnish has karhu 'bear' < karhea 'coarse' (referring to fur), kontio
'bear' < kontia 'crawl on all fours' (referring to manner of motion). As
for 'destruction', there's Finnish hukka 'wolf' = hukka 'loss,
destruction', hukkua 'get lost, perish, drown'. These words predate zoos,
for sure ;-)

Speaking of wolf and bear, how would a semantic shift 'wolf' > 'bear'
sound like? It has been suggested that Proto-Samoyed *wErkE 'bear' (E =
schwa) < Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?

 - Ante Aikio


From DSavignac at aol.com  Thu Mar  2 23:06:11 2000
From: DSavignac at aol.com (DSavignac at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:06:11 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.180611.EST.>

A delightful comment!

David Savignac
Lurker


From jrader at m-w.com  Thu Mar  2 09:09:19 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:09:19 +0000
Subject: British Celtic placenames [Was: the Wheel and Dating PIE]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.090919.0000.>

> That is not entirely true - Brittonic elements in placenames (hills,
> forests, towns, rivers) are present all throughout England (most of the
> English cities even retain a modernized Romano-British name), though the
> names are less common in the East as opposed to the West.
>[Christopher Gwinn]

A classic discussion of this issue, with a map showing river names of
British Celtic origin in what is now England, is the chapter "Britons
and Saxons in the Fifth to Eighth Centuries" in Kenneth Jackson's
_Language and History in Early Britain_ (1953).  I think Jackson's
conclusions tend to support Mr. Gwinn, and I doubt that in this area
more recent scholarship would conflict with Jackson.

Jim Rader


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar  2 17:28:08 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:28:08 +0100
Subject: Welsh not [was: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.182808.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gordon Selway" <gordonselway at gn.apc.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 8:01 PM

[snip]
> But 'thou' (as a workaday pronoun, rather than in fixed formulas) - in some
> cases with the conjugated verb form - does survive.  I wonder whether the
> use of the authorised version of the bible may have affected this, though I
> would not expect a low status child saying 'thou hast' to be well received
> in an educational system which elsewhere made use of the 'Welsh not' (a
> kind of wooden thing to be placed on the neck of the latest child to speak
> Welsh instead of English).

[Ed Selleslagh]

An almost identical custom existed in (almost exclusively: Catholic) schools in
Flanders to ban Dutch, before it became the official (and compulsory education)
language in 1931. They used a 'key' or some other device.

This was a remnant of the times since the foundation of Belgium in 1830 by a
very limited French speaking upper class (voting right based upon real estate
taxes paid), intending to create a French speaking nation, even though 50%
spoke Dutch (dialects) (Now, over 60% speaks Dutch).

Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that can
be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we should
be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

BTW, spoken Flemish Dutch is still somewhat more archaic than Holland Dutch.
e.g the actual equivalent (not linguistically speaking: it is an old plural,
like 'you') of 'thou' ('gij') is still in daily use in the lower registers,
while in Holland it is Biblical.

[snip]
> Gordon Selway
> <gordonselway at gn.apc.org>

Ed.


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Wed Mar  1 07:09:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 07:09:00 GMT
Subject: IE silver?; was: Balkan Kurgans
Message-ID: <WED.1.MAR.2000.070900.GMT.>

Thank you for the shaft-grave excursion.
In my unprofessional view there was a fine comparison of perhaps IE graves
in JIES 23/1995 by some archaeologists of Moldavia.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover, (no mails >16kB please).


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  2 20:50:55 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:50:55 -0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.205055.0000.>

>Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE features
> -- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.

This is a chicken and egg situation.   The present, aorist and perfect *as
tenses* are read back into PIE from Greek and I-I alone.   We cannot
therefore say whether they are "retained archiasms" or "shared innovations".

The various formations - s suffix, reduplication, secondary endings etc etc
are scattered all over PIE, but those tenses as part of a tense system are
only in those two language groups.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Mar  2 19:04:30 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:04:30 +0100
Subject: R and r
In-Reply-To: <001101bf83b2$53559c00$ca03703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.200430.0100.>

"Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

>From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
>> Ed suggested a contrast in Classical Greek (rho / rho with spiritus asper or
>> dasemon)?

>> I cannot think of any words where there would such a contrast.  In the
>> absence of such words, the presence or absence of the spiritus asper is
>> purely mechanical, and therefore not phonemic, so there cannot be a phonemic
>> contrast.   Some modern publications no longer even print the spiritus
>> asper, since it is so predictable.

>[Ed]

>I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast: why would they
>have invented this unobvious orthography in the first place? Note that
>rho-sp.a. or the combination rho-rho-sp.a. occurs in the positions where you
>could expect a 'fortis' R, very similar to the occurrence of rr in Spanish
>(word-initially and in case of gemination), and the one in Portuguese. The
>spiritus asper is strongly suggestive of some form of aspiration.

There was a contrast, but it wasn't contrastive.

Greek initial r- comes mainly from *sr- > *hr- (original *r- had
become er-).  The r- was surely aspirated (i.e. voiceless) in
Classical Attic Greek, but since this applied to *all* initial
r's, there is no reason to postulate a separate phoneme /rh/.
The spiritus asper here is a case of subphonemic orthography (as
in many of these cases introduced after the fact, in this case by
Byzantine scribes).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  2 20:28:46 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:28:46 -0000
Subject: R and r
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.202846.0000.>

>Classical Greek (rho / rho with spiritus asper ...

>I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast:

There cannot be a phonemic contrast, because there are no options.   All
initial /r/ is given the spiritus asper (which, remember, was not written in
texts until some centuries after the time of the language in question) and
all initial /r/ in compounds with a prefix ending in a vowel is written
double, with spiritus lenis on the first, and asper on the second (hence
those horrendous English words such as dia-rrhoea).   Single medial /r/ ( as
in patera) or final /r/ is never given the spiritus asper.

So if there were a difference in pronunciation, it cannot have been
phonemic!   There are no words distinguished by it - at least if I am
correct.

Peter


From karhu at umich.edu  Thu Mar  2 15:55:57 2000
From: karhu at umich.edu (Marc Pierce)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:55:57 -0500
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4dff1b327df@[195.247.65.199]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.105557.0500.>

Hi,

Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

Marc Pierce

How can men who've never seen light be called enlightened?
	Pete Townshend


From fabcav at adr.dk  Thu Mar  2 18:07:06 2000
From: fabcav at adr.dk (Fabrice Cavoto)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:07:06 +0100
Subject: Jose Perez' questions [was: Re: *hwergh-, *hwerg- or *hwerk-?]
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.190706.0100.>

> Their current price is 693.50 FF (list is 730.00); at today's exchange
> rates that's about $103, GBP 65.
> Chantraine's dictionary is also listed by them in a couple of different
> formats; the two-volume edition (if I understand it correctly) is 1444 FF;
> $212, GBP 135.

[Fabrice Cavoto]  Ernout & Meillet is still in print. The price 730 Ff
includes the French VAT. As for Chantraine, there is a very new version
(december 1999, still Klincksieck) now in one vol. (incl. the addenda Vol.
and indexes) at about the same price, or a little bit more.

[ moderator snip ]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  2 20:38:40 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:38:40 -0000
Subject: Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.203840.0000.>

>>    Could you, please, give me the complete reference of the Lexicon der
>Indogermanischen Verbum?

...>    Does anybody know whether it could be purchased via internet?

Someone posted a while back the information that it is available for about
40 English pounds from Amazon.de  (note the suffix!  It doesn't show up in
English versions of Amazon)

Peter


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Thu Mar  2 12:31:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 12:31:00 GMT
Subject: Pokorny-CD-Version; was:Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.123100.GMT.>

SG>the reference of the Pokorny's CD version of his roots dictionary?

SG>There is none.

.. no official one. I asked several times for personal issues. E.g. the
St.Peterburg University at least is trying to digitalize the Pokorny.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:39:52 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:39:52 -0800
Subject: Assumptions in Computing phylogenies
In-Reply-To: <200002291125.p2517@h2.maus.de>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.193952.0800.>

At 09:25 AM 2/29/00 +0000, Hans Holm wrote:
>SF>Actually, properly done, cladistic analysis *determines* which
>SF>characters are innovations and which are retentions.

>.. In my humble understanding it is vice versa.
>The biologist or linguist decides which features are retentions vs.
>innovations, and the cladistic algorithm computes the 'optimal' tree.

Actually, the initial "assignments" of status for a character as derived or
ancestral are purely for ease of encoding, and have no real impact on the
final result.  In the final analysis it is the placement of the characters
relative to the root that matters. Thus one has to have some means of
placing the root independent of the researcher's judgement of the relative
advancement of the characters.

I have this on very good authority - from people who do cladistic analysis
for a living, such as the paleontologist Dr. Holtz.

[I suppose one could *tentatively* place the root at the link with the
highest count of ancestral characters per the researcher's judgement, but
this would be considered weak evidence, at best].

> See
>my parallel mail for a textbook on the topic.
>But perhaps it is a misunderstanding.

I think it is.  When encoding the characters, the researcher usually
assigns numeric codes in the expected order of derivation from the most
"primitive".  But once the tree is actually derived, position of the
character on the tree takes precedence over this initial encoding.

Dr. Holtz is VERY insistent on that.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From frauzel at azstarnet.com  Fri Mar  3 01:56:57 2000
From: frauzel at azstarnet.com (John Frauzel)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:56:57 -0700
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <v01540b05b4e2e425eaae@[128.83.254.24]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.185657.0700.>

At 09:17 AM 3/1/00 -0600, Carol Justus wrote:

>The earliest attested IE prayers don't usually ask for forgiveness but are
>more like Menelaos's prayer to Zeus for guiding his spear so that he will
>kill Paris or Chryses' to Apollo to make Agamemnon's army pay for
>Agamemnon's insults. Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence
>forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

It's certainly common in Indic tradition. The "house of clay" hymn, RV
7:89, ends "If we humans have committed some offence against the race of
the gods, O Varun.a, or through carelessness have violated your laws, do
not injure us, O god, for that sin." (O'Flaherty's translation). Sin might
be an unfortunate translation for 'enas', although Grassmann does give as
meanings Frevel, Suende, Bedraengnis, Unglueck (originally Gewalttat). But
the concept is not that far removed. And there are dozens of RV hymns with
formulaic verses, to various gods, "If we have offended you in a or b or c,
please don't x or y or z."

This does seem to be much more common in the Indo-Iranian tradition that in
the Greek. In fact I can't think of anything comparable in Greek.

John Frauzel  Phone 520 579-3235
		Fax 520 579-9780


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:19:02 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:19:02 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.011902.EST.>

>cjustus at mail.utexas.edu writes:

>Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence forgiveness, enters the IE
>prayer record? >>

-- it certainly doesn't seem to be very important in the early stages.  In
fact, to the limited extent one can tell, the PIE-speakers seem to have been
a bunch of "right bastards" -- to use a British dialect term -- whose
religious concepts centered on boozing themselves into altered states and
bribing the gods with blood-sacrifices and flattery, when they weren't
bashing their neighbors over the head and stealing their cattle... 8-).


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:16:03 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:16:03 -0800
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <763mbsgiddettmcik5j0ueehmqcjk72gnc@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.191603.0800.>

At 01:11 AM 2/29/00 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>Actually, I'm not suggesting a GBS genetic node.  I think
>Germanic "broke away" quite early on (while "Balto-Slavic" was
>still more or less undifferentiated eastern PIE).  Afterwards,
>Germanic and Balto-Slavic came into close areal contact (a "GBS
>Sprachbund", possibly in the Corded Ware period).   ...

Ah, yes, well I find that reasonable.  Though I would tend to place the
contact somewhat later, my sense on that is uncertain.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:06:11 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:06:11 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.000611.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Afterwards, Germanic and Balto-Slavic came into close areal contact (a "GBS
>Sprachbund", possibly in the Corded Ware period).  In fact, the
>opposite of what Ringe seems to be suggesting (GBS, later areal
>Gmc-Ital/Celt contacts). >>

-- continuous Germanic/Balto-Slavic contact, diminishing in intensity, with
continuous contact between Germanic and Italic and Celtic, ditto, would seem
to fit the evidence.  That is, from the PIE period the dialects antecedent to
Germanic were "always" west of Balto-Slavic, and north of Italic and Celtic.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:25:29 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:25:29 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.012529.EST.>

>sonno3 at hotmail.com writes:

>The largest percentage of Brittonic elements are in Western England, including
>Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire as well as Shropshire, Worcestershire,
>North East Herefordshire, Western Gloucestershire and, of course, Devon and
>Cornwall.

-- true, the process of Germanization seems to have been both slower and less
complete in these western areas (Cornish surviving into the 17th century, and
the provisions for "Welsh" persons in the early Wessex law codes).

Even there, however, there are placename features which show incomprehension
-- besides the "river river" ones, there are the "hill hills".

You often get these types of names in situations of limited bilingualism.

Eg.,  Lake Malawi was, for a long time, called "Lake Nyasa", because of the
explorer Livingston's lousy chiChechwa.  He pointed at the lake and asked a
Malawian "what's that lake?" in what he thought was the local language.  The
peasant, who didn't understand a word he said, replied "That's the
_lake_".... which in chiChechwa, is of course "nyasa".  So the lake was "Lake
Lake" for several generations.

There's a town in Madagascar whose name means "you can tie up your boat down
there" for similar reasons.

One can imagine a Saxon grunting out something and pointing, at which the
bewildered Briton says "That's the _river_," or "That's the _hill_".


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:18:45 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:18:45 -0800
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <ab.10bac9a.25ecab74@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.191845.0800.>

At 11:56 PM 2/28/00 -0500, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor landscape
>features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few and
>often the product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western English
>rivers are called "Avon", which means... 'river'.

And then there is the place called (after translation) "Hillhill Hill".

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:39:36 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:39:36 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.013936.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Based on the differentiation of the IE languages as attested ca. 1500 BC
>(Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek and Hittite), any date within the range
>5500-3500 is absolutely reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl. >>

-- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar; with a knowledge
of one language and of the sound-shifts, you can trace the general meaning of
a text in the other language.  There are even common elements in things like
poetic kennings.  They're more similar than modern standard German and
English, comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those are unusually
conservative.

Looking at those two examples, one would assume something in the 500-1500
year range for last-common-ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek.

Granted, Hittite is more differentiated.  However, the example of the _other_
early IE languages, when we get some records -- early Latin, for instance, or
the reconstructed forms of Proto-Germanic or Proto-Celtic or Proto-Tocharian
-- show that this is an exceptional case.

As of their earliest attestation, all the other IE languages with the
_exception_ of the Anatolian group show divergences not much earlier than the
Greek-Indo-Iranian.

So if the ancestors of Sanskrit and Greek parted company sometime between
2000 BCE and 3000 BCE, which seems reasonable, then the ancestor of, say,
Latin and the others must have done so only a little earlier.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 04:51:31 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 23:51:31 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.235131.EST.>

>maxdashu at LanMinds.Com writes:

<< Or are non-IE languages other than Hurrian known in Anatolia? >>

-- several, depending on your definitions. (Eg., Hattic, which was probably
extinct except as a learned language by the 14th century BCE.)  The Hittite
royal archives included extensive texts in six languages!

The situation during the Imperial Hittite period seems to have been that the
Hittite-Luvian-Palaic complex occupied western and parts of central Anatolia,
with Hurrian (and presumably the related proto-Urartian) to the east and
south, and various little-known but probably non-IE languages to the east and
northeast.

Nobody seems to know what the "Kaska people" directly to the northeast of
Hattusas spoke, for example, despite extensive contact (they sacked and
burned the Hittite capital at least twice).


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:03:28 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:03:28 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.000328.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>But the lack of obvious - jump off the page - reflex doesn't mean that
>Thracian wasn't IE.  But it might mean that it is very old IE.

-- no, it just means that we don't have enough of it to say much about it.
And we probably never will.  So much for the extensive texts...

>The problem is that what little we have can't be read.

-- no, you've got it bass-ackwards again.  We can't read it because we have
so little.

If we had as little Greek writing as we do Thracian, we'd have exactly the
same problems.

So the relevance of the few small fragments of Thracian to the question at
hand -- time-depth -- is... well, zero.  They say nothing.

>It made up of [either 61 or 81 - I can't read it] Greek charcters engraved
>on a golden ring.  The reading of the letters poses no difficulties but
>division of the text into words is uncertain.

-- 60-80 characters is about four to twelve words.  This is not a "text";
this is a _fragment_.

>It contains 51 characters and no acceptible translation has been made.

-- see above.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:58:36 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:58:36 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.015836.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Anyway, for what it's worth, 500 years for me is Dutch and Afrikaans

-- 500 is much too long for that example.

The settlement at the Cape was founded in 1654, and only started receiving
any substantial number of long-term Dutch settlers a generation later.

So until well after 1700, the majority of Dutch-speakers at the Cape were
European-born and hence would be speaking dialects of Dutch direct from the
Low Countries. (In fact, a lot of them were Germans or French, but that's by
the by for present purposes.)

Afrikaans was present as a spoken language in very much the present form by
the middle of the 19th century, and was in use fairly extensively in written
form by the 1870's.

So it's more like 150 years from Dutch to Afrikaans.  No more than 6
successive generations of speakers, in an extremely small population -- and
at that, in a population still using High Dutch as a written and
administrative standard.

>I think (Vedic) Sanskrit and (Mycenaean) Greek are further apart
>than that.  I'd say Vedic Skt. and Gathic Avestan comes close to
>about 500 years.

-- much closer.  Vedic and Avestan are dialects of the same language for all
practical purposes; similar to the differences between, say, Yorkshire
dialect and Texan, or Standard English and Cockney.

>Hittite and either M.Greek or V.Sanskrit for me is definitely
>2000 years or more.  The languages are structurally further
>apart, there is no mutual intelligibility to speak of.

-- Look at the differences between the English of 1000 CE and 1500 CE.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Fri Mar  3 07:06:59 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 08:06:59 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <e0.1be58a3.25ecb667@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.080659.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>>>By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>>*ulkwiha?

>-- Carl Darling Buck's _A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal
>Indo-European Languages_.

No you don't.  CDB doesn't do laryngeals.
I can't think of any source which uses <h{a}> for H2.

>Old High German "mariha" is a reflex.

OHG <mariha>, OS <meriha>, OE <mi:ere>, ON <merr>, Dutch <merrie>
are thought to reflect PGmc. *marhi: < *m'arkih2, metathesized to
*mari:h and augmented with feminine -a < *-eh2.

I probably prefer an alternative explanation, with two /h/'s in
Germanic (PGmc. *marhih-) from a variant form *markik- [I know
there's a problem with Verner here], likewise later augmented
with feminine -a.  Cf. Martinet and the Latin feminine suffix -ix
(*-ik(s)) for expected *-ih2(s).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:10:10 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:10:10 EST
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.011010.EST.>

>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>Excuse me, but do the Greek historians mention the Old Irish and Welsh
>words ?

-- possibly I misunderstood Mr. Long, but from the original posting I assumed
he meant that there were, in fact, no terms derived from *ekwos in any Celtic
language, and adduced the Greek historians as supportive evidence.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 08:16:12 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 03:16:12 EST
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.031612.EST.>

I wrote:
>>>A number of Greek historians tell us the Celtic word for horse was <marka>,
>>>never mentioning <equus> or <hippos> or any other name.

Mr. Stirling replied:
>>-- wrong, and completely wrong at that.  Eg., the following Celtic words for
>>"horse", deriving from *ekwos:
>>Old Irish:  ech
>>Gaulish:    epo (plus "equos", as the name of a month)
>>Welsh       ebol (colt)
>>You really should be more careful... 8-).

(I take it that Mr. Stirling was correcting the Greek historians and asking
them to be more careful, since all I was doing was reporting what they said.)

In a message dated 3/1/2000 10:07:52 PM, Dr. Stefan Georg replied:
>Excuse me, but do the Greek historians mention the Old Irish and Welsh
>words ? I'd be surprised, if they did, so the statement above is not really
>touched by your assertion that it is "completely wrong"  ...

Thanks for trying to keep that straight.  If anyone recalls, this is about
Mr. Stirling's claim that <marko-> or something like it was "probably" the
word for wild horses.

With regard to *equus reflexes in Celtic, of course each of the languages
above also has a <marko-> word for horse.  But it make me wonder how
forgiving this analysis should be - since I see a complete absence of *ekwos
in Breton, NIr and Manx.

(And those words the author cites for Gaulish and Welsh - epo and ebol? - I
guess that pesky p/q thing can make a Latin-looking word for horse look like
a Greek-looking word for horse.)

Also I note that Buck has somehow failed to include in his book a rather
important OIr word for 'deer' - <ach>  (Gaelic - <each>).  Perhaps more on
that later.

But here's one quote if anyone's interested:

Pausanias Description of Greece (Loeb edition)
[10.19.11]
"The Persians used to wait until the battle was over before replacing
casualties, while the Gauls kept reinforcing the horsemen to their full
number during the height of the action. This organization is called in their
native speech trimarcisia; it is well known that marca is the Celtic name for
a horse."

[...Galatais de hup' aut?n tou ergou t?n akm?n ho arithmos apepl?routo
t?n hippe?n. touto ?nomazon to suntagma trimarkisian t?i epich?ri?i
ph?n?i: kai hipp?i to onoma ist? tis markan on ta hupo t?n Kelt?n.]

Cf. Greek <margas> = <desmos> (band, bond, anything for tying and fastening,
as halter, Hom. Il. 6.507; yoke-strap, Xenophon. Anabases.) LS.

Regards,
Steve Long


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:43:53 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:43:53 -0800
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <007c01bf8353$29d7dc80$9ad31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.194353.0800.>

At 07:52 AM 3/1/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

This depends in part on the accent pattern, and in part on the direction of
analogical levelling.  Proterodynamic words in -iH(2)- tend to come out one
way, and hysterodynamic ones the other - because one paradigm has more case
forms containing -ieH(2) than the other, biasing the direction of
analogical levelling.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Mar  3 00:01:45 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:01:45 -0000
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.000145.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 6:56 PM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>>> *ulkwiha?

>> [MCV]
>>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

[PRp]
>> Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both formants
>> in combination, but how do we know?

[MCV]
> I merely assumed a transcription error (for h-sub_a or something
> like that).

[PRp]
>> Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

[MCV]
> With i: < iH and u: < uH one never knows.  Or does one?  Let me
> refer to Jens E. Rasmussen's article "IH, UH and RH in
> Indo-European".  (Abstract: Greek, Tocharian and Armenian show
> ih1/uh1 > i:/u:, ih2/uh2 > ya:, wa:, ih3/uh3 > yo:, wo:, with
> exceptions).  Greek -ia(:) therefore points to *-ih2.

[PR]
I like Jens' resolution.

But what is the significance of Greek -ia(:) for this question?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Mar  3 00:19:37 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:19:37 -0000
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.001937.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 7:53 PM

> On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com), following up a
> query about a form in a Stirling post, wrote:

>>>> By the way, Pokorny lists *u.lkwi: for 'female wolf'.  Where do you get
>>>> *ulkwiha?

>> [MCV]
>>> For <ha> read <h2> (or <A>).

>> <PRp>
>> Well, yes, we could *assume* that it is a case of utilizing both
>> formants in combination, but how do we know?

[RA]
> By "both formants", I'm assuming you mean your notion of *y and *H_2 as
> feminine formations.  I won't address that.

[PRp]
>> Could it not equally well be *u.lkwiH1- or *u.lkwiH3-?

>> And why would not *ulkwiH(2)e develop into *u.l/wl.kwia:  ?

> Last question first:  Vowels are only lengthened with the loss of a
> *following* laryngeal, so if the proto-form were ?*ul{k^w}i{H_2}e, the
> outcome would have a short vowel *a, not a long *a:.  However, the suffix
> is *-i{H_2}, with no trailing *-e.

> For the remainder of this post, I am going to write just the numeric portion
> of the TeX constructs {H_1}, {H_2}, and {H_3} to represent the e-, a-, and o-
> coloring laryngeals.  This should make things easier to read without added
> ambiguity.

> The feminine-forming suffix *-i2 is reconstructed based on Skt. -i:, Gk. -ia,
> etc.; Latin has extended the form with an additional suffix, -g-, as in
> _stri:x, stri:gis_.  The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this
> is one of the few places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel
> developments: We find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

> This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing ?*ul{k^w}i1
> or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a different outcome
> in Greek.

[PR]
But *u.lkwi2 has no outcome in Greek, does it?

And the Greek outcomes look like:

-iH1 -> ie: -> i:; -H2 -> ia: -> ia; -iH3  -> -io:

The pattern here is evidence, I believe, for my hypothesis that H1 = e:; H2
= a: H3=o:.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 03:50:37 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:50:37 -0800
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e320af2c59@[195.247.65.99]>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.195037.0800.>

At 08:39 PM 3/1/00 +0100, Stefan Georg wrote:

>I confess that I don't know what an "expanded" variant of an Arabic root
>is. What I do know, however, is that *every* Arabic verb form has vowels.

That is what I meant.  I do not know the correct terminology for
differentiating between the "pure" triconsonantal root and the actually
spoken forms that, naturally, have vowels.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 04:02:27 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:02:27 -0800
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <mrsqbs8c8ds8cjbd1b54cjtdiv0a2j0bqt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.200227.0800.>

At 09:07 PM 3/1/00 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
>vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
>on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
>fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
>course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
>[unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

Which is one of the bases on which some IEists have reconstructed a pre-PIE
stage with some obscure conditioned variation that was reinterpreted as an
e/o variation when the true PIE accent pattern developed.

Now, personally, I have never found any of these systems particularly
convincing.  As you say, it makes little phonetic sense.

>The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
>with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
>consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

I am not sure this works either, unless one postulates extensive analogical
extensions of *o to places where it was not original.  Certainly it came to
be a marker of derivation, found in the root of many nouns derived from verbs.

The problem is that many of these schemes sound *reasonable*, but there are
always just enough exceptions to make one wonder.

>The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
>an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
>/&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.
...
>Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
>The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
>(i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
>predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
>Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

Actually, I find this a very plausible scheme.  Probably the best I have
ever heard.

It is interesting to postulate that pre-PIE underwent the same sound change
as English did (compare my name to the independent noun: Stan vs. stone).

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar  3 04:53:00 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:53:00 -0800
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <010101bf83ca$eb94e760$5cc71a3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.205300.0800.>

At 10:09 PM 3/1/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

><SF>
>> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
>> differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
>> conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

><PR>
>Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

As far as minimal contrast goes, one can simply look at the "perfect"
versus the "aorist" of many verbs (especially in the third singular).

A quick perusal of Pokorny (yes, I know, out of date) gives:
*kem: "summen"
and
kom: "neben, bei, mit"

That the e/o distinction was phonemic at breakup is unquestionable.

><PR>
>I agree that an older accentual system is a reasonable theory, which I also
>agree is viable. So, if I understand correctly, you are proposing that this
>older system predates PIE?

Not really, just mentioning it as a *possibility*.  I find a switch from a
length distinction to be more plausible.

><SF>
>> Note, when there is only one non-high vowel in a language, it is *always*
>> best viewed as /a/, not /e/.  (It may have /e/ as an *allophone* in some
>> environments, but its neutral allophone will always be low).

><PR>
>I agree 100%. And it is /*a/ which I theorize preceded /*e,*o/ in what I
>call the Pontic stage, which I believe preceded PIE. But I also believe the
>non-phonemic status of the /*e,*o/ Ablaut suggests strongly that it
>developed from a single predecessor.

I tend to agree.  I think you can make your theory work as well with a
length distinction though, which is phonetically more likely.

>stress-accented syllable had /*o/. On this basis, I believe that no /*a/
>existed in PIE except possibly as a result of a reduction of /*a:/ deriving
>from a "laryngeal" + /*a/ in the Pontic (pre-PIE) stage.

I tend to agree.  I reconstruct a PIE vowel system with e/o/i/u.

[Note, I consider it likely that laryngeals survived into many of the
daughter languages, so lengthening due to loss of laryngeals was probably
*post* PIE].

><SF>
>> I can only accept this where there is good evidence of alternation with
>> /*ue/ or /*eu/.  There are just too many cases where there *is* no such
>> variation visible.  [The obvious examples are mostly inflectional ending
>> and pronouns, but there are certainly others as well].

><PR>
>Let us look at some of those examples. The strongest argument for this idea
>is foreclosed to me because it involves the "N" word.

Well, there is the root Pokorny list as *bheu.  However, the only branch
showing an e-grade of it is Indo-Iranian.  Outside of that it is
universally in "zero" grade.  Thus I do not believe the e-grade is ancient.
 I reconstruct *bhuH "grow, increase".

Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two distinct
roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an e-grade at all
(since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

There is *uper "over, above".

The root listed as *ueidh shows no actual reflexes with e-grade in Pokorny,
so one must really reconstruct *widh: "trennen".

And those are just some random gleanings from Pokorny.

><PR>
>I think we must be careful about overvaluing typological facts. If the
>Pontic stage of pre-PIE were the only language in all our knowledge to
>employ a single vowel (even for a very short period), phonological rather
>than typological considerations should influence more strongly. Typology,
>generally, is a heuristic device, would you not agree?

Up to a point.  If we find ourselves reconstructing something that is
completely unknown in well-attested languages, we really do need to think
three times before accepting the reconstruction.  [Absolute universals are
rare, and when they do exist are probably fundamental].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From jer at cphling.dk  Fri Mar  3 14:27:03 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 15:27:03 +0100
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <mrsqbs8c8ds8cjbd1b54cjtdiv0a2j0bqt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.152703.0100.>

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> [...]
> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

Thanks! we are still a minority I believe, but a viable alternative does
not seem to have been proposed.

> The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
> an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
> The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
> (i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
> predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
> Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

I don't get the part on Brugmann's Law. But stressed -e:'n vs. unstressed
'-o:n (and -e:'r vs. '-o:r and -e:s vs. '-o:s in parallel
fashion) indicates that the expected loss of the unstressed vowel of the
suffix (/-en-/, /-er-/, /-es-/) had not progressed further than to a stage
of weakening when the "nominative lengthening" set in: The nominative
marker (some variety of /s/) caused lengthening of the nearest preceding
vowel in the environment VC(C)_# Thereby, underlying /e/ appears as /e:/,
and the weakened counterpart is found, at the end of the day, to surface
as /o:/. Phonetically, this could perhaps be seen as something like the
French e muet which is indeed a weakened vowel and does exhibit a marked
rounding (at least in some varieties of the language). Supposing the
relevant prestage of PIE to have been comparable to this, one gets a "long
rounded schwa" from where the /o:/ of the PIE forms could well have
developed. It takes a rule saying the lengthened vowels were not deleted
by the working of the accent-governed ablaut, and in fact I see no
counterexamples. So, I agree, IE /o/ has a multitude of sources.

Cheers,

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar  2 23:54:15 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 23:54:15 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.235415.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 8:07 PM

> Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>> At 05:44 PM 2/25/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> But, let us approach this from another avenue.

>>> 1) What I believe we find in the earliest IE is one vowel, /*e/, which
>>> has a conditioned variant , /*o/.

>> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs
>> that differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have
>> been conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

>> It is possible that some pre-PIE language had such conditioned variation,
>> but any such conditioning factor had disappeared by the time we reach the
>> reconstructible time layers.  [One viable possibility is an old accent
>> system as the conditioning factor, with conditioning destroyed by a shift
>> in the accent pattern to the one reconstructed for PIE].

[MCV]
> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

[PR]
I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
which produces *e/*o variations.

[MCV]
> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

[PR]
I must have been on vacation when this was discussed. Is there any kind of
consensus on this list that Jens has demonstrated this?

[MCV]
> The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
> an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut,

[PR]
Of course, this is a possibility. But if all /**a,**a:/ had become
/*e/*o/-Abldute, how would we ever know? Is this not pure speculation?

[MCV]
> with developments /a/ >
> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

[PR]
But why would they (prtimary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

[MCV]
> The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
> (i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
> predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
> Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:19:52 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:19:52 EST
Subject: non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.001952.EST.>

>rdrews at richmond.edu writes:

>Intrusive in the Halys arc, yes, but "Hittite" seems to have come to Hatti
>from the south, where Luwian and other Anatolian languages seem to have been
>spoken as far back as there were permanent settlements.

-- well, the Hittites called their language "Neshite".  It shows every
evidence of being intrusive in the area which constituted the heartland of
the Hittite kingdom.

The area east and southeast of the Hittites was non-Indo-European throughout
recorded history until the intrusion of Armenian -- eg., in the early Iron
Age, Armenia was occupied by the Urartian kingdom, which spoke a non-IE
language related to Hurrian. Evidence for Hurrian and languages related to
Hurrian in eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia goes back well into the
3rd millenium BCE.

>FROM western Anatolia, and from this population's subsequent separation from
>its western Anatolian roots.

-- proto-Anatolian couldn't possibly have been _ancestral_ to
proto-Indo-European.  And the degree of differentiation doesn't suggest a
prolonged separation.

All theories which posit an Anatolian homeland for PIE or PIH run into this
problem.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:59:04 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:59:04 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.005904.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>First you say that Greek is intrusive than you say Hittite must be intrusive
>because it is not related to Greek.

-- no, I said Hittite is intrusive in Anatolia. This is obvious due to the
very large set of loan-words from Hattic, the non-IE language originally
spoken in the Halys area, and the nature of those loan-words.  It's been a
standard interpretation for a long time.

The implications of Hittite's lack of close relationship with Greek is
another matter.

>Well, then my explantion is either Hittite's intrusive or Greek's intrusive
>and that's why they don't have to be closely related.

-- if you're arguing that the IE languages spread from east to west, Anatolia
to Greece and then to the Balkans, then logically Greek and Hittite ought to
be closely related, and Greek and say, Latin (still more Sanskrit or
Balto-Slavic) distantly related.  Whereas precisely the opposite is the case.

And Renfrew does claim that Greek is the result of development _in situ_, at
least in his original book.

>That makes NO sense.

-- correct.  However, since this argument existed nowhere but in your mind...
8-).

>So Greek proves nothing about Hittite's lack of intrusiveness.

-- where did you get the idea that I said it did?

>I know this is a waste of time, but what SPECIFIC internal relationships are
>you talking about?  What SPECIFIC links would you expect?

-- here's where we get to the stuff about Hittite and Greek.  You know,
morphology and so forth?  Greek lacks the specific isoglosses which define
the Anatolian group of IE languages (eg., loss of grammatical gender).  Greek
has specific isoglosses which it shares with Indo-Iranian (eg., retention of
the augment).

(Note:  since you seem to have trouble with the concept of "example", I will
specify that these are not the _only_ common features of these languages --
these are just single _examples_.)

>And what do you mean by other IE languages?  I know you won't answer any of
>these, but I'll ask anyway.

-- Greek, Balto-Slavic, Tocharian, Germanic, Italic, Celtic, Indo-Iranian.

>What do you think Hittite is closely related to?

-- Luwian and Palaic in its own time; Lycian and the others later.  Not,
however, to Phrygian or Armenian.

You see, the Anatolian languages -- Hittite, Luwian, etc. -- are subfamily,
like the Romance or Germanic or Indo-Iranian.

>In your last post, you have the entire Ukraine and maybe even the Balkans
>occupied by a Greek-Sanskrit-Armenian dialectical continum. You have
>Anatolia completely encircled.

-- here I must refer you to a map.  That puts PIE north of Anatolia, and
separated by the Black Sea, the Balkans, and the Caucasus mountains.

>So where do you think Hittite came from?

-- same place as the rest, only rather earlier.  The first wave in a series.
Given the predominantly non-IE population of eastern Anatolia and most of
transcaucasia at the earliest recorded periods, probably although not
certainly from the west, via the Bosphorus.  Sometime after 3500 BCE, but
before 2000 BCE (the latter being a _terminus ad quem_ because of the
Anatolian-IE names recorded by Assyrian merchants about that date).  Not too
much earlier than 2000 BCE, because of the -- here's that term again --
degree of differentiation shown by the Anatolian languages when we get some
written records of them, around 500 years after the Assyrian _karum_ tablets.

>My read on this is that "PIE minus Anatolian" forms on the Danube and becomes
>Bandkeramik.  The predecessor "Anatolian-Balkan painted pottery" culture
>found in the Balkans and Anatolia represents the residue of 'wide PIE' AFTER
>the split and would include proto-Hittite-Luwian...>>

-- and so all these languages vanished, except a couple in central Anatolia.
Hmmm.
Convenient, eh?  And non-falsifiable.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:02:01 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:02:01 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.010201.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

 I wrote:

 >(and possibly proto-Phrygian-Thracian, though don't hold me to that.)

 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

 >-- good thing you added the qualifier, since Phrygian shows close links to
 >Greek and none in particular to Anatolian.

>Once again, I'll have to ask you what SPECIFIC links you are talking about.
>>From all I know, Phrygian doesn't show much of anything and its evidence is
>about a 1000 years later than Luwian and Hittite.

-- once again, I'll have to refer you to the literature on the subject.  I
can't teach you comparative philology, even to the meagre extent I've
absorbed it.

If you want a few examples...

...there's the retention of the augment -- eg., "edaes", "he put", from PIE
*h(1)edeh(1), 'he put', a feature Phrygian shares with Greek, Armenian and
Indo-Iranian; this is usually considered a late innovation shared by the
southeastern dialect group of PIE.

Features shared by Phrygian and Greek include the relative pronoun *ios, the
suffix *-meno, the pronoun *auto-, the use of the ending *-s in the
nominative singular masculine of a-stems, and the augment (mentioned above).

There's a Phrygian inscription on the tomb of King Midas:  "Midai lavagtaei
vanaktei", "To Midas the War-leader and King".

This contains two terms shared with (Mycenaean) Greek:  lawagetas and wannax
("war-leader" and "king", respectively.)

>It may even be only understood by only one person.

-- since you're very much in the minority here, that's a rather odd remark.


From fabcav at adr.dk  Fri Mar  3 06:58:12 2000
From: fabcav at adr.dk (Fabrice Cavoto)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 07:58:12 +0100
Subject: PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and
 evidence from Uralic linguistics)
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.075812.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

> There is no reason to concider *-i (= your *-e) in PU *nimi 'name' a stem
> formant. *-i is no known a PU morpheme

[Fabrice Cavoto]  It certainly is, see below.

> , and *nim- couldn't even
> theoretically be a PU morpheme, since all roots (except pronouns and the
> two auxilaries) had to be of shape *(C)V(C)CV-.

[Fabrice Cavoto]  See f.ex. Decsy 1990, p. 26-35, as well as, more
recently, Abondolo (ed) 1998, p. 6-7. The structure of Uralic *roots* is V,
CV, CVC or CVCV. The fact that PUral. *words* ended in a vowel doesn't
imply that the vowel was originally part of the root. Some call it
"thematic vowel", other "stem vowel", and it is mostly seen as an element,
or part of an element, forming stems. Whether it is for prosodic or
morphologic reasons is not entirely clear, but the fact that the vowel is
not always the same (since there are a-stems, e/i-stems), and that it
happens that the same root is attested with both, also points to the fact
that that element, what ever we call it, is added on the root.


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Mar  3 14:01:16 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 16:01:16 +0200
Subject: Uralic Urheimat (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and evidence from
 Uralic linguistics)
In-Reply-To: <20000301082113.54350.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.160116.0200.>

[I wrote:]

>In principle, it [= Uralic Urheimat South of the Black Sea] cannot be
>totally excluded. However, the idea of a P-U homeland south of the Black Sea
>would not be a very fruitful hypothesis, since it would only create a new,
>very difficult question to answer: why and how would the P-U speakers have
>migrated north to become hunter-gatherers in the taiga/tundra zone of northern
>Eurasia? There is no evidence suggesting that the P-U Urheimat would have been
>-outside- the area where U languages are spoken today.

[G?bor S?ndi replied:]
> Well, our linguistic (I presume you to be Finnish, I am Hungarian)

Yes, I'm both Finnish and Saami.

> ancestors
> must have migrated to the taiga/tundra zone from the south at one point,
> seeing that the ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens were in Africa. I would
> venture the guess that they were big game hunters, and as the ice sheets
> moved north, the predecessors of Proto Uralic speakers followed the mammuth
> and other large game to the north.

This is true. And I'd stress the word predecessors - this must have
happened conciderably before Proto-Uralic. There are researchers who
maintain that e.g. the first inhabitants of Finland who moved there
along the retreating ice sheet approx. 9000BP were PU speakers, but this
view seems to be anachronistic. There are similar problems with it as most
IE-ists see in Renfrew's model of the IE expansion - it is simply too
early.

Thus, some Pre-PU "homeland" may well have been located south of the Black
Sea, but the PU homeland can not (as you agree below).

> Just before the first offshoots of Proto-Uralic (the Samoyeds?) split off

I don't believe the primary split in Uralic is between Samoyed
and all the rest (= "Finno-Ugric"). There is no clear linguistic evidence
in support of this view, although the traditional binary family tree has
been the concensus view in Uralistics for over 100 years (since Otto
Donner presented it the first time in 1879). On the contrary, I'd go as
far as to say that it was falsified by Kaisa H?kkinen in her doctoral
thesis, and her 1984 article in Ural-Altaische Jahrb?cher.

> I agree that they must have lived somewhere north of the Black Sea/Caspian
> area. Some of them might even have lived just north of the Black Sea, to be
> pushed north by the more populous neolithic farmers moving into the area -
> ancestors of the Sredni Stog, Tripolye etc. cultures.

I mostly agree with this - except that I see no reason to assume that PU
speakers would have lived just north (= on the shores of?) Black Sea. I
think the most logical option is to place the PU homeland in the forest
zone between Volga and Urals. The spread happened on an east-west
axis; Pre-Saamic-Finnic must have spread to the Baltic Sea area before the
introduction of Battle Axe culture in southwestern Finland (5000BP), and
the first branch to spread east to Siberia must obviously have been
Pre-Samoyedic. But nothing indicates that one of these spreads would have
taken place earlier than the other. The fact that the western branches
(Saami, Finnic) show more cognate lexemes with the central languages than
Samoyedic does probably results from later contacts.

Best wishes,

Ante Aikio


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 06:04:05 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 01:04:05 EST
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20Tocharian=20A=20w=E4s,=20B=20yasa?=
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.010405.EST.>

>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>So, Samoyed *wes? ~ Tocharian *wesa seems like chance correspondence. But,
>assuming that the Toch. form requires an irregular (?) metathesis, the loan
>etymology perhaps remains as a(n unlikely) possibility? >>

-- I suppose it could have been a Tocharian-Samoyed loan?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 07:14:23 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 02:14:23 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.021423.EST.>

>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>

-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.

That might indicate (since there are or were wolves in Anatolia as well as
lions) that the 'wolf' meaning is a semantic narrowing from "dangerous one",
which would seem to be supported by the Hittite "walkuwa" ("dangerous") and
Sanskrit "a-vrka" ("safe").

There's also been a suggestion that the *uelkwo word is a derivative of
*uel-, meaning 'tear, lacerate', so the name would be "the thing that rips
you up". (Some Russian linguist, wasn't it?)

Of course, the fact that there's no clear PIE root for "lion" is also
indicative, since in Bronze Age and neolithic times lions were known all
across Greece, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East, and into India.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 07:16:58 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 02:16:58 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.021658.EST.>

Someone wrote:
>>To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
>>pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

In a message dated 3/2/2000 6:19:06 AM, Dr. Stefan Georg wrote:

>Friends, have a look at some Siberian languages; the very fact that these
>fellas can get *really nasty* is responsible for the fact that most people
>who *really know* them   use some taboo word, lest the bloddy beast
>understands its name and comes along to look at who's talking.
>Zoo-goers may use descriptive names for our brown friends, forest-dwellers
>aren't stupid enough to do that.

Not to rile anyone but just to express a minority opinion in the short time
I'm allowed lately -

Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

Although bears are big and dangerous, you are talking here about people whose
ancestors seemed to make a living out of hunting some big, angry things.
Native Americans even before having acquired gunpowder were extremely
effective at keeping a steady supply of bearskins coming into the European
colonies right from the start, and it was reported that every single colonial
home in cold New Amsterdam had several nice warm bearskins acquired from
indigenous hunters.

Two schools of thought here - one says the bear stood for dread.  The other
says that the bear stood for a warm bear skin - provided by a benign
Providence who nevertheless did mandate some, small inconvenience in
obtaining this gift by attaching it to a bear.  And a
not-very-ecologically-minded Davy Crockett could therefore proudly prove by
an invoice he always carried with him that he once "harvested" 40 bearskins
in a single week.

My little suggestion here is again that brown did not give its name to the
bear, but that the bear's fur gave its name to brown.

I suspect that - as today - most folks back then had more contact with the
by-products of wild animals than they did with the animals themselves -
witness the large number of wild fauna remains at Troy until it appears the
local wild fauna ran out.  And perhaps most folks back then would have had
more contact with bears by way of bearskins than by way of mortal personal
experiences with bears.  Plus bears are not full-time professional predators
being natural omnivores and are also hibernators.  So it doesn't seem likely
that there was a bear assigned to terrorizing each and every IE speaking
village.

Hunters are not the social types.  Merchants are.  And merchants are more
likely to influence what we call things than hunters are.  Our own modern
experience has been been that we've eaten or worn more fox, sable, buffalo,
mink, beaver, alligator, shrimp, salmon, tuna and crayfish than we'd ever see
alive.  I know that I've seen more cowhide than I've seen cows.  And of
course merchants make up names as the market demands.  In the US, we can
order a fish called a scrod.  Sardines are little fish that come in a can.
It's beef, not cow meat.  And though I've looked I've never seen a veal, a
suede or a leather scampering around out there.

And that may be why bears are mostly called otherwise.  Bearskins.  And the
word for bearskin may have become one word for brown.

I don't think there's much evidence that ancients were often terrorized BY
wild animals, but there is a lot of evidence that they often terrorized wild
animals.  Read Homer's description of lions - most are showing great courage
and its much too much courage of course that gets them killed by guess who...

And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
north star. And of course its hard not to look at L., ursa (bear) without
thinking of Gr., bursa (animal skin).  But of course if a bear knew that you
were thinking that way, that might make that bear pretty darn mad.

Regards,
Steve Long


From xdelamarre at siol.net  Fri Mar  3 21:09:24 2000
From: xdelamarre at siol.net (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:09:24 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0003021354510.14136293-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.220924.0100.>

Ante Aikio wrote :

>But it is precisely the descriptive names that are created for taboo reasons.
>E.g. Finnish has karhu 'bear' < karhea 'coarse' (referring to fur), kontio
>'bear' < kontia 'crawl on all fours' (referring to manner of motion). As
>for 'destruction', there's Finnish hukka 'wolf' = hukka 'loss,
>destruction', hukkua 'get lost, perish, drown'. These words predate zoos,
>for sure ;-)

As for Finnish _karhu_, I have proposed (_Historische Sprachforschung_ 105,
1992, pp 151-54) that it could be a loan from a Proto-Aryan form
_*harkSas_, itself from IE _*h2rtk'os_, with hardening of the laryngeal
(very much like _kana_ 'chicken' from Germanic _*xana_, or _teke_ 'to do'
from IE _*dheH1-_) and  regular outcome of Uralic and Aryan -kS- into _h_,
in Baltic Finnish (O.Ind. _makSa:_ 'fly' = Mordvin _mekS_ = Finn.
_mehi(lainen)_ 'bee'). Mentioned by Szemer?nyi in his _Introduction to IE
Ling._, 53.

The etymology of _karhu_ by _karhea_ 'coarse' (J. M?giste, _Estn. Etym.
W?rtb._, followed by Itkonen & Alii, _Suomen Sanojen Alkuper?_) is probably
a 'popular etymology'.

The existence in Finnish (and Uralic) of very archaic loans from various IE
strata (late IE, Aryan, Baltic, Germanic etc), which are, so to say,
'fossilised' in the language, is in my view the strongest argument for a
Eurasian Urheimat.

I am presently dealing with Old Celtic lexicography where, as is well
known, the word for 'bull' is _taruos_ (Gaulish _taruos_, O.Ir. _tarb_
etc.) a metathesised form of IE _*tauros_, maybe on the analogy of _caruos_
'deer'. The funny thing is that we have a Finnish word _tarvas_ designating
big cervidae, which shows the same metathesis as Celtic (whereas there is
none in Aryan, Baltic & Germanic). But it may be pure coincidence or we
have to postulate that the loan was made somewhere in present Russia,
before (Proto-)Celts entered Central Europe.

Xavier Delamarre
Ljubljana


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Mar  3 10:17:48 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 15:47:48 +0530
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.154748.0530.>

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Pierce <karhu at umich.edu>
Sent: Thursday, 02 March, 2000 9:25 PM

> Hi,

> Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

> Marc Pierce

> How can men who've never seen light be called enlightened?
> Pete Townshend

The web address of Universitdtsverlag C. Winter is:
http://www.winter-verlag-hd.de/

But it's under construction, and seems to contain no information. It does,
however, provide an e-mail address:

info at winter-verlag-hd.de

All the best,

Gabor Sandi

PS: As I work in an artificially illuminated office with the brillian Indian
sunshine outside, can I be called enlightened?


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar  3 12:40:02 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 13:40:02 +0100
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.10.10003021054540.7817-100000@centipede.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.134002.0100.>

>Hi,

>Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

A few years ago it went bankrupt. That's the bad news. But its program (and
the name) is, as far as I know, continued by some other publisher whose
name I keep forgetting. Anyone in the know ?

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From oldgh at hum.au.dk  Fri Mar  3 16:00:14 2000
From: oldgh at hum.au.dk (George Hinge)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 17:00:14 +0100
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.170014.0100.>

Marc Pierce asked:

>Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

They have a web page: www.winter-verlag-hd.de, but it is apparently under
construction and is therefor of little use. It has been under construction
for a year and a half, as far as I remember. They refer to the www.geist.de,
but it doesn't seem that they are sited there anymore. A complete catalogue
of available books printed in Germany ist to be found on www.buchhandel.de.

George Hinge,
The Department of Greek and Latin,
The University of Aarhus, Denmark


From edsel at glo.be  Fri Mar  3 11:32:38 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 12:32:38 +0100
Subject: Pokorny-CD-Version; was:Jose Perez' questions
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.123238.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hans Holm" <Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 1:31 PM

> SG>the reference of the Pokorny's CD version of his roots dictionary?

> SG>There is none.

> .. no official one. I asked several times for personal issues. E.g. the
> St.Peterburg University at least is trying to digitalize the Pokorny.

> Regards
> Hans J. Holm

[Ed Selleslagh]

I tried their website at

	http://www.spbu.ru/engl/html/Education/Faculties/Philology/

but couldn't find anything about this project. Do you know in what stage it is?
Very early?

Regards,
Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Fri Mar  3 12:07:35 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 13:07:35 +0100
Subject: R and r
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.130735.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 8:04 PM

> "Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast: why would they
>> have invented this unobvious orthography in the first place? Note that
>> rho-sp.a. or the combination rho-rho-sp.a. occurs in the positions where you
>> could expect a 'fortis' R, very similar to the occurrence of rr in Spanish
>> (word-initially and in case of gemination), and the one in Portuguese. The
>> spiritus asper is strongly suggestive of some form of aspiration.

> There was a contrast, but it wasn't contrastive.

> Greek initial r- comes mainly from *sr- > *hr- (original *r- had
> become er-).  The r- was surely aspirated (i.e. voiceless) in
> Classical Attic Greek, but since this applied to *all* initial
> r's, there is no reason to postulate a separate phoneme /rh/.
> The spiritus asper here is a case of subphonemic orthography (as
> in many of these cases introduced after the fact, in this case by
> Byzantine scribes).

> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

[Ed]

This really seems to touch upon the core of the matter, Miguel. Thank you for
the clarification.

But I find it difficult to believe that Byzantine scribes would have been aware
of the initial r- < *hr- < *sr- (which is pre-classic I believe, i.e. close to
a 1000 years earlier) if there hadn't been left some trace in pronunciation.
The different spelling at the beginning and in the middle of a word is not
surprising: Spanish and Portuguese, in which the sounds represented by r and rr
in intervocalic positions are clearly distinguished phonemes, use the same
system: word-initial written r is always pronounced as if it were written rr,
while intervocalically it is written rr; intervocalic r is another phoneme. So,
my conjecture would be that word-initial rho-sp.a. and intervacalic
rho-rho-sp.a. were pronounced the same way (uvular like in Portuguese?) and
intervocalic rho some other way (flap?).

I said 'uvular' (or similar) because that comes close to what a non-linguist
(like the Byzantine scribes) would possibly hear as 'breath' (spiritus, pneuma)
in the pronunciation of an r. That's a not-too-uneducated guess, I hope.

Regards,
Ed.


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar  3 12:45:21 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 13:45:21 +0100
Subject: Jose Perez' questions
In-Reply-To: <015001bf8489$7d9a1860$4a46063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.134521.0100.>

>>>    Could you, please, give me the complete reference of the Lexicon der
>>Indogermanischen Verbum?

>...>    Does anybody know whether it could be purchased via internet?

>Someone posted a while back the information that it is available for about
>40 English pounds from Amazon.de

Yes, they do have it, for 60 Euros, much to my surprise they also have Rix'
Greek Grammar (55 Euros), and Meiser's Latin grammar (40 Euros); they don't
have the Winter bookls, however.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 15:06:55 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 10:06:55 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.100655.EST.>

In a message dated 3/3/2000 1:45:45 AM, edsel at glo.be wrote:

>Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that
>can be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we
>should be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

I just want to mention again the statistic that I mentioned earlier that says
that most Americans are descended from non-English speakers.  The model in
the US is aspirational and quite different, as it might have been in other
places where the concept of "newness" makes old languages seem old.  The
neolithic hypothesis has the advantage of perhaps offering the concept of
newness as did perhaps Latin through its association with Christianity.  (See
Fletcher's The Barbarian Conversions, where Latin is one of the measures of
the new order of the civitas and centers, versus the old older of the
countryside and pagani)  Even where such oppressive measures as Ed describes
were apparently successful - e.g., the medieval criminal laws in Germany
against the speaking of Wendish dialects - the process seems to leave a
prominent subtrate (e.g., Berlin is from a Slavic word).  And it is also
grindingly slow.  Plus, as in the case mentioned by Ed and in the case of the
19th cent. Russian ban on teaching Polish, the process can also backfire.

The spread of IE, however, seems to have been both fast and extremely
effective, suggesting that both a large neolithic population increase in IE
speakers and the advantage of "newness' favored language expansion and
displacement and created little resistance, except of course among those
admirably stubborn Basques, Finns and Estonians.

Regards,
Steve Long


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri Mar  3 09:15:29 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 09:15:29 +0000
Subject: Basque <egun> 'day'
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.091529.0000.>

Ed Selleslagh writes:

>  Your response is interesting, as it says that the Turkish word is from
>  the name of the sun; apparently the Basque word is also related to
>  'daylight', at least according to some.

OK.  Basque <egun> 'day' has no etymology, and is clearly native and ancient.
The combining form of this word is either <egu-> or <egur->, showing
alternations which are quite regular in ancient words.

The nearly universal word for 'sun' is <eguzki>, which consists of <egun>
plus a compound noun-forming suffix <-z-ki>, where <-ki> is a suffix
forming concrete nouns, and <-z> is the instrumental suffix, which has
a habit of turning up in odd places.  The whole thing is, roughly,
'day-thing'.

The Zuberoan dialect has for 'sun' <ekhi>, which is almost certainly
from *<egu-ki>, the same as above but without the <-z>.  The development
of *<egu-ki> to <ekhi> would in fact be quite regular in Zuberoan.

For 'daylight', the most widespread word today is <eguargi>, with <argi>
'light', and the compound is parallel to the English one.  Some varieties
have re-formed this as <egunargi>.

Hiding behind all this is the seemingly ancient stratum of words formed
on *<ortzi> ~  *<osti>.  The precise significance of this is uncertain,
but its numerous compounds point to the range of senses 'sky, cloud,
thunder, storm'.  One of the derivatives is <oskarbi> 'clear sky', with
<garbi> 'clean'.  Best bet for the original sense of *<ortzi> is 'sky',
I think, but the evidence is not decisive.  The modern Basque word for
'sky' is <zeru>, from a Romance development of Latin <caelum>, roughly
*<tselo>.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From ECOLING at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 04:20:01 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 23:20:01 EST
Subject: possessive [form of a] pronoun
Message-ID: <THU.2.MAR.2000.232001.EST.>

Bob Whiting has widened our set of examples.
He thereby brought up yet another wholly new line of argument,
which was not covered by preceding messages.

I still refer back to the message "possessive [form of a] pronoun"
for the parallelism which it *did* contain,
and which is strongly supported by more detailed considerations,
as shown below.

First, I am not knowingly trying to mislead anyone,
despite Bob Whiting's claim:

>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
>determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.

Not so, though I should not have to defend myself against
such a groundless ad-hominem assertion.
(The Postscript notes that I normally do just the reverse of that!)

I *did* choose the word "his" deliberately because unlike
some of the other genitive forms ("determiners", as many call them),
it does look more like an apostrophe-s form.

But I did not choose it because of homonymy between
determiner (my) and pronominal (mine) forms: (his, his).
I was not at all concerned with the pronominal forms
(his, hers, mine, yours, ours, theirs).
Bob Whiting's examples involve such pronominal forms,
but my examples did not involve them.
So there was nothing to "slide past" anyone.

If you add to the following examples I used the specification
that *we are talking about the determiner use of "his, my, etc"*,
which was certainly the context in which I was writing
(and please note that Larry Trask had also not been discussing
"mine" etc., and said so in response to Pat Ryan)...

Then there is no way of adding Bob Whiting's examples,
because they do not fit that context.  Here were my examples,
now extended only by adding a first-person example as well.

> The relation:
> he :: his
[> or
> I :: my   ]

> is from syntactic and semantic points of view
> essentially the same as the relation

> the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's.

This statement remains valid, as I think all linguists know.
A "syntactic and semantic" "relation" is not the same as a slot-filler
word class.
In the cases of "he", "I", and "the man we met yesterday",
dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
are as full noun phrases.
In the cases of "his", "my", and "the man we met yesterday's ",
dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
are as determiners of full noun phrases
(referring by "determiner" here to function and positions
of some occurrences, not to slot-filler word class).

The latter are not full noun phrases in most usages, as we all agree

(though the third of these can be used also as a full noun phrase,
in the more complex structures discussed below).

End of main line of argument (again, and just as previously stated).

***

Now as to the tangent, elaboration, or extension of range
of the discussion to pronominal forms like "mine, yours, ...":

Bob Whiting alleges that the lack of a complete parallel between forms
shows that an equivalence of syntactic and semantic relations does not exist.

This is not the case, as when we talk about word classes,
determined by slot-filler criteria, we often find only partial equivalences.
We even find that the surface form "this"
can function both as a determiner and as a pronoun (as I think the
participants in these discussions wish to call them).  So a relation
"this :: this" functions syntactically and semantically equivalently to
"my :: mine".  Merely one such asymmetry.

***

Whiting's parallels were these:

>This is the man we met yesterday's book.
>This is the book of the man we met yesterday.
>
>This is his book.
>This is the book of he.*

I find the fourth of these ungrammatical, of course.
I also find the second one odd, *either* in possessive sense
*or* in another sense which it might conceivably express,
a book about the man we met yesterday.
For the possessive sense, the sense in the examples I had given,
(note again that I had *not* given examples with pronominal usages),
I believe such a usage more normally occurs with a relative clause
following, than in the simple form given by Whiting:

This is the book of his   which we were talking about.
This is the book of mine   which we were talking about.
This is the book of John's   which we were talking about.
This is the book of the man we met yesterday's   which we were talking about.
     [as opposed to the books belonging to the man we met yesterday
     which we were not talking about]

The "of..." phrase in each case has at least sometimes been treated
as a transformation of something with a bit more concrete content:

This is the book from among mine which we were talking about.
This is the book from among John's which we were talking about.

or even
This is the book [which is mine] which we were talking about.
This is the book [which is John's] which we were talking about.

We also have the following form, which to me is more colloquially normal
with the apostrophe-s.  I believe it shows that, like "his",
the form "the man we met yesterday's" *can* function
either as modifier (parallel to "my")
or *sometimes* as a full noun phrase (parallel to "mine").

We then have a three-way relation,
and although some may not prefer the terminology which immediately
follows, I trust with the examples they will know what I am referring to:

The triple relations:

(nominative pronoun; determiner genitive pronoun; possessive pronoun NP)

he :: his :: his
I :: my :: mine

are equivalent to the triple relation:

the man we met yesterday ::
:: the man we met yesterday's :: the man we met yesterday's

with some slippage that in certain contexts and styles,
in the last triple relation,
the first form may sometimes be used for the third form
(but with stylistic marking and awkwardness of different forms
for different speakers depending on additional details of the contexts...).
The third of the forms in each of the relations above was *not*
previously prominent in these discussions (except very briefly).

I still plead to our list:
Can we now stop trying to prove people are wrong in using
traditional terminology?  It meant what it in fact referred to,
and we all knew what it was intended by the author to refer to.
Still does refer to just what it did before,
not only for those who themselves use terms that way,
but *also* for those who understand the terms that way
while preferring themselves to use different terms!
(And just as Larry Trask has pointed out that "pronoun" is an
illogical term, because it refers to what are really "proNP"s,
yet that we still use it successfully, so it can be the case for
other traditional terminology.)

Can we please rule out of order on this list any messages which
go off into meta-analysis to prove someone wrong because
of the terms they used,
instead of dealing with the content of what we perfectly well
know they were saying?
I thought that was the policy which our moderator declared
sometime back?

Sincerely yours,
Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics

***

In response to Bob Whiting's ad-hominem, an incorrect one:
>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
>determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.

I may be *wrong* in some analysis I propose,
but I don't try to "slide" things "past" anyone.
Just the contrary, I tend to bring up counter-examples
even to my own beliefs!
People sometimes try to get me to shut up when we are on the same
team, precisely because I do that, because they don't want me to
present a more nuanced or balanced case.
I always try to see all sides and especially do not want to overstate
and have to retract something later!


From ECOLING at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:43:18 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:43:18 EST
Subject: Logical Gap
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.004318.EST.>

Larry Trask writes,
concerning his criteria for including words as potential early Basque
monosyllabic words:

>My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>particular phonological form.

I have no doubt that Trask believes this.
But it has been pointed out before that it does not follow.

There is a logical non-sequitur here, which is *one* of the core
difficulties in the entire discussion we have been having on this subject.

It is perfectly possible that criteria may be *stated* in words
none of which have the slightest thing to do with phonological form,
and yet, in the real world, the combination of those criteria have
some consequence which end up excluding some category
of vocabulary elements describable by a particular phonological
form, at least statistically.

(Statistically is for me systematically, especially when in quite
a number of cases the exclusions may reach near-complete
exclusion.
If Trask wishes to define "systemically" as meaning "100%",
then I would probably agree with him on his statement above;
but then he would be discussing a different question from the
one I was discussing, and we should not be continuing this
conversation.  Assuming Trask wishes to discuss what I was
discussing, since his message appears to be a response to what
I said, I continue...)

Here is an example of an exclusion which is an indirect consequence,
not explicitly stated in a set of criteria, yet a real exclusion nonetheless.
None of Trask's criteria refer explicitly or directly to verbs,
yet given the structure of Basque, in which as I understand Trask
no verbal word is monosyllabic (though verbal *roots* are),
his criteria do end up excluding all verbs.
In this case, we only need a single criterion, monosyllabicity of the word,
to end up excluding all verbs.  Yet "monosyllabicity of the word"
is a criterion which nowhere mentions anything directly related to
"verb".  The exclusion is indirect, because of something else,
a fact of verb structure (specific to, though not unique to, Basque).

In the case of a criterion based on early attestation,
there is nothing referring explicitly to excluding any particular
strata of vocabulary or individual lexical items,
yet an indirect consequence is that any strata of vocabulary
which are selectively disfavored for written attestation,
or any individual lexical items so disfavored,
will be statistically excluded.

So it can happen, through using a combination of criteria,
that several strata of vocabulary end up being excluded *statistically*
(all I have ever claimed) by Trask's criteria.
Since most of us know independently of Trask's criteria
that most or all living languages contain vocabulary of such strata,
it would normally be considered appropriate to include some of them
as candidates for reconstruction of any pattern which is expected
to have any sort of general validity for the language.
("general" does not mean "universal").

And any set of criteria which had the effect, direct or
indirect, of excluding such vocabulary strata systematically
(statistically), would be judged as a poor set of criteria.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics

***

An addendum:

Given the previous publication on this list of a very detailed message
by me listing 9 very specific points in which I argue it would be
better to modify Trask's general criteria for including and
for excluding potential words as reflecting ancient Basque,
the following statements by Trask seem exceedingly odd.

I refrain from repeating the nine specific items,
since they can be found in the archives.
The message was titled
"9 specifics on Including and excluding data"
and was posted on 30th October, 1999.
I have had in preparation for about a month a list of an
*additional* eight or so specific modifications which I argue would
improve such a set of criteria, numbers 10-17.
It will be sent to the IE list shortly.

These statements by Trask:

[LA]
>>  It is not that the long monomorphemic words have been generally lost,
>>  it is that Trask's criteria exclude them from his considering them as
>>  early Basque (this has been discussed in many other messages, one a
>>  cumulation of 9 ways in which his criteria might usefully be modified).
>
[LT]
>Oh, no -- not this again! ;-)

It's not going to go away.  There are responsible people
who disagree with Trask on what are linguistically justifiable criteria,
*even* for the goal Trask says he has set himself.
I believe that in stating the 9 (soon 17) specific modifications I have
proposed,
I am being *more conservative* in the sense of *more careful*
than Trask, careful not to jump to conclusions which have a
substantial probability of being incorrect.

>Lloyd, this is not true.  My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>particular phonological form.

Discussed above in the main portion of this message.

[LA]
>>  It is one respect in which the totality of Trask's criteria embody a
>> bias against certain vocabulary
>>  not justified by careful linguistic methodology.

[LT]
>And just what "careful linguistic methodology" would you put in place of
>my explicit criteria?
>
>Lloyd, I have asked you this question countless times now, and you have
>still refused to answer it.

Answered many times, in specifics.

***
[I interrupt here to insert a direct quotation from Larry Trask's message
of 9th December, 1999, in which Trask *admits* the comments were
specifics, though he had been contending they were only generalities,
not specifics.  Perhaps Larry has forgotten he agreed they were specifics.

Quote:

>OK.  Lloyd Anderson has raised a number of specific points concerning
>my criteria for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words.
>His posting is too long to address at one go, so I'll try to deal with it
>in a series of postings, one for each point raised.]
***

>You just keep muttering darkly

No, not muttering,
rather crafting careful responses, worded carefully.

>that there must be something wrong with my criteria,
>but you have *never* advanced any other
>explicit criteria.  Now have you?

Yes, I have.  In the message cited, and in many other messages.
Trask knows this.

>If you want to pursue this matter, will you *please* finally now spell
>out the criteria you think we should be using?
>Mine are on the table: where are yours?

Already did spell out specific modifications to Trask's criteria.
*Including* explicitly cases where
the best modification is to partly or wholly remove a criterion,
as wrong-headed at least when used as an absolute exclusionary
barrier rather than as part of a weighted set of criteria balanced
against each other.

Trask doesn't agree with them.
But that is quite another matter from claiming they
were not spelled out.

***

A tangent in Trask's message:

I am perfectly well aware that /tx/ is an affricate.
In the terminology I use, along with many other linguists,
affricates are considered or may be considered as a sub-class of stops.
I did so refer to them that way.
I do not care what Trask wishes to call affricates phonetically.
It has no bearing on any substantive differences of views at the moment.

Whether /txitxi/ (my error) or /txito/ (as Trask corrects the form),
there are two voiceless stops (in my terms)
and there are voiceless initial stops (in my terms),
and I believe Trask argues that (translated into those same terms)
voicless initial stops do not occur in native ancient Basque vocabulary.
(If we call some of them "affricates",
then we simply say that "stops or affricates" are excluded initially...?
Or did the statement of initial non-occurrence
apply only to voicless stops which are *not* affricated?).

(I think I stated in my first reference to the word for 'chick'
that I was not sure I had remembered the spelling right.
Trask states that it is /txito/ rather than /txitxi/.
Of course it is then no longer an example of apparent reduplication.
But that correction has no bearing on the main point I was making,
that a word of highly exceptional form, as Trask states,
was nevertheless quite plausibly a part of ancient Basque vocabulary
(a status he was inclined in this case not to deny,
even though it might stick out a mile).


From ECOLING at aol.com  Fri Mar  3 05:43:14 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 00:43:14 EST
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.004314.EST.>

The discussion of "criteria" when seeking candidate vocabulary
which descends from earlier stages of a language is clearly
relevant whenever we seek such vocabulary,
is is relevant to much more than Basque.
Most of the particular suggestions made also apply to more than just Basque.

This message contains additional material to support
a more sophisticated and nuanced set of techniques for selecting items
to include as potential monomorphemic Old Basque lexicon.
The core concept underlying all of these specific suggestions
for modifying Trask's criteria is that we are dealing with gradient
and fuzzy matters, matters of degree, ones not susceptible to
sharp yes-or-no decisions.  Though each criterion or perspective
by itself may give a clear result in special cases, it need not,
and the combination of criteria can give a complex of information
which we can weight different ways.  If we "tag" the items
with multiple scores in a computer database, we can then change
the weightings as seems appropriate to consider different hypotheses.

This message adds criteria 10-17 to the earlier message titled
"9 specifics on Including and excluding data"
sent on 30th October, 1999.

Larry Trask recently again challenged that he had not received
specific alternative suggestions for criteria for inclusion
of words when seeking ancient native monomorphemic lexical items
for Basque.  That statement is false on its face,
I simply refer to the message just mentioned from 30 October, 1999,
which should be in our archives, with the additions here.

And Trask's statement is also false on its face based on Trask's own
message of 9th December, 1999, in which he admitted that he had
received specific suggestions:

>OK.  Lloyd Anderson has raised a number of specific points concerning
>my criteria for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words.
>His posting is too long to address at one go, so I'll try to deal with it
>in a series of postings, one for each point raised.]

No need to go over the same ground again.

Let's start with a point of agreement:

>So, Lloyd, are you now agreeing to the following?

>   Expressive formations should be subject to no special treatment
>   at all, but must be treated just like all other words, according
>   to exactly the same criteria, whatever those are.

>Yes or no?

Of course I agree with this, and always did agree.
I have only protested against criteria which had biases against
expressives or other strata of vocabulary,
not advocated that we should have some a priori criteria
to include specifically expressives or any other words
even if they did not satisfy other *reasonable, legitimate, unbiased*
criteria.  I emphasize the latter part deliberately,
because criteria cannot stand as valid judges of other matters
unless the criteria themselves are first judged.

***

I'll continue here with principled, fully general criteria
which differ from Trask's:

***

10.  bias against longer words

Trask has stated the goals of his collection this way:

>native, ancient and monomorphemic lexical items.  That's all.
>I think I've been pretty explicit about this.

Yet in the same message where he stated this, he also
replied as follows:

[LA]
>> The exclusion of expressives,
>> *or systematically of any other group of words*
>> (such as the longer words, as noted above),
>> through any aspect of the sampling procedure,
>> would of course tend to invalidate such general validity.

[LT]
>No; not at all.  Polysyllabic words are excluded by definition: they are
>not relevant to my task.

I'll assume that was a typo, "polysyllabic" instead of "polymorphemic",
because otherwise polysyllabic words are *not* excluded by the definition
of goals just quoted.  They certainly are *not* excluded automatically
by any principles of reliable historical reconstruction!

***

11.  "polymorphemic" not intended synchronically

But it may not be a typo, it may rather reveal some interdependence of
criteria in Trask's thinking.
Assuredly, polysyllabic words are more likely to be polymorphemic,
and the skilled and knowledgeable analyst may be able to segment
many polysyllabic words into etymologizable parts.  Some of these
results must certainly reflect the psychological reality of the morphemes
for the speakers.
But if we take the concept seriously in a synchronic sense,
then we must recognize that also in ancient languages,
even proto-languages, there may be many words
which demonstrably once were morphemically composite,
which yet for the speakers of the proto-language were single morphemes.
Trask does not seem to recognize this problem.
Most or all languages we know of do contain historically polymorphemic
vocabulary items which are synchronically monomorphemic.
So we must be willing to reconstruct such words for any proto-language
also.  This is the error of over-analysis, over-segmentation.

Trask (in another message today) classes English "vixen" as
"Bimorphemic in English",
I do not understand a synchronic basis for his doing so.
It was polymorphemic at one time, but surely not in English now.
There is no other word in the American Heritage Dictionary beginning
with "vix-", and there is no English feminine ending "-en" sufficiently
salient
that I can think of a word with it right off hand, though that may be my
personal mental limitation of the moment.
(I could only think of "oxen", "oven", "coven", "maven", "raven",
"maiden".)
So "vixen" is not even as decomposible as the
famous "cranberry" where at least "-berry" is obvious.
This has been the pattern of Trask's remarks on a host of other items,
where he classes them as polymorphemic if he can *etymologize*
them as multiple morphemes, not if they are polymorphemic
in a sychronic analysis of the language itself.

That tends to exclude words illegitimately by my understanding
of the goals Trask has stated for himself.  As we use "polymorphemic"
more and more loosely, we make the restricted monomorphemic
set included by a set of criteria less and less representative of
the language as a whole.  Representativeness of the language as a whole
is of course not Trask's aim when he states his goal explicitly
including the criterion "monomorphemic".
But it is a relevant way to evaluate how he states his conclusions,
and it is my distinct impression that he very often states his goals
without that limitation, as if his results could then have a wider
validity, as if he had not restricted himself to monomorphemic words only.
Here is one, from Trask's message of 9th December, 1999,
quoted more fully elsewhere in this message today:

>for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words

Notice that this did *not* specify
"a plausible list of monomorphemic Pre-Basque words".
It might be inferred from context, and he has stated
the monomorphemic criterion elsewhere, but as I said,
I think he tends to drop that limitation, and therefore to
end of in effect claiming a wider validity of his eventual
conclusions than is warranted by the severe limitations
he imposes on his data.

***

12.  Reduplications are not polymorphemic unless the
unreduplicated form also occurs.
This is elementary.  The term "reduplication" is rather often
applied to words that are primary, merely because they have
the same consonant or even syllable as their first and second.
It is often applied to nursery words and expressive words.
But "dad", "mom", "mommy", "daddy", etc. are not polymorphemic,
by a careful use of the criteria for morpheme division.
Not even "mama", despite "ma" which seems synchronically
to be a shortening of "mama" not the reverse.
     Trask has not explicitly said, so far as I know, that
reduplications are polymorphemic, but I suspect he has tended
to think of them that way.  I'll be happy if this is not the case.

***

13.  Words in ancient Basque, vs. words descended from words
in ancient Basque?  Identity requirements popping up when only historical
descent is relevant

>Obviously expressive words hardly ever satisfy
>my criteria, from which the most appropriate conclusion appears to be
>that *these particular words* are not ancient.

[That is not the most appropriate conclusions
if the criteria are biased against expressives, even indirectly,
as i believe I have shown Trask's are]

>Of course, Pre-Basque
>doubtless possessed *some* expressive words, but there is no evidence to
>support a claim that these were identical to the modern ones.

Identity is not the requirement, surely.

Here again, a typo:  Presumably Trask means that they were not
the ancestors of the modern ones?  Because if identity is required,
we have yet another criterion introduced which was not implied by
his definition of goals, and which would further reduce the vocabulary
which he admits into his collections.  He *has* used this kind of
wording at other points, as in the discussion of whether a range
of forms which show partial resemblances to each other,
as for 'butterfly', warrant the assumption of some proto-form.
For 'butterfly', he argued there was too much variation,
that none of the forms was ancient.
That is not the relevant question, a relevant question is
rather whether any of the forms *descend from* antecedents,
which were part of Basque at an earlier stage.

This may seem like nit-picking, but I think it is not,
or I would not mention it.  I believe it is merely one of the
steps Trask takes which lead his sample to be rather unrepresentative,
not merely of ancient Basque, but even of ancient Basque
monomorphemic words, Trask's expressed goal.

Taking off from Trask's use of the word "modern" just above,
I do not accept any sharp temporal cutoff date
as a legitimate part of historical linguistic inquiries
in attempting to determine which words descend from
ancestors in their language, because of the demonstrable
occurrence of systematic biases in exclusion of some sorts
of items from written attestations, dependent on culture
and other factors...

On Basque words for 'badger', Trask today expressed
what I regard as a more inclusive attitude about historical descent
rather than identity of words,
though still excluding these words by their date of attestation.
After some considerable discussion of others' hypotheses, he says:

>Who knows?  Not sure what to do with this, but it looks too fishy to go
>straight into the list.  Anyway, not recorded before 1745, and therefore out,
>even though I agree at once that the numerous and peculiar regional variants
>point to a much older word.

The last clause is for me sufficient to justify study and inclusion
in any list of the best candidates.  Date of attestation by itself is a
very minor influence.  Even lack of regular sound correspondences
is very minor, given the knowledge that irregular historical descent
is not rare.

The same phrasing, applied to words for 'butterfly',
as I hope to show in future discussion of them,
after Trask has had his opportunity to comment on my first analysis,
would appropriately suggest that they "point to a much older word",
just as for words for 'badger'.  That discussion will of course
be based on the facts of the words for 'butterfly' and of the
patterns of sound changes and irregularities in Basque, etc..

***

14.  Use of patterns dominant in Basque to downgrade words
which do not fit the dominant patterns.

(This objection, pointing to an alternative to Trasks application
of his criteria, may have been part of the earlier list of nine,
though I do not at present recall that it was;
but because new concrete examples make it relevant,
I highlight it here.  It has at least new application now.)

One of Trask's objections to inclusion of words in his lists,
which influences him to regard them as loanwords or
inventions, is that no native Basque words have two voiceless
stops, or voiceless stops beginning the first syllable.
(I may not have stated that exactly right, but the general
point is clear.)

On Basque 'chick', which he points out is the only word
for a small animal (from a list) which is *not* formed with
the suffix -(k)ume 'offspring' and thus polymorphemic,
he writes:

>'chick' is the obviously imitative
>          <(t)xito> ~ <(t)xita> ~ <txitxa>.
>This last word will probably meet my
>criteria, but will stand out a mile.

Well, but if it is included, then at least that word
with two voicelss stops is presumptively part of ancient Basque
(if it meets other legitimate evaluations to a sufficient degree).
And if that one is included, then others with two voiceless stops
must not be downgraded on that basis, nor must it be argued
on that basis alone that they are non-native, borrowings or even
recent inventions.

But then one of the words for 'butterfly',
"pitxilota", is also a good candidate for inclusion.
Its four-syllable status does not by itself prove it to be
non-monomorphemic, though it may be.
Nor do the two voiceless stops prove it to be a loan.

***

15.  The use of mere suspicion to exclude items,
or of occurrence in neighboring languages,
even when absent from the closest relatives of the
neighboring languages which are not proximal to the
language of focus (Basque).

Trask writes, concerning "bill" (of bird) that the form
<moko>, variant <mosko> may possibly qualify on his other
criteria, but continues:

>But the widely held belief in a
>Romance origin will probably disqualify it.

A belief, no matter how widely held, should not be
considered relevant at all.  Evidence is relevant.
Perhaps Trask had some which he did not mention
because it did not seem germane or important at the moment.

But this may possibly go along with
Trask's exclusion of items which occur *only*
in Iberian Romance and in Basque.
For such a distribution of attestations, lacking any other evidence,
I think standard linguistic methodology dictates a conclusion
that the item was in early Basque and borrowed into Romance,
rather than the other way round;
or else perhaps in a "substrate", borrowed into both Ibero-Romance
and Basque, but with no reason to prefer this second explanation.
As has been pointed out by careful historical linguists,
supposed substrates should not be appealed to without direct
evidence of their existence, they are a wildcard.

***

16.  In addition to all the other restrictions, there is an implicit one
against verbs, because

>1. No ancient Basque verb is monomorphemic.
>A native verbal root is a bound morpheme,
>and hence no ancient verb will make my list.

While there is certainly nothing wrong with Trask seeking
the canonical forms of native ancient monomorphemic
lexical items, it would be appropriate to join any conclusions
drawn with the point that of course no verbs are included at all.
So the validity of any conclusion becomes yet again more
narrowly limited.
Trask has been explicit about this fact of Basque verbs
this is really a point about evaluating
whether the results of Trask's criteria can be representative
of an interesting portion of Basque.  Every restriction of
course reduces the range of any conclusions.  The exclusion
of verbs also does so, whether specified explicitly or not.

It is well known that verbs can have different canonical forms
from non-verbs, in some languages, so it is important to point
out very prominently this kind of exclusion of verbs,
if one is studying canonical forms.
I do not wish to claim more on this point than literally just that.

***

17.
This is in one sense not a new criterion,
but in another sense it is, and it is convenient to refer to it
with a new number.  It is an example of one noted long ago.
Range of distribution among dialects should be *relative to* the
number of dialects which can be included in the sample.
One reason a dialect cannot be included is that no word was
recorded for the concept in question.
Another reason, almost the same one in effect,
is that a loanword has replaced whatever the dialect would have
had otherwise.  The last point is what makes this item a new item.
Trask writes:

>For example, 'pine tree' is the Latino-Romance loan <pinu>
>almost everywhere, while the eastern dialect Roncalese has <ler>
>and its neighbor Zuberoan has <leher> in some varieties.
>It is highly possible that <leher> ~ <ler> represents an indigenous
>word displaced almost everywhere by the loan word,
>but I can't be sure of this, and the word does not qualify for
>inclusion.

Admittedly any item could be better if attested in more rather than
fewer dialects, but in this case, the form <leher> ~ <ler>
is attested in 100% of the dialects where there is no loanword <pinu>.
100% is a rather high number.  Very different from a case in which
a non-loanword is attested in place of <pinu>.

The problem of criteria for the "best",
but not really meaning the "best", recurs here.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sat Mar  4 03:52:40 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:52:40 -0500
Subject: Carl Winter Verlag
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.225240.0500.>

Marc Pierce wrote:

> Does anybody know if the Carl Winter Verlag has a web page?

There seems to be one under construction at
<http://www.winter-verlag-hd.de/>.  For now they are referring visitors
to <http://www.geist.de/>.

Brian M. Scott


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sat Mar  4 03:43:10 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:43:10 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.224310.0500.>

[ moderator snip ]

try Kipling's "The Truce of the Bear" (extracts)

                                    1898
 .....................

"Two long marches to northward, at the fall of the second night,
I came on mine enemy Adam-zad all panting from his flight.
There was a charge in the musket -- pricked and primed was the pan --
My  finger crooked on the trigger -- when he reared up like a man.

"Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer,
Making his supplication rose Adam-zad the Bear!
I looked at the swaying shoulders, at the paunch's swag and swing,
And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous, pleading thing.

"Touched witth pity and wonder, I did not fire then . . .
I have looked no more on women -- I have walked no more with men.
Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands that pray --
>From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!

"Sudden, silent, and savage, searing as flame the blow --
Faceless I fell before his feet, fifty summers ago.
I heard him grunt and chuckle -- I heard him pass to his den.
He left me blind to the darkened years and the little mercy of men.
.......

"Rouse him at noon in the bushes, follow and press him hard --
Not for his ragings and roarings flinch ye from Adam-zad.

"But (pay, and I put back the bandage) this is the time to fear,
When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near;
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of his little, swinish eyes;

"When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer
That is the time of peril -- the time of the Truce of the Bear!"

.....

Over and over the story, ending as he began: --
"There is no trnce with Adam-zad, the Bear that looks like a Man!"


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 16:43:44 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:43:44 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <e2.1e4a091.25f0c04f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.174344.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>

>-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
>"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.

I don't see how that word can be related.  G&I give walwa-,
walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian walwa-, but
that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not
aware of a development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes).

The Anatolian word is much more likely to be related (as wa-lwa-
< *lwa-l(e)wa- ?) to the general Eastern Mediterranean word for
"lion", Egyptian <rw> (< *lw), Kartvelian *lom-, Semitic *labu?at
("lioness").  As to Greek-Latin/Germanic-Slavic *lew-, G&I argue
with some justification against the Germanic > Slavic word being
< Latin, although I probably wouldn't go as far as establishing a
PIE *lew- "lion" (well maybe, if Toch. <lu> "wild animal" is
another reflex).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat Mar  4 16:54:45 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:54:45 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.175445.0100.>

There's a lot of interesting stuff in Steve's message, and I only want to
throw in a tiny remark:

>Two schools of thought here - one says the bear stood for dread.  The other
>says that the bear stood for a warm bear skin -

Well, the taboo coin has two sides: one is: tabooize any names for
things/animals/neighbours you fear, and, do so for those who want to get
hold of. *If* you specialize in bear hunting, and *if* you have the brains
to outsmart and the weapons to barbecue Old Misha, and *if* you have
reasons to believe that he might be in the know about that, then, well,
you'd *again* rather use a cover term for him, since, if the smaller furry
creatures of the forest whisper in his ears what they overheard when near
your village, viz. that you and your chums are contemplating to have a
really juicy piece of bear-paw for dinner, followed by some first-class
skinning (no, the other way round) he might chose to retreat into the
thicket, spoiling your feast.

One of the bases for lexical taboo is thus: to avoid that the creature in
question hears its "real" name mentioned and is able to draw any
conclusions from that. It works both ways, and both schools of thought can
be happy with it.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar  4 11:00:04 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 11:00:04 -0000
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.110004.0000.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 7:14 AM

[JS]

[ moderator snip ]

> Of course, the fact that there's no clear PIE root for "lion" is also
> indicative, since in Bronze Age and neolithic times lions were known all
> across Greece, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East, and into India.

[PR]
I am not convinced that there is no PIE root for 'lion'.

For a few thoughts on the subject, some readers may want to visit:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/apollo.htm

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Sat Mar  4 22:55:16 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:55:16 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.155516.0700.>

[Steve Long wrote]

> Not to rile anyone but just to express a minority opinion in the
> short time I'm allowed lately -

> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

...

> My little suggestion here is again that brown did not give its name to the
> bear, but that the bear's fur gave its name to brown.

Being an outsider to serious PIE work, where to the earliest attested
Indo-European languages and PIE fall on the Berlin and Kay color scale?
This is an important thing to know before discussing whether 'bear' >
'brown' or vice versa.  Ultimately, 'brown' should be traced to something
non-color (since it's a VERY late color term to develop), but did this
happen before, during, or after PIE?  If there isn't a full range of
white/light, black/dark, red, yellow, green, and blue, then we can't really
expect 'brown' and perhaps the PIE term reconstructed 'brown' might better
be reconstructed 'bear' with the understanding that the development of
'bear-colored' to 'brown' might be very early.  I'm just guessing, so would
one of the real Indo-Europeanists like to factualize the discussion?  (I'm
in a creative derivational mood today. :-)).

> I suspect that - as today - most folks back then had more contact with the
> by-products of wild animals than they did with the animals themselves -
> witness the large number of wild fauna remains at Troy until it
> appears the
> local wild fauna ran out.  And perhaps most folks back then would have had
> more contact with bears by way of bearskins than by way of mortal personal
> experiences with bears.

Your (longer) discussion on this matter assumes that PIE was more urbanized
than not.  I must disagree.  While there was a certain amount of agriculture
and pastoralism involved, the time dates and locations for PIE suggest a
culture much more closely tied to the environment than modern communities in
the Middle East.  Among hunting peoples around the world, there is virtually
no one in a community who has not seen a large local predator.  Stories from
the North American frontier are replete with encounters with bears by
virtually every adult in a tribe or community.  During the earliest layers
of PIE, this would undoubtedly be more true than not.  You also argue that
fear is not so great among those who are not in regular community-wide
contact with the source of that fear.  Witness, however, the continued human
revulsion to snakes, yet how many urban Americans have never even seen a
garter snake, let alone a Mohave Rattlesnake (the most aggressive and
poisonous of the bunch)?  However, I do agree that prolonged non-exposure
does lead to a reduction of the immediate caution and fear, but that this
reduction requires urbanization and not just agricultural communities.
While most modern urbanized Americans understand on an intellectual level
the danger posed by a female grizzly with cubs, they still picture her in
the light of Yogi, or Smokey, or Baloo.  Most of the grizzly maulings and
bison gorings that occur each year out here in the Yellowstone and Glacier
country are performed on city people.  Rural people know better.  They
aren't hunter/gatherers, but being a part of an agricultural community close
to wild country is enough contact to maintain healthy fear and respect,
whether one has ever actually seen the creature or not.  One of my
colleagues here in the English department specializes in the literature of
monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.).  His conclusion is this very thing,
that fearsome wild creatures and monsters tend to become more 'tame' the
more urban the environment, but that there is a distinct difference in the
level of the "Barnification of Tyrannosaurus Rex" and the "Count
Choculization of Dracula" in urban areas versus rural areas.  (For the
non-Americans here, "Barney" is a friendly purple T. rex with straight white
herbivore teeth that hosts a preschooler afternoon show on television and
"Count Chocula" is the name of a chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal made by
General Mills [it's the chocolate version of the fruit-flavored
"Frankenberry"].)

To reiterate my earlier questions, where do the earliest IE languages stand
on the Berlin and Kay scale?  Where does PIE stand?

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Sun Mar  5 01:11:53 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 20:11:53 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.201153.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
perhaps?

>Although bears are big and dangerous, you are talking here about people whose
>ancestors seemed to make a living out of hunting some big, angry things.

-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

>Our own modern experience has been been that we've eaten or worn more fox,
>sable, buffalo, mink, beaver, alligator, shrimp, salmon, tuna and crayfish
>than we'd ever see alive.

-- our own modern experience is of being urbanites and non-farmers, which
makes us utterly un-typical of human beings before this century.

Until historically recent times, the overwhelming majority of human beings
spent their time finding their own food, and making most of their everyday
clothing, housing and tools.


From sarima at friesen.net  Sun Mar  5 01:56:48 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:56:48 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.175648.0800.>

At 02:16 AM 3/3/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
>bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
>artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
>north star.

Umm, there is a problem with that: Polaris was NOT the pole star in Homer's
day!  In fact it wasn't even the pole start in Roman times!

Now, it is true that the constellations called the Big and Little Bear have
always been northerly, but they have not always incorporated the celestial
north pole.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Mon Mar  6 07:43:09 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 09:43:09 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.094309.0200.>

[Steve Long:]
(snip)
> And that may be why bears are mostly called otherwise.  Bearskins.  And the
> word for bearskin may have become one word for brown.
(snip)

There's a similar semantic shift in e.g. Finnish puna 'red color' <
< *'fur' (its cognates mean 'hair', 'fur', 'wool').

 - Ante Aikio


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Mon Mar  6 10:30:21 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 12:30:21 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b4e5c6db9c6e@[212.30.94.240]>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.123021.0200.>

[I wrote:]
>E.g. Finnish has karhu 'bear' < karhea 'coarse' (referring to fur)

[Xavier Delamarre:]

> As for Finnish _karhu_, I have proposed (_Historische Sprachforschung_ 105,
> 1992, pp 151-54) that it could be a loan from a Proto-Aryan form
> _*harkSas_, itself from IE _*h2rtk'os_, with hardening of the laryngeal
> (very much like _kana_ 'chicken' from Germanic _*xana_, or _teke_ 'to do'
> from IE _*dheH1-_) and  regular outcome of Uralic and Aryan -kS- into _h_,
> in Baltic Finnish (O.Ind. _makSa:_ 'fly' = Mordvin _mekS_ = Finn.
> _mehi(lainen)_ 'bee'). Mentioned by Szemer?nyi in his _Introduction to IE
> Ling._, 53.

I was not aware of this etymology. It sounds phonologically quite
well possible; the only thing one could object to is Aryan *-as > Finnic
*-u (why not Finnish karhas : karhaa- ?). But this is not a big problem, I
guess - e.g., back-formation of non-attested karhas seems possible.

PU *kS > Finnish h is regular, but I don't think it's necessary to
assume *kS here. Aryan *rkS > Pre-Finnish *rS > Finnish rh is equally
possible, since three-conconant clusters are a relatively late development
in Uralic.

> The etymology of _karhu_ by _karhea_ 'coarse' (J. M?giste, _Estn. Etym.
> W?rtb._, followed by Itkonen & Alii, _Suomen Sanojen Alkuper?_) is
> probably a 'popular etymology'.

I'd still see it as a possibility. But the loan etymology sounds quite
well argumented.

> The existence in Finnish (and Uralic) of very archaic loans from various IE
> strata (late IE, Aryan, Baltic, Germanic etc), which are, so to say,
> 'fossilised' in the language, is in my view the strongest argument for a
> Eurasian Urheimat.

I consider them an argument against e.g. the Anatolian Urheimat of
IE. "Eurasian" is a wide concept - what do you mean, more precisely?

> I am presently dealing with Old Celtic lexicography where, as is well
> known, the word for 'bull' is _taruos_ (Gaulish _taruos_, O.Ir. _tarb_
> etc.) a metathesised form of IE _*tauros_, maybe on the analogy of _caruos_
> 'deer'. The funny thing is that we have a Finnish word _tarvas_ designating
> big cervidae, which shows the same metathesis as Celtic (whereas there is
> none in Aryan, Baltic & Germanic). But it may be pure coincidence or we
> have to postulate that the loan was made somewhere in present Russia,
> before (Proto-)Celts entered Central Europe.

The Finnish metathesis is independent of the Celtic one. Actually,
Pre-Finnish *wr > Finnic / Finnish rv seems to be a regular sound law -
there are no counterexamples, and several Baltic loan words have undergone
the same sound shift (e.g. Finnish torvi 'horn (instrument)', Finnish
karva 'hair (not on head)', cf. Lithuanian taure~, gau~ras). Finnish
tarvas is thus < *tawras < Baltic.

Regards,

Ante Aikio


From rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu  Sat Mar  4 05:54:47 2000
From: rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu (rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 00:54:47 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.005447.0500.>

John Frauzel wrote:
>At 09:17 AM 3/1/00 -0600, Carol Justus wrote:
>>The earliest attested IE prayers don't usually ask for forgiveness
>>but are more like Menelaos's prayer to Zeus for guiding his spear so
>>that he will kill Paris or Chryses' to Apollo to make Agamemnon's
>>army pay for Agamemnon's insults. Has anyone found when the concept
>>of sin, hence forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

>It's certainly common in Indic tradition. The "house of clay" hymn,
>RV 7:89, ends "If we humans have committed some offence against the
>race of the gods, O Varun.a, or through carelessness have violated
>your laws, do not injure us, O god, for that sin." (O'Flaherty's
>translation).

These lines from George Hart's "The Nature of Tamil Devotion" (in
"Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, eds. Deshpande and Hook, 1979) may be
of some relevance:

'So prominent is this consciousness of sin among the Tamil bhakti
poets... On the other hand, the awareness of sin is notable for its
almost complete absence in premedieval North India.  Wendy O'Flaherty
writes, "There are some striking exception examples of a true sense of
sin and repentance in [classical] Hinduism: some Rig-Vedic hymns to
Varuna, some poems of Tamil Saivism, and a [Sanskrit] verse still
recited by many sophisticated Hindus today: "Evil am I, evil are my
deeds".  But these are outweighed a thousandfold by instances of sin
regarded as the fault of God or nature.  Evil is not primarily what we
do; it is what we do not wish to have done to us.'

The rest of the article is an extremely interesting study of the
mapping of "high" (Sanskritic) devotion onto the indigenous Tamil
varieties.

Might we postulate 1) that while sin may occur more frequently the
Indian (Indo-Iranian?) tradition than in the Greek, it is still
exceptional when it does; and 2) as a concept there, it may have
leached in from Dravidian traditions where it is not only common but
basic?

An Iranian perspective would probably be valuable here.  It would be
interesting if the Gathas parallelled the Rig Veda but without the
concept of sin -- sort of like the parallels between the languages
that stop short at retroflex consonants.

Disclaimer: I am not a student of any of this.

Regards,
Rohan.


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Sat Mar  4 14:00:03 2000
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 14:00:03 +0000
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
In-Reply-To: <c3.277d234.25f0b4d9@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.140003.0000.>

At 1:25 EST yesterday morning, Joat Simeon <JoatSimeon at aol.com> wrote:
>>sonno3 at hotmail.com writes:
>>The largest percentage of Brittonic elements are in Western England,
>>including Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire as well as Shropshire,
>>Worcestershire, North East Herefordshire, Western Gloucestershire and, of
>>course, Devon and Cornwall.

>-- true, the process of Germanization seems to have been both slower and
>less complete in these western areas (Cornish surviving into the 17th
>century, and the provisions for "Welsh" persons in the early Wessex law
>codes).

>Even there, however, there are placename features which show
>incomprehension -- besides the "river river" ones, there are the "hill
>hills".

[and at 19:39 PST on Thu, 02 Mar 2000 Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net>
wrote:
>And then there is the place called (after translation) "Hillhill Hill".

Whoa, again, and back to methodology and the quality of the argument.

One of the hill-hill-hill examples is close to the bald hill (not hill
bald) example.

I suppose that the bald hill (ie British) rather than hill bald (ie Welsh)
name might be prayed in aid as proof of limited or non understanding, but
bear in mind that Glasgow (with a body of speakers of the language which
gave the city its name resident there throughout, though changing from all
the residents to a minority of incomers over the period) has the same
manner of formation and has retained it for 1,500 odd years, and that there
is a community in Powys not far from Offa's Dyke which is called Glascwm,
though you may elsewhere find Brynglas, iirc.

We should not suppose that place names remain transparent, or more
precisely are heard transparently.

One 'hill-hill' is in or adjoins what was until the 19th century a
Welsh-speaking area (it's on the English side of the border, but Welsh was
spoken on both sides not far away (Oswestry/Croes Oswallt), not sure about
the area east of Trallwng.Welshpool).  The second 'hill' in the Bredon
group of names (of which four or five come to mind straightaway without
looking them up, Somerset 'Brendon', Worcs 'Bredon' and 'Breedon', Salop
'Breidden', Leics 'Breedon') could be British or Germanic (dinas in Mod
Welsh is 'city';
Clifton Downs in Bristol, North and South Downs in Surrey/Sussex/Kent &c
are presumable OE)

I've already disposed of the 'river river' claim.  And people are happy to
speak about 'Lake Windermere', 'Lake Derwentwater' and so forth (thought
the OS map mames have no 'Lake', and it's common to comment that there is
only one lake in the Lake District - Bassenthwaite Lake, but that's by the
by).

>You often get these types of names in situations of limited bilingualism.

That is certainly true, but that is not a transitive proposition, and no
evidence that the names in western England (or indeed on the extreme SE
corner of GB at *Dubra:s > Dover

>One can imagine a Saxon grunting out something and pointing, at which the
>bewildered Briton says "That's >the _river_," or "That's the _hill_".

We can each imagine what we like, but there's no evidence it's what
happened here, and there are place names which are transparently Welsh in
modern Welsh, as well as the calques where the English names may have
replaced a Welsh one with the same or a similar meaning (eg *yr Helynau ->
Wich) and hybrids where there are elements of both Celtic and Germanic and
they are not repetitious.

And why on earth should a Briton tell a Saxon pointing at a nearby hill,
'That's a hill'?

As Tony Andrewes (I think - it may have been the AH don at Trinity and not
the professor at New College) said of the C8-ish BCE bucket from Laconia
with the inscription 'Alpheiou eimi' (or whatever the Arcadian/Doric/Elian
form of the words should be, claimed to have the name of a river on it, 'it
doesn't hold water'.

><snip>

Gordon Selway
< gordonselway at gn.apc.org>


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Sat Mar  4 16:03:19 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 10:03:19 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.100319.0600.>

>It's certainly common in Indic tradition. The "house of clay" hymn, RV
>7:89, ends "If we humans have committed some offence against the race of
>the gods, O Varun.a, or through carelessness have violated your laws, do
>not injure us, O god, for that sin." (O'Flaherty's translation). Sin might
>be an unfortunate translation for 'enas', although Grassmann does give as
>meanings Frevel, Suende, Bedraengnis, Unglueck (originally Gewalttat). But
>the concept is not that far removed. And there are dozens of RV hymns with
>formulaic verses, to various gods, "If we have offended you in a or b or c,
>please don't x or y or z."

>This does seem to be much more common in the Indo-Iranian tradition that in
>the Greek. In fact I can't think of anything comparable in Greek.

>John Frauzel  Phone 520 579-3235
>                Fax 520 579-9780

Thank you for pointing me in the direction of these passages. In Hittite
too there is a lot of emphasis on not performing the ritual correctly, and
with Mursili's plague prayers a recognition that the gods are punishing
them for errors, but part of the prayer theme is that Mursili doesn't know
why the punishment continues. Hittite wastai- 'make a mistake' (often
translated as 'sin') not quite the same thing as sin, which would seem to
be related more closely to personal (knowing) responsibility and resultant
guilt. With Zarathustra and the dichotomy between good and evil, there
seems to be a basis for what we have come to know as 'sin' associated with
guilt, although as late as the Biblical Job and its Babylonian parallel
(Ludlul bel nemeki 'Let me praise the lord of wisdom' ca. 700 BC ?), there
is a sort of rejection of a necessary connection between deeds and
punishments.

As has been pointed out in the discussions of dating and contact, there
were historical periods of contact between the Hittites and the
Indo-Iranian Mitanni perhaps as early as 1500 BC, certainly by 1400 BC.
Zarathustra's Iranian then represented a religious reform which had an
impact on their Near Eastern neighbors as well. If the Vedic notion of
violation of divinely prescribed ritual was more like the Hittite and less
like later guilt associations, we should find datable IE vocabulary to
distinguish these, datable vocabulary that might help with the distinctions
that Neu, Meid, Polome, and others have drawn between old peripheral
retentions (between e.g., Germanic and Anatolian) and newer shared
isoglosses like those among Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Italic, and Celtic.
What about words for 'sin', 'guilt', and 'violation', for example?

Thanks again for the Vedic passage,

Carol Justus


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar  3 11:08:20 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 06:08:20 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.060820.0500.>

> Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence
> forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

Rgveda, book 7 has some prayers for forgiveness addressed to Varuna.
These are considred to be later hymns but not the latest hymns of the
RV. I am not sure of the Avesta. So, unless we have Hittite prayers,
RV/Avesta would be the oldest.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar  5 13:11:38 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 14:11:38 +0100
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
In-Reply-To: <v01540b04b4e2e2d49b6b@[128.83.254.24]>
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.141138.0100.>

cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>Is there some compelling reason for rejecting Edgar Polome's (JIES 22
>[1994] 289-305] with references) linguistic arguments (based on earlier
>studies as well) for an initial closer link between Germanic and Baltic,
>but Slavic and Iranian, then a movement of Slavic closer to Baltic with
>Germanic moving closer to Italic, then when Italic tribes moved south into
>Italy, closer contact between Celtic and Germanic? This would not imply an
>original unity but successive post-PIE areal contacts at different stages
>of cultural development.

One of course cannot reject what one hasn't seen.

I could be wrong, but my own impression is that the
Slavic-Iranian contacts are relatively recent (much like the
Germanic-Celtic ones).  Indeed the Scythians appear late in the
western steppe region.  It largely depends on whether Cimmerian
was an Iranian language or not (if Hamp's identification of a
"Cimmerian" substrate in Slavic is correct, it definitely wasn't
[*bh > p, *p > b]).

[Aha, Hamp (sometimes) uses H-sub_a to denote H2 (or is it @2?)]

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Mon Mar  6 07:19:00 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 12:49:00 +0530
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.124900.0530.>

There must be some

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, 03 March, 2000 12:09 PM

Joat Simeon wrote on 3 March 2000:

>> mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>> Based on the differentiation of the IE languages as attested ca. 1500 BC
>> (Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek and Hittite), any date within the range
>> 5500-3500 is absolutely reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl. >>

> -- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar; with a knowledge
> of one language and of the sound-shifts, you can trace the general meaning of
> a text in the other language.  There are even common elements in things like
> poetic kennings.  They're more similar than modern standard German and
> English, comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
> the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those are unusually
> conservative.

> Looking at those two examples, one would assume something in the 500-1500
> year range for last-common-ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek.

> Granted, Hittite is more differentiated.  However, the example of the _other_
> early IE languages, when we get some records -- early Latin, for instance, or
> the reconstructed forms of Proto-Germanic or Proto-Celtic or Proto-Tocharian
> -- show that this is an exceptional case.

> As of their earliest attestation, all the other IE languages with the
> _exception_ of the Anatolian group show divergences not much earlier than the
> Greek-Indo-Iranian.

> So if the ancestors of Sanskrit and Greek parted company sometime between
> 2000 BCE and 3000 BCE, which seems reasonable, then the ancestor of, say,
> Latin and the others must have done so only a little earlier.

I do not see how what you wrote here is tenable. Mycenean Greek, as far as I
know, is only known from Linear B texts, which can only be read (tentatively
in many cases) because of likely cognates in later versions of Greek, which
is so well known. The writing system of Linear B is so difficult that
normally we cannot distinguish among the three series of stops, final -s (of
rather great importance in Greek) is not shown, etc. etc. Under these
circumstances, I don't understand how it can be stated that Mycenean Greek
and Vedic Sanskrit are "extremely similar". How can we possibly know? In any
case, most of the extant Linear B texts are inventories and palace accounts,
hardly comparable to Vedic texts.

I know that there are many structural similarities between Homer's Greek and
Vedic Sanskrit, but even there I doubt that it is possible to read
continuous text in one, if you only know the other.

Any Classical scholars or Sanskrit experts out there who could comment?

Sincerely,

Gabor Sandi


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 14:56:40 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:56:40 +0100
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <9b.22c9611.25f0bc9c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.155640.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>>Anyway, for what it's worth, 500 years for me is Dutch and Afrikaans

>-- 500 is much too long for that example.

That's OK.  Subjective valorations of differences between
languages/dialects can't be made with a granularity smaller than
500 years or so (even that may be too fine).

>>I think (Vedic) Sanskrit and (Mycenaean) Greek are further apart
>>than that.  I'd say Vedic Skt. and Gathic Avestan comes close to
>>about 500 years.

>-- much closer.  Vedic and Avestan are dialects of the same language for all
>practical purposes; similar to the differences between, say, Yorkshire
>dialect and Texan, or Standard English and Cockney.

I don't know enough Gathic Avestan (or Yorkshire dialect) to
decide (and my Vedic Sanskrit and Texan aren't that much better
either).  Indo-Aryan and Iranian must have lost most contact at
least 500 years before the earliest texts on historical grounds
(not that there's much consensus on the historical trajectories
or even the dating of the earliest texts).  A subjective
assessment of the differences and commonalities between Vedic and
Gathic can't pin it down to anything more exact than "about 500
years" either (which means that it could just as easily be 200
years as it could be 800 years).  Within Proto-Indo-Iranian, the
dialects ancestral to Indo-Aryan may have been diverging from
those ancestral to Iranian for as long as there was a
Proto-Indo-Iranian (which would add another millennium or so to
give 1500 years of divergence), while in other respects
Indo-Aryan and Iranian may have been sharing isoglosses even
after the Indo-Aryans crossed over into the Indian subcontinent
(some amount of contact may have been retained).

Northumbrian was already a distinct dialect in OE times, so here
too in some respects the divergence is almost 1500 years old,
while in others it hasn't started yet.  Dating "dialects" (in the
sense of speech communities speaking languages having a common
origin and which have remained in contact throughout) is almost
impossible.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Mar  6 11:04:41 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 06:04:41 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.060441.EST.>

In a message dated 3/2/2000 4:29:38 AM, Rich Alderson quoted me:
> Is this differentiation is quantifiable?  Are you sure it works in your
> favor?....
> Following Renfrew, roughly 4000 years separates non-Anatolian PIE from
> Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin (500BC).  How
> 'differentiated' are those three languages?  On a scale of 1 to 10?

And then wrote:
>>Now, to me, and apparently to Mr. Stirling, this is a challenge to state how
>>easily these three languages are recognized as being related to one another.
>>Nothing in the query stands out as asking for "the time of separation" of
>>these languages,...

Well, even my quote given above includes a pretty good indication of what
kind of difference I was talking about <<roughly 4000 years separates
non-Anatolian PIE from Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin
(500BC)>>.

And of course Mr Stirling has continuously used selective examples of IEness
to somehow give dates of separation.  None of these examples have proved
anything about absolute dating and much less any absolute statements about
IE's final unity - which is after all the subject of this thread.

It's blindingly obvious that 'agnis/ignis' does not represent the typical
difference between Latin and Sanskrit.  And when you compare this "look how
similar" approach to what geologists, biologists and yes archaeologists
consider credible time measurement, it does not come off as particularly
viable.

Going back in the archives, one will see that my point has always been about
how clear the evidence was against Renfrew's dates.  I cannot take any of Mr.
Stirling's arguments about archaeological dating seriously.  They are just
oftern as not outright incorrect.  Go back to the beginning of this thread,
and you'll see that the first arguments against Renfrew were all based on
paleolinguistic dating of archaeological subjects.  Every single one of those
arguments is either weak or simply now wrong.  Everytime I dig into one I
find there's nothing there.  (With the possible exception of an argument that
a list member sent to me privately that may date the wheel in fact to some
stage of PIE.)

The other argument against Renfrew's dates is the supposed correlation
between differences in unreconstructed languages and the time those
differences represent.

I respect Rich Alderson's impressions of "time/differentiation" measures
(Hittite to Mycenaean/Sanskrit = 500years) as I do Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
([The difference between] "Hittite and either M.Greek or V.Sanskrit for me is
definitely 2000 years or more.").  But I really don't have to choose.

You see, my guess has always been that there is NOTHING in comparative
linguistics that in some scientific way clearly DISPROVES Renfrew's dates.
And although professional impressions have weight, they cannot be dispositive
on scientific issues.  Nothing so far has scientifically disproven Renfrew's
dates.

And despite what has been written on this last any number of times - advising
me to read textbooks and such - I haven't found a single instance of anything
resembling an objective, reproducible method of measuring time/difference in
languages.  If it is an art, that is fine.  But then the objection to
Renfrew's dates are artistic, not scientific.  (I have found exceptions to
what I've just written in the textbooks, but they all deal with
glottochronology - e.g., Robert Lee's formula for calculating 'time depth'
given by Lehmann (1992, p.176) at least attempts to quantify elements and
just as importantly offers reproducibility and a measure of possible error -
requirements these days in real science.)

In this context, the persistent use of examples of cognates to prove some
kind of time relationship is very troubling.  It's basic problem is
demonstrated - just as an example - in the post below:

In a message dated 2/25/2000 7:04:34 PM, rao.3 at osu.edu quoted:
>"Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
>> I know how similar cognate words are in Hittite and Sanskrit.
>>  After one abstracts out the differences in writing systems, they
>> are very little different at all.  Indeed, if the phonetic differences
>> were all there were, they would be more like dialect variants of
>> one language.... - much like the fact that in my dialect of English, "worm"
>> is pronounced almost identically to the reconstructed
>> PIE root it derives from [*wrm] - sans endings).

Here the author is saying that stripped of writing systems and if "the
phonetic differences were all there," THE COGNATES in Sanskit and Hittite
would sound not different than in two "dialect variants."  Of course in other
messages, the same author has also pointed out there is a 'dearth of
cognates' in Hittite, raising the question of how much of Hittite he is
comparing to Sanskrit.  Do the amount of cognates count against time?  What
about the non-cognates, do they count in easuring time?

But more importantly what do these cognates say about time differentation?
In the very same post, he tells us how much these cognates can change -

<<...much like the fact that in my dialect of English, "worm" is pronounced
almost identically to the reconstructed PIE root it derives from [*wrm]>>

5000-7000 years and the 'cognate' sounds the same?  What does that tell us
about the use of cognates to indicate time and change correlations?  How long
does it take agnis/ignis to stop sounding a lot like "ignite" in modern
English or "ognik" in modern Slavic?  This is like clocking something with a
watch that isn't running.

When I brought up the fact that its the differences that should be measured
and that agnis/ignis does not occur in Mycenaean or Hittite and that thay is
the key difference, I got the following reply:

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:48:36 -0800, Rich Alderson wrote:
<<The answer to the question *as posed* is "Within the bounds of phonological
change in the individual languages, yes, Mycenaean and Hittite decline their
words for 'fire' similarly to Latin and Sanskrit. That is one of the defining
characteristics of the IE family, after all."

But that's not what you meant to ask, is it?>>

I'll take that as a measure of time/difference, if by thae above it was meant
that the 'phonological change in the individual languages' was going to be
equated to a reproducible, objective meausre of time and change in languages.
 Yes, that is what I meant to ask.

And the next question I'd have is how long does it take to come up with an
-xi conjugation - which I understand to be a real difference between Hittite
and the languages it is being compared to.

In the same post, I was quoted:
>> Well, it seems that Anatolian is in the picture when the evidence helps, but
>> x.not when it doesn't.

The defense offered was:

>But that's the way of *all* evidence in *every* discipline:  If there's
>nothing to be said by a particular witness, you don't bother to call her to
>the stand.

Unfortunately, that is not true when the witness has contrary evidence to
offer.  In many disciplines, failing to call her might then be considered
falsifying.  In 1978, I saw two economists censured and fined in federal
court for failing to mention contradicting evidence in their affidavits
before an appeals court.

There is much contradictory evidence here.  And as I said above, the position
I've taken doesn't require me to take sides.  I'm only contradicting the
statement that Renfrew's dates are 'impossible' given the linguistic
evidence.  At this point I can say that certainly is not true, by any
scientific standard.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Mar  4 07:23:34 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 02:23:34 EST
Subject: Assumptions in Computing phylogenies
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.022334.EST.>

>>Actually, properly done, cladistic analysis *determines* which
>>characters are innovations and which are retentions.

In a message dated 3/1/2000 7:27:04 PM, Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de replied:
>.. In my humble understanding it is vice versa.
>The biologist or linguist decides which features are retentions vs.
>innovations, and the cladistic algorithm computes the 'optimal' tree. See
>my parallel mail for a textbook on the topic.
>But perhaps it is a misunderstanding.

Well, as far as biology is concerned, cladistics is about finding out what
attributes count and which don't.

If you've noticed that some of our friends here on the list in discussing
time, have put a lot of emphasis on cognates and other genetic features.
This I think reflects one logical approach to the problem.  Proceeding on the
idea that if a mass of the most genetically related portions of two language
are very close, then the languages themselves must be close in time.

Cladistics sort of switches this kind of thinking around.  Traditional
classifications in biology were in fact based on "similarities" between
species and the closer the similarities were, the closer the expected
relationship.  Cladistics on the other hand disregards large blocks of
similarities on a rather wholesale basis.

The example that should alert one to the turnaround in thinking that
cladistics represents is given in Henry Gee's In Search of Deep Time - and in
the review of the book by Kevin Padian in the Feb '00 Scientific American
that Lloyd mentioned on the list awhile ago.

And that's the example of the Salmon, the Lungfish and the Cow.

The lungfish and the salmon (like Sanskrit and Latin) have many, many things
in common.  From specifics of average shape to scales and boniness (as
opposed to the shark's cartilage)  and both of course live in water and are
traditionally grouped as fishes.  And we can with some certainty identify the
common ancestor of the salmon and the lungfish - the paleocinids - and
identify a large number of retentions and shared innovations between salmon
and lungfish.

On the basis of those similarities and innovations, the traditional
classification of the salmon and the lungfish had them relatively closely
related on the vertebrate family tree.

The surprise is that cladistics groups the lungfish not with the salmon but
with the cow.  (Lest this appear obvious in any way, the specific innovations
indicated that the salmon lacks and the lungfish and cow share are "nasal
passages that open in the throat and jointed bones in the fins/limbs".)

Cladistic trees are actually a chain of innovations.  And this is in fact the
cladistic definition of "ancestry".  There is no equivalent of reconstructing
a hypothetical parent on the basis of phonetic equivalencies in cladistics.
In fact, there is generally speaking no reconstructing of parents in orthdox
cladistics at all.  How the dinosaur became a bird for example is NOT
reconstructed and nothing in between the dinosaur and the bird is
reconstructed.  Particular innovations are the only trail and backward
reconstruction to identify forward relationships is not part of the scheme.
(Though Padian in his review gives some reasonable space for dissenting a
small degree from what he calls this 'hard-nosed' position about any
reconstruction.)

The problem with applying cladistics to historical linguistics as reflected
in IE scholarship (the one that the UPenn tree ran into) is that the methods
are so thoroughly contrasted in the nature of their data.

One can see this in a fundamental definition of cladistics which defines "the
unrooted tree" as one "for which the ancestor (= root) has not been
hypothesized...."
(A good glossary of cladistic terms by Micheal Crisp at ANU is available on
the web at http://www.science.uts.edu.au/sasb/glossary.html.)

If you look for commercial software that construct cladistic phylogenies on
the web, you will see that they all are designed to construct "unrooted
trees" but not necessarily rooted trees.  And the reason for that is that
cladistic analysis starts with unrooted trees.  The whole idea is to strip
the data of any assumptions regarding ancestry.  The exact opposite of using
PIE cognates as data, which would root the tree before any analysis is done.

One can see how this could create a problem in using traditional IE data in
cladistic analysis.

Reflexes based on PIE reconstructions and reconstructed PIE morphologies of
course are based on a hypothesized parent.  They cannot be used to build a
unrooted tree any more than DNA sequences reconstructed from a hypothetical
parent can (a celebrated error in early cladistics.)

And without an unrooted tree, you lose the core of cladistic analysis - since
the rooting process is all about finding the best fitting actual ancestors
and thereby the direction of evolutionary change among the branches.

Thinking about it again, it would seem that morphology - so long as it is not
based on reconstructed *PIE morphology - might be appropriate data for a
cladistic analysis.  But the taxonomy would need to be thorough.  And the
results might be surprising.

Remember the significant amount of biological "morphology" (the body parts
and how they are put together) that the lungfish and the salmon share in
common and how little either look at all like the morphology of the cow.  But
it is a very few, very particular and not very obvious pieces of morphology
that groups the lungfish and the cow together.  It's not the weight of
evidence of ancestry in cladistics, it can be very one small piece of
evidence.  And that could produce the same very unexpected results - like
perhaps grouping French with Armenian or Slavic with Basque.  But, after all,
surprises keep life interesting.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Steve Long


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Mon Mar  6 11:45:45 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 13:45:45 +0200
Subject: PU *nimi / PIE *HneH3men- (was: Re: IE "Urheimat" and
 evidence from Uralic linguistics)
In-Reply-To: <01BF84E6.510B41E0.fabcav@adr.dk>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.134545.0200.>

[I wrote]
>There is no reason to concider *-i (= your *-e) in PU *nimi 'name' a stem
>formant. *-i is no known a PU morpheme

[Fabrice Cavoto]
> It certainly is, see below.

No, it isn't - see below.

[I wrote]
>, and *nim- couldn't even
>theoretically be a PU morpheme, since all roots (except pronouns and the
>two auxilaries) had to be of shape *(C)V(C)CV-.

[Fabrice Cavoto]
> See f.ex. Decsy 1990, p. 26-35, as well as, more
> recently, Abondolo (ed) 1998, p. 6-7. The structure of Uralic *roots* is V,
> CV, CVC or CVCV. The fact that PUral. *words* ended in a vowel doesn't
> imply that the vowel was originally part of the root. Some call it
> "thematic vowel", other "stem vowel", and it is mostly seen as an element,
> or part of an element, forming stems.

Abondolo 1998: 6-7 doesn't discuss PU root structure. As for D?csy, his
view that all PU words ended in a vowel is untenable (as are many of his
other views concerning PU phonology). There is a very clear distinction
between the reflexes of PU suffixes of the shape *-C, *-Ca/-C? and
*-Ci. Cf. e.g. PU genitive *nimi-n, accusative *nimi-m, nominative plural
*nimi-t, but locative *nimi-n?, nominative with sing.1.p. px *nimi-mi and
separative *nimi-t?.

Also, pronouns could end in a consonant: e.g. PU *mun 'I', *tun 'thou'.
Because *-i and *-a/*-? were also present in the morphologically unmarked
nominative of nouns in PU (e.g. *nimi 'name'), there is no justification
for a segmentation like *nim-i. I can't see why a PU noun "root" should be
anything else than the nominative singular.

> Whether it is for prosodic or
> morphologic reasons is not entirely clear, but the fact that the vowel is
> not always the same (since there are a-stems, e/i-stems), and that it
> happens that the same root is attested with both, also points to the fact
> that that element, what ever we call it, is added on the root.

The fact that the vowel is not always the same, i.e. that there are
stems in *-i and stems in *-a/-?, points to the opposite: the vowel was a
part of the root, since it is an arbitrary element - there's no way to
predict which stems have a high vowel and which a low one.

Could you specify what you mean by "the same root is attested with [*-i and
*-?/-a]"? I can only think of the morphologically unclear pair PU *luki-
'count', *luka 'ten', which has no parallels. I did check the 700+ cognate
lexemes between Saamic and Finnic and found only two cases with irregular
correspondence of stem vowel: Finnish raina 'badly worn item' (< *rajna) =
Saami ruoidna- 'to become skinny' (< *rajni-) and Finnish sys?t? 'to shove'
(< *s?sk?-) = Saami saskat 'to copulate (of reindeer bull)' (<
*s?ski-), both of which are obviously affective.

Regards,

Ante Aikio


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 12:37:38 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 13:37:38 +0100
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0003031524280.5024-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.133738.0100.>

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>> [...]
>> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
>> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
>> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
>> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
>> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
>> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

>> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
>> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
>> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

>Thanks! we are still a minority I believe, but a viable alternative does
>not seem to have been proposed.

I apologize for the typo, I meant "one haS to agree".

>> The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
>> an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut, with developments /a/ >
>> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
>> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
>> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
>> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
>> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
>> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
>> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
>> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
>> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.
>> The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
>> (i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
>> predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
>> Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

>I don't get the part on Brugmann's Law.

In my scheme, after **a had become [E] and **a: had become [O:]
(and something else had happened to **i and **i:, *u and *u:),
vowel length momentarily ceased to be phonemic in PIE, much as is
the case in modern Dutch, or was the case in proto-Western
Romance (quantitative distinctions had given way to qualitative
ones).  The back vowel can thus be phonologically represented as
*/o/, even if at least in the PIE dialect ancestral to
Indo-Iranian it still had an allophonic vaiant *[O:] in at least
the open syllables (with or without the Kleinhans restriction,
etc., see Collinge's "The Laws of Indo-European" if you have the
stomach).  This allophone later merged with the new long vowels
resulting from nominative lengthening, sigmatic aorist
lengthening, derivative vrddhi, laryngeal lengthening etc., all
resulting in Proto-Indo-Iranian *a:.

In this context, it is perhaps interesting that in Tocharian the
reflexes of *o and lengthened *e: also merge (as Toch. <e> ~
<(y)e>).

>But stressed -e:'n vs. unstressed
>'-o:n (and -e:'r vs. '-o:r and -e:s vs. '-o:s in parallel
>fashion) indicates that the expected loss of the unstressed vowel of the
>suffix (/-en-/, /-er-/, /-es-/) had not progressed further than to a stage
>of weakening when the "nominative lengthening" set in: The nominative
>marker (some variety of /s/) caused lengthening of the nearest preceding
>vowel in the environment VC(C)_# Thereby, underlying /e/ appears as /e:/,
>and the weakened counterpart is found, at the end of the day, to surface
>as /o:/. Phonetically, this could perhaps be seen as something like the
>French e muet which is indeed a weakened vowel and does exhibit a marked
>rounding (at least in some varieties of the language). Supposing the
>relevant prestage of PIE to have been comparable to this, one gets a "long
>rounded schwa" from where the /o:/ of the PIE forms could well have
>developed. It takes a rule saying the lengthened vowels were not deleted
>by the working of the accent-governed ablaut, and in fact I see no
>counterexamples.

As I said, my **a: > *o rule does not give a totally satisfactory
account of the d'aimo:n ~ poim'e:n distribution.  It is tempting
to include it anyway, but it can only be done by the
counterintuitive step of assuming that stressed vowels resisted
lengthening, while unstressed ones did not (and that is
contradicted by the existence of stressed thematic vowels).

The main advantage of assuming lengthening of the unstressed
vowels in this position is that it explains why they did not
disappear as they should have after the working of "zero grade".

Similarly, an unstressed (pretonic) *primary* long vowel was
shortened, but did not disappear (and in fact attracted the
accent secondarily) in the (acro)static nominal and verbal
paradigms, some of which show o-grade (*wodr, *wedn- "water"),
others lengthened grade (*ye:kwr, *yekwn- "liver").  Of course,
in the case of *ye:kwr the preceding palatal consonant (*y, maybe
originally *l^) may easily have prevented the backing of *aa to
*o(o), and the original long vowel merged with new *e: instead.
Perhaps other cases of acrostatic *e: instead of *o can also be
explained by my theory that *all* (pre-)PIE consonants had
labialized and palatalized versions.  I'd have to investigate
that.

>So, I agree, IE /o/ has a multitude of sources.

Indeed.  Besides *h3e, I believe another source of *o can be
labialized consonant + *e (if we assume *h3 itself was
labialized, as it most probably was, we need no special rule for
the laryngeal here).  For instance, the Italo-Celtic(-Slavic)
1pl. verbal ending *-mos can be derived from *-mwes (cf. Hittite
-wen but Luwian -wan), with labialized *mw (from **mu "I") +
plural *-es.  Another example may be the apparent o-grade *mol-
"to grind" (Lat. mole:re), which appears where we would
morphologically expect e-grade, and which in zero-grade appears
as e.g. Greek mul-os "mill".  If we assume a single labialized
phoneme */mw/, the situation is normalized: e-grade *mwel- (>
Lat. mol-), zero-grade *mwl- (> Grk. mul-).  With loss of the
labialization we have *mel- and *ml- elsewhere.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun Mar  5 00:11:41 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 00:11:41 -0000
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.001141.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 4:53 AM

> At 10:09 PM 3/1/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

<snip>

>> <SFp>

>>> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>>> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs that
>>> differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have been
>>> conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

>> <PRp>

>> Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

<SF>

> As far as minimal contrast goes, one can simply look at the "perfect"
> versus the "aorist" of many verbs (especially in the third singular).

<PR>

All three aorists have the *H(1)e- prefix. No perfect has it.

According to Larry's dictionary, a _minimal pair_ is "two words of distinct
meaning which exhibit different segments at one point but identical segments
at all other points".

In his examples, no pair is given like **sing-sung so I presume that
"meaning" does *not* include nuaces created by inflection or conjugation.

Even if one ignored the personal suffixes (which is hardly permissible), any
PIE aorist-perfect pair would contrast in at least two points: 1) *e/*o
Ablaut and +/- H(1)e- prefix.

Now you may have another definition of minimal pair but according to this
one, which I think it generally accepted, PIE aorisy and perfect *cannot* be
termed a 'minimal pair'.

<SF>

> A quick perusal of Pokorny (yes, I know, out of date) gives:
> *kem: "summen"
> and
> kom: "neben, bei, mit"

<PR>

I see you have not indicated *kem in the way that Pokorny does, namely
"*kem-".

What the omission of the hyphen masks is that there is no entry in Pokorny
for any language that shows the bare root "*kem*.

Therefore, by reason of the definition cited above, I do not believe that
*kem-+X ('summen') can be considered as a part of a minimal pair with *kom,
'neben, bei, mit'.

<SF>

> That the e/o distinction was phonemic at breakup is unquestionable.

<PR>

Unless you can produce an acceptable minimal pair contrasting *e/*o, I
believe the question of phonemicity remains open.

>> <PRp>

>> I agree that an older accentual system is a reasonable theory, which I also
>> agree is viable. So, if I understand correctly, you are proposing that this
>> older system predates PIE?

<SF>

> Not really, just mentioning it as a *possibility*.  I find a switch from a
> length distinction to be more plausible.

>> <SFp>

>>> Note, when there is only one non-high vowel in a language, it is *always*
>>> best viewed as /a/, not /e/.  (It may have /e/ as an *allophone* in some
>>> environments, but its neutral allophone will always be low).

>> <PRp>

>> I agree 100%. And it is /*a/ which I theorize preceded /*e,*o/ in what I
>> call the Pontic stage, which I believe preceded PIE. But I also believe the
>> non-phonemic status of the /*e,*o/ Ablaut suggests strongly that it
>> developed from a single predecessor.

<SF>

> I tend to agree.  I think you can make your theory work as well with a
> length distinction though, which is phonetically more likely.

<PR>

I read Miguel's exposition of this but, in my answer to him, you may see
that I was not persuaded.

<PRp>

>> stress-accented syllable had /*o/. On this basis, I believe that no /*a/
>> existed in PIE except possibly as a result of a reduction of /*a:/ deriving
>> from a "laryngeal" + /*a/ in the Pontic (pre-PIE) stage.

<SF>

> I tend to agree.  I reconstruct a PIE vowel system with e/o/i/u.

<PR>

For that, you would need to present minimal pairs contrasting *Ce/oC with
*CiC and *CuC. Can it be done?

<SF>

> [Note, I consider it likely that laryngeals survived into many of the
> daughter languages, so lengthening due to loss of laryngeals was probably
> *post* PIE].

>> <SFp>

>>> I can only accept this where there is good evidence of alternation with
>>> /*ue/ or /*eu/.  There are just too many cases where there *is* no such
>>> variation visible.  [The obvious examples are mostly inflectional ending
>>> and pronouns, but there are certainly others as well].

>> <PRp>

>> Let us look at some of those examples. The strongest argument for this idea
>> is foreclosed to me because it involves the "N" word.

<SF>

> Well, there is the root Pokorny list as *bheu.  However, the only branch
> showing an e-grade of it is Indo-Iranian.  Outside of that it is
> universally in "zero" grade.  Thus I do not believe the e-grade is ancient.
>  I reconstruct *bhuH "grow, increase".

<PR>

I wonder if you have Pokorny there or are trusting to memory.

I see several examples of *e-grade in languages other than Indo-Iranian,
e.g. Armenian boin, 'nest'; Albanian bane", 'dwelling'; Gothic bauan,
'dwell', etal. --- as well as some *o-grade examples.

<SF>

> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two distinct
> roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an e-grade at all
> (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

<PR>

There are several *bher- roots. Why not expand on this a bit?

<SF>

> There is *uper "over, above".

<PR>

If one notates it as Pokorny does, namely *upe'r, the problem is simplified:
**wepe'r -> *upe'r. There are many examples of *weC- becoming *uC-: e.g.
*wep-:*wo/o:p-:*up-, 'water'.

<SF>

> The root listed as *ueidh shows no actual reflexes with e-grade in Pokorny,
> so one must really reconstruct *widh: "trennen".

<PR>

What about Old Indian ve:dh- or German *waisan < *woidh-son- (we should take
cognizance of o-grades in this context, should we not?).

<SF>

> And those are just some random gleanings from Pokorny.

<PR>

Frankly, you may need to go back between the rows.

>> <PRp>

>> I think we must be careful about overvaluing typological facts. If the
>> Pontic stage of pre-PIE were the only language in all our knowledge to
>> employ a single vowel (even for a very short period), phonological rather
>> than typological considerations should influence more strongly. Typology,
>> generally, is a heuristic device, would you not agree?

<SF>

> Up to a point.  If we find ourselves reconstructing something that is
> completely unknown in well-attested languages, we really do need to think
> three times before accepting the reconstruction.  [Absolute universals are
> rare, and when they do exist are probably fundamental].

<PR>

Agreed.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 13:24:17 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 14:24:17 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <007601bf84a2$b55e7ca0$209f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.142417.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
>> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
>> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
>> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
>> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
>> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

>[PR]

>I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
>stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
>which produces *e/*o variations.

That is often said, but it needs to be elaborated for it to make
sense.  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
its development?  If it switched from stress accent to pitch
accent (as suggested by zero grade everywhere and Vedic-Greek
accentuation), how did the unstressed vowels that were to become
o's by pitch accent survive the reduction caused by stress
accent? Etcetera.

>[MCV]

>> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
>> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
>> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

>[PR]

>I must have been on vacation when this was discussed. Is there any kind of
>consensus on this list that Jens has demonstrated this?

I don't think there's a consensus.  I find the evidence
conclusive (one does need however, to distinguish between two
kinds of sibilant: **"s" [*-e-s] and **"z" [*-o-s]).

>[MCV]

>> with developments /a/ >
>> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
>> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
>> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
>> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
>> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
>> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
>> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
>> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
>> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

>[PR]

>But why would they (prtimary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
>the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
>indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

Primary (etymological, non-apophonic) **a:'s gave *o (sometimes
<a:> in Indo-Iranian by Brugmann's Law) just like secondarily
lengthened **a's.  This is the origin of the PIE acrostatic
paradigms (I again agree with Jens), as opposed to the "regular"
proterodynamic (root/extension-accented) and hysterodynamic
(extension/suffix-accented) models without an original long vowel
in the root.

Lengthened grade was certainly a morphological device in PIE
(vrddhi).  JER has an alternative explanation, but I would
distinguish between cases of "old vrddhi", where the **a was
lengthened to **a: and appears as PIE *o (e.g. the
causative-iteratives in CoC-'ei-e-), and "younger vrddhi" where
the **a first developed to *e and was subsequently lengthened to
*e:.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sat Mar  4 13:29:25 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 14:29:25 +0100
Subject: Domesticating the Horse
In-Reply-To: <008901bf84a3$aaa5ee00$209f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.142925.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>But what is the significance of Greek -ia(:) for this question?

Feminines in *-ih2 appear in Greek as -ia (e.g. potnia < *potnih2).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Sat Mar  4 16:15:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 16:15:00 GMT
Subject: Armenian, was: Horses
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.161500.GMT.>

SG>>Eastern? Or Western? or hopefully, Graban?
SG>/e:sh/ "donkey" is the same in EArm, WArm and in ClassArm ("graba*r*").

If we hadn't Georg, correcting every typing error...
Of course it's <grabar> 'book language'.

Because everyone in the list knows that comparatists should use the oldest
forms available, a just 'Armenian dictionary' would not suffice.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 02:06:37 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 21:06:37 -0500
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.210637.0500.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> With regard to *equus reflexes in Celtic, of course each of the languages
> above also has a <marko-> word for horse.  But it make me wonder how
> forgiving this analysis should be - since I see a complete absence of *ekwos
> in Breton, NIr and Manx.

Breton <ebeul> 'colt', NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed', and
I assume Manx <eagh> 'riding horse, steed, racehorse'.

Brian M. Scott


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 02:06:54 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 21:06:54 -0500
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.210654.0500.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> Also I note that Buck has somehow failed to include in his book a rather
> important OIr word for 'deer' - <ach>  (Gaelic - <each>).  Perhaps more on
> that later.

Can you give a reference to this word?  There is no entry
for <ach> 'deer' in the Dict. of the Irish Lang. Based
Mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials; there *is* <ech>
'a horse, a steed', giving NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed'
and Sc. Gael. <each> 'a horse, a brute'.  OIr <ech> can
of course be found in Buck's 3.41 (generic term for a horse).

Brian M. Scott


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Mar  4 04:46:08 2000
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 22:46:08 -0600
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
In-Reply-To: <69.1d6018e.25f0af59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.224608.0600.>

	And how do we know that they're not loanwords from Greek?

[snip]

>There's a Phrygian inscription on the tomb of King Midas:  "Midai lavagtaei
>vanaktei", "To Midas the War-leader and King".

>This contains two terms shared with (Mycenaean) Greek:  lawagetas and wannax
>("war-leader" and "king", respectively.)

[snip]

	Everything I've read on Phrygian, admittedly not much, seems to
claim a different genetic relationship: Albanian, Armenian, Hellenic,
Thracian
	Anyone game enough to explain which one might be correct, if any,
and why?
	btw: regarding Thracian, there's an extensive website linking it to
Balto-Slavic. Given that I know even less about Thracian than the miniscule
amount that I know about Phrygian, I'd like to hear from someone better
informed

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar  3 11:05:05 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 06:05:05 -0500
Subject: Hypergeometric?  [was Re: GREEK PREHISTORY AND IE (EVIDENCE?)]
Message-ID: <FRI.3.MAR.2000.060505.0500.>

> MAI>What is meant here by "the hypergeometric"?

>  It is too difficult to explain it in a nutshell here.

Given that I teach this stuff occasionally, I can't resist trying :-)

Consider an urn with 8 red balls and 4 black balls. Pull out three at
random, without replacing the balls you draw. Then count the number of
black balls among the three drawn. The hypergeometric distribution
models this kind of thing.

More generally, if you have population of size N (12 in the example
above) and a subgroup of size A (4 in our example) and you take a sample
of n (3 for our example) members at random and count the number of
members from the subgroup in the sample, you get the hypergeomtric.

If both A and N-A are at least an order of magnitude larger than the
sample size n, hypergeometric is hardly distinguishable from the
binomial. As this is the common situation in many applications (so I
don't quite understand Hans's comment about where it is used),
hypergeomtric is usually omitted from courses in the US meant for
general audiences.


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Sat Mar  4 16:14:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 16:14:00 GMT
Subject: Black Sea Flood; was: non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.161400.GMT.>

RD>Ryan and Pitman had not yet published their Black Sea Flood discovery.

The black sea, or, more exact, its northwestern part, was 'flooded' in the
middle of the 5th millennium BC, according to my information.

RD>Now that flood will have to be taken into account by anyone
RD>speculating how the community that gave us PIE could have been severed
RD>from the community that gave us PA.

..< According to this time depth I would find it difficult if not daring
to draw connections in favour of any theory of IE diversification.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Sat Mar  4 16:16:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 16:16:00 GMT
Subject: UPenn tree; was: Indo-Hittite Hypothesis
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.161600.GMT.>

MAI>The UPenn work is supposed to provide exactly the information we have
MAI>lacked till now, that is, where to put in branches.  Having generated
MAI>their branching structure, they then picked a root position such that
MAI>Anatolian branches away from the entire rest of the family, all of
MAI>which can be viewed as going back to a single proto-language.

.. again: "Where is the exact information" on the UPenn tree???

We only do have the description of Tandy Warnows so-called 'optimality
criteria'. And the results. But in my humble understanding, there are
still some (or a lot of?) links missing.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Sat Mar  4 22:20:04 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:20:04 -0700
Subject: Arabic "expanded" roots
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000302194905.009bfec0@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.152004.0700.>

Wouldn't a more universally understood terminology for the Semitic (using
Hebrew) b-r-' versus bara' be to call the "triconsonantal root" the "root"
(i.e., a phonological meaning-carrying form that is incapable of being
divided into further morphemes) and the "expanded root" the "stem" (i.e., a
polymorphemic or monomorphemic form consisting only of root(s) and zero or
more derivational morpheme(s) that is ready for inflection)?  I'm not a
Semiticist, so I'm not so familiar with the terms used in traditional
Semitic (or Afro-Asiatic) linguistics, but as far as universal linguistic
terms "root" and "stem" seem to be the proper words to use.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)

> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 8:51 PM
> Subject: Re: Arabic "expanded" roots

> At 08:39 PM 3/1/00 +0100, Stefan Georg wrote:

>> I confess that I don't know what an "expanded" variant of an Arabic root
>> is. What I do know, however, is that *every* Arabic verb form has vowels.

> That is what I meant.  I do not know the correct terminology for
> differentiating between the "pure" triconsonantal root and the actually
> spoken forms that, naturally, have vowels.

> --------------
> May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Sun Mar  5 01:16:40 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 20:16:40 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.201640.EST.>

>edsel at glo.be wrote:

>Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that
>can be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we
>should be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

-- people learn languages because they're useful.  In most contexts, there
seems to be fairly limited emotional investment in them -- modern linguistic
nationalism being an exception, of course.

Even there, it's mostly political militants and bureaucrats who agitate such
matters.  Eg., the continuing inexorable decline of Gaelic in Ireland has
been completely unaffected by political intervention since the emergence of
the Irish Free State, with its policy of promoting Gaelic by all possible
means.

Ordinary people seem to switch languages when circumstances make such change
(a) possible and (b) a useful means of 'getting ahead'.


From sarima at friesen.net  Sun Mar  5 01:37:38 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 17:37:38 -0800
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <015101bf8489$7e6382e0$4a46063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.173738.0800.>

At 08:50 PM 3/2/00 +0000, petegray wrote:

>>Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE features
>> -- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.

>This is a chicken and egg situation.   The present, aorist and perfect *as
>tenses* are read back into PIE from Greek and I-I alone.   We cannot
>therefore say whether they are "retained archiasms" or "shared innovations".

>The various formations - s suffix, reduplication, secondary endings etc etc
>are scattered all over PIE, but those tenses as part of a tense system are
>only in those two language groups.

However the non-present forms in Latin and Germanic (at least) are
obviously heterogeneous in origin, on purely internal grounds.  This lends
support to a model postulating originally separate tenses a la Greek and I-I.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 02:06:59 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 21:06:59 -0500
Subject: English as a creole
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.210659.0500.>

>>  The inversion after an
>> initial adverb or phrase still appears in Elizabethan English and
>> the King James Bible.

> The texts you are referring to are 'high' style, probably voluntarily
> archaicizing (Lawyers still do it : 'What say you?').  Do we know how the
> ordinary people were (already) speaking in the 16-17th century?

Queen Elizabeth I uses 'for that I se not' in a letter that
seems unlikely to represent an archaic style:

	I haue, right deare brother, receaued your
	frendly and affectionat letters, in wiche
	I perceaue the mastar Grayes halfe, limping
	limping answer, wiche is lame in thes respectz:
	the one, for that I se not that he told you
	who bade him talke with Morgan of the price
	of my bloude, wiche he knowes, I am assured,
	right wel; nor yet hathe named the man that
	shuld be the murtherar of my life.

[_Letters of Queen Elizabeth and King James VI of Scotland
(1582-90)_, ed. J. Bruce (Camden Society, 46, 1849), pp.12-13,
as quoted in Martyn Wakelin, _The Archaeology of English_,
Barnes & Noble, 1988, pp.111-2.]

_The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of
London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D.1563_, ed. John Gough Nichols
(Camden Society I, 42, 1848), offers even less formal writing.
On p.2: 'The xxx day of November was bered Crystoffer Machyn,
Marchand-tayllor'; 'The xiiij day of Feybruarii was dysposyd
of ys bysshoppr[icke] of Wynchestur, the old bysshope M.
Stevyn Gardener, and cared in to the Towre ...'.  P.6: 'The
v day of Juin cam to Clessay the yerle of Shrusbery with
xij^xx hors, ...'.  (The caret indicates a superscript.)
P.7: 'The vij day of July begane a nuw swet in London, and
... ded my lord Crumwell in Leseter-shyre'.  (Here 'ded' is
'died', not 'dead'.)

Such inversions are also to be found occasionally in the
late 16th c. _Gerard's Herbal_, a very plain and straight-
forward piece of writing.

Brian M. Scott


From jimbilbro at email.msn.com  Sun Mar  5 04:12:15 2000
From: jimbilbro at email.msn.com (James Bilbro)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 22:12:15 -0600
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.221215.0600.>

Since I haven't checked my email in some time, this response may be a bit
belated, as I still have 376(!) messages from this list yet to check.  (This
is too much!)

In any case, what you may be remembering is that Celtic, Anatolian, and
Tocharian all share all share a passive formation in /r/, as does Italic
(and Phrygian?).  All four are also "centum"-languages.  The r-passive seems
to be a shared retention of a fairly archaic formant.  Of course, this
should not be interpreted to indicate any closer relationship between these
languages in the PIE-period, beyond the fact that they were all
centum-dialects.

Sincerely,
Jim Bilbro

-----Original Message-----
From: ECOLING at aol.com <ECOLING at aol.com>
Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 1:46 AM

>For Italic,
>is there any argument that on balance
>the geographic position of Italic in the earliest
>stages of PIE dialect network would put it
>closer to Slavic, or Armenian, or etc.,
>because of a few shared isoglosses with those
>which might be common innovations?
>Or are any sharings retentions?

>In either case,
>Perhaps shared verbal conjugations?
>If so, shared with which other IE groupings?

>I am trying to dredge up some old memories.

>Lloyd Anderson
>Ecological Linguistics


From jimbilbro at email.msn.com  Sun Mar  5 04:30:09 2000
From: jimbilbro at email.msn.com (James Bilbro)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 22:30:09 -0600
Subject: The law
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.223009.0600.>

Although I have not yet read it, Jaan Puhvel's book, "Myth and Law Among the
Indo-Europeans might shed some light on this question.

-Jim Bilbro

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Appleyard <mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 7:58 PM

Did the speakers of common IE have any notion of "the law" as an institution?

What was the IE word for "law", either as "the rules to be obeyed" (Latin
{lex}), or as "the process of justice" (Latin {jus})? Each IE language that I
know of seems to have a different word. My knowledge here is limited and I
accept any correction. Doubled vowel = long. Greek w = digamma.

- Anglo-Saxon {ae(w)}, compare Greek {ewaoo} = "I allow".
- Old Norse {log} < {lagu}, c.f. {l-g-} = "lay, lie": < "that which is laid
  down"?
- Latin {leg-}; the root also occurs as "choose" and "read".
- Latin {jus} < *{jous-} : what cognates are there for that word?
- Greek {dikee}: same root in Greek {deiknuumi} = "I indicate", Latin {dico} =
  "I say".
- Greek {nomos}: same root in Greek = "I apportion".
- Russian {zakon}.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar  5 12:39:54 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 13:39:54 +0100
Subject: R and r
In-Reply-To: <008f01bf8509$159eed00$9101703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.133954.0100.>

"Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

>From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> Greek initial r- comes mainly from *sr- > *hr- (original *r- had
>> become er-).  The r- was surely aspirated (i.e. voiceless) in
>> Classical Attic Greek, but since this applied to *all* initial
>> r's, there is no reason to postulate a separate phoneme /rh/.
>> The spiritus asper here is a case of subphonemic orthography (as
>> in many of these cases introduced after the fact, in this case by
>> Byzantine scribes).

>But I find it difficult to believe that Byzantine scribes would have been
>aware of the initial r- < *hr- < *sr- (which is pre-classic I believe, i.e.
>close to a 1000 years earlier) if there hadn't been left some trace in
>pronunciation.

Of course they were not aware of *sr-, but they were aware of the
classical pronunciation [rh-], with aspirated (voiceless) r.

>I said 'uvular' (or similar) because that comes close to what a non-linguist
>(like the Byzantine scribes) would possibly hear as 'breath' (spiritus,
>pneuma) in the pronunciation of an r. That's a not-too-uneducated guess, I
>hope.

There is no reason to assume a uvular pronunciation and no reason
not to take the Byzantine spelling at face value: the spiritus
denotes an aspirated (voiceless) [rh].  See the discussion in
Allen "Vox Graeca" pp. 41-45.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun Mar  5 16:55:08 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 11:55:08 -0500
Subject: Logical Gap
Message-ID: <SUN.5.MAR.2000.115508.0500.>

ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

> Larry Trask writes,
> concerning his criteria for including words as potential early Basque
> monosyllabic words:

>> My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>> and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>> particular phonological form.

> I have no doubt that Trask believes this.
> But it has been pointed out before that it does not follow.

It does, if one makes an effort to understand what he's
trying to say.

> There is a logical non-sequitur here, which is *one* of the core
> difficulties in the entire discussion we have been having on this subject.

> It is perfectly possible that criteria may be *stated* in words
> none of which have the slightest thing to do with phonological form,
> and yet, in the real world, the combination of those criteria have
> some consequence which end up excluding some category
> of vocabulary elements describable by a particular phonological
> form, at least statistically.

I doubt very much that when Larry says that his criteria
'cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any particular
phonological form', he means to deny this rather obvious fact.
I understand him to mean that any such (statistically) systematic
exclusion will be the necessary result of real correlations
between phonological form and status as an early, native,
monomorphemic Basque word.  And if the phonology of the words
in question really is statistically different from that of
the lexicon as a whole, any criteria that do their job will
of course result in exclusions that are correlated with
phonological form.

> So it can happen, through using a combination of criteria,
> that several strata of vocabulary end up being excluded *statistically*
> (all I have ever claimed) by Trask's criteria.
> Since most of us know independently of Trask's criteria
> that most or all living languages contain vocabulary of such strata,
> it would normally be considered appropriate to include some of them
> as candidates for reconstruction of any pattern which is expected
> to have any sort of general validity for the language.

I don't think that you've ever answered the obvious question:
Precisely how would you choose these candidates?  For that
matter, how would you decide just what strata are inadequately
represented in the written record?

Brian M. Scott


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Sat Mar  4 16:51:50 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 10:51:50 -0600
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.105150.0600.>

At 01:42 PM 3/2/00 +0000, Larry Trask  wrote:

>>  Roz Frank writes:

>>  [on Basque <(h)anka> 'haunch', 'leg' (and other senses)]

>>>  There does seem to be a good case that could be made for <(h)anka> being
>>>  related to the French/Romance forms mentioned above and consequently a
>>>  recent borrowing.

>>  Overpowering, I'd say.

>>>  But what is one to make of the Basque word <zango>
>>>  (<zanga-> in composition) that means 'leg, foot, calf' and its
>>>  phonological
>>>  variant in <zanko, zankho> (<zanka-> in composition) with the same
>>>  meanings?

>>  The word is <zanko> or <zanka> in Zuberoan, <zango> in the rest of the
>>  French Basque Country, and usually <zanko> south of the Pyrenees, though
>>  <zango> in High Navarrese.  The widespread presence of <zanko> in the south
>>  is clear evidence of a late borrowing, since an inherited *<zanko> would
>>  have developed regularly to *<zango> in the early medieval period -- as
>>  indeed has happened in much of the north, in which this voicing process
>>  seems to have persisted longer than elsewhere.  The combining form
>>  <zanka->, of course, is perfectly regular in Basque.

>>  The word variously means 'paw', 'foot', 'leg', 'calf', according to region,
>>  with various transferred senses in places, such as 'track' (of a game
>>  animal) and 'jack' (in cards).

>>  The source of the word is clear.  It is the very widespread Romance word
>>  which appears in Castilian Spanish as <zanca> 'calf', 'leg (of a bird)',
>>  'shank', and, according to Corominas, also 'stilt'.  Castilian also has
>>  an altered form <zanco> 'stilt'.  The same word occurs in Portuguese,
>>  Mozarabic, Catalan, and perhaps elsewhere, with a range of senses
>>  including 'wooden shoe', 'kind of sandal', and 'stilt', at least.
>>  (I'm not sure if Italian <zampa> 'leg (of an animal)', 'paw', 'foot'
>>  represents the same word or not.  Anybody know?)

So, according to this version of events, what we have are two Basque words,
both borrowed but from totally different sources. The first would be
<(h)anka> that would be borrowed first from one of the adjoining Romance
dialects and then these Romance dialect(s), in turn, would have borrowed
their expression from an unattested Frankish etymon whose prior existence
is posited on reflexes of <haunch> (Eng.) in Germanic. In short, in the
case of <(h)anka> its source would be traced back to the Frankish term and
that story ends there.

>>  This word is derived by Corominas from a late Latin <zanca> 'kind of shoe'
>>  (no asterisk, according to Corominas).  And this he traces to Old Persian
>>  <zanga-> 'leg', the source of modern Persian <zang> 'leg'.  He proposes
>>  that the Persian word was carried west into Europe by cobblers, especially
>>  since (he says) shoes were an eastern invention which passed into Europe
>>  via Persia.

Then we have a different story that explains the source/etymon for the
Basque word <zanko/zanga-/zango/zanga->. That story argues that the Basque
word was borrowed from a Romance language or languages in the early Middle
Ages. And that the Romance terms, in turn, can be traced to a Wanderwort
brought in by cobblers who got it from Old Persian, i.e., from <zanga->.
That means that the ultimate origin of <zanko> (Basque) is an Old Persian
word <zanga-> meaning 'leg'. But the story (see option #1 discussed below)
does not posit any relationship between A and B, between the source for
<(h)anka> and that of <zanka>.

Stated dfferently, the scenario in question would posit that <(h)anka>
(Basque) deriverom <anca> (Spanish), related in turn to <hanche> (Fr.)
and naturally <haunch> (Eng.). But this scenario alleges that there is no
relationship whatsoever between these two terms and the expression <shank>
(Eng.): '1) the part of the human leg between the knee and ankle or the
corresponding part in other vertebrates; 2) the whole leg of a man; 3) a
cut of meat from the leg of a steer, calf, sheep, or lamb; 4) the long
narrow part of a nail or pin; 5) a stem, stalk, or similar part'. The
relationship between <shank> (Eng.) and <zanca> (Sp.) as well as <anca>
(Sp.) is noteworthy since the terms are used to refer to a similar part of
human and animal anatomy.

The AHD gives the following under <shank>: "*skeng- 'crooked. Germanic
*skanko- 'that which bends,' leg, in Old English <sc(e)anca>, shinbone,
shank. [Pok. (s)keng- 930]." Are there other reflexes in IE languages of
<shank>, i.e., outside of Germanic?  In short, we have an unattested
Germanic *skanko- that according to the AHD is unrelated to the other
Germanic etymon: haunch 1) the hip, buttock and upper thigh in man and
animals; 2) the loin and leg of an animal
 [From] Middle English ha(u)nche
from Old French <hanche> from Germanic <hanka> (unattested)."

Also, what evidence is there, when the item means 'leg' in Old English, for
defining the prototype meaning of the term as "crooked" and/or "that which
bends". Where are the concrete data supporting this
interpretation/reconstruction? Was it Pokorny or another inventive
philologist who decided/decreed that 'leg' originally meant 'crooked' or
'that which bends'? Is there other evidence that could be employed to
support this interpretation?

One also notes that unattested Germanic items are given precedence while
there seems to have been little discussion of the possibility that both the
Germanic unattested forms and the Basque and Romance attested forms could
have arisen from a common substrate/areal effect that was overlaid by the
influence of a Wanderwort dating back only to the Middle Ages (as
summarized in option #2 below).

Moreoever, previously on the IE-list there has been 1) discussion of
substrate elements in Germanic and 2) discussion of the number and sorts of
languages in which an item needs to be attested before it can be a
candidate for (P)IE status. From those discussions it would seem that at
best the reflexes of *hanka nor *skanko- might make these proposed etyma be
candidates for some areal effect, but not for PIE status. I state this
basing my interpretation on the fact that, to my knowledge, neither of
these two IE items has been related to the Old Persian etymon cited by
Corominas as the source for the or Romance and Basque items in <zanka>, et.
al.

Before we examine Corominas' theory about cobblers and Old Persian
(included in option #1 below), we need to consider the way that prototypic
meanings operate. The present scenario, according to Corominas, requires an
Old Persian word meaning 'leg' to pass into Romance and once there to
acquire the more specialized meanings of 'stilt' or 'long skinny leg-like
appendage', e.g., like the 'leg (of a bird)' or 'shank'. Euskera would have
borrowed the term early on and kept both meanings. Such a shift in the
prototypic meaning, i.e., from general to specific, would be a normal and
expected development.

However, it would be far more convincing if the same term showed up in
other IE languages of the same geographic zone, since one assumes that the
cobblers were a guild and the Wanderwort went along with them irrespective
of what the local language was. In other words, if we seek out a point
source for the Romance and Basque items, alleging that they all derive from
an Old Persian etymon, we need to explain why the same expressions don't
show up in many other IE languages. Or perhaps they do?

That is, they would 'show up' if one were to accept that <shank> (Eng.) and
the Old English reflex of it meaning 'leg' were cognate with the Old
Persian <zanga->. It seems tme that the case would be even stronger if
one were to argue that <haunch> (Eng.) along with the Romance and Basque
reflexes of it, form part of the same morpho-semantic field (MSF). In such
a reconstruction of linguistic events, the two Basque items <(h)anka> and
<zanko> would pertain to the same MSF although the former would be
perceived as a more recent borrowing from the Romance languages adjacent to
Basque. In this scenario the status of (or domain occupied by) <zanko>
(Basque) within the translingual MSF would be less clear.

If, for example, one accepts the story told by Corominas about the path
that brought an Old Persian Wanderwort into Romance languages, one must ask
why the cobblers didn't stop off in Germanic speaking lands first? Or, in
contrast to what Pokorny, et. al. have alleged with respect to this data,
could we consider another option: the possibility that we  talking about a
MSF that has several reflexes showing up: in modern English as  <shank> and
 <haunch>, in Romance as <zanca> and <anca> and in Basque as <zanko>
(<zanka-> in composition) and <anka>?

In summary, it seems to me that there are several approaches open to us if
we accept that proposing several options might correspond better to the
fuzzy nature of the data itself: These options might be phrased in the
following way:

1) to accept the rather complex stories that have been told to explain all
of these items, alleging a different origin for each (<haunch> comes from
an unattested Germanic etymon; <shank> from another unattested Germanic
etymon; and the Romance <zanca> from yet another, an Old Persian etymon
<zanga->);

2) to allege that the western European variants (<haunch> (Eng.), <shank>
(Eng.) and <zanca> (Sp.) are related to each other and can be explained by
complex substrate influences (perhaps including the role of a Wanderwort
that also meant 'stilt) that also gave rise to the Basque <zanka>;

3) to allege that the western European variants are related to each other
and that they all derive from a single Persian Wanderwort that was brought
into the west by cobblers. For the latter scenario to become more
convincing, one ought be able to identify reflexes of the Old Persian
lexeme in other western European languages. Again, I offer these three
options as possible ways of modeling the data.

Now it may well be that a particular type of shoe was brought in from
Persia, but shoes in general seem to date back beyond the Middle Ages. Now
would this scenario require the first cobblers moving into Europe to be
Persian? Or, for example, would this simulation of the data mean that at
some part there was contact between a guild of European-born cobblers and
those speaking Farsi? Certainly it would require cobblers to have adopted
an Old Persian word for 'leg' at some point. And as is well known, there
are other words for 'leg' in IE languages so if we are talking about
cobblers working in Europe with access to an IE language with a word for
'leg', they wouldn't have had any pressing need to acquire this word from
their Persian colleagues. On the other hand, one might imagine a scenario
in which the use of an 'exotic' term, could enhance the specialized
vocabulary of the cobblers' guild. Obviously, if one is talking about a
guild, then we must project a medieval backdrop to the Wanderwort's
activities. And if we chose this option (3), since the Romance languages
date back to the Middle Ages, the Wanderwort would have had to enter the
area after these linguistic systems were in place. Again, what I am trying
to do is draw out and make visible the underlying assumptions that strike
me as being implicit in options # 1 and # 3.

On the other hand, the connection between <zanca> and a 'wooden-shoe' in
Romance seems to be fairly peripheral to the term's prototypic meaning.
Rather one might argue that it was the use by shepherds of special stilts
that allowed them to travel rapidly and keep their feet dry that may have
played a role here in terms othe technological innovation that spread the
word about. Of course, it would be difficult to pin-point the location
where such an invention first came into being for I am aware that there are
a number of locations in southwestern France and northern Spain where
amazing feats are performed while the dancers/shepherds whirl about mounted
on their <zancas>.

On the other hand, again following the lines of argument laid down by
Corominas, the cobblers who preferred <zanga-> to whatever the word was for
'leg' in their native tongue, came to the west and introduced it into the
geographical region called Spain and Portugal today. There perhaps they
whittled away making tall stilt-like wooden-shoes for the local populations
and teaching them a special term for them. Thus, the expression was picked
up by the locals sometime in the Christian era as the incipient Romance
tongues were emerging.

On that note, we should mention that Meyer-L?bke (9598) offers a slightly
different version for he gives the meaning of <zanca> (pers.) as 'Schuh'
citing Ait. <zanca> 'Bein, Fufs, Schaft'; <zanche> 'Stelzein', F?hlh?rner,
comask. <txanc> 'Holzschuhe', prov. Sanca 'Kothurn', sp. <zanca> 'Bein',
<zanco> 'Stelze', zancas 'Schuh mit Hotzsohle, pg. <sanco> 'Bein des Vogels
von der klaue bis zum ersten Gelenk,' et. al. This version fits better with
the prototypic meanings of <zanca> and allows for 'high wooden shoe' to
become conflated with 'very tall shoes' or 'stilts' and or 'skinny legs'.
However, again we should note that for Basque, one would have to propose a
further evolution, that the word entered Basque meaning 'a type of high
wooden shoe' and/or 'a type of stilts' and then took on the meaning of
'leg'. And once again we are confronted with the question of whether or not
there is a larger MSF operating here that would comprise <shank> and
<hanch> along with the items cited by Meyer-L?bke and the Old Persian
lexeme in its earlier (?) meaning of 'leg'.

In closing I would mention that Meyer-L?bke (9598) also lists "nordostit.
<tsanko>, engad. <tschanc> and <friaul. <tsanko> 'linksh?ndig, links'" in
the sense of 'clumsy, akward'; similar to the meaning of Spanish
<zancajoso>. Are these exceptions to be understood as extensions of the
meanings associated with the image schema of someone walking on tall wooden
shoes or stilts?  Or are we still talking also about 'skinny wobbly legs'
and/or 'shanks'?? In summary, are we to reconstruct three different
morpho-semantic fields or is there a possibility that the three fields form
part of a larger and more complex MSF. That option doesn't deny the role of
the Persian Wanderwort, but rather would incorporate it into a larger
explanatory paradigm for the etyma in question.

Finally, what is interesting about this Wanderwort is the fact that a
careful review of the history of foot-ware in Europe could allow us to
determine the port of entry of the word. From the little that I know of
that topic, the fashion of wearing 'high wooden shoes' would have moved
along a vertical axis from the upper classes to the lower classes, the
upper classes having greater access to exotic foreign goods and being more
attune to the winds of fashion. From there the shoes, along with the exotic
term for them, would have made their way down to the lower echelons of
society, and finally both would have entered the vocabulary of shepherds
whose costume of wearing stilts to go about their everyday tasks may well
have antedated the arrival of the Persian expression. A careful examination
of the use of stilts would be needed to determine whether this assertion is
true. Or if, conversely, the shepherds didn't utilize stilts until after
they came into contact with outsiders/upper class gentry wearing tall
wooden shoes, etc. This interpretation of the Persian lexeme would connect
it directly with a type of shoe that reached western Europe, perhaps
through the marketing efforts of merchants operating out of Italy or
Catalunya. Indeed, there mig be some connection between these 'tall
shoes' and those referred to as <chapines> that became the rage in the
courts of Aragon, Navarre and Catalunya. As I vaguely recall reading
somewhere, the shoes were originally relatively modest in height, but the
fashion trend was to build them higher and higher, until some of them had
wooden or cork soles elevated three to four feet off the ground, an
advantage for the ladies of high blood for that way their dresses didn't
drag in the mud when they emerged from their carriages, but a problem, too,
since many of the ladies had to crouch down in order to fit themselves
through the openings of doorways constructed to accomodate normal-sized
mortals. And walking itself was a major problem unless one were accompanied
by a servant who could keep one from tripping.

Have a good day,
Roz


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Sun Mar  5 00:07:59 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 18:07:59 -0600
Subject: Excluding Basque data
Message-ID: <SAT.4.MAR.2000.180759.0600.>

Since the topic of criteria for inclusion and exclusion of Basque data has
surfaced again on the list, perhaps the following information will be of
interest.

Larry Trask Fri. Oct. 15 1999 writes:

ECOLING at aol.com writes:

>Concerning Larry Trask's list of criteria for potential candidates
>for early Basque vocabulary lists:

> [on the choice of cut-off date]

[LA]

>>The details in the paragraph above suggest to me OBVIOUSLY
>>if you want early Basque, you use 1700 in preference to 1600,
>>because the 16th-century materials are so limited in content.
>>It is always possible to study any differences between 16th and 17th century
>>equivalent grammatical morphemes, forms of the same words, etc.,
>>where those are attested in both centuries, but obviously much
>>non-religious vocabulary will be systematically disfavored by the earlier
>>cut-off date.

[LT]

>Well, I've already explained that I am prepared to consider 1700 rather than
>1600. But I don't think the choice is obvious. My impression at this stage -
>which might prove to be wrong, of course - is that most of the words that meet
>my other criteria are already attested by 1600, and so, if possible, I'd
>prefer to use the more restrictive early date.

I've prepared the following background summary in order to aid those
members of the list who might be somewhat unfamiliar with the source
materials for Basque. Hopefully, the summary also will bring into focus
some of the problems that inevitably arise when one attempts to choose a
"more restrictive early date" for the cut-off, whether that be set at 1600,
1700 or even 1800.

1) There is essentially no Medieval Basque 'literature' of any kind. Hence,
by 1500 what we have accumulated are some epitaphs, a few song fragments
(verses taken from the oral traditions) stuck into things written in
Romance, place names, proper names, e.g., in legal documents, and a couple
of very short word lists compiled by non-Basque speakers. That's it.
Whoops, I left out the marginal notes in the _ Glosas Emilienses _ and a
word or short phrase here and there inserted into poetic works written in
Romance, e.g., in the poetry of Gonzalo de Berceo. He was a priest from La
Rioja who wrote in Castillian. Although he might not have been a
Basque-speaker himself, he apparently was at least passingly familiar with
the language. He was known by the name of the village where he was born,
Berceo (in La Rioja), while he received his education at the Monastery of
San Millan in Araba. This was a zone that we can assume was bilingual at
that time (13th century) since it was located near the Castilian-Basque
linguistic border. Curiously, as was the case with the author of the first
example of Castilian, i.e., the _Glosas Emilienses_, the first medieval
poet writing in Castilian whose name we know, also seems to have had some
knowledge of Basque. For example, as Larry Trask mentions in his book
(1997:45), Berceo "spattered his poems with vasconisms, such as <don
Bildur> (a personification of <bildur> 'fear'), <zatico> (a derivative of
western <zati> 'period of time') and <gabe> 'without'."  In contrast to the
author of the _Glosas Emilienses_ who was clearly a Basque speaker, it is
more difficult to determine the level of fluency that Berceo had in the
language.

2) The Renaissance legacy.

a) The first book in Euskera: Poems.
It wasn't until 1545 that the first book in Euskera was published
consisting of a short collection of poems, many of which are dedicated to
the Virgin Mary (and to women in general). And then there is one poem
dealing with the writer's personal problems with certain ecclesiastical and
civ authorities. In addition to the poems the book also has a very brief
introductory section in prose of about one page in length. The work called
_Linguae Vasconum Primitiae_ has a medieval ring to it. And since the
author was from Low Navarre, that is the dialect represented. The author is
Bernard Dechepare (his name has other spellings), a priest who at one point
in his life becomes an 'arcipreste'.   The overall length of the sample can
be appreciated if one keeps following fact in mind: that in the recent
facsimile edition of the work (1995), the Spanish translation of the Basque
original runs from page 107 to page 127.

b) The second book: The New Testament (a Protestant version).
Next we have Johannes Leizarraga, another religious man. Actually he was a
Protestant minister who ended up in charge of a group of translators who
would produce the first Basque translation of the New Testament (1571), a
work which ended up, not unexpectedly, quite plagued with Latinisms. The
team of 'Wycliffs' worked for Juana de Albret, Queen of Navarre and Dame of
Bearne. Bearne was the location where the translators worked and resided.
Firmly committed to Calvinism, Leizarraga himself was from Lapurdi
(Labourd) although he opted to use a mixture of the three northern Basque
dialects in the translation. When published it was accompanied by _ABC edo
Christinoen Instructionea_, a catechism that contained the principals of
the Calvinist Creed, and _Kalendarea_, calendrical tables to be used to
calculate the moveable feasts.

c) Three collections of sayings.
Then the century ends with three collections of proverbs and sentences
written as far as I know in Bizkaian which at that time was more similar to
the Lapurdin dialect than it is today. Two of the collections weren't
published until several centuries later.

The name of the author of only two of the three collections is known, i.e.,
Esteban de Garibay of Mondragon, chronicler of Phillip II. The latter
writer also included a fragment from a Basque ballad in his _Memorias_.
Leaving aside the proper names and repeated elements found in that
fragment, the text contains a total of 21 words.

d) Although not strictly a literary work, there is also a letter from an
individual residing in the New World to someone back home ( I don't
remember exactly who the recipient was). It is a couple of pages long as I
recall, and was written by a man born in Durango, Bizkaia. He was Fray Juan
de Zumarraga, first Bishop of Mexico. The letter is dated 1537.

Criteria.

Larry Trask has stated that he would prefer 1600 as the cut-off date for
"early attestation".  As one can see from the information given above, if
the cut off date is set at 1600, it's pretty slim pickins.

And furthermore, if one applies Larry Trask's other criterion to the same
corpus, namely, that for an item to be included in his list it must be
recorded early in all dialects or most of the dialects, we're fried
(although this might not be the way that Larry intends the dialectal
criterion to be applied to the data). The database in question simply
doesn't provide a wide sampling. In other words, serious difficulties would
arise if one were to apply the second criterion of widespread dialectal use
to items attested prior to 1600: the two books mentioned above and three
collections of proverbs do not cover all the dialects. Thus, a strict
application of Larry's second rule would actually eliminate all the words
found in these works. Again, he may assume that if the word is attested
early (prior to 1600) in one or more of the northern dialects that would be
sufficient.

Earlier Larry Trask has stated that in his opinion, when finished his list
would end up containing only 200 "native" Basque words. He may have stated
'a couple hundred' (sorry I don't have the exact citation). By my
calculations, there might be even fewer, unless he means that he would
include a if the word can be attested prior to 1600 in one dialect and then
rediscovered in the nineteenth and tntieth centuries in four of the five
dialects.

Thus, there is the question of how the sample is skewed because of the
following facts:

1) that many works are translations from Latin by clergymen;
2) that when the works are not translations they are nonetheless books or
treatises written by priests about religious themes; and
3) during the 16th and 17th centuries the works represent primarily one
dialectal zone, Lapurdi.

With respect to the first point, we note that both of the major books from
the 16th century were written by members of the clergy. In the 17th century
there were 36 editions (note: these are editions, not necessarily new
books) whose authors with one exception, that of Oihenart, were priests; in
the 18th century all the authors were members of the clergy except two,
Barrutia and Etcheberri. Hence, 90% of the works published in these three
centuries were by clergymen; this compares with 6% of the works written in
French for the same period. In terms of the authors themselves, 28% of the
French books were authored by members of the nobility; another 28% by
members of the clergy; and 66% by members of the Third Estate. In contrast,
90% of the books in Euskera were written by the clergy and 10% by members
of the Third Estate.

In terms of the dialect distribution, in the 17th century, of the 36
editions of books over 100 pages, 32 were written in Lapurdin (for a
dialect population estimated at 30,000), 1 in Low Navarrese and 3 in
Zuberoan. None of them were written in any of the southern dialects (for a
discussion of these statisitics, cf. Ibon Sarasola, _Historia social de la
literatura vasca_, Madrid: Akal, pp. 35-55).

So if my understanding is correct, Larry Trask's "more restrictive early
date" would admit one translation of the New Testament with a catechism and
tables for calculating moveable feasts, 1 short book of poems, a letter
from Mexico, and three brief collections of proverbs as his data base to
which he would add the miscellaneous citations, epigraphs, songs, place
names, proper names, a couple of very short word lists compiled by
non-Basques and some random words and phrases found in works written in
Romance prior to 1700.

Should such a database be considered a representative sample?

Keep reading, there are more surprises!!

List members unfamiliar with the highly oral nature of Basque culture might
be surprised to know that the date set for the beginning of Basque
literature is 1879. And to give people a better idea of just how few texts
there really are I would like to reproduce (actually summarize) information
in the form of three charts. In their original form the charts also
indicate which dialects the works were written in, but I've left that
information out. The cut off date for the statistical tabulation is 1879.
To qualify as a work, the text had to be a non-periodical and at least 48
pages long, a standard definition taken from UNESCO.

The time periods covered are:

XVIb 1545-1599
XVIIa 1600-1649
XVIIb 1650-1699
XVIIIa 1700-1749
XVIIIb 1750-1799
XIXa 1800-1849
XIXb 1850-1879

Chart #1.
 In chart #1 we have listed the number of works published in Euskera for
each half-century period, whether written originally in that language or as
a translation. The numbers on the right don't include re-editions of the
same work.

XVIb 3
XVIIa 7
XVIIb 13
XVIIIa 17
XVIIlb 43
XIXa 47
XIXb 64

Total 194

Chart #2
In chart #2 we have a list of all works written and published originally in
Euskera, i.e., those that are not translations.

XVIb 1
XVIIa  6
XVIIb 6
XVIIIa 5
XVIIlb 24
XIXa 26
XIXb 33

Total 101

Chart #3
In chart #3 we can appreciate more fully the dearth of non-religious works
meeting the above minimal UNESCO criteria. Stated differently, the
following list contains the tabulation of secular works written originally
in Euskera up to 1879.

XVIb 1
XVIIa 0
XVIIb 1
XVIIIa 1
XVIIlb 1
XIXa 4
XIXb 4

Total 12

For a full discussion of the data and these chartsf. Sarasola
1976:179-183.

I believe that these three charts help explain some of the reason that Jon
Patrick and I have repeatedly argued in favor of including Azkue's
dictionary as a legitimate and necessary addition to any database for
Euskera. In addition, Azkue was meticulous in noting the dialect, even
indicating the name of the village, in which he collected the item.
Moreover, he utilized some 150 Basque texts as part of his database and he
indicates precisely which text each item comes from, citing the entire
sentence in which it occurred so that the reader has the contextualization
of the entry.

In conclusion, keeping in mind the question of whether religious texts,
primarily translations, are appropriate (or the best) data sources for our
purposes, I would like to quote a few short passages from Jon Juaristi's
book _Historia de la literatura vasca_ from the series _Historia critica de
la literatura hispanica_ (Madrid: Taurus, 1987).

Speaking of the production during the 16th century, he states that the fact
the texts were written in Euskera at all can be attributed to the religious
struggle of that time that was being waged between Protestants and the
forces of the Counter-Reformation:

"Los primeros textos en euskera (al menos, los primeros que tuvieron una
entidad digna de tenerse en cuenta) fueron obras de caracter religioso para
la evangelizacion de un pueblo sin escritura, libros escritos por clerigos
para servir de apoyo a la labor pastoral de otros clerigos. Unamuno pudo
comparar con toda justicia la literatura vasca de los siglos XVI al XIX con
la literatura guarani que los jesuitas promovieron en sus Reducciones del
Paraguay: 'Los catecismos de doctrina cristiana se escribian en vascuence,
pero no para que los ninos los aprendiesen leyendolos, sino para que los
curas se los ensenasen de viva voz. Porque no se debe perder de vista que
el vascuence no ha sido letra escrita por el pueblo (Unamuno 1920).' En
efecto, como sucedia con los textos religiosos guaranies, los libros
euskericos rara vez se dejaban en manos de aquellos a cuya edificacion y
adoctrinamiento iban destinados (Juaristi 1987:13-14)."

In short, from my point of view, given the nature of the facts set out
above, to assign the cut-off point for the database at 1600 is not
particularly logical; and it would be only slightly more logical to assign
the cut-off to 1700. This is particularly so if we keep in mind that our
aim is to reconstruct a stage of the language roughly 2000 years earlier,
i.e., prior to its first contacts with the Roman invaders who entered the
Peninsula in 218 BC.  Considering the intended purpose of the database, it
is unlikely that any changes that the language would have undergone in the
hundred-year period, i.e., from 1599-1699, would affect the outcome of the
study in any significant way.

By the way is there a chronological cut-off point for words in Romance
languages? Or in Slavic? Just curious.

Ondo ibili,
Roz


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Mar  6 21:06:13 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 16:06:13 EST
Subject: Celtiberian
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.160613.EST.>

In a message dated 3/1/2000 10:25:54 PM, Jim Rader wrote:

> Joseph Eska, in his succinct and useful review of some of the recent
> literature on Celtiberian/Hispano-Celtic (posted 28 Feb), modestly
> fails to mention his own contribution, _Towards an Interpretation of the
> Hispano-Celtic Inscription of Botorrita_ (1989), published in the
> Innsbrucker Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft series

And I should apologize to Dr. Eska.  This reference was frequent in the
materials an informant sent me.  But because I was editing to save space and
because I don't know any better, I left it out.  Obviously a poor decision.
And thanks to Jim Rader for pointing it out.

Just a few notes regarding Joseph Eska's reply to my post:

I wrote:
>> "The 'first full manual' on the language appeared in 1998.  Jordan Cslera,
>> Carlos. Introduccisn al Celtibirico. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu replied:

> Not so much a manual as a preliminary description.

The description is not mine but Javier Mart?nez Garc?a's: "This is the
first manual of this language to appear. Using a comparative framework, the
author discusses phonetic-phonological and morphological features of the
Celtiberian language. He also describes the most important documents (coins,
graffiti, tombstones, documents of hospitality, etc.). The book includes a list
of linguistic features, a word index, and bibliography."

I also wrote:
>> Wolfgang Meid's commentaries on Celtiberian Inscriptions Archaeologica
>> (Budapest 1994) have been considered authoritative.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> Again, not so.  In fact, the very large majority of specialists on
> Continental Celtic have found Prof. Meid's hermeneutic analyses anything but
> authoritative, and, indeed, rather fantastic.

Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that Meid is cited often enough
alongside of Dr. Eska to deserve mention, aside from the merits of his
approach.  An example from the a Blackwell Peoples of Europe series: "Botorrit
a I remains the most important Hispano-Celtic inscription for linguistic
anaylsis (Meid 1993: 9-15; Eska 1989: 3-10).
...Interpretations of this inscription have varied widely, with most
commentators considering the text to be either religious or legal. This
disagreement is due to our fragmentary knowledge of the grammar and
vocabulary of the language. Both Meid and Eska supply exhaustive
bibliographical information throughout their treatments of the inscription
(Meid 1993, Eska 1989)."

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also wrote:

<<As for the q-Celtic label, well, this is pretty trivial phonologically, and
not really much of a diagnostic.  Cf. the case of Lepontic, traditionally
considered to be p-Celtic, but in which several examples of the inherited
voiceless labiovelar arguably occurs.>>

I had written:

> However, it now appears that this may also have been the result of
> the Latinization of the language in the late period, since some early texts
> now seem to show signs of being P-Celtic...

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

>> Absolutely not!  There isn't the slightest bit of evidence for this at all.
>> Now, Lusitanian, which Untermann maintains could be, at least, para-Celtic,
>> does retain IE *p, but few specialists are persuaded that it's related to
>> Celtic in any close way.

I am not sure of the upshot of this.  If "the q-Celtic label, well, this is
pretty trivial phonologically, and not really much of a diagnostic." then I
would not understand the importance of the next observation.  And if
Lusitanian relationship to Celtic is problematic at least - then the asserted
'remarkable similarity' of Celtic starts to depend on narrowing the
definition of Celtic instead of actually acknowledging the ambiguoity and the
possible lack of that 'remarkable similarity'.  Also the very fact that the
first clearly attested Celtic languages - Gaulish, Lepontic and Celtiberian-
are "q-Celtic" might suggest that conjectures about when and how the change
from IE <p> occurred are not part of any real evidence regarding time.  As
you wrote, "several scholars have claimed that [Hispano-Celtic] is
practically identical to proto-Celtic, a sentiment I do not share..." The
absence of evidence of any transition to q-Celtic leaves open when and how
that transition may have occured.  Others on this list have referred to
Lepontic and Hispano-Celtic as evidence that the transition to "q-Celtic was
already occuring by the 7th century," an unjustified dating of that event
from my point-of-view.

I wrote:

>> There is also the difficult problem, mentioned above, as to whether
>> Latinization in the mid 2d century BC altered the language so that it was
>> at least dialectically different from the one used in the Iberian script.
>> Familiar structure that appears in Latin alphabet texts are not often
>> confirmed in the earlier texts.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> If this is a reference to structural differences between Hispano-Celtic texts
> written in Iberian and Roman characters, respectively, I'd really like to
> know what they are, as I'm not aware of them.

I believe the original writer was referring to the suggestion made by some -
I'm not sure but I think it seems to say e.g., Kim McCone in A Relative
Chronology of Celtic Sound Changes (1996) - that evidence of Gaulish's
Latinization might also be found in Celtiberian.  I do see the following
cited:  Cremin's The Celts in Europe: "Although the Botorrita text is
lengthy, it gives little information about grammar, and this is also the case
with most of the Celtiberian inscriptions we have... "  But that Roman
scripts, such as those at Pe?alba de Villastar, Teruel, reveal "almost all we
know of the structure of Celtiberian."

Finally, with regard to dating Hispano-Celtic I wrote:

>> Since evidence of Celtiberian dates back as far as early Latin, contraryto
>> what [Mr Stirling] said above, it certainly is a candidate as one of the
>> earliest IE languages on record and needs to be accounted for on an equal
>> basis, I think.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> While Hispano-Celtic is clearly archaic -- several scholars have claimed that
> it is practically identical to proto-Celtic, a sentiment I do not share  --
> it also has its share of innovations, and evidence does not date back as far
> as early Latin.  Hispano-Celtic texts are often notoriously difficult to
> date, but I know of no specialist who would claim that any texts date from
> earlier than the first half of the second century BCE.

Actually, I was actually repeating the post that came before on the list that
mine was in reply to, from Christopher Gwinn <sonno3 at hotmail.com which read:

<<In any case, we know
Celtiberian was already being spoken in Spain in the 6th century BC, and
that it shares many similarities with the Goidelic branch
(PIE -Kw-=Qu/Ku/Cu, for example). Its vocabulary preserves some archaisms
not found in Goidelic or Brythonic (Silbur "silver" next to regular Common
Celtic word Arganto-)...>>

One would prefer not to refer to the existence of a language in a particular
location having particular attributes 400 years before there is real
attestation of it.  But be aware that this 5th century date is often
repeated.  E.g.:

<<The Celtiberian script is in fact a modified form of Iberian, with some
innovations... Celtiberian inscriptions, very few in number, were made from
the 6th to the 1st century BC; since the 3rd century the Roman alphabet came
in use, being much more convenient and suitable for the language.>>
You'll find the above on the web at http://www.ropnet.ru/cyryllo/script/celti.
html

Much thanks once again to Dr Eska for taking the time to inform us on this
subject.

Regards,
Steve Long


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Mar  6 22:25:59 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 17:25:59 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.172559.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

> G&I give walwa-, walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian walwa-,
> but that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not aware of a
> development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes). >>

-- Mallory & Adams seem to think it's credible.


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Tue Mar  7 00:43:39 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 01:43:39 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.014339.0100.>

>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>>'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>>prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

>-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
>perhaps?

Joat, have you read Berlin/Kay's "Basic color terms", or at least some
extensive quotation from it, and if so, what do you find basically wrong
with it ? If, however, the answer to the first question is no, my next
question has to be: why ?

>>Although bears are big and dangerous, you are talking here about people whose
>>ancestors seemed to make a living out of hunting some big, angry things.

>-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

You obviously were around.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Mar  7 03:31:13 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 19:31:13 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFEEBDCHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.193113.0800.>

At 03:55 PM 3/4/00 -0700, Dr. John E. McLaughlin wrote:
>[Steve Long wrote]

>> Not to rile anyone but just to express a minority opinion in the
>> short time I'm allowed lately -

>> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'
>...

>> My little suggestion here is again that brown did not give its name to the
>> bear, but that the bear's fur gave its name to brown.

>Being an outsider to serious PIE work, where to the earliest attested
>Indo-European languages and PIE fall on the Berlin and Kay color scale?

Fairly "early", at least as far as Homeric Greek is concerned (with four
color words according to B&K).  Which is probably why Steve is dubious
about there being a word for 'brown' in PIE.

However, I have some doubts about *some* of Berlin and Kay's conclusions.
For one thing, I am less certain than they that color words cannot be lost.
 And I suspect that borrowed color words replace older ones more frequently
than B&K seem to believe (they are less explicit on this issue, however,
they tend to use the presence of a borrowed basic color term as an
indication of recency of that concept in the language).

So, the presence of only 4 basic color words in Homer is not really that
conclusive vis-a-vis PIE, IMHO.

>This is an important thing to know before discussing whether 'bear' >
>'brown' or vice versa.  Ultimately, 'brown' should be traced to something
>non-color (since it's a VERY late color term to develop), but did this
>happen before, during, or after PIE?

Or did it come and go several times before and after PIE?

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Mar  7 03:34:28 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 19:34:28 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.6.MAR.2000.193428.0800.>

At 08:11 PM 3/4/00 -0500, you wrote:
>-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
>perhaps?

Many languages, even today, have no word for brown.  This is what allowed
Berlin and Kay to develop their color hierarchy.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Mar  7 06:23:18 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 01:23:18 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.012318.EST.>

In a message dated 3/6/2000 6:32:12 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

>Your (longer) discussion on this matter assumes that PIE was more urbanized
>than not.  I must disagree.  While there was a certain amount of agriculture
>and pastoralism involved, the time dates and locations for PIE suggest a
>culture much more closely tied to the environment than modern communities in
>the Middle East.  Among hunting peoples around the world, there is virtually
>no one in a community who has not seen a large local predator.

I am not sure what "time dates and locations for PIE" you have in mind, but
if you are going to clear forests and shrubland at the rate Bandkeramik did
(pollen deposits reveal where plant forms changed to domesticates), you are
going to run into a similar situation to the one that faced european settlers
for a century in places like Kentucky and Western PA.  And bear remains are
definitely among the fauna found in the trash heaps of these settlements.
And because bears normally do not have high population density (except when
they chase salmon - when they become vulnerable in open areas) and are
vulnerable during hibernation, they can be eradicated from a broad area
rather quickly.  Where winter prevails, agricultural communities rely on
hunting quite a bit.  And in Europe - from the Steppes to the Atlantic -
there were already very effective mesolithic hunting communities - especially
in the territory of TBK, where later Germanic would make the bear/brown
connection prominent.

Once again, Bandkeramik had a very effective trade network and if there was a
market for bear by-products like bear furs, there were probably specialists
who made a living looking for them, along with other wild fauna.  And that
would say that while members of the community might have seen the bear, they
may have seen a lot more of what was left of the bear - while there were
still bears around.

Stefan Georg's turnaround on the taboo (hunter not wanting bear to be
forewarned) does suggest that the taboo might have applied anyway.  Having
engaged in such mesolithic activities, I know that my belief in luck went up
sharply when the trail got cold.

Regards,
Steve Long


From xdelamarre at siol.net  Tue Mar  7 06:51:48 2000
From: xdelamarre at siol.net (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 07:51:48 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0003061206280.14979637-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.075148.0100.>

I wrote:

>> As for Finnish _karhu_, I have proposed (_Historische Sprachforschung_ 105,
>> 1992, pp 151-54) that it could be a loan from a Proto-Aryan form
>> _*harkSas_,

Ante Aikio wrote :

>I was not aware of this etymology. It sounds phonologically quite
>well possible; the only thing one could object to is Aryan *-as > Finnic
>*-u (why not Finnish karhas : karhaa- ?). But this is not a big problem, I
>guess - e.g., back-formation of non-attested karhas seems possible.

I have adressed this question in my article, but not in a very satisfying
manner, proposing a back-formation, like you. I think now a more obvious
solution would be to see the -u of karhu as a reflex of the Aryan ending
-o: of the thematic nominative (cf the Avestan & O.ind. treatment  -o: of
the ending -as) ; but we have the counter-exemples of _porsas_, _taivas_
(against _orpo_, _arvo_), maybe a question of time when the loans were made
(those in -as being earlier than those in -o/-u).

>>. "Eurasian" is a wide concept - what do you mean, more precisely?

I only mean that the IE were, since remote times, in close contact with the
Uralic tribes, that is somewhere in present Russia (so, let us say Eastern
Europe rather than Eurasia)

>> The funny thing is that we have a Finnish word _tarvas_ designating
>> big cervidae, which shows the same metathesis as Celtic (whereas there is
>> none in Aryan, Baltic & Germanic). But it may be pure coincidence or we
>> have to postulate that the loan was made somewhere in present Russia,
>> before (Proto-)Celts entered Central Europe.

>The Finnish metathesis is independent of the Celtic one. Actually,
>Pre-Finnish *wr > Finnic / Finnish rv seems to be a regular sound law -
>there are no counterexamples, and several Baltic loan words have undergone
>the same sound shift (e.g. Finnish torvi 'horn (instrument)', Finnish
>karva 'hair (not on head)', cf. Lithuanian taure~, gau~ras). Finnish
>tarvas is thus < *tawras < Baltic.

Thank you for the information, I did not know this law. What comparative
grammar  do you use ? (I have Laanest's "Einf?hrung" and I have been
looking for years for Hakulinen's "Rakenne & Kehitys", out-of-print,
introuvable).

X. Delamarre
Ljubljana


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Mar  7 16:30:15 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 09:30:15 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.093015.0700.>

[Steve Long wrote]
>> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
>> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
>> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

[Joat Simeon replied]
> -- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
> perhaps?

There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late term to
develop in color vocabulary.  It does not mean that there are no brown
things or that the the speakers of these languages are deficient in their
visual acuity, but only that the basic terms for color cover a wider range
of hues than in languages with a word for 'brown'.  Typically, 'brown' as a
primary color term is found only in languages that have already developed
white/light, black/dark, red, yellow, blue, and green as primary terms.  In
languages without a primary 'brown' term, brown things are typically
described with words like 'dark', 'dark red', 'red', 'yellow', 'dark
yellow', 'dirt-colored', 'rock-colored', and probably even 'bear-colored'.
In Panamint, for example, the word commonly translated 'brown' is a
derivative of the word for 'yellow'.  Many African languages, for example,
also lack 'brown' as a basic color term.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 19:23:57 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 11:23:57 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <30.1fc775a.25f0c0ea@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.112357.0800.>

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote on the subject of bears
and how they have been named:

> Being one of those who don't think that there was an any actual word for
> 'brown" in Latin or Greek, much less PIE, I'd like to suggest a much more
> prosaic scenario for words like 'bear.'

Let's all remember that the word for "bear" is firmly reconstructible, based on
Skt. _r.ks.as_, Gk. _arktos_, Latin _ursus_, etc., as *r.tkos, with the well-
known "thorn" metathesis, and that only *one* group, the speakers of Proto-
Germanic, renamed the bear as "brown one" (just as the Proto-Slavic community
renamed him as "honey-eater").

So the question that arises is not whether PIE had a colour term "brown"
(almost certainly not), but whether Proto-Germanic did.  I have no opinion on
the topic, just want to keep straight who and what language we are discussing.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 23:20:45 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 15:20:45 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0003060939470.14979637-100000@paju.oulu.fi>
 (message from Ante Aikio on Mon, 6 Mar 2000 09:43:09 +0200)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.152045.0800.>

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Ante Aikio (anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi) wrote:

> There's a similar semantic shift in e.g. Finnish puna 'red color' < *'fur'
> (its cognates mean 'hair', 'fur', 'wool').

Is it the basic term for _red_ in Finnish?  Or is there another, so that only
certain things get labeled _puna_?  (Cf. horse-hide terms in English such as
_bay_, _dun_, _chestnut_, and so on.)

								Rich Alderson


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Mar  7 05:48:19 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 00:48:19 EST
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.004819.EST.>

In a message dated 3/6/2000 6:32:12 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

>Being an outsider to serious PIE work, where do the earliest attested
>Indo-European languages and PIE fall on the Berlin and Kay color scale?
>This is an important thing to know before discussing whether 'bear' >
>'brown' or vice versa.  Ultimately, 'brown' should be traced to something
>non-color (since it's a VERY late color term to develop), but did this
>happen before, during, or after PIE?  If there isn't a full range of
>white/light, black/dark, red, yellow, green, and blue, then we can't really
>expect 'brown' and perhaps the PIE term reconstructed 'brown' might better
>be reconstructed 'bear' with the understanding that the development of
>'bear-colored' to 'brown' might be very early....

>To reiterate my earlier questions, where do the earliest IE languages stand
>on the Berlin and Kay scale?  Where does PIE stand?

Some points about Berlin and Kay might be helpful here.

1. The original B&K conclusion in Basic Color Terms (1969) was - if you had
11 or less color terms in your language, they would be present pretty much in
the same order no matter what the language was - or at least for the speakers
of the original 98 living languages they studied.  These are from some notes:
 <<eleven psychophysically defined colours serve as the perceptual focal
points of all the basic colour words in all the languages of the world. This
set of eleven psychophysically defined percepts thus constitutes a
substantive semantic universal... B&K found that words for the basic colours
arose in different languages in a particular sequence: so all languages with
only two basic colour words have words for black and white; languages with
exactly three basic colour words have words for black, white and red and so
on. They interpret this ordering as an evolutionary one.>>

I see B&K had brown as #7, after blue, so that if you had seven or more
"basic color terms" in your language, you'd have brown.

2.  B & K based all categorization on what they felt defined "basic color
terms", so there were a lot of languages that didn't get as high as level 7
brown - mostly non-European languages - and I see that in my notes that much
to my surprise they included "Homeric Greek" and made it a "stage IIIb level
language" (only four BCT's - not brown).  How many Homeric Greeks they tested
those color chips on I do not know.

3. B&K were hit heavy by conventional researchers - and even innatists had
problems with their not taking proper account of the rods and cones.  But the
heaviest hit came from the experimentalists on methodological grounds. The
targeted article was Saunders, B. A. C. & van Brakel, J. (1997). Are there
nontrivial constraints on colour categorization? Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 20 (2):167-228, and a whole series followed.

I have this note as summarizing the state of the dialogue by "Gammack and
Denby": "Classic previous studies motivated by a search for universals
constraining color terms (Berlin & Kay, 1969) have, however, had their
methodology criticized. Saunders and Van Brakel's (1997) target article and
the associated critical responses gives a good status report on the major
arguments. Berlin and Kay's later studies make some slight concessions, but
Kay and Berlin (1997) maintain the essence of their original position on
universals. The unreliability of naming as a dependent variable is one major
problem, and so attempting to design studies around some objectively
comparable standards is preferred. Colour sensations "number in excess of
7,000,000 ... [color names] are of infinite variety" (Cohen, 1969)."

4. My big problem with B&K is that they used solid-color chips.  That treats
color not as a feature of an object, but as an independent thing in itself.
This is a modern convention - a result of the color spectrum and pigment
technology - and not the way ancients saw these things until pigmentation and
color analysis became sophisticated.  (Homer didn't use the word <chroma> and
he never used a noun for a specific color - it was always an adjective or a
physical stain.  <Chroma> was a metaphorical adaption of a word for skin used
by the later Greek natural philosophers.  Words for pigments, <pharma>, mix,
I believe, were even more clearly derived from the specific sources of those
pigments.)

5.  I suppose that all 11 "basic color terms" might be reconstructed back to
*PIE, but this would really feel like an anachronism.  Just like with
wheel-words, you might find they are all there in one IE language or another.
 But the historical "semantics" just don't seem to support that with colors
at all.

Anyway - hope this helps.

Regards,
Steve Long


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar  7 09:11:39 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 14:41:39 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.144139.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Monday, 06 March, 2000 4:34 PM

I would like to comment on the following statement by Steve Long:

> You see, my guess has always been that there is NOTHING in comparative
> linguistics that in some scientific way clearly DISPROVES Renfrew's dates.
> And although professional impressions have weight, they cannot be dispositive
> on scientific issues.  Nothing so far has scientifically disproven Renfrew's
> dates.

It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory). After
all, any word in a language can be a loanword, therefore - in principle -
the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
roots. The main question is: how likely is it that such borrowings /
derivations happened independently from each other, often in languages far
removed from each other?

Let me concentrate on the word for horse in Latin: equus.

Where do you think it comes from? Let me assume that you accept the reality
of PIE - if you don't, it is difficult to continue any kind of debate. So -
I can think of four possibilities:

------------------------------------------------------
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION ONE:

Equus is derived linearly, with one generation of speakers following
another, from a PIE word reconstructed by linguists as *ek^uos.

Here, k^ stands for a velar or palatal voiceless stop that was subject to
satemization in the "satem" languages; I am ignoring the possibility of an
initial laryngeal, which - not being reflected in any daughter language - is
not relevant here. Now, if this etymological explanation is correct, the
word *ek^uos or its linear descendants all the way to 'equus' must have
existed at all stages in the development of PIE > Latin, as - before the
invention of writing and written traditions - there was no way for words to
disappear and then reappear in a language, unless by borrowing (for which
see later).

If this was the case, the word must have referred to something, presumably
to a horse-like creature. The problem is that there is no evidence of
horses, wild or domesticated, in Italy before the Polada culture (ca. 2600
BC, if I am not mistaken). If Renfrew's Indo-Europeans arrived in Italy
around 5000 BC, or even earlier, they presumably encountered no horses
there. Actually, there is no evidence for horses at the time in the areas
that they had come from according to Renfrew, namely Greece or the Balkan
peninsula. So: what did *ek^uos refer to? Either a mythical beast, or the
donkey (were there actually donkeys around?), or maybe the sheep or the cow?

I don't like any of these explanations, and I find it hard to believe that
when the pre-Latins encountered the horse after 2600 BC, they pointed at it
and said: aha, here is this mythical beast that our ancestors in Anatolia
called 'equos', nice to find it again after so many millennia. Or,
alternatively, they said: let's call it 'equos' after the donkey, which it
resembles somewhat, now all we have to do is invent a word for the donkey,
not to confuse the two. Good thing that the word 'asinos' is around, applied
to - say - the deer, now we have to find a word for the 'deer'. A nice chain
reaction, there.  [You'll notice that I presume that the ending -os had not
yet become -us, because this is a historically attested phonetic change that
occurred during the 1st millennium BC].

The only weakness in this argument is that maybe horses were present in
Italy at the time, we have just found no evidence for them. I ask
archaeologists: is this likely? Italy is well covered by archaeological
sites from many eras - if horses were there before 2600 BC (at first only in
the extreme north), is it likely that their bones would be consistently
missing from before 2600 BC, while present in ever increasing numbers
afterwards?

----------------------------------------------------------------

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION TWO

The word "equus" in Latin is an independent creation, possibly from the root
that gave also 'ocior' (faster). The fact that Old English had "eoh",
Sanskrit "asvas" is irrelevant - by chance these languages have relied on
their own derivational resources to end up with a similar word for horse.

I will not spend time refuting this possibility - it is too absurd.

----------------------------------------------------------------

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION THREE

The word "equus" is ultimately a loanword in Latin - it was borrowed from an
IE language spoken north of the Alps at the same time (or later than) the
animal itself was introduced into Italy.

This explanation is not impossible, and it would not contradict Renfrew. The
main problem is that there are far too many words associated with the early
Bronze Age and Sherratt's Secondary Products Revolution that would have to
have been borrowed around the same time. Not impossible, but unlikely - at
least in my opinion.

A modification of this theory would have other IE languages borrowing the
word from Italy - this strikes me as extremely unlikely, seeing that the
domestication of the horse is in any case associated with the area north of
the Black Sea.

---------------------------------------------------------------

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOUR

I can think of a fourth explanation, one that would not completely destroy
Renfrew's theory, but modify it: Renfrew could be right as far as PIE
(Anatolia) > PIE (Balkans), but then the Italic languages would have been
introduced later into Italy from the north or the northeast, say as
derivatives of the Baden culture. These people would have had the horse,
which would have came to them by diffusion from the east together with its
name.

This explanation would not exclude an earlier strain of IE speakers in Italy
(with no name for the horse), who would have come in as Renfrew indicates,
and who would have supplied Latin and the other Italic languages with an IE
substratum. Such a substratum might well have supplied Latin with the many
words with "unetymological" a: quattuor, canis, manere etc.

--------------------------------------------------------------

A nice hypothesis, this last one - and, maybe, one pointing in the direction
of eventually reconciling Renfrew and Gimbutas. After all, the Kurgan theory
has no very convincing hypothesis for the prehistory of the PIE speakers -
they might have come from the Balkans, in which case the neolithic
revolution in Europe would have introduced languages closely related to, or
even ancestral to, what we know as PIE.

But I leave all this to another posting.

Best wishes to everyone,

Gabor Sandi


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Tue Mar  7 17:19:24 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 10:19:24 -0700
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <q572csclmcotc1q531cfd3p8pdnqcdhjpj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.101924.0700.>

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote]

> That's OK.  Subjective valorations of differences between
> languages/dialects can't be made with a granularity smaller than
> 500 years or so (even that may be too fine).

Actually, it's not.  The earliest known recording of Comanche dates from
1786 in a treaty signed with the governor of New Mexico.  The Comanche names
are recorded there in a Spanish orthography and reveal that, at that time,
Comanche and Eastern Shoshoni had identical phonologies.  There are enough
Comanche names in the document (with Spanish translations of the meaning) to
find nearly all of the diagnostic phonological markers that separate Modern
Comanche from Modern Eastern Shoshoni and see that none of the Comanche
changes had happened yet.  Also present are a number of archaic Shoshoni
morphemes that Modern Comanche has lost or changed.  In a Comanche word list
collected in a French orthography in 1828, a few of the phonological changes
in Comanche had taken effect, and there are fewer archaic words.  In an
extensive Comanche dictionary recorded in a Spanish-based orthography in
1861, all the changes that separate Modern Comanche from Eastern Shoshoni
have taken place and there is much less archaic vocabulary.  There are other
Comanche word lists and documents recorded in the much less adequate English
orthography (all workers in Native America dread working with nineteenth
century English-orthography word lists), but the first list based on a
phonetic alphabet is a body of texts from 1901.  I have found only one
archaic form in that body of texts (for Coyote, of course) and the phonology
is completely modern.  The nature of the evidence is quite good and clearly
shows that Comanche differentiated from Eastern Shoshoni (the two are only
about as mutually intelligible as Spanish and Portuguese) within the 500
year boundary claimed by Miguel.  We can state with confidence that the
distinction is only on the order of about 200 to 250 years (possibly up to
300, but definitely not any more than that).  These two languages are also
not differentiated on a dialect level, but on a full language level--there
are major phonological, morphological, and syntactic differences between the
two.  Comanche speakers generally say that they can understand a little
Shoshoni if they live among them for a couple of months, but the reverse is
not true.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 23:56:00 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 15:56:00 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <q572csclmcotc1q531cfd3p8pdnqcdhjpj@4ax.com> (message from Miguel
 Carrasquer Vidal on Sat, 04 Mar 2000 15:56:40 +0100)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.155600.0800.>

On Sat, 04 Mar 2000, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (mcv at wxs.nl) wrote:

> Indo-Aryan and Iranian must have lost most contact at least 500 years before
> the earliest texts on historical grounds (not that there's much consensus on
> the historical trajectories or even the dating of the earliest texts).

Indeed there is not.  At one time, I corresponded for several weeks with a
gentleman working on his dissertation in the area of early Persian history (or
religion, it was never quite clear which), who was arguing that Zarathustra was
a Vedic-period reformer trying to introduce a sense of sin to marauding cattle
thieves/young warriors.  (This was several years ago, on the alt.zoroastrianism
newsgroup.  I doubt that it was archived anywhere.)

I would put the similarities between Vedic and Gathic at much less than 500
years, but then, you knew that.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  8 01:42:08 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:42:08 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
In-Reply-To: <d.2425118.25f4eac9@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.174208.0800.>

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> Well, even my quote given above includes a pretty good indication of what
> kind of difference I was talking about <<roughly 4000 years separates
> non-Anatolian PIE from Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin
> (500BC)>>

The original text reads "Following Renfrew, roughly 4000...", which I of course
ignored in answering the (to me) *real* question, which was (from his earlier
post):

>> How 'differentiated' are those three languages?  On a scale of 1 to 10?

The answer to this question *should* lead one to question, strongly, Renfrew,
but apparently it does not, as witness the following:

> You see, my guess has always been that there is NOTHING in comparative
> linguistics that in some scientific way clearly DISPROVES Renfrew's dates.
> And although professional impressions have weight, they cannot be dispositive
> on scientific issues.  Nothing so far has scientifically disproven Renfrew's
> dates.

[ ... ]

> I haven't found a single instance of anything resembling an objective,
> reproducible method of measuring time/difference in languages.  If it is an
> art, that is fine.  But then the objection to Renfrew's dates are artistic,
> not scientific.

Under this regimen, Renfrew's dates are artistic as well, as he has no evidence
for his claim that the Neolithic farming spread is to be equated with that of
the Indo-European languages.  So let's be honest about what we're rejecting,
and why.

> (I have found exceptions to what I've just written in the textbooks, but they
> all deal with glottochronology - e.g., Robert Lee's formula for calculating
> 'time depth' given by Lehmann (1992, p.176) at least attempts to quantify
> elements and just as importantly offers reproducibility and a measure of
> possible error - requirements these days in real science.)

It has been demonstrated, time and again, as each generation re-discovers the
mistake that was glottochronology, that there is no possible measure of rate of
change in language.  Take the two grossest examples with which I am familiar,
Greenlandic Eskimo and Icelandic:  The rate of lexical retention in the former
is 40% loss per century, in the latter 0%.

Real science, these days or any other, requires that things measured actually
be mensurable.  Rate of change in language is not.

> In this context, the persistent use of examples of cognates to prove some
> kind of time relationship is very troubling.

The "persistent use of examples" was due to a massive misunderstanding of what
it was you were actually asking (due, in part, of course, to a rejection of
some of your premises as untenable).  The reason for using those examples, and
any others, is to show how similar these languages are without having to teach
a full year course in Indo-European comparative phonology and morphology, as
that was the question as understood ("How 'differentiated' are those three
languages?"  "Not all that much.")

> When I brought up the fact that its the differences that should be measured
> and that agnis/ignis does not occur in Mycenaean or Hittite and that thay is
> the key difference, I got the following reply:

What you actually *asked* (Tue, 22 Feb 2000), and I noted that my answer was a
tacky cop-out, was:

>>> Does Mycenaean decline 'fire' the same similar way as Latin and Sanskrit?
                   ^^^^^^^
>>> Does Hittite?

> On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:48:36 -0800, Rich Alderson wrote:
> <<The answer to the question *as posed* is "Within the bounds of phonological
> change in the individual languages, yes, Mycenaean and Hittite decline their
> words for 'fire' similarly to Latin and Sanskrit. That is one of the defining
> characteristics of the IE family, after all."

and I stand by that answer.  The *declension*, that is to say, the *nominal
morphology*, of the different words for _fire_ in the four languages, is very
much the same.  What you *wanted* to ask, and did not, was whether or not the
*same lexical item* occurred in all four languages.  So it was a smart-ass
answer to an unintended question, for which I should be ashamed.

> I'll take that as a measure of time/difference, if by thae above it was meant
> that the 'phonological change in the individual languages' was going to be
> equated to a reproducible, objective meausre of time and change in languages.
> Yes, that is what I meant to ask.

No, the "phonological change in the individual languages" was not, and is not,
and never will be, "equated to a reproducible, objective meausre of time and
change".  Rather, it was a nod to the fact that the languages in question have
undergone some changes that happen to make the nominal endings opaque to the
non-specialist viewer.

> And the next question I'd have is how long does it take to come up with an
> -xi conjugation - which I understand to be a real difference between Hittite
> and the languages it is being compared to.

I assume you mean the hi-conjugation, and the answer is that there is no way to
know.  We have to explain the creation of the hi-conjugation, but we don't have
to say when it was created.  And the parts that go into it already existed in
PIE:  The stative ("perfect") endings, the *-i deictic ("here and now") also
seen in the so-called primary endings, the notion of adding the deictic to
past-time forms to create present-time forms.  So it could have been created
the Tuesday before the first Hittite text was written down--or it could have
existed from time immemorial in the Indo-European Ursprache and only have been
retained in Hittite.  But its simple existence tells us nothing either way.

I'll ask you a similar question in your own field, to show you why it is
meaningless:  What does the creation of the Clovis point tell us about when a
Neanderthal decided to put flowers in the gravesite at Shanidar?

> In the same post, I was quoted:
>>> Well, it seems that Anatolian is in the picture when the evidence helps,
>>> but x.not when it doesn't.

> The defense offered was:

>> But that's the way of *all* evidence in *every* discipline:  If there's
>> nothing to be said by a particular witness, you don't bother to call her to
>> the stand.

> Unfortunately, that is not true when the witness has contrary evidence to
> offer.  In many disciplines, failing to call her might then be considered
> falsifying.

[ ... ]

> There is much contradictory evidence here.

None of the evidence you have cited contradicts what linguists have to say
about Renfrew's dating, no matter how little you may like to hear that.

> I'm only contradicting the statement that Renfrew's dates are 'impossible'
> given the linguistic evidence.  At this point I can say that certainly is not
> true, by any scientific standard.

Renfrew's dates *are* impossible, by any scientific standard you care to name:
He has no evidence for any of his claims about the linguistic heritage of the
Neolithic farmers, only his own belief that migrations don't happen so this
*must* be what happened.

You, of course, don't see it that way, and don't see why anyone would see it
any other, so there's really no reason to continue to discuss the point.

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:54:25 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:54:25 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.235425.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>I don't know enough Gathic Avestan (or Yorkshire dialect) to decide (and my
>Vedic Sanskrit and Texan aren't that much better either).

-- I forge ahead fearlessly on a basis of very limited knowledge... 8-).
Consider, though, that speakers of both groups used the same ethnonym for
themselves.  I think it's plain that there was a dialect continuum across the
Iranian plateau and into Afghanistan and the Punjab.  Avestan itself shows,
of course, differences from Old Persian, a southwestern dialect within the
Indo-Iranian continuum; it was geographically as well as linguistically
closer to Sanskrit.

However, even by about 1000 BCE -- taking a late date for Vedic Sanskrit and
an early one for the Gathas -- lexical similarities must still have been
obvious even to an illiterate speaker of either:

Eg.,

Sanskrit                    Avestan

ajati                       azaiti          drives
bhratar                     bratar          brother
tuvam                       tuvem           thou
hanti                       jainti          strikes
na                          na              man
janu                        zanu            knee

-- and so forth.  Likewise, verbal morphology was still very strongly
similar; yajai/yajai for "I honor".

In a sentence like "I honor the man who strikes thee on the knee" slowly, a
speaker of either would be able to follow someone from the other.
Particularly with a little practice.

This is not the case for most Germanic languages now, for instance; but it
_is_ the case for, say, Dutch and Afrikaans, or the more divergent dialects
of English.  That gives a "200-800" year comparison.

Admittedly I'm not deeply familiar with either language, but it does look as
if one can be fairly easily 'transposed' into the other with an "accent".

>Indo-Aryan and Iranian must have lost most contact at least 500 years before
>the earliest texts on historical grounds

-- not really.  In the late Bronze/early Iron Age the whole area between the
Zagros and the Ganges was inhabited by people who called themselves "Aryans",
worshipped (roughly) the same set of deities, and spoke closely related
dialects.  And they were plainly intrusive in the whole area south of the
Oxus.  The ones who influenced the language of Mitanni were plainly
Indo-Aryans specifically, but of a much more primitive strata than those who
composed the Rig-Veda, which strongly suggests that they preceeded the
Iranians proper on the Iranian plateau.

>From the evidence, I'd place the period of Indo-Iranian linguistic unity
sometime around 2000 BCE with significant differentiation still minor by
about 1500 BCE, and with Proto-Indo-Iranian emerging from "eastern dialects
of PIE" sometime around 2500 BCE, when it was still in close enough contact
with Balto-Slavic for the spread of innovations like satemization.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar  7 12:11:58 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 14:11:58 +0200
Subject: possessive [form of a] pronoun
In-Reply-To: <af.163a313.25f09771@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.141158.0200.>

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

>Bob Whiting has widened our set of examples. He thereby brought
>up yet another wholly new line of argument, which was not covered
>by preceding messages.

>I still refer back to the message "possessive [form of a]
>pronoun" for the parallelism which it *did* contain, and which is
>strongly supported by more detailed considerations, as shown
>below.

First of all, I was surprised to see that message posted since
the moderator pulled the plug on this discussion on 3 October
1999.  And I wouldn't have replied to it except for the fact that
the poster promised not to respond (but I should have known
better).

The moderator was quite correct to stop the discussion because it
was another terminological discussion that could have been
resolved by simply consulting an up-to-date reference book.  The
discussion centered around the fact that possessive pronominal
determiners are not possessive pronouns and that therefore it is
improper to call possessive pronominal determiners possessive
pronouns because syntactically determiners are not pronouns
(although there is often a close semantic relationship and many
determiners can also function as pronouns).

Larry Trask has pointed out that general dictionaries are often
not up-to-date on grammatical terminology and therefore not to be
trusted as sources of definitions.  However, I find that, despite
some inconsistencies and overgeneralizations, 'my' dictionary
(Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged, 1994) is quite strong in this
area so I provide the following definitions from that source
which will be needed in the following discussion:

     determiner 2. Gram. a member of a subclass of English
     adjectival words that limits the nouns it modifies in a
     special way and that usually is placed before descriptive
     adjectives, as _a_, _an_, _the_, _your_, _their_.

     pronoun Gram. any number of a small class of words found in
     many languages that are used as replacements or substitutes
     for a wide variety of nouns and noun phrases, and that have
     very general reference, as _I_, _you_, _he_, _this_ _who_,
     _what_.  Pronouns are sometimes formally distinguished from
     nouns, as in English by the existence of special objective
     forms, as _him_ for _he_, or _me_ for _I_, and by
     nonoccurrence with an article or adjective.

     possessive 4. Gram. indicating possession, ownership,
     origin, etc.  _His_ in _his book_ is a possessive adjective.
     _His_ in _The book is his_ is a possessive pronoun.

     genitive _Gram. --adj. 1. (in certain inflected languages)
     noting a case used primarily to indicate that a noun is a
     modifier of another noun, often to express possession,
     measure, origin, characteristic, etc., as _John's hat_,
     _man's fate_, _week's vacation_, _duty's call_.  2. noting
     an affix or other element characteristic of this case, or a
     word containing such an element.  3. similar to such a case
     form in function or meaning.

     adjective 1. Gram. any member of a class of words that in
     many languages are distinguished in form, as partly in
     English by having comparative and superlative endings, or by
     functioning as modifiers of nouns, as _good_, _wise_,
     _perfect_.

Probably not even Larry T. would find much to dispute in these
defintions (although I wait to be corrected), except for the more
or less interchangeable use of adjective and determiner.  Larry
has argued that determiners are not adjectives because they can't
fill the same slots.  Specifically, he pointed out that the slot
'the ______ book' cannot be filled by a determiner but can be
filled by an adjective.  This, however, is the only restriction
on use, and for the rest of their ranges determiners and
adjectives are coextensive although there are other distinctions
between determiners and adjectives (e.g., determiners do not have
comparative and superlative forms).  I would prefer to categorize
determiners as a subclass of adjectives, rather than saying that
determiners are not adjectives.

The restriction in use comes from the fact that determiners of
various classes are mutually exclusive within their classes.
While one can have as many coordinate adjectives in an NP as one
wants, an NP can have only one determiner of a particular class
at any particular level.  Thus a slot like 'I like ______ books'
can be filled by either a determiner ('I like the books', 'I like
his books', 'I like some books') or (any number of) adjectives
('I like long, interesting, inexpensive books') or even a
determiner and any number of adjectives ('I like some long,
interesting, inexpensive books') while a slot like 'the ______
book' already contains a determiner in the NP and thus cannot
have another of the same class.  If a determiner and adjectives
are used together, the determiner normally precedes all
adjectives.

>First, I am not knowingly trying to mislead anyone,
>despite Bob Whiting's claim:

Then perhaps you are at your best (or worst) when you aren't
trying.

>>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form
>>where the determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are
>>isomorphic.

>Not so, though I should not have to defend myself against
>such a groundless ad-hominem assertion.

You are still responsible for what you say and do, regardless of
whether you did it knowingly or not.

>(The Postscript notes that I normally do just the reverse of that!)

>I *did* choose the word "his" deliberately because unlike some of
>the other genitive forms ("determiners", as many call them), it
>does look more like an apostrophe-s form.

I don't believe this!  You are telling me (and the whole list)
that, after having badgered Larry Trask for almost a year with
claims that his selection criteria for Basque words *could* bias
his conclusions, you have deliberately [your word] selected your
data specifically for its bias towards your conclusions?  Shame on
you.  As far as doing scientific work is concerned, I am afraid that
we are simply on two different planets.  I regard knowing how data
selection can bias results as a way of avoiding it myself or
recognizing it when others do it.  You seem to see it as a way of
deciding which method to use when you want to demonstrate that
your conclusions are correct.  Constantly questioning the motives
and methods of others while steadfastly refusing to examine your
own is simply the height of arrogance.

>But I did not choose it because of homonymy between
>determiner (my) and pronominal (mine) forms: (his, his).
>I was not at all concerned with the pronominal forms
>(his, hers, mine, yours, ours, theirs).
>Bob Whiting's examples involve such pronominal forms,
>but my examples did not involve them.
>So there was nothing to "slide past" anyone.

The fact that the fault that you were accused of did not happen
to be the actual fault that you practiced does not exonerate
you.  It is rather like being charged with driving 60 mph in a 25
mph zone and claiming in your defense that you weren't going a
bit over 50.

I claimed that the choice of 'his' biased the data sample in
favor of your conclusion.  I am willing to accept your claim that
the reason I gave for why this was true (the determiner and the
pronoun are isomorphic) never occurred to you.  But this does not
change the fact that the selection of 'his' as the data sample
does bias the conclusion.  Since you admit that you chose 'his'
for this very purpose, the specific reason why it biases the
conclusion is immaterial.

But if that was your reasoning then there are a number of
compelling reasons why you made a poor choice.  Given this line
of reasoning, the obvious choice for an example is 'its' because:

     (1) 'its' looks much more like an apostrophe-s form than
     'his' does (I cannot remember ever seeing anyone write
     <he's> for <his>, but I constantly see <it's> for the
     pronominal determiner <its>).

     (2) 'its' is used only as a pronominal determiner in
     English, not as a possessive pronoun.  Therefore the
     possibility of confusing the determiner with the possessive
     pronoun does not exist.

     (3) 'his' is the *only* personal pronoun where the
     determiner and the possessive pronoun are isomorphic.
     *All* of the other determiner:possessive pronoun pairs use
     different forms for the different functions (my:mine,
     you:yours, her:hers, its:--, our:ours, their:theirs).

In short, your example only works if you use 'his'.  This is the
only way that you can get 'the man we met yesterday's' to always
map to 'his' and thus justify your equation.  If you use 'the
woman we met yesterday's' it sometimes maps to 'her' and
sometimes to 'hers'.

>If you add to the following examples I used the specification
>that *we are talking about the determiner use of "his, my, etc"*,
>which was certainly the context in which I was writing
>(and please note that Larry Trask had also not been discussing
>"mine" etc., and said so in response to Pat Ryan)...

Nobody knows what you are thinking unless you say what you think.
One can only determine what you mean from what you write.
Personally, I think it is rather fanciful to expect listmembers
to remember the context of a discussion that was killed by the
moderator six months ago.  And please note that possessive
pronouns like 'mine', etc. were not being discussed because
everyone agrees that they are possessive pronouns.  What was
being discussed was the relationship between the possessive
pronominal determiners and the possessive pronouns and the
question was "if the possessive pronouns are pronouns, why aren't
the pronominal determiners pronouns too?"  In this discussion,
the possessive pronouns are taken as given; but the question of
the relationship of the pronominal determiners to them is not
likely to be resolved by eliminating them from the discussion.

>Then there is no way of adding Bob Whiting's examples,
>because they do not fit that context.  Here were my examples,
>now extended only by adding a first-person example as well.

>> The relation:
>> he :: his
>[> or
>> I :: my   ]

>> is from syntactic and semantic points of view
>> essentially the same as the relation

>> the man we met yesterday :: the man we met yesterday's.

>This statement remains valid, as I think all linguists know.

Yes, so long as you restrict the context to the use of
determiners.  But any linguist will also tell you that "syntactic
and semantic" equivalence is the same as "functional"
equivalence, not the same as "formal" equivalence.  And
membership of words in classes is determined by function, not by
form (particularly in English with its general lack of
inflectional elements; perhaps less so in areas like Semitic
languages where form is very closely tied to function).  The
analogy shows that both NPs in the genitive and pronominal
determiners function as determiners, not that NPs in the genitive
are formally identical to possessive pronouns (despite your, as
you admit, deliberately choosing 'his' to suggest that they are).
Now pronominal determiners function as pronouns in that they can
be substituted for NPs.  But they can only be substituted for NPs
when the NP is being used as a determiner/adjective, not when the
NP is complete in itself.  But since they are then functioning as
determiners, they are pronominal determiners and not pronouns.
Is there anyone else who can't see the difference?

>A "syntactic and semantic" "relation" is not the same as a
>slot-filler word class.

If the "relation" is equivalence, then it is precisely the same.
Syntax is the rules by which forms can be combined to create
(grammatically correct) utterances.  Semantics is meaning, pure
and simple.  Thus "syntactic and semantic" equivalence of forms
means that the forms can replace one another in the same
combination of forms and still produce a grammatical utterance
without changing the meaning concept (but not necessarily the
specific meaning) of the utterance.  So all you are doing by
setting up analogies to demonstrate "syntactic and semantic"
equivalence and then not giving examples of the constructions is
creating the slots and then refusing to fill them.

>In the cases of "he", "I", and "the man we met yesterday",
>dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
>are as full noun phrases.
>In the cases of "his", "my", and "the man we met yesterday's ",
>dominant uses, and the use I exemplified,
>are as determiners of full noun phrases
>(referring by "determiner" here to function and positions
>of some occurrences, not to slot-filler word class).

By Jove, you've got it (except for the slot bit).  Determiner is
a functional class.  Determiners are not full NPs but modify NPs.
An NP in the genitive case can be used as a determiner.  A
pronoun can be substituted for an NP.  A determiner can be
substituted for (fill the same slot as) another determiner.  Hold
that thought.

>The latter are not full noun phrases in most usages, as we all agree

Precisely.  And since you state that Larry Trask has stated that
pronouns replace full noun phrases, what replaces these "not full
noun phrases" are not pronouns.  It's that simple.

>(though the third of these can be used also as a full noun
>phrase, in the more complex structures discussed below).

But in that case it can't be replaced by a pronominal determiner,
only by a possessive pronoun.

>End of main line of argument (again, and just as previously stated).

Except that this time your own explanation has shown how faulty
the conclusions based on this argument were and how the choice
of the data was made to support the conclusion.

>***

>Now as to the tangent, elaboration, or extension of range
>of the discussion to pronominal forms like "mine, yours, ...":

>Bob Whiting alleges that the lack of a complete parallel between
>forms shows that an equivalence of syntactic and semantic
>relations does not exist.

>This is not the case, as when we talk about word classes,
>determined by slot-filler criteria, we often find only partial
>equivalences. We even find that the surface form "this" can
>function both as a determiner and as a pronoun (as I think the
>participants in these discussions wish to call them).  So a
>relation "this :: this" functions syntactically and semantically
>equivalently to "my :: mine".  Merely one such asymmetry.

Yes, merely one.  Practically any deictic or quantifying
determiner can function also as a pronoun (this, that, some, any,
each, every, many, etc.).  And it is easy to tell how it is being
used.  If it is part of an NP it is a determiner and if it
replaces a full NP it is a pronoun. (Henceforth [d] and [p] will
be used to mark isomorphic determiners and pronouns
respectively.)

     Some[d] books are red, some[p] are blue, some[p] are black.

     Q:  Are all books red?
     A:  Not all of them are; some[p] are, some[p] aren't.
         This[d] one is red, those[p] are blue, and those[d]
         others are black.

And so on ad nauseum.  But since the usage can always be
determined from the environment, this distinction is not a
random, sporadic use of "this :: this", but rather it is a
predictable "this[d] :: this[p]" which functions syntactically
and semantically equivalently to (= fills the same slots as) "my
:: mine".  No asymmetry left.

>***

>Whiting's parallels were these:

>>This is the man we met yesterday's book.
>>This is the book of the man we met yesterday.

>>This is his book.
>>This is the book of he.*

>I find the fourth of these ungrammatical, of course.

Of course.  That's what the asterisk after it means.

>I also find the second one odd, *either* in possessive sense
>*or* in another sense which it might conceivably express,
>a book about the man we met yesterday.

There is also another sense, which apparently hasn't occurred to
you yet:  a book written by the man we met yesterday.

>For the possessive sense, the sense in the examples I had given,
>(note again that I had *not* given examples with pronominal
>usages),

Actually, you hadn't given any examples at all.  All you had
given was analogies of "syntactic and semantic" equivalence
without any examples of usage.  You created the slots but didn't
fill them.  Using 'his' in your analogies without giving usages
does not make it clear whether you are using the determiner or
the pronoun.  And saying that everyone should have known what you
were talking about from a six-month old context is taking a lot
for granted.

>I believe such a usage more normally occurs with a relative
>clause following, than in the simple form given by Whiting:

Whether a relative clause is to be expected after the NP or not
is determined by whether the head of the NP is definite or not so
the rest of this paragraph is just argumentum ad infinite
digression.

>This is the book of his   which we were talking about.
>This is the book of mine   which we were talking about.
>This is the book of John's   whih we were talking about.
>This is the book of the man we met yesterday's   which we were talking about.
>     [as opposed to the books belonging to the man we met yesterday
>     which we were not talking about]

>The "of..." phrase in each case has at least sometimes been treated
>as a transformation of something with a bit more concrete content:

>This is the book from among mine which we were talking about.
>This is the book from among John's which we were talking about.

>or even
>This is the book [which is mine] which we were talking about.
>This is the book [which is John's] which we were talking about.

[end of digression]

>We also have the following form, which to me is more colloquially normal
>with the apostrophe-s.  I believe it shows that, like "his",
>the form "the man we met yesterday's" *can* function
>either as modifier (parallel to "my")
>or *sometimes* as a full noun phrase (parallel to "mine").

Spot on again.  And the fact that we can determine which form has
to be used in a given environment shows that it is not a vague
"*sometimes*" but "under certain conditions".  But you have the
basic idea correctly stated: 'my' is a modifier, 'mine' is a
pronoun ("functions as a full noun phrase").  And this is the key
to the entire thing.  Pronouns do not act as modifiers.  If
something that looks like a pronoun acts as a modifier then it
isn't a pronoun any more.  It's a pronominal modifier.

>We then have a three-way relation,

And this is where you should have started in the first place.

>and although some may not prefer the terminology which
>immediately follows, I trust with the examples they will know
>what I am referring to:

I'm glad that you realize that the terminology is out of line.
Up to this point you have demonstated only that the second
category is a determiner, not a pronoun.  In fact, you have
rather conclusively shown that it is not a pronoun.  So labelling
it as a pronoun is what is known as petitio principii ("begging
the question").  You haven't proved that it is a pronoun, you
have begged the conclusion.

>The triple relations:

>(nominative pronoun; determiner genitive pronoun; possessive pronoun NP)

>he :: his :: his
>I :: my :: mine

>are equivalent to the triple relation:

>the man we met yesterday ::
>:: the man we met yesterday's :: the man we met yesterday's

>with some slippage that in certain contexts and styles,
>in the last triple relation,
>the first form may sometimes be used for the third form
>(but with stylistic marking and awkwardness of different forms
>for different speakers depending on additional details of the
>contexts...).
>The third of the forms in each of the relations above was *not*
>previously prominent in these discussions (except very briefly).

Which is why your bipartite scheme fell apart with a little
gentle prodding.  You claim that demonstrating that two
expressions are "syntactically and semantically" equivalent
proves that they are the same form.  I say that demonstrating
this proves that they have the same function.  Proving that two
things have the same functional relationship does not prove that
they have the same formal relationship.

You claim that since 'the man we met yesterday's' is the genitive
case of 'the man we met yesterday' then 'his' must be the
genitive case of 'he' because both have the same function (and
look: they both have <s> on the end).  This presupposes a proof
that expressions with the same function always have the same
form.  I know of no such proof.  It is simply a premise ex nihilo
bolstered by your choice of 'his' for your analogy because "it
does look more like an apostrophe-s form."

Now it is not terribly difficult to demonstrate fairly
conclusively that the pronominal determiners must be pronoun
forms (apart from the obvious formal similarity) and that they
must be genitive forms, but it requires the tripartite relational
system.

To simplify it and expand it to cover all the personal pronouns:

   NP   :: NP's[d] :: NP's
   I    :: me      :: mine
   you  :: your    :: yours
   he   :: his[d]  :: his[p]
   she  :: her     :: hers
   it   :: its     :: --
   we   :: our     :: ours
   they :: their   :: theirs

This scheme accounts for all the genitive uses of NPs.  Since
'NP's' is genitive and can be replaced by any form in the third
column the other members of the column must be pronouns (forms
that can be substituted for NPs).  Since pronouns can have cases,
the evidence all converges on the supposition that these members
of column three are the genitive forms of the personal pronouns,
especially since all the forms with the exception of the first
person singular end in '-s' which is characteristic of the
English genitive.  Note that this is different from going
directly to 'his' in column two (or even 'its') and claiming that
it must be the genitive because it has an '-s' ending and is
congruent with one (and only one) use of the genitive 'NP's'.

The next problem is to account for the forms in column two.
First, we note the transparent similarity (or even identity) of
the members of the second and third columns.  Next we note that
the heads of each of these columns are identical in form, but not
in function.  The head of column two occurs only when 'NP's' is
part of another NP (i.e., it modifies another noun or NP).  We
note that only when 'NP's' occurs in this environment can it be
replaced by another member of column two.  Members of column
three occur in all other environments where 'NP's' can occur.
Thus the members of columns two and three are in complementary
distribution since it can be predicted from the environment which
one must be used.

Any linguist will tell you that similar forms that are in
complementary distribution are most likely to be aspects of the
same form.  Thus it is highly likely that if the members of
column three are pronouns then the members of column two are also
pronoun forms.  Furthermore since both can replace only genitives
both are probably allomorphic variants of genitive pronoun forms.

This establishes that the members of column 2 are genitive
pronoun forms.  Fine, everyone says, but if they are pronoun
forms, why not just call them pronouns and be done with it?
Well, many people do.  In fact, 'my' dictionary classifies each
one of these forms as a pronoun (even though if you look at its
definition of 'determiner' you will see that it knows that they
are really determiners) and then goes on to note that they are
used as attributive adjectives.  And for the man in the street,
to whom grammar is something that he had to study in school, this
is sufficient.  If he considers these forms as pronouns used as
adjectives he will still be able to speak the language correctly.

Linguists (and some grammarians), however, are less concerned
with how to use *a* language than with how language works (please
note the difference between *a* language and language), so this
simplistic approach of "if it looks like a pronoun, it must be a
pronoun" is not sufficient.  For a linguist, words are classified
by what they do, not by how they look.  Pronouns do not act as
modifiers, so something that acts as a modifier can't be a
pronoun no matter how much it looks like a pronoun, or even if it
is transparently derived from a pronoun.

Now while these forms do have a pronominal function in that they
can replace NPs, they cannot replace just any NP.  They can only
replace NPs that are being used as modifiers.  Hence their
pronominal funcion is entirely subordinated to their function as
modifiers.  A few simple tests will show a linguist that the type
of modifier that these forms function as is a determiner so the
linguist will call them pronominal determiners.  Anyone can say
that 'her' is a pronoun to the man in the street and no one will
argue (and if someone does you can look it up in a dictionary and
"prove" that it is a pronoun).  But anyone who says that 'her'
is a pronoun to a linguist will be told "no, it is a determiner"
and if he persists in calling it a pronoun (and the linguist is
patient) the linguist will explain to him why it is a determiner.
The moral of the story is that if you want to talk to people, you
have to speak their language.

>I still plead to our list:
>Can we now stop trying to prove people are wrong in using
>traditional terminology?

And can we reject the use of arrogance as a hermenutic?

>It meant what it in fact referred to,
>and we all knew what it was intended by the author to refer to.
>Still does refer to just what it did before,
>not only for those who themselves use terms that way,
>but *also* for those who understand the terms that way
>while preferring themselves to use different terms!
>(And just as Larry Trask has pointed out that "pronoun" is an
>illogical term, because it refers to what are really "proNP"s,
>yet that we still use it successfully, so it can be the case for
>other traditional terminology.)

Terminology is important in linguistics, as it is in most
specialized disciplines.  One can use imprecise terminology as
much as one wants to in general discussions, but when one starts
talking about linguistics with linguists one should be prepared
to use linguistic terminology.

>Can we please rule out of order on this list any messages which
>go off into meta-analysis to prove someone wrong because
>of the terms they used,
>instead of dealing with the content of what we perfectly well
>know they were saying?

Not when the terms used affect the content.

>I thought that was the policy which our moderator declared
>sometime back?

And I thought that our moderator killed this discussion last
October for just that reason.  Or do we now have a new,
self-appointed moderator?

>Sincerely yours,
>Lloyd Anderson
>Ecological Linguistics

>***

>In response to Bob Whiting's ad-hominem, an incorrect one:
>>You have simply tried to slide one past us by using a form where the
>>determiner 'his' and the possessive pronoun 'his' are isomorphic.
>I may be *wrong* in some analysis I propose,
>but I don't try to "slide" things "past" anyone.
>Just the contrary, I tend to bring up counter-examples
>even to my own beliefs!
>People sometimes try to get me to shut up when we are on the same
>team, precisely because I do that, because they don't want me to
>present a more nuanced or balanced case.
>I always try to see all sides and especially do not want to overstate
>and have to retract something later!

I will simply let this stand on its own merits.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Tue Mar  7 14:00:59 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 08:00:59 -0600
Subject: -r passive archaic or innovating?
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.080059.0600.>

>In any case, what you may be remembering is that Celtic, Anatolian, and
>Tocharian all share all share a passive formation in /r/, as does Italic
>(and Phrygian?).  All four are also "centum"-languages.  The r-passive seems
>to be a shared retention of a fairly archaic formant.  Of course, this
>should not be interpreted to indicate any closer relationship between these
>languages in the PIE-period, beyond the fact that they were all
>centum-dialects.

>Sincerely,
>Jim Bilbro

It is, however, peculiar that in Hittite the -ri of the present tense -r
passive in innovating. Older Hittite medio-passives have the -ri optionally
tacked on. One scenario suggests the Old Hittite lost a final *-R passive,
then it began to be restored with the present -i as -ri. There is a nice
study by Yosida in the early 90s (?) that plots the progress of this new
-ri through historically dated Hittite texts, from OH without it to NH with
increasingly more uses of -ri in e.g., forms such as arta(ri) 'stands',
kisa(ri) 'becomes', esa(ri) 'sits', kitta(ri) 'lies' (cf. Greek keitai,
Sanskrit saye, sete).

Interesting that this *-R passive / middle, medio-passive got lost in OH
and everywhere except Italic, Celtic, Tocharian, and later Hittite. Holger
Pedersen and Annelies Kammenhuber thought that the opposite was true, that
this form, as many lexical items too argued for a closer relationship among
Hittite, Italic, Celtic, and Tocharian. A closer relationship among these
branches, of course, is problematic for an variant of an Indo-Hittite or
first branching off of Anatolian.

Carol Justus


From edsel at glo.be  Tue Mar  7 16:11:29 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:11:29 +0100
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.171129.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 2:16 AM

>> edsel at glo.be wrote:

>> Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that
>> can be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we
>> should be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

> -- people learn languages because they're useful.  In most contexts, there
> seems to be fairly limited emotional investment in them -- modern linguistic
> nationalism being an exception, of course.

[Ed]

That's a complete misunderstanding. There is huge difference between learning
another language for practical reasons (or in more modern times: out of
interest in other cultures, religion or what have you) and being forced to
abandon one's own language (and inevitably:culture). The latter invariably
involves a transition period of being second-class (or worse) citizens.

There is hardly anything people are so attached to as their own language and
culture. It is something that defines them. Recent studies have even shown that
this has an influence on how the brain gets 'wired' during early infancy.
Mother tongue affects the deepest levels of the way we perceive the world. Ask
those who study cognitive linguistics; there are several of them on this list.

> Even there, it's mostly political militants and bureaucrats who agitate such
> matters.

[Ed]

That's the theory of the linguistic majorities (social, numerical, political,
etc...). The fact is that ordinary people resent very much being treated as
somebody who can't speak properly.

> Eg., the continuing inexorable decline of Gaelic in Ireland has
> been completely unaffected by political intervention since the emergence of
> the Irish Free State, with its policy of promoting Gaelic by all possible
> means.

[Ed]

That's what happens when the original language loses its critical mass and
becomes the language of a minority: it is then beyond salvation in most cases.

Another case of this kind is Basque: only 25% of the Basque population (which
itself is 5% of the Spanish population) can speak it, and not many more
understand it. It happens after very long periods (centuries e.g.) of
domination by a powerful language community, during which active measures may
be taken to ban, eradicate, or degrade in status, etc. the original language.
The original population becomes 'barbarian natives' (a.Grk. barbaroi: those who
speak like "bar bar bar...", an unintelligible language of the uncivilized)

> Ordinary people seem to switch languages when circumstances make such change
> (a) possible and (b) a useful means of 'getting ahead'.

[Ed]

That is true, but it doesn't mean they like it. They do it because the
circumstances are not favorable to the use of their own language. Your (b) is a
typical case: underlying is social discrimination, unless...('If you can't beat
them, join them'). The 'glass ceiling' is not only a gender matter: it can also
be linguistically determined and has often been so throughout history. It is
absolutely not a modern invention. It has existed as long as peoples have
conquered or dominated in some way other peoples' lands and/or economies, but
we only know that for sure since writing was invented.

Ed. selleslagh


From jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au  Tue Mar  7 23:39:08 2000
From: jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au (Jon Patrick)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 10:39:08 +1100
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 04 Mar 2000 20:16:40 EST."
 <1e.23515a4.25f30f78@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.103908.1100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com    said

    -- people learn languages because they're useful.  In most contexts, there
    seems to be fairly limited emotional investment in them -- modern
    linguistic nationalism being an exception, of course.

    Even there, it's mostly political militants and bureaucrats who agitate
    such matters.

    Ordinary people seem to switch languages when circumstances make such
    change (a) possible and (b) a useful means of 'getting ahead'.

This is a very simplistic picture that belies the complexities of many
situations. For example in the Basque Country. The language was in retreat for
40 years with oppression from the franco regime where people were beaten for
using it, and now is in advance as a popular movement that is also supported
by basque government policies. Neither scenarios fit your picture.

Jon
---------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Jon Patrick			BH +61-2-9351 3524
Sybase Chair of Information Systems	FX +61-2-9351 3838
Basser Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sydney
Sydney, 2006	
NSW
Australia	    WEB: http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~jonpat
----------------------------------------------------------


From ECOLING at aol.com  Tue Mar  7 16:17:52 2000
From: ECOLING at aol.com (ECOLING at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 11:17:52 EST
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.111752.EST.>

What I believe I was remembering, and would fit the subject of
my question (Italic close to Slavic?) was something concerning the
membership in verbal conjugation classes, Latin a:/e:/short-e/i:-stems,
and matches in Slavic or elsewhere (where else if so?).
That also might be an archaism,
and it might therefore suggest nothing about a family tree,
but it could also be a reflection of significant dialect-network areas
in early PIE or IE, in a framework in which we consider such
dialect areas to be potentially of importance alongside or instead of
family tree views.  That is, stated much more precisely,
the kind of question I was asking.

Thanks for the mention of where the "r-passive" occurs:

In a message dated 3/7/2000 6:58:24 AM, jimbilbro at email.msn.com writes:

>In any case, what you may be remembering is that Celtic, Anatolian, and
>Tocharian all share all share a passive formation in /r/, as does Italic
>(and Phrygian?).  All four are also "centum"-languages.  The r-passive
>seems
>to be a shared retention of a fairly archaic formant.  Of course, this
>should not be interpreted to indicate any closer relationship between these
>languages in the PIE-period, beyond the fact that they were all
>centum-dialects.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 18:55:37 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 10:55:37 -0800
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
In-Reply-To: <009001bf84a6$3d4605e0$209f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.105537.0800.>

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) responded to my
statement of the preceding day:

>> The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this is one of the few
>> places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel developments: We
>> find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

>> This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing
>> ?*ul{k^w}i1 or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a
>> different outcome in Greek.

> But *u.lkwi2 has no outcome in Greek, does it?

Disingenuous.  The *suffix* in question has a number of occurrences, all with
a short alpha.

Note that there are occurrences of long alpha following iota, which are *not*
reflexes of this suffix, and which therefore show that something else is going
on here.

> And the Greek outcomes look like:

> -iH1 -> ie: -> i:; -H2 -> ia: -> ia; -iH3  -> -io:

I'm afraid not.  There is no evidence for either of your intermediate stages
with regard to H_1 or H_2.

								Rich Alderson


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Tue Mar  7 21:42:49 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 22:42:49 +0100
Subject: Latin word formation
In-Reply-To: <19.1a4cc24.25f30e59@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.224249.0100.>

Latin /de:bilis/ is mostly etymologized today as consisting of a privative
prefix /de:-/ (which also exists in Celtic), the root /be/ol-/ "power,
strength", as seen in skt. /bali/, and Slavic /bolIjI/ + a denominal suffix
-e/os.?

Now, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that the word formation displayed
here looks rather odd. Is anyone aware of parallels, i.e. de:- + nominal
root + -e/os ?
Is this formation pretty normal in Latin (Italic, Celtic, IE ...), or am I
right in finding it a bit fishy ? What about halfway parallels (de:- +
n.r., or n.r. + -e/os) ?

Grateful for any input, pointing me to paragraph 1 of the beginner's
handbook included.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:20:10 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:20:10 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.232010.EST.>

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>I could be wrong, but my own impression is that the Slavic-Iranian contacts
>are relatively recent (much like the Germanic-Celtic ones).  >>

-- there are contacts, and then again contacts.  Some of the Iranian
vocabulary in Slavic -- the word for "god" and the river-names of the Ukraine
-- would seem to be comparatively recent.  And, after all, the breakup of
Proto-Slavic is very recent, relative to that of the other large stocks.

On the other hand, other features -- satemization -- are undoubtedly much
earlier, Bronze Age at the latest.

This would point, I think, to at least intermittent contact between
Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian right from the splitup of the PIE dialect
cluster down to historic times.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:26:07 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:26:07 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.232607.EST.>

In fact, given the archaic characteristics of the Baltic and Slavic
languages, the lack of apparent substratal influence, and the high percentage
of their vocabulary which can be traced back to PIE, I would say that their
position (_at the earliest recorded periods_) would be indicative of the PIE
urheimat.

Not that it would be identical, but that it would be fairly close.

At the earliest historic attestation, Slavic is in what's now eastern Poland
and the northwestern Ukraine, with Baltic to the north -- Baltic-speaking
tribes reached as far east as Moscow as late as the early medieval period,
and a vast swath from the Baltic Sea to the Volga is characterized by Baltic
river-names although it became Slavicized later.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 04:31:12 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 23:31:12 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.233112.EST.>

>g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>The writing system of Linear B is so difficult

-- this is a severe handicap, granted.  The Linear B script is vilely
unsuited to writing Greek, or any inflected language, for that matter.

>I don't understand how it can be stated that Mycenean Greek and Vedic
>Sanskrit are "extremely similar". How can we possibly know? In any case, most
>of the extant Linear B texts are inventories and palace accounts, hardly
>comparable to Vedic texts.

-- true, but one can compare some lexical items.  Eg., Mycenaean *gous
(Homeric and later Greek "bous"), which compares closely to Sanskrit 'gav'
and Avestan 'gaus'. (Or PIE *gwous, for that matter.)

>but even there I doubt that it is possible to read continuous text in one,
>if you only know the other.

-- I've been told that it's possible to puzzle out the general meaning; it
would be going to far to say that one could "read".


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Wed Mar  8 12:13:08 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 07:13:08 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.071308.0500.>

"G?bor S?ndi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Joat Simeon wrote on 3 March 2000:
>> -- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar;
>> with a knowledge of one language and of the sound-shifts, you
>> can trace the general meaning of a text in the other language.
>>  There are even common elements in things like poetic kennings.
>>  They're more similar than modern standard German and English,
>> comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
>> the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those
>> are unusually conservative.

> I do not see how what you wrote here is tenable. Mycenean Greek,
> as far as I know, is only known from Linear B texts, which can only
> be read (tentatively in many cases) because of likely cognates in later
> versions of Greek, which is so well known.  [...]
> I know that there are many structural similarities between Homer's
> Greek and Vedic Sanskrit, but even there I doubt that it is possible
> to read continuous text in one, if you only know the other.

> Any Classical scholars or Sanskrit experts out there who could
comment?

I don't claim to be a Sanskrit expert, but I suspect that my experience
would be typical and give a resounding no as the answer. A collegue of
mine, a Classics Faculty member who works on Homer, wouldn't be able to
read Vedic without a refresher course.

What was said, I think, is a bit different: Start with a Vedic form like
bhara:mi. Trace it back to PIE *bhero: and map forward to Greek fero.
This is the kind of similarity that can be claimed.

But not really accepted: Start with s'rn.omi or a:rin.ak; trace it back
to *k'lneumi, (e)linekt; and map forward to Greek to come up with
klanu:mi, (e)line (?). I would be surprised if Homer could have made any
sense of these.

I am doubtful of even the extent of structural similarities: The
difference in the verbal system and case syncretism would cause enough
problems even without the extent of phonological change.


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar  7 23:47:58 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 15:47:58 -0800
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel and
 Dating PIE]
In-Reply-To: <20000306072028.18160.qmail@hotmail.com> (message from
 =?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?= on Mon, 6 Mar 2000 12:49:00
 +0530)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.154758.0800.>

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Gabor Sandi (g_sandi at hotmail.com) wrote:

> I know that there are many structural similarities between Homer's Greek and
> Vedic Sanskrit, but even there I doubt that it is possible to read continuous
> text in one, if you only know the other.

While my Sanskrit professor thought (and taught) this way in his introductory
class, in my opinion one would have to be extremely well versed in the history
of both languages in order for this to work, so much so that the experiment is
not really possible:  By the time one had learned enough of the background to
do it, one would have learned enough of the target language to read it.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar  8 01:59:45 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:59:45 -0800
Subject: UPenn tree; was: Indo-Hittite Hypothesis
In-Reply-To: <200003041816.p2817@h2.maus.de> (Hans_Holm@h2.maus.de)
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.175945.0800.>

On Sat, 04 Mar 2000, Hans Holm (Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de) wrote:

[NB:  "MAI" = Rich Alderson, the present author, presumably somehow extracted
 from my full name (which includes a numeral, like it or not).]

MAI>The UPenn work is supposed to provide exactly the information we have
MAI>lacked till now, that is, where to put in branches.  Having generated
MAI>their branching structure, they then picked a root position such that
MAI>Anatolian branches away from the entire rest of the family, all of
MAI>which can be viewed as going back to a single proto-language.

HH> .. again: "Where is the exact information" on the UPenn tree???

I admit, I inferred the purpose of the UPenn work from the descriptions of the
work, and the sketchily published results of the work, rather than learning it
from any grand descriptive document.

Personally, I'm often happy just to continue using the "massive 10-way split"
model...

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 05:00:55 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:00:55 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.000055.EST.>

>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

>Everything I've read on Phrygian, admittedly not much, seems to
>claim a different genetic relationship: Albanian, Armenian, Hellenic,
>Thracian. Anyone game enough to explain which one might be correct, if any,
>and why?

-- my own guess would be that Phrygian, Armenian and Hellenic were, in
origin, part of the same dialect-cluster and simply share a lot of late
isoglosses.  Thracian we simply don't know enough about to say.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 05:15:24 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:15:24 EST
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.001524.EST.>

>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

>And how do we know that they're [lavagtaei and vanaktei] not loanwords from
>Greek?

-- well, it would be highly unusual if they were, since they'd have to be
_very_ early, and the recorded instances of their use in Phrygian are from
times long after those terms were lost in Greek.

"Wannax" was an obsolete term even by Homer's time, largely replaced by
"basileus", from Myceaean "gwasileus", with a semantic shift from "headman"
or "foreman" to "king" and showing the characteristic *gw ==> b.  Reflexes of
"wannax" in Classical Greek referred to religious, not secular posts, if my
memory serves me correctly.

As for "lawagetas", it survived only as an obscure dialect form in Classical
times.

And of course the "w" sound dropped out of Greek even by Homer's time; he has
'annax' for 'wannax'.

So, conceivably, they could have been Bronze Age loans into pre-Phrygian from
Mycenaean Greek; on the other hand, cognates are more likely, I'd say.

"wannax/vanaktei" would both be from PIE *unatks (gen *unatkos), meaning
"leader, lord"; there's a Tocharian reflex, "natak", with precisely that
meaning.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 05:03:56 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:03:56 EST
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.000356.EST.>

>BMScott at stratos.net writes:

>Breton <ebeul> 'colt', NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed', and
>I assume Manx <eagh> 'riding horse, steed, racehorse'. >>

-- correct.  The point being that Proto-Celtic started out with two words for
horse; one derived from *ekwos and one from *markos (the latter also being
present in Germanic).

There can be no certainty in the matter, but the prevalence of
*ekwos-reflexes in the IE languages indicates that this was probably the
"default" word for "horse" and that *markos had some other, specialized
meaning.  Probably "wild horse".


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Mar  8 09:46:24 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 04:46:24 EST
Subject: Celtic word for horse
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.044624.EST.>

I wrote:

>> With regard to *equus reflexes in Celtic, of course each of the languages
>> above also has a <marko-> word for horse.  But it make me wonder how
>> forgiving this analysis should be - since I see a complete absence of
>> *ekwos in Breton, NIr and Manx.

In a message dated 3/7/2000 2:32:19 AM, BMScott at stratos.net replied:

> Breton <ebeul> 'colt', NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed', and
> I assume Manx <eagh> 'riding horse, steed, racehorse'.

Buck does list <ebeul> for colt, but not <each> for NIr - in NIr, it doesn't
seem any *ekwos looking words appear in any of the different categories Buck
lists for different kinds of horses (horse, stallion, gelding, mare, foal,
colt).  The word is <eagh> OR <agh> in Kelly's Manx dictionary - Buck does
not have either.

I also wrote:

>> Also I note that Buck has somehow failed to include in his book a rather
>> important OIr word for 'deer' - <ach>  (Gaelic - <each>).  Perhaps more on
>> that later.

In a message dated 3/7/2000 2:32:19 AM, BMScott at stratos.net replied:

> Can you give a reference to this word?  There is no entry
> for <ach> 'deer' in the Dict. of the Irish Lang.

Quite right.  Sorry about that.

The word is <agh>.  McBain's Etymon. Dict. defines it in Gaelic and Ir as
"hind", and as "deer" in <agh allaidh> (allaidh being 'wild'), citing
O'Clery's Glossary (1643).  OIr is given as <ag>.   (Also interesting in
McBain's is Welsh <uch> = elk or deer.) Buck mentions none of these.

In Manx, <agh> = steed, horse, <agh markiaght> = riding horse; (Kelly's
Fockleyr Gaelg - Baarle (Manx Gaelic).

BMScott at stratos.net also wrote:

> there *is* <ech>
> 'a horse, a steed', giving NIr <each> 'a horse, a steed'
> and Sc. Gael. <each> 'a horse, a brute'. OIr <ech> can
> of course be found in Buck's 3.41 (generic term for a horse)

Yes, well, in any case, marko-  is the only word Buck gives for "generic"
horse in ALL four of the Celtic languages (<marc>/<march>/<marc'h>) and Buck
lists marko- words for "mare" in NONE of those four Celtic languages.  (His
rationale for leaving out other relevant words is unexplained.)

Regards,
Steve Long


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar  8 00:02:07 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 00:02:07 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.000207.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2000 1:24 PM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>> From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

<snip>

[MCV]
> That is often said, but it needs to be elaborated for it to make
> sense.  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
> accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
> its development?  If it switched from stress accent to pitch
> accent (as suggested by zero grade everywhere and Vedic-Greek
> accentuation), how did the unstressed vowels that were to become
> o's by pitch accent survive the reduction caused by stress
> accent? Etcetera.

[PR]
This is, of course, a crucial question.

At a time long ago, in an Urheimat far away . . .

When PIE had only one vowel, /a/ . . .

One possibility might be that, just prior to the transition from
stress-accent (which was *free*) to tonal accent, the syllable which would
later display /o/ was stress-accented; in other words, at that point was
/a'/.

The stress-accented syllable with /a'/  (which might have induced to become
/a:'/), then became /a(:)*/, with the asterisk indicating a high-tonal
accent, when tonal accent supplanted stress-accent.

Sanskrit reflects this stage.

Subsequently, the tonal accent was moved to the root syllable, and *fixed*,
producing Ca*-Ca(:)., with . indicating a low tone.

Later yet, high tones produced syllables with /e*/, low tones produced
syllables with /o(:)./.

Finally, stress-accent was re-introduced, and the syllable with high-tone
/e*/ became /e'/ while the syllable with low-tone /o(:)./ became simply
/o(:)/.

<snip>

>> [MCVp]

>>> with developments /a/ >
>>> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
>>> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
>>> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
>>> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
>>> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
>>> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
>>> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
>>> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
>>> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>>> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

[PR]

So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/ and
/a:/?

And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

>> [PRp]
>> But why would they (primary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
>> the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
>> indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

[MCV]
> Primary (etymological, non-apophonic) **a:'s gave *o (sometimes
> <a:> in Indo-Iranian by Brugmann's Law) just like secondarily
> lengthened **a's.  This is the origin of the PIE acrostatic
> paradigms (I again agree with Jens), as opposed to the "regular"
> proterodynamic (root/extension-accented) and hysterodynamic
> (extension/suffix-accented) models without an original long vowel
> in the root.

> Lengthened grade was certainly a morphological device in PIE
> (vrddhi).  JER has an alternative explanation, but I would
> distinguish between cases of "old vrddhi", where the **a was
> lengthened to **a: and appears as PIE *o (e.g. the
> causative-iteratives in CoC-'ei-e-), and "younger vrddhi" where
> the **a first developed to *e and was subsequently lengthened to
> *e:.

[PR]

And could you describe the morphological function of lengthened grade in
PIE?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar  8 06:44:04 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 22:44:04 -0800
Subject: "centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE
 attributes]
In-Reply-To: <006001bf8637$7ba81700$9314153f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.224404.0800.>

At 12:11 AM 3/5/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>>> <PRp>

>>> Well, let us look at those pairs which you feel display minimal contrast.

><SF>

>> As far as minimal contrast goes, one can simply look at the "perfect"
>> versus the "aorist" of many verbs (especially in the third singular).

><PR>

>All three aorists have the *H(1)e- prefix. No perfect has it.

While they are not *strictly* minimal pairs, the augment is, in general,
separated from the root vowel by one or more consonants, and thus has
virtually no phonetic influence.  As far as establishing *e and *o as
distinct phonemes, these pairs are quire sufficient.

>In his examples, no pair is given like **sing-sung so I presume that
>"meaning" does *not* include nuaces created by inflection or conjugation.

Rather, he just doesn't have space to cover all the variations, as meaning
most certainly *does* include tense.  In fact it includes any semantic
variation at all.
><SF>

>> A quick perusal of Pokorny (yes, I know, out of date) gives:
>> *kem: "summen"
>> and
>> kom: "neben, bei, mit"

><PR>

>I see you have not indicated *kem in the way that Pokorny does, namely
>"*kem-".

>What the omission of the hyphen masks is that there is no entry in Pokorny
>for any language that shows the bare root "*kem*.

So?  Umlaut aside, suffixes are generally too loosely associated to
interfere with establishment of phonemic distinctions.

[Remember, I made QUICK perusal of Pokorny, not an exhaustive search: a
more detailed search would take such things into account, both for and
against].

><PR>

>Unless you can produce an acceptable minimal pair contrasting *e/*o, I
>believe the question of phonemicity remains open.

Phonemic status does not really require the existence of strict minimal
pairs, just semantic distinction in the absence of phenetic conditioning
factors.  Minimal pairs are merely a *sufficient* condition, not a
necessary one.

><PR>

>I read Miguel's exposition of this but, in my answer to him, you may see
>that I was not persuaded.

><PRp>

My problem is that I have always found the purely accentual systems
unconvincing phonetically.  They just do not match my experience.  On the
other hand, the breaking of a length distinction into a qualitative one is
well attested in other, less ambiguous cases.

As I pointed out, my own name includes and example of it: Stan vs. stone,
where the Modern English qualitative difference harks back to a prior
length distinction: stan- vs. sta:n.

><PR>

>For that, you would need to present minimal pairs contrasting *Ce/oC with
>*CiC and *CuC. Can it be done?

No, I just need contrasting meanings in non-contrasting *environments*.

><SF>

>> Well, there is the root Pokorny list as *bheu.  However, the only branch
>> showing an e-grade of it is Indo-Iranian.  Outside of that it is
>> universally in "zero" grade.  Thus I do not believe the e-grade is ancient.
>>  I reconstruct *bhuH "grow, increase".

><PR>

>I wonder if you have Pokorny there or are trusting to memory.

Yes, I do.  I was looking at it as I wrote.  (Care must be taken: for
instance Old English vowels show some odd modifications that may *look*
like e-grade, but are just dipthongized o-grades, whence the Modern English
long 'e').

>I see several examples of *e-grade in languages other than Indo-Iranian,
>e.g. Armenian boin, 'nest'; Albanian bane", 'dwelling'; Gothic bauan,
>'dwell', etal. --- as well as some *o-grade examples.

I will have to cross check these.  Right off they do not look like obvious
e-grades to me.

><SF>

>> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two distinct
>> roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an e-grade at all
>> (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

><PR>

>There are several *bher- roots. Why not expand on this a bit?

Pokorny list both of them as one root: "bh(e)reu: bh(e)ru(:)".  It starts
on page 143 in my printing.  The root *bheru is under subheading A., and
the root bhreHu is under subheading B.

><SF>

>> There is *uper "over, above".

><PR>

>If one notates it as Pokorny does, namely *upe'r, the problem is simplified:
>**wepe'r -> *upe'r.

The problem is that this assumes the conclusion.  No trace of any such
thing as **wepe'r is found anywhere.  This is my complaint: reconstructing
an *e for the *sole* reason of avoiding "bare" *u and *i as vowels.

> There are many examples of *weC- becoming *uC-: e.g.
>*wep-:*wo/o:p-:*up-, 'water'.

Certainly there are.  But just because something is *common* doesn't make
it *universal*.

><SF>

>> The root listed as *ueidh shows no actual reflexes with e-grade in Pokorny,
>> so one must really reconstruct *widh: "trennen".

><PR>

>What about Old Indian ve:dh- or German *waisan < *woidh-son- (we should take
>cognizance of o-grades in this context, should we not?).

Yes, though in perfects there is always the possibility of analogical
extension of the o-grade to forms originally lacking it.  Still, you are
right, this one may require further study.

>Frankly, you may need to go back between the rows.

If I had time.  I cannot spend the hours necessary to research this properly.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From edsel at glo.be  Tue Mar  7 16:11:09 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:11:09 +0100
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <TUE.7.MAR.2000.171109.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "roslyn frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2000 5:51 PM

[snip]

> If, for example, one accepts the story told by Corominas about the path
> that brought an Old Persian Wanderwort into Romance languages, one must ask
> why the cobblers didn't stop off in Germanic speaking lands first?
[snip]
> Have a good day,
> Roz

[Ed]

Persian craftsmen, architects etc. played an important role in what is now
perceived as expressions of 'Arab' or Muslim material culture. The most likely
place to find these people during the Middle Ages would be the Arab occupied
part of Spain, and nowhere else.

Ed. Selleslagh


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  8 10:22:32 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 10:22:32 +0000
Subject: Excluding Basque data
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.102232.0000.>

Roz Frank writes:

>  Since the topic of criteria for inclusion and exclusion of Basque data has
>  surfaced again on the list, perhaps the following information will be of
>  interest.

[snip my discussion of cutoff dates]

>  I've prepared the following background summary in order to aid those
>  members of the list who might be somewhat unfamiliar with the source
>  materials for Basque. Hopefully, the summary also will bring into focus
>  some of the problems that inevitably arise when one attempts to choose a
>  "more restrictive early date" for the cut-off, whether that be set at 1600,
>  1700 or even 1800.

>  1) There is essentially no Medieval Basque 'literature' of any kind.

Indeed, apart from a few songs transmitted orally before being finally
written down.

[snip summary of medieval Basque materials]

These medieval materials are more substantial than is sometimes realized.
Michelena's 1964 Textos Arcaicos Vascos is a dense 200-page book summarizing
them.  These materials are of immense linguistic value.  And Michelena
himself was fond of reminding us that the linguistic history of Basque
begins in the 10th century, and not, as is often supposed, with the
literary works of the 16th century.

I can't stress this too strongly.  A great deal of Basque vocabulary,
plus some phonology and morphology, and even a little syntax, is recorded
in those medieval materials.

[snip summary of 16th-century materials, which by the way omits one very
important work: Landucci's Basque dictionary of 1562]

>  Criteria.
>
>  Larry Trask has stated that he would prefer 1600 as the cut-off date for
>  "early attestation".  As one can see from the information given above, if
>  the cut off date is set at 1600, it's pretty slim pickins.

Oh, no -- not at all.

In spite of the modest body of material before 1600, the proportion of
the basic Basque vocabulary recorded in it is very high.

Take a look at Sarasola's 1996 dictionary, which reports dates of first
attestation.  Every page I glance at lists between two and eight words
first recorded before 1600.  The average seems to be about four or five
such words.  So, since the dictionary has 800 pages, that means that the
total of such words must be somewhere around 3000-4000.  Not bad.

Of course, there are further words first recorded between 1600 and 1700.
But these are less numerous, and, more importantly, *practically all*
of them are transparent compounds or derivatives, or sometimes obvious loan
words, and hence will be excluded from my list in any case.  In fact, on
browsing through the dictionary just now, I couldn't find *a single word*
first recorded between 1600 and 1700 which was neither obviously
polymorphemic nor an obvious loan word.  I think this is a telling point:
the kind of vocabulary I'm interested in is almost invariably recorded
before 1600, if it's recorded at all.

>  And furthermore, if one applies Larry Trask's other criterion to the same
>  corpus, namely, that for an item to be included in his list it must be
>  recorded early in all dialects or most of the dialects, we're fried
>  (although this might not be the way that Larry intends the dialectal
>  criterion to be applied to the data).

No; it is not.  My criteria are (1) that the word is recorded *somewhere*
before 1600, (2) that it is recorded *at some time* in all or nearly all
dialects, (3) that it is not obviously polymorphemic, and (4) that it does
not appear to be shared with any neighboring languages.

>  The database in question simply
>  doesn't provide a wide sampling. In other words, serious difficulties would
>  arise if one were to apply the second criterion of widespread dialectal use
>  to items attested prior to 1600: the two books mentioned above and three
>  collections of proverbs do not cover all the dialects. Thus, a strict
>  application of Larry's second rule would actually eliminate all the words
>  found in these works.

No.  This is a misunderstanding.

>  Again, he may assume that if the word is attested
>  early (prior to 1600) in one or more of the northern dialects that would be
>  sufficient.

It is sufficient for me if the word is recorded *anywhere* before 1600.
There's nothing special about the northern dialects.  And, for historical
work, it would be difficult to name a single more important text than
the Refranes y Sentencias of 1596 -- written in the Bizkaian dialect.

>  Earlier Larry Trask has stated that in his opinion, when finished his list
>  would end up containing only 200 "native" Basque words. He may have stated
>  'a couple hundred' (sorry I don't have the exact citation).

No; I have never named any such precise number, nor any number this small.
What I suggested was "a few hundred" or "several hundred" words.  In fact,
even this estimate is perhaps too cautious, but I'm trying to err on the
safe side until I've done the work.

>  By my
>  calculations, there might be even fewer, unless he means that he would
>  include a if the word can be attested prior to 1600 in one dialect and then
>  rediscovered in the nineteenth and tntieth centuries in four of the five
>  dialects.

Yes, that's roughly what I mean.

>  Thus, there is the question of how the sample is skewed because of the
>  following facts:
>
>  1) that many works are translations from Latin by clergymen;
>  2) that when the works are not translations they are nonetheless books or
>  treatises written by priests about religious themes; and
>  3) during the 16th and 17th centuries the works represent primarily one
>  dialectal zone, Lapurdi.

But none of these is a problem for me.  All may well be issues in other
kinds of historical work.  For example, they are *certainly* issues in
working on early Basque syntax.  But, for basic vocabulary, they are
simply not a problem.

Even if he's merely translating a religious text, a Basque writer is not
going to translate things like 'hand', 'eye', 'cow', 'two', 'sister' or
'go' with anything other than the ordinary Basque word.  The *additional*
presence of a mass of religious vocabulary is no obstacle.  Nor is the
likely absence of words like 'somersault' or 'otter' a problem, since
these less usual words are almost invariably polymorphemic or borrowed.

Moreover, it is not quite true that our 16th-century texts are
overwhelmingly Lapurdian: the R&S is Bizkaian, and Landucci's
dictionary is Alavese.

Finally, the sheer size of a work is also not necessarily a big issue.
Axular's huge 1643 book Gero contains a total of only about 4300 words,
and this total includes proper names and derivatives: for example, it
includes <jakin> 'know' and six derivatives of this word, all counted
separately.  And this total is not so much greater than the perhaps
2000 words recorded in the tiny 16th-century collections of proverbs.

There just *isn't* that much Basque vocabulary which is native,
ancient and monomorphemic.  And what there is keeps turning up over
and over again, in text after text, regardless of how big the text
is or of how many other words it contains.

>  With respect to the first point, we note that both of the major books from
>  the 16th century were written by members of the clergy.

But Landucci was not a clergyman, and his 143-page dictionary of 1562
is not religious in nature.  Among other delights, this book contains
the first known occurrences of the words <alu> and <zakil>, which I
shall delicately gloss here as 'vulva' and 'virile member' -- admittedly
words which most Basque clergymen were reluctant to commit to print.

[snip summary of subsequent Basque literature]

>  So if my understanding is correct, Larry Trask's "more restrictive early
>  date" would admit one translation of the New Testament with a catechism and
>  tables for calculating moveable feasts, 1 short book of poems, a letter
>  from Mexico, and three brief collections of proverbs as his data base to
>  which he would add the miscellaneous citations, epigraphs, songs, place
>  names, proper names, a couple of very short word lists compiled by
>  non-Basques and some random words and phrases found in works written in
>  Romance prior to 1700.

Plus Landucci.  But Roz makes it sound as though this were a feeble and
inadequate body of materials.  It is not.  Not only does it contain
thousands of words, it contains practically all of the words which have
any chance of meeting my other criteria.

>  Should such a database be considered a representative sample?

For my purposes, absolutely.

If you doubt this, then accept a little challenge: name me three Basque
words which are first recorded only after 1600, which are attested more
or less throughout the country, which are not transparently polymorphemic,
and which do not appear to be shared with any neighboring languages.
Please report back to me when you've found them. ;-)

>  Keep reading, there are more surprises!!

For who?

>  List members unfamiliar with the highly oral nature of Basque culture might
>  be surprised to know that the date set for the beginning of Basque
>  literature is 1879. And to give people a better idea of just how few texts
>  there really are I would like to reproduce (actually summarize) information
>  in the form of three charts. In their original form the charts also
>  indicate which dialects the works were written in, but I've left that
>  information out. The cut off date for the statistical tabulation is 1879.
>  To qualify as a work, the text had to be a non-periodical and at least 48
>  pages long, a standard definition taken from UNESCO.

[snip tables]

All irrelevant, I'm afraid.

First, whether some text does or does not qualify as "literature" by
somebody's definition is irrelevant.  All that matters is that it is
written in Basque by somebody who knows Basque.  For this purpose, a
laundry list is as good as a novel, except that the laundry list is
likely to be shorter.  In fact, in some respects, a laundry list is
preferable to a novel, since it's more likely to represent ordinary
everyday usage than is a work of self-conscious literature.

Second, while later texts obviously add greatly to the record of
Basque words, they do *not* add significantly to the body of words
I'm interested in: the best candidates for native, ancient and
monomorphemic status.  Finding <ikusmen> '(sense of) vision', 'eyesight'
only in 1785 is of no interest to me: the word is plainly polymorphemic,
and the suffix is borrowed.

>  I believe that these three charts help explain some of the reason that Jon
>  Patrick and I have repeatedly argued in favor of including Azkue's
>  dictionary as a legitimate and necessary addition to any database for
>  Euskera.

No.  Not to *any* database.  There is practically nothing in Azkue which
is relevant to me but which is not more readily available elsewhere.
Remember what I'm doing.

>  In addition, Azkue was meticulous in noting the dialect, even
>  indicating the name of the village, in which he collected the item.
>  Moreover, he utilized some 150 Basque texts as part of his database and he
>  indicates precisely which text each item comes from, citing the entire
>  sentence in which it occurred so that the reader has the contextualization
>  of the entry.

I've already discussed Azkue's virtues and vices on this list.  His
meticulous citing of sources is a big plus, and I make heavy -- but
cautious -- use of him for this purpose.  However, as I've explained
before, Azkue contains many errors, and the dictionary cannot be taken
at face value for historical work.

>  In conclusion, keeping in mind the question of whether religious texts,
>  primarily translations, are appropriate (or the best) data sources for our
>  purposes,

For my purposes, it is the *earliest* texts which are crucial.  I don't
care whether those texts are about religion or about alien abductions.
As long as they are written in Basque, that's all that matters.

[snip passage on the religious nature of early Basque literature]

>  In short, from my point of view, given the nature of the facts set out
>  above, to assign the cut-off point for the database at 1600 is not
>  particularly logical;

Sorry; I can't agree.  This is a fine choice, for my purposes.

>  and it would be only slightly more logical to assign
>  the cut-off to 1700. This is particularly so if we keep in mind that our
>  aim is to reconstruct a stage of the language roughly 2000 years earlier,
>  i.e., prior to its first contacts with the Roman invaders who entered the
>  Peninsula in 218 BC.

Careful.  It makes a big difference just *what* we are trying to reconstruct.

Thanks to Michelena, we already have an excelent reconstruction of the
phoneme system of the Pre-Basque of some 2000 years ago.

Now I want to move on to a reconstruction of the morpheme-structure
constraints applying to monomorphemic lexical items in Pre-Basque.
To do that, I need to identify the best attesed candidates for such
lexical items.  And those best candidates, unsurprisingly, are largely
to be found in the basic everyday vocabulary, the words which recur
constantly in Basque texts at all periods.

>  Considering the intended purpose of the database, it
>  is unlikely that any changes that the language would have undergone in the
>  hundred-year period, i.e., from 1599-1699, would affect the outcome of the
>  study in any significant way.

I agree, Roz.  But this is an argument for taking 1600 as the cutoff
date -- now isn't it?

However, we don't have to choose the cutoff date arbitrarily.  As I've
pointed out above, a quick scan of the evidence suggests that preferring
a later date to 1600 is not going to increase the number of relevant
words to any significant extent.

And, once again, let me remind you wearily that I am *not* trying to
identify *all possible* candidates for native and ancient status --
at least, not at this stage.  I am only trying to identify the *best*
candidates.

>  By the way is there a chronological cut-off point for words in Romance
>  languages? Or in Slavic? Just curious.

Depends on the purpose.

Look.  I'm not suggesting that my criteria are the best possible
criteria for doing *any work* on Basque.  I'm only suggesting that
they're the most suitable criteria for *my particular purposes*.
Other tasks will very likely call for different criteria.  But so what?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  8 11:14:02 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 11:14:02 +0000
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion (1)
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.111402.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

The posting I'm trying to reply to here is enormous.  I'm afraid
I can't possibly deal with all of it now, or perhaps ever.  So I'll
content myself with responding to a point or two for now.  Maybe
later I can turn to other points.

>  The discussion of "criteria" when seeking candidate vocabulary
>  which descends from earlier stages of a language is clearly
>  relevant whenever we seek such vocabulary,
>  is is relevant to much more than Basque.
>  Most of the particular suggestions made also apply to more than just Basque.

But I'm only working on Basque, and the doubtless fascinating and
complex issues that arise in working on Algonquian are of no
relevance to me.

>  This message contains additional material to support
>  a more sophisticated and nuanced set of techniques for selecting items
>  to include as potential monomorphemic Old Basque lexicon.
>  The core concept underlying all of these specific suggestions
>  for modifying Trask's criteria is that we are dealing with gradient
>  and fuzzy matters, matters of degree, ones not susceptible to
>  sharp yes-or-no decisions.

Unfortunately, I have to *make* "sharp yes-or-no decisions".
For my purposes, I need a list of words, and so, before I can
do anything else, I have to decide which words should go into that
list.  I can't include a word to only 30%.  Fuzziness exists, yes,
but my response to fuzziness is this: if there is *any* doubt that
the word belongs in the list, then leave it out.

>  Though each criterion or perspective
>  by itself may give a clear result in special cases, it need not,
>  and the combination of criteria can give a complex of information
>  which we can weight different ways.  If we "tag" the items
>  with multiple scores in a computer database, we can then change
>  the weightings as seems appropriate to consider different hypotheses.

Irrelevant to my purposes, I'm afraid.

I am not considering different hypotheses.  In principle, I don't
even have *any* hypotheses.  I want to compile a list of words,
and I want my conclusions to derive entirely from that list.
That's all.

So, the only issue for me is a simple one: which words go into
the list?

>  This message adds criteria 10-17 to the earlier message titled
>  "9 specifics on Including and excluding data"
>  sent on 30th October, 1999.

>  Larry Trask recently again challenged that he had not received
>  specific alternative suggestions for criteria for inclusion
>  of words when seeking ancient native monomorphemic lexical items
>  for Basque.  That statement is false on its face,
>  I simply refer to the message just mentioned from 30 October, 1999,
>  which should be in our archives, with the additions here.

It is not false.  Please watch yourself, Lloyd.

>  And Trask's statement is also false on its face based on Trask's own
>  message of 9th December, 1999, in which he admitted that he had
>  received specific suggestions:

Suggestions.  Comments.  Points.  Yes.  But criteria?  No.

That posting did not add up to a set of explicit criteria for
deciding whether any given Basque word should or should not
go into my list.

>  Let's start with a point of agreement:

>  >So, Lloyd, are you now agreeing to the following?

>  >   Expressive formations should be subject to no special treatment
>  >   at all, but must be treated just like all other words, according
>  >   to exactly the same criteria, whatever those are.

>  >Yes or no?

>  Of course I agree with this, and always did agree.

Fine.  Good.

>  I have only protested against criteria which had biases against
>  expressives or other strata of vocabulary,
>  not advocated that we should have some a priori criteria
>  to include specifically expressives or any other words
>  even if they did not satisfy other *reasonable, legitimate, unbiased*
>  criteria.  I emphasize the latter part deliberately,
>  because criteria cannot stand as valid judges of other matters
>  unless the criteria themselves are first judged.

OK, Lloyd: then *what other* criteria do you propose?

>  I'll continue here with principled, fully general criteria
>  which differ from Trask's:

>  10.  bias against longer words

>  Trask has stated the goals of his collection this way:

>  >native, ancient and monomorphemic lexical items.  That's all.
>  >I think I've been pretty explicit about this.

>  Yet in the same message where he stated this, he also
>  replied as follows:

>  [LA]
>  >> The exclusion of expressives,
>  >> *or systematically of any other group of words*
>  >> (such as the longer words, as noted above),
>  >> through any aspect of the sampling procedure,
>  >> would of course tend to invalidate such general validity.

>  [LT]
>  >No; not at all.  Polysyllabic words are excluded by definition: they are
>  >not relevant to my task.

>  I'll assume that was a typo, "polysyllabic" instead of "polymorphemic",
>  because otherwise polysyllabic words are *not* excluded by the definition
>  of goals just quoted.  They certainly are *not* excluded automatically
>  by any principles of reliable historical reconstruction!

Indeed.  That was a dozy typo, and I did mean 'polymorphemic'.
My apologies.

>  11.  "polymorphemic" not intended synchronically
>
>  But it may not be a typo, it may rather reveal some interdependence of
>  criteria in Trask's thinking.

No; it was just a typo.

>  Assuredly, polysyllabic words are more likely to be polymorphemic,
>  and the skilled and knowledgeable analyst may be able to segment
>  many polysyllabic words into etymologizable parts.  Some of these
>  results must certainly reflect the psychological reality of the morphemes
>  for the speakers.
>  But if we take the concept seriously in a synchronic sense,
>  then we must recognize that also in ancient languages,
>  even proto-languages, there may be many words
>  which demonstrably once were morphemically composite,
>  which yet for the speakers of the proto-language were single morphemes.
>  Trask does not seem to recognize this problem.

Yes, I do.

When I exclude polymorphemic words, I exclude words which can
reasonably be shown to be polymorphemic *in origin*.  I don't
care whether these words are still regarded as polymorphemic
by speakers today.  I'm doing historical work, not synchronic
work on the contemporary language.

Probably no modern English-speaker perceives 'hussy' as polymorphemic,
but we can show that is, in origin.  And probably no modern
Basque-speaker perceives <itun> 'confession', 'banns' as
polymorphemic, but we can show that it is, in origin -- in fact,
it consists of no fewer than *four* morphemes -- and so
it doesn't go into my list.

>  Most or all languages we know of do contain historically polymorphemic
>  vocabulary items which are synchronically monomorphemic.
>  So we must be willing to reconstruct such words for any proto-language
>  also.  This is the error of over-analysis, over-segmentation.

If it's monomorphemic as far back as we can trace it, then it's
monomorphemic for my purposes.

Basque <itun> is certainly polymorphemic, so it's out.

Basque <gibel> 'liver' is probably polymorphemic in origin, but
I can't demonstrate this decisively, so it will probably go in.
I'm pondering this one.

Basque <sabel> 'stomach' is possibly polymorphemic, but this is
doubtful and far from demonstrable, so it goes in.

There is no trace of evidence that Basque <buru> 'head' is
polymorphemic, so in it goes.

>  Trask (in another message today) classes English "vixen" as
>  "Bimorphemic in English",
>  I do not understand a synchronic basis for his doing so.
>  It was polymorphemic at one time, but surely not in English now.

True, but not relevant.  The word is polymorphemic *in origin*, and
so, for the kind of purpose I have in mind, it must be classed
as polymorphemic.

>  There is no other word in the American Heritage Dictionary beginning
>  with "vix-", and there is no English feminine ending "-en" sufficiently
>  salient
>  that I can think of a word with it right off hand, though that may be my
>  personal mental limitation of the moment.
>  (I could only think of "oxen", "oven", "coven", "maven", "raven",
>  "maiden".)
>  So "vixen" is not even as decomposible as the
>  famous "cranberry" where at least "-berry" is obvious.
>  This has been the pattern of Trask's remarks on a host of other items,
>  where he classes them as polymorphemic if he can *etymologize*
>  them as multiple morphemes, not if they are polymorphemic
>  in a sychronic analysis of the language itself.

Of course.  Lloyd, I'm doing *historical* work here.

>  That tends to exclude words illegitimately by my understanding
>  of the goals Trask has stated for himself.  As we use "polymorphemic"
>  more and more loosely, we make the restricted monomorphemic
>  set included by a set of criteria less and less representative of
>  the language as a whole.

Certainly not.  And I am not using the term 'polymorphemic' "loosely"
at all.  For me, if we can show beyond reasonable doubt that a word
consists historically of two or more morphemes, then it is
polymorphemic.  What could be clearer?

>  Representativeness of the language as a whole
>  is of course not Trask's aim when he states his goal explicitly
>  including the criterion "monomorphemic".

Damn straight.  I am not interested, at this stage anyway, in
characterizing Pre-Basque "as a whole".  I'm only interested in
the morpheme-structure constraints applying to native and
monomorphemic lexical items.

>  But it is a relevant way to evaluate how he states his conclusions,
>  and it is my distinct impression that he very often states his goals
>  without that limitation, as if his results could then have a wider
>  validity, as if he had not restricted himself to monomorphemic words only.

Certainly not.  What on earth are you talking about, Lloyd?

>  Here is one, from Trask's message of 9th December, 1999,
>  quoted more fully elsewhere in this message today:

>  >for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words

>  Notice that this did *not* specify
>  "a plausible list of monomorphemic Pre-Basque words".
>  It might be inferred from context, and he has stated
>  the monomorphemic criterion elsewhere, but as I said,
>  I think he tends to drop that limitation, and therefore to
>  end of in effect claiming a wider validity of his eventual
>  conclusions than is warranted by the severe limitations
>  he imposes on his data.

Again, certainly not.  True, I don't always bother to type out
the tediously long word 'monomorphemic' on every occasion.
But, in these discussions, that's what I usually mean, unless
I say otherwise.

>  12.  Reduplications are not polymorphemic unless the
>  unreduplicated form also occurs.
>  This is elementary.

It is not elementary, and it is probably not even true.

Basque has a class of m-reduplications.  Here are a few:

	<aiko-maiko> 'pretext'
	<zirimiri> 'drizzle'
	<zurrumurru> 'whisper, rumor, gossip'
	<txistmist> 'lightning'

In each case, the first element has no known existence outside the
reduplicated form.

Now, whatever one may think of these things, it is certainly
not obvious that they are "monomorphemic" -- end of story.

>  The term "reduplication" is rather often
>  applied to words that are primary, merely because they have
>  the same consonant or even syllable as their first and second.
>  It is often applied to nursery words and expressive words.
>  But "dad", "mom", "mommy", "daddy", etc. are not polymorphemic,
>  by a careful use of the criteria for morpheme division.

Eh?  What?

Lloyd, you don't think 'mommy' and 'daddy' are polymorphemic?
You don't think 'mommy' is <mom> + <-y>?  You don't think 'daddy'
is <dad> + <-y>?  You also don't think 'doggy' is <dog> + <-y>?

This is your idea of "careful" morpheme division?

>  Not even "mama", despite "ma" which seems synchronically
>  to be a shortening of "mama" not the reverse.

A different case, I'd say.

>       Trask has not explicitly said, so far as I know, that
>  reduplications are polymorphemic, but I suspect he has tended
>  to think of them that way.  I'll be happy if this is not the case.

I have my doubts as to whether reduplicated forms lacking source words
are capable of being segmented into morphemes in the ordinary way at all.
But I am certainly not going to declare them obviously monomorphemic.

However, this is unlikely to be an issue, since few if any of these
words will satisfy my other criteria anyway.  For example, <aiko-maiko>
is recorded only from 1909, and is hardly found outside the Bizkaian
dialect, and similar remarks apply to my other examples.

OK; that's all I've got time for now.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Mar  8 14:20:42 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 14:20:42 +0000
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion (2)
Message-ID: <WED.8.MAR.2000.142042.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

>  13.  Words in ancient Basque, vs. words descended from words
>  in ancient Basque?  Identity requirements popping up when only historical
>  descent is relevant

>  >Obviously expressive words hardly ever satisfy
>  >my criteria, from which the most appropriate conclusion appears to be
>  >that *these particular words* are not ancient.

>  [That is not the most appropriate conclusions
>  if the criteria are biased against expressives, even indirectly,
>  as i believe I have shown Trask's are]

>  >Of course, Pre-Basque
>  >doubtless possessed *some* expressive words, but there is no evidence to
>  >support a claim that these were identical to the modern ones.

>  Identity is not the requirement, surely.

>  Here again, a typo:  Presumably Trask means that they were not
>  the ancestors of the modern ones?

No; no typo.  When I say "identical", I mean identical in the sense in
which modern English 'house' is identical to Old English <hus>.

>  Because if identity is required,
>  we have yet another criterion introduced which was not implied by
>  his definition of goals, and which would further reduce the vocabulary
>  which he admits into his collections.  He *has* used this kind of
>  wording at other points, as in the discussion of whether a range
>  of forms which show partial resemblances to each other,
>  as for 'butterfly', warrant the assumption of some proto-form.
>  For 'butterfly', he argued there was too much variation,
>  that none of the forms was ancient.
>  That is not the relevant question, a relevant question is
>  rather whether any of the forms *descend from* antecedents,
>  which were part of Basque at an earlier stage.

If you like.  But the answer to this question, for the 'butterfly'
words, is clear: it is "no".

>  This may seem like nit-picking, but I think it is not,
>  or I would not mention it.  I believe it is merely one of the
>  steps Trask takes which lead his sample to be rather unrepresentative,
>  not merely of ancient Basque, but even of ancient Basque
>  monomorphemic words, Trask's expressed goal.

>  Taking off from Trask's use of the word "modern" just above,
>  I do not accept any sharp temporal cutoff date
>  as a legitimate part of historical linguistic inquiries
>  in attempting to determine which words descend from
>  ancestors in their language, because of the demonstrable
>  occurrence of systematic biases in exclusion of some sorts
>  of items from written attestations, dependent on culture
>  and other factors...

OK, Lloyd: what are your criteria?

You still haven't given us any, you know.

>  On Basque words for 'badger', Trask today expressed
>  what I regard as a more inclusive attitude about historical descent
>  rather than identity of words,
>  though still excluding these words by their date of attestation.
>  After some considerable discussion of others' hypotheses, he says:

>  >Who knows?  Not sure what to do with this, but it looks too fishy to go
>  >straight into the list.  Anyway, not recorded before 1745, and therefore
>  >out, even though I agree at once that the numerous and peculiar regional
>  >variants point to a much older word.

>  The last clause is for me sufficient to justify study and inclusion
>  in any list of the best candidates.  Date of attestation by itself is a
>  very minor influence.

No, it isn't: not for my purposes.  Early attestation is crucial.
If a word is nowhere recorded until long after a substantial body
of written materials is available, then the word is a doubtful
candidate for antiquity.

>  Even lack of regular sound correspondences
>  is very minor, given the knowledge that irregular historical descent
>  is not rare.

Presence or absence of regular sound correspondences is not one of my
criteria.  But the presence of the wholly, even wildly, unsystematic
correspondences in form among the numerous Basque words for 'butterfly'
is certainly a strong argument against antiquity, when you look at
all the evidence.

>  The same phrasing, applied to words for 'butterfly',
>  as I hope to show in future discussion of them,
>  after Trask has had his opportunity to comment on my first analysis,
>  would appropriately suggest that they "point to a much older word",
>  just as for words for 'badger'.

They do not.  They point instead to expressive formations of recent
origin.  The 'butterfly' words exhibit *all* the characteristics of
expressive formations in Basque: segments and sequences not found
in ordinary vocabulary, unusual length, enormous and unsystematic
variation, severe localization of individual forms, lack of early
attestations, and semantics (name of a small creature, in this case).

With the partial exception of considerable and unsystematic variation,
the *single* 'badger' word exhibits *none* of these properties.  Most
(not all) of the variant forms can be straightforwardly derived from
an original *<azkone>.  This looks nothing like an expressive formation.
In fact, it is indistinguishable from a native Basque word.  But it
has been widely suspected of being borrowed from Latin <taxonem>.
Quite apart from the late attestation (1745), this plausible Latin
source is enough to exclude the word from my list.  Any Basque word
for which a good case can be made for a loan origin must be excluded
from my list.

>  That discussion will of course
>  be based on the facts of the words for 'butterfly' and of the
>  patterns of sound changes and irregularities in Basque, etc..

Indeed.  And the 'butterfly' words are out, by every conceivable
criterion.

>  14.  Use of patterns dominant in Basque to downgrade words
>  which do not fit the dominant patterns.

>  (This objection, pointing to an alternative to Trasks application
>  of his criteria, may have been part of the earlier list of nine,
>  though I do not at present recall that it was;
>  but because new concrete examples make it relevant,
>  I highlight it here.  It has at least new application now.)

>  One of Trask's objections to inclusion of words in his lists,
>  which influences him to regard them as loanwords or
>  inventions, is that no native Basque words have two voiceless
>  stops, or voiceless stops beginning the first syllable.
>  (I may not have stated that exactly right, but the general
>  point is clear.)

Change to "two voiceless plosives", and you are right.

However, this is only a belief of mine, a preliminary conclusion.
It is *not* a criterion for excluding words.  So, as I've said before,
Basque <tipi> 'small', in spite of its two voiceless plosives, and
in spite of my beliefs, must go into my list, because it satisfies
all my criteria.

>  On Basque 'chick', which he points out is the only word
>  for a small animal (from a list) which is *not* formed with
>  the suffix -(k)ume 'offspring' and thus polymorphemic,
>  he writes:

>  >'chick' is the obviously imitative
>  >          <(t)xito> ~ <(t)xita> ~ <txitxa>.
>  >This last word will probably meet my
>  >criteria, but will stand out a mile.

>  Well, but if it is included, then at least that word
>  with two voicelss stops is presumptively part of ancient Basque
>  (if it meets other legitimate evaluations to a sufficient degree).

Doesn't follow, I'm afraid.

The observation that a word satisfies my criteria does not entail
that it can be projected back to Pre-Basque.  It merely means that
I can't exclude it from my list -- a very different matter.

>  And if that one is included, then others with two voiceless stops
>  must not be downgraded on that basis, nor must it be argued
>  on that basis alone that they are non-native, borrowings or even
>  recent inventions.

But no one has suggested any such thing.  Wakey, wakey, Lloyd:
I do *not* exclude anything from my list on the basis of its
phonological form.  To do so would be self-defeating, since it is
the phonological forms of Pre-Basque which I am trying to recover.

>  But then one of the words for 'butterfly',
>  "pitxilota", is also a good candidate for inclusion.
>  Its four-syllable status does not by itself prove it to be
>  non-monomorphemic, though it may be.
>  Nor do the two voiceless stops prove it to be a loan.

Reality check, Lloyd.

No one has suggested that a four-syllable word must *ipso facto*
be polymorphemic.

No one has suggested that its phonological structure proves it to be
a loanword.

In fact, no one has suggested that it *is* a loanword.

So what are you talking about?

Finally, it is *false* to assert that <pitxilota> is "a good
candidate for inclusion" in my list.  It is a simply terrible
candidate, since it satisfies *no criteria at all*, apart from
absence from neighboring languages.

Oh, sorry -- it apparently does satisfy one criterion: Lloyd likes it.
;-)

Lloyd, if you think this word is a good candidate for inclusion
in my list, then you must have some criteria in mind -- criteria
which you haven't told us about.

The form <pitxilota> is recorded nowhere except in a very small area
of the Bizkaian dialect, and it does not appear to be recorded at all
before the 20th century.

So: what criteria are you appealing to in telling us that this word
is a good candidate for inclusion in my list?  May we know, please?

OK.  Enough again.  Maybe back later.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 07:05:26 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 02:05:26 EST
Subject: the Bear and the north star
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.020526.EST.>

I wrote:
>>And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
>>bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
>>artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
>>north star.

In a message dated 3/6/2000 7:19:25 PM, sarima at friesen.net wrote:
>Umm, there is a problem with that: Polaris was NOT the pole star in Homer's
>day!  In fact it wasn't even the pole star in Roman times!

>Now, it is true that the constellations called the Big and Little Bear have
>always been northerly, but they have not always incorporated the celestial
>north pole.

The author is correct about Polaris.  But note that I did not mention Polaris
and there were clearly "north stars" - in the sense of "pole stars" - before
Polaris.  I have that Polaris "stands almost still all night above the
northern horizon as other stars wheel around it... For nearly 1000 years,
Polaris has been located within a few degrees of the north celestial pole,
but in other times other stars have been nearer the pole. If a bright star is
located near the north celestial pole, it is called the North Star....  The
current North Star, Polaris, is in Ursa Minor as was it's predecessor,
Kochab."

Before 2300BC the pole star would have been in the constellation Draco, but
afterward would have been well on its way into the region of Bootes (the
herdsman) and the adjacent Ursae.  (BTW, Bootes contains Arcturus, Gr.,
"guardian of the bear".)  By 1200BC, the celestial pole would entered the
Ursae region and the pole star would have been found there.

And, by Hellenic times, the Greek super-geometrists were referring to the
pole-star with scientific precision, some using the term "polos" (LS:
"pole-star, Eratosth. Cat.2.")  By 300BC, one of them - Pythias - had even
established that neither celestial axis nor "pole star" were fixed.

Thales says that the Phoenicians were already navigating by the pole star
(@600BC.) and that would suggest some kind of calculation of latitude.  But
Homer's references are obviously to "the star" as a simplier navigational
guide.

In the Odyssey, we read:
"Gladly then did goodly Odysseus spread his sail to the breeze; [270] and he
sat and guided his raft skillfully with the steering-oar, nor did sleep fall
upon his eyelids, as he watched the Pleiads, and late-setting Bootes, and the
Bear, which men also call the Wain, [Wagon] which ever circles where it is...
[275] and alone has no part in the baths of Ocean. For this star, Calypso,
the beautiful goddess, had bidden him to keep on the left hand as he sailed
over the sea."

In the Illiad, Homer gives us "and the Bear, that men call also the Wain,
that circleth ever in her place, and watcheth Orion [the Hunter], and alone
hath no part in the baths of Ocean. " - e.g. never sets below the horizon.

It is clear in any case, that by the time of Herodotus (@500BC), <arktos> was
becoming a word for north: (LS) to de Pani?nion esti t?s Mukal?s
ch?ros hiros pros ARKTON tetrammenos (The Panionion is a sacred ground in
Mycale, facing north...) Hdt. 1.148.

It is also interesting that in some of the earliest accounts the Bear gets up
there thanks to the intervention of Zeus who saves it from being shot by an
arrow.  Once again, it's not the bear who is doing the mayhem.  And in the
Greek sky, the Bear apparently even needed "a guardian."

Regards,
Steve Long


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 07:16:07 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 02:16:07 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.021607.EST.>

>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>>-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

>You obviously were around.>>

-- what alternative subsistence strategies do you find more credible?
Hunting and gathering, or selling insurance door-to-door?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 07:21:15 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 02:21:15 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.022115.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>And that would say that while members of the community might have seen the
>bear, they may have seen a lot more of what was left of the bear - while
>there were still bears around. >>

-- since the brown bear remained common in Europe down to early medieval
times (and beyond, in some regions), they would have plenty of time to make
its acquaintance.  One would think.

Incidentally, a look at the faunal assemblages found in Neolithic and later
habitation sites would help you avoid these speculation-in-a-vacuum
excursions into folk entymology.


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Thu Mar  9 09:37:16 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 11:37:16 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <200003072320.PAA10927@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.113716.0200.>

On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

> On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Ante Aikio (anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi) wrote:

>> There's a similar semantic shift in e.g. Finnish puna 'red color' < *'fur'
>> (its cognates mean 'hair', 'fur', 'wool').

> Is it the basic term for _red_ in Finnish?  Or is there another, so that only
> certain things get labeled _puna_?  (Cf. horse-hide terms in English such as
> _bay_, _dun_, _chestnut_, and so on.)

No, it's the only term for 'red' in Finnish. _puna_ is actually a noun
meaning 'red color', and the corresponding adjective is a derivative of it
(punainen 'red'). The meaning 'color' is also attested in some of the
other Uralic cognates, but not 'red'.

						 	Ante Aikio


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 21:18:07 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 16:18:07 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.161807.EST.>

>mclasutt at brigham.net writes:

>There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
>'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late term to
>develop in color vocabulary.

-- ah, my fault.  I should have been clearer.  I think it's entirely academic
and pointless to distinguish between "primary" and other color terms.  We say
"orange"; the word is derived from the fruit, not vice-versa; is "orange"
then a "primary" color term, or not?  Who cares?

Likewise, PIE seems to have had a term for "bay-colored horse".  If its
speakers then referred to other things of similar color as "bay", so what?


From stevegus at aye.net  Fri Mar 10 01:42:23 2000
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:42:23 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.204223.0500.>

Richard M. Alderson quoth:

> Is it the basic term for _red_ in Finnish?  Or is there another, so that only
> certain things get labeled _puna_?  (Cf. horse-hide terms in English such as
> _bay_, _dun_, _chestnut_, and so on.)

Interestingly, most of the horse colours in later Latin seem to have been
borrowed from Germanic: blancus, fulvus, griseus, blondus.  These also seem
to have taken root while classical words like -albus-, -spadix-,
and -fuscus- were dropped by the wayside.

--
Hyge sceal thy heardra, heorte thy cenre,
mod sceal thy mare, thy ure maegen lytlath.
                            --- The Battle of Maldon


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Mar 10 07:42:44 2000
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 09:42:44 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <l03130301b4ea4a7c2afd@[193.189.191.14]>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.094244.0200.>

[I wrote]
> the only thing one could object to is Aryan *-as > Finnic > *-u (why not
> Finnish karhas : karhaa- ?). But this is not a big problem, I guess -
> e.g., back-formation of non-attested karhas seems possible.

[Xavier Delamarre]
> I have adressed this question in my article, but not in a very satisfying
> manner, proposing a back-formation, like you. I think now a more obvious
> solution would be to see the -u of karhu as a reflex of the Aryan ending
> -o: of the thematic nominative (cf the Avestan & O.ind. treatment  -o: of
> the ending -as) ; but we have the counter-exemples of _porsas_, _taivas_
> (against _orpo_, _arvo_), maybe a question of time when the loans were made
> (those in -as being earlier than those in -o/-u).

Finnish orpo 'orphan' is a back-formation of *orpas - it includes the
deminutive suffix *-j (*orpa-j > Proto-Finnic *orpoi > Finnish
orpo). The other languages show *-s: Saami oarbbis, Mordvin uros, and
probably also Hungarian ?rva (*s > zero being regular in Hungarian). The
-o in arvo 'value' must be secondary, since there is Finnish arva-ta 'to
guess, estimate'.

But there is at least one loan where some languages show *-s and some don't:
Pre-Ary. *erdhos 'side' > Uralic *ert?s (> Mordvin ir?d?es, Mari
?rdEZ) ~ *ert? (> Saami earti, Udmurt urd-l?, Komi ord-l?). So,
*harkSas > Pre-Finnic *kar(k)Sa seems perfectly possible - but Finnish -u would
have to be a suffix (< *-Vw).

[I wrote]
>>>. "Eurasian" is a wide concept - what do you mean, more precisely?

[X.D.]
> I only mean that the IE were, since remote times, in close contact with the
> Uralic tribes, that is somewhere in present Russia (so, let us say Eastern
> Europe rather than Eurasia)

Yes - I fully agree.

[I wrote]
>> Actually,
>> Pre-Finnish *wr > Finnic / Finnish rv seems to be a regular sound law -
>> there are no counterexamples, and several Baltic loan words have undergone
>> the same sound shift (e.g. Finnish torvi 'horn (instrument)', Finnish
>> karva 'hair (not on head)', cf. Lithuanian taure~, gau~ras). Finnish
>> tarvas is thus < *tawras < Baltic.

[X.D.]
> Thank you for the information, I did not know this law.

I don't think it has been explicitly stated anywhere.

[X.D.]
> What comparative
> grammar  do you use ? (I have Laanest's "Einf?hrung" and I have been
> looking for years for Hakulinen's "Rakenne & Kehitys", out-of-print,
> introuvable).

Laanest is a bit outdated, but it's still the best, I'd say. There
really isn't a more up-to-date presentation. H?kkinen's "Suomen kielen
??nne- ja muotorakenteen historiallista taustaa" (1985) is a short
presentation on historical phonology and morphology written mainly for
teaching purposes, but it might also be handy. There would really be a
need for an up-to-date comparative grammar of Finnic (and Uralic, for that
matter).

Regards,
Ante Aikio


From alex at AN3039.spb.edu  Thu Mar  9 19:36:43 2000
From: alex at AN3039.spb.edu (Alexander S. Nikolaev)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 22:36:43 +0300
Subject: Hittite walwa 'lion' WAS: Bears and why they are mostly...
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.223643.0300.>

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>>>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>

>>-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
>>"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.

>I don't see how that word can be related.  G&I give walwa-,
>walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian walwa-, but
>that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not
>aware of a development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes).

>The Anatolian word is much more likely to be related (as wa-lwa-
>< *lwa-l(e)wa- ?) to the general Eastern Mediterranean word for
>"lion", Egyptian <rw> (< *lw), Kartvelian *lom-, Semitic *labu?at
>("lioness").  As to Greek-Latin/Germanic-Slavic *lew-, G&I argue
>with some justification against the Germanic > Slavic word being
>< Latin, although I probably wouldn't go as far as establishing a
>PIE *lew- "lion" (well maybe, if Toch. <lu> "wild animal" is
>another reflex).

	I agree; there is no reason to connect the
	hittite word to PIE *wl.kwos (regrettably, one can't appeal to
	any authorities: the hittite word discussed is missing in
	both Puhvel and Tischler dictionaries, Neu mentions it in
	his Anitta-edition, but without any IE etymology).
	But there is to my mind little which can prevent us from
	reconstructing a PIE lexeme for 'lion' -- we must reckon with the fact,
	that in prehistorical times the species Panthera Leo was
	spread vastly, the ancestors of today's lions were dwelling
	even in Europe (Darlington P. Zoogeography: the geographical
	distribution of animals. NY, 1957.)

	As to the shape of this putative PIE lexeme, hittite walwa
	posits a lot of difficulties. I know of a hypothesis,
	which i find attractive, but the text can hardly be accessible
	to any of the list members  (it appeared in the
	"Jazgulamskij sbornik", St-Petersburg, 1996 and belongs to A.
	Ryko). I am taking the liberty to outline it briefly, as it
	is of interest. A "broken reduplication", suggested by G&I,
	is an extremely rare type, if exists at all.
	That is why the author suggests to reconstruct the word as
	a o-grade nominal formation from the root *welw/wlew, which
	om its part can be an w-enlarged root *wel- 'to tear' (some
	of the other PIE roots with the same shape *wel-, such as 'to
	see', 'to deceive', 'hair'  are compelling candidacies, too. -
	- why not trace wl.-kw-os to the same root, whatever it might
	be? And what is gr. alo:pe:ks then?)
	The initial *w- in this Schwebeablauting root can be proved
	with the help of the greek material, cf. e.g.
		Tro:es de {F}leiousin eoikotes o:mophagoisi
	"de", which stands in the beginning of the 2nd foot, should form a long
	syllable, and the length is caused by the dygamma, which
	closes the syllable.

	Any comments?

			Alexander Nikolaev


From sarima at friesen.net  Thu Mar  9 14:14:19 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 06:14:19 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <20000307091728.73770.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.061419.0800.>

At 02:41 PM 3/7/00 +0530, G?bor S?ndiuZGk= wrote:
>peninsula. So: what did *ek^uos refer to? Either a mythical beast, or the
>donkey (were there actually donkeys around?), or maybe the sheep or the cow?

Or the now-extinct Quagga.  (I think this unlikely, as there seems to be a
linguistic tendency to keep the striped equines distinct from the plain
one, but it is possible).

>substratum. Such a substratum might well have supplied Latin with the many
>words with "unetymological" a: quattuor, canis, manere etc.

In addition to this, there is also the uncertainty whether all of the
supposed Italic languages really are such.  If some are not, then they
suggest a non-Italic IE stratum in Italy.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 10 06:58:01 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 01:58:01 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.015801.EST.>

In a message dated 3/9/2000 4:35:46 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory). After
>all, any word in a language can be a loanword, therefore - in principle -
>the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>roots. The main question is: HOW LIKELY is it that such borrowings /
>derivations happened independently from each other, often in languages far
>removed from each other?

No, I'm sorry.  This must be a misunderstanding.  The main question has not
been HOW LIKELY?  The main question is WHEN?  When did the words enter the
languages?

I'd like to address just this part before I go onto the case of the Italian
horse.

g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:
>It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of the horse
was @2000BC.  The cow about 3000BC in the Near East, 2000BC in Europe.  The
discovery of metal working made the wheel possible in the Near East about
2500BC.   When that Near East technology reaches the IndoEuropean homeland
about 2000BC, it sets off the invasions of the "Indoeuropeans" in 1600BC when
they enter Greece and India and the Near East.  All culminating in 1125BC
with the fall of Troy.

The above would STILL disprove Renfrew.  If any of those dates were still
true.

The problem is that they are not still true.   And the dates have moved
backward in time.  And that makes Renfrew's hypothesis more likely.  And what
was described above less likely.

>the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>roots.

But 'native' or 'borrowed' isn't really the first question as far as Renfrew
goes.  The dates are first thing you have to address.  I don't know what you
are referring to as far as "trees and wild animals" go.  But all the rest of
those things NOW date pretty well in the range for Renfrew's hypothesis -
especially if you don't find words like <kwelo> and <ekwos> in Anatolian -
which you don't.

And basically you can find a reasonable explanation for why words referring
to milk and land and horse and cow and yoke and sow and grain and field are
often common in IE languages - those languages came with farming.

Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who had
a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed with
roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to pop
that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every meaning and
sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such skill it
would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

Those are the two scenarios I have been given so far.

g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:
>It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>"disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

Conversely, given the above, it's equally hard to see what kind of additional
evidence you would need to consider Renfrew's dates possible.

Regards,
Steve Long


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Thu Mar  9 06:42:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 06:42:00 GMT
Subject: Assumptions in Computing phylogenies
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.064200.GMT.>

>Proceeding on the idea that if a mass of the most genetically related
>portions of two language are very close, then the languages themselves
>must be close in time.

.. this ad-hoc idea is too simple. As soon as two languages split/depart,
the amount of losses in each of them may differ extremely, as we all know,
but often forget.

>The surprise is that cladistics groups the lungfish not with the salmon
>but with the cow.

.. you must not really cite any misuse of cladistics; and: there is no one
"cladistics", of which Warnow on the one side of the Atlantic and Bandelt
on the other are the youngest offsprings.

>The problem with applying cladistics to historical linguistics as
>reflected in IE scholarship (the one that the UPenn tree ran into) is
>that the methods are so thoroughly contrasted in the nature of their
>data.

.. Try to argue with Ringe. /We all/ do not have the data.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar  9 21:41:48 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 16:41:48 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.164148.EST.>

>edsel at glo.be writes:

>That's a complete misunderstanding. There is huge difference between learning
>another language for practical reasons (or in more modern times: out of
>interest in other cultures, religion or what have you) and being forced to
>abandon one's own language (and inevitably:culture).

-- "abandon" is a value-judgement; it would be equally (or more) accurate to
speak of "acquiring" a new culture.

Eg., I have a friend who's Japanese-Canadian, second generation.  She knows
maybe 6 words of Japanese (fewer than I do) and is married to someone whose
parents came from Lancashire.  Has she 'abandoned' a language and culture
which is somehow uniquely 'hers'?  Of course not; she has a perfectly good
language -- English -- and a perfectly good culture -- "Overseas European",
samesame as the rest of us.

Language and culture are not like skin color.  They're more like your
clothes.  One can change, mix and match to suit the circumstances.  Many of
my ancestors were Gaelic-speaking and wore the Great Kilt.  I'm
English-speaking and wear trousers, and firmly of the conviction that Butcher
Cumberland did Scotland a favor.

>It [language] is something that defines them.

-- until they get a new definition.  Linguistic and ethnic identity are fluid
and changeable, subjective in nature.

Eg., to take just one example, there's a community of over 1,000,000 people
of South Asian (Indian) origin in South Africa, descended mainly from
indentured workers brought in to cut sugar cane.  A large majority of them
now use English as their native language.  How are they any worse off than if
they were speaking Gujarati or Tamil?  A small language is a prison, under
modern conditions.

>The fact is that ordinary people resent very much being treated as
>somebody who can't speak properly.

-- and then in most cases, shrug and get on with the job.  Eg., my father
worked very hard as a young man to shed his Newfoundland accent. (A dialect
which can get extremely impenetrable to Standard English speakers).  Standard
English was more useful, so he learned it; just as my more remote ancestors
shed Gaelic and Lallans -- or most of the ancestors of the inhabitants of
Vienna shed various Slavic languages for German.

>That's what happens when the original language loses its critical mass and
>becomes the language of a minority: it is then beyond salvation in most
>cases.

-- a "minority" where?  Minority/majority status is a product of the size of
the sphere of interaction, which in turn these days is a product of
technological development.

A small language could get along quite well when most people were illiterate
peasants who rarely left their villages.  The local patois was as useful --
more useful -- than a larger national language.

In the age of 'globalization', even French or German are "small" languages,
of declining usefulness.  A fifth of the entire human race can speak English,
and the percentage increases rapidly.  Meanwhile half the languages spoken in
1900 AD are extinct, and half the languages spoken in 2000 AD are moribund
(no longer learned by children).  This is all to the good.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar  9 19:36:25 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:36:25 -0000
Subject: *-iH_2 [was Re: Domesticating the Horse]
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.193625.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 6:55 PM

> On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) responded to my
> statement of the preceding day:

[RAp]

>>> The Greek outcome is especially interesting, since this is one of the few
>>> places where the laryngeals do not undergo fully parallel developments:  We
>>> find *i1 > _i:_, *i2 > _ia_, and *i3 > _iO:_.

>>> This last fact, of course, answers the question of reconstructing
>>> ?*ul{k^w}i1 or ?*ul{k^w}i3:  Were the suffix not *-i2, we would have a
>>> different outcome in Greek.

>> But *u.lkwi2 has no outcome in Greek, does it?

> Disingenuous.  The *suffix* in question has a number of occurrences, all with
> a short alpha.

> Note that there are occurrences of long alpha following iota, which are *not*
> reflexes of this suffix, and which therefore show that something else is
> going on here.

[PRp]

>> And the Greek outcomes look like:

>> -iH1 -> ie: -> i:; -H2 -> ia: -> ia; -iH3  -> -io:

[RA]

> I'm afraid not.  There is no evidence for either of your intermediate stages
> with regard to H_1 or H_2.

[PR]

What PIE suffixal form would you reconstruct for a Greek word like
so:te:ri'a:?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar  9 19:45:27 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:45:27 -0000
Subject: -r passive archaic or innovating?
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.194527.0000.>

Dear Carol and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Carol F. Justus" <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 2:00 PM

[ moderator snip ]

For whatever it may be worth, I believe I have isolated a PIE element *re/o,
meaning 'any', so that the medio-passive forms with -r- should be regarded
as indefinites.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar 10 05:08:20 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:08:20 EST
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel
 and Dating P...
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.000820.EST.>

>alderson at netcom.com writes:

>While my Sanskrit professor thought (and taught) this way in his introductory
>class, in my opinion one would have to be extremely well versed in the history
>of both languages in order for this to work, so much so that the experiment is
>not really possible:

-- as an experiment, why not compare a few sentences?  Say:

"I sacrificed a hundred cattle to the gods."

"Our powerful and mighty heroes siezed the land of their enemies."

That sort of thing.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 10 05:58:10 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 07:58:10 +0200
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <8e.22251db.25f7305f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.075810.0200.>

On Tue, 7 Mar 2000 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> In fact, given the archaic characteristics of the Baltic and Slavic
> languages, the lack of apparent substratal influence, and the high
> percentage of their vocabulary which can be traced back to PIE, I
> would say that their position (_at the earliest recorded periods_)
> would be indicative of the PIE urheimat.

Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing periphery"
model?  Following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion,
Lithuania is the Urheimat.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Fri Mar 10 05:11:40 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 23:11:40 -0600
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.231140.0600.>

At 11:26 PM 3/7/00 EST, you wrote:
>In fact, given the archaic characteristics of the Baltic and Slavic
>languages, the lack of apparent substratal influence,

Could someone spell out in more detail what these 'archaic characteristics'
are? Or at least the most salient ones.

Thanks.
Roz Frank


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Mar  9 20:59:15 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:59:15 -0000
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.205915.0000.>

>similarities between Homer's Greek and
> Vedic Sanskrit,
> Any Classical scholars or Sanskrit experts out there who could comment?

The claim of similarity has troubled me for some time.   I read Greek well
and Sanskrit badly, and I think the claim has no foundation except (a) that
the PIE we reconstruct from Greek and Sanskrit looks remarkably like both,
and (b) similarities are superficially more obvious than between say Gothic
and Sanskrit, partly because the sound changes are more transparent.

I am surprised the claim has not been challenged and dismissed before now.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 12 08:45:06 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 08:45:06 -0000
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.084506.0000.>

>Mycenean Greek and Vedic
> >Sanskrit .
> -- I've been told that it's possible to puzzle out the general meaning;

Even that is an overstatement in my opinion.    A knowledge of Greek can
help at times when I am reading Sanskrit, but it could never replace
learning the language.   With a knowledge of historical linguistics, some
words and forms can be recognised, but not much more than that.   There is
Dravidian vocabulary even in Vedic, and non-PIE vocab in Greek.  Sanskrit of
course has 8 cases to Greek's 5, so any claim that you can read Sanskrit
with Greek is absurd.

I also repeat my earlier point.  It was claimed that since the two languages
were close, they had to be separated recently.   I find this illogical,
since they only appear close because of our knowledge of their linguistic
history.   The two languages as they actually appear are nowhere near as
close as has been suggested.

Peter


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 10 16:42:15 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:42:15 -0600
Subject: Ventris-Schele Mycenaean-Mayan Exhibition  OPEN MARCH 9-AUG 1 @
 Benson  Rare Books
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.104215.0600.>

[ Moderator's note:
  I received the following at my personal e-mail address, but I think it's
  clearly intended for the IE list.  If not, I hope Carol Justus will forgive
  me!
  --rma ]

Dear Rich,

Just so I don't forget to forward this, I have done so in its entirety, but
probably only parts will be of interest to the IE List. In any case, here
is all the info!

Best,  Carol

>Delivered-To: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu
>Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 22:22:51 -0600
>From: tpalaima at mail.utexas.edu (Tom Palaima)

>It is a great pleasure to announce that the exhibition:

>Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Writing: The Parallel Lives of Michael
>Ventris and Linda Schele and the Decipherment of Mycenaean and Mayan
>Writing

>is now installed in the Benson Latin American Library Rare Books Collection
>in Sid Richardson Hall. The show will run March 9-August 1, and will
>overlap with the Maya Meetings which start tomorrow and the 11th
>International Mycenological Colloquium which will be held in the Thompson
>Conference Center May 7-13.

>The superb curatorial skills and tremendous hard work of Elizabeth Pope and
>Kent Reilly, most recently in the crucial stretch drive, have made for an
>exhibition that has accomplished what we three hoped for.  If you visit the
>show, you will be afforded an insider perspective on the collective
>intellectual and human process of decipherment that even most experts,
>including ourselves, have never had before.  The three Metropolitan Linear
>B tablet casts, made in 1913 from originals in the Ashmolean Museum,
>Oxford, and on loan to us, are beautifully displayed and linked to
>scholarly materials elsewhere in the show.  The same is true for Schele's
>Mayan inscriptions.

>Thanks once again to Chris Williams and Kevin Pluta for many long hours of
>work at computer scanning, image manipulation and text layout.  We want
>particularly to thank again Juliana Asreen, Martha Dillon and Tommy on the
>presses at UT printing for the exquisite design and excellent production
>quality of posters and catalogue.  Thanks also to the staff of the Benson
>and especially to Jane Garner for help throughout.

>Please visit our web site for further information. The show is also
>featured on the site for the UT General Libraries.

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/cipem/exhib

>and then click on AN EXHIBITION.

>There is also a link through:

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp.

>Please do pay the show a visit. You will do honor to a former great UT
>professor of Art and Art History, Linda Schele, and a UT adjunct professor
>of Classics and soon to be recipient of the gold medal for lifetime
>achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America, Emmett L.
>Bennett, Jr.

>Tom Palaima

>*******************************************
>Thomas G. Palaima
>Dickson Centennial Professor of Classics
>Director, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory
>WAG 123 (C3400)  University of Texas at Austin
>Austin, TX 78712-1181

>512 471-5742  fax 512 471-4111
>e-mail: tpalaima at mail.utexas.edu
>-OR-   pasptgp at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu

>PASP produces the revived
>*Studies in Mycenaean Inscriptions and Dialect* (now edited by
>Peter van Alfen).  VISIT:
>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp

>TGP coedits *Minos*, the journal of early Greek and Aegean
>linguistics scripts, and  texts.

>Please send submissions, pertinent offprints and books for review
>to the above address.

>The 11th International Mycenological Colloquium sponsored
>by the Comiti International Permanent pour les Itudes
>Myciniennes (CIPEM: a UNESCO Committee) will meet in
>Austin, TX May 7-13, 2000.  For more information, VISIT:

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/cipem

>>From March 9-August 1 in the Benson Library Rare Book Collection,
>SRH 1.101 UT Austin PASP is sponsoring an exhibition entitled:

>"Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Writing"

>which focuses on the decipherment of Mycenaean (1400-1200
>B.C.E.) and Mayan (11 B.C.E.-1250 C.E.) writing.

>http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/cipem/exhib
>*******************************************


From sarima at friesen.net  Sat Mar 11 01:09:29 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 17:09:29 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <008001bf8891$a4fad280$7cd31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.170929.0800.>

At 12:02 AM 3/8/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>At a time long ago, in an Urheimat far away . . .

>When PIE had only one vowel, /a/ . . .

This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

>[PR]

>So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/ and
>/a:/?

Most would call this stage pre-PIE, or something like that, not plain PIE.

[And I would suspect he is saying it had only two non-high vowels, which is
slightly different].

>And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
grammatical.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From varny at cvtci.com.ar  Sat Mar 11 03:05:22 2000
From: varny at cvtci.com.ar (Vartan Matiossian)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 00:05:22 -0300
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.000522.0300.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 2:00 AM

> -- my own guess would be that Phrygian, Armenian and Hellenic were, in
> origin, part of the same dialect-cluster and simply share a lot of late
> isoglosses.  Thracian we simply don't know enough about to say.

Views on this subject are very contradictory, but the consensus reached
during the last years seems to point that there was a Greek-Armenian dialect
cluster (perhaps Indo-Iranian-Greek-Armenian), and that Phrygian had not
genetical relation with Armenian. A well-balanced study of this is V. Orel's
article ("The Position of Phrygian, Annual of Armenian Linguistics, vol. 14,
1993)

Regards,
Vartan Matiossian
Casilla de Correo 2, Suc. 53
1453 Buenos Aires
Argentina
varny at cvtci.com.ar


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Mar 11 09:24:07 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 04:24:07 EST
Subject: On the Horse in Italy, pt 1
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.042407.EST.>

In a message dated 3/9/2000 4:35:46 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>Let me concentrate on the word for horse in Latin: equus.
>Where do you think it comes from? Let me assume that you accept the reality
>of PIE - if you don't, it is difficult to continue any kind of debate. So -
>I can think of four possibilities:

>Equus is derived linearly, with one generation of speakers following
>another, from a PIE word reconstructed by linguists as *ek^uos.
...[snipped]
>Now, if this etymological explanation is correct, the
>word *ek^uos or its linear descendants all the way to 'equus' must have
>existed at all stages in the development of PIE > Latin, as - before the
>invention of writing and written traditions - there was no way for words to
>disappear and then reappear in a language, unless by borrowing (for which
>see later).

>If this was the case, the word must have referred to something, presumably
>to a horse-like creature. The problem is that there is no evidence of
>horses, wild or domesticated, in Italy before the Polada culture (ca. 2600
>BC, if I am not mistaken).  If Renfrew's Indo-Europeans arrived in Italy
>around 5000 BC, or even earlier, they presumably encountered no horses
>there....

>The only weakness in this argument is that maybe horses were present in
>Italy at the time, we have just found no evidence for them. I ask
>archaeologists: is this likely? Italy is well covered by archaeological
>sites from many eras.

Let's stop here.

I'd like to address borrowing and other such things in another post.  If I
may, I'd just like to address this issue of the horse in Italy here.  I don't
have my best references with me, but I think I have enough to make it clear
what the problem is with this sort of quick-shot analysis.

1. I can't contradict the statement that earliest identifiable horse
(caballus equus) bones date to 2600BC.  (Polada, I believe, comes a millenium
or a half later.)  I'll assume that's true for the area that today
constitutes mainland Italy.

2. HOWEVER, what's also important here is what is going on in the areas
immediately adjacent to Italy by land or sea.

Note that agriculture or agriculturalists do NOT simply arrive from across
the Adriatic and then go into isolation.  There is in fact a steady record of
exchange going on throughout the period from roughly 6000BC - 2000BC -
especially back AND forth between Iberia, Italy, the Balkan peninsula and
North Africa.  Just after 4000BC, for example, metallurgy has not only come
to Sardinia but also advanced early into making arsenical bronze.  From the
west, there is evidence that the domesticated poppy - originating in western
Europe - has moved east across Italy and the Mediterranean.

3. The fact that these areas were in regular contact is important to this
whole issue of <equus>.  Because the absence of direct evidence of the
domesticated or the wild horse would not necessarily MEAN LACK OF AWARENESS
OF THE HORSE.  Horsehide - for example - simply does not preserve as an
artifact well in the European climate.  (And up until the horse was
domesticated, it's main use to these humans would have been in the form of
by-products.)

How would these early Italians know about the horse?  The same way and from
the same places that they learned of copper smelting, poppy seeds or other
things not 'native' to the area.

4. The odd assumption made in most arguments concerning the horse that it was
not present in most areas in mainland Europe prior to domestication.  But
even in Greece, for example, the evidence at Franchthi Cave shows that the
wild horse was the main diet of its occupants into the mesolithic -
@8000-7000BC - when it is suddenly replaced by other things, including the
red deer.  The disappearance of the wild horse from many areas in Europe is
often attributed to climatic change, though it is clear that there was a
certainly over-hunting.  Whole herds of wild horses have been found driven
off cliffs in late paleolithic sites.

What's important here however is that there is clear evidence that the "true"
wild horses did not disappear from Europe west of the Ukraine after 6000BC.

5. In fact, there is strong evidence that the wild horse survived and thrived
in the many areas in Europe throughout this period.

In The Przewalski Horse: Morphology, Habitat and Taxonomy, Colin P. Groves
describes the process of identification of wild versus the domesticated equid
that have been developed over the years.  This paper is on the web and very
much worth reading.
(http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/cg_przewalski_horse.htm)  What is clear
from it is that wild horse strains were not only preserved in northcentral
Europe, but that even in Roman times there were identifiably wild (non-equus
caballus) horses in Iberia, North Africa, Germany, Poland and possibly
southern France (the Camargue delta region).

6.  And it should be said that although the evidence is that the horse was
first domesticated in the Ukraine, there is very strong evidence that it was
also domesticated not much later in other parts of Europe.

The evidence seems to strongly suggests multiple origins, "with Central Asia,
Eastern, Central and South-Western Europe being more or less independent
regions of domestication" :

Here again is an abstract entitled The Domesticafion of the Horse by Dr.
Norbert Benecke (from an Abstracts of papers presented at the 30th
WAHVM-congress, 9-12 September 1998 ):
"On the basis of subfossil bone remains, archaeological findings and artistic
representations the current state of research concerning the domestication of
the horse is discussed. New osteometric data from Early and Middle Holocene
wild horses, as well as from early domestic horses, support the assumption of
a polytope origin of the domestic horse, with Central Asia, Eastern, Central
and South-Western Europe being more or less independent regions of
domestication. In all those areas the domestication of the horse took place
within agrarian societies or at least in contact with them....

In Central and South-Western Europe the controlled keeping and breeding of
horses started around 3000 B.C. One of the oldest Neolithic cultures in
Central Europe with unambiguous evidence for the presence of domestic horses
is the Bernburg Culture...."

(Bernburg is BTW a middle TRB culture (3800-3200BC) located about 300 miles
as the crow flies from the modern Italian border.)

7. Evidence of wild horse domestication in Iberia is extensive.  Here are
some excerpts:
"The Origins of the Lusitano Horse by Juan Valera-Lema, Ph.D.
Archaeological evidence in the Iberian Peninsula, modern day Spain and
Portugal, indicates that the origins of the Lusitano horse date back the form
of its primitive ancestor, the Sorraia breed.... The Sorraia is believed to
have developed from crosses between native Iberian Proto Draft Horses (Equus
Caballus Caballus of Western Europe) and ancient strains of Oriental/North
African horses.
The Sorraia remained isolated for several millennia in the southern part of
Iberia, the Alentejo and Andalusian regions of modern Portugal and Spain.
Noted Portuguese historian Mr. Ruy d'Andrade suggested that by the Neolithic
period (@4000 B.C.) the native tribes of the area may have used horses in
war."

"Dr. d'Andrade's extensive studies documented the Sorraia horse as a direct
descendant of one of the four forms of primeval wild horses from which all
our domestic breeds derived, namely form III, which inhabited the south of
the Iberian peninsula. That the Sorraia represents the indigenous South
Iberian horse was acknowledged by the other premier prehistorians of the
horse, Speed (Scotland), Etherington (Scotland), Ebhardt (Germany),
Skorkowski (Poland), Zeeb (Germany) and Schaefer (Germany).... Paintings of
horses on the cave walls at La Pileta, Spain, dated between 30,000 and 20,000
B.C., already show the subconvex heads and arched necks typical of
Andalusians, Lusitanos and their ancestor, the Sorraia, as do ancient
sculptures.... However, man-made Iberian breeds have in their veins, besides
some non-Iberian blood, that of another kind of wild equid also indigenous to
the Iberian peninsula: the Garrano, a wild pony inhabiting the mountainous
regions in the north."

8. Across north western and central Europe, a slightly different wild horse
has been identified.  The distinction is made between "the lighter, more
refined Tarpan of Eastern Europe and the Ukranian Steppes, which is
exemplified by the famous herd maintained at Popielno in Poland; and the
heavy, slow-moving horse of the northern European marshlands known as Equus
silvaticus, from which our heavy horse breeds derive...  (Horse Type 4, while
smaller than the others, was much more refined, with a concave profile and
high-set tail. It came from western Asia and its present equivalent is the
Caspian pony. It is postulated as the prototype Arabian.)"

Perhaps, 600 miles as the crow flies north from the modern Italian border,
these European wild horses were obviously around just BEFORE the
domestication process began and were even a part of the Danish diet at the
time - just as agriculture was being adopted.  "During the Atlantic period,
7000-3900 BC, the sea level rose so much that the northern parts of Denmark we
re divided into islands, and deep fiords cut into the landscape. A dense
forest dominated by limetrees spread across the land. The population was
found mostly near the coasts and lived on fish and shellfish, supplemented by
hunting... Settlements were often situated near the edges of lakes which have
since become bogs. In the east of Denmark, the peat in these bogs has
preserved a rich variety of weapons and tools, bones from slaughtered
animals, including bison, wild horses, elk and aurochs...."

9. There is also evidence about wild horses being present in the area of the
Danube basin and North Africa at this time that I will get to later.

It should be evident from the above that even if we assume that there were no
wild or domesticated horses in Italy until 2600BC, there is still very good
evidence that there were plenty enough wild horses - as well as horses in the
process of being domesticated - quite near-by.  In my next post, I'll give
some evidence that Italy was in contact with this areas throughout the period
from 6000- 2600BC.

I should say that I - like some others on this list - do not necessarily
agree with Renfrew that IE came to Italy with Cardial Ware (@6000-5500BC).
Cardial Ware culture is not Bandkeramik and shows evidence of influences
outside the Balkans and Anatolia.  But for the sake of this matter, I'm
assuming IE was in Italy from that early neolithic period.

One more thing I noticed in passing:
g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>So: what did *ek^uos refer to? Either a mythical beast, or the
>donkey (were there actually donkeys around?), or maybe the sheep or the cow?

>I don't like any of these explanations, and I find it hard to believe that
>when the pre-Latins encountered the horse after 2600 BC, they pointed at it
>and said: aha, here is this mythical beast that our ancestors in Anatolia
>called 'equos', nice to find it again after so many millennia.

With regard to:
---here is this mythical beast that our ancestors in Anatolia called
'equos'...

I believe there is no real evidence of <ekwos> as a native word in any of the
Anatolian (Hittite, Luwian) languages.  So it is quite possible that their
Anatolian ancestors called it something borrowed, like <onus>.

What <ekwos> actually meant 7000 years ago - 4000 years before it is first
attested - is another matter that I will try to get to.

Regards,
Steve Long


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar 11 03:49:46 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 03:49:46 -0000
Subject: i/u as original vowels [was "centum"/"satem" exceptions]
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.034946.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 6:44 AM

> At 12:11 AM 3/5/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
 <snip>

[PRp]

>> Unless you can produce an acceptable minimal pair contrasting *e/*o, I
>> believe the question of phonemicity remains open.

[SF]

> Phonemic status does not really require the existence of strict minimal
> pairs, just semantic distinction in the absence of phenetic conditioning
> factors.  Minimal pairs are merely a *sufficient* condition, not a
> necessary one.

[PR]

It is the "absence of phonetic conditioning factors" that would be the
problem for me. In the examples you cited, it seems that the augment (*e'-)
and the difference between an CVC with closed as against a CVC- with open
syllable would constitute (at least, potential) conditioning factors.

<snip>

>> [SFp]

>>> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two
>>> distinct roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an
>>> e-grade at all (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

<snip>

[SF]

> Pokorny list both of them as one root: "bh(e)reu: bh(e)ru(:)".  It starts
> on page 143 in my printing.  The root *bheru is under subheading A., and
> the root bhreHu is under subheading B.

[PR]

Well, if I understand your point, I would have to say that the root in
question seems to be a very obvious derivation of 2. *bher-, listed on p.
132 --- extended by *-ew-. As for the "*u appear(ing) not to be associated
with an e-grade", surely the o-grade in Greek phoruto's suffices for
establishing that the initial consonant cluster is the result of reduction
due to stress-accent rather than original.

Also, one might notice Greek phre'ar where the *-u- is clearly treated like
a *-w-, and incidentally shows something close to an e-grade.

>> [SFp]

>>> There is *uper "over, above".

>> [PRp]

>> If one notates it as Pokorny does, namely *upe'r, the problem is
>> simplified:  **wepe'r -> *upe'r.

[SF]

> The problem is that this assumes the conclusion.  No trace of any such
> thing as **wepe'r is found anywhere.  This is my complaint: reconstructing
> an *e for the *sole* reason of avoiding "bare" *u and *i as vowels.

[PRp]

>> There are many examples of *weC- becoming *uC-: e.g.
>> *wep-:*wo/o:p-:*up-, 'water'.

[SF]
> Certainly there are.  But just because something is *common* doesn't make
> it *universal*.

[PR]

What distinguishes *upe'r from *wep- is that, apparently, the stress-accent
could shift to a subsequent syllable created by inflection, leaving the
first syllable in zero-grade (*wp- > *up-).

With *upe'r, apparently no subsequent suffix could occasion a
re-stress-accentuation of the first syllable, so that zero-grade would be
permanent.

I would not be a bit surprised if it turned out that *upe'r(i) was a -r(o/i)
derivation from 2. *wep-, 'throw, strew' (cf. Latvian vepris, 'boar').

<snip>

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From xdelamarre at siol.net  Fri Mar 10 19:47:49 2000
From: xdelamarre at siol.net (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 20:47:49 +0100
Subject: Celtic word for horse
In-Reply-To: <7e.1fac1df.25f7393c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.204749.0100.>

There are more than two words for horse in Celtic :

- _epos_ : Gaulish PNN, _Epos, Epo-sognatos, Epo-meduos_ , O.Ir. _ech_ etc.

- _marcos_ : _marcan_ acc. (Pausanias), and the LNN _Marco-durum,
Marco-magus_, O.Ir. _marc_, W. _marh_ etc. ; connections only with
Germanic, OHG _meriha_, ON _marr_ etc.

- _uore:dos_ : Gaul. _ueredus_, Gallo-Latin _para-ueredus_ (> palfrey,
Pferd etc.), W. _gorwydd_ ; < _*upo-reid(h)o-

- _caballos_ : Gallo-Latin _caballus_, PNN _Caballos, Ro-cabalus_ etc.,
OIr. _capall_, W. _ceffyl_ etc. Prob. 'Wanderwort'

- _mandu-_ : PNN _Catu-mandus_, Mandu-benos_, LNN _Mandu-essedum_ etc.,
Latin (< Gaul.) _mannus_ 'poney' ; some "Illyrian" connections.

For those interested in the various designations of the horse in Celtic,
with their different functions :
- Joseph Loth, "Comptes-Rendus de l'Acad?mie des Inscriptions et Belles
Lettres", 43 (1925), 113 ss.
- Idem : "Revue Celtique" 44 (1927), 410.

X. Delamarre
Ljubljana


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Sat Mar 11 19:06:10 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 12:06:10 -0700
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
In-Reply-To: <45.16f62b9.25f5f223@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.120610.0700.>

Steve Long has doubts about the value of the Berlin and Kay color research,
but in my experience, I've found more value in their work that in the work
of others on the same line.  Sure, their work may not be perfect, but in the
absence of another system, that's the one we've got.  In my own work on
Panamint, instead of color swatches, I used photographs of local flora,
fauna, and geology to analyze the Panamint color system.  While I can't put
a Pantone color to it, there's still a visible different between the "red"
of a pronghorn antelope (pale to medium orange), the "red" of a beavertail
cactus blossom (pink), and the "red" of the iron ochre soil used to made
paint (brick red).  In Panamint, though, they're all ankapihty (y is barred
i) 'red'.

I'm still interested in finding out:

What basic color terms are reconstructable to PIE?
What basic color terms are reconstructable to PGermanic?
Has anyone ever looked at this?

I've looked in Buck, but am more interested in current specialist thinking.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 12 09:26:07 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 09:26:07 -0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.092607.0000.>

Stanley said:

>the non-present forms in Latin and Germanic (at least) are
> obviously heterogeneous in origin, on purely internal grounds.

I'm not so sure.

Proto-Germanic had a new formation for weak verbs, and in strong verbs the
pattern:
     present                 e grade
     preterite singular  o grade
     preterite plural      zero grade
     (and past participle zero grade, though that's not relevant here)

Later phonetic changes and analogical levelling have obscured the system
somewhat, and I admit there are problems, especially with class 6 verbs, but
I don't see that this is "obviously heterogeneous".   The system is based on
the IE pattern reflected in Greek and I-I perfect.  Even the
preterite-presents could all go back to the perfect, I think.

The Latin system does show different formations, but we come to it with
Indo-European eyes, and see in it traces of what we know from Greek and I-I.
In Greek and I-I we are happy to have different formations of the same
tense, without saying that they must originally have been different tense
systems, e.g. the reduplicated aorist, the -s- aorist, the root aorist.....
We can accept that there was more than one way of forming that tense.   This
is why I prefer to think of various morphological options in PIE, perhaps
with differences or nuances (as with all the various present formations),
and of course the tense structures we can recover even for PIE - but these
are not necessarily those of Greek and I-I.   These were combined into new
tense structures somewhat differently in different parts of the PIE world.

So it is a question of how we interpret Latin's "obviously heterogeneity" -
and I do not believe that on purely internal grounds Latin compels us to
believe that the different formations were different tenses with different
meanings.

(a) Latin overwhelmingly shows -s- on consonant stems, -ui/vi on vowel or
laryngeal stems.
(b) Relics of other formations are also to be found, e.g:
   (i) reduplication with zero grade.   Is this aorist (as it could be in
Sanskrit) or perfect singular generalised to the plural?   The only
difference in PIE would be the endings, a difference entirely lost in Latin.
If you say it is aorist, you say it is not a different tense system from the
Latin -s- forms;  if you say it is perfect, then you say it is different.
I think this is reading into Latin what we know from elsewhere, rather than
using "purely internal" arguments.
   (ii) long vowel, often from secondary origins (e.g. se:di from se-sd-ai
or la:vi from lav at vai), but not always secondary.   This is rare in Greek &
I-I, so often gets overlooked.  It is found in the Germanic class 6 verbs.
I don't think you want to claim that this is also a new tense system.   So
do we simply put it with the aorists, saying it's another form but not a new
tense?   On purely internal grounds in Latin, I don't think we can claim
anything.

Hope that helps clarify my reservations.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 11 20:57:40 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 20:57:40 -0000
Subject: Latin word formation
Message-ID: <SAT.11.MAR.2000.205740.0000.>

de-bil-is

How about   de:mens?
Or deliciae = gutter?   < de: + liqu- + ia

You say debilis is de: + nominal root + suffix.   Could it be from a
different route?   de: + verbal root  + deverbative ending?

Peter


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun Mar 12 14:49:04 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 09:49:04 -0500
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.094904.0500.>

I would like to take the liberty to quote from my forthcoming book " Common
Slavic Nominal Morphology: A New Synthesis"

Certain authors (Milewski1932. "Rozw?j fonetyczny wyglosu praslowianskiego".
Slavia 11: 250,255; Galabov 1973. "Urslavische Auslautprobleme". Wiener
Slavistisches Jahrbuch, 20: 11-17.) have reconstructed the
passive/deponent -r ending for Slavic

Chapter 4, fn. 10, p. 106 In this context it has not been remarked that the
reconstruction of *-r for verbs in Slavic would have interesting
implications for IE studies: so far only Celtic, Italic, Tocharian and
Anatolian have been attested with these forms, and they are quoted as a
classic case of an archaism retained by peripheral dialects (most recently,
Sihler 1995: 472-74).

Robert Orr

[ moderator snip ]


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu Mar  9 10:03:58 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 10:03:58 +0000
Subject: Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion (4)
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.100358.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

>  15.  The use of mere suspicion to exclude items,
>  or of occurrence in neighboring languages,
>  even when absent from the closest relatives of the
>  neighboring languages which are not proximal to the
>  language of focus (Basque).

Of course.  If there exists good reason to suspect that a given Basque
word *might* be borrowed, then it must be excluded from my list.
It would be potentially disastrous for me to include in my list
words which are not of native origin.

>  Trask writes, concerning "bill" (of bird) that the form
>  <moko>, variant <mosko> may possibly qualify on his other
>  criteria, but continues:
>
>  >But the widely held belief in a
>  >Romance origin will probably disqualify it.
>
>  A belief, no matter how widely held, should not be
>  considered relevant at all.  Evidence is relevant.
>  Perhaps Trask had some which he did not mention
>  because it did not seem germane or important at the moment.

Very many Vasconists and Romanists have looked at the Basque word
and said "This looks to me like a probable loan from Romance."
Even if I don't agree -- and in this case I probably don't --
I can't simply wave away a body of informed judgement.
If lots of specialists suspect the word of being borrowed, then,
unless I have good counter-evidence -- which I don't -- I must
exclude the word from my list.

Lloyd, in constructing my list, I must *always* err on the side
of caution.  Over-cautiously excluding some genuinely native
Basque words is not a problem for me.  But wrongly including
some borrowed words will have grave consequences.

Isn't this obvious?

If it's not, consider an analogy.

Suppose there exist a large number of paintings which are associated
with the great 14th-century Italian painter Pintore.  An art historian
is sure that many of these paintings, perhaps most, are not the work
of Pintore at all, but of his students and imitators.  But he's not
sure which are genuine.  So, how will he proceed?

I suggest he will proceed as follows.  He will sift through the
paintings and try to pick out the ones for which he can find the
*strongest* evidence that Pintore painted them.  Having identified
the (rather small) number of paintings which he feels are almost
certainly Pintore's own work, he will examine these in order to
identify, as explicitly as possible, the distinguishing features
of Pintore's work.  Having done so, he will then turn to the much
larger number of remaining paintings, and compare the features of
each in turn with the now known features of Pintore's work.  In this
way, he will be able, if all goes well, to identify further genuine
Pintore works which he had at first excluded, and also to determine
that the rest of the paintings, which fail to show the required
features, are not by Pintore.

Doesn't this make sense?  But this is *exactly* what I'm doing with
my Pre-Basque words.

Lloyd, it appears that you would protest volubly about our historian's
procedure, and demand instead that his initial list of best candidates
should be greatly expanded to include *all* paintings which might
*possibly* be Pintore's works.  Isn't that what you're demanding
of me?  And can't you see that such a procedure would be disastrous?

>  But this may possibly go along with
>  Trask's exclusion of items which occur *only*
>  in Iberian Romance and in Basque.

I exclude every Basque word shared with *any* language known to have
been in contact with Basque.  There is no earthly reason to make an
exception for Ibero-Romance -- which, after all, is the source of a huge
proportion of the loan words in Basque.

>  For such a distribution of attestations, lacking any other evidence,
>  I think standard linguistic methodology dictates a conclusion
>  that the item was in early Basque and borrowed into Romance,
>  rather than the other way round;

"Standard linguistic methodology" dictates no such thing.

In North America, we can cite a number of words which are found
in Algonquian languages, and also found in English, but not found
in any other North American languages.  Your "standard methodology"
would force the conclusion, then, that words like 'raccoon' and
'woodchuck' are English words borrowed into Algonquian.

Standard linguistic methodology, as I understand it, involves
scrutinizing all the available evidence and drawing conclusions
accordingly.  And, in the example of Basque and Ibero-Romance, this
procedure leads, in virtually every case in which a conclusion can
be drawn, to the conclusion that the word in question is a Romance
word borrowed into Basque.

>  or else perhaps in a "substrate", borrowed into both Ibero-Romance
>  and Basque, but with no reason to prefer this second explanation.
>  As has been pointed out by careful historical linguists,
>  supposed substrates should not be appealed to without direct
>  evidence of their existence, they are a wildcard.

Well, we agree about something.

>  16.  In addition to all the other restrictions, there is an implicit one
>  against verbs, because

>  >1. No ancient Basque verb is monomorphemic.
>  >A native verbal root is a bound morpheme,
>  >and hence no ancient verb will make my list.

>  While there is certainly nothing wrong with Trask seeking
>  the canonical forms of native ancient monomorphemic
>  lexical items, it would be appropriate to join any conclusions
>  drawn with the point that of course no verbs are included at all.
>  So the validity of any conclusion becomes yet again more
>  narrowly limited.

This is a bizarre comment.

Lloyd, I am expressly interested in studying the phonological forms
of Pre-Basque lexical items which are *monomorphemic*.  That's the
objective.  Got that?

Now, it is true that ancient Basque verbs are *never* monomorphemic.
*All* word-forms involving ancient verbs are polymorphemic.
So, verb-forms (and verbs) fail to be included in my study.

Why does this bother you?  And it what sense does this outcome
make my study "yet again more narrowly limited"?

Complaining that a study of monomorphemic lexical items fails
to include polymorphemic verb-forms is rather like complaining
that a study of mammals fails to include fish.  Now isn't it?

>  Trask has been explicit about this fact of Basque verbs
>  this is really a point about evaluating
>  whether the results of Trask's criteria can be representative
>  of an interesting portion of Basque.

Lloyd, I am not concerned here with your definition of "an interesting
portion of Basque", whatever that may be.  I am only concerned with
monomorphemic lexical items.

When I announce clearly that I am interested in studying monomorphemic
lexical items, and nothing else, you have no business complaining
"Hey, Traskie -- you're going badly wrong because you're ignoring
polymorphemic word-forms, which I happen to like."

>  Every restriction of
>  course reduces the range of any conclusions.  The exclusion
>  of verbs also does so, whether specified explicitly or not.

So.  In my study of monomorphemic lexical items, every time I
decide to exclude a class of polymorphemic word-forms, I am being
foolish, and I am ruining the validity of my results.  Uh-huh.

Say, Lloyd -- in your student days, did you do a course in logic?
How did you get on with it?  ;-)

>  It is well known that verbs can have different canonical forms
>  from non-verbs, in some languages, so it is important to point
>  out very prominently this kind of exclusion of verbs,
>  if one is studying canonical forms.
>  I do not wish to claim more on this point than literally just that.

I have already said publicly that ancient Basque verbs are never
monomorphemic and that they will therefore not be included in my list.
Isn't this good enough?

What do you want me to do, Lloyd -- buy air time on CBS? ;-)

>  17.
>  This is in one sense not a new criterion,

Unsurprising, since none of the last 16 was a new criterion, either. ;-)

>  but in another sense it is, and it is convenient to refer to it
>  with a new number.  It is an example of one noted long ago.
>  Range of distribution among dialects should be *relative to* the
>  number of dialects which can be included in the sample.

The number of Basque dialects included in my sample is not one of
the more vexing issues facing me.  I count *all* of them.

>  One reason a dialect cannot be included is that no word was
>  recorded for the concept in question.

But this is no reason for excluding the dialect.  My solution to the
relative paucity of data for the smaller and less well-studied
dialects is to group these with other dialects into larger assemblies,
which I then count as single dialectal entities.

>  Another reason, almost the same one in effect,
>  is that a loanword has replaced whatever the dialect would have
>  had otherwise.

No doubt, but there's nothing I can do about this, so I don't
worry about it.

>  The last point is what makes this item a new item.

Er -- yes, I guess.  So?

>  Trask writes:
>
>  >For example, 'pine tree' is the Latino-Romance loan <pinu>
>  >almost everywhere, while the eastern dialect Roncalese has <ler>
>  >and its neighbor Zuberoan has <leher> in some varieties.
>  >It is highly possible that <leher> ~ <ler> represents an indigenous
>  >word displaced almost everywhere by the loan word,
>  >but I can't be sure of this, and the word does not qualify for
>  >inclusion.

>  Admittedly any item could be better if attested in more rather than
>  fewer dialects, but in this case, the form <leher> ~ <ler>
>  is attested in 100% of the dialects where there is no loanword <pinu>.
>  100% is a rather high number.  Very different from a case in which
>  a non-loanword is attested in place of <pinu>.

Sorry; not so.  The word <pinu>, in its eastern variant <pino>, is
found in Zuberoan as elsewhere.  Only in the southern varieties of
Zuberoan do we find <leher> instead of -- or perhaps alongside;
don't know -- <pino>.

Anyway, I find this reasoning diabolical, I'm afraid.

The Basque word <badia> 'bay' is recorded nowhere but in the local
Bizkaian variety of the town of Lekeitio.  This word is therefore
found in 100% of the local varieties which have it.  So what?

>  The problem of criteria for the "best",
>  but not really meaning the "best", recurs here.

I know perfectly clearly what I mean by "the best candidates".
And a word attested only in one small corner of the country does
not qualify.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 10 04:20:53 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 23:20:53 EST
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <THU.9.MAR.2000.232053.EST.>

In a message dated 3/9/2000 10:04:12 PM, edsel at glo.be wrote:

>Persian craftsmen, architects etc. played an important role in what is now
>perceived as expressions of 'Arab' or Muslim material culture. The most
>likely place to find these people during the Middle Ages would be the Arab
>occupied part of Spain, and nowhere else.

Just a note.  In Faust's Metropolis, the author mentions the find of over
1000 Arab coins in the old Slavic Wendish town under Berlin (the dates would
be around 900AD I think.)  Though this doesn't necessarily prove the presence
of tradespeople, it does prove the presence of trade.  And one might follow
the other, if not in form of architects, then in the perhaps in the form of
shoemakers.

Regards,
Steve Long


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri Mar 10 10:25:32 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:25:32 +0000
Subject: Logical Gap
Message-ID: <FRI.10.MAR.2000.102532.0000.>

Lloyd Anderson writes:

[snip]

> Here is an example of an exclusion which is an indirect consequence,
> not explicitly stated in a set of criteria, yet a real exclusion nonetheless.
> None of Trask's criteria refer explicitly or directly to verbs,
> yet given the structure of Basque, in which as I understand Trask
> no verbal word is monosyllabic (though verbal *roots* are),
> his criteria do end up excluding all verbs.

In modern Basque, a few non-finite forms of a few verbs are monosyllabic.
But it is clear that, in every case, the forms were originally
polysyllabic, and that their monosyllabic modern forms result from
regular changes.

So, historically, no ancient Basque verb-forms are ever monosyllabic, yes.
But why is this relevant?  My criteria say nothing about the number
of syllables.

More importantly, no ancient Basque verb-form is ever monomorphemic.
Since I am expressly looking only at monomorphemic lexical items,
then, yes, it follows that all verbs will be excluded.  Why should
this bother anybody?  Why should anyone be concerned that a list of
monomorphemic lexical items excludes a set of polymorphemic word-forms?

> In this case, we only need a single criterion, monosyllabicity of the word,
> to end up excluding all verbs.

No: monomorphemic structure is what excludes verbs.  Monosyllables are
not excluded, and quite a few monosyllables will make it into my list,
because they satisfy my criteria.

> Yet "monosyllabicity of the word"
> is a criterion which nowhere mentions anything directly related to
> "verb".  The exclusion is indirect, because of something else,
> a fact of verb structure (specific to, though not unique to, Basque).

Verbs are excluded, yes, because they never appear as monomorphemic
lexical items -- and it is monomorphemic lexical items I'm looking at.

> In the case of a criterion based on early attestation,
> there is nothing referring explicitly to excluding any particular
> strata of vocabulary or individual lexical items,
> yet an indirect consequence is that any strata of vocabulary
> which are selectively disfavored for written attestation,
> or any individual lexical items so disfavored,
> will be statistically excluded.

I'm not sure what Lloyd means here by 'strata'.  Normally, when we
talk about strata in a lexicon, we mean groups of words which have
entered the language at different times.  And, of course, the whole
point of my list is to get back to the earliest recoverable stratum
in the Basque lexicon, and hence to exclude all words which have
entered the language more recently.  So, excluding particular strata
is exactly what I'm up to.

But I suspect Lloyd has something else in mind when he mentions
'strata' -- perhaps something like 'words exhibiting particular
types of formation' or 'words in particular semantic domains'.
However, if such words fail to be native, ancient and monomorphemic --
as indeed they often do -- then they don't belong in my list.

> So it can happen, through using a combination of criteria,
> that several strata of vocabulary end up being excluded *statistically*
> (all I have ever claimed) by Trask's criteria.
> Since most of us know independently of Trask's criteria
> that most or all living languages contain vocabulary of such strata,
> it would normally be considered appropriate to include some of them
> as candidates for reconstruction of any pattern which is expected
> to have any sort of general validity for the language.
> ("general" does not mean "universal").

Not so, I'm afraid.

Again, the suggestion is that native and ancient words of *particular*
phonological structure have, for some reason, either failed to survive or
failed to be recorded.  And I still can't see any reason to worry about
this.

> And any set of criteria which had the effect, direct or
> indirect, of excluding such vocabulary strata systematically
> (statistically), would be judged as a poor set of criteria.

No.

If I'm interested in the most ancient stratum of native monomorphemic
lexical items -- as I am -- then criteria that have the effect of
excluding everything else strike me as a pretty good set of criteria.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From sarima at friesen.net  Mon Mar 13 06:20:11 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 22:20:11 -0800
Subject: the Bear and the north star
In-Reply-To: <b9.14d0830.25f8a736@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.12.MAR.2000.222011.0800.>

At 02:05 AM 3/9/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>I wrote:
>>>And also in Homer - being of a seafaring people - by far the most important
>>>bear is the one in the sky that marks north - arktos giving its name to the
>>>artic not because that's where bears live, but because of Ursa minor and the
>>>north star.

>In a message dated 3/6/2000 7:19:25 PM, sarima at friesen.net wrote:
>>Umm, there is a problem with that: Polaris was NOT the pole star in Homer's
>>day!  In fact it wasn't even the pole star in Roman times!
> ...

>located near the north celestial pole, it is called the North Star....  The
>current North Star, Polaris, is in Ursa Minor as was it's predecessor,
>Kochab."

Ah, that is the key point.  I was not sure that the previous North Star had
also been in the Ursae.

>afterward would have been well on its way into the region of Bootes (the
>herdsman) and the adjacent Ursae.  (BTW, Bootes contains Arcturus, Gr.,
>"guardian of the bear".)  By 1200BC, the celestial pole would entered the
>Ursae region and the pole star would have been found there.

Which is plenty early to be the namesake of the Arctic, as suggested.

>And, by Hellenic times, the Greek super-geometrists were referring to the
>pole-star with scientific precision, some using the term "polos" (LS:
>"pole-star, Eratosth. Cat.2.")  By 300BC, one of them - Pythias - had even
>established that neither celestial axis nor "pole star" were fixed.

I never doubted the Greeks had the celestial pole located properly.  That
pretty much goes without saying.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Mon Mar 13 09:03:23 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:03:23 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <dd.22678e0.25f8a9b7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.100323.0100.>

>>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>>>-- the PIE speakers were farmers and pastoralists.

>>You obviously were around.>>

>-- what alternative subsistence strategies do you find more credible?
>Hunting and gathering, or selling insurance door-to-door?

I only take issue with what I understood as a rather pronounced denial of
any hunting activity among them from your side. Being a farmer and
pastoralist does not *exclude* knowing how to hunt (and to gather) and
doing this from time to time. Even being an insurance salesperson or an
Indo-Europeanist doesn't.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Mon Mar 13 16:48:01 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:48:01 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <77.2134cc6.25f96f0f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.094801.0700.>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>> There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
>> 'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late term to
>> develop in color vocabulary.

[Joat Simeon wrote]

> -- ah, my fault.  I should have been clearer.  I think it's entirely academic
> and pointless to distinguish between "primary" and other color terms.

Berlin and Kay have a very precise meaning for "basic" (not "primary", which
is a term of optics representing Red, Yellow, and Blue only, as opposed to
"secondary", which is a term for Orange, Green, and Purple).  A "basic"
color term is one that is not derived from another word and not borrowed
from another language.  As far as your charge of "academic", that's what
linguistics is really all about--looking at the details and giving accurate
representations of what we find.  While controversial in some aspects,
Berlin and Kay's work has proven more useful than not in my experience.
Since you weren't familiar with their term "basic", I suggest you read their
work first:

B. Berlin and P. Kay.  1969.  Basic Color Terms.  Berkeley:  University of
California Press.

> We say "orange"; the word is derived from the fruit, not vice-versa; is
> "orange" then a "primary" color term, or not?

"Orange" is not a basic color term in Modern English, since it is still
recognized as being the color of the fruit.  Once that association has been
lost, that is, once the fruit is called "bonzo", then we can consider
"orange" a basic color term.  "Brown" is a good example (assuming for the
sake of argument, of course, that "brown" is derived from "bruin" [or some
such history]).  Since "bruin" is on the way out in Modern English, "brown"
is moving into the realm of a basic color term.  "Orange" fits into that
large class of non-basic color terms like "pink", "violet", "indigo",
"russet", "brick red", "lemon yellow", "sky blue", and "rose".  The basic
color terms in Modern English (according to my own reckoning) are "white",
"black", "red", "yellow", "green", "blue", "purple", and "gray".  "Brown" is
moving into this class, but since we still have "bruin" in our language,
it's not quite there yet.  "Pink" is closer to being a basic term than
"orange", since only gardeners recognize "pink" as a name for a member of
the genus Dianthus.

> Who cares?  Likewise, PIE seems to have had a term for "bay-colored horse".
> If its speakers then referred to other things of similar color as "bay", so
> what?

Since there is no evidence that "bay" was ever used as anything other than a
part of the word for "bay horse" or, as horsemen say, "bay", (not
"bay-colored horse", no one says that), it cannot be considered a color term
at all, but only a specific marker for horse type.  Neither "bay" nor any
other "horse color", like "pinto", "dun" and "paint", can be applied to any
other creature or inanimate object.

Academic?  Of course it is.  Does it have any relevance when you buy a plum
shirt with tan pants and russet socks?  No.  Does it have relevance for our
understanding of language change and evolution.  Absolutely.  Here's another
good source for what we're talking about.

M.J.P. Nichols.  1980.  "Renewal in Numic Color Systems," American Indian
and Indoeuropean Studies.  Mouton.  Pp. 159-167.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Mon Mar 13 08:14:19 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 03:14:19 -0500
Subject: Bandkeramik and non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.031419.0500.>

[ moderator snip ]

> btw: regarding Thracian, there's an extensive website linking it to
>Balto-Slavic. Given that I know even less about Thracian than the miniscule
>amount that I know about Phrygian, I'd like to hear from someone better
>informed

What's the URL of that website?

Robert Orr


From jrader at m-w.com  Mon Mar 13 08:51:40 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 08:51:40 +0000
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.085140.0000.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:

> In the age of 'globalization', even French or German are "small" languages,
> of declining usefulness.  A fifth of the entire human race can speak English,
> and the percentage increases rapidly.  Meanwhile half the languages spoken in
> 1900 AD are extinct, and half the languages spoken in 2000 AD are moribund
> (no longer learned by children).  This is all to the good.

"All to the good"??  I think this is very much a minority opinion
among linguists and those interested in languages and what they tell
us about Homo sapiens.  In any event, the whole issue is very much
off the topic of Indo-European, and I think that our very tolerant
moderator ought to ask that it be dropped.

Jim Rader


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon Mar 13 08:21:29 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 08:21:29 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.082129.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2000 1:09 AM

> At 12:02 AM 3/8/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> At a time long ago, in an Urheimat far away . . .

[PRp]

>> When PIE had only one vowel, /a/ . . .

[SF]

> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
> exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

[PR]

I do not suppose that this was a stable situation. But, as I have written
before, that does not, in my opinion, mean that it could not have occurred
briefly.

Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a combination
of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

>> [PRp]

>> So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/
>> and /a:/?

[SF]

> Most would call this stage pre-PIE, or something like that, not plain PIE.

> [And I would suspect he is saying it had only two non-high vowels, which is
> slightly different].

[PR]

Well, call it pre-PIE if you like. I was only trying to avoid the "N" word.

I wait to see what Miguel says.

[PRp]

>> And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

[SF]

> Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
> grammatical.

[PR]

Of which I have yet to see convincing examples.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Mon Mar 13 16:45:58 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:45:58 -0700
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000309060833.00991700@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.094558.0700.>

[Stanley Friesen wrote]

> Or the now-extinct Quagga.  (I think this unlikely, as there seems to be a
> linguistic tendency to keep the striped equines distinct from the plain
> one, but it is possible).

This is even more unlikely since the range of the quagga has always been
limited to the extreme part of southern Africa.  Most modern taxonomists
have reached a consensus that the quagga is simply the southernmost
subspecies of the Plains Zebra (Equus burchelli) which includes all the
zebras of East Africa except the Grevy's Zebra (Equus grevyi) of Ethiopia
and Somalia.  (There is a third zebra, the mountain zebra (Equus zebra),
that only occurs in southern Africa.)  Although the current edition of
Walker lists Equus quagga as a separate species, the text clearly indicates
that this is not the consensus opinion.  However, what is clear is that the
quagga's range never extended outside the southernmost part of Africa.
Grevy's zebra, however, probably extended as far north as Egypt until as
recently as 3500 BP.  The word 'quagga' itself is from Afrikaans which is
from Xhosa and probably ultimately from one of the Khoisan languages (since
the word starts with a click in Xhosa).

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:13:06 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:13:06 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.191306.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>I don't know what you are referring to as far as "trees and wild animals" go.

-- the PIE lexicon has no terms for many familiar Mediterranean plants and
animals.  This would be extremely odd, if the language had originated in the
Mediterranean area.

The vocabulary for these items is comprised of non-IE borrowings in the
relevant languages.  Eg., Greek uses loan-words for cypress, laurel,
chestnut, and olive, among others.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:13:57 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:13:57 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.191357.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
>from literature appearing before or about1920:

-- what earthly relevance does this stuff from the prehistory of archaeology
to do with us?


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:20:00 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:20:00 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.192000.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>especially if you don't find words like <kwelo> and <ekwos> in Anatolian -
>which you don't.

-- sorry, I'm afraid there is a reflex of *ekwos is Anatolia -- specifically,
Luvian "azuwa", horse, (and Lycian "esbe", "horse"); cognate with Lithuanian
"asvienis', etc.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 00:23:37 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:23:37 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.192337.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>And basically you can find a reasonable explanation for why words referring
>to milk and land and horse and cow and yoke and sow and grain and field are
>often common in IE languages - those languages came with farming.

-- but many of those inventions -- the yoke, for instance, and the domestic
horse -- come long, long after the beginnings of agriculture.

So if the words are PIE, then PIE itself must come long, long after the
beginnings of agriculture.

QED.

>Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
>on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
>with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders

-- since this is precisely what happened in Iran and India, why do you find
it objectionable in Europe?  Do European farmers have some sort of inherent
superiority to Dravidian or Elamite ones?

>- done with such skill it would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all
>along.

-- well, no.  You see, if they'd been speaking PIE all along, the sound
changes would be profoundly different from what we in fact observe.

That's the whole point.  You've been steadfastly trying to ignore the
evidence.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Mar 13 21:11:58 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:11:58 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.161158.EST.>

>frank at uiowa.edu writes:

>Could someone spell out in more detail what these 'archaic characteristics'
>are? Or at least the most salient ones. >>

-- with respect to the Baltic languages, particularly the declension of the
noun and adjective, with seven cases, singular and plural, and preseveration
of the dual as well in some dialects.  This is almost completely unchanged
from PIE.

The Baltic verbal system is more innovative, but the PIE present tense is
well-preserved, and the future represents a PIE disiderative formation
revalued as a simple future.

There PIE lexicon is preserved to a really startling degree:  eg, *dubus ==>
dubus (deep), *gwous ==> guovs (cow), *h(1)rudh ==> rudas (red), etc.

The most archaic Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Old Prussian) are about as
close to PIE as some of the very first attested IE languages.  Conservatism
of a mind-boggling degree.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon Mar 13 21:16:50 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:16:50 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.161650.EST.>

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing periphery"
>model?

-- not really, although you do have a point.  Eg., the Baltic languages (and
the Slavic) undergo satemization, a late development in the eastern IE
dialects.  What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup of PIE they
became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than Slavic.

That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The degree of
retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared to, say, Hittite.

There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other features in the
area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was historically attested).

>following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, Lithuania is the
>Urheimat.

-- I'd say it's _close_ to the Urheimat, relatively speaking.

If the Urheimat is the Ukraine, then it isn't very far to the Baltic.  And
once you're up in the Baltic forests, you're very much "out of the way".


From jose.perez3 at yucom.be  Tue Mar 14 00:11:45 2000
From: jose.perez3 at yucom.be (jose.perez3)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 01:11:45 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.011145.0100.>

>> From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
>> stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
>> which produces *e/*o variations.

> That is often said, but it needs to be elaborated for it to make
> sense.  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
> accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
> its development?  If it switched from stress accent to pitch
> accent (as suggested by zero grade everywhere and Vedic-Greek
> accentuation), how did the unstressed vowels that were to become
> o's by pitch accent survive the reduction caused by stress
> accent? Etcetera.

I'd be very thankful for anybody who has paid attention to the issue of tonal
and stress accent to elaborate on this subject, presenting some sound
information about how we think that IE differed from most modern European
languages in its accent.

Is there still anybody around there who thinks that most modern languages have
"stress accents"? Has anybody checked on this with expert phoneticians?

When I studied Classics, my teachers explained to me that Classical Latin had
stress accents but that they named them with "musical" terms because they were
"copying" Greek grammarians.

The problem is that to my (admittedly poorly trained) ears Modern Greek has a
tonal accent, so I don't see what has changed about that ever since Homer. All
Romance languages have tonal accents (pronounce any of them taking away any
stress from the accented sylables and the change of tone will still indicate
where it goes)... so how was Latin different from them?? The same applies to
modern Germanic and Slavic languages. In fact I'm still waiting to come across
the proverbial language with pitched non tonal accent to begin to fathom what
the whole story is about.

Could it be that comparative linguists pulled this rabbit out of the hat
without checking with phoneticians without realising that they might be rather
tone deaf?

Or am I still missing the obvious?

                    Joe


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Mon Mar 13 16:27:04 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:27:04 -0600
Subject: Edgar Polome and JIES
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.102704.0600.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following note was received at the list address.  With Carol Justus'
  kind permission, I am forwarding it unedited.

  Our heartfelt sympathies go out to Prof. Polom?'s family and friends.

								Rich Alderson ]

Dear Rich,

This is an excerpt from summary messages that some of us have been sending
each other for a while now:

Edgar Polom? passed away yesterday at 1 p.m. at the M. D. Anderson Cancer
Clinic in Houston.

He had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in his shoulder in
late January, which led to amputation of shoulder and arm on Feb. 8. He was
apparently on the mend, via physical therapy, and his and Sharon's spirits
were high, when a week or so ago pneumonia set in; a CT scan on Friday
showed that the cancer had spread massively throughout both lungs, and
clusters of cancer cells were now trapping the pneumonia inside. He had a
tracheotomy operation the same day, but never fully regained consciousness.


I don't know how much you want to make public on the IE List, but you
probably do want to let people know, particularly if anyone had sent
correspondence to Edgar in the last 5-6 months. Much lay unanswered as we
all thought for a long time that he would be soon be taking care of things
himself.

James Mallory will now begin taking over as editor of the Journal of IE
Studies, but it may be a bit of time before correspondence that was sent to
Edgar gets answered. Roger Pearson, the Publisher, does have mss. that
Edgar had approved, and they will come out in the next issue or two. The
last issue appeared while Edgar was in the hospital, hence its lack of
proper proofing.

Carol


From tuitekj at ANTHRO.UMontreal.CA  Mon Mar 13 14:47:40 2000
From: tuitekj at ANTHRO.UMontreal.CA (Kevin Tuite)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:47:40 -0500
Subject: Edgar =?iso-8859-1?Q?Polom=E9?=
In-Reply-To: <7f.1b2b8c6.25fb6ab7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.13.MAR.2000.094740.0500.>

Dear Colleagues,

I am passing on to you the following message which I received from a
Belgian friend. I join him and I am sure most of you in expressing my
regret at the passing of this gentlemanly scholar, one of the finest
comparativists of his generation.
Sincerely,
Kevin Tuite

Une grande figure du comparatisme indo-europ?en vient de dispara?tre.
Edgar Polom? est d?c?d? avant-hier, le 11 mars.

D'origine belge, Edgar Polom? enseignait ? l'Universit? du Texas
(Austin).  Il ?tait, entre autres, l'?diteur du Journal of Indo-European
Studies.

**************************************************************
ATTENTION: NOUVELLE ADRESSE!!      tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca
(MESSAGES ENVOY?S ? LA VIELLE ADRESSE SERONT ACHEMIN?S)
Kevin Tuite                         514-343-6514      (bureau)
D?partement d'anthropologie         514-343-2494 (t?l?copieur)
Universit? de Montr?al
C.P. 6128, succursale centre-ville
Montr?al, Qu?bec H3C 3J7      	   tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca
Notre site Web:	           http://www.fas.umontreal.ca/ANTHRO/
**************************************************************


From ALDERSON at toad.xkl.com  Wed Mar 15 19:51:42 2000
From: ALDERSON at toad.xkl.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 11:51:42 -0800
Subject: Brief interruption in list service
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.115142.0800.>

Postings to the Indo-European and Nostratic mailing lists will not be sent out
between Thursday, 16 March 2000, and Monday, 20 March 2000, while I attend the
colloquium at the University of Richmond on the topic of "Greater Anatolia and
the Indo-Hittite Language Family".

If any list members are attending, perhaps we can arrange to meet for dinner
Saturday evening.

								Rich Alderson
								list owner and
								moderator


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 10:28:18 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 05:28:18 EST
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.052818.EST.>

[ Moderator's note:
  This message, and the next on the same subject, will be the last of this
  discussion on the list.  Those who wish to discuss further the issues raised
  by Mr. Stirling should do so in private e-mail.
  --rma ]

>jrader at m-w.com writes:

>and I think that our very tolerant moderator ought to ask that it be dropped.

-- no problem.  Although when one thinks of it, the pre-neolithic situation
in Europe was probably much like that in Eastern North America when Europeans
arrived;  dozens of language families, hundreds of separate languages, many
covering quite small areas.

Now there are only Indo-European, Uralic and Basque; with Indo-European
overwhelmingly predominant.


From plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA  Tue Mar 14 05:14:47 2000
From: plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA (Plourde Eric)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 00:14:47 -0500
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
In-Reply-To: <c5.2b0186d.25f9749c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.001447.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following message addresses a number of issues brought up in a recent
  post by S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com); nothing further on those issues
  will be posted to the list.  However, a comment in the final paragraph takes
  us beyond those issues, and back to Indo-European issues, and I will welcome
  further discussion *of that paragraph only*.
  --rma ]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2000 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>> edsel at glo.be writes:

>> That's a complete misunderstanding. There is huge difference between
>> learning another language for practical reasons (or in more modern times:
>> out of interest in other cultures, religion or what have you) and being
>> forced to abandon one's own language (and inevitably:culture).

> -- "abandon" is a value-judgement; it would be equally (or more) accurate to
> speak of "acquiring" a new culture.

> Eg., I have a friend who's Japanese-Canadian, second generation.  She knows
> maybe 6 words of Japanese (fewer than I do) and is married to someone whose
> parents came from Lancashire.  Has she 'abandoned' a language and culture
> which is somehow uniquely 'hers'?  Of course not; she has a perfectly good
> language -- English -- and a perfectly good culture -- "Overseas European",
> samesame as the rest of us.

Your "Japanes-Canadian" friend is then not Japanese, just Canadian. Depending
on how old she is, yes, she did not abandon her culture, but maybe her parents
or grandparents, if they lived in Canada during 1940's as Canadian citizens of
Japanese origin were sent to concentration camps for "reeducation" due to their
"treason". They did not have the right to vote from 1895 (like Chinese and
Natives of British Columbia, thelatterrecovering it in 1949 and on federal
level in 1960 only, 20 years after "white" women.) So she probably either did
not have a chance to learn Japanese from her parents, orshe was beaten for
speaking it, much like the Natives. And it is interesting to use "perfectly
good" to qualify English and Overseas European (whatever that means) because
these are value judgments based on your prejudices.

> Language and culture are not like skin color.  They're more like your
> clothes.  One can change, mix and match to suit the circumstances.  Many of
> my ancestors were Gaelic-speaking and wore the Great Kilt.  I'm
> English-speaking and wear trousers, and firmly of the conviction that Butcher
> Cumberland did Scotland a favor.

See, it is exactly the opposite. Humans use languages and they shape the way
you think, so language is not like clothing. It is true that most British,
USAns and Australians use skin color to segregate their societies (like South
Africa) but religion is a pretty stronger divider of society (REAL examples
would be the Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian languages that maintain dialectal
intelligibility, the differences being based on religion (Catholics, Orthodox
Christianity and Islam, respectively) and the alphabet used. Or, Hindi and
Urdu, that areshaped by Hinduism and Islam respectively, and use devenagari and
arabic script, respcetively.)

Another pretty strong prejudice is "doing Scotland a favor", by what?  Killing
the people? Like Jonhatan Swift "Why are Irish complaining they have nothing to
eat, they have a plentiful natural resource, they should eat their children." I
don't know what kind of favor that is.

>> It [language] is something that defines them.

> -- until they get a new definition.  Linguistic and ethnic identity are fluid
> and changeable, subjective in nature.

The only affirmation making sense until now.

> Eg., to take just one example, there's a community of over 1,000,000 people
> of South Asian (Indian) origin in South Africa, descended mainly from
> indentured workers brought in to cut sugar cane.  A large majority of them
> now use English as their native language.  How are they any worse off than if
> they were speaking Gujarati or Tamil?  A small language is a prison, under
> modern conditions.

Gujarati or Tamil are not "small languages". Also, they have a very deep
literary tradition that rivals English in many ways. The "South Asian"
community was defined along the lines of Apartheid (a Brown, maybe...) and they
were colonized by the British who viewed their languages as primitive and
useless...  This process was even more reinforced in South Africa, where the
white man was the epitome of "perfectly good" culture and language.

>> The fact is that ordinary people resent very much being treated as
>> somebody who can't speak properly.

> -- and then in most cases, shrug and get on with the job.  Eg., my father
> worked very hard as a young man to shed his Newfoundland accent. (A dialect
> which can get extremely impenetrable to Standard English speakers).  Standard
> English was more useful, so he learned it; just as my more remote ancestors
> shed Gaelic and Lallans -- or most of the ancestors of the inhabitants of
> Vienna shed various Slavic languages for German.

Your father used a variety of English developed on a Gaelic and Irish English
(what an oxymoron) substrate that was frowned upon and seen as "impure" and
"dissonant", and instead of others making the effort to understand him and the
other people that spoke it (I gather some still speak it) he was forced to
change his ways as Newfoundland was forced in the Canadian Federation.

>> That's what happens when the original language loses its critical mass and
>> becomes the language of a minority: it is then beyond salvation in most
>> cases.

> -- a "minority" where?  Minority/majority status is a product of the size of
> the sphere of interaction, which in turn these days is a product of
> technological development.

If you are one of those people blinded by M. McLuhan's empty digression about
"medium is the message" and "dans ce cas les primitifs sont cuits". You mustnot
forget that, why is there a predominance of English on computers and Internetis
that the software creators were too stupid to invent a way to display other
fonts or characters right away.

> A small language could get along quite well when most people were illiterate
> peasants who rarely left their villages.  The local patois was as useful --
> more useful -- than a larger national language.

That is in the same state of mind as Marshall McLuhan's implicit belief
that languages "evolve" with technology, but so is not the case. Most of the
"illiterate" peasants (and what of the hunters-gatherers) that dot India's
countryside can use at least two languages, and normal  people in central Asia
until the 20th century could use an average three or even four.

> In the age of 'globalization', even French or German are "small" languages,
> of declining usefulness.  A fifth of the entire human race can speak English,
> and the percentage increases rapidly.  Meanwhile half the languages spoken in
> 1900 AD are extinct, and half the languages spoken in 2000 AD are moribund
> (no longer learned by children).  This is all to the good.

I was laughing at the entire letter until I read the last paragraph. This kind
of thought is quite typical of someone who either has a serious inferiority
complex because he cannot use more than one language (like 80% of the planet)
or he is flaunting a kind of linguistic "Manifest destiny" where English will
become the only language on Earth and then it,s going to be Heaven on earth.
Yeah, right.

I guess either you really wanted to provoke, or you just really do nothave a
clear picture of the global stateof languages. Sure, English is gaining ground,
but what kind of English will it be? Some people are already complaining about
the "weird English" used by foreigners or the immigrant children whose first
words are swearing words...

PIE was probably never a unified, unique language, sure, there is nothing
provocative about that hypothesis. But the people who used the IE langages were
probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their culture (and
languages) on the others. How else would they havespread so quickly? How
Scythians and the Germanic tribes were depicted? In the war between Sparta and
Athens, who won? The city of belligerance and cruelty orthe city of democracy
and tolerance? You know the answers.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 14 05:49:12 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 07:49:12 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.074912.0200.>

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Dr. John E. McLaughlin wrote:

<snip>
> Since there is no evidence that "bay" was ever used as anything other than a
> part of the word for "bay horse" or, as horsemen say, "bay", (not
> "bay-colored horse", no one says that), it cannot be considered a color term
> at all, but only a specific marker for horse type.  Neither "bay" nor any
> other "horse color", like "pinto", "dun" and "paint", can be applied to any
> other creature or inanimate object.

You mean a pinto bean is really a horse? :)  Just joking, John, and I take
your point.  But I do think you have overstated it.  Horse colors do get
transferred (practically any term can be transferred), but usually with
the marker '-colored' attached (e.g., 'dun-colored', 'roan-colored').  The
problem is that 'pinto' and 'paint' are not colors but refer to patterns
of markings.  And a pinto bean and a pinto horse both have mottled colors.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.if


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 14 10:30:53 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 05:30:53 EST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.053053.EST.>

>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>Being a farmer and pastoralist does not *exclude* knowing how to hunt (and
>to gather) and doing this from time to time.  >>

-- ah, I should have added the "predominantly" instead of assuming it.


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar 16 04:31:00 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:31:00 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.233100.0500.>

At 09:48 13/03/00 -0700, you wrote:

>[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>>> There are many, many languages in the world that have no basic word for
>>> 'brown', and, as Berlin and Kay have demonstrated, 'brown' is a late
>>> term to develop in color vocabulary.

>[Joat Simeon wrote]

>> -- ah, my fault.  I should have been clearer.  I think it's entirely
>> academic and pointless to distinguish between "primary" and other color
>> terms.

>Berlin and Kay have a very precise meaning for "basic" (not "primary", which
>is a term of optics representing Red, Yellow, and Blue only, as opposed to
>"secondary", which is a term for Orange, Green, and Purple).

[Ed]
I suppose you mean magenta, yellow and cyan, the primary colores if you
consider subtractive color mixing, like in printing (one layer over another
on white paper, masking part of the spectrum). Together they give black.
Otherwise, the primary colors (for additive mixing, like TV, i.e. adding
light from three sources) are red, green, blue. Together they give white.

Just to keep things clear.

Ed. Selleslagh

Dr. Ir. Eduard Selleslagh (in Spain)
E-03189	Orihuela-Costa (Alicante)
Espa?a
Phone: +34-96.676.04.37	E-Mail: edsel at glo.be


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Mar 14 16:07:35 2000
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:35 -0600
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.100735.0600.>

[snip]

	Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
"berry"?

>Since there is no evidence that "bay" was ever used as anything other than a
>part of the word for "bay horse" or, as horsemen say, "bay", (not
>"bay-colored horse", no one says that), it cannot be considered a color term
>at all, but only a specific marker for horse type.  Neither "bay" nor any
>other "horse color", like "pinto", "dun" and "paint", can be applied to any
>other creature or inanimate object.
[snip]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 15 02:24:17 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 18:24:17 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.182417.0800.>

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, John McLaughlin (mclasutt at brigham.net) wrote:

> "Orange" is not a basic color term in Modern English, since it is still
> recognized as being the color of the fruit. ...  "Brown" is moving into this
> class, but since we still have "bruin" in our language, it's not quite there
> yet.  "Pink" is closer to being a basic term than "orange", since only
> gardeners recognize "pink" as a name for a member of the genus Dianthus.

This is certainly a matter of dialect or idiolect:  For me, all three are basic
in the B&K sense.  As a child, I learned that the fruit was called "an orange"
because it *was* orange, I never associated "brown" with "bruin" (an adult
learned term), and I had a pink shirt and necktie (with Davy Crockett on it)
that was my favourite thing to wear when I was three.  Even as an occasional
gardener, "pinks" are called that because they are...

								Rich Alderson


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Mar 15 06:52:08 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 01:52:08 EST
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.015208.EST.>

In a message dated 3/13/2000 10:55:36 AM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

>Steve Long has doubts about the value of the Berlin and Kay color research,
>but in my experience, I've found more value in their work that in the work
>of others on the same line.  Sure, their work may not be perfect, but in the
>absence of another system, that's the one we've got.

Just a note on this. My doubts about Berlin & Kay are not singular, as I
pointed out with citations in my earlier post.  Ther has been some very heavy
duty criticisms of B&K.  And at the core of many of those doubts, there's
also the question of what it is exactly that the "system" does.

It should be pointed out that in their original study, B&K found that by far
most of the languages they studied DID NOT have a full complement of the
basic color terms.

Of 98 languages, nine only had terms for black and white and 47 languages
only had four "basic color terms."  And a whopping 65 did not even make it to
"stage VI" and therefore did not have a "BCT" for "brown."  ( The description
of these languages "lacking" a full complement include "New Guinea, Congo,
South India, Amerindian, African, Pacific, Australian Aboriginal, South
India, African, Philippine, Polynesian, Sumatra, Eskimo" - and of course my
favorite, Homeric Greek.)

Now, it seems reasonable to me to ask what this may prove about the above
languages.  Is it that they had no way of communicating that an object was
certain colors - so that one speaker of these languages would NOT immediately
know what color the other was referring to?  Even if they lack a BCT for that
color?

That is unlikely.  My quess is that all or most of these languages permitted
their speakers to refer to and communicate regarding a specific color without
suffering much due to the absence of a "basic color term" for that color.

If I told you that something was the color of "mud" - we might have no word
for dark brown, but you would know what color to look for.  If
"looks-like-mud" became our regular word for dark brown and "looks-like-a
tanned-hide" became our regular word for light brown, we still might not have
a word for "brown" in general, but we might get along just dandy anyway.

In actuality, what B&K seem to be asking is whether a language has a word for
B&K's definition of brown - a specific arc of nanometers on the color
spectrum.

My guess is that these languages had very effective ways of communicating
about colors.  I'm mindful of something Mr. Stirling wrote:

<<-- ah, no word for the color "brown".  Brown things didn't exist then,
perhaps?>>

Quite obviously, the world can be a very brown place depending on location
and season.  Are we to assume that these languages in their state of
"evolution" (B&K's term) never had occasion to refer to the colors of all the
basic brown things out there - from dirt and wood and cooked meat to the hide
color of many if not most animals?  I suspect that everything could be
described in terms of color attributes, but that they just didn't match B&K's
grouping of colored attributes. (Cf., the typical Roman precision in "color
inter aquilium candidumque".)

What B&K were apparently doing was rating languages on whether they had
generalized a variety of colored attributes under a specific set of names.
And that specific set of names - "basic color terms" - refers not so much to
the evolution of the language as it does to the evolution of the science and
technology of color - where the color spectrum - along with white and black -
divide up neatly into just about 11 bands of visible light.  This is a recent
idea.

So, going back to the question of what it is exactly that the "system" does?

>From this point of view, it seems to be a way of accounting for why some
languages just do not seem to match our modern technical system of color
names.  And why some languages more or less do not match our system of
dividing up colors.

And the answer is "evolution."  This explanation for the relative absence of
matching "modern" categorizations in "non-westernized" languages, however,
can be seen from one perspective as both anachronistic and artificial and
therefore basically uninformative.

Regards,
Steve Long


From georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl  Tue Mar 14 09:05:09 2000
From: georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:05:09 +0100
Subject: Latin word formation
In-Reply-To: <008001bf8c05$ea7dc7a0$995d01d5@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.100509.0100.>

>de-bil-is

>How about   de:mens?

Doesn't really qualify, 'cause there's no -e/os suffix.

>Or deliciae = gutter?   < de: + liqu- + ia

Could qualify, but I'm not sure about the etymology. And, it's a verbal
root, s.b.

>You say debilis is de: + nominal root + suffix.   Could it be from a
>different route?   de: + verbal root  + deverbative ending?

Which verbal root then ?
Communis opinio seems to be that the root is *be/ol- "power" athl., skt.
bali-, slav. bolIjI (ru. bol'she).
Actually, I don't believe this, and I'm looking for an alternative, but
first of all I'm trying to ascertain that, in the traditional scenario, the
word formation is really so odd as it seems to me.

Thanks for the input.

St.

Dr. Stefan Georg
home:
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-691332+
Georg at home.ivm.de

work:
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/vtw/Georg/Georg.html


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 14 10:17:31 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 15:47:31 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.154731.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, 10 March, 2000 12:28 PM

> In a message dated 3/9/2000 4:35:46 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory). After
>> all, any word in a language can be a loanword, therefore - in principle -
>> the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>> various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>> language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>> roots. The main question is: HOW LIKELY is it that such borrowings /
>> derivations happened independently from each other, often in languages far
>> removed from each other?

> No, I'm sorry.  This must be a misunderstanding.  The main question has not
> been HOW LIKELY?  The main question is WHEN?  When did the words enter the
> languages?

My main argument is based on the WHEN question - both absolute timing
(horses are not attested in Italy before 2600 BC, therefore there was no
word for them), and relative timing (horses were attested quite a bit after
cows were in much of Europe and in the Middle East, therefore the word for
horses also came later into whatever languages were used there at the time,
or - alternatively - there was language replacement).

The HOW LIKELY question enters the picture if someone claims that, say,
*kwekwlos was applied to the wheel independently in two different IE
languages, quite distant from each other in space.

> I'd like to address just this part before I go onto the case of the Italian
> horse.

> g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

> I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
> from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of the horse
> was @2000BC.  The cow about 3000BC in the Near East, 2000BC in Europe.  The
> discovery of metal working made the wheel possible in the Near East about
> 2500BC.  When that Near East technology reaches the IndoEuropean homeland
> about 2000BC, it sets off the invasions of the "Indoeuropeans" in 1600BC when
> they enter Greece and India and the Near East.  All culminating in 1125BC
> with the fall of Troy.

What used to be is not really relevant. I am trying to use archaeological
dates from the most recent literature that I can find. If you have better
data acceptable to the archaeological "communis opinio", I shall certainly
be prepared to consider them.

> The above would STILL disprove Renfrew.  If any of those dates were still
> true.

> The problem is that they are not still true.   And the dates have moved
> backward in time.  And that makes Renfrew's hypothesis more likely.  And what
> was described above less likely.

>> the words for horse, wheel, the cart and its parts, yoke, copper/bronze,
>> various trees and wild animals, can all be borrowed in a specific IE
>> language. Alternatively, they can all be derived independently from native
>> roots.

> But 'native' or 'borrowed' isn't really the first question as far as Renfrew
> goes.  The dates are first thing you have to address.  I don't know what you
> are referring to as far as "trees and wild animals" go.

For trees, see Indo-European Trees by Friedrich (I don't have the
bibliographic data in front of me). For various wild animals in the North
Pontic area, including fish, Mallory wrote several articles in JIE. Both of
these sources look to me pretty consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. If
someone would analyze the flora and fauna of Anatolia around 6500 BC, it
would be interesting to see how the names in various IE languages for the
various plants and animals found in Anatolia fit in with Renfrew's theory,
and eventually to see which theory fits in better with the biological facts.

> But all the rest of
> those things NOW date pretty well in the range for Renfrew's hypothesis -
> especially if you don't find words like <kwelo> and <ekwos> in Anatolian -
> which you don't.

> And basically you can find a reasonable explanation for why words referring
> to milk and land and horse and cow and yoke and sow and grain and field are
> often common in IE languages - those languages came with farming.

I specifically excluded words for cow, sow and grain. I assume that there
were words for these concepts among neolithic farmers, so their presence in
IE languages says nothing about PIE speakers except that they were familiar
with agriculture. 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
hunter gatherers not have words for them?

The word for 'horse' is of course the crux of my argument.

> Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
> on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
> with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who had
> a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed with
> roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to pop
> that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every meaning and
> sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such skill it
> would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

I find this very unclear. I can't even figure out whether you favour Renfrew
or Gimbutas in the above text.

What I find reasonable as a theory is Gimbutas's: the farming population of
much of Europe switched language because it was conquered by a horse-riding,
warlike elite who imposed its hero-worshipping ideology on it. A bit like
what the Hungarians did to the Slavic and other inhabitants of Hungary after
895 AD, or what the Turks did to the various inhabitants of Anatolia in
post-Classical times. The basic ethnic composition of both of these areas
remained pretty much the same, I believe, yet there was a language shift,
with plenty of substratal influence.

Even Renfrew does not deny that such changes are possible: he calls them
"elite dominance". He just does not believe that the Indo-Europeanization of
Europe was due to it.

> Those are the two scenarios I have been given so far.

> g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

> Conversely, given the above, it's equally hard to see what kind of additional
> evidence you would need to consider Renfrew's dates possible.

Renfrew himself has modified his theory, and in my view his latest article
is more worthy of a linguistic investigation than his previous attempts.
["Time depth, convergence theory, and innovation in Proto-Indo-European:
'Old Europe' as a PIE linguistic area" (JIES 27 (3-4): 258-293)]. In
particular, he allows for the possibility of the following:

1. Proto-Italic might have been introduced overland from the north or
northwest, rather than by sea from the east (p.282).

2. There might have been a pre-Greek IE "adstratum" in Greece, subsequent to
which there were "ties between Greek and its sister languages in the Balkan
continuum at the end of phase II" (p.279). This to me implies at least two
layers of IE in Greece, the latter of which having strong ties with the
North.

These two modicications already bring Renfrew closer to linguistic
acceptability, and I would certainly love continuing this debate.

All the best,
Gabor


From jrader at m-w.com  Tue Mar 14 09:54:43 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:54:43 +0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.095443.0000.>

>The word 'quagga' itself is from Afrikaans which is
> from Xhosa and probably ultimately from one of the Khoisan languages (since
> the word starts with a click in Xhosa).

> John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> mclasutt at brigham.net

Small point of correction here, but the earliest attestations of
<quagga>  (spelled <quacha>, <quayha>, etc.) occur in the written
Dutch of Cape Colony beginning in 1691--see G.S. Nienaber's
_Hottentots_ (Pretoria, 1963) for documentation.  The word was
picked up by English zoological writers in the late 18th century--see
documentation in _A Dictionary of South African English_ (DSAE). The
word must have been borrowed directly from a Khoikhoi or San
language, not Xhosa, given that Europeans were only minimally in
contact with the Xhosa at this time.  DSAE gives the Xhosa word as
<iqwarha>, undoubtedly a Khoisan borrowing, but not the source of the
English word.

Jim Rader


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Mar 15 12:28:08 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:28:08 +0200
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <d4.21a29c6.25feb4c2@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.142808.0200.>

On Mon, 13 Mar, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>>Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing
>>periphery" model?

>-- not really, although you do have a point.

I guess my real point was that if it is so simple surely someone
would have cottoned on to it a lot sooner:  All you have to do is
find the most conservative IE language and, if it is free from
significant substratum influences, then hey presto, there is the
IE Urheimat.

"Innovative core -- archaizing periphery" is really an expression
of the wave model of linguistic change and, of course, the "core"
and "periphery" can be different for each change.  The wave model
says that linguistic change spreads like the waves from an object
dropped in a liquid, gradually dying out with increasing distance
from the center.  Thus there will be a core or central area where
the change is complete, transitional areas where the change is
less complete, and relic areas that the change does not reach at
all.  And, as I said, how this model applies depends on where the
particular change started so there is nothing about the Urheimat
that *has* to make it the most innovative or the most
conservative with respect to the proto-language.

>Eg., the Baltic languages (and the Slavic) undergo satemization,
>a late development in the eastern IE dialects.

A slight terminological quibble:  You can't say that satemization
was a development in the eastern IE dialects because Tocharian
didn't undergo it.  What you have to say is that the core area
for satemization was I-Ir. and that the easternmost "dialect" of
IE (Tocharian) was already isolated from this core area when this
change took place (i.e., was no longer part of the IE dialect
continuum).

>What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
>the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup
>of PIE they became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than
>Slavic.

The evidence fairly clearly shows that both Baltic and Slavic
were transitional areas in both the satemization (palatal
assibilation) and RUKI palatization changes that had their core
in I-Ir (although RUKI is more generalized in Slavic than in
Baltic).  Essentially all this shows is that Baltic and Slavic
were still in fairly close contact with I-Ir. in contrast to
Greek, Italic, Germanic and points west which were not affected
at all by these changes (relic areas).  In short, all the other
IE stocks have already broken off or are simply out of range
(which is not quite the same thing as they could still be at the
other end of a dialect continuum) before this change.  And
conservatism after this point indicates that the language was
consistently a relic area in further changes originating in the
dialect continuum

Expressed in terms of a tree model, it sounds very much like a
scenario that Steve Long proposed:  At any node on the tree,
there is a non-innovating branch and other branches.  If we follow
the non-innovating branch from each node, at the bottom of the
tree we arrive at a language that is practically identical to PIE
(in this case, Lithuanian).  Now everyone said 'no, no, that
can't be right because actually all branches innovate, just in
different ways.'  The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue
against this.  Nodes in a tree must be based on some comparative
linguistic information.  The only such information that is useful
is some innovation that appears in one branch and not in the
other.  Shared retentions don't propagate either as waves or
trees.  They just stay where they were left, like a well-trained
dog.  Of course the fact that Lithuanian was always on the
non-innovating branch (or least innovative branch if you prefer)
after satemization and RUKI (and only partly on the innovating
branch even there; sort of holding on to the end of the branch
with one paw) says nothing about where it was located
geographically.

Now someone is going to say that it's against the law of averages
for Lithuanian to have always been on the non-innovating branch.
And of course it is.  But the point is that *something* has to
be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.  It is equally
against the law of averages for a team or an individual to win a
single elimination tournament; but someone always does.  In the
IE superbowl, Lithuanian is apparently the winner.  But that
still doesn't say anything specific about where it started out
geographically.

>That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The
>degree of retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared
>to, say, Hittite.

Yes, absence of substratum influences would be useful in showing
either (a) the language was in its original home, (b) the
language moved into a previously uninhabited area, (c) the
language does not accept loanwords, or (d) the speakers of the
language drove off or killed all the original inhabitants before
there was any significant linguistic contact.  But is it clear
that there is no substratum influence?  There are a number of
Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a considerably larger number
of Baltic loanwords in Balto-Finnic.  Looks like about what one
would expect if Baltic were a superstratum language over Western
Finnic.  Just because there wasn't an unknown substratum, as
there apparently was in Germanic, that provided a lot of words of
unknown origin to the language doesn't mean that there wasn't
some substratum.

>There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other
>features in the area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was
>historically attested).

Again, useful for indicating that (a) the language was in its
original home, (b) the language moved into a previously
uninhabited area, (c) the speakers of the language
systematically renamed or calqued all river names in their own
language, or (d) the speakers of the language drove off or killed
all the original inhabitants before they could learn the original
names of the topographical features (i.e., no period of
linguistic contact).

I'm not trying to be difficult just for the sake of being
difficult, but rather to point out that while what you propose is
an arguable hypothesis, there are a lot of other arguable
hypotheses that have to be falsified before it could be accepted
as *the* hypothesis.  That is the problem with historical
linguistics in prehistory.  Genes don't equate to language on a
one-to-one basis; material culture doesn't equate to language on
a one-to-one basis.  The only thing that identifies language on a
one-to-one basis is written remains (that can be read) and once
you have that, you aren't in prehistory anymore.

>>following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion,
>>Lithuania is the Urheimat.

>-- I'd say it's _close_ to the Urheimat, relatively speaking.

So would I, but it's all a question of what it's relative to.
I'd say it's definitely closer to the Urheimat than the fringes
of the Gobi Desert are.

>If the Urheimat is the Ukraine, then it isn't very far to the
>Baltic.  And once you're up in the Baltic forests, you're very
>much "out of the way".

Tell me about it :)

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Mar 14 12:02:30 2000
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 12:02:30 +0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.120230.0000.>

-- Begin original message --

> From: "jose.perez3" <jose.perez3 at yucom.be>

> I'd be very thankful for anybody who has paid attention to the issue of tonal
> and stress accent to elaborate on this subject, presenting some sound
> information about how we think that IE differed from most modern European
> languages in its accent.

> Is there still anybody around there who thinks that most modern languages
> have "stress accents"? Has anybody checked on this with expert phoneticians?

> When I studied Classics, my teachers explained to me that Classical Latin had
> stress accents but that they named them with "musical" terms because they
> were "copying" Greek grammarians.

> The problem is that to my (admittedly poorly trained) ears Modern Greek has a
> tonal accent, so I don't see what has changed about that ever since Homer.
> All Romance languages have tonal accents (pronounce any of them taking away
> any stress from the accented sylables and the change of tone will still
> indicate where it goes)... so how was Latin different from them?? The same
> applies to modern Germanic and Slavic languages. In fact I'm still waiting to
> come across the proverbial language with pitched non tonal accent to begin to
> fathom what the whole story is about.

> Or am I still missing the obvious?

>                     Joe

-- End original message --

Possibly the last ;-)

The thing about a stress accent is not that it is not realized by pitch/tone
change (possibly in combination with other features such as length and
loudness), but that it doesn't matter at all what the direction or level of the
pitch is. Or, to put it another way, pitch DIRECTION (contour) or pitch LEVEL
is not lexically contrastive. In languages like English, in CITATION forms,
lexical stress is realized by falling tone. But the same lexeme may well have
rising, level, fall-rise tone, whose starting point may be high or low, in a
particular utterance context. The shape of the pitch contour is determined at
the phrase, sentence, or possibly discourse level. All that is determined
lexically is which syllable bears 'accent'. In this respect Classical Latin,
Modern Greek and English are alike, along with most other European languages.
Ancient Greek is described as pitch-accented because there was a possible
contrast on long vowels between 'acute' (realized as 'grave'in some contexts,
an element of 'tone sandhi') and 'circumflex'. But even here, in an alternative
moraic analysis, there would be only one 'accent' which might fall on the first
or the second mora of a long vowel, to give circumflex and acute respectively.

This is aimed at your general linguistic query. It's not clear to me what
accent system is plausible for late PIE, though I guess some IE alternations,
such as full-grade/zero-grade alternations and Verner's law only make sense in
stress systems. I don't think it's easy to make sense of e/o alternations via
either stress or pitch (which is not to say it's impossible).

Max Wheeler

______________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON BN1 9QH, G.B.

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975 Fax: +44 (0)1273 671320 Email: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
______________________________________________________________


From xiang at free.fr  Tue Mar 14 13:01:18 2000
From: xiang at free.fr (Guillaume JACQUES)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:01:18 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.140118.0100.>

> The problem is that to my (admittedly poorly trained) ears Modern Greek has a
> tonal accent, so I don't see what has changed about that ever since Homer.
> All

First of all, modern greek, if I am not mistaken, lost vocalic length. In
ancient greek you had in fact just one accent (high pitch) but it could fall on
the first or on the second mora of a long vowel so you had rising and falling
long vowels.  I don't quite understand the way you use 'tonal' accent. Aren't
you mistaking pitch and intensity ?  In French, for example, (very roughly) we
have an accent of intensity and length on the last syllable of a phonological
word, and a high pitch on the *first* syllable of a word (unless it is a
grammatical word).  Of course in many languages, the three factors : intensity,
pitch and length (as well as a difference in formants; the unstressed syllable
tend to be centralised, to have a lower F2 and a higher F1).may be mixed up.  I
think you should listen to Lithuanian or South Slavic dialects if you want an
idea of a pitch accent language. And, of course, I think you should listen to
asian tonal languages. If think that greek rising accent (as in hEgemO/n
"chief") sounded much like a rising tone and the falling accent (as in ei~mi "I
go", timO~ "I fear"). But greek pitch accent was only superficially similar to
asian tone languages because it had just one tonal feature.

Guillaume


From simona_klemencic at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 14 16:09:33 2000
From: simona_klemencic at hotmail.com (Simona Klemencic)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 16:09:33 GMT
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.160933.GMT.>

To Jose Perez:

If I've got you right you are saying that the stress accent doesn't really
exist? Maybe I can add something here as a native speaker of a language in
which both, stress and tonic accent exist. Namely, in Slovene (Slovenian)
one part of the speakers (mostly Lower and Upper Carniola) still speak in
the tonic (musical) way of accentuation, inherited from the Common Slavic
language. The others have lost it; we speak the dinamic/stress version of
Slovene. There's an obvious difference. In the melodic accentuation,
different tonemes can change the meaning of a word - for example: "peta"
with a circumflexed e means 'a heel' while "peta" with an acuted e means
'sung'. I think this is the whole point of the melodic accent while we
others cannot even hear these differences.

Greetings,
Simona Klemencic


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed Mar 15 00:30:35 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 01:30:35 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <000001bf8d4a$22e088e0$72ae08d4@joseperez3>
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.013035.0100.>

On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, jose.perez3 wrote:

>>> From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> [...9  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
>> accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
>> its development?  [...]

> I'd be very thankful for anybody who has paid attention to the issue of tonal
> and stress accent to elaborate on this subject, presenting some sound
> information about how we think that IE differed from most modern European
> languages in its accent.
[...]

I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
"prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).
   Why must that be so?
   A. HIGH PITCH is secured for PIE by:
      A.1. The Sanskrit term uda:tta 'elevated' used of the prominent
           syllable in Vedic.
      A.2. Greek grammarians' report of a manifestly higher pitch on the
           prominent syllable.
      A.3. In Balto-Slavic, a short diphthong (and a short vowel) has
           falling tone, whereas as long diphthong (and an old long
           vowel) has rising tone: The prominence is on the
           beginning of the last full-vowel mora of a syllable. That
           can be achieved only by assigning high pitch to the most
           prominent part of the syllable.
      A.4. The Slavic, after many changes, the basic accent habit remain
           the same: There is high pitch on the formerly prominent
           syllable in Stokavian Serbocroatian, even after the stress
           itself has been retracted (to the preceding syllable)
	   from the syllable still accented in Cakavian and Russian.
   B. STRESS on the same segment is secured by:
      B.1. The stress accent of Pashto which basically falls on the
	   same syllable as the Vedic uda:tta.
      B.2. The stress accent of Modern Greek which is still on the
           syllable accented in Ancient Greek.
      B.3. The stress of Russian and Cakavian which falls on the syllable
	   carrying high pitch in Stokavian.
      B.4. The Hittite plene writing of originally short vowels in
           accented position, which points to volume, not pitch. The
           effects on the consonantism which is reduced after long
           vowels are the same in Luvian and Lycian as in Hittite.
      B.5. The Lydian vowel reductions in unaccented position observed
           by Eichner.
      B.6. The loss of unaccented vowels in Albanian numerals where
           reductions appear to have taken place so early that the
           relevant accent was still that of PIE, while in the bulk
           of the vocabulary reductions postdate a more automatic
           accent assignment.

There are certainly other indications, but this will suffice to show that
the two features (high pitch and stress) went together in PIE already.

Jens


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 15 02:39:39 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 18:39:39 -0800
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <000001bf8d4a$22e088e0$72ae08d4@joseperez3> (jose.perez3@yucom.be)
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.183939.0800.>

On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Jose Perez (jose.perez3 at yucom.be) wrote:

> Is there still anybody around there who thinks that most modern languages
> have "stress accents"? Has anybody checked on this with expert phoneticians?

Well, 26.5 years ago I studied phonetics with Ilse Lehiste, author of a book
entitled _Suprasegmentals_, who taught us that stress accents involved all of
pitch, amplitude, and duration, thereby differing from pitch or tone (which are
not the same thing, by the way:  Greek and Vedic, Lithuanian and South Slavic,
had or have *pitch*, not *tone*, accents).

Several years later, I did a year of experimental phonetics, including work on
stressed vs. unstressed syllables that was published in the Chicago Linguistics
Society volume for 1978.

> Could it be that comparative linguists pulled this rabbit out of the hat
> without checking with phoneticians without realising that they might be
> rather tone deaf?

Prof. Lehiste is also known as the co-author, with the late Robert Jeffers, of
_Principles and Methods for Historical Linguistics_; before her graduate work
in phonetics, she obtained a D. Phil. in historical linguistics at Hamburg.

> Or am I still missing the obvious?

								Rich Alderson


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed Mar 15 21:01:08 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 21:01:08 -0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.210108.0000.>

Joe said:

>Is there still anybody around there who thinks that ...  modern languages have
>"stress accents"?

This is new to me, Joe, and a little puzzling.   English intonation patterns
do seem to involve a greater forcefulness of articulation on the syllabic
peak we call "stressed", while the pitch can be level, higher, or lower.
Am I deceived here?   Furthermore, you seem to be denying the validity of
this, and also the validity of the opposite point of view,  when you suggest
there is no such thing as "pitched non-tonal accent".    So I feel puzzled,
both by your logic, and because I believe some languages, such as Swedish,
have a fixed pitch pattern for words, without which the word is not
understood.

>  When I studied Classics, ...

You seemed in that paragraph to be denying that the Greek and Latin accents
were different.   They certainly function very differently, precisely in
line with the old ideas concerning "stess" and "pitch" accents.   Latin
accent causes syncope, Greek does not;  Latin accent becomes related to
metre (producing effects of syncopation or coincidence), Greek accent is
totally irrelveant to metre;   Latin has early non-syllabic count verse with
a regular number of accented syllables (like the old Anglo-saxon verse) but
Greek only ever shows syllable-count verse (like modern Romance languages),
and so on.

> Modern Greek ...

Greek (according to the usual theory) lost the pitch accent sometime in the
last centuries BC, and developed a stress accent - hence:
    (a) the need for accents to be marked.   You know that Greek - even
Modern Greek - preserves the accent in the same position, so why was there a
need to mark the accent, if its position was known, unless there was other
information being indicated - such as the three-fold distinction in pitch
pattern?
   (b) The Greeks themselves were now using the old musical terminology for
their new stress accent - The Romans simply borrowed the terms, and used
them precisely as the Greeks were doing.

But I am only repeating what I have never before heard questioned - so
please tell us more, Joe.

Peter


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 15 05:53:02 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:53:02 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005201bf8cc5$3ab8d1a0$6fc71a3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.215302.0800.>

At 08:21 AM 3/13/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
>[SF]

>> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
>> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
>> exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

>[PR]

>I do not suppose that this was a stable situation. But, as I have written
>before, that does not, in my opinion, mean that it could not have occurred
>briefly.

Only if you can show even *one* language today with only one phonemic
vowel.  If NO modern language has only one vowel, then this must be taken
as a true, absolute  universal.  If it is an absolute universal, then, yes,
it *must* be excluded, even as a transitory phase.

>Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a combination
>of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

Derivationally and historically, yes.  But synchronically within the
language, 'e' and 'o' are true phonemic vowels.  (Actually, so are 'i' and
'u', if I remember my Sanskrit correctly).

The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
any less phonemic in the current language.

>Well, call it pre-PIE if you like. I was only trying to avoid the "N" word.

It is a standard use of terminology.  An internally reconstructed stage
earlier than a basic proto-language is prefixed with "pre-".

>[SF]

>> Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
>> grammatical.

>[PR]

>Of which I have yet to see convincing examples.

Umm, what sort of example would you expect?  The shift **a: > *o would have
been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
universal.  By the very nature of the hypothesis no *direct* trace would be
left - ALL of the old a:s would have gone over into o's, resulting in an
alternation between *e and *o where there had formerly been one between **a
and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o alternation *is* the example.

And that particular change is well attested in later languages.  It
happened between Old English and Modern English, for instance.  OE /sta:n-/
became Modern English 'stone', but the short vowel, as seen in my name,
remained low and unrounded.

[The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 15 01:18:46 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 17:18:46 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000310170528.009b0c40@mf.mailbank.com> (message from
 Stanley Friesen on Fri, 10 Mar 2000 17:09:29 -0800)
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.171846.0800.>

On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
> exist.

As far as I know, the only two languages ever analyzed as having only one
vowel, Abaza and Kabardian, have both been shown to have been mis-analyzed, and
both have two vowels, /a/ and /i-/.  (I believe I have the correct "ASCII IPA"
for [+ high, -back, -front, +vocalic], i. e. "barred i".)

								Rich Alderson


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Wed Mar 15 12:30:47 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 07:30:47 -0500
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.073047.0500.>

Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a
> combination of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

When JER suggested Sanskrit as an ``almost'' example several months ago,
I looked for exceptions. I gave up because it is hard to do searches
like these without a comprehensive word list (one exists, but I don't
have access to it). But I am doubtful because pairs of type viyukta
(unyoked) and vyukta (vi + (vac+ta), explained) must have existed even
if I am unable to point to them on demand in RV.

We can try to use accent to distinguish them, but then we run into the
problem of how vyukta was actually pronounced (it seemed to have varied
over time and space).

There is a good reason why searches for universals and universal
tendencies is done on living languages.


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Tue Mar 14 17:19:01 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 11:19:01 -0600
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.111901.0600.>

Following up a longer discussion, but with special reference to PIE vowel
alternation, the perfect,and Germanic:

>Stanley said:

>>the non-present forms in Latin and Germanic (at least) are
>> obviously heterogeneous in origin, on purely internal grounds.

>I'm not so sure. ( - Peter)

>Proto-Germanic had a new formation for weak verbs, and in strong verbs the
>pattern:
>     present                 e grade
>     preterite singular  o grade
>     preterite plural      zero grade
>     (and past participle zero grade, though that's not relevant here)

>Later phonetic changes and analogical levelling have obscured the system
>somewhat, and I admit there are problems, especially with class 6 verbs, but
>I don't see that this is "obviously heterogeneous".   The system is based on
>the IE pattern reflected in Greek and I-I perfect.  Even the
>preterite-presents could all go back to the perfect, I think.

The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek oi~da,
i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb paradigm would
seem to be that between the singular and plural as in Gothic wait, witum.
In Hittite this vowel alternation is exemplified by verbs like kuenzi,
kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the
third person plural is zero grade as opposed to other full grade persons.
Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
not originally.

People like Neu, Meid, and Polom? see the Germanic preterite-presents, like
the Hittite situation, as older (adducing lexical and other arguments).
Bridget Drinka's study of the sigmatic aorist in IE (JIES monograph 13) and
subsequent studies adduces a lot of evidence that the -s- aorist is
secondary (internally in Greek it is, for example, beside older root
aorists), and that the Latin verbal system without productive e:o aspectual
distinctions shows an archaism independent of what would then be a
Greek-Armenian-I-I common innovation.

The Germanic strong verb preterites are particularly important here.
Although their singular-plural ablaut pattern may well be old, to the
extent that it is similar to the clearly old preterite-present pattern, the
present e-grade forms may be just as innovating as Greek eidomai, eido:
'see', back formed from old oida 'know' (internal Greek evidence argues
that this form for Greek 'see' is new).

Carol Justus


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 15 05:34:57 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:34:57 -0800
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <008701bf8c05$f2accfc0$995d01d5@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.213457.0800.>

At 09:26 AM 3/12/00 +0000, petegray wrote:
>I'm not so sure.

>Proto-Germanic had a new formation for weak verbs, and in strong verbs the
>pattern:
>     present                 e grade
>     preterite singular  o grade
>     preterite plural      zero grade
>     (and past participle zero grade, though that's not relevant here)

>Later phonetic changes and analogical levelling have obscured the system
>somewhat, and I admit there are problems, especially with class 6 verbs, but
>I don't see that this is "obviously heterogeneous".   The system is based on
>the IE pattern reflected in Greek and I-I perfect.  Even the
>preterite-presents could all go back to the perfect, I think.

That is certainly the *majority* case.  But there are just enough irregular
verbs with remnants of the 'aorist' in Germanic languages to require its
prior existence in some predecessor of Proto-Germanic.  (I seem to remember
even having run across a handful of s-aorists).

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 15 05:30:15 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:30:15 -0800
Subject: i/u as original vowels [was "centum"/"satem" exceptions]
In-Reply-To: <00a601bf8b0d$b17c1cc0$4ec71a3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.14.MAR.2000.213015.0800.>

At 03:49 AM 3/11/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>[PR]

>It is the "absence of phonetic conditioning factors" that would be the
>problem for me. In the examples you cited, it seems that the augment (*e'-)
>and the difference between an CVC with closed as against a CVC- with open
>syllable would constitute (at least, potential) conditioning factors.

Which is why one chooses verbs with an initial consonant cluster, so the
augment does not significantly change the syllable structure.

[Also, I have heard there is some possibility that the augment was
optional, in which case it would not have made a very effective
conditioning for the root vowel: but I am not sure of the status of this
possibility].

><snip>

>>> [SFp]

>>>> Then there is the pair *bheru- and bhreHu, which appear to be two
>>>> distinct roots.  In both the *u appears not to be associated with an
>>>> e-grade at all (since the laryngeal comes in between in the second).

><snip>

>[SF]

>> Pokorny list both of them as one root: "bh(e)reu: bh(e)ru(:)".  It starts
>> on page 143 in my printing.  The root *bheru is under subheading A., and
>> the root bhreHu is under subheading B.

>[PR]

>Well, if I understand your point, I would have to say that the root in
>question seems to be a very obvious derivation of 2. *bher-, listed on p.
>132 --- extended by *-ew-. As for the "*u appear(ing) not to be associated
>with an e-grade", surely the o-grade in Greek phoruto's suffices for
>establishing that the initial consonant cluster is the result of reduction
>due to stress-accent rather than original.

It isn't the vowel before the 'r' that matters in this example.  It is the
absence of one before the 'u'.  (Note, even breHu has a *consonant* before
the 'u').

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Wed Mar 15 22:15:28 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 17:15:28 -0500
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel
 andDating P...
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.171528.0500.>

<JoatSimeon at aol.com> wrote:
> -- as an experiment, why not compare a few sentences?  Say:

The trouble is that we don't have exact semantic matches sufficiently
often to do this. For example, what is the equivalent of ``sacrifice''
in Sanskrit? There is `yaj' which really meant `worship' or `honor' as
indicated both by syntax and meaning of cognates in Avestan and Greek.
Then there is `hu' which meant `pour' and more specifically `offer into
the fire'. I am not sure that anyone today can tell which Sanskrit
speakers from 3000 years ago would have selected if they knew Modern
English connotations of `sacrifice' (possibly neither) .  Anyways, here
are my translations into Sanskrit. I will not attempt Greek.

> "I sacrificed a hundred cattle to the gods."

devebhyas' s'atan" gava:m ajuhavam'  OR `deva:n~ chatena gava:m ayaje

> "Our powerful and mighty heroes siezed the land of their enemies."

This is even harder: `powerful' and `mighty' are rather close in meaning
and `hero' is a bit problematic. My best try is:

  asmadi:ya:s' s'aktimanto balavantas' s'u:ra:h. ks.etram ari:n.a:m
a:gr.bhn.an
[For later Sanskrit, change gr.bh- to gr.h]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 15 17:32:05 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 17:32:05 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.173205.0000.>

Dear Indo-Europeanists:

In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
"laryngeal".

Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
of H".

I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
relationship.

Anyone know of a few more?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com
(501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA
WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/
and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html
"Veit ek, at ek hekk, vindga mei?i, n?tr allar n?u,
geiri unda?r . . . a ?eim mei?i er mangi veit
hvers hann af r?tum renn." (H?vamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar 16 13:31:22 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 08:31:22 -0500
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
In-Reply-To: <9e.21b2387.25f9d225@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.083122.0500.>

At 23:20 9/03/00 EST, you wrote:
>In a message dated 3/9/2000 10:04:12 PM, edsel at glo.be wrote:

>>Persian craftsmen, architects etc. played an important role in what is now
>>perceived as expressions of 'Arab' or Muslim material culture. The most
>>likely place to find these people during the Middle Ages would be the Arab
>>occupied part of Spain, and nowhere else.

>Just a note.  In Faust's Metropolis, the author mentions the find of over
>1000 Arab coins in the old Slavic Wendish town under Berlin (the dates would
>be around 900AD I think.)  Though this doesn't necessarily prove the presence
>of tradespeople, it does prove the presence of trade.  And one might follow
>the other, if not in form of architects, then in the perhaps in the form of
>shoemakers.

>Regards,
>Steve Long

[Ed]
This is very remarkable to say the least.  Maybe these coins were obtained
somehow (trade, battles?) from neighboring Slavs in contact/conflict  with
non-Arab Islamic neighbors like the Turks e.g.? Almost anything is
possible, but Persian craftsmen usually stayed within the Islamic world.

Ed. .Selleslagh

Dr. Ir. Eduard Selleslagh (in Spain)
E-03189	Orihuela-Costa (Alicante)
Espa?a
Phone: +34-96.676.04.37	E-Mail: edsel at glo.be


From bao at cphling.dk  Tue Mar 21 12:36:30 2000
From: bao at cphling.dk (Birgit Anette Olsen)
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 13:36:30 +0100
Subject: Conference in Copenhagen
Message-ID: <TUE.21.MAR.2000.133630.0100.>

Dear fellow Indo-Europeanists,

We are currently investigating the possibilities of
arranging a minor conference in Copenhagen on the
subject: "Structure and Growth of the Indo-European
Word - registration and analysis" (probably October
2oth - 22th 2000). So far nothing is really settled,
but in order to convince our Faculty that this is
actually worthwhile considering, and that it would be
a good idea to give us a little money to cover the
costs, we need to know whether there is a genuine
interest in the matter or not. The plans so far would
include a couple of days on the subject of IE word
formation (nominal and verbal), preferably covering
a wide range of IE languages/branches, and a session
(perhaps one afternoon) dedicated to the question of
registration of the material (handbooks, lexical works
etc.). So, please, let us know what you think about it -
if you have any good ideas and plans, and if you would
consider coming. The deadline for applying for funds is
the first of April, so please don't hesitate.

Looking forward to reading your reactions -

Birgit Olsen.


From bhrghowidhon at galactica.it  Fri Mar 17 16:53:02 2000
From: bhrghowidhon at galactica.it (Guido Borghi)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 08:53:02 -0800
Subject: Congresso: "Verbo indoeuropeo"
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.085302.0800.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following was sent to my personal mail address.  I am passing it on to
  the list for wider distribution.
  --rma ]

     (Ich bitte um Entschuldigung, wenn folgendes auf Italienischem
geschrieben ist. Ich hoffe dass trotzdem man alles leicht verstehen koenne)

    Il Dipartimento di Scienze Glotto-Etnologiche dell'Universita' di
Genova ha previsto di organizzare, per il giorno 18 aprile 2000, un
seminario di studi sul tema:

    Il verbo indoeuropeo.

    Sono previste sette relazioni, della durata di venticinque minuti
ciascuna, dedicate a settori linguistici particolari nell'ambito
dell'argomento generale. I relatori saranno:

Ore 10.00-12.00:

Paolo DI GIOVINE,	Per una riconsiderazione delle categorie funzionali e
			flessionali del verbo indoeuropeo
Romano LAZZERONI,	Diatesi e modalita' nel sistema verbale sanscrito
Onofrio CARRUBA,	Il verbo nelle lingue anatoliche
Aldo Luigi PROSDOCIMI,	Il verbo italico (e latino)

Ore 12.00-12.30:	Discussione

Pausa pranzo

Ore 15.00-16.30:

Filippo MOTTA,		La sintassi delle forme verbali nel celtico antico
Giancarlo BOLOGNESI,	Il verbo armeno
Guido MICHELINI,	I tratti arcaici del verbo delle lingue baltiche


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 15 22:15:34 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 22:15:34 -0000
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.221534.0000.>

Dear Eric and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Plourde Eric" <plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA>
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 5:14 AM

<snip>

[EP]

> PIE was probably never a unified, unique language, sure, there is nothing
> provocative about that hypothesis. But the people who used the IE langages
> were probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their culture
> (and languages) on the others.

[PR]

To characterize IE-speakers as "very violent and bloodthirsty" implies that
they can legitimately be contrasted with speakers of other languages who
were *only* violent, or even less violent.

I frankly think this is an entirely unwarranted assumption. I know of no
people in history (let alone, pre-history) that has not, when the occasion
presented itself, acted ruthlessly, violently, and bloodthirstily.

I believe your characterization smacks of the dubious theories of the late
Lithuanian feminist Gimbutas, and has more psychological than archaeological
content.

[EP]

> How else would they have spread so quickly? How Scythians and the Germanic
> tribes were depicted? In the war between Sparta and Athens, who won? The city
> of belligerance and cruelty or the city of democracy and tolerance? You know
> the answers.

[PR]

I would think that anyone who has been participating in the discussion on
this list might be able to think of a number of scenarios in which a
language might spread quickly in addition to a pre-historic Kulturkampf.

By the way, you may characterize Athens as the city of democracy if you
wish. I would characterize it as the city of moral, ethical, and financial
corruption.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar 17 10:33:35 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 05:33:35 -0500
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.053335.0500.>

> [ Moderator's note:
>   The following message addresses a number of issues brought up in
> a recent  post by S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com); nothing further
> on those issues will be posted to the list.  However, a comment in the
> final paragraph takes us beyond those issues, and back to
> Indo-European issues, and I will welcome further discussion *of that
> paragraph only*.  --rma ]

I agree that the topic is minefield and may not be suitable, but I am
not sure if that is possible to discuss only the issues in the cited
para: After all, the question is whether the examples given so far can
be used as models for PIE spread.

"Plourde Eric" <plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA> wrote:
> [...] But the people who used the IE languages were
> probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their
> culture (and languages) on the others. How else would they have
>spread so quickly? How Scythians and the Germanic tribes were
> depicted?

Just how quickly did PIE spread? How can we know given the
uncertainties about the PIE homeland, the time of split, and the time
of disappearance of non-PIE languages?

How do we know where PIE speakers stood on the scale of
bloodthirstiness? And just how do we set up this scale: By the number of
bodies excavated from conquered areas? And what is that count? and so
on.

And how does bloodthirstiness help in spreading a language? There have
been bloodthirsty (from the point of view of the conquered: Alexander
was supposedly magnanimous, but that is not what Zoroastrians said)
conquerors such as Genghis Khan who did not manage to impose their
language on even a third of their conquered lands.

The models for `imposing' languages that have been given all seem to
depend on schools and other such institutions, which were compulsory for
the subject peoples. Are we to assume that PIE speakers had the same
setup?

The whole thread seemed to me to be pointless. The examples given in the
last 15 years for the spread have been cases of slow absorption via
client-patron relation into an open hierarchical society, not forceful
imposition via the sword (which seems to have been limited to religion
before 1500 CE).


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Mar 16 20:51:27 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 15:51:27 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.155127.EST.>

In a message dated 3/16/00 12:29:13 AM Mountain Standard Time,
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

<< "Innovative core -- archaizing periphery" is really an expression
 >of the wave model of linguistic change and, of course, the "core"
 >and "periphery" can be different for each change.  The wave model
 >says that linguistic change spreads like the waves from an object
 >dropped in a liquid, gradually dying out with increasing distance
 >from the center.  Thus there will be a core or central area where
 >the change is complete, transitional areas where the change is
 >less complete, and relic areas that the change does not reach at
 >all.  And, as I said, how this model applies depends on where the
 >particular change started so there is nothing about the Urheimat
 >that *has* to make it the most innovative or the most
 >conservative with respect to the proto-language.

 >Eg., the Baltic languages (and the Slavic) undergo satemization,
 >a late development in the eastern IE dialects.

 >A slight terminological quibble:  You can't say that satemization
 >was a development in the eastern IE dialects because Tocharian
 >didn't undergo it.  What you have to say is that the core area
 >for satemization was I-Ir. and that the easternmost "dialect" of
 >IE (Tocharian) was already isolated from this core area when this
 >change took place (i.e., was no longer part of the IE dialect
 >continuum).

-- you're quite right about that.  I had forgotten about Tocharian.

 >What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
 >the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup
 >of PIE they became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than
 >Slavic.

> The evidence fairly clearly shows that both Baltic and Slavic
> were transitional areas in both the satemization (palatal
> assibilation) and RUKI palatization changes that had their core
> in I-Ir (although RUKI is more generalized in Slavic than in
> Baltic).  Essentially all this shows is that Baltic and Slavic
> were still in fairly close contact with I-Ir. in contrast to
> Greek, Italic, Germanic and points west which were not affected
> at all by these changes (relic areas).  In short, all the other
> IE stocks have already broken off or are simply out of range
> (which is not quite the same thing as they could still be at the
> other end of a dialect continuum) before this change.  And
> conservatism after this point indicates that the language was
> consistently a relic area in further changes originating in the
> dialect continuum

-- this seems to be a terminological problem here.  That's pretty much what I
was trying to say.  Pardon the infelicities of expression!

>The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue
>against this.

-- it's a matter of degree.  Lithuanian certainly changed far less; but it
still changed.

>But the point is that *something* has to
>be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.  It is equally
>against the law of averages for a team or an individual to win a
>single elimination tournament; but someone always does.  In the
>IE superbowl, Lithuanian is apparently the winner.  But that
>still doesn't say anything specific about where it started out
>geographically.

-- however, it's not just Lithuanian.  Apart from the other Baltic languages,
there's the example of Slavic  -- which, while not quite as conservative, is
still notably so.

>But is it clear that there is no substratum influence?  There are a number of
>Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a considerably larger number of Baltic
>loanwords in Balto-Finnic.  Looks like about what one would expect if Baltic
>were a superstratum language over Western Finnic.  Just because there wasn't
>an unknown substratum, as there apparently was in Germanic, that provided a
>lot of words of unknown origin to the language doesn't mean that there wasn't
>some substratum.

-- its a question of degree.  There are certainly substrata in Baltic, but
not to nearly the same degree as in Germanic.  The number of lexical items
which can be traced to PIE is proportionately much larger and Baltic that in,
say, Germanic or Greek.

 >There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other
 >features in the area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was
 >historically attested).

>Again, useful for indicating that (a) the language was in its
>original home, (b) the language moved into a previously
>uninhabited area, (c) the speakers of the language
>systematically renamed or calqued all river names in their own
>language, or (d) the speakers of the language drove off or killed
>all the original inhabitants before they could learn the original
>names of the topographical features (i.e., no period of
>linguistic contact).

-- one has to make a balance of probabilities in these cases. Even the case
of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, which is about as complete a case of
linguistic replacement as exists in the historical record, not all the river
and place names were changed.  River names in particular seem to persist.


From jrader at m-w.com  Thu Mar 16 09:45:11 2000
From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 09:45:11 +0000
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PI
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.094511.0000.>

>[S.M. Stirling:]
> >That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The
> >degree of retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared
> >to, say, Hittite.
> [Robert Whiting:]
> Yes, absence of substratum influences would be useful in showing
> either (a) the language was in its original home, (b) the
> language moved into a previously uninhabited area, (c) the
> language does not accept loanwords, or (d) the speakers of the
> language drove off or killed all the original inhabitants before
> there was any significant linguistic contact.  But is it clear
> that there is no substratum influence?  There are a number of
> Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a considerably larger number
> of Baltic loanwords in Balto-Finnic.  Looks like about what one
> would expect if Baltic were a superstratum language over Western
> Finnic.  Just because there wasn't an unknown substratum, as
> there apparently was in Germanic, that provided a lot of words of
> unknown origin to the language doesn't mean that there wasn't
> some substratum.

I'm sure there are people on the list who can comment much more
learnedly than me on the matter, but isn't the presence of adessive
and illative cases in Old Lithuanian, through agglutination of
postpositional <-p(i)> and <-na> onto existing case endings, a fairly
obvious candidate for Finnic substratal influence?  Another candidate
would be the fixing of dynamic stress--or "ictus" in Stang and
others' terminology--on the first syllable in Latvian and northern
dialects of Lithuanian, at the same time that some original Baltic
accentual distinctions were maintained.   (On the other hand, Livonian,
the Finnic language most intimately in contact with Baltic, developed
lexical tones of a Baltic type--otherwise quite uncharacteristic of
Uralic languages.)  Of course, on a simple typological basis, the
Baltic languages are the most Uralic-like of the modern I-E
languages, because case endings are so crucial in expressing
grammatical relations.  If Baltic had gone the route of most other
I-E languages and suffered severe final-syllable attrition, it would have
been forced to become less Uralic-like morphosyntactically.

Jim Rader


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 09:34:09 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 09:34:09 -0000
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.093409.0000.>

Robert posted a long email about Lithuanian, non-innovation, and the
Ur-heimat, and I do not wish to question any of his conclusions.   There is,
however, a small point of logic, ultimately quite trivial.   Anyone with
sense will read no further, and if I had any, I wouldn't make this quibble.

He said:
> Now someone is going to say that it's against the law of averages
> for Lithuanian to have always been on the non-innovating branch.
> And of course it is.  But the point is that *something* has to
> be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.

At each node, on that model, there will be a non-innovating branch, but it
is not necessary that it is always one and the same branch which does not
innovate.   Hence the significance of the surprising fact that Lithuanian
has at each node been the non-innovator.    This allows us to conclude what
you so poignantly express in your last comment - it's a long way away from
anywhere.

Peter


From mcalamia at hotmail.com  Thu Mar 16 06:05:48 2000
From: mcalamia at hotmail.com (Maria Anna Calamia)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 22:05:48 PST
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.220548.PST.>

bay leaves turn brown when they are dried.

>From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>Subject: RE: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
>Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:35 -0600

>	Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
>something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
>"berry"?

[ moderator snip ]


From lieven.marchand at just.fgov.be  Thu Mar 16 08:58:30 2000
From: lieven.marchand at just.fgov.be (Lieven Marchand)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 08:58:30 +0000
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJHPIGJGDEKDCLOBFAEEACHAA.mclasutt@brigham.net>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.085830.0000.>

Dr. John E. McLaughlin writes:
 > "Brown" is a good example (assuming for the sake of argument, of
 > course, that "brown" is derived from "bruin" [or some such history]).
 > Since "bruin" is on the way out in Modern English, "brown" is moving
 > into the realm of a basic color term.

What's the story with bruin/brown in English?

bruin is the word for brown in Dutch and according to Merriam-Webster
bruin in English is an (obsolete?) word for bear borrowed from the
Middle-Dutch animal fable "Van den vos Reynaerde". Also according to
M-W brown has the following etymology:
Middle English broun, from Old English brun; akin to Old High German
brun brown, Greek phrynE toad while the entry for bear states:
Middle English bere, from Old English bera; akin to Old English brun
brown.

The two words bear and brown were distinct in Reynaerde:
Dies was die coninc sciere beraden
Dat hi dus sprac te Bruun den beere:

I think at least in Dutch bruin is a basic color term.

Lieven Marchand


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu Mar 16 12:54:24 2000
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 07:54:24 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.075424.0500.>

Rick McCallister wrote:

> Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
> something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
> "berry"?

I am reasonably certain that both E. -bay- and Spanish -bayo- are from
Latin -badium-.

--
Hyge sceal the heardra, heorte the cenre,
mod sceal the mare, the ure maegen lytlath.
                            --- The Battle of Maldon


From r.piva at bluewin.ch  Thu Mar 16 16:01:20 2000
From: r.piva at bluewin.ch (renato piva)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 18:01:20 +0200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.180120.0200.>

Rick Mc Callister schrieb:

>         Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
> something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
> "berry"?

No. The adjective comes from ancient French bai < lat. badius, a word used by
Varro, but also known as an Oscan family name (Badius); according to Meillet,
Irish has buide ?yellow?.

R. Piva


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:34:58 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:34:58 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <200003150224.SAA14316@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103458.0700.>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>> "Orange" is not a basic color term in Modern English, since it is still
>> recognized as being the color of the fruit. ...  "Brown" is moving into this
>> class, but since we still have "bruin" in our language, it's not quite there
>> yet.  "Pink" is closer to being a basic term than "orange", since only
>> gardeners recognize "pink" as a name for a member of the genus Dianthus.

[Rich Alderson wrote]

> This is certainly a matter of dialect or idiolect:  For me, all three are
> basic in the B&K sense.  As a child, I learned that the fruit was called "an
> orange" because it *was* orange, I never associated "brown" with "bruin" (an
> adult learned term), and I had a pink shirt and necktie (with Davy Crockett
> on it) that was my favourite thing to wear when I was three.  Even as an
> occasional gardener, "pinks" are called that because they are...

This is, indeed, the tricky part of identifying basic color terms versus
non-basic terms.  When looking at the historic evidence, it is usually safer
to say that color terms are derived from other terms vastly more often than
the other way round.  (Although as I write this, I just heard a narrator on
the History Channel say, "...into the wild blue" and I also recall the basic
American terms of racial identification, "blacks" and "whites".)  As with
most language descriptions, we cannot rely on idiolects (unless, of course,
we're dealing with the "last speaker"), but must average things out.  On a
scale from most "colorified" to least, I would say that "pink" is the
farthest along ("pink" as a member of the genus Dianthus is a much older
usage than "pink" as a color), "brown" comes next (the "Bruins" of UCLA keep
that word alive), and "orange" is the least "colorified".  Ultimately, since
we're dealing with a diachronic process anyway, synchronic judgments of what
we learn first as a child, or what our level of familiarity with the
non-color word is, are irrelevant to the issue of what are the basic color
terms of Modern English.  If the source word is still extant in the
language, then the color term isn't basic yet.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:34:52 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:34:52 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.20.0003140736340.25270-100000@vesuri.Helsinki.FI>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103452.0700.>

[Bob Whiting wrote]

> You mean a pinto bean is really a horse? :)  Just joking, John, and I take
> your point.  But I do think you have overstated it.  Horse colors do get
> transferred (practically any term can be transferred), but usually with
> the marker '-colored' attached (e.g., 'dun-colored', 'roan-colored').  The
> problem is that 'pinto' and 'paint' are not colors but refer to patterns
> of markings.  And a pinto bean and a pinto horse both have mottled colors.

Bob, you're quite right, and that underscores why horse colors cannot be
considered as "basic" color terms in Berlin and Kay's definitions.  The fact
that you can't have a "dun coat", but can have a "dun-colored coat"
illustrates the horse-associated nature of these colors.  "Roan" is actually
a little broader in scope (compare the sable antelope (Hippotragus niger)
which is black, the extinct blue buck (Hippotragus leucophaeus), and the
roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus), all of subsaharan Africa).  Another
unique characteristic of these horse colors, is that they really can't be
associated with products that are not animals or derived from animals, such
as leather, wool, horsehair things, and other animals.  I'm not sure which
came first--pinto bean or pinto horse.  They're probably independent uses of
the adjective "pinto".

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:34:55 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:34:55 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.19991207132903.2d4f6382@online.be>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103455.0700.>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>> Berlin and Kay have a very precise meaning for "basic" (not "primary", which
>> is a term of optics representing Red, Yellow, and Blue only, as opposed to
>> "secondary", which is a term for Orange, Green, and Purple).

> [Ed]

> I suppose you mean magenta, yellow and cyan, the primary colors if you
> consider subtractive color mixing, like in printing (one layer over another
> on white paper, masking part of the spectrum). Together they give black.
> Otherwise, the primary colors (for additive mixing, like TV, i.e. adding
> light from three sources) are red, green, blue. Together they give white.

> Just to keep things clear.

You're quite right about other color systems.  When you're talking about
color mixing in printing (magenta, cyan, yellow) or blending light (red,
green, blue), you're quite right.  The traditional color palette, however,
is based on paint mixing.  This the old red, yellow, blue primary color
scheme.  What was a simple issue thirty years ago is now much more
complicated with computer display color issues interfering with painting and
printing.  In discussing Berlin and Kay, it is more useful (IMHO) to stick
with the painting palette since those colors (red, blue, and yellow) also
are the first three color words to develop after white and black.  Of course
these color terms represent a range of colors and not just single values,
but the center of the range is usually always within the range we would call
'red', 'blue', and 'yellow'.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:43:30 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:43:30 +0100
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <4b.1ae4bbe.25f58a77@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.014330.0100.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>> G&I give walwa-, walwi- with question mark as Hittite, besides Luwian
>> walwa-, but that could be a Luwian borrowing into Hittite.  Still, I'm not
>> aware of a development *kw > w in Luwian (*k^ > zero, yes). >>

>-- Mallory & Adams seem to think it's credible.

On what grounds?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Mon Mar 20 16:12:09 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 16:12:09 GMT
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <MON.20.MAR.2000.161209.GMT.>

Hereinafter ! 2 3 are the laryngeals. Greek w = digamma.

As regards possible euphemisms:-
  The PIE literal for "bear" is said to be {2rksos}; but I read that its
Hittite form {hartaggas} means "predator", i.e. yet another descriptor.
  In Ancient Greek I have come across:-
  wolf: PIE {wlqwos} > Greek {lukos}, not the expected **{wlapos} or similar;
distortion to associate with {luk-} = "light" (= illumination)?
  shark: {selakhos}, compare (selas} = "beam of light".
  lion: {lewo:n} : compare {loweo:} = "I wash".
  PIE {wlqwos} sounds suspiciously like someone imitating a wolf howling,
perhaps as a yet older euphemism?
  hare (not a dangerous animal but a subject of many superstitions): compare
words {has-} = "grey", and more recent replacement words in Irish etc.


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu Mar 16 17:35:00 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:35:00 -0700
Subject: PIE brown/Berlin &Kay
In-Reply-To: <8c.1bc27f0.26008d18@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.103500.0700.>

Steve Long wrote a long reply to my last posting about color terms, but we
are actually saying very similar things.  Steve states that just because a
language doesn't have a word for 'brown', it doesn't mean that they can't
see brown or have no brown in their environment or just never talk about
brown things.  He used an excellent example in citing, "It's the color of
mud."  Another example would be, "It's mud red" (in languages without a
basic term for 'brown', brown things generally fall into either the 'red'
range or the 'yellow' range).  I completely agree with Steve on this.

Secondly, Steve asks what the Berlin and Kay work means in terms of defining
a spectrum and he disagrees with defining color terms in other languages by
reference to the way that English breaks up the spectrum.  Here we have a
slight difference of opinion.  Steve seems to object to using 'red',
'yellow', 'blue', etc. to "translate" foreign basic color terms because they
imply a specific English-based range of the spectrum and eliminate colors
that include other parts of the spectrum.  I agree with the difficulty of
defining, say, the range of the spectrum that falls under Panamint ankapihty
(y is barred i) using only the English term 'red'.  Ankapihty includes
colors from dark yellow through orange and red into a medium purple, but we
have no word for that range in English.  However, we can locate the general
spectral range where the "center of balance" is.  That center is in the
range we call 'red'.  Obviously, a dictionary should list the range of
colors and not just the central color.  Indeed, I've run informal tests on
English speaking students in some of my Language and Culture courses.  I'd
hand them a color wheel and ask them to mark on the wheel the primary and
secondary colors 'red', 'yellow', 'orange', etc.  While the center of each
color covered the typically associated spectral range, the boundaries
differed on every wheel.  In fact, my wife and I have a fundamental
difference in what we call "pure red".  My wife identifies a dark scarlet as
"pure red" while I identify a bright crimson as "pure red".

The value of the Berlin and Kay system is not in the specific spectral
identifications it wants to make, but in the identification of color centers
in the whole spectral range by means of basic color terms that are neither
borrowed nor derived within the extant language.  The value is in looking at
the order in which the linguistic system divides the entire spectrum into
(excluding white and black) one to eight or so pieces.  It also allows us to
look at the naturalness of reconstructed systems.  A reconstruction that has
'red', 'yellow', and 'grue' (green and blue), for example, is much more
probable than a system that has 'pink', 'violet', and 'orange'.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 01:07:06 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 02:07:06 +0100
Subject: Hittite walwa 'lion' WAS: Bears and why they are mostly...
In-Reply-To: <2000Mar9.223643@AN3039.spb.edu>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.020706.0100.>

alex at AN3039.spb.edu (Alexander S. Nikolaev) wrote:

>	As to the shape of this putative PIE lexeme, hittite walwa
>	posits a lot of difficulties. I know of a hypothesis,
>	which i find attractive, but the text can hardly be accessible
>	to any of the list members  (it appeared in the
>	"Jazgulamskij sbornik", St-Petersburg, 1996 and belongs to A.
>	Ryko). I am taking the liberty to outline it briefly, as it
>	is of interest. A "broken reduplication", suggested by G&I,
>	is an extremely rare type, if exists at all.
>	That is why the author suggests to reconstruct the word as
>	a o-grade nominal formation from the root *welw/wlew, which
>	om its part can be an w-enlarged root *wel- 'to tear' (some
>	of the other PIE roots with the same shape *wel-, such as 'to
>	see', 'to deceive', 'hair'  are compelling candidacies, too. -
>	- why not trace wl.-kw-os to the same root, whatever it might
>	be? And what is gr. alo:pe:ks then?)
>	The initial *w- in this Schwebeablauting root can be proved
>	with the help of the greek material, cf. e.g.
>		Tro:es de {F}leiousin eoikotes o:mophagoisi
>	"de", which stands in the beginning of the 2nd foot, should form a long
>	syllable, and the length is caused by the dygamma, which
>	closes the syllable.
>
>	Any comments?

Interesting, but how to explain the loss of w- in Latin (if not
from Greek), Germanic/Slavic (if not from Latin) or Tocharian
[hmm, in Toch., *wla:nt- gives both nom. <walo> and acc.
<la:nt>].  And what about the extra-IE parallels (none of which
show initial w-)?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 16 04:11:07 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 04:11:07 -0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.041107.0000.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen" <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 12:30 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).
>    Why must that be so?
>    A. HIGH PITCH is secured for PIE by:
>       A.1. The Sanskrit term uda:tta 'elevated' used of the prominent
>            syllable in Vedic.
>       A.2. Greek grammarians' report of a manifestly higher pitch on the
>            prominent syllable.
>       A.3. In Balto-Slavic, a short diphthong (and a short vowel) has
>            falling tone, whereas as long diphthong (and an old long
>            vowel) has rising tone: The prominence is on the
>            beginning of the last full-vowel mora of a syllable. That
>            can be achieved only by assigning high pitch to the most
>            prominent part of the syllable.
>       A.4. The Slavic, after many changes, the basic accent habit remain
>            the same: There is high pitch on the formerly prominent
>            syllable in Stokavian Serbocroatian, even after the stress
>            itself has been retracted (to the preceding syllable)
>    from the syllable still accented in Cakavian and Russian.
>    B. STRESS on the same segment is secured by:
>       B.1. The stress accent of Pashto which basically falls on the
>    same syllable as the Vedic uda:tta.
>       B.2. The stress accent of Modern Greek which is still on the
>            syllable accented in Ancient Greek.
>       B.3. The stress of Russian and Cakavian which falls on the syllable
>    carrying high pitch in Stokavian.
>       B.4. The Hittite plene writing of originally short vowels in
>            accented position, which points to volume, not pitch. The
>            effects on the consonantism which is reduced after long
>            vowels are the same in Luvian and Lycian as in Hittite.
>       B.5. The Lydian vowel reductions in unaccented position observed
>            by Eichner.
>       B.6. The loss of unaccented vowels in Albanian numerals where
>            reductions appear to have taken place so early that the
>            relevant accent was still that of PIE, while in the bulk
>            of the vocabulary reductions postdate a more automatic
>            accent assignment.

> There are certainly other indications, but this will suffice to show that
> the two features (high pitch and stress) went together in PIE already.

I do not wish to dispute the particular examples you have given but I would
like to call attention to the fact that stress and tone do *not* necessarily
go together in English.

In a sentence like: "I have the receipt", the final syllable has
stress-accent and falling tone.

In my opinion, the original function of stress was to delimit phrases while
the original function of tone was to delimit sentences.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From xiang at free.fr  Thu Mar 16 10:15:57 2000
From: xiang at free.fr (Guillaume JACQUES)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:15:57 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.111557.0100.>

> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the other
less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to assume IE had
both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence indicates PIE
had a pitch accent.

Guillaume


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Thu Mar 16 17:31:50 2000
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (roslyn frank)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:31:50 -0600
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.113150.0600.>

The following is an abstract from the recent meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistic Society (Feb. 18-21, 2000) titled "On the Accented/Unaccented
Distinction in Western Basque and the Typology of Accentual Systems" by
Jose Ignacio Hualde, Rajka Smiljanic and Jennifer Cole. Its contents
relates to the discussion at hand.

http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/abstracts/0010.pdf

The program of the conference and other abstracts can be found at:
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/BLS26.html

Regards,
Roz Frank


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:22:35 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:22:35 -0000
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.102235.0000.>

Thank you, Jens for you posting on stress and tone accents.

You use the stress accents of some modern languages, such as Greek, to argue
that PIE must have had stress.   Does this argument necessarily follow?

(a) Isn't the old argument also possible, that the accent in Greek has
changed from pitch to stress? (and presumably therefore also possible in the
other languages that you mention)

(b) There are no indications of stress accent in Classical Greek, neither in
the grammarians, nor in what the accent does to the phonology, metre, or
anything else.   See W Sidney Allan Vox Graeca.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 16 05:27:33 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 05:27:33 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.052733.0000.>

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 5:53 AM

> At 08:21 AM 3/13/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> [SFp]

>>> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
>>> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
>>> exist.  The normal minimum is *three* vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/.

>> [PRp]

>> I do not suppose that this was a stable situation. But, as I have written
>> before, that does not, in my opinion, mean that it could not have occurred
>> briefly.

[SF]

> Only if you can show even *one* language today with only one phonemic
> vowel.  If NO modern language has only one vowel, then this must be taken
> as a true, absolute  universal.  If it is an absolute universal, then, yes,
> it *must* be excluded, even as a transitory phase.

[PR]

I cannot believe that you will maintain this position upon reflection. No
"modern" bird has the wingspan of a pterodactyl but that certainly does not
mean that no bird can ever have had such a wingspan.

As for "(true) absolute unversal(s)", I do not know of any in linguistics or
any other field. I enjoyed Plato myself but I think it is a mistake to take
him seriously.

[PRp]

>> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a combination
>> of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

[SF]

> Derivationally and historically, yes.  But synchronically within the
> language, 'e' and 'o' are true phonemic vowels.  (Actually, so are 'i' and
> 'u', if I remember my Sanskrit correctly).

[PR]

Well, let us be a bit more precise. Old Indian [a]+[y] does *not* become /e/
rather it becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] does *not* become /o/ rather it
becomes /o:/. Careful notation distinguishes between long and short vowels
although, in theory, I suppose there is no problem writing [o] so long as
everyone knows that this indicates a long vowel  /o:/.

Now, I suppose that opinions can reasonably differ on the (interesting?)
following question:

I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
/o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat
these sounds as diphthongal.

But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian? Or the simple /o/.

It does not exist so far as we can determine.

I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
/w/; and, as they have no existence outside of these conditioned
environments, they cannot be considered phonemes, whether they retained
their earliest diphthongal character or not.

[SF]

> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
> the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
> any less phonemic in the current language.

[PR]

Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

[PRp]

>> Well, call it pre-PIE if you like. I was only trying to avoid the "N" word.

[SF]

> It is a standard use of terminology.  An internally reconstructed stage
> earlier than a basic proto-language is prefixed with "pre-".

[PR]

Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If
it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

>> [SF]

>>> Those that show 'o' in PIE proper, except where that is analogical or
>>> grammatical.

>> [PRp]

>> Of which I have yet to see convincing examples.

[SF]

> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?

[PR]

True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
undisputed in any other language.

[SF]

> The shift **a: > *o would have
> been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
> universal.  By the very nature of the hypothesis no *direct* trace would be
> left - ALL of the old a:s would have gone over into o's, resulting in an
> alternation between *e and *o where there had formerly been one between **a
> and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o alternation *is* the example.

[PR]

I do not think I am the only reader who will find this dizzyingly circular.

The fact of e/o alternation "proves" an a/a: alternation?

Hmmh?

And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
certain accentual/tonal conditions?

[SF]

> And that particular change is well attested in later languages.  It
> happened between Old English and Modern English, for instance.  OE /sta:n-/
> became Modern English 'stone', but the short vowel, as seen in my name,
> remained low and unrounded.

> [The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

[PR]

Certainly very interesting. But your example certainly does not mean that we
should expect OE *sa:wian for ME sew (/so:/) when seowian is attested, does
it?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:34:43 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:34:43 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <008001bf8891$a4fad280$7cd31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.013443.0100.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>The stress-accented syllable with /a'/  (which might have induced to become
>/a:'/), then became /a(:)*/, with the asterisk indicating a high-tonal
>accent, when tonal accent supplanted stress-accent.

>Sanskrit reflects this stage.

Aren't you forgetting the law of the palatals?

Sanskrit, too, went through a stage with /e/.

><snip>

>So are you saying there was a time when PIE had two phonemic vowels: /a/ and
>/a:/?

>And, if so, what are some roots that had phonemic /a:/ at this stage?

There are a number of roots containing *o that show no trace of
e/o apophony (nor evidence for *h3).  Unfortunately, my active
command of PIE vocabulary is very poor...  First one that comes
to mind is *pot(i)- (perhaps < **pa:t(n^)-) and its derivative
(?) *nepot- (**na-pa:t-).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA  Thu Mar 16 15:47:21 2000
From: plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA (Plourde Eric)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:47:21 -0500
Subject: pre-IE k > H
In-Reply-To: <004e01bf8ea4$63efbda0$8ad21b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.104721.0500.>

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Dear Indo-Europeanists:

> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
> "laryngeal".

> Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
> as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
> of H".

> I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
> another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
> relationship.

> Anyone know of a few more?

Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish) when
it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples (including
the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 17 18:04:24 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:04:24 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.120424.0600.>

Annelies Kammenhuber never really endorsed the laryngeal theory because of
words where one scribe might use a sign with a 'k' equivalent where others
usually used the Hittite 'h' that confirmed Saussure's hypothesis. I don't
have a list of such words, but someone may.

Hittite scribes, of course, were not all native speakers of Hittite, nor
were Hittite texts written in a monolingual context. (I think someone
mentioned six written languages at Hattusa; there were seven, but you might
argue for losing Sumerian since it was only written, not spoken. But
Palaic, both dialects of Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, Akkadian, and Hittite
certainly were, even if Hattic died out in the early years.) Without
abandoning the laryngeal theory, such scribal variants as those between k
and h may have their own tale to tell.

Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the details of the
Romance languages, took a position often reduced to the slogan "every word
has its own history" because he found so many explanations for exceptions
to regular sound correspondences. While both the laryngeal theory and the
Neogrammarian principle of sound correspondence remain landmarks in the
science of language, competing forces have not been systematically factored
in for IE in much depth. In this context the Hittite k ~  h alternation,
for example, has not been systematically accounted for. This has left
Greenberg some room for working with the pre-IE system of sounds. It would
be interesting to do for IE what Malkiel did for Romance linguistics,
namely to amass some data on the anomalies, especially if they turned out
to show sub-systematicity beyond what the 19th century did so well. We are,
after all, in the 21st century! Pat's question is not a bad one.

Carol

>Dear Indo-Europeanists:
>
>In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
>"laryngeal".

>Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
>as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
>of H".

>I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
>another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
>relationship.

>Anyone know of a few more?

>Pat


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 17 08:20:32 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 03:20:32 EST
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.032032.EST.>

g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>> The main question is: HOW LIKELY is it that such borrowings /
>> derivations happened independently from each other,...

I wrote:

>>The main question has not been HOW LIKELY?  The main question is WHEN?
>>When did the words enter the languages?

In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>My main argument is based on the WHEN question -
>both absolute timing
>(horses are not attested in Italy before 2600 BC, therefore there was no
>word for them)

Yes, but that date is artificial, because of your assumptions. There is lots
of evidence of horses - both wild and domesticated - across northern, western
and eastern Europe and North Africa before this date.  You're presuming that
lack of evidence of the horse in the vicinity before a certain date where
Latin was spoken means lack of knowledge of the horse before that date.

By the same token, because we have no evidence of lions anywhere near Britain
since the pleistocene, there should not be a word for lion in English.

Horses did not fall out of thin air.  And unless you are claiming some
extraordinary isolation for the Italian peninsula - something that is
thoroughly contradicted by the evidence - there are good reasons to think
this date is inappropriate for establishing knowledge of or a word for the
horse.

There are parts of France and England where no evidence of iron, horses or
even textiles have been found that are datable before 1800AD.  You can
certainly use that evidence to suggest that no words for iron, horses or
textiles can be expected in the local vocabularies.  But the dating and the
localization are artificial and your conclusions would be false.

g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

I replied:

>> I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I pulled
>> from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of the
>> horse was @2000BC.

g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>What used to be is not really relevant....

Wait a second.  You said it was hard to see what evidence would disprove
Renfrew.  I gave you what evidence would disprove Renfrew.  And you say it's
not really relevant.

g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>I am trying to use archaeological
>dates from the most recent literature that I can find.

But you are actually using selective evidence.  The date of the horse in
Italy applies neither to your own idea of the PIE homeland nor to the date of
the horse in that location.  Evidence of the so-called 'true horse' has been
dated as early as 4300BC in the middle Ukraine.  Evidence of wild horses of
any type (a prerequisite for domestication) can be found between that
location and Italy throughout that period.

You are making an assumption and that assumption is neither archaeological
nor linguistic.  You are assuming that the word for a horse cannot be present
in a language unless horses are also present.

If IE speakers entered Italy well before 2600BC, there is absolutely NOTHING
to necessitate their having horses with them.  Jarred describes in Guns,
Germs and Steel just how inefficient keeping horses can be.  The standard
burial wagon of the pre-3000BC period in central and eastern europe is drawn
by an ox.  Even before wheeled transport, the ox would have provided better
cartage.  The rather small tarpan-related domesticated horse of the period
may not have been particularly useful in hauling and probably were not
particularly rideable.  As opposed to the steppes where sufficient pasturage
and range would have been available, the terrain of the Italian peninsula
would have made horse-rearing undesirable and inefficient for either the
purposes of meat or milk.

So once again knowledge of the horse and a word for the horse did not make
the horse either desirable or a necesssary presence.  There is more than
sufficient evidence of contact between Italy and areas where the horse was
present well before 5500BC for the horse to be neither a mystery or a dim
memory.

<<For trees, see Indo-European Trees by Friedrich (I don't have the
bibliographic data in front of me). For various wild animals in the North
Pontic area, including fish, Mallory wrote several articles in JIE. Both of
these sources look to me pretty consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. If
someone would analyze the flora and fauna of Anatolia around 6500 BC, it
would be interesting to see how the names in various IE languages for the
various plants and animals found in Anatolia fit in with Renfrew's theory,
and eventually to see which theory fits in better with the biological facts.>>

This is mainly pure fantasy.  The very notion that a species unique to the
Caspian region 8-5000 years ago can be identified with a word in documented
IE languages a thousand miles away and 4000 years later is just absurd.  Any
name for flora in one region could just as easily be applied to similar flora
in another region - this has happened constantly throughout history.  Maize
is corn in American English and prairie dogs are not dogs and groundhogs are
not hogs.  And yes there were salmon or something that could be called salmon
just about everywhere.

<<I specifically excluded words for cow, sow and grain. I assume that there
were words for these concepts among neolithic farmers, so their presence in
IE languages says nothing about PIE speakers except that they were familiar
with agriculture. 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
hunter gatherers not have words for them?

Saying that PIE speakers were familiar with agriculture is actually saying a
lot.  Those words are often enough reconstructed back to PIE - why would a
small, warlike elite on horses off the steppes need to teach a continent full
of farmers a whole new set of words for farming? Especially since those
steppe types don't appear to have known that much about any thing more than
horse and sheep breeding and nothing about the kind of farming that was done
in central and western Europe?

<<The word for 'horse' is of course the crux of my argument.>>

I don't think so.  I think you mean <ekwos>.  Which is not the only word for
horse and didn't even necessarily always mean horse.

<<What I find reasonable as a theory is Gimbutas's: the farming population of
much of Europe switched language because it was conquered by a horse-riding,
warlike elite who imposed its hero-worshipping ideology on it. A bit like
what the Hungarians did to the Slavic and other inhabitants of Hungary after
895 AD, or what the Turks did to the various inhabitants of Anatolia in
post-Classical times.>>

Yeah, well.  What's unreasonable about all that is that most of Europe
appears to never have been exposed to those horse-riding war-like elitists.
"Kurgan" barely puts a dent in central Europe and never reaches western
Europe.  Near the Danube and up in Poland, it seems your war-like elite
abandon their horses for sheep and take over over-salinized fields abandoned
centuries before by the earlier population.  Since there is no evidence of
either horse-back riding or chariots in most of Europe before 1800BC, this
elite is either charging around in horse-drawn ox-carts or dragging their
steeds behind them.  Meanwhile, "the farming population of Europe" has
already mastered traction enough to build megalith graves for whomever their
non-heros were, mastered metal making and produced formidable metal axes and
equally formidiable obsidian spear and arrow-heads, begun by 3800BC to
fortify encampments and make war on one another in the west, already built
what Zwiebel called the largest buildings in the world at the time,
apparently generated sufficient surpluses to create an elite of their own and
bury them accordingly - but not in the kurgan-style, have a pretty well
developed trade network across Europe and into the Near East where they may
have been exposed to Gilgamesh style war-like elitists as well as the wheel -
which they also apparently introduced to their eastern neighbors.  And
increase the population of Europe by as much as100 times depending on the
location.

The neolithic population of Europe probably had a richer language - certainly
in terms of a wide variety of technical areas, including metalurgy, farming,
sea-going, building, vehicle construction, animal husbandry and tool and
weapon making - than any culture that appears on the European Steppes before
2000BC.  Most of these items appear in IE languages with no sign of a
substrate or with signs of importation from the Near East.  My best guess is
that if any elite did come off the steppes, they went the way of most elites,
they were swallowed up.

Also as Lehmann points, Gimbutas' theory suffers from a lack of available
personnel.  There were just too few with too little - the steppes are
underpopulated and underarmed before 2000BC.  A big difference from the Turks
and Maygars.

>> Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
>> on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
>> with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who
>> had a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed with
>> roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to pop
>> that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every meaning
>> and sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such skill it
>> would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

>I find this very unclear. I can't even figure out whether you favour Renfrew
>or Gimbutas in the above text.

I was being sarcastic in the above text.  The scenario - a Gimbutian one - is
ludicrous.

Regards,
Steve Long


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Fri Mar 17 10:30:11 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 05:30:11 -0500
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.053011.0500.>

"G?bor S?ndi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
> hunter gatherers not have words for them?

If `milk' is not derived from `mother's milk', why would those who do
not use milk have a word for it? Isn't that the whole point of dating by
the ``secondary products revolution''?


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:10:46 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:10:46 -0000
Subject: Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel
 andDating P...
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.101046.0000.>

>> -- as an experiment, why not compare a few sentences?

> The trouble is that we don't have exact semantic matches sufficiently
> often to do this.

Doesn't that answer the question immediately?   Lexicon is part of language,
if we are talking about readability.

Peter


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Mon Mar 20 15:55:20 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 15:55:20 GMT
Subject: Black Sea Flood; was: non-Anatolian PIE
Message-ID: <MON.20.MAR.2000.155520.GMT.>

Hans Holm <Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de> wrote:-

RD>Ryan and Pitman had not yet published their Black Sea Flood discovery.

> The black sea, or, more exact, its northwestern part, was 'flooded' in the
> middle of the 5th millennium BC, according to my information.

RD>Now that flood will have to be taken into account by anyone
RD>speculating how the community that gave us PIE could have been severed
RD>from the community that gave us PA.

>..< According to this time depth I would find it difficult if not daring
> to draw connections in favour of any theory of IE diversification.

(1) Please what are the bibliographic (ISBN etc) or scientific paper
references to any published books and papers on the Black Sea Flood theory?

(2) I suspect that this language discussion depends on how much more
communication there was between the steppes and Anatolia before the Black Sea
flood, If the deeper parts of the Black Sea were occupied by a big lake, or by
a deep dry furnace-hot salt-floored sink, then there may not have been much
more routine language contact across the Black Sea than there is now.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 09:24:29 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 09:24:29 -0000
Subject: Latin word formation
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.092429.0000.>

>> How about   de:mens?

> Doesn't really qualify, 'cause there's no -e/os suffix.

The original asker asked for any de: + nominal root forms.

>> You say debilis is de: + nominal root + suffix.   Could it be from a
>> different route?   de: + verbal root  + deverbative ending?

> Which verbal root then ?

Habeo has been suggested.   We know de+habeo > de:beo.  (Plautus still has
dehibeo).

My point was made because the original asker found de+ nominal root odd.  I
wanted to query why it had to be a nominal root in debilis.   That
assumption is made perhaps only because of the suggested links to Sanskrit
and Slavic.  But you are right, the next question is whether we have any
evidence for a verbal root that could give de-bil-is or de-bi-lis.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 01:16:07 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 02:16:07 +0100
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01b4f40bef7991@[128.83.251.71]>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.021607.0100.>

cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
>preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek oi~da,
>i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb paradigm would
>seem to be that between the singular and plural as in Gothic wait, witum.
>In Hittite this vowel alternation is exemplified by verbs like kuenzi,
>kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the
>third person plural is zero grade as opposed to other full grade persons.
>Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
>not originally.

Hittite does have e/a alternation in some verbs of the
hi-conjugation, with <e> in the plural, <a> in the singular.
E.g. sakhi, sakti, sakki, [*sekweni], sekteni (sakteni),
[*sekkanzi] "to know" (similarly in the past tense).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Mon Mar 20 17:56:02 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 12:56:02 -0500
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <MON.20.MAR.2000.125602.0500.>

"Carol F. Justus" <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu> wrote:

> The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
> preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek
> oi~da, i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb
> paradigm would seem to be that between the singular and plural
> as in Gothic wait, witum. In Hittite this vowel alternation is
> exemplified by verbs like kuenzi, kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi
> 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the third person plural is zero
> grade as opposed to other full grade persons. Hittite does not
> have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
> not originally.

Firstly, from grammaticalization theory point of view, deriving Germanic
peterite-presents from PIE perfect is unremarkable: RV and Greek suggest
that the perfect originally had a resultative meaning (for RV, Macdonell
and Renou say that this was still the main meaning). Now resultatives
can develop into a perfect as in English by losing the idea of the state
being present or, by losing the component of event that produced the
result, can come to denote a present state. It can also happen that one
happens with some verbs and the other with other verbs. Both Vedic
(veda, da:dha:ra, di:dha:ya, ...) and Greek have examples where the
perfect implies only a present state (and so must be translated by a
present). [And in RV, whether the perfect is translated by a present
perfect or a present depends on context.] On the other hand perfect can
evolve into a (perfective) past as in modern French or German. Bybee et
al, ``The evolution of grammar'', give enough examples of these that it
should not surprise us. [Bybee et al suggest evolution from a
resultative as the solution for the preterite-presents of Germanic,
apparently unaware that this is the traditional explanation.]

Turning now to the vowel grade: The traditional reconstruction is that
the e/zero alternation was in the root present/aorist while the o/zero
alternation was in the perfect [for those who do not assume that
reduplication was obligatory.] Hittite would seem to support the idea
that e-grade in singular present/aorist is old. I don't understand how
this can be used to claim that e-grade in the present in Germanic is an
innovation. The question is just about the vowel grade in the perfect
singular, or looking at it differently, whether the same root could both
have a present and a perfect. Germanic preterite-presents are not enough to
deny that.

The only thing that remains is the relation to the hi-conjugation of
Hittite: Two avenues are possible here: We can argue, as Szeremneyi
does, that this is a purely Hittite innovation starting from the PIE
perfect. Or the traditional PIE perfect may have been a resultative
built using a stative formation, in which case reduplication and/or the
o-grade may have been to give a specifically resultative meaning. [If
so, then it is o-grade that is new, not the e-grade in the present.] I
am not sure that we have conclusive evidence for one over the other.
Anyway, I remain skeptical of zero past vs marked non-past, and so
of -ha being past of stative. Anyway, it is hard to see how past stative can evolve into a resultative (which refers to >present<
state).

[Perhaps I should explain the terminology a bit: A stative simply says
that a state exists, while a resultative says that a state exists due to
a past event. ``This branch is bent'' is statitive while ``this branch
has become bent'' is resultative.]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:09:39 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:09:39 -0000
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.100939.0000.>

Stanley said:

> there are just enough irregular
> verbs with remnants of the 'aorist' in Germanic languages to require its
> prior existence in some predecessor of Proto-Germanic.  (I seem to remember
> even having run across a handful of s-aorists).

I would be interested in examples, if you can remember them.   In
particular, I have read in JIE the assertion that there is no s aorist in
Germanic, so counter-examples would be fun.

Thanks
Peter


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu Mar 16 13:56:34 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 13:56:34 +0000
Subject: Basque <(h)anka>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.135634.0000.>

Just a brief interjection here.  Corominas, as I understand him, does
*not* propose that any Persian cobblers traveled to Europe.  Instead,
he proposes only stimulus diffusion: that is, he proposes that artefacts
and techniques for making them diffused from Persia through the
Mediterranean, along with names for some of these.

However, whatever one may think of Corominas's account, it is
irrelevant to the point that started this thread.  Basque <hanka>
and <zanko> are borrowed from Romance, as shown clearly by their
forms.  Where the Romance words came from is a wholly different
issue.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From HSTAHLKE at gw.bsu.edu  Thu Mar 23 14:28:36 2000
From: HSTAHLKE at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 09:28:36 -0500
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.092836.0500.>

>>> xiang at free.fr 03/16/00 05:15AM >>>

>> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
>> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
>> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
>> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
>> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

> I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
> accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the
> other less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to
> assume IE had both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence
> indicates PIE had a pitch accent.

A pitch accent can also turn into a lexical tone system as has happened in
Niger-Congo, where Bantu and Mande preserve pitch accent while western
Benue-Congo, Kwa, and Kru have a lot of lexical tone.  I'm curious what it was
about PIE pitch accent that none of the dialects became lexical tone languages.

Herb Stahlke


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu Mar 23 16:42:14 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 17:42:14 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <38D0B45C.129DC1A4@free.fr>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.174214.0100.>

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Guillaume JACQUES wrote:

[Quoting me (JER) on pitch and stress in IE]

>> [...] In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
>> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
>> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

> I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
> accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the
> other less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to
> assume IE had both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence
> indicates PIE had a pitch accent.

Fine, they do point to a pitch accent, but later stages show stress in the
same position, and so does the IE ablaut for an _earlier_ period. Does the
vanishing of unaccented short vowels in pre-PIE not count for anything in
discussions about the nature of the PIE accent? I would say, if there was
stress before we find pitch, and there is also stress after the pitch
period, the most reasonable inference would be that there was stress also
at the time of the pitch accent? There was stress before PIE, and stress
after PIE, why not _in_ PIE?

Jens


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Mar 23 17:45:25 2000
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 11:45:25 -0600
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <002101bf8f46$c1f36620$d8c407c6@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.114525.0600.>

I believe you're right regarding bayo --but you should have sent me that
post before I hit the send button :>

>Rick McCallister wrote:

>> Isn't bay cognate to Spanish baya "berry, red", bayo "bay"? [from
>> something like Celtic *baca?] In which case, the word originally meant
>> "berry"?

>I am reasonably certain that both E. -bay- and Spanish -bayo- are from
>Latin -badium-.

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar 24 15:36:31 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:36:31 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <006f01bf8f08$6aab8840$6f9f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.073631.0800.>

At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>As for "(true) absolute unversal(s)", I do not know of any in linguistics or
>any other field. I enjoyed Plato myself but I think it is a mistake to take
>him seriously.

Let's put it this way: the rarer something is among living languages, the
more evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language.

>I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
>transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
>/o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat
>these sounds as diphthongal.

>But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian? Or the simple /o/.

>It does not exist so far as we can determine.

>I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
>/w/; and, as they have no existence outside of these conditioned
>environments, they cannot be considered phonemes, whether they retained
>their earliest diphthongal character or not.

When the diphthongal character is lost, so is the *conditioning*
*environment*.  Thus at that point they do indeed become independent
phonemes, namely /e:/ and /o:/.   This is standard phonology.  New sounds
become phonemic when the conditioning factor is lost.  (Now this does
produce an unusual situation of a language with more contrasts in it long
vowel system than its short, but that is not unheard of, and Sanskrit is
far better attested than many living languages, so it is hardly
reconstructed anyhow].

>[SF]

>> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
>> the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
>> any less phonemic in the current language.

>[PR]

>Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

I am not sure what your point here is.  I was just pointing out that being
*derived* diachronically is not sufficient reason to deny *synchronic*
phoneme status, and gave an example of that.

>[PR]

>Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If
>it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
other name is available for it.

>[SF]

>> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?

>[PR]

>True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>undisputed in any other language.

Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
even in living languages.  To show some sound difference is not phonemic
you have to show that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it
is not *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of the
best texts on phonology.

The *origin* of */o/ can be argued for PIE, but the very fact that it *can*
be argued is strong evidence that at *that* time it was already a distinct
phoneme.  If it were an allophone of */a/ then the conditioning factors
*still* should be visible, and apply uniformly to all cases.  It is the
fact that there are too many environments in which */o/ occurs, with no
identifiable commonality, that makes the sound a phoneme.

>[SF]

>> The shift **a: > *o would have
>> been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
>> universal.  By the very nature of the hypothesis no *direct* trace would be
>> left - ALL of the old a:s would have gone over into o's, resulting in an
>> alternation between *e and *o where there had formerly been one between **a
>> and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o alternation *is* the example.

>[PR]

>I do not think I am the only reader who will find this dizzyingly circular.

>The fact of e/o alternation "proves" an a/a: alternation?

I NEVER said that.  I was just pointing out that the lack of a direct
example in PIE does not *refute* the hypothesis, as such is not expected.

To put it another way: we have in PIE what can be viewed as the expected
result of a regular sound change, so it regularity is hardly evidence
*against* a sound change.

Certainly other evidence is needed.  My preference for that hypothesis is
based simply on the fact that it is the only origin model for /o/ in PIE I
have yet seen that has actually been *observed* to occur in other languages
(English, for example).

Other alternatives include that the /o/ is ancient, and inherited from the
preceding proto-language (e.g. Nostratic).  If it turns out that the
/e/-/o/ distinction in PIE corresponds regularly to some vowel quality
distinction in a wider group of languages, then inheritance is supported.
(Now, at present no such evidence is forthcoming, and I would be surprised
if it were, as /o/ looks recent to me in PIE as reconstructed).

>And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
>certain accentual/tonal conditions?

Because nobody has come up with a consistently applicable set of such
conditions that can explain all of the occurrences of /o/ in PIE.

>[PR]

>Certainly very interesting. But your example certainly does not mean that we
>should expect OE *sa:wian for ME sew (/so:/) when seowian is attested, does
>it?

Umm, where do you get that?

You seem to keep turning what I say around and making the implication go
the opposite direction from anything I ever said.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar 24 15:41:28 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:41:28 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <38D13AF9.A581820E@stratos.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.074128.0800.>

At 02:50 PM 3/16/00 -0500, Brian M. Scott wrote:

>> [The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

>Eh?  Surely it's a transferred locative surname, from OE
><sta:n-le:ah> (or its dat. sing.).

Possibly.  I was just going by what I had been told the name meant, from
name books.
[Stony Wood is certainly a reasonable source also].

>   There's no shortage of
>compound place-names in which OE <sta:n-> has become PDE
><Stan-> /st&n-/; I take it that these are the result of
>early ME shortening of the vowel before consonant groups.

Either way, this is the cause of the difference.  The name clearly contains
a shortened vowel, whatever its source.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From sarima at friesen.net  Fri Mar 24 15:46:35 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:46:35 -0800
Subject: Black Sea Flood; was: non-Anatolian PIE
In-Reply-To: <6D92373776B@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.074635.0800.>

At 03:55 PM 3/20/00 +0000, Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>(1) Please what are the bibliographic (ISBN etc) or scientific paper
>references to any published books and papers on the Black Sea Flood theory?

I seem to remember it being mentioned in Scientific American a few months back.
[It could also be Natural History magazine, or even Science News].

Certainly there were extensive human settlements in what is now sea bottom.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 16 05:43:28 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 05:43:28 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.054328.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 1:18 AM

> On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

>> This is where I start to have a problem.  As far as I know, NO living
>> language has only one vowel, or at most only one or two such languages
>> exist.

[RA]

> As far as I know, the only two languages ever analyzed as having only one
> vowel, Abaza and Kabardian, have both been shown to have been mis-analyzed,
> and both have two vowels, /a/ and /i-/.  (I believe I have the correct "ASCII
> IPA" for [+ high, -back, -front, +vocalic], i. e. "barred i".)

[PR]

Based on my reading of Greenberg's new book, I would have no problem
accepting a stage of (Pre-)PIE vocalic height alternation that had /a/ [+
low, -back, -front, +vocalic] and /i-/ [+ high, -back, -front, +vocalic],
but eventually resolving to /a/ as in Old Indian.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu Mar 16 13:55:00 2000
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:55:00 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <001401bf8ecc$21f5e960$9b71fe8c@lucent.com>
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.145500.0100.>

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

> []
> When JER suggested Sanskrit as an ``almost'' example several months ago,
> I looked for exceptions. I gave up because it is hard to do searches
> like these without a comprehensive word list (one exists, but I don't
> have access to it). But I am doubtful because pairs of type viyukta
> (unyoked) and vyukta (vi + (vac+ta), explained) must have existed even
> if I am unable to point to them on demand in RV.

> We can try to use accent to distinguish them, but then we run into the
> problem of how vyukta was actually pronounced (it seemed to have varied
> over time and space). []

Well, if there was no difference between the two words, it does not matter
how we write them. If there was, one may just write /vyyvkta/ and /vyvkta/
in accordance with the morphemic analysis, the former giving a reading
[viyukta], the latter, [vyukta], by the rule demanding that you begin from
the end of the word and syllabify every sonant not already having a
syllabic neighbor (that was also the PIE rule). A few subrules should be
added allowing specific sonant clusters (as for PIE), as here vyu-, not
+uyu-. It is not absolutely flawless for synchronic Sanskrit, given the
interesting syllabifications caused by laryngeals that have later
vanished. But if it is used to _recover_ the stage with segmental
laryngeals still around, it works remarkably well. That even demands such
pairs as vra- : ura- to be posited as /vra-/ and /vrHa-/, and the adj.
uru- as /vrH-v-/, just as Avest. vouro- shows it really was. For urV-, one
might even contemplate a synchronic notation /vrrV-/ which, with an
Edgerton-style development of syllabic + asyllabic shape of the same
sonant would give what we find. Typologically that may even be preferable,
for there is no guarantee that the old stage with laryngeals intact is not
in fact _so_ old that the monotonous /a/ was still the original triad /e/
: /a/ : /o/. In any case, it works best in cyberspace.

Jens


From BMScott at stratos.net  Thu Mar 16 19:50:17 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:50:17 -0500
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.145017.0500.>

> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?  The shift **a: > *o would have
> been a regular phonetic change, and thus would have been essentially
> universal.  [...]

> And that particular change is well attested in later languages.  It
> happened between Old English and Modern English, for instance.  OE /sta:n-/
> became Modern English 'stone', but the short vowel, as seen in my name,
> remained low and unrounded.

> [The name 'Stanley' derives from OE 'stanlig' or 'stanlice'].

Eh?  Surely it's a transferred locative surname, from OE
<sta:n-le:ah> (or its dat. sing.).  There's no shortage of
compound place-names in which OE <sta:n-> has become PDE
<Stan-> /st&n-/; I take it that these are the result of
early ME shortening of the vowel before consonant groups.

Brian M. Scott


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Fri Mar 17 04:21:55 2000
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 22:21:55 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.222155.0600.>

Pat Ryan wrote:

>In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=3DIE or early IE k became a
>"laryngeal".

>Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
>as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
>of H".

>I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
>another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
>relationship.

I haven't seen Greenberg's book, but this is strange, since IE languages
are full of words with initial k- (k'-).  Any such change would have to have
been very rare.  And would there have been a conditioning factor?  Hard to find
one with so few examples (impossible, of course, if there's only one).

If there were any connection (unlikely, I think), one might think rather of a
"hardening" of laryngeals to a velar stop, perhaps in sandhi -- since final
laryngeals were common enough, one could consider whether /-VH HV-/ was
realized as [-Vk kV-], the second word then being reanalyzed as /kV-/.  That,
at least, could have a certain phonetic plausibility.  But please, folks, this
is *highly* speculative, and unless several more plausible examples can be
found, it isn't worth the phosphors it is written on.


Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at memphis.edu                    University of Memphis


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Fri Mar 17 02:14:54 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:14:54 -0500
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <THU.16.MAR.2000.211454.0500.>

There's also the complex represented by, e.g., Lithuanian ozys, Russian koza
(goat)

But I'm not sure there are any more.

Robert Orr

and the costa/os complex is really idiosyncratic!

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com>
Date: Thursday, March 16, 2000 8:27 AM

Dear Indo-Europeanists:

In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
"laryngeal".

Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
of H".

I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
relationship.

Anyone know of a few more?

Pat


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat Mar 18 10:07:56 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 10:07:56 -0000
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <SAT.18.MAR.2000.100756.0000.>

Thanks for your reply, Carol.   I think there are some points which are
either confusing or confused, and I hope you can clarify.

Carol said:

>The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
>preterite-presents

(me:)

I disagree - it is not just the preterite-presents.    All the strong
perfects in classes 1 to 6 show exactly the same pattern as the oldest
perfects preserved in Greek and I-I, namely o grade singular, zero grade
plural.   Whereas Greek generalised the o grade for most verbs, I-I and
Germanic did not.

Carol said:

>Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
>not originally.

There is no e:o alternation in the perfect.  If were you meaning the e grade
presents, Germanic certainly has those.

Carol said:

>Bridget Drinka's study of the sigmatic aorist ...

There is no relic of the sigmatic aorist in Germanic.

Carol said:

>the -s- aorist is secondary (internally in Greek it is ...

It cannot be totally internal to Greek - there are traces of it from Celtic
through Latin etc round  to Baltic,and it is highly productive in I-I.   I
guess you mean that it is a later development at a stage when PIE was
already beginning to break up.  If that's the case, it seems irrelevant to
Germanic and I am no longer sure what you were trying to argue.

Carol said:

>the Latin verbal system [is] without productive e:o aspectual
>distinctions.  [this ]shows an archaism ...

Traces of the o grade perfects remain (e.g. the long u: perfects, mostly <
*-ou-), but even if they did not, it would be difficult to argue that Latin
showed an archaism here, rather than a generalisation of the plural zero
grade to the singular.   (The zero grade is widespread in Latin perfects,
and there is a e:zero present:perfect pattern.)   The word "productive"
might be misleading here too.   The only productive perfect in Latin, at the
time we know Latin, is the -v/u- form;  all the others are relics.

Carols said:

>The Germanic strong verb preterites ...  their singular-plural ablaut
>pattern ... is similar to the ... preterite-present pattern,

Do you mean that both have zero grade in the plural?

>the present e-grade forms may be just as innovating

The present e forms in Germanic are no more innovating - or just as much
innovating - as they are in all the other IE languages that show them.   I
guess you don't mean that they developed independently in all those IE
dialects - so what do you mean?   That they were a development at a later
stage of PIE?   Then you are not really saying anything about Germanic at
all.

Carol said:

>Greek eidomai, eido:  'see', back formed from old oida 'know' (internal
>Greek evidence argues that this form for Greek 'see' is new).

But again, not new within Greek, but developed while the PIE dialects were
in touch.   This verb occurs with the meaning "see" and a present in e grade
in Latin, Greek, Armenian, I-I.   Surprisingly for your argument, it does
not occur in Germanic!  So I am rather unclear what you are actually saying.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:36:30 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:36:30 +0100
Subject: Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000314213134.009e1660@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.013630.0100.>

Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>That is certainly the *majority* case.  But there are just enough irregular
>verbs with remnants of the 'aorist' in Germanic languages to require its
>prior existence in some predecessor of Proto-Germanic.  (I seem to remember
>even having run across a handful of s-aorists).

Do you recall the details?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun Mar 19 00:42:55 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:42:55 +0100
Subject: Italic close to Slavic?
In-Reply-To: <006f01bf8c32$1ded2f00$982467d1@roborr.uottawa.ca>
Message-ID: <SUN.19.MAR.2000.014255.0100.>

colkitto at sprint.ca wrote:

>Certain authors (Milewski1932. "Rozwsj fonetyczny wyglosu praslowianskiego".
>Slavia 11: 250,255; Galabov 1973. "Urslavische Auslautprobleme". Wiener
>Slavistisches Jahrbuch, 20: 11-17.) have reconstructed the
>passive/deponent -r ending for Slavic

Could you give a brief hint about the Slavic forms in question (I
suffer from mild bibliothecophobia)?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA  Thu Mar 23 05:21:54 2000
From: plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA (Plourde Eric)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:21:54 -0500
Subject: About forcing a language on someone
In-Reply-To: <003801bf8ffd$0b861e20$6071fe8c@lucent.com>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.002154.0500.>

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

>> [ Moderator's note:
>>   The following message addresses a number of issues brought up in
>> a recent  post by S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com); nothing further
>> on those issues will be posted to the list.  However, a comment in the
>> final paragraph takes us beyond those issues, and back to
>> Indo-European issues, and I will welcome further discussion *of that
>> paragraph only*.  --rma ]

> I agree that the topic is minefield and may not be suitable, but I am
> not sure if that is possible to discuss only the issues in the cited
> para: After all, the question is whether the examples given so far can
> be used as models for PIE spread.

> "Plourde Eric" <plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA> wrote:

>> [...] But the people who used the IE languages were
>> probably very violent and bloodthirsty people who imposed their
>> culture (and languages) on the others. How else would they have
>>spread so quickly? How Scythians and the Germanic tribes were
>> depicted?

> Just how quickly did PIE spread? How can we know given the
> uncertainties about the PIE homeland, the time of split, and the time
> of disappearance of non-PIE languages?

> How do we know where PIE speakers stood on the scale of
> bloodthirstiness? And just how do we set up this scale: By the number of
> bodies excavated from conquered areas? And what is that count? and so
> on.

Impossible to count, I agree. I think that the last comment from my part was
totally uncalled for. I was reacting rashly to an opinion that I have found too
often even in scientific spheres. I should have kept those last thoughts for
myself.

> And how does bloodthirstiness help in spreading a language? There have
> been bloodthirsty (from the point of view of the conquered: Alexander
> was supposedly magnanimous, but that is not what Zoroastrians said)
> conquerors such as Genghis Khan who did not manage to impose their
> language on even a third of their conquered lands.

On that matter it is difficult to apply any model except the assumption that
something very specific triggered the kind of "bush fire" spread of IE. I think
that Mrs. Gimbutas' model is too simplistic (like my affirmation) and the
spread could have varied in speed and magnitude and even slowed in some areas
for various reasons (climate (Finno-Ugric), inaccessiblity (Caucasic and
Basque?)  but the two conquerors mentioned in the preceding paragraph were
quick to adopt the local customs (marrying local "princesses" and maintaining
institutions). It is possible that the quick spread of IE languages could have
been similar to the conquest of Anatolia by Turks, who replaced the cultural
elements while most of the genetic and physical elements were left almost
intact.

> The models for `imposing' languages that have been given all seem to
> depend on schools and other such institutions, which were compulsory for
> the subject peoples. Are we to assume that PIE speakers had the same
> setup?

> The whole thread seemed to me to be pointless. The examples given in the
> last 15 years for the spread have been cases of slow absorption via
> client-patron relation into an open hierarchical society, not forceful
> imposition via the sword (which seems to have been limited to religion
> before 1500 CE).

This last statement is highly debatable but is completely outof the subject so
I will refrain from commenting. I think in that matter of contact of languages,
the comparative or reconstructive (paleolinguistic) models have shown their
limitations. We should apply other models, like the ones currently being
generated in the "sphere" of creolistics, among others.


From lmfosse at online.no  Thu Mar 23 10:55:25 2000
From: lmfosse at online.no (Lars Martin Fosse)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 11:55:25 +0100
Subject: SV: About forcing a language on someone
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.115525.0100.>

Vidhyanath Rao [SMTP:rao.3 at osu.edu] skrev 17. mars 2000 11:34:

> The whole thread seemed to me to be pointless. The examples given in the
> last 15 years for the spread have been cases of slow absorption via
> client-patron relation into an open hierarchical society, not forceful
> imposition via the sword (which seems to have been limited to religion
> before 1500 CE).

There are obviously a large number of ways that a language may spread. The
relationship you mention is just one of several possible models. But I think
that it would be unfair to say that languages are spread through the sword
alone. If anything, that would only be the first part of the process: get
political control of an area. After that, the language of the dominating group
might more or less force itself upon the conquered. Example: English in North
America, Spanish or Portuguese in Latin America. Sometimes, a language or
culture is targeted for extinction by the political authorities: Basque in
Spain (now in revival), the Sami language of Norway (now in revival, the Sami
people having received a public excuse from the prime minister for the
Norwegianization policies of yesterday), Breton in France (perhaps in revival),
Welsh in Wales (aggressively in revival, I believe), Irish in Ireland.

There do not seem to be any ironclad rules about how languages spread. What we
can observe are certain trends, but we need empirical or historical data to say
with any degree of exactitude how such shifts actually occur and why they
occur. Sometimes, the conqueror gives up his language: Mongols in China,
French-speaking Norsemen in England. So for every example, there is a
counter-example. We cannot not used observed data an extrapolate to other less
well known situations with any degree of certainty. Until empirical data are
available, there will always be an element of uncertainty involved.

Best regards,
Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Norway
Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Fri Mar 17 08:22:06 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 03:22:06 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <FRI.17.MAR.2000.032206.EST.>

In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>The HOW LIKELY question enters the picture if someone claims that, say,
>*kwekwlos was applied to the wheel independently in two different IE
>languages, quite distant from each other in space.

I just wanted to make a SEPARATE point about this HOW LIKELY question and how
it is guaranteed to get us nowhere.

FOR EXAMPLE:
Does HOW LIKELY apply if someone claims that they can know what a
reconstructed word like *kwekwos meant before it was ever attested -
as if someone could actually deduce what 'drive' once meant from only knowing
its current application to data storage devices?

Does the HOW LIKELY question apply when someone assumes that two different IE
languages could have once been the same language in the same place and then
separate and MAGICALLY become "quite distant from each other" without the
intermediate step (required of most phenomenon in this physical universe) of
first being close-by - and at that point very amenable to contact and
linguistic exchange?

What question applies if someone assumes that *kwekwos even existed in PIE
when there's no direct evidence at all that it was ever even present in half
of the known IE languages?

Obviously, "HOW LIKELY" can be used in a question that can be as loaded as
Nathan Detroit's favorite pair of dice.  But of course when that question is
rephrased to reveal hidden assumptions, we can start to see the tabulations
of "likeliness" change and change drastically.

How likely is it that the unattested *kwekwlos was applied to the wheel
independently in two different IE languages, [alledgedly] quite distant from
one another" and therefore alledgedly not in contact?  If by that you mean,
how likely is it that two peoples speaking very similar languages with the
same word for something circular would both independently describe the wheel
as being circular -  well, the better question is probably: why wouldn't they?

Regards,
Steve Long


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Fri Mar 24 02:49:11 2000
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:49:11 -0700
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <14544.40803.948468.468401@orthanc.roj.just.fgov.be>
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.194911.0700.>

[Lieven Marchand wrote]

> What's the story with bruin/brown in English?

> bruin is the word for brown in Dutch and according to Merriam-Webster
> bruin in English is an (obsolete?) word for bear borrowed from the
> Middle-Dutch animal fable "Van den vos Reynaerde". Also according to
> M-W brown has the following etymology:
> Middle English broun, from Old English brun; akin to Old High German
> brun brown, Greek phrynE toad while the entry for bear states:
> Middle English bere, from Old English bera; akin to Old English brun
> brown.

Thanks for the correction about 'bruin'.  I think that once we take 'bruin'
out of the picture, then 'brown' in Modern English has clearly become a
basic color term.

> The two words bear and brown were distinct in Reynaerde:
> Dies was die coninc sciere beraden
> Dat hi dus sprac te Bruun den beere:

> I think at least in Dutch bruin is a basic color term.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)


From r.clark at auckland.ac.nz  Fri Mar 24 06:47:33 2000
From: r.clark at auckland.ac.nz (Ross Clark)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:47:33 +1200
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.184733.1200.>

>>> "Dr. John E. McLaughlin" <mclasutt at brigham.net> 03/17 6:34 AM >>>

[I (John McLaughlin) wrote]

>As with most language descriptions, we cannot rely on idiolects (unless, of
>course, we're dealing with the "last speaker"), but must average things out.
>On a scale from most "colorified" to least, I would say that "pink" is the
>farthest along ("pink" as a member of the genus Dianthus is a much older usage
>than "pink" as a color), "brown" comes next (the "Bruins" of UCLA keep that
>word alive), and "orange" is the least "colorified".  Ultimately, since we're
>dealing with a diachronic process anyway, synchronic judgments of what we
>learn first as a child, or what our level of familiarity with the non-color
>word is, are irrelevant to the issue of what are the basic color terms of
>Modern English.  If the source word is still extant in the language, then the
>color term isn't basic yet.

But what is this "diachronic process" if not one of progression from
non-basic to "basic" (better I think would be "abstract") colour term? And how
else are we to decide when it has happened except by considering how actual
speakers understand these words? For me, "bruin" is a name for a bear, or an
alternative word for bear (beloved of journalists). It has *nothing to do*
with the word or the colour "brown". I am sure there are many English speakers
who don't even know the word "bruin". For me and for them "brown" is,
therefore, basic. I can't see how Berlin & Kay's criteria make any sense
except, ultimately, in those terms. And that is what disturbs me about their
cross-linguistic sample, given that their sources of data are so limited in
many cases. If English were a language spoken by a few thousand people on a
Pacific island, known to B & K only through a dictionary, they would have
looked at "pink" and "orange" (at least), and disqualified them because of the
flower and the fruit. And I think they would have been wrong.

Ross Clark


From BMScott at stratos.net  Fri Mar 24 04:30:20 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 23:30:20 -0500
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <THU.23.MAR.2000.233020.0500.>

petegray wrote:

> [Bob Whiting] said:

>> Now someone is going to say that it's against the law of averages
>> for Lithuanian to have always been on the non-innovating branch.
>> And of course it is.  But the point is that *something* has to
>> be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.

> At each node, on that model, there will be a non-innovating branch, but it
> is not necessary that it is always one and the same branch which does not
> innovate.   Hence the significance of the surprising fact that Lithuanian
> has at each node been the non-innovator.  [...]

I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

At each node you start afresh, so it's not really meaningful
to speak of 'one and the same branch'.

Brian M. Scott


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Mar 24 13:01:41 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:31:41 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.183141.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, 17 March, 2000 1:50 PM

> In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>> My main argument is based on the WHEN question - both absolute timing
>> (horses are not attested in Italy before 2600 BC, therefore there was no
>> word for them)

In a message dated 3/23/2000, X99Lynx at aol.com replied:

> Yes, but that date is artificial, because of your assumptions. There is lots
> of evidence of horses - both wild and domesticated - across northern, western
> and eastern Europe and North Africa before this date.  You're presuming that
> lack of evidence of the horse in the vicinity before a certain date where
> Latin was spoken means lack of knowledge of the horse before that date.

> By the same token, because we have no evidence of lions anywhere near Britain
> since the pleistocene, there should not be a word for lion in English.

> Horses did not fall out of thin air.  And unless you are claiming some
> extraordinary isolation for the Italian peninsula - something that is
> thoroughly contradicted by the evidence - there are good reasons to think
> this date is inappropriate for establishing knowledge of or a word for the
> horse.

> There are parts of France and England where no evidence of iron, horses or
> even textiles have been found that are datable before 1800AD.  You can
> certainly use that evidence to suggest that no words for iron, horses or
> textiles can be expected in the local vocabularies.  But the dating and
> the localization are artificial and your conclusions would be false.

g_sandi at hotmail.com (3/24/00) replies:

Horses were present in northern, western and eastern Europe in neolithic
times, but were absent in the Balkans and on the Italian peninsula. They
were absent completely, unless you can offer me archaeological data to the
contrary. Getting around in those times was very difficult, and knowledge of
distant animals (and distant could have meant as little as 100 miles)
unlikely. This is my belief, of course you may think whatever you wish. In
any case, horses such as they existed in northern Europe were small, not
very remarkable animals, how could a well-characterized word like *ekwos
with a definite meaning survive for thousands of years among the supposed IE
inhabitants of Italy?

The analogy with lions is, in my view, false. Writing about and pictures of
lions had circulated in Europe widely since Roman times. In addition, feudal
kings often had them in their courts and sent them to each other as gifts -
if my memory serves me well, lions and tigers are offered as gifts at the
beginning of the Chanson de Roland. Has anyone found a single statuette or
picture of a horse from anywhere in Italy ca. 3500 BC?

> g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

>>>> It is very hard to see what kind of evidence you would accept as
>>>> "disproving" Renfrew's dates (and, consequently, Renfrew's theory).

> I replied:

>>> I'll tell you what the evidence USED TO BE.  I have a list of dates I
>>> pulled from literature appearing before or about1920: the domestication of
>>> the horse was @2000BC.

> g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>> What used to be is not really relevant....

> Wait a second.  You said it was hard to see what evidence would disprove
> Renfrew.  I gave you what evidence would disprove Renfrew.  And you say it's
> not really relevant.

Since the evidence you offer is, according to yourself, outdated, why I
should I spend any time looking at it?

> g_sandi at hotmail.com replied:

>> I am trying to use archaeological
>> dates from the most recent literature that I can find.

> But you are actually using selective evidence.  The date of the horse in
> Italy applies neither to your own idea of the PIE homeland nor to the date
> of the horse in that location.  Evidence of the so-called 'true horse' has
> been dated as early as 4300BC in the middle Ukraine.  Evidence of wild horses
> of any type (a prerequisite for domestication) can be found between that
> location and Italy throughout that period.

What is my own idea of the PIE homeland? I said that I favour Gimbutas's,
but I am willing to look at Renfrew's, especially if I consider his latest
modifications.

What evidence of wild horses can you offer between the middle Ukraine and
Italy around 4300 BC? Draw a straight line: where? In the Carpathian basin?
In the northern Balkans? In the Alps?

According to my readings, wild horses were widespread at the time on the
North European plain: roughly today's Benelux, northern Germany, Poland and
further east. Small pony-like animals, the topic of everyday conversation
among peasants in Tuscany, according to you.

> You are making an assumption and that assumption is neither archaeological
> nor linguistic.  You are assuming that the word for a horse cannot be
> present in a language unless horses are also present.

> If IE speakers entered Italy well before 2600BC, there is absolutely NOTHING
> to necessitate their having horses with them.  Jarred describes in Guns,
> Germs and Steel just how inefficient keeping horses can be.  The standard
> burial wagon of the pre-3000BC period in central and eastern europe is drawn
> by an ox.  Even before wheeled transport, the ox would have provided better
> cartage.  The rather small tarpan-related domesticated horse of the period
> may not have been particularly useful in hauling and probably were not
> particularly rideable.  As opposed to the steppes where sufficient pasturage
> and range would have been available, the terrain of the Italian peninsula
> would have made horse-rearing undesirable and inefficient for either the
> purposes of meat or milk.

> So once again knowledge of the horse and a word for the horse did not make
> the horse either desirable or a necesssary presence.  There is more than
> sufficient evidence of contact between Italy and areas where the horse was
> present well before 5500BC for the horse to be neither a mystery or a dim
> memory.

See above for my comments. Contacts with northern Europe notwithstanding, I
don't believe that the horse was known in Italy at the time in any way. I
guess we'll just have to disagree.

> <<For trees, see Indo-European Trees by Friedrich (I don't have the
> bibliographic data in front of me). For various wild animals in the North
> Pontic area, including fish, Mallory wrote several articles in JIE. Both of
> these sources look to me pretty consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. If
> someone would analyze the flora and fauna of Anatolia around 6500 BC, it
> would be interesting to see how the names in various IE languages for the
> various plants and animals found in Anatolia fit in with Renfrew's theory,
> and eventually to see which theory fits in better with the biological
> facts.>>

> This is mainly pure fantasy.  The very notion that a species unique to the
> Caspian region 8-5000 years ago can be identified with a word in documented
> IE languages a thousand miles away and 4000 years later is just absurd.  Any
> name for flora in one region could just as easily be applied to similar flora
> in another region - this has happened constantly throughout history.  Maize
> is corn in American English and prairie dogs are not dogs and groundhogs are
> not hogs.  And yes there were salmon or something that could be called salmon
> just about everywhere.

I am talking about good fits and less good ones. I know that names for
animals and plants can be changed, lost and transferred. In fact, some of
the biological data do not provide good evidence for the Kurgan hypothesis:
if *bhbgos meant "beech", it is curious that the beech tree is absent from
the north Pontic area (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in
Mallory and Adams). So make it a late wandering-word - which is how I would
explain the *ekwos word, were I to advocate Renfrew's theory. Unlike you, I
don't accuse those I disagree with of advocating pure fantasy.

> <<I specifically excluded words for cow, sow and grain. I assume that there
> were words for these concepts among neolithic farmers, so their presence in
> IE languages says nothing about PIE speakers except that they were familiar
> with agriculture. 'land' and 'milk' are even less indicative - why could
> hunter gatherers not have words for them?

> Saying that PIE speakers were familiar with agriculture is actually saying
> a lot.  Those words are often enough reconstructed back to PIE - why would a
> small, warlike elite on horses off the steppes need to teach a continent
> full of farmers a whole new set of words for farming? Especially since those
> steppe types don't appear to have known that much about any thing more
> than horse and sheep breeding and nothing about the kind of farming that was
> done in central and western Europe?

Why shouldn't they? When people switch languages, they may adopt the words
of the new language, whether they mean "mother" or "yoke". Of course, they
may also keep some of the old words from the substratum language - French
has a number of agricultural terms from Gaulish, even though there were
perfectly good Latin terms for the concepts.

How do you know what those old steppe types knew about? If you can believe
that Italian peasants had a word for ponies living thousands of kilometres
away, why could the Kurgan people not know about yokes and plows?

> <<The word for 'horse' is of course the crux of my argument.>>

> I don't think so.  I think you mean <ekwos>.  Which is not the only word for
> horse and didn't even necessarily always mean horse.

What on earth did it mean?

In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE. If
Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

> <<What I find reasonable as a theory is Gimbutas's: the farming population of
> much of Europe switched language because it was conquered by a horse-riding,
> warlike elite who imposed its hero-worshipping ideology on it.  A bit like
> what the Hungarians did to the Slavic and other inhabitants of Hungary after
> 895 AD, or what the Turks did to the various inhabitants of Anatolia in
> post-Classical times.>>

> Yeah, well.  What's unreasonable about all that is that most of Europe
> appears to never have been exposed to those horse-riding war-like elitists.
> "Kurgan" barely puts a dent in central Europe and never reaches western
> Europe.  Near the Danube and up in Poland, it seems your war-like elite
> abandon their horses for sheep and take over over-salinized fields abandoned
> centuries before by the earlier population.

You made your point. The first Kurgan conquests could have been like my
initial scenario, followed by the combined strength of civilizations with
the Kurgan elite and "Old European" peasanty. Lots of holes even there in
the argument, but there are plenty of holes in Renfrew as well. There are
some (like Makkay, I believe) who don't believe that the LBK people are in
any way derived from the Balkan neolithic - there is little direct evidence.
And if Vinca is IE, but LBK isn't, how did IE spread so wide?

> Since there is no evidence of
> either horse-back riding or chariots in most of Europe before 1800BC, this
> elite is either charging around in horse-drawn ox-carts or dragging their
> steeds behind them.  Meanwhile, "the farming population of Europe" has
> already mastered traction enough to build megalith graves for whomever
> their non-heros were,

Now wait a minute - the megalith builders are pretty much restricted to the
Atlantic seabord. Their supposed mastery of traction could hardly be
projected to provide defence against Kurgans in Central Europe.

> mastered metal making and produced formidable metal axes and
> equally formidiable obsidian spear and arrow-heads, begun by 3800BC to
> fortify encampments and make war on one another in the west, already built
> what Zwiebel called the largest buildings in the world at the time,
> apparently generated sufficient surpluses to create an elite of their own
> and bury them accordingly - but not in the kurgan-style, have a pretty well
> developed trade network across Europe and into the Near East where they
> may have been exposed to Gilgamesh style war-like elitists as well as the
> wheel - which they also apparently introduced to their eastern neighbors.
> And increase the population of Europe by as much as100 times depending on the
> location.

> The neolithic population of Europe probably had a richer language -
> certainly in terms of a wide variety of technical areas, including metalurgy,
> farming, sea-going, building, vehicle construction, animal husbandry and tool
> and weapon making - than any culture that appears on the European Steppes
> before 2000BC.  Most of these items appear in IE languages with no sign of a
> substrate or with signs of importation from the Near East.  My best guess
> is that if any elite did come off the steppes, they went the way of most
> elites, they were swallowed up.

> Also as Lehmann points, Gimbutas' theory suffers from a lack of available
> personnel.  There were just too few with too little - the steppes are
> underpopulated and underarmed before 2000BC.  A big difference from the
> Turks and Maygars.

It's the Magyars, thank you. I have some figures, though not at hand, on how
few Magyars there might have been when they (we?) came through the
Carpathians in 895. They had a pretty good military organization, excellent
fighting skills and a belief in their own abilities and in their right to
conquer whatever territory they chose. Like the British and French in North
America, and the Iberians in Latin America later on, all of them seriously
outnumbered by the native Americans.

>>> Or you can find it more reasonable that all these words were somehow forced
>>> on a large trans-continental population of 'passive' farmers (already armed
>>> with copper and bronze axes) by a relatively small group of outsiders who
>>> had a language with no apparent relatives but still wonderfully endowed
>>> with roots for all occasions, allowing that cowardly European population to
>>> pop that language right into place from the Ukraine to Holland, every
>>> meaning and sound changes exactly where it supposed to be. - done with such
>>> skill it would seem as if they had been speaking PIE all along.

>> I find this very unclear. I can't even figure out whether you favour Renfrew
>> or Gimbutas in the above text.

> I was being sarcastic in the above text.  The scenario - a Gimbutian one - is
> ludicrous.

I don't think that Renfrew is ludicrous - just less likely, that's all.
Name-calling is not necessarily a good scientific practice.

All the best,
Gabor


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar 24 13:18:01 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 14:18:01 +0100
Subject: Latin word formation
In-Reply-To: <000501bf90ed$a38ae160$794a063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.141801.0100.>

>>> How about   de:mens?

>> Doesn't really qualify, 'cause there's no -e/os suffix.

>The original asker asked for any de: + nominal root forms.

As the original asker, I think I have to make my point a bit clearer
(though the point is that I don't really have a point).

Some current etymologies of Lat. /de:bilis/ segment the word as de:- +
be/ol + e/os, in order to, as you rightly observe, justify the
Latin-Slavic-Sanskrit etymology (based on the root *be/ol- "strength". I
was wondering, whether this *exact* pattern has any good parallels in
Latin, Celtic (where de:- is prominent) or probably elsewhere. de:mens
shows only parts of the pattern, whereas the de:bilis <
*de:habilis-etymology has de:- + hab + Lat. ilis (< *-ele/os), and it is at
the moment unclear to me whether this (old) etymology is the better
alternative.

For the time being I'm content with the fact that the segmentation
de:-bil-is may help to find a Sanskrit-Slavic etymology of this word, but
that it leaves us with a slightly odd (minor, marginal, or maybe even
unheard of) derivational pattern for Latin. That was my question, and my
thanks for your input.



Stefan

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 24 15:19:38 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 09:19:38 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.091938.0600.>

>On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Dear Indo-Europeanists:

>> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
>> "laryngeal".

[ moderator snip ]

>Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
>for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish) when
>it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples (including
>the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples

I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

Carol Justus


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Mar 24 16:06:44 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 10:06:44 -0600
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.100644.0600.>

>cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>>The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
>>preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek oi~da,
>>i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb paradigm would
>>seem to be that between the singular and plural as in Gothic wait, witum.
>>In Hittite this vowel alternation is exemplified by verbs like kuenzi,
>>kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the
>>third person plural is zero grade as opposed to other full grade persons.
>>Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
>>not originally.

>Hittite does have e/a alternation in some verbs of the
>hi-conjugation, with <e> in the plural, <a> in the singular.
>E.g. sakhi, sakti, sakki, [*sekweni], sekteni (sakteni),
>[*sekkanzi] "to know" (similarly in the past tense).

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl

Quite right. It was the second person plural which had both forms (See the
1981 study: Nr. 7, Lfg. 10 of Kammenhuber's Materialen zu einem
hethitischen Thesaurus which includes all forms attested in texts known). A
major reason for doing exhaustive studies of Hittite 'know' and other verbs
such ak(k)-/ek(k)- 'eat' was to explore the ablaut types in Hittite that
differed from e.g., es-/as- 'be'. At that time I noted (pp. 14-16 on
etymology) just a few etymological relations. The major one was the
comparison with the singular:plural alternation of the old perfect (v?da:
vidm?, wait:witum etc.) suggesting that Hittite 'know' might be
grammatically cognate, albeit not formally cognate, with the IE pattern.

An oddity which looked even older was the one with Latin sum, sumus, sunt:
es, est, estis that had a parallel in Hittite uhhi, umeni, uwanzi : auti,
auszi, aummeni, autteni 'see'. Then (as now) there were phonological
explanations for the 'sum' set, but the fact that Hittite 'see' showed such
a similar patterning raised questions in my mind as to whether the
phonological explanation of the Latin forms might not be ad hoc, that these
two (independent?) groupings of a 1sg, 1pl, and 3pl together with zero
grade-like forms as opposed to 2sg, 3sg, and 2pl full grade forms might not
reflect something almost totally lost to us.

In that context the sg:pl alternation looked like a reanalysis or leveling
of an older pattern on a basis (sg vs. pl) that we still understand.
Hittite sak(k)-/sek(k)- forms from texts then known are (1981:4-13):

Prs. Indic.
(variants are not noted unless the vocalism differed)
1s saggahhi,           Imperative / voluntative seggallu
2s sakti, sekti        Imper. sak(i)
3s sakki               Imper. sakdu, sakku
1p sekkueni
2p sakteni, sekteni
3p sek(k)anzi

Preterite Indicative
1s saggahhun
2s sakta
3s sakkis, sekta, sakta
1p sekkuen
2p sakten               Imperative sekten,[s]akten
3p sakkis, sekta, sakta Imperative sekkandu

Participle
SG sekkan-   PL  sakkanta (acc. neuter), sekkandus, sakkandus (acc. common)

The vowel alternation for 'know' ( sak(k)-/sek(k)-) is just about the
opposite of 'be' (es-/as-), barring, of course, the interesting 2pl
variants and the reversal with the participle. From this vantage point, and
the fact that Hittite third plural often contrasts in vowel variant with
all the other persons (esmi, essi, eszi, esmeni, esteni, asanzi and with
kuen- / kunnanzi etc.), when we see that the Greek, Sanskrit, and German
perfect has a regular sg:pl alternation (veda, vettha, veda vs. vidma,
vida, vidur), it looks like a sg:pl leveling, but an old one that got
shared with Germanic (of course we only have one pl form in Germanic, as
Gothic witum is 1p, 2p, and 3p).


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Fri Mar 24 21:20:28 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 16:20:28 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.162028.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>What question applies if someone assumes that *kwekwos even existed in PIE
>when there's no direct evidence at all that it was ever even present in half
>of the known IE languages?

-- the general rule is that if there are cognates in more than three
otherwise unrelated and geographically widely separated branches of IE., it's
a PIE word.

Are you objecting to the existance of historical linguistics again?

Or is this a selective memory slip, as when you stated there was no reflex of
*ekwos in Anatolian?

*Kwekwlos:  reflexes in Germanic, Phrygian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Tocharian,
Celtic, Baltic.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri Mar 24 18:52:20 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:52:20 -0000
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.185220.0000.>

Dear Steve and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2000 8:22 AM

> In a message dated 3/16/2000 1:51:59 AM, g_sandi at hotmail.com wrote:

 <snip>

> How likely is it that the unattested *kwekwlos was applied to the wheel
> independently in two different IE languages, [alledgedly] quite distant
> from one another" and therefore alledgedly not in contact?  If by that you
> mean, how likely is it that two peoples speaking very similar languages with
> the same word for something circular would both independently describe the
> wheel as being circular - well, the better question is probably: why wouldn't
> they?

[PR]
I have been following this interesting discussion from the sidelines.

I would like to offer a couple of ideas in this context:

1) I believe the root of *kwekw-lo- should be emended to *k^wek^w-lo- on the
strength of the palatal responses in Old Indian;

2) I believe the root **k^wel- is related to **k^wej6-, and that the common
semantic factor is 'curl';

3) I believe that it is likely that **k^wek^w-lo-, based on its proposed (by
me) semantics, refers to the spoked wheel, the integral part of which is the
felloe, 'curled around' the spokes;

4) Since solid wheels preceded spoked wheels, and certainly presumably were
the wheels used for the ox-carts of the roaming Indo-Europeans, and were not
semantiacally appropriate for a term like **k^wek^w-lo-, it would seem to me
that the term should be put into a time context at which *spoked* wheels are
attested.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Thu Mar 16 04:52:35 2000
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:52:35 -0500
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <WED.15.MAR.2000.235235.0500.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following posting is edited from two versions submitted by Mr. Colkitto,
  each with some problems.  I am taking the liberty of posting this edited
  version so that the discussion can continue.
  --rma ]

>> Could someone spell out in more detail what these 'archaic characteristics'
>> are? Or at least the most salient ones. >>

> -- with respect to the Baltic languages, particularly the declension of the
> noun and adjective, with seven cases, singular and plural, and preseveration
> of the dual as well in some dialects.  This is almost completely unchanged
> from PIE.

> The Baltic verbal system is more innovative, but the PIE present tense is
> well-preserved, and the future represents a PIE disiderative formation
> revalued as a simple future.

> There PIE lexicon is preserved to a really startling degree:  eg, *dubus >
> dubus (deep), *gwous > guovs (cow), *h(1)rudh > rudas (red), etc.

> The most archaic Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Old Prussian) are about as
> close to PIE as some of the very first attested IE languages.  Conservatism
> of a mind-boggling degree.

This argument has already been played out in Baltic and Slavic studies.  The
term "archaic" in linguistics should be used with extreme caution.  Once again,
I am taking the liberty of quoting myself (pp. 91-94)

3.7 Slavic and Baltic: Relative Degrees of `Archaism'

Although at first sight Baltic appears far more `archaic' than Slavic; in fact,
certain scholars have even advocated using Baltic, especially Lithuanian, data
as a check on CS reconstructions (see especially Otkup?cikov 1974, 1983,
Jasanoff 1983a: 142, although for criticism of this view see, e.g., Stankiewicz
1988), this generalisation needs some clarifying in at least two respects.

3.7.1 Defining `Archaic'

In historical linguistics (and probably in other related fields) the terms
`more archaic' and `less archaic' need some quantifying.  To take one fairly
obvious, albeit extreme, example, probably no scholars would rate English as
`more archaic' than German overall, and yet for certain features, in phonology,
morphology, and syntax, this is an fair statement, e.g.,

1) The preservation of Gc ? in English as opposed to its loss in German,
e. g., E three - Ge drei < CG *?rij-.

2) The related preservation of unshifted Gc t, d in English as opposed to their
development to c (orthographic z), t under the Second Sound Shift in German,
e.g., E ten - Ge zehn (< CG *tehun).

3) The preservation of IE w in English as opposed to its development to v in
German, e.g., E win - Ge (ge)winnen [(ge)vinen].

4) The preservation of a three-fold alternation in certain Gc Class I strong
verb paradigms, e.g., E drive (< IE *-ei-) - drove (< IE *-oi-) - driven (< IE
*-i-), as opposed to Ge treiben (< IE *-ei-) - trieb - getrieben (the
generalisation of the reflex of CG *-i-).

5) The failure of English to develop HAVE-constructions such as Ge Ich habe
Hunger `I have hunger' "I am hungry".

6) The preservation of 1st sg am in English as opposed to its loss in German.

7) The preservation of certain lexical items from Common Germanic (and IE) in
English as opposed to their loss in German, e.g., E tree, choose, ask.

Of course, it would be very easy to think of far more examples where German
preserves archaisms where English has innovated, especially when dialectal
materials are considered; the point here is that `more archaic' and `less
archaic' are relative terms, to be used with a degree of caution.  Within
Slavic, Russian may be seen as `more archaic' than Polish with regard to
certain syntactic constructions and lexical items (Orr 1992), whereas from the
point of view of the evolution of gender Polish may be said to be more archaic
in some respects than Russian (cf. Slobin 1985: 1194, 1216; Weiss 1993:
99-101). Manczak 1991: 74-76 makes a similar proposal regarding the oft-cited
status of Sardinian as the most archaic Rmc language.  This perception of
Sardinian is based on the fact that it preserves the original Italian velars
before front vowels; Manczak, however, shows that from the point of view of the
lexicon, standard Italian is actually more archaic than Sardinian.

3.7.2 Defining `Baltic'

`Common Slavic', `West Baltic', and `East Baltic' are relatively
straightforward concepts; `Balto-Slavic' is much less so; but the problems in
reconstructing `Common Baltic' are immense.  In fact, it has even been
suggested that Slavic is originally a type of `West Baltic' (Zeps 1984), cf.
also Ivanov and Toporov 1961; Toporov 1988.

At this stage it might be advisable to summarise the points where Slavic may be
said to be `more archaic' than Baltic in the nominal declension.  In most of
them it will be noted that Slavic disagrees with only a part of Baltic in many
forms.  Some will necessarily be contentious, cf. especially (6), (7), (8).

1) The preservation of the neut in Slavic as opposed to its loss over most of
Baltic; in this context it is startling, that Lithuanian, which is usually
taken as the most `archaic' form of Baltic, has almost completely lost the
neut, while Old Prussian has preserved it (but see Schmalstieg 1992).

2) The related restoration of the IE anim/inanim distinction (see 3.2.3, and
Kry ko 1994: 198).

3) The preservation of a neut *s-stem paradigm in Slavic as opposed to its
near-loss in Baltic, e.g., OCS slovo `word' - gen sg slovese.

4) The preservation of a * -stem paradigm in Slavic as opposed to its loss in
Baltic, e.g., OCS svekry `mother-in-law'- gen sg svekru ve;

5) The more recent survival of length in the nom sg form of the fem * -stems in
Slavic than in Baltic, cf. OCS raka `hand'< *rank ; Lith rank? `hand' <
*ranka would have developed into *ranko without shortening, and we might refer
to the fem *a-stems in Lithuanian, as in Germanic.  It should be noted,
however, that here Old Prussian agrees with Slavic against East Baltic, cf.
Lith galv? `head'; Latvian galva id < *- as opposed to OPr galv id; OCS glava
id < *- ;

6) The failure of Slavic to develop the postposition *-en as an affix, cf. OCS
syn x ; Lith s nuos? `son' loc pl, Old Lith -su.

7) The development of a gen pl form in Baltic which may reflect *- m as opposed
to the lack of any such form in Slavic.

8) The greater extension of *-m as an acc marker in Baltic than in Slavic.

9) Finally, one might also cite the fact that while extra cases have emerged in
both Baltic and Slavic, Lithuanian might be said to have carried this
development further, see Stang 1966: 228-32, e.g., galv? `head'; acc sg
g?lv , illative sg galv?n, gen sg galv?s, allative sg galv?sp, loc sg
galvoj? adessive sg galv?ip; within Slavic, Russian might be said to have
developed new cases in the Gen-2 and Loc-2, cf. Jakobson 1932, 1958.  In any
event, this point only serves to highlight the difficulty of categorising whole
groups of languages as `more or less archaic'; one part of Baltic (Latvian) may
have lost cases (or failed to develop extra ones).

(references available off lst)

Robert Orr


From alderson at netcom.com  Sat Mar 25 02:28:58 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:28:58 -0800
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.20.0003151425040.21185-100000@vesuri.Helsinki.FI>
 (message from Robert Whiting on Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:28:08 +0200
 (EET))
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.182858.0800.>

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote regarding
the conservative nature of Lithuanian:

> Expressed in terms of a tree model, it sounds very much like a scenario that
> Steve Long proposed:  At any node on the tree, there is a non-innovating
> branch and other branches.  If we follow the non-innovating branch from each
> node, at the bottom of the tree we arrive at a language that is practically
> identical to PIE (in this case, Lithuanian).  Now everyone said 'no, no, that
> can't be right because actually all branches innovate, just in different
> ways.'  The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue against this.  Nodes in
> a tree must be based on some comparative linguistic information.  The only
> such information that is useful is some innovation that appears in one branch
> and not in the other.  Shared retentions don't propagate either as waves or
> trees.  They just stay where they were left, like a well-trained dog.  Of
> course the fact that Lithuanian was always on the non-innovating branch (or
> least innovative branch if you prefer) after satemization and RUKI (and only
> partly on the innovating branch even there; sort of holding on to the end of
> the branch with one paw) says nothing about where it was located
> geographically.

The problem is that there is *no* IE language without significant innovations
vis-a-vis all the others.  Lithuanian is conservative in its *retention* of the
nominal case system (for the most part--though it loses one and adds a couple
based on a Finnic model), but it is innovative in the verb; which counts more
heavily?

Further, if we look at the *phonology*, Lithuanian is extremely innovative:  It
merges the voiced plain and voiced aspirate series of stops, it has contrastive
palatalized and non-palatalized series of obstruents, it merges *o(:) and *a(:)
and otherwise disturbs the vowel system, and it moves the IE accent from the
center of the word to the ends.  So now tell me how conservative it is.

There is *no* branch on the tree that can be labeled "non-innovating", and we
do ourselves a disservice as linguists, and a greater one to the non-linguists
looking to us for guidance, by pretending that there is.

								Rich Alderson


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Mar 25 10:28:03 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 05:28:03 -0500
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.052803.0500.>

"Brian M. Scott" <BMScott at stratos.net> wrote:
> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
> leaf of the tree.

You >may< come to a leaf that is non-innovating for all >branch
determining< innovations. A branch might innovate without splitting
further. Also the non-innovating branch might go extinct, while other
branches continue to split.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Mar 27 03:19:35 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 22:19:35 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.221935.EST.>

In a message dated 3/24/2000 10:04:49 PM, BMScott at stratos.net wrote:

>Start at the root, and at each node
>follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
>the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

>At each node you start afresh, so it's not really meaningful
>to speak of 'one and the same branch'.

Actually one would not start afresh at each node.  IF your "branch-offs" only
mark a limited set of innovations at each node, then those innovations in
theory will not be found in the last chronological residue of the
non-innovating language/languages.

There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying anything new
happened in that non-innovating residue.  Only certain innovations are
determinative at each node.  Other innovations don't count, just as
retentions don't count.

So the "node" ONLY represents languages in which the defining innovations
occur.  There is nothing 'new' in the other languages that can mean there is
a 'fresh start' at such points for those languages.  They are treated
precisely as if they were made up entirely of retentions.  The fact that they
may be changing internally is irrelevant to this kind of methodology, because
these changes have not been designated in any of the nodes.

(I have brought up in the past that there are taxonomic methods used in some
areas of evolutionary theory that do measure the relative quantative variance
in biological morphology and do use it as a narrow measure of chronological
relatedness, mutation or parallel adaptiveness.  These methods in effect use
both retentions and even minor innovations to guess the number of generations
separating filials from parentals.  In this kind of analysis, ANY and ALL
innovations (or lack of retentions) are used to measure something like
relatedness.  The starting assumption is that all progeny should be identical
to the parent in all forms and in every filial generation.  Quantitative
variances in effect yield rates of mutation or other effecting factors.

In this kind of analysis, you may in some ways be "starting fresh" at each
new F generation.)

>It is equally true that if you always follow
>the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

Well, it is interesting to some of us.  Because it means that the methodology
yields an IE language or set of IE languages which innovated nothing - within
the scope of the innovations that were used earlier to differentiate all the
other IE languages.  Depending on whether you call something an innovation or
retention can of course completely change the identification of that language
which 'innovated nothing.'

Regards,
Steve Long


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Mon Mar 27 14:58:11 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:58:11 +0300
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <4d.2228bbd.2602a34f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.175811.0300.>

On Thu, 16 Mar, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 3/16/00 12:29:13 AM Mountain Standard Time,
>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

<snip>

[quoting JoatSimeon at aol.com on 13 Mar]
>>>What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
>>>the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup
>>>of PIE they became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than
>>>Slavic.

>> The evidence fairly clearly shows that both Baltic and Slavic
>> were transitional areas in both the satemization (palatal
>> assibilation) and RUKI palatization changes that had their core
>> in I-Ir (although RUKI is more generalized in Slavic than in
>> Baltic).  Essentially all this shows is that Baltic and Slavic
>> were still in fairly close contact with I-Ir. in contrast to
>> Greek, Italic, Germanic and points west which were not affected
>> at all by these changes (relic areas).  In short, all the other
>> IE stocks have already broken off or are simply out of range
>> (which is not quite the same thing as they could still be at the
>> other end of a dialect continuum) before this change.  And
>> conservatism after this point indicates that the language was
>> consistently a relic area in further changes originating in the
>> dialect continuum

>-- this seems to be a terminological problem here.  That's
>pretty much what I was trying to say.  Pardon the infelicities of
>expression!

Yes, I would say that this is pretty much a difference of
terminology as I simply tried to restate the proposition in terms
of a wave model.  But there is one difference, which may still be
terminological, but is nonetheless a difference.  You said that
Baltic and Slavic "_were_ in the 'innovative core'", while I said
that they "were still in fairly close contact" with it and were
transitional areas for the particular changes we were talking
about.  Whether the difference between being 'in the core' or
being 'on the edge' of it is significant or not does not seem to
be worth arguing about (sort of like "once you are in the forest,
can you go further in or can you only go out?"), but, as you say,
it's a matter of degree.

>>The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue against this.

>-- it's a matter of degree.  Lithuanian certainly changed far
>less; but it still changed.

Of course it changed.  Change is not just a linguistic universal,
it is a universal universal.  That is to say that it has to do
with the way the universe works -- everything changes.   This is a
by-product of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  What would be
truly remarkable would be if Lithuanian had not changed at all.

And as for it's being a matter of degree, again, of course it's a
matter of degree.  Anything that isn't a binary opposition
(yes/no, on/off, 0/1) is a matter of degree.  But if we are
talking about a binary branch at a node defined by an innovation
on one branch and a lack of innovation on the other, then it is
not a matter of degree.  It is a binary opposition.  Now what
happens on the individual branches after the bifurcation is beyond
our control.  The less innovative branch may suddenly take it
into its head to innovate like mad without branching again while
the innovating branch may suddenly become very conservative.

Again, we are not saying different things here, we are saying the
same thing differently.  Lithuanian was obviously on the
innovative branch of the node that is defined by palatal
assibilation and RUKI but after this change this branch seems to
have become very conservative (Sanskrit, Slavic, Baltic).  By
contrast, the non-innovative branch of this node subsequently
underwent such extensive innovations as to take any of its
members out of the running for the most archaic surviving IE
language.  This has made the branch that actually innovated the
more conservative by default.  But this status only lasts until
the next bifurcation and then it starts afresh from the new node.
It must be remembered that not only are Sanskrit, Slavic, and
Baltic on the innovating branch of the palatal assibilation node,
but so are Armenian and Albanian, which are not particularly noted
for their conservatism.

Finally, it must be remembered that the changes that define nodes
may be in different areas (phonology, morphology, syntax, or
semantics [lexicon]) and so not every node will affect a given
area.  Lithuanian's claim to great archaism lies mostly in noun
morphology (especially in the number of cases and the forms of
the endings and in a number of particularly archaic looking
lexical items).  There may be other languages that are more
archaic in other areas.

>>But the point is that *something* has to be; if not Lithuanian,
>>then something else.  It is equally against the law of averages
>>for a team or an individual to win a single elimination
>>tournament; but someone always does.  In the IE superbowl,
>>Lithuanian is apparently the winner.  But that still doesn't say
>>anything specific about where it started out geographically.

>-- however, it's not just Lithuanian.  Apart from the other
>Baltic languages, there's the example of Slavic -- which, while
>not quite as conservative, is still notably so.

Again, we are not saying different things.  The node that
produced Lithuanian from the other Baltic languages would have
been in the branch that was less innovative from the previous
node (actually, one of the other Baltic languages, like Old
Prussian or Curonian, may have been even more conservative, but
since little or nothing of them survive it is not possible to
say).  Similarly, the node that produced Baltic on one branch and
presumably Slavic on the other (assuming a Balto-Slavic unity,
which is not universally accepted) would have again been on the
least innovative branch of the next higher node producing the
observed effect of two conservative branches with one slightly
less conservative than the other.  But again (or still) this
doesn't say anything specific about where they started out
geographically except that Baltic was always in close proximity
to Slavic.

>>But is it clear that there is no substratum influence?  There
>>are a number of Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a
>>considerably larger number of Baltic loanwords in Balto-Finnic.
>>Looks like about what one would expect if Baltic were a
>>superstratum language over Western Finnic.  Just because there
>>wasn't an unknown substratum, as there apparently was in
>>Germanic, that provided a lot of words of unknown origin to the
>>language doesn't mean that there wasn't some substratum.

>-- its a question of degree.  There are certainly substrata in
>Baltic, but not to nearly the same degree as in Germanic.  The
>number of lexical items which can be traced to PIE is
>proportionately much larger and Baltic that in, say, Germanic or
>Greek.

Here, I am less inclined to see it as a matter of degree,
especially as the claim was originally stated "That's where the
absense of substratal influence comes in." If the absence of
substratum influence is important, then surely the presence
of a non-trivial amount of it changes the situation.  But the
presence of more archaic lexical items and fewer obvious
substrate borrowings could equally well be a result of the
refusal of the language to accept loans as of its still being
in its original home.  German, for example, for some considerable
time simply refused to accept loan words or neologisms unless
they blended seamlessly with German phonology, preferring to
calque them instead when absolutely necessary (e.g., Eng.
exposition, Ger. Ausstellung; Eng. rhinoceros, Ger. Nashorn).
English, on the other hand, just gobbles up loanwords and
neologisms regardless of whether they violate English
phonotactics or not (e.g., aardvark, gnu, syzygy).  This is
simply not a function of how close these respective languages are
to their original homelands.

If we didn't have a historical record of the situation, the
argument of conservatism plus lack of substratum influence could,
other things being equal, be used to claim that Iceland is the
original Scandinavian homeland.

>>>There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other
>>>features in the area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was
>>>historically attested).

>>Again, useful for indicating that (a) the language was in its
>>original home, (b) the language moved into a previously
>>uninhabited area, (c) the speakers of the language
>>systematically renamed or calqued all river names in their own
>>language, or (d) the speakers of the language drove off or killed
>>all the original inhabitants before they could learn the original
>>names of the topographical features (i.e., no period of
>>linguistic contact).

>-- one has to make a balance of probabilities in these cases.
>Even the case of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, which is
>about as complete a case of linguistic replacement as exists in
>the historical record, not all the river and place names were
>changed.  River names in particular seem to persist.

Yes, river names seem to be particularly persistent.  But it must
be kept in mind that, in non-literate societies, linguistic
contact is essential for the transfer of any linguistic
information.  Unless a language has been recorded somehow, that
language exists only in the minds of its speakers.  When the last
speaker of a language dies, unless the language is recorded
somehow, that language is gone forever.  There is no hope of
recovering it through DNA analysis of the remains of its speakers
or archaeological excavation of their material culture.  The only
hope of recovering it is time travel with a camcorder, not yet a
serious option.

Now one way that a language can be recorded (albeit imperfectly)
is through loanwords in a surviving (at least surviving until it
can be recorded) language.  If there are such loanwords that do
not fit the normal patterns of a language and that cannot be
identified as coming from any known language, we can postulate
contact with an otherwise unknown language.  If there are no such
loanwords, however, we can only say that there are no such
loanwords.  Negative evidence cannot be used to construct
specific scenarios.  Negative evidence only means that there is
no evidence.  Negative evidence could mean that there was no such
language, that there was no linguistic contact (bilingual
speakers), or that the second language simply refused to accept
loanwords (or possibly even consciously purged them at a later
date).  Each of these scenarios will be identically represented
in the evidence:  no loanwords.

Making a balance of probabilities is fine so long as you know
what all the probabilities are.  But a balance of probabilities
doesn't tell you what happened, it only tells you what is likely
to have happened.  And if history is "was eigentlich geschah"
that is not quite good enough (although it is done regularly).
Using a balance of probabilities on historical events that have
already happened and claiming that it has to represent what
actually happened is simply a misuse of probability.  Probability
is used to predict the outcome of multiple events in the future
based on the number of possible outcomes and the relative
frequency with which the possible outcomes can occur.  But even
when used correctly for this purpose, probability still doesn't
tell you what is going to happen in a single event, only that the
distribution of the outcomes of multiple events will accord with
the probabilities.  The laws of probability have no memory of
previous events.  Otherwise, the chance of heads with a fair coin
being 1:2, two tosses of the coin would guarantee one head -- and
it ain't so.

If you look at the paramutual odds and see that the favorite is
listed at 1:3 and Beetlebomb is listed at 200:1, that means that
the people who make a living giving odds on horse races think
that the favorite is 600 times more likely to win the race than
Beetlebomb, or expressed another way, if the race were to be run
600 times, the favorite would win 599 times and Beetlebomb would
win once.  But the race isn't going to be run 600 times, it is
only going to be run once.  And if Beetlebomb has a legitimate
chance of winning the race once in 600 times, there is nothing
in the laws of probability that says that that once can't be the
first (and only) time that the race is run.  If it is, then the
rules of probability just say that the next 599 times the race
is run, the favorite should win every time.  So long shots do
come in (sometimes) and the favorite doesn't always win.

So it is with historical events (including historical
linguistics).  There is only one event and it is possible,
depending on the circumstances, for a long shot to come in (cf.
the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588).  So in looking at
events for which there is no historical record, saying that it
is likely for a certain event to have had a certain outcome does
not prove that it did have that outcome unless it is impossible
to have had any other outcome.  In eliminative induction only the
impossible can be eliminated.  The merely improbable can still be
the truth.

Now there is nothing wrong with saying that the most likely
outcome is the most likely to have happened (in fact, it is sort
of a truism, or at least a definition of 'most likely').  But it
must be kept in mind that doing this is what is known as a
"purely hypothetical" solution.  The solution relies on the
hypothesis that the most likely outcome is what actually
happened.  But in much of history, and particularly in
prehistory, purely hypothetical solutions are the only ones that
are available.  And in such cases, purely hypothetical solutions
are frequently not marked as such.

So, once again, I don't say that it is an unreasonable
explanation that the Balto-Slavic homeland is very near the
IE Urheimat.  I just say that it is a purely hypothetical one
and therefore not necessarily the correct one.  I don't say it
can't be right, I just say it doesn't have to be right, and as
long as we are agreed on this, then there is no dispute about
the hypothesis.

But I do dispute the contention that linguistic conservatism or
archaism per se is an indication of proximity to the Urheimat.
There are too many counterexamples of conservative and archaic
languages that have moved from their original location and are
now surrounded by heterochthonous languages where the archaism or
conservatism is a result of a phenomenon known as "language
loyalty" that resists the influence of foreign languages (or any
kind of change) in order to retain the speakers' linguistic (and
hence ethno-cultural) identity.  By contrast, the languages that
have "stayed at home" are not subject to similar pressures and
are more free to innovate, to follow linguistic fads, and to
experiment with more expressive modes of speech.

These different pressures are one of the things that contributed
to the "archaizing periphery -- innovative core" model, but it
can be seen here that, unlike wave model of linguistic change,
the core and the periphery are subject to different but
counterbalancing pressures.  The periphery is subjected to
influences from outside languages but tends to resist them
because of language loyalty, while the core is not subjected to
outside linguistic influences but has no need to adopt a
conservative stance in self-defense of its linguistic identity.
The response to these various pressures tends to be governed by
sociological factors (prestige, intragroup bonding, desire for
novelty or for the familiar, etc.) rather than by purely
linguistic ones, so geographical location with respect to the
homeland doesn't have anything specific to say about whether a
language is going to be archaizing or innovative.

Once again, I don't say that the archaic nature of Lithuanian
speaks *against* its being at or close to the Urheimat.  I just
don't think that it necessarily has anything to say *for* it
either.  As Brian Scott pointed out (23 Mar), if we have a tree
of binary nodes (admittedly, an oversimplification), if we follow
the least innovative branch from each node (however we choose to
measure "least innovative", assuming that we can, and even
assuming that we can tell the difference between the archaism and
the innovation) then we will eventually reach a branch that
contains the language that is the most archaic.  We have to.
Similarly, if we always follow the most innovative path we will
reach a branch that contains the most innovative language.  We
have to.  The most innovative and the least innovative languages
*have* to be there, but I don't think that the fact that they are
there means that they *have* to tell us where these languages
started out with relation to the Urheimat.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From sarima at friesen.net  Sat Mar 25 05:46:04 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 21:46:04 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <20000324130240.64110.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.24.MAR.2000.214604.0800.>

At 06:31 PM 3/24/00 +0530, G?bor S?ndi wrote:
>I am talking about good fits and less good ones. I know that names for
>animals and plants can be changed, lost and transferred. In fact, some of
>the biological data do not provide good evidence for the Kurgan hypothesis:
>if *bhbgos meant "beech", it is curious that the beech tree is absent from
>the north Pontic area (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in
>Mallory and Adams).

Does this take into account changed distributions of the tree in ancient
times?  The climate has changed substantially since circa 4000 BCE.  Tree
distributions will have changed.

>In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE. If
>Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
>nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
>this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
>technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

It would have to be loan-translation, to account for the phonetic facts.
(As in, e.g. German 'Fernsehen' from Anglicized Latin 'television').

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar 25 10:40:26 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 10:40:26 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.104026.0000.>

Dear Gabor and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabor Sandi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 1:01 PM

[ moderator snip ]

> In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE.
> If Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
> nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
> this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
> technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

[PR]
I wonder how productive it is to adopt arguments from non-linguists that
seem to have little likelihood of being accepted by linguists.

I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

On the other hand, it, at least, appears possible that **H(1)o:k^u'-s
*might* be derived from *H(1)ek^uo-s although the lengthened vowel is a
problem.

Secondly, it is generally more likely that an adjective ('fast') was derived
from a noun ('horse') than the reverse --- particularly in view of the early
relative paucity of adjectives, and the existence of terms like
**k^(h)e:i-to- [my emendation]  (*ke:i-to-), 'fast'.

 <snip>

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Sat Mar 25 08:02:54 2000
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 02:02:54 -0600
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.020254.0600.>

[ Moderator's note:
  The following material is quoted from a message posted on 16 March 2000 by
  Eric Plourde (plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA).  I apologize for not having
  added the citation to Carol Justus' response from which it is taken here.
  --rma ]

>>On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> Dear Indo-Europeanists:

>>> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>>> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
>>> "laryngeal".

>[ moderator snip ]

>>Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
>>for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish)
>>when it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples
>>(including the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples

Carol Justus wrote:

>I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
>happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
>Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

Absolutely!  Moreover, it is essential to separate a regular phonetic change
(k- > h- in Hungarian and Germanic) from a sporadic change, such as the
proposed k- > H-.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at memphis.edu                    University of Memphis


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat Mar 25 11:03:57 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 11:03:57 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.110357.0000.>

Dear Carol and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Carol F. Justus" <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:19 PM

[ moderator snip ]

[ Moderator note:
  The following was quoted by Carol Justus from a posting by Eric Plourde
  (plourer at MAGELLAN.UMontreal.CA) on 16 March 2000.  My apologies for not
  having added the citation information before.
  --rma ]

>> Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
>> for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish)
>> when it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples
>> (including the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples

[CJ]
> I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
> happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
> Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

[PR]
It is, of course, vital.

Although I can find much in Greenberg's book to praise, I suspect this
suggestion of his will reveal itself as poorly conceived --- perhaps based
on something as ethereal as Hittite [h].

I believe the fundamental problem here is a reluctance to assume different
origins for morphemes that semantically were closely related and merged.

Greenberg suggested that IE feminine -*(i)H(2)a: might be derived from
*-(i)ko, a formant used in various language as a diminutive (p. 166).

Based on my research, in addition to a formant that would appear in IE as
*ke/o ('child'), there is another formant, *H(2)e/o (better, **-a:, I
believe), with the basic meaning 'hollow', which, for obvious reasons,
became a designation of females based on sexual characteristics, and was
used as a feminine formant.

The reason for my original question was that I consider this suggestion of
his highly unlikely, and  that the variant forms for 'bone' etc. have
another better explanation.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon Mar 27 01:29:04 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 01:29:04 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.012904.0000.>

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2000 4:21 AM

> Pat Ryan wrote:

>> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=3DIE or early IE k became a
>> "laryngeal".

>> Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
>> as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
>> of H".

>> I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
>> another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
>> relationship.

[LC]

> I haven't seen Greenberg's book, but this is strange, since IE languages are
> full of words with initial k- (k'-).  Any such change would have to have been
> very rare.  And would there have been a conditioning factor?  Hard to find
> one with so few examples (impossible, of course, if there's only one).

> If there were any connection (unlikely, I think), one might think rather of a
> "hardening" of laryngeals to a velar stop, perhaps in sandhi -- since final
> laryngeals were common enough, one could consider whether /-VH HV-/ was
> realized as [-Vk kV-], the second word then being reanalyzed as /kV-/.  That,
> at least, could have a certain phonetic plausibility.  But please, folks,
> this is *highly* speculative, and unless several more plausible examples can
> be found, it isn't worth the phosphors it is written on.

[PR]

We are in complete agreement. I was asking for other examples from
list-members to so if I could imagine Greenberg's suggestion as more
plausible.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rao.3 at osu.edu  Sat Mar 25 10:24:00 2000
From: rao.3 at osu.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 05:24:00 -0500
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.052400.0500.>

> But what is this "diachronic process" if not one of progression from
> non-basic to "basic" (better I think would be "abstract") colour term?

This made me wonder if we also need to worry about cyclical evolution:
Can a non-abstract color word replace an abstract color word? What does
that say about the B & K classification?


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 26 08:20:12 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 09:20:12 +0100
Subject: Hittite walwa 'lion' WAS: Bears and why they are mostly...
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.092012.0100.>

>> The initial *w- in this Schwebeablauting root can be proved
>> with the help of the greek material, cf. e.g.
>> Tro:es de {F}leiousin eoikotes o:mophagoisi

Unreliable, unless the digamma is required in many or most occurrences of
this  word.  Lengthening before a resonant had become an unexplained
phenomenon in epic poetry, so it spread to words where it did not originally
belong.

Unfortunately I have no Homeric concordance, so can't check.

Peter


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Sat Mar 25 12:36:15 2000
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 07:36:15 -0500
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
In-Reply-To: <11.1e262cd.2603452e@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.073615.0500.>

On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 03:22:06AM -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
	. . .
> How likely is it that the unattested *kwekwlos was applied to the wheel
> independently in two different IE languages, [alledgedly] quite distant from
> one another" and therefore alledgedly not in contact?  If by that you mean,
> how likely is it that two peoples speaking very similar languages with the
> same word for something circular would both independently describe the wheel
> as being circular - well, the better question is probably: why wouldn't they?

In modern times two countries speaking the _same_ language as well
as having very close economic and cultural contacts have developed
different words for new technology:

	wrench		- spanner
	elevator	- lift
	hood		- bonnet
	truck		- lorrie
	streetcar	- tram
	tube		- valve
--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sun Mar 26 07:45:55 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 02:45:55 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.024555.EST.>

In a message dated 3/25/2000 12:55:59 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>Are you objecting to the existance of historical linguistics again?

Definitely not.  But I sure have problems with YOUR version of historical
linguistics.

>-- the general rule is that if there are cognates in more than three
>otherwise unrelated and geographically widely separated branches of IE., it's
>a PIE word.

I don't know how three IE languages can be "otherwise unrelated."  Is this
another one of the special concepts in your version of historical linguistics?

With regard to "geographically widely separated" - I have no idea how those
languages could always be "widely separated" and still have been once the
same language.  There must have been an interim time.  What I wrote was:

<<Does the HOW LIKELY question apply when someone assumes that two different
IE languages could have once been the same language in the same place and then
separate and MAGICALLY become "quite distant from each other" without the
intermediate step (required of most phenomenon in this physical universe) of
first being close-by - and at that point very amenable to contact and
linguistic exchange?>>

<<Or is this a selective memory slip, as when you stated there was no reflex of
*ekwos in Anatolian?>>

I think the memory slip is yours.  No known word in Hittite.  As has been
pointed out many, many, many times on this list, the Luwian 'asuwa' looks to
be a IIr or Mitanni-Aryan borrowing, unless you assume some kind of special
Luwian satemization that could yield *-kw > sw.  (I don't know how Miguel
explains the a-.)

In any case, there is NO clear evidence that Anatolian had *ekwos as the
native word for horse.  Except in your version of historical linguistics, of
course.

<<*Kwekwlos:  reflexes in Germanic, Phrygian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Tocharian,
Celtic, Baltic.>>

*Telephone: reflexes in all IE languages.  Give me a break.

Steve Long


From hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu  Sun Mar 26 04:29:58 2000
From: hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 23:29:58 -0500
Subject: Typology and the phonetics of laryngeals
Message-ID: <SAT.25.MAR.2000.232958.0500.>

In the various IE handbooks, I've seen a number of phonetic solutions proposed
for the problem of what the laryngeals were phonetically, but all of them look
like typologically odd sets of sounds given standard reconstructions for PIE.

In the '70s and '80s, phonological typology was called on pretty heavily to
motivate the glottalic hypothesis for PIE.  I'm puzzled about the near absence
of application of typology to the question of what the phonetic values of the
laryngeals might have been.

Have I missed obvious sources?  Has there been discussion of the typology of
laryngeals?

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 26 10:20:07 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 11:20:07 +0100
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.112007.0100.>

Jens said:
> There was stress before PIE, and stress
> after PIE, why not _in_ PIE?

I find this argument more persuasive than your earlier ones, Jens, but we
are still left with the evidence of Greek, which does not appear to have had
a stress accent until well after the classical period.   Sanskrit accent is
also described as pitch, but I know the details less well, and cannot argue
that stress is precluded by the evidence, the way I would wish to for Greek.
I know that the Sanskrit grammarians use only pitch terms, not stress, and
that there is no sign of the stress effects on adjacent syllables that we
would expect to find with a stress accent.

If these two languages did indeed have no stress accent, then your logic
seems shakier - it is not necessarily true that the PIE stress accent
continued unabated from the earliest time.

Peter


From edsel at glo.be  Mon Mar 27 18:27:01 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:27:01 +0200
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.202701.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Herb Stahlke" <HSTAHLKE at gw.bsu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 4:28 PM

>>>> xiang at free.fr 03/16/00 05:15AM >>>

>>> I do not think it differed very much: As your mail continues, there is a
>>> high pitch on the stress in Modern Greek too, and the same goes for
>>> Italian. In PIE the two must have gone hand in hand, i.e. there was a
>>> "prominent" syllable in every word, its prominence consisting in high tone
>>> AND stress (greater muscular effort giving a louder sound volume).

>> I don't quite follow you here. A pitch accent can change into an intensity
>> accent.  This is what happened in greek and slavic, and I suppose in the
>> other less archaic languages that you cite from.  It isn't necessary to
>> assume IE had both accents. I think greek, vedic, baltic and slavic evidence
>> indicates PIE had a pitch accent.

> A pitch accent can also turn into a lexical tone system as has happened in
> Niger-Congo, where Bantu and Mande preserve pitch accent while western
> Benue-Congo, Kwa, and Kru have a lot of lexical tone.  I'm curious what it
> was about PIE pitch accent that none of the dialects became lexical tone
> languages.

> Herb Stahlke

[Ed]
Without pretending to prove anything, I would like to add some information:

Contrary to Castilian stress accent marking, Valencian Catalan uses two
different diacritics to mark stress: acutus for a rising pitch on the stressed
syllable, gravis for the descending pitch: Val?ncia (e-gravis), but: Gand?a
(i-acutus). Maybe Miguel Carrasquer can tell us more about Catalan
accentuation.

This pitch is not lexical, only contextual in relation with the stressed
syllable; only the position of the stress may have lexical implications, like
in English, e.g. ((a) record, (to) record).

Ed.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Mar 26 08:44:10 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 09:44:10 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.094410.0100.>

>>> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a
>>> combination of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

What began as a cautious statement which allowed for exceptions has now
apparently become dogma.   There are counter-examples within Sanskrit.
For example
(a) Rigveda 1:35:5 has hiatus in pra-ugam.   The u vowel cannot be taken as
a vocalic form of w, nor can a-u be considered here as [a +w].
(b) in Rigveda 1:1:9 the written svastaye must be scanned (and therefore was
pronouned) as su-astaye.   This is not uncommon, and affects some forms with
written -y- as well.
(c) The wise suggestion that vi-yukta should be distinguished from vyukta
(vi+vac).

So the analysis of Sanskrit as a one vowel language is not totally true.

> Old Indian [a]+[y] becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] becomes /o:/.

On the one vowel theory of Sanskrit, these combinations cannot exist.
[a+i]> /e:/, and [a+u} > /o:/.   [y] and [w] occur before vowels, and remain
after [a].  For example, the aorist of the root yuj (yoke) is ayuji.

y is very rare before a consonant in Sanskrit, and perhaps only in -yy-
and -yv-.
Furthermore, how would you explain -e:y-?

> But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian?    It does not
> exist so far as we can determine.

Yes it does - the law of palatalisation:  Kwe > ca, kekara > cakara etc.

> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
> preceding /j/ etc

Very far from obvious, as there are so many counter-examples.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon Mar 27 02:12:10 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 02:12:10 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.021210.0000.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:36 PM

> At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> As for "(true) absolute unversal(s)", I do not know of any in linguistics
>> or any other field. I enjoyed Plato myself but I think it is a mistake to
>> take him seriously.

[SF]

> Let's put it this way: the rarer something is among living languages, the
> more evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language.

[PRp]

>> I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
>> transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
>> /o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly
>> treat these sounds as diphthongal.

>> But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian? Or the simple
>> /o/.

>> It does not exist so far as we can determine.

>> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>> preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
>> /w/; and, as they have no existence outside of these conditioned
>> environments, they cannot be considered phonemes, whether they retained
>> their earliest diphthongal character or not.

[SF]

> When the diphthongal character is lost, so is the *conditioning*
> *environment*.  Thus at that point they do indeed become independent
> phonemes, namely /e:/ and /o:/.   This is standard phonology.  New sounds
> become phonemic when the conditioning factor is lost.  (Now this does
> produce an unusual situation of a language with more contrasts in it long
> vowel system than its short, but that is not unheard of, and Sanskrit is
> far better attested than many living languages, so it is hardly
> reconstructed anyhow].

[PR]

Well, if you will forgive me for saying so, I think you have completely
missed the point of the question.

We are talking about whether Old Indian *at one point* had basically a one
vowel system.

I think the facts make obvious that there was a time, however brief, when
Old Indian had only /a/ as a vowel, with [ay] and [aw] on the way to
becoming /ai/ -> /e:/ and /au/ -> /o:/.

Above you wrote: "the rarer something is among living languages, the more
evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language."

If that is your position, why not put it in practice on all questions under
consideration?

Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
(giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

>> [SFp]

>>> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
>>> the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
>>> any less phonemic in the current language.

>> [PRp]

>> Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

[SF]

> I am not sure what your point here is.  I was just pointing out that being
> *derived* diachronically is not sufficient reason to deny *synchronic*
> phoneme status, and gave an example of that.

[PR]

I confess I do not have any idea about what "*derived* diachronically" is
supposed to mean.

I am talking about a *synchronic* situation during which Old Indian had /a/,
/ay/, and /aw/.

>> [PRp]

>> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>> if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE.  If
>> it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

[SF]

> Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
> the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
> descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
> Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
> has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
> other name is available for it.

[PR]

Well, something has been lost in translation here. You mentioned Pre-IE, I
thought, not Pre-PIE.

>> [SF]

>>> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?

>> [PR]

>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>> undisputed in any other language.

[SF]

> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
> even in living languages.

[PR]

You assertion by itself does not convince me.

Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
in a minimal pair?

[SF]

> To show some sound difference is not phonemic
> you have to show that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it
> is not *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
> then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of the
> best texts on phonology.

[PR]

Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
phoneme from it?

[SF]

> The *origin* of */o/ can be argued for PIE, but the very fact that it *can*
> be argued is strong evidence that at *that* time it was already a distinct
> phoneme.  If it were an allophone of */a/ then the conditioning factors
> *still* should be visible, and apply uniformly to all cases.  It is the
> fact that there are too many environments in which */o/ occurs, with no
> identifiable commonality, that makes the sound a phoneme.

[PR]

Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept this
basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

>> [SFp]

>>> The shift **a: > *o would have been a regular phonetic change, and thus
>>> would have been essentially universal.  By the very nature of the
>>> hypothesis no *direct* trace would be left - ALL of the old a:s would have
>>> gone over into o's, resulting in an alternation between *e and *o where
>>> there had formerly been one between **a and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o
>>> alternation *is* the example.

>> [PRp]

>> I do not think I am the only reader who will find this dizzyingly circular.

>> The fact of e/o alternation "proves" an a/a: alternation?

[SF]

> I NEVER said that.  I was just pointing out that the lack of a direct
> example in PIE does not *refute* the hypothesis, as such is not expected.

[PR]

Proposing a hypothesis is not particularly valuable if no evidence can be
brought to support it.

[SF]

> To put it another way: we have in PIE what can be viewed as the expected
> result of a regular sound change, so it regularity is hardly evidence
> *against* a sound change.

> Certainly other evidence is needed.  My preference for that hypothesis is
> based simply on the fact that it is the only origin model for /o/ in PIE I
> have yet seen that has actually been *observed* to occur in other languages
> (English, for example).

[PR]

So, you consider that a chain shift was going on in IE?

What are the some of the other details? Other shifts?

[SF]

> Other alternatives include that the /o/ is ancient, and inherited from the
> preceding proto-language (e.g. Nostratic).  If it turns out that the
> /e/-/o/ distinction in PIE corresponds regularly to some vowel quality
> distinction in a wider group of languages, then inheritance is supported.
> (Now, at present no such evidence is forthcoming, and I would be surprised
> if it were, as /o/ looks recent to me in PIE as reconstructed).

[PRp]

>> And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
>> certain accentual/tonal conditions?

[SF]

> Because nobody has come up with a consistently applicable set of such
> conditions that can explain all of the occurrences of /o/ in PIE.

[PR]

I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
transferred to another syllable.

>> [PRp]

>> Certainly very interesting. But your example certainly does not mean that
>> we should expect OE *sa:wian for ME sew (/so:/) when seowian is attested,
>> does it?

[SF]

> Umm, where do you get that?

> You seem to keep turning what I say around and making the implication go
> the opposite direction from anything I ever said.

[PR]

I believe it was your point that OE /a:/ shows up as Modern English /o:/.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Mon Mar 27 10:03:05 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 12:03:05 +0200
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
In-Reply-To: <v01540b03b50139dd2620@[128.83.154.7]>
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.120305.0200.>

cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>A major reason for doing exhaustive studies of Hittite 'know' and other verbs
>such ak(k)-/ek(k)- 'eat' was to explore the ablaut types in Hittite that
>differed from e.g., es-/as- 'be'. At that time I noted (pp. 14-16 on
>etymology) just a few etymological relations. The major one was the
>comparison with the singular:plural alternation of the old perfect (vida:
>vidma, wait:witum etc.) suggesting that Hittite 'know' might be
>grammatically cognate, albeit not formally cognate, with the IE pattern.

>An oddity which looked even older was the one with Latin sum, sumus, sunt:
>es, est, estis that had a parallel in Hittite uhhi, umeni, uwanzi : auti,
>auszi, aummeni, autteni 'see'. Then (as now) there were phonological
>explanations for the 'sum' set, but the fact that Hittite 'see' showed such
>a similar patterning raised questions in my mind as to whether the
>phonological explanation of the Latin forms might not be ad hoc, that these
>two (independent?) groupings of a 1sg, 1pl, and 3pl together with zero
>grade-like forms as opposed to 2sg, 3sg, and 2pl full grade forms might not
>reflect something almost totally lost to us.

>In that context the sg:pl alternation looked like a reanalysis or leveling
>of an older pattern on a basis (sg vs. pl) that we still understand.

That's an interesting possibility.  However, it is difficult to
see what 1sg, 1pl and 3pl might have had in common from an
accentual point of view.  The singular/plural split, on the other
hand, makes good sense in that respect: the plural forms had one
extra syllable ("plural" *-en-), which may have caused the accent
to shift one syllable to the right.

Also, if *o derives from **a:, as I have proposed, the Hittite
a/e ablaut in the hi-conjugation can be seen as old, and be
derived by the rule that unaccented *a: (in the plural) is
shortened to *a (> *e), while accented *a: (in the singular)
remains and becomes *o (Hitt. /a/).  Shortened *e in the plural
may have attracted the accent secondarily in Hittite (so it
remained as /e/), while in the other IE languages it may have
stayed unaccented and therefore suffered further reduction to
zero (o/zero Ablaut in the PIE perfect).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From summers at metu.edu.tr  Sun Mar 26 10:41:15 2000
From: summers at metu.edu.tr (Geoffrey Summers)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 13:41:15 +0300
Subject: Horses
Message-ID: <SUN.26.MAR.2000.134115.0300.>

It might be worth pointing out that bones of wild horses have been found
in neolithic levels at both ?atal H?y?k and Asikli H?y?k in recent
years. This came as a surprise to many of us and should be a warning
against the use of negative evidence.

It is also clear that horses (as opposed to onagers or what ever) appear
on some of the ?atal murals. So far as I know, horse bones and skulls
have not yet been recognised as components in the plastered wall
decorations at ?atal (in contrast to cattle, foxes, vultures and so
forth).

The neolithic peoples of the Anatolian plateau would have had word(s)
for horses since they both ate them and painted them. Archaeological
evidence is not (yet) able to tell us what language(s) those words
belonged to.

It is now necessary to re-examine the few horse bones from Bronze Age
sites in Anatolia to see if the animals were domesticated (often
assumed) or whether there were small wild populations on the plateau as
late as the Third Millennium BC.

It has always seemed to me striking that the Assyrian Colony trade used
donkeys and not horses (or mules).

Best,
Geoff
--
Geoffrey SUMMERS
Dept. of Political Science & Public Administration,
Middle East Technical University,
Ankara TR-06531, TURKEY.

Office Tel: (90) 312 210 2045
Home Tel/Fax: (90) 312 210 1485
The Kerkenes Project Tel: (90) 312 210 6216
http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwkerk/


From lmfosse at online.no  Mon Mar 27 19:46:08 2000
From: lmfosse at online.no (Lars Martin Fosse)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 21:46:08 +0200
Subject: An etymological question
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.214608.0200.>

Dear members of the list!

I am just reading a book where the author claims that Latin ars/artis and ritus
(with the English derivative ritual) are etymologically related to Skt. .rta
(as in the Vedic cosmic principle). I do not have the opportunity to check this
where I am, so I would appreciate any comments on the matter.

Best regards,
Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Norway
Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 01:35:17 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:35:17 -0800
Subject: Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise
In-Reply-To: <6D96A987B3F@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk> (mclssaa2@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.173517.0800.>

On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Anthony Appleyard (mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk) wrote:

> As regards possible euphemisms:
[...]
> wolf: PIE {wlqwos} > Greek {lukos}, not the expected **{wlapos} or similar;
> distortion to associate with {luk-} = "light" (= illumination)?

There would have been a sonority-linked interchange between [ulkwos] and
[wl.kwos] in PIE; this easily feeds into the attested Greek metathesis--
and provides an environment for Cowgill's Law (labiovelar loses labiality
in the environment of a high round vowel, so there is no need to look for
a connection to *leuk-.

								Rich Alderson


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Mar 28 01:36:19 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 03:36:19 +0200
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <002401bf9646$a061bbe0$2fd31b3f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.033619.0200.>

"proto-language" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
>deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

>On the other hand, it, at least, appears possible that **H(1)o:k^u'-s
>*might* be derived from *H(1)ek^uo-s although the lengthened vowel is a
>problem.

If we assume an adjective stem *h1ek^u- ( ~ *h1o:k^u-),
*h1ek^u-o- certainly looks like a definite/substantivized
adjective ("the fast one"), derived with -o-.

>Secondly, it is generally more likely that an adjective ('fast') was derived
>from a noun ('horse') than the reverse --- particularly in view of the early
>relative paucity of adjectives, and the existence of terms like
>**k^(h)e:i-to- [my emendation]  (*ke:i-to-), 'fast'.

Notwithstanding the fact that six of the terms for "horse" listed
in C.D. Buck's dictionary (alogo, horse, hengst, arklys, z^irgas
and haya-) are adjectival or at least eptithetical in origin.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 04:25:00 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:25:00 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000324214024.00ae98e0@mf.mailbank.com> (message from
 Stanley Friesen on Fri, 24 Mar 2000 21:46:04 -0800)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.202500.0800.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

> At 06:31 PM 3/24/00 +0530, G\341bor S\341ndi wrote:

>> (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in Mallory and Adams).

> Does this take into account changed distributions of the tree in ancient
> times?  The climate has changed substantially since circa 4000 BCE.  Tree
> distributions will have changed.

I have not looked at Mallory and Adams, but since we tend to put into encyclo-
paedic form material gathered by others, I would expect that they have relied
on Paul Friedrich--and he certainly *did* look at fossil pollen reports and the
like for his maps of ancient tree distribution.

								Rich Alderson


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 28 05:13:46 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 10:43:46 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.104346.0530.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Saturday, 25 March, 2000 11:16 AM

At 06:31 PM 3/24/00 +0530, Gabor Sandi wrote:

>> I am talking about good fits and less good ones. I know that names for
>> animals and plants can be changed, lost and transferred. In fact, some of
>> the biological data do not provide good evidence for the Kurgan hypothesis:
>> if *bhbgos meant "beech", it is curious that the beech tree is absent from
>> the north Pontic area (see the map accompanying the headword BEECH in
>> Mallory and Adams).

> Does this take into account changed distributions of the tree in ancient
> times?  The climate has changed substantially since circa 4000 BCE.  Tree
> distributions will have changed.

[From GS]

Mallory and Adams do talk at length about the gepgraphical spread of the
beech in Europe since the last Ice Age, with the information taken in part,
presumably, from Friedrich. Unfortunately, the information on the map in
Mallory and Adams does not correspond very well to what is written in the
text - but, in any case, it is clear that aside from a corner of the Crimea,
the beech was absent from the north Pontic area during the 5th-4th millennia
BC, and therefore from the PIE core area as defined by Gimbutas and Mallory.

>> In my view, if Gimbutas is right, *ekwos meaning 'horse' was part of PIE.
>> If Renfrew is right, the word either did not exist in PIE, or it was a
>> nominalized form of an adjective *H3okus or the like, meaning 'fast'. When
>> this nominalized form was applied to the horse later on, it became a
>> technical word that was widely borrowed from one IE language to another.

> It would have to be loan-translation, to account for the phonetic facts.
> (As in, e.g. German 'Fernsehen' from Anglicized Latin 'television').

I don't understand why the speakers of PIE (or of a later IE language) at
some stage couldn't have used normal derivational processes for this
development, without any reference to another language. After all, they
domesticated the horse (even Renfrew would probably admit that the horse was
domesticated by IE speakers).

This is a quibble, but 'television' is hardly Latin. It is a "barbaric"
combination of the Greek prefix "tele-" (far) and the Latinate
English/French "vision" (presumably borrowed during the Renaissance). The
Latin word was "visio", with all other cases formed on the stem vision-.

Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
"television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
are there?

Cordially,
Gabor Sandi  g_sandi at hotmail.com


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Tue Mar 28 09:36:07 2000
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fib3IgU+FuZGk=?=)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 15:06:07 +0530
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.150607.0530.>

----- Original Message -----
From: proto-language <proto-language at email.msn.com>
Sent: Saturday, 25 March, 2000 4:10 PM

> Dear Gabor and IEists:

[ moderator snip ]

> [PR]
> I wonder how productive it is to adopt arguments from non-linguists that
> seem to have little likelihood of being accepted by linguists.

[GS]
By non-linguists, do you mean me or Gimbutas? I am a linguist - whether a
good one or not is not for me to say. Gimbutas's arguments are based on
archaeology, as well as a certain amount of theorizing that goes along with
any innovative scientific thinking. There are many linguists who accept the
Kurgan hypothesis - probably more than those who reject it outright.

> I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
> deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

[GS]

Sorry, of course I meant *H(1)o:k^us, *H(3)ek^uos would have resulted in
*H(3)ok^uos.

I am not too happy about the unusual length, or even the particular ablaut
grades either. But so much of ablaut variation is unpredictable that I would
not exclude this particular development. Neither would I oppose vehemently a
semantic development like "horse-like" > "fast, quick". My main point is
that *ekwos could be the result of internal derivational processes within
PIE, and there does exist a reconstructable root that could - in theory - be
related to it.

[ moderator snip ]


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 02:26:54 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 18:26:54 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <006f01bf8f08$6aab8840$6f9f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.182654.0800.>

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> Well, let us be a bit more precise. Old Indian [a]+[y] does *not* become /e/
> rather it becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] does *not* become /o/ rather it
> becomes /o:/. Careful notation distinguishes between long and short vowels
> although, in theory, I suppose there is no problem writing [o] so long as
> everyone knows that this indicates a long vowel /o:/.

Let's be careful with notations here:  [] indicate *phonetic* claims, while //
indicate *phonemic* claims.  It is  /ay/ that becomes /e:/, not [ay] or [ai];
mutatis mutandis, the same holds for the relationship between /aw/ and /o:/.

> I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least transitorily,
> have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and /o:/ like English
> /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat these sounds as
> diphthongal.

Indic *a = /a/ is phonetically [@], by which I mean a mid-central unrounded
vowel, not a reduced vowel.  This is often written in (American) phonology
texts with the inverted lowercase <v> symbol (cf. Laduslaw & Pullum, _Phonetic
Symbol Guide_, 2nd edition).  The sound of the collocations [@i] and [@u] are
familiar to those who have heard Canadian speakers from southern Ontario or
US speakers from the Tidewater region of Virginia, and their transition to
[e:] and [o:] is a simple matter of coloring of [@] and lowering of [i]/[u] by
the processes well-described by Patricia Stampe in papers published in the Ohio
State Working Papers in Linguistics in the mid-1970s.  There is no need for
them *ever* to have been [ei] and [ou]--though that is not ruled out.

> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
> preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding /w/;

Impossible, if you truly mean the notation you are using.  I think you mean
that [e] and [o] are allophones of /a/, but by the time we are speaking of
Indic, those relationships simply do not exist in the sense you intend.

> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before'; if
> a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If it
> is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

Because that makes claims about relationships which are not recoverable via the
method in question, internal reconstruction.  And the usual collocation is
"pre-IE" rather than "pre-PIE", though the latter is not really a solecism.  If
the results obtained by means of internal reconstruction can be correlated with
the results of Nostratic-level comparative reconstruction, we then have the
Nostratic equivalent of Kuryl~owicz's affirmation of the Saussurean _coe'ffi-
cients sonantiques_ in Indo-European, and Indo-Europeanists would have to then
reconsider very strongly their opposition to some version of Nostratic.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 03:36:50 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:36:50 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000324071048.00adeb30@mf.mailbank.com> (message from
 Stanley Friesen on Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:36:31 -0800)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.193650.0800.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

> At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>> if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If
>> it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

> Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
> the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
> descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
> Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
> has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
> other name is available for it.

Actually, the timeframe for pre-IE is *not* set with regard to Nostratic (for
whichever value of "Nostratic" one wishes to assume):  Internal reconstruction
is as strictly timeless as comparative reconstruction in its results.

As an example of what can be done by IR, I have been told that the alternations
between fricatives or affricates of various stripe and velars are transparent
enough in the Slavic languages that a clever linguist could eliminate all of
them through internal reconstruction--and would end up with a set of pre-forms
that would be incorrect for the Proto-Slavic stage that we reconstruct using
the comparative method.

The two methods must be used in conjunction, and with great care.

								Rich Alderson


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Tue Mar 28 09:35:46 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 11:35:46 +0200
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005a01bf9791$dcfd40a0$c99f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.113546.0200.>

Pat Ryan asks:

>Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
>(giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
>a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
>the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
>allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

>If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

Pashto

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Mar 28 14:33:27 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 15:33:27 +0100
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.153327.0100.>

Pat Ryan writes:

>>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>>> undisputed in any other language.

> [SF]

>> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
>> even in living languages.

> [PR]

> You assertion by itself does not convince me.

> Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
> in a minimal pair?

Easy.  English /h/ and [eng] -- the velar nasal, as in 'sing' -- do not
form even a single minimal pair.  They can't, because they are in
complementary distribution: broadly, /h/ only occurs syllable-initially,
while [eng] only occurs syllable-finally.  But we still count them as
two phonemes, and not as allophones of a single phoneme, since their
degree of phonetic similarity is so low.

The existence of minimal pairs may be a *sufficient* condition to
establish a phonemic contrast, but it is not a *necessary* condition.
Even when phones are phonetically similar, we can consider assigning
them to a single phoneme only when their distribution can be stated
by rule.  If we can't state their distribution by rule, then we can't
put them into a single phoneme, even if there are no minimal pairs.

In fact, minimal pairs are very hard to come by for the English [esh] /
[ezh] contrast.  All the minimal pairs I can think of are marginal for
one reason or another.

	obscure, archaic or elevated words:

		'ruche' / 'rouge'
		'leash' / 'liege'

	words of obvious foreign origin:

		'show' / 'zho'

	made-up words:

		'mesher' / 'measure'

	proper names, or derivatives of these:

		'Asher' / 'azure'
		'Aleutian' / 'allusion'
		'Confucian' / 'confusion'
		'shock' / 'Jacques'

There is one minimal pair that works for most of my British students:

	'assure' / 'azure'

But this doesn't work at all in my American accent, since I stress
'azure' on the first syllable -- a pronunciation that invokes giggles
or scowls from my students.

However, even if not one of these marginal pairs existed, it would
not be difficult to show that [esh] and [ezh] are distinct phonemes
in English.  That's because we have near-minimal pairs.  The following
work in my accent, and probably most of them work in all accents:

	'kosher' / 'closure'
	'vacation' / 'occasion'
	'thresher' / 'treasure'
	'fission' / 'vision'
	'nation' / 'equation'
	'masher' / 'azure'
	'pressure' / 'pleasure'
	'condition' / 'precision'
	'contrition' / 'derision'
	'motion' / 'erosion'
	'commotion' / 'corrosion'	
	'fuchsia' / 'fusion'
	'inflation' / 'invasion'
	'solution' / 'delusion'

Clearly, the choice of [esh] or [ezh] cannot be governed by rule.
In fact, there is probably no more economical way to account for
the distribution of these two sounds than to give lists of the
words containing them.  This observation is enough to establish
thet they must be distinct phonemes -- even if we have no minimal
pairs.

> [SF]

>> To show some sound difference is not phonemic
>> you have to show that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it
>> is not *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
>> then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of the
>> best texts on phonology.

>  [PR]

>  Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
>  phoneme from it?

I suggest the following:

Francis Katamba (1989), An Introduction to Phonology, London: Longman.
pp. 22-23.

Katamba cites the example of the African language Ewe, in which it is
apparently difficult to find minimal pairs for /f/ and /v/, even though
the two appear in near-minimal pairs with such a distribution that the
choice between them is impossible to state by rule.

> [PR]

> Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
> in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
> with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept this
> basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

This is *a* method of establishing phonemes.  But it is not *the only*
method of establishing phonemes.  If the distribution of two sounds
cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single
phoneme.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 02:38:51 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 18:38:51 -0800
Subject: linguistic maxims [was Re: pre-IE k > H]
In-Reply-To: <v01540b04b4f81e6abea7@[128.83.168.180]> (cjustus@mail.utexas.edu)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.183851.0800.>

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Carol Justus (cjustus at mail.utexas.edu) wrote in passing:

> Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the details of the
> Romance languages, took a position often reduced to the slogan "every word
> has its own history" because he found so many explanations for exceptions to
> regular sound correspondences.

Doesn't this particular maxim date back to Hermann Paul and the beginnings of
dialect geography--on which Schmidt based his proposal of the _Wellentheorie_?

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 03:48:29 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:48:29 -0800
Subject: TeX notation in e-mail [was Re: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions]
In-Reply-To: <005601bf95c2$16aa0b20$a0d31b3f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.194829.0800.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> 1) I believe the root of *kwekw-lo- should be emended to *k^wek^w-lo- on the
> strength of the palatal responses in Old Indian;

I'm really not sure what you mean by the collocation <k^w>:  If *I* wrote it,
it would be a TeX-style notation indicating a superscript <w>--that is, the
labiovelar.  Is this what you mean?  It is, of course, the correct notation
for the word reconstructed on the basis of Skt. _cakras_, Gk. _kuklos_, Eng.
_wheel_, etc.

Or do you mean to indicate a palatal *k', in which case the evidence is very
much against you?

Many of the people writing on this list are often sloppy with regard to the
writing of labiovelars (as in *{k^w}e{k^w}los) vs. clusters of palatal+*w (as
in *ek'wos "horse").  If we were all careful to write in a (somewhat modified)
TeX-style, as I have noted in the past, this sort of question would not arise.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 04:11:26 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:11:26 -0800
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <36.3b91cb2.26102d47@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.201126.0800.>

On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying anything new
> happened in that non-innovating residue.  Only certain innovations are deter-
> minative at each node.  Other innovations don't count, just as retentions
> don't count.

Every innovation counts.

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 28 06:08:19 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 01:08:19 EST
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.010819.EST.>

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>You said that Baltic and Slavic "_were_ in the 'innovative core'", while I
>said that they "were still in fairly close contact" with it and were
>transitional areas for the particular changes we were talking about.

-- I would agree with this, on the whole.  To be precise, my guess would be
that Balto-Slavic was in contact with Proto-Indo-Iranian on the east and
Proto-Germanic on the west; that is, that its relative geographical position
-- if not absolute location -- in the IE spectrum was consistent from the
time of the first break-up of the PIE linguistic continuum down to the
historic era, with respect to these dialect-clusters.  When we first get
written records, I-Ir and Slavic were in contact, and ditto Baltic and Slavic
and both with Germanic.

Of course, this brings up the question of how far back there was a meaningful
degree of differentiation between these "entities", _except_ of course that
with the advantage of hindsight we can say that one cluster was going to move
in a direction which eventually produced, say, Proto-Germanic.

Since, for example, some of the innovations that define Proto-Germanic seem
to be quite recent -- Iron Age, judging by the development of the Celtic
loanwords for things like iron technology and some social terminology like
"king" or "servant" -- what would be the distinction between
pre-proto-Germanic and pre-Balto-Slavic in, say, 1500 or 2000 BCE?

Not a question that can be settled, of course, but interesting to
contemplate.  (My own guess would be "not much".)

>but after this change this branch seems to have become very conservative
>(Sanskrit, Slavic, Baltic).

-- here I would disagree, to a certain extent.  Baltic and Slavic yes; but
Indo-Iranian, no.  After all, Sanskrit appears conservative precisely because
the version we have was fossilized as a "learned" and liturgical language,
rather like Latin.  Its forms date from a very early period, analagous to
that of our Mycenaean and Hittite records.

As a _spoken_ language, the Sanskrit of the earliest Vedas is usually
assigned a second-millenium BCE date; and certainly the (admittedly scanty)
remains of Indo-Aryan from the Mittannian sources would support that, since
they're datable to around 1500 BCE or a little later.

Thus if we compare our reconstructed PIE with Sanskrit (1200 BCE) and
contemporary Lithuanian (2000 CE) we get a roughly comparable degree of
innovation... but 3000 years + more time between PIE and Lithuanian than
between PIE and Rig-Vedic Sanskrit.

When we compare contemporary Lithuanian with contemporary Indo-Iranian
languages -- with Urdu, say, or modern Farsi -- the Baltic example looks to
be in another category altogether!

>(actually, one of the other Baltic languages, like Old Prussian or Curonian,
>may have been even more conservative, but since little or nothing of them
>survive it is not possible to say).

-- very true; entropy strikes again.  On the other hand, if you run Latvian
backward, you get a proto-language very much like Lithuanian!   Plus, of
course, we know that much of the territory now occupied by Latvian was
originally Uralic.

>But again (or still) this doesn't say anything specific about where they
>started out geographically except that Baltic was always in close proximity
>to Slavic.

-- not definitively, no.

However, at the earliest historic attestation, Baltic was directly north of
Slavic and Slavic extended from east of the Vistula into the forest-steppe of
the Ukraine.  The relationship of Baltic and Slavic and the lack of
identifiable substrata other than some influence from Uralic _and_ the
presence of Baltic river-names in the eastern and northeastern areas later
colonized by Slavic (Russian and Beorussian particularly) would argue that
they had occupied both this relative position _and_ their respective actual
territories for a very, very long time.

>But the presence of more archaic lexical items and fewer obvious substrate
>borrowings could equally well be a result of the refusal of the language to
>accept loans as of its still being in its original home.

-- quite true; we know, for example, that Anglo-Saxon ended up in England due
to migration and supplanted a Brythonic-Celtic language (and Latin), but you
couldn't prove it by linguistics alone.  11th-century Anglo-Saxon, the Wessex
dialect specifically, was still an extremely ordinary West Germanic language
and probably fully mutually comprehensible with its near kin in the Low
Countries.  It was still marginally mutually comprehensible with
Scandinavian, for that matter.   And there were very few Celtic loan-words --
about 12, if I remember correctly.

So the archaism and lack of non-IE loanwords in the Baltic languages _by
itself_ would not be a firm indication of anything, as you say.  However,
when taken in _combination_ with other factors, we're in somewhat different
territory.

Eg., Anglo-Saxon/Old English is geographically peripheral to the main mass of
the Germanic languages, with salt water in between, and there -are- a number
of Celtic place-names in its territory, increasing in number as you move
west.  Even if one knew nothing about the history prior to 1000 CE, you'd
still have enough for an informed guess that Anglo-Saxon was a fairly recent
offshoot of the main Germanic zone. (And, taking in similar evidence from the
Continent, that Germanic in general had been expanding at the expense of
Celtic and Romance.)

>English, on the other hand, just gobbles up loanwords and neologisms
>regardless of whether they violate English phonotactics or not (e.g.,
>aardvark, gnu, syzygy).  This is simply not a function of how close these
>respective languages are to their original homelands.

-- true; although, of course, we know that German is much closer
geographically to the proto-Germanic _urheimat_.

Interestingly enough, English only became exceptionally open to loan-words
after the Norman Conquest.  Prior to that, Old English was notably resistant
to foreign lexical influence.

>If we didn't have a historical record of the situation, the argument of
>conservatism plus lack of substratum influence could, other things being
>equal, be used to claim that Iceland is the original Scandinavian homeland.

-- good point.

Although there, we know that there was no prior population -- and my original
argument was that Baltic probably entered an area not far away from the
_urheimat_ ... _and_ one which was very thinly populated.  (What's now the
eastern part of the Baltic was late being neolithicized, if memory serves me
correctly.)

>Negative evidence cannot be used to construct specific scenarios. Negative
>evidence only means that there is no evidence.

-- it's not demonstrative, as positive evidence is.  However, I think it can
be legitimately used _in conjunction_ with other supporting evidence to say
that one of a number of alternative explanations is more likely than another.

As Holmes said, the crucial thing was what the dog did in the night.  When
Watson pointed out that the dog had done nothing in the night, he replied:
"Exactly."


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 28 13:41:37 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 16:41:37 +0300
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <004201bf9646$623b6500$8f70fe8c@lucent.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.164137.0300.>

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

> "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott at stratos.net> wrote:

>> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
>> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
>> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
>> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>> leaf of the tree.

> You >may< come to a leaf that is non-innovating for all >branch
> determining< innovations. A branch might innovate without splitting
> further. Also the non-innovating branch might go extinct, while other
> branches continue to split.

All true, but there will >still< be a minimal path from the top of the
tree to some leaf that represents a surviving language.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue Mar 28 20:03:04 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 21:03:04 +0100
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.210304.0100.>

> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
> leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
> the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
> these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

Yes - you're right!

Does this raise questions about the validity of this particular tree
structure?    How far does this mirror reality - are we really saying that
in any dialect group there must of necessity be one dialect that never
innovates?   That's what the tree - in this form - implies, and it is
clearly untrue of real life.   Or is it only a result of the fact that we
select certain innovations (those that create distinctions) and ignore
others (those within a group already distinct)?

Peter


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 28 15:13:57 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:13:57 +0300
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <200003250228.SAA08350@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.181357.0300.>

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote
> regarding the conservative nature of Lithuanian:

>> Expressed in terms of a tree model, it sounds very much like a scenario
>> that Steve Long proposed:  At any node on the tree, there is a
>> non-innovating branch and other branches.  If we follow the
>> non-innovating branch from each node, at the bottom of the tree we
>> arrive at a language that is practically identical to PIE (in this
>> case, Lithuanian).  Now everyone said 'no, no, that can't be right
>> because actually all branches innovate, just in different ways.'
>> The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue against this.  Nodes in
>> a tree must be based on some comparative linguistic information.  The
>> only such information that is useful is some innovation that appears
>> in one branch and not in the other.  Shared retentions don't
>> propagate either as waves or trees.  They just stay where they were
>> left, like a well-trained dog.  Of course the fact that Lithuanian
>> was always on the non-innovating branch (or least innovative branch if
>> you prefer) after satemization and RUKI (and only partly on the
>> innovating branch even there; sort of holding on to the end of
>> the branch with one paw) says nothing about where it was located
>> geographically.

> The problem is that there is *no* IE language without significant
> innovations vis-a-vis all the others.  Lithuanian is conservative in
> its *retention* of the nominal case system (for the most part--though
> it loses one and adds a couple based on a Finnic model), but it is
> innovative in the verb; which counts more heavily?

> Further, if we look at the *phonology*, Lithuanian is extremely
> innovative:  It merges the voiced plain and voiced aspirate series of
> stops, it has contrastive palatalized and non-palatalized series of
> obstruents, it merges *o(:) and *a(:) and otherwise disturbs the vowel
> system, and it moves the IE accent from the center of the word to the
> ends.  So now tell me how conservative it is.

> There is *no* branch on the tree that can be labeled "non-innovating",
> and we do ourselves a disservice as linguists, and a greater one to
> the non-linguists looking to us for guidance, by pretending that there
> is.

1) Yes, there is no such thing as a language that has not innovated.

2) Yes, it is likely that some areas of a language will innovate more than
others.

3) Yes, there is no branch of the tree that can be labeled
"non-innovating". (But there are branches at nodes that can be labeled
non-innovating.)

But there is a minimal path through the tree that when followed to the
bottom will find the language that is closest to the parent.  It is not as
simplistic as I originally expressed it (and Steve Long went astray when
he assumed that a non-innovating branch from a node never innovated again
until the next node), but we had a lengthy discussion about this last
August, started by Jon Patrick, under the subject of "Principled
Comparative Method - a new tool".  How the minimal path is calculated was
the essence of the thread and the specific application reported involved
only phonology, but it should be applicable to other areas of language as
well.

Now 2) above says that the minimal path for one area of language may
not (probably won't) be the same as for another.  But then one can just
award prizes by areas or average the path lengths for the areas to find
an overall winner.

But if it is possible to quantify the amount of change along each path,
then unless *every* IE language has innovated *precisely* the same amount
(down to the last decimal point) there must be a minimal path through
the tree.  There *must* be.  1) and 3) above just say that there will be
no path of length 0 in any given area (although there could be for a
specific character).

Personally, I think we do a disservice to linguistics when we say that
linguistic data can't be quantified so there is no point in trying.  It
gives the people who turn to linguists for guidance the idea that
linguists are simply innumerate.  While I feel that there are some
categories of linguistic data that are not readily subject to
quantification (particularly semantic change), there are others that are
(particularly phonological change), and what can be learned from these
quantifications should be pursued for what it may teach us about some of
the conclusions that have been arrived at by intuition.  Our tools aren't
that good yet that we can afford to ignore potential improvements.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From sarima at friesen.net  Tue Mar 28 04:22:48 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:22:48 -0800
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
In-Reply-To: <4b.227bee2.260f1a33@aol.com>
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.202248.0800.>

At 02:45 AM 3/26/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 3/25/2000 12:55:59 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>> -- the general rule is that if there are cognates in more than three
>> otherwise unrelated and geographically widely separated branches of IE.,
>> it's a PIE word.

>I don't know how three IE languages can be "otherwise unrelated."  Is this
>another one of the special concepts in your version of historical linguistics?

It means "not having a more recent common ancestor than PIE itself". (Or,
at least that no such more recent ancestor is *demonstrable* using
comparative methods).

>With regard to "geographically widely separated" - I have no idea how those
>languages could always be "widely separated" and still have been once the
>same language.

Nobody denies this.  The "widely separated" applies to the time of earliest
attestation.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 28 06:20:38 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 01:20:38 EST
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.012038.EST.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Definitely not.  But I sure have problems with YOUR version of historical
>linguistics.

-- well, since mine is taken straight from the textbooks...

>I don't know how three IE languages can be "otherwise unrelated."  Is this
>another one of the special concepts in your version of historical
>linguistics?

-- French and Italian are both IE languages.  French and German are both IE
languages.  But French and German are "otherwise unrelated" while French and
Italian are related by both being Romance languages.

Is this clear now?

Hence, if we have cognates in, say, Hittite, Tocharian, and Celtic, we can
assume a PIE origin for the word.  (Note the distinction between "cognate"
and "loanword"; this seems to be a perennial problem of yours.)

>I think the memory slip is yours.  No known word in Hittite.

-- Luwian "azuwa", and Lycian "esbe".

>*Telephone: reflexes in all IE languages.  Give me a break.

-- no breaks as long as you fail to understand the difference between
"cognate" and "loanword", I'm afraid.


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue Mar 28 04:30:19 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 20:30:19 -0800
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
In-Reply-To: <4b.227bee2.260f1a33@aol.com> (X99Lynx@aol.com)
Message-ID: <MON.27.MAR.2000.203019.0800.>

On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> As has been pointed out many, many, many times on this list, the Luwian
> 'asuwa' looks to be a IIr or Mitanni-Aryan borrowing, unless you assume some
> kind of special Luwian satemization that could yield *-kw > sw.

Interestingly enough, there were references to Luwian (and Southern = Western
Anatolian in general) as "satem" at the Greater Anatolia colloquium, though
others did not necessarily accept this characterization--but the assibilation
of *k' was not disputed.

								Rich Alderson


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Mar 28 16:12:38 2000
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 17:12:38 +0100
Subject: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.171238.0100.>

Steve Long writes:

> Does the HOW LIKELY question apply when someone assumes that two different IE
> languages could have once been the same language in the same place and then
> separate and MAGICALLY become "quite distant from each other" without the
> intermediate step (required of most phenomenon in this physical universe) of
> first being close-by - and at that point very amenable to contact and
> linguistic exchange?

Nothing magical about it.  It is perfectly possible for a single
speech community to split abruptly into two or more widely separated
groups, for example because of migration or because of the intrusion
of a different group into the middle of the territory.  Norwegian
and Icelandic is perhaps a nice case in point, but there are lots of
others.  Athabaskan, for example.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue Mar 28 05:20:16 2000
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 00:20:16 EST
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.002016.EST.>

>colkitto at sprint.ca writes:

>In historical linguistics (and probably in other related fields) the terms
>`more archaic' and `less archaic' need some quantifying.  To take one fairly
>obvious, albeit extreme, example, probably no scholars would rate English as
>`more archaic' than German overall, and yet for certain features, in
>phonology, morphology, and syntax, this is an fair statement.

-- true, but not really relevant.  All languages conserve; all languages
innovate.  The overall degree of either is obviously what we mean when we
refer to a _language_ as conservative or innovating.

I don't think anyone would deny that Lithuanian taken as a whole shows less
innovation vs. a vs. PIE than, say, Polish; and that both show less than,
say, any Germanic language.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue Mar 28 20:16:56 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 21:16:56 +0100
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.211656.0100.>

[On English as
`more archaic' than German, alleged to be a "fair statement"]

Robert's main point is clearly right, namely:
>the point here is that `more archaic' and `less archaic' are relative
>terms, to be used with a degree of caution.

So this is merely a note on some details and trivia:

>3) The preservation of IE w in English as opposed to its development to v in
>German, e.g., E win - Ge (ge)winnen [(ge)vinen].

Both are developments from an original consonantal u.   The English sound is
much more consonantal than the Latin, and probably more so than the IE.   So
if German and English both develp the sound, I am not certain we can say one
development is more archaic than the other.

>4) The preservation of a three-fold alternation in certain Gc Class I strong
>verb paradigms, e.g., E drive (< IE *-ei-) - drove (< IE *-oi-) - driven (<
>IE *-i-), as opposed to Ge treiben (< IE *-ei-) - trieb - getrieben (the
>generalisation of the reflex of CG *-i-).

Again, both are generalisations.   PIE perfect and proto-Germanic preterite
had singular *-oi-, plural *-i-*.   English generalised the singular, German
the plural.   Why should one generalisatoin be called more archaic than the
other?

>6) The preservation of 1st sg am in English as opposed to its loss in German.

English has 1st sg "be" or even (I believe) "bin" in non-standard dialects.
What does non-standard German have?

>7) The preservation of certain lexical items from Common Germanic (and IE) in
>English as opposed to their loss in German, e.g., E tree, choose, ask.

The same is true the other way round.

Peter


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Tue Mar 28 16:05:02 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 10:05:02 -0600
Subject: PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.100502.0600.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl

>cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus) wrote:

>>A major reason for doing exhaustive studies of Hittite 'know' and other verbs
>>such ak(k)-/ek(k)- 'eat' was to explore the ablaut types in Hittite that
>>differed from e.g., es-/as- 'be'. At that time I noted (pp. 14-16 on
>>etymology) just a few etymological relations. The major one was the
>>comparison with the singular:plural alternation of the old perfect (vida:
>>vidma, wait:witum etc.) suggesting that Hittite 'know' might be
>>grammatically cognate, albeit not formally cognate, with the IE pattern.

>>An oddity which looked even older was the one with Latin sum, sumus, sunt:
>>es, est, estis that had a parallel in Hittite uhhi, umeni, uwanzi : auti,
>>auszi, aummeni, autteni 'see'. Then (as now) there were phonological
>>explanations for the 'sum' set, but the fact that Hittite 'see' showed such
>>a similar patterning raised questions in my mind as to whether the
>>phonological explanation of the Latin forms might not be ad hoc, that these
>>two (independent?) groupings of a 1sg, 1pl, and 3pl together with zero
>>grade-like forms as opposed to 2sg, 3sg, and 2pl full grade forms might not
>>reflect something almost totally lost to us.

>>In that context the sg:pl alternation looked like a reanalysis or leveling
>>of an older pattern on a basis (sg vs. pl) that we still understand.

>That's an interesting possibility.  However, it is difficult to
>see what 1sg, 1pl and 3pl might have had in common from an
>accentual point of view.  The singular/plural split, on the other
>hand, makes good sense in that respect: the plural forms had one
>extra syllable ("plural" *-en-), which may have caused the accent
>to shift one syllable to the right.

>Also, if *o derives from **a:, as I have proposed, the Hittite
>a/e ablaut in the hi-conjugation can be seen as old, and be
>derived by the rule that unaccented *a: (in the plural) is
>shortened to *a (> *e), while accented *a: (in the singular)
>remains and becomes *o (Hitt. /a/).  Shortened *e in the plural
>may have attracted the accent secondarily in Hittite (so it
>remained as /e/), while in the other IE languages it may have
>stayed unaccented and therefore suffered further reduction to
>zero (o/zero Ablaut in the PIE perfect).

Oops! I just noticed that I incorrectly translated 'eat' for Hittite
ak(k)-ek(k)- 'drink' in my earlier message. It was a lapse conditioned by
the fact that 'eat' is another one that ablauts in Hittite.

If the Hittite /a/ of 'know' corresponds to Greek perfect /o/, then it
corresponds nicely with the perfect meaning often associated with 'know'.
Are you suggesting that Greek perfect /o/ was also originally **a? Is **a
different from *a and hence responsible for the Latin and Greek distinction
between /a/ and /o/?

Besides the clearly relic pattern of Hittite 'see' (comparable with Latin
sum), Hittite has the a/e pattern of 'know' (/e/ only in the 2pl) but also
the pattern e/a of 'be' (/a/ only in the 3pl). Are you suggesting that
these are two different accentual patterns.

I don't recall what Craig Melchert (book 1994?) and Sara Kimball (various
articles with her book appearing any day now in Meid's Innsbruck series)
have done with these, although I do know that Sara has incorporated the
evidence from plene writings in Hittite as evidence for PIE accentual and
length correspondences.

Carol Justus


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Tue Mar 28 17:02:53 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 17:02:53 GMT
Subject: Brahui
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.170253.GMT.>

Brahui is a Dravidian language spoken in a most unexpected place ::
Baluchistan, which is a northwest part of Pakistan. Such an outlier weighs
on the history of the IE-descended and other languages in the area. I have
heard two theories re Brahui:-

(1) It is a valuable relic of a time when Dravidian was spoken over much of
India.
(2) The Brahui-speakers are descended from soldiers that were raised in
Dravidian South India fairly recently and dumped in Baluchistan when no longer
needed. As such, their language is irrelevant here.

Which is true?

How much is Dravidian related to Elamite, as I have heard ideas of?

Where does the word "Dravidian" come from?

As regards the idea that the language of the Indus valley civilization was
Dravidian, I read once that:-
  (1) Two Indus Valley gambling dices were found, and on their faces were
pictures of things whose names resembled the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 in Dravidian.
  (2) Over time more and more Dravidian words get into Indian Sanskrit
writings, but no more in the Andhra period and after, as if that is when the
lower castes in the north of India finally forgot their old Dravidian
languages.

What is usual opinion about this?


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Mar 28 17:26:04 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 20:26:04 +0300
Subject: pre-IE k > H
In-Reply-To: <01JNFLGJFYGI9TUE07@LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.202604.0300.>

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000 CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU wrote:

<snip>
> Carol Justus wrote:

>> I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
>> happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
>> Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

> Absolutely!

Actually it isn't.  The writing of Hittite /h/ with the diacritic is just
a historical accident.  Hittite cuneiform was adapted from Akkadian
cuneiform.  In Akkadian, the only h-type sound is etymologically /x/, and
the transliteration system devised for Akkadian reflects this. (In writing
foreign words and names, the Akkadian h-type signs are often used for a
wide range of laryngeals [h, he, ayin, ghain].) However, the Akkadian
signs for this were adapted from Sumerian and we don't really know what
h-type sound Sumerian had (but most suspect that it was plain /h/).
Since Akkadian was the first of the cuneiform languages to be read, the
h-type signs were written with the h with diacritic that is used to
transcribe the etymologically equivalent sound (/x/) in Arabic.  Again, we
don't know what the h-type signs represent in Hittite since the sound is
not preserved in any other IE languages, but the transliteration system
for Hittite simply uses the values of the signs that were established in
Akkadian because the transliteration system is supposed to be a one-to-one
mapping of cuneiform signs to the latin script (i.e., no interpretation is
allowed and arbitrary changes to the sign values are not permitted).  So
the diacritic on the h has no particular significance for Hittite or IE
phonology.  It is only significant in identifying cuneiform signs, and
since Akkadian has only one h-type sound, the diacritic is often dropped
in publications to save typesetting costs and trouble since there is
nothing else that it can be confused with.  But the value of the
Hittite sound represented by the cuneiform cannot be extrapolated from
the Akkadian value except to conclude that it is some kind of laryngeal.

This being the case, Carol is still quite right in saying that
k > laryngeal is better terminology than k > h.  But it has nothing
to do with the diacritic under the h.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Mar 28 21:36:57 2000
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 23:36:57 +0200
Subject: Tonal and stress accents
In-Reply-To: <003b01bf981a$1245d000$b301703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.233657.0200.>

"Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

>Contrary to Castilian stress accent marking, Valencian Catalan uses two
>different diacritics to mark stress: acutus for a rising pitch on the stressed
>syllable, gravis for the descending pitch: Valhncia (e-gravis), but: Gandma
>(i-acutus). Maybe Miguel Carrasquer can tell us more about Catalan
>accentuation.

As far as I know, Catalan has nothing but a stress accent.  The
orthographic accent is used to mark "unusually" stressed
syllables (according to a system of diacritic-avoidance in
general not unlike that of Castilian, although different in most
of the details [e.g. it's Valencia and Gandi'a in Castilian, but
Vale`ncia and Gandia in Catalan]).  The letter "a" is always
marked with a grave, the letters "i" and "u" invariably with an
acute, while "e" and "o" are marked with one or the other,
depending on the quality of the vowel (/e/ ~ /E/, /o/ ~ /O/).  As
far as Valencian goes, [e] and [E] are not phonemes (not sure
about [o] and [O], but I could look it up if anybody is
interested), so strictly speaking Val`encia might as well be
Vale'ncia, in Valencian that is.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 29 02:05:57 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:05:57 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005a01bf9791$dcfd40a0$c99f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.180557.0800.>

On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
> formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
> transferred to another syllable.

The *pitch* accent, not the *stress* accent, at least if you are having
recourse to Lehmann's theory of the vowel system.

								Rich Alderson


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 29 04:56:03 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 20:56:03 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <005a01bf9791$dcfd40a0$c99f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.205603.0800.>

At 02:12 AM 3/27/00 +0000, proto-language wrote:

>We are talking about whether Old Indian *at one point* had basically a one
>vowel system.

>I think the facts make obvious that there was a time, however brief, when
>Old Indian had only /a/ as a vowel, with [ay] and [aw] on the way to
>becoming /ai/ -> /e:/ and /au/ -> /o:/.

I maintain that at that time it *also* had /u/ and /i/, making it a *three*
vowel system.  Indeed, in Sanskrit it is probably harder to maintain that
/u/ and /w/ are allophones than it was in PIE (and likewise /i/ and /y/).

>Above you wrote: "the rarer something is among living languages, the more
>evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language."

>If that is your position, why not put it in practice on all questions under
>consideration?

>Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
>(giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
>a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
>the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
>allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

1) Sanskrit is NOT RECONSTRUCTED, so the rule does not apply.

2) I believe it is more adequately described as: /a/, /a:/, /e:/, /i/,
/i:/, /o:/, /u/, /u:/.

3) I am fairly certain there are other somewhat similar languages.  (My
reference that has the vowel system survey is buried, and not currently
accessible, so I cannot immediately name any).

>If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

If I manage to find my vowel survey text, I will.

>>> [SFp]

>>>> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived*
>>>> from the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel
>>>> quality any less phonemic in the current language.

>>> [PRp]

>>> Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

The vowel difference between those words *started* as an allophonic one,
and developed separately later.

>I am talking about a *synchronic* situation during which Old Indian had /a/,
>/ay/, and /aw/.

and /i/ and /u/ and /a:/ and /i:/ and /u:/.

[PR]

>Well, something has been lost in translation here. You mentioned Pre-IE, I
>thought, not Pre-PIE.

If so, then it was a typo.  The term is indeed Pre-PIE.  (Check some of
Lehman's work, for instance, which even uses Pre-Pre-PIE).

[SF]

>> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
>> even in living languages.

>[PR]

>You assertion by itself does not convince me.

>Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
>in a minimal pair?

Most of my old basic linguistics texts are also inaccessible. But if I
remember correctly English is particularly rife with that situation.

Remember, there is a combinatorial problem: to fulfill your requirement you
must have a minimal pair for *every* pair of comparable sounds.  Even
allowing that vowels and consonants cannot really be paired, this still
makes for an amazing number of necessary pairs for English, or even High
German.

English, depending on the dialect, has between 9 and 11 simple vowels (not
counting diphthongs), requiring around 100 minimal pairs just for the basic
vowels alone!  Then there are at least 21 consonants, 23 if one counts
/dz^/ and /tc^/, 24 if one adds the glottal stop, requiring 441 to 576
minimal pairs.  So, English would require at least 522 minimal pairs (605
in some dialects), even keeping vowels and consonants separate.  If one has
to distinguish each vowel from each consonant with a minimal pair (which
your strict rule would require), one would need 900 to more than a thousand!

I seriously doubt one can come up with even 500 minimal pairs in English.

>[PR]

>Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
>phoneme from it?

If you will volunteer to come over and sort my library :-)

>[PR]

>So, you consider that a chain shift was going on in IE?

The change of /a:/ to /o/ is not necessarily a chain shift!

Indeed, if there had previously been no mid-back vowel, there is no need
for any further shifts at all.

>[PRp]

>>> And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
>>> certain accentual/tonal conditions?

Because:

a) nobody has ever produced a set of tonal and accentual conditions that
actually explains all of the /o/'s in PIE.  (I.e. no sufficient set of
conditioning factors has ever been proposed).

b) it is phonetically unlikely: I cannot think of any other well-attested
case of rounding being conditioned strictly be tone or accent.

[Note, a phonemic /o/, even originating mainly from older /a:/, need no
longer have a  visible set of conditioning factors, due to phonetic change
and analogical extension].

>[SF]

>> Because nobody has come up with a consistently applicable set of such
>> conditions that can explain all of the occurrences of /o/ in PIE.

>[PR]

>I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
>formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
>transferred to another syllable.

It fails to cover some of the cases, especially in the perfect and deverbal
nouns, and it requires some variances in the "reconstructed" accent in
regard to the endings to make it work.

[Believe me, I have tried to make a complete inflectional model in which
this works, but the moment one gets into details, it breaks down: unless
one uses circular reasoning to postulate a shift in accent when no evidence
except the /o/ point to it].

>[SF]

>> Umm, where do you get that?

>> You seem to keep turning what I say around and making the implication go
>> the opposite direction from anything I ever said.

>[PR]

>I believe it was your point that OE /a:/ shows up as Modern English /o:/.

Yes, but I *never* said that *all* ME /o:/ come from OE /a:/!
[Any more than all PIE /o/ would come from /a:/, some would come from H3,
and some might come from loss of nearby -u or ^w (aka umlaut)].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 22:49:26 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 22:49:26 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.224926.0000.>

Dear Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 9:35 AM

Pat Ryan asks:

>> Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
>> (giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
>> a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
>> the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
>> allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

>> If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

> Pashto

 [PR]

I have no ready means of information on Pashto so would you mind if I
enquire:

1) does Pashto have any long vowels beside /e:/ and /o:/?

2) in Pashto, are /e:/ and /o:/ derivable from earlier /Vi/ and /Vu/?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 30 00:59:51 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 00:59:51 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.005951.0000.>

Dear Pete and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 8:44 AM

[PRp]

>>>> Look at Old Indian. There, any vowel other than [a] is clearly a
>>>> combination of [a] + [y], [w], or [H] ) or [a] of we consider vrddhi.

[PG]

> What began as a cautious statement which allowed for exceptions has now
> apparently become dogma.   There are counter-examples within Sanskrit.
> For example
> (a) Rigveda 1:35:5 has hiatus in pra-ugam.   The u vowel cannot be taken as
> a vocalic form of w, nor can a-u be considered here as [a +w].

[PR]

In the context of the previous postings, I suggested that Old Indian /i/ and
/u/ were vocalic allophones of /y/ and /w/ in avocalic situations,

To what IE root do you propose to attribute [-ugam]?

As far as your example is concerned, I think we both know that if the IE
root were *preug-, the resulting Old Indian would be **pro:g-.

Is it unreasonable to suppose that [a-u-] is handled differently than
[-au-]?

[PG]

> (b) in Rigveda 1:1:9 the written svastaye must be scanned (and therefore was
> pronouned) as su-astaye.   This is not uncommon, and affects some forms with
> written -y- as well.

[PR]

And what problem does this present for my hypothesis? Pokorny suggest that
*su- is a zero-grade of *swe-. Is that so palpably wrong?

[PG]

> (c) The wise suggestion that vi-yukta should be distinguished from vyukta
> (vi+vac).

[PR]

I do not see this as having a bearing on the problem either.

[PG]

> So the analysis of Sanskrit as a one vowel language is not totally true.

[PR]

We have to distinguish --- and I believe you are not --- the proposition
that "Sanskrit is a one vowel language" from what *I* am proposing: "Old
Indian has one phonemic vowel".

[PRp]

>> Old Indian [a]+[y] becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] becomes /o:/.

[PG]

> On the one vowel theory of Sanskrit, these combinations cannot exist.
> [a+i]> /e:/, and [a+u} > /o:/.   [y] and [w] occur before vowels, and remain
> after [a].  For example, the aorist of the root yuj (yoke) is ayuji.

[PR]

Please see above.

As for your example, the /y/ in ayuki is before /u/, hence not vocalic.

[PG]

> y is very rare before a consonant in Sanskrit, and perhaps only in -yy-
> and -yv-.

[PR]

And is it your opinion that [-yy-] was pronounced /-yy-/? Or was it possibly
/-iy-/?

[PG]

> Furthermore, how would you explain -e:y-?

[PR]

as from *-eHey- or *-Hey-.

[PRp]

>> But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian?    It does not
>> exist so far as we can determine.

[PG]

> Yes it does - the law of palatalisation:  Kwe > ca, kekara > cakara etc.

[PR]

I have addressed this in another posting which should be dstributed before
this is.

[PRp]

>> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>> preceding /j/ etc

[PG]

> Very far from obvious, as there are so many counter-examples.

[PR]
Sorry, cannot agree that you have furnished them.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 22:42:44 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 22:42:44 -0000
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.224244.0000.>

Dear Larry and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Trask" <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 2:33 PM

[PRp]

>>>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>>>> undisputed in any other language.

<snip>

[LT]

>>> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
>>> even in living languages.

>> [PRp]

>> Your (SF's) assertion by itself does not convince me.

>> Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
>> in a minimal pair?

[LT]

> Easy.  English /h/ and [eng] -- the velar nasal, as in 'sing' -- do not
> form even a single minimal pair.

[PR]

Now I am really confused. I would have thought that /h/ could be established
by many minimal pairs like [her] / [per] and /ng/ by many minimal pairs like
[bang] / [ban], along the lines of your dictionary's: "The existence of such
a pair demonstrates conclusively that the two segments which are different
must belong to two different phonemes."

I really do not see where phonotactics has much to do with the question
since there is no phonological similarity.

[LT]

> They can't, because they are in
> complementary distribution: broadly, /h/ only occurs syllable-initially,
> while [eng] only occurs syllable-finally.  But we still count them as
> two phonemes, and not as allophones of a single phoneme, since their
> degree of phonetic similarity is so low.

> The existence of minimal pairs may be a *sufficient* condition to
> establish a phonemic contrast, but it is not a *necessary* condition.

[PR]

So what other condition is "*sufficient*" to establish a phonemicity?

[ moderator snip ]

>> [PRp]

>> Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
>> in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
>> with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept this
>> basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

[LT]

> This is *a* method of establishing phonemes.  But it is not *the only*
> method of establishing phonemes.  If the distribution of two sounds
> cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single
> phoneme.

[PR]

Ah, a diplomatic answer.

Well, a rule that has been proposed to account for IE /o/ is that it results
when the (tonal-/stress) accent of an /e/ is shifted to another syllable.

Additionally of interest is that no IE verbal root seems to contain /o/.

So, applying your insight, is IE /o/ a phoneme or not?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Thu Mar 30 18:00:45 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 21:00:45 +0300
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
In-Reply-To: <E12Zx3g-0002Yg-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.210045.0300.>

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Larry Trask wrote:

> Pat Ryan writes:

>>>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>>>> undisputed in any other language.

<snip of lots of stuff>

> The existence of minimal pairs may be a *sufficient* condition to
> establish a phonemic contrast, but it is not a *necessary* condition.
> Even when phones are phonetically similar, we can consider assigning
> them to a single phoneme only when their distribution can be stated
> by rule.  If we can't state their distribution by rule, then we can't
> put them into a single phoneme, even if there are no minimal pairs.

<snip of lots more stuff>

>> [SF (= Stefan Georg)]

[ Moderator's note:
  "SF" is Stanley Friesen rather than Stefan Georg.
  --rma ]

>>> To show some sound difference is not phonemic you have to show
>>> that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it is not
>>> *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
>>> then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of
>>> the best texts on phonology.

<snip of still more stuff>

>> [PR]

>> Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
>> in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
>> with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept
>> this basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

> This is *a* method of establishing phonemes.  But it is not *the only*
> method of establishing phonemes.  If the distribution of two sounds
> cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single
> phoneme.

I would say that even a minimal pair is not a sufficient condition to
establish two sounds as separate phonemes.  The distribution by rule
takes precedence.  Take the English minimal pair

         'thigh'  /  'thy'

         (the pair 'thistle'  /  'this'll' [contraction of 'this will']
         is clearly marginal)

Most people would not insist on phonemic status for both [th] and [dh] in
English on the basis of this minimal pair (although some would doubtless
claim that there has been a phomemic split similar to what occurred with
/s/ and /z/).  This is because otherwise the sounds are in complementary
distribution, [dh] occuring in voiced environments and in deictic words
and pronouns, [th] otherwise.  Thus it is not only as Larry says "If the
distribution of two sounds cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be
assigned to a single phoneme," but also 'If the distribution of similar
sounds can be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to separate
phonemes.'

Minimal pairs are a shortcut to finding phonemes, but contrastive
environments are a clincher.  As in the comparative method and
internal reconstruction, similar items that are in complementary
distribution are usually aspects of the same thing.  But believe it
or not, linguists will still disagree on the phonemic status of sounds
and different analyses may result in different numbers of phonemes
claimed for a particular language.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From sarima at friesen.net  Wed Mar 29 05:06:17 2000
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 21:06:17 -0800
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
In-Reply-To: <20000328054458.82303.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.210617.0800.>

At 10:43 AM 3/28/00 +0530, G?bor S?ndi wrote:

>Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
>"television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
>are there?

Actually, I can think of several (my German is a bit rusty, so I may have
some morphemes wrong): "Ansichtwerfer" (= "picture transmitter") seems
reasonable.  Some derivative of the word for 'radio', say "picture-radio"
would also work.  Or one could have "movie-box" or "picture-box", or ...

[Well, I switched to English, but I think the idea is clear].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Mar 28 23:27:45 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 23:27:45 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.232745.0000.>

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 1:36 AM

> "proto-language" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>> I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
>> deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

>> On the other hand, it, at least, appears possible that **H(1)o:k^u'-s
>> *might* be derived from *H(1)ek^uo-s although the lengthened vowel is a
>> problem.

[MCV]

> If we assume an adjective stem *h1ek^u- ( ~ *h1o:k^u-),
> *h1ek^u-o- certainly looks like a definite/substantivized
> adjective ("the fast one"), derived with -o-.

[PR]

Yes, I think it possible that *H(1)ek^-ew- (verbal) could first become
*H(1)e'k^-u- (nominal), and then become *H(1)ok^-u'- (adjectival), and
finally *H(1)o:k^u'- with expressive (vr.ddhi) lengthening.

And from *H(1)ek^-w-e'-s (nominal), the nominal form we find,
*H(1)e'k^w-o-s.

I would be inclined to consider the basal form a combination of *H(1)e- +
*k^(y)e(:)u-, either a form derived from *ke:i- or an alternate form of the
same root, *ke:u-, seen in its s-mobile from: *s-k^e/e:u-.

I think it might even be possible to ultimately reconstruct **k^(h)e-H(1)e-,
'**run away'; **k^(h)e(-H(1)e)-w-, '**speed up (away), cause one's self to
start running (away)'); **k^(h)e-ye-, '**fast', with the initial *H(1)e-
representing 'away', somewhat redundantly.

[PRp]

>> Secondly, it is generally more likely that an adjective ('fast') was
>> derived from a noun ('horse') than the reverse --- particularly in view of
>> the early relative paucity of adjectives, and the existence of terms like
>> **k^(h)e:i-to- [my emendation] (*ke:i-to-), 'fast'.

[MCV]

> Notwithstanding the fact that six of the terms for "horse" listed
> in C.D. Buck's dictionary (alogo, horse, hengst, arklys, z^irgas
> and haya-) are adjectival or at least epithetical in origin.

[PR]
That is certainly a good point diachronically.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Mar 28 23:56:25 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 23:56:25 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <TUE.28.MAR.2000.235625.0000.>

Dear Gabor and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabor Sandi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 5:13 AM

<snip>

> Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
> "television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
> are there?

Lautbildfernsendungempfangsschirmwerk?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 00:02:19 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 00:02:19 -0000
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.000219.0000.>

Dear Gabor and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabor Sandi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 9:36 AM

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: proto-language <proto-language at email.msn.com>
> Sent: Saturday, 25 March, 2000 4:10 PM

>> Dear Gabor and IEists:

> [ moderator snip ]

>> [PRp]
>> I wonder how productive it is to adopt arguments from non-linguists that
>> seem to have little likelihood of being accepted by linguists.

> [GS]
> By non-linguists, do you mean me or Gimbutas? I am a linguist - whether a
> good one or not is not for me to say.

[PR]

I had no intention of questioning your credentials or competency.

[GS]

> Gimbutas's arguments are based on
> archaeology, as well as a certain amount of theorizing that goes along with
> any innovative scientific thinking. There are many linguists who accept the
> Kurgan hypothesis - probably more than those who reject it outright.

[PR]

My problem with Gimbutas is not the Kurgan Hypothesis per se but the
extraneous ideological interpretation she attached to the bare
archaeological facts.

[PRp]

>> I am reasonably sure (though, subject to correction) that a process of
>> deriving *H(1)ek^uo-s from *H(3)o:k^u's is simply not possible.

> [GS]

> Sorry, of course I meant *H(1)o:k^us, *H(3)ek^uos would have resulted in
> *H(3)ok^uos.

[PR]

For whatever it might be worth, this was my point.

[GS]

> I am not too happy about the unusual length, or even the particular ablaut
> grades either. But so much of ablaut variation is unpredictable that I would
> not exclude this particular development. Neither would I oppose vehemently a
> semantic development like "horse-like" > "fast, quick". My main point is
> that *ekwos could be the result of internal derivational processes within
> PIE, and there does exist a reconstructable root that could - in theory - be
> related to it.

[PR]

See my answer to Miguel. I have no problem with anything you have written
here.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar 29 12:40:53 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 14:40:53 +0200
Subject: Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.144053.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "G?bor S?ndi" <g_sandi at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 7:13 AM

[snip]

> Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
> "television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
> are there?

> Cordially,
> Gabor Sandi  g_sandi at hotmail.com

[Ed]

If I'm not mistaken, Icelandic uses 'sk?nwarp' (or something like that -
Nordic specialists, correct me) with roots meaning 'shine' ('project'?) and
'cast' respectively. This refers to the transmitter (like 'broadcast' in
English), not the receiver as in German. Just a matter of point of view of the
observer.

Ed. Selleslagh


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Mar 29 12:52:44 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:52:44 +0300
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
In-Reply-To: <00dc01bf98f3$df2ce700$6852063e@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.155244.0300.>

On Tue, 28 Mar, petegray <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

[quoting Brian M. Scott]

>> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
>> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
>> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
>> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>> leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
>> the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>> these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

>Yes - you're right!

>Does this raise questions about the validity of this particular
>tree structure?    How far does this mirror reality - are we
>really saying that in any dialect group there must of necessity
>be one dialect that never innovates?   That's what the tree - in
>this form - implies, and it is clearly untrue of real life.   Or
>is it only a result of the fact that we select certain
>innovations (those that create distinctions) and ignore others
>(those within a group already distinct)?

Yes, he is right, but he is also not right (and since he was
defending a position that I had taken originally, I was also both
right and not right).  He is right if you only consider the
behavior of the tree at the nodes.  But he is not right if you
cansider what may happen along the branches as well.  In my
original statement of the process, I conflated two steps.

While a tree node typically represents a binary opposition
between innovation and non-innovation, there is nothing that
requires that the non-innovating branch coming out of the node
has to be the least innovative branch by the time that the next
node is reached or even at the end of the branch if it never
branches again.  I think that this is the point that you were
trying to raise with your original post on this matter.  So you
(meaning I) cannot simply use the non-innovating branch out of a
node to determine which is ultimately the least innovative branch
and this is the point that I did not make clear originally.  The
example of Lithuanian itself exemplifies this since it was at one
point on the innovative branch of a node.  Now it would be
possible to design a tree so that Lithuanian would always be on
the non-innovating branch (this would mean that you couldn't use
palatal assibilation or RUKI palatization to define a node), but
this would be manipulating the data to produce the desired result;
the exact equivalent of using binary choices to force a card on
the subject in a magic trick.

Therefore it is not true that there must of necessity be one
dialect that never innovates.  In fact, it is extemely unlikely
that there would ever be a dialect that never innovates.  If
there is, it is not a living language.  But unless there is some
law that says that all languages have to innovate exactly the
same amount over time, there must be a minimally innovated
dialect.  I do not think that there is such a law; if there were,
glottochronolgy would work.  In the absence of such a law then
dialects are free to innovate as they will, and, barring an
astronomical amount of coincidence, some dialect will innovate
less than all the others.

It is my contention that this least innovative dialect will be at
the end of the path through the tree from the top to the bottom
that has the lowest total number of innovations on it.  Again, it
is my contention that, unless all languages must innovate to
exactly the same extent, there must be such a minimal path
through the tree.  Saying that this path can be found by
following the non-innovating path from each node is not strictly
speaking true (It might be, but it doesn't have to be).  It may
not even be on the least innovative branch between one node and
the next.  But if you add up all the innovations (perhaps as
number of rule applications necessary to derive new forms from the
old) for each path through the tree, one of these paths will be
minimal.

Yes, trees do not reflect real life.  Only part of our
information can be displayed with a tree.  The tree will look
different depending on which part of our information we choose
to display.  Nodes are customarily defined by innovations found
on one branch out of the node and not on the other since it is
only shared innovations that define linguistic groupings within
a larger group.  Innovations that do not result in branching are
generally not accounted for in trees.  But trees are still useful
for visualizing certain relationships even if they do not
correspond to reality (rather like the planetary model of the
atom).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 19:12:24 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:12:24 -0000
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.191224.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 4:11 AM

> On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

>> There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying anything new
>> happened in that non-innovating residue.  Only certain innovations are
>> determinative at each node.  Other innovations don't count, just as
>> retentions don't count.

> Every innovation counts.

[PR]

For a (IMHO) very lucid discussion of the principles invloved in trees, I
think some list-members might enjoy:

Family Evolution, Language History and Genetic Classification by Ilia Peiros

in

Historical Linguistics & Lexicostatistics, edited by Vitaly Shevoroshkin and
Paul Sidwell

In addition, there are good discussions of glottochronology and
lexicostatistics.

A bonus is a convenient collection of attested Palaeo-European vocabulary.

And no, I have no motive but interest in recommending it.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar 29 13:40:08 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:40:08 +0200
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.154008.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Whiting" <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 5:13 PM

[snip]

> Personally, I think we do a disservice to linguistics when we say that
> linguistic data can't be quantified so there is no point in trying.  It
> gives the people who turn to linguists for guidance the idea that
> linguists are simply innumerate.  While I feel that there are some
> categories of linguistic data that are not readily subject to
> quantification (particularly semantic change), there are others that are
> (particularly phonological change), and what can be learned from these
> quantifications should be pursued for what it may teach us about some of
> the conclusions that have been arrived at by intuition.  Our tools aren't
> that good yet that we can afford to ignore potential improvements.

> Bob Whiting
> whiting at cc.helsinki.fi

[Ed]

The problems is of course the near-absence of people with advanced statistics
skills in linguistics (fortunately there are some exceptions on this list - I'm
NOT one of them).

I think programs based on fuzzy-set theory that are used to do multidimensional
statistical analysis on things that are as difficult to quantify as political
tendencies or market analysis (locating 'cliques' in the jargon) could be very
useful in detecting clusters of linguistic traits and quantify their closeness/
distance. Apparently some research has been done in this direction (e.g. on
Chinese dialects), but I'm not aware of the use of existing marketing research
tools (software) in linguistics. Does anyone know more?

Ed. Selleslagh


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Wed Mar 29 14:39:08 2000
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 09:39:08 EST
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.093908.EST.>

In a message dated 3/29/2000 3:38:01 AM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi wrote:

>(and Steve Long went astray when
>he assumed that a non-innovating branch from a node never innovated again
>until the next node),

Quick note:

In this matter, Steve Long never, ever 'went astray.'

Steve Long (with admirable patience and civility) kept (and keeps) pointing
out that if you are defining your tree in terms of ONLY CERTAIN 'shared
innovations', then those 'other' innovations in the non-innovating branch are
not in the data and NOT represented in your tree.  Remember that, like other
cladistic modeled trees, the UPenn tree being discussed was entirely built on
(in form at least) a narrowed sample of 'data' and therefore ENTIRELY
excluded from the tree those innovations you are referring to.

Steve Long did and does walk the true path.

with admirable patience and civility,
Steve Long


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 29 23:44:35 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:44:35 -0800
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.20.0003281645530.13623-100000@vesuri.Helsinki.FI>
 (message from Robert Whiting on Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:13:57 +0300
 (EET DST))
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.154435.0800.>

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote:

> Personally, I think we do a disservice to linguistics when we say that
> linguistic data can't be quantified so there is no point in trying.  It gives
> the people who turn to linguists for guidance the idea that linguists are
> simply innumerate.  While I feel that there are some categories of linguistic
> data that are not readily subject to quantification (particularly semantic
> change), there are others that are (particularly phonological change), and
> what can be learned from these quantifications should be pursued for what it
> may teach us about some of the conclusions that have been arrived at by
> intuition.  Our tools aren't that good yet that we can afford to ignore
> potential improvements.

Agreed.

The issue I have is with the terminology "innovating" vs. "non-innovating":
*This* is what I think is misleading to a number of non-linguists, who do not
see "non-innovating" as equivalent to "not innovating in the same way".  *I'm*
not altogether comfortable with it in that meaning myself, and I understand
what is meant by it.

								Rich Alderson


From edsel at glo.be  Wed Mar 29 13:09:50 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:09:50 +0200
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.150950.0200.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 10:16 PM

> [On English as `more archaic' than German, alleged to be a "fair statement"]

[snip]

>> 6) The preservation of 1st sg am in English as opposed to its loss in
>> German.

> English has 1st sg "be" or even (I believe) "bin" in non-standard dialects.
> What does non-standard German have?

[snip]
> Peter

[Ed]

I don't know about non-standard German dialects having anything else than 'Ich
bin', but I can inform you about Dutch, closely related to both English and
German:

Standard: ik ben, jij bent (in Flanders, and archaic, often :gij zijt, actually
a plural), hij/zij is; pl.: wij zijn, jullie zijn (Fl. and arch. often: gij
zijt), zij zijn. In Antwerp and other Brabant dialects: 1st sg. ik zijn
(actually a plural), and in various Holland-Dutch dialects 1st/2nd/3rd pl.
wij/jullie/zij benne(n) (actually a 'fabricated' plural of 'ben').

As you can see, a lot of permutations among the three (actualy two original
ones) roots 'is'/'zijn'/'be'. Like in all Germanic, and IE in general.

Ed. Selleslagh.


From alderson at netcom.com  Wed Mar 29 23:52:20 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:52:20 -0800
Subject: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE
In-Reply-To: <29.2f7bc98.26119b10@aol.com> (JoatSimeon@aol.com)
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.155220.0800.>

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, S. M. Stirling (JoatSimeon at aol.com) wrote:

> I don't think anyone would deny that Lithuanian taken as a whole shows less
> innovation vs. a vs. PIE than, say, Polish; and that both show less than,
> say, any Germanic language.

Unless, for example, some version of the "New Look" is correct and Germanic and
Armenian are the most conservative with respect to the stop system rather than
highly innovative.

								Rich Alderson


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Thu Mar 30 19:34:56 2000
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 13:34:56 -0600
Subject: linguistic maxims [was Re: pre-IE k > H]
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.133456.0600.>

>On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Carol Justus (cjustus at mail.utexas.edu) wrote in passing:

>> Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the details of the
>> Romance languages, took a position often reduced to the slogan "every word
>> has its own history" because he found so many explanations for exceptions to
>> regular sound correspondences.

>Doesn't this particular maxim date back to Hermann Paul and the beginnings of
>dialect geography--on which Schmidt based his proposal of the _Wellentheorie_?

>                                                                Rich Alderson

Quite right. This has a long tradition, but Malkiel did a particularly
thorough job of examining the details for the Romance languages, including
stages that are still spoken and earlier stages with textual histories. One
does cannot always extend the experience of one language to another, of
course.


From jbisso at voila.fr  Wed Mar 29 16:54:58 2000
From: jbisso at voila.fr (Jacques Bisso)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 18:54:58 +0200
Subject: Chaque mot a son histoire
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.185458.0200.>

Rich Alderson wrote:

>On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Carol Justus (cjustus at mail.utexas.edu)
>wrote in passing:

>>Some years ago, Yakov Malkiel, exhaustively studying the
>>details of the Romance languages, took a position often
>>reduced to the slogan "every word has its own history"
>>because he found so many explanations for exceptions to
>>regular sound correspondences.

>Doesn't this particular maxim date back to Hermann Paul
>and the beginnings of dialect geography--on which Schmidt
>based his proposal of the _Wellentheorie_?

In speaking, Malkiel almost always attributed this maxim to the "father"
of dialect linguistics, Jules Gillieron. Here is what Iorgu Iordan (and
John Orr) has to say about it: "The realities of language, however, as
they are revealed in the studies of Gillieron and his disciples, prove
that there can be no talk of applying a phonetic norm to a series of
words, because we never find two words identically situated. Words which
at first sight seem to share the same conditions show themselves, in
fact, to have each a life of its own, different, to a greater or lesser
degree, from that of all the rest. This is the inwardness of another
fundamental principle of the Gillieronian doctrine, mainly, that every
word has its own history -- 'chaque mot a son histoire'." [Iordan-Orr.
1970. An Introduction to Romance Linguistics. p. 170.]

According to Elcock: "The principle that each word has its own
individual history, implicit in the teaching of Gillieron and formulated
in print by his pupil Karl Jaberg, now commands almost universal
acceptance." [W. D. Elcock. 1975. The Romance Languages. p. 164.]

Malkiel writes: "The dictum 'Chaque mot a son historie' has customarily
been ascribed, by friend and foe alike, to Jules Gillieron [...] This
widespread belief in Gillieron's authorship involves a dual
oversimplification. On the one hand, Gillieron, admittedly an
indefatigable toiler and a man endowed with an unfailing flair for,
shall we say, 'detective' work in linguistic reconstruction but
certainly no outstanding theorist, relied heavily on the truly original
thinking of Schuchardt, to whom, characteristically, he dedicated -- on
the occasion of the revered master's seventieth birthday -- the first
collection of his pioneering essays." [Malkiel. 1964. "Each Word Has a
History of Its Own." in Glossa: A Journal of Linguistics. I:2, 1967, pp.
137-149. (also in Malkiel. 1983. From Particular to General Linguistics
: Essays 1965 - 1978.)] In this article, he goes on to investigate
Bloomfield's (!) acceptance of the dictum under discussion.

jim


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Wed Mar 29 13:03:18 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:03:18 +0200
Subject: Brahui
In-Reply-To: <1B45430A36@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.150318.0200.>

>Brahui is a Dravidian language spoken in a most unexpected place ::
>Baluchistan, which is a northwest

southwest

>part of Pakistan.

>Where does the word "Dravidian" come from?

A hypersanskritization of /tamiZ/ (= Tamil)

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Wed Mar 29 16:43:22 2000
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 16:43:22 GMT
Subject: English as a creole
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.164322.GMT.>

  "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott at stratos.net> wrote about inversion.

People who could write might well have learned to write with inversions as a
literary practice, so much by years of early schoolroom indoctrination that
they reproduced it in all their writing same as they learned non-phonetic
English spellings such as "trouble" instead of "trubble". A similar example is
the recent (and to me annoying) spread from officialese to wide common spoken
usage of "on an X basis" instead of the good old adverb-forming suffix "X-ly".


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 19:06:24 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:06:24 -0000
Subject: TeX notation in e-mail [was Re: Loaded "HOW LIKELY" questions]
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.190624.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 3:48 AM

> On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

>> 1) I believe the root of *kwekw-lo- should be emended to *k^wek^w-lo- on
>> the strength of the palatal responses in Old Indian;

[RA]

> I'm really not sure what you mean by the collocation <k^w>:  If *I* wrote it,
> it would be a TeX-style notation indicating a superscript <w>--that is, the
> labiovelar.  Is this what you mean?  It is, of course, the correct notation
> for the word reconstructed on the basis of Skt. _cakras_, Gk. _kuklos_, Eng.
> _wheel_, etc.

> Or do you mean to indicate a palatal *k', in which case the evidence is very
> much against you?

> Many of the people writing on this list are often sloppy with regard to the
> writing of labiovelars (as in *{k^w}e{k^w}los) vs. clusters of palatal+*w
> (as in *ek'wos "horse").  If we were all careful to write in a (somewhat
> modified) TeX-style, as I have noted in the past, this sort of question would
> not arise.

[PR]

Well, I should have been more careful, and additionally explained what I
meant explicitly.

I believe that the phoneme (/x/) which became IE *k<w>, the labiovelar,
appeared in that earlier language before /e/, /a/, and /o/.

I believe that palatal responses in Old Indian to IE *k<w>  are due *not* to
an earlier IE *k<w>e but rather to a previous /*xe/ as opposed to /*xa,o/.

I have adopted a notation of *k^<w> to indicate this phoneme though, of
course, I realize it is phonologically contradictory.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed Mar 29 19:56:07 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:56:07 -0000
Subject: pre-IE k > H
Message-ID: <WED.29.MAR.2000.195607.0000.>

Dear Bob and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Whiting" <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 5:26 PM

[ mdoerator snip ]

> But the value of the
> Hittite sound represented by the cuneiform cannot be extrapolated from
> the Akkadian value except to conclude that it is some kind of laryngeal.

> This being the case, Carol is still quite right in saying that
> k > laryngeal is better terminology than k > h.  But it has nothing
> to do with the diacritic under the h.

[PR]

I propose a minor correction.

/x/ is not a "laryngeal"; rather it is a dorsal fricative.

Also, since cuneiform had signs at its disposal that were VC, and these were
used in Ajjadian for syllables deriving from /?V/, e.g., I think the
presumption should be that [h] (with or without diacritical sub-hook)
represented /x/.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Mar 30 10:13:23 2000
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 12:13:23 +0200
Subject: Neanderthal DNA
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.121323.0200.>

I would like to bring to your attention the 'feature of the week' in the most
recent issue of Nature (March 30, 2000): http://www.nature.com/nature/fow/
about Neanderthal DNA results. It is a series of good and balanced articles
that may have some bearing on the origin of language as we know it, and on the
out-of-Africa theory.

This may be somewhat beyond the scope of the list, but I am sure several
members will be interested.

Ed. Selleslagh


From alderson at netcom.com  Thu Mar 30 23:33:46 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 15:33:46 -0800
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <018101bf99e3$568a66c0$749f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.153346.0800.>

On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

> We have to distinguish --- and I believe you are not --- the proposition
> that "Sanskrit is a one vowel language" from what *I* am proposing: "Old
> Indian has one phonemic vowel".

In any reasonable phonological theory, the two statements are equivalent.  What
do you think differentiates them?

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 30 17:35:32 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 17:35:32 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.173532.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 2:26 AM

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

[PRp]

>> Well, let us be a bit more precise. Old Indian [a]+[y] does *not* become /e/
>> rather it becomes /e:/; O. I. [a] + [w] does *not* become /o/ rather it
>> becomes /o:/. Careful notation distinguishes between long and short vowels
>> although, in theory, I suppose there is no problem writing [o] so long as
>> everyone knows that this indicates a long vowel /o:/.

[RA]

> Let's be careful with notations here:  [] indicate *phonetic* claims, while
> // indicate *phonemic* claims.  It is /ay/ that becomes /e:/, not [ay] or
> [ai]; mutatis mutandis, the same holds for the relationship between /aw/ and
> /o:/.

[PR]

Thank you for noticing that.

[PRp]

>> I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
>> transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
>> /o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly treat
>> these sounds as diphthongal.

[RA]

> Indic *a = /a/ is phonetically [@], by which I mean a mid-central unrounded
> vowel, not a reduced vowel.  This is often written in (American) phonology
> texts with the inverted lowercase <v> symbol (cf. Laduslaw & Pullum,
> _Phonetic Symbol Guide_, 2nd edition).  The sound of the collocations [@i]
> and [@u] are familiar to those who have heard Canadian speakers from southern
> Ontario or US speakers from the Tidewater region of Virginia, and their
> transition to [e:] and [o:] is a simple matter of coloring of [@] and
> lowering of [i]/[u] by the processes well-described by Patricia Stampe in
> papers published in the Ohio State Working Papers in Linguistics in the
> mid-1970s.  There is no need for them *ever* to have been [ei] and
> [ou]--though that is not ruled out.

[PR]

A good point. And, in view of examples like pra-ugam, probably very
pertinent.

[PRp]

>> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>> preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
>> /w/;

[RA]

> Impossible, if you truly mean the notation you are using.  I think you
> mean that [e] and [o] are allophones of /a/, but by the time we are speaking
> of Indic, those relationships simply do not exist in the sense you intend.

[PR]

Well, let me try again. Old Indian [e:] is an allophone of /a/ in an
environment preceding /j/; [o:] is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
preceding /w/. And yes, I do realize that closer in time, Ve:V could
contrast with VaV, imparting phonemic status to /e:/.

<snip>

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu Mar 30 18:15:33 2000
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 18:15:33 -0000
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.181533.0000.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard M. Alderson III" <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 2:05 AM

> On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

>> I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
>> formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
>> transferred to another syllable.

[RA]

> The *pitch* accent, not the *stress* accent, at least if you are having
> recourse to Lehmann's theory of the vowel system.

[PR]
Correction accepted. Although, as we all know, the relationship of stress-
and tone-accents is gnarled.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Fri Mar 31 05:37:41 2000
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 07:37:41 +0200
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
In-Reply-To: <015a01bf99d1$1df25aa0$749f113f@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.073741.0200.>

>I have no ready means of information on Pashto so would you mind if I
>enquire:

>1) does Pashto have any long vowels beside /e:/ and /o:/?

Yes, a:, i:, u: are also present.

>2) in Pashto, are /e:/ and /o:/ derivable from earlier /Vi/ and /Vu/?

The sources of /o:/ include OIr. /a:/, /-aha-/ athl. (/au/ > /u:/
normally), whereas for /e:/, i-diphthongs are among the sources.

However, the Pashto vowel system is not *exactly* like the Sanskrit one, in
that it contains a phonemic schwa (which may be the short counterpart of
e:), which I overlooked, so for the parallel you were looking for, a
different language presents itself: Balochi

St.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Mar 31 19:14:50 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 20:14:50 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.201450.0100.>

> 1) Sanskrit ... is more adequately described as: /a/, /a:/, /e:/, /i/,
> /i:/, /o:/, /u/, /u:/.

Sanskrit also had short (!!) [e] and [o] as allophones of /e/ and /o/ before
a non-elided initial /a/ - according to MacDonell, A Vedic Reader, p20.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Mar 31 19:22:33 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 20:22:33 +0100
Subject: PIE e/o Ablaut
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.202233.0100.>

>> .. pra-ugam

> To what IE root do you propose to attribute [-ugam]?

Hyeug - to yoke.   Either the /y/ or the /H/ has caused hiatus here by
dropping out.   This means that your "rule" for the combination /a + u/ is
not always true.

>su-astaye.

The problem is again that your "rule" of consonant/vowel allophones doesn't
work and would need revising to cover cases like this.   Perhaps you can
revise it without trouble - but in its present form, a succession of two
vowels is not possible.

Peter


From alderson at netcom.com  Thu Mar 30 23:52:02 2000
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 15:52:02 -0800
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
In-Reply-To: <015101bf99d0$3513ca80$749f113f@oemcomputer>
 (proto-language@email.msn.com)
Message-ID: <THU.30.MAR.2000.155202.0800.>

On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote, responding
to Larry Trask's post of Tue, 28 Mar 2000:

>>> Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
>>> in a minimal pair?

> [LT]

>> Easy.  English /h/ and [eng] -- the velar nasal, as in 'sing' -- do not
>> form even a single minimal pair.

> [PR]

> Now I am really confused. I would have thought that /h/ could be established
> by many minimal pairs like [her] / [per] and /ng/ by many minimal pairs like
> [bang] / [ban], along the lines of your dictionary's: "The existence of such
> a pair demonstrates conclusively that the two segments which are different
> must belong to two different phonemes."

Of course they are established by those minimal pairs--but there is no minimal
pair involving *those* *two* *phonemes*.

In rabid American Structuralist writings, complementary distribution of two
apparent phonemes required that they be combined into a single phoneme with
two (or more) allophones--until it was pointed out that in English, [h] and [N]
were in complementary distribution ([h] only occurs word-initially, [N] word-
medially and -finally), and otherwise fit the minimal-pair requirement for
phonemehood, as you yourself note.  This led to the _ad hoc_ creation of the
requirement for "phonetic similarity" among all the allophones of a phoneme.
(I think Twaddell wrote that position paper--it's in Joos, _Readings in
Linguistics_, in any case.)

NB:  It's "phonetic", not "phonological", similarity that is required in this
phonological theory.

								Rich Alderson


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Mar 31 19:27:12 2000
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 20:27:12 +0100
Subject: minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.202712.0100.>

>....  But believe it
> or not, linguists will still disagree on the phonemic status of sounds
> and different analyses may result in different numbers of phonemes
> claimed for a particular language.

Interestingly, this has come up before on the list even with reference to
English - and in particular, the phonemicity of voiceless /w/ ("where" etc,
in some dialects) and c-cedilla in words like "hue".

If you want a minimal pair, I offer:   hue ~ who;  but even this does not
guarantee phonemic status for the initial sound in "hue".

Peter


From BMScott at stratos.net  Fri Mar 31 05:41:49 2000
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 00:41:49 -0500
Subject: Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or
 NW-IE)
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.004149.0500.>

Robert Whiting wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Mar, petegray <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

> [quoting Brian M. Scott]

>>> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
>>> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
>>> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
>>> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>>> leaf of the tree.  It is equally true that if you always follow
>>> the innovating branch you will arrive at some leaf.  Which leaves
>>> these are is of interest; that there are such leaves is not.

>> Yes - you're right!

[...]

> Yes, he is right, but he is also not right (and since he was
> defending a position that I had taken originally, I was also both
> right and not right).  He is right if you only consider the
> behavior of the tree at the nodes.

Yes, I was making a statement only about the structure
of binary trees.  I took it as obvious that there will
have been innovations along branches, so that the
'non-innovating' branch may in fact be nothing of the
kind.  I wish that I'd thought of generalizing to
weighted trees to get a more realistic result, though!

[Snip weighted trees and incompleteness of tree models; I
agree with all of it.]

To clarify one other point:

BMS:

>> At each node you start afresh, so it's not really meaningful
>> to speak of 'one and the same branch'.

Steve Long responded:

> Actually one would not start afresh at each node.  IF your
> "branch-offs" only mark a limited set of innovations at each
> node, then those innovations in theory will not be found in
> the last chronological residue of the non-innovating
> language/languages.

My statement that each node is a fresh start was in response
to the comment that 'it is not necessary that it is always one
and the same branch which does not innovate'.  Every minimal
path through the tree from the root to a leaf is a branch, so
every non-terminal node and edge lies on more than one branch,
and it is therefore not clear what can be meant by 'one and
the same branch' unless one has chosen a particular branch
beforehand.  From a tree-structural point of view each node
is the root of a subtree that does not depend on the ancestors
of that node, so you really do start afresh there.  This is
also true from a linguistic point of view, since change is
inevitable along every edge.

SL:

> There is nothing in the data you are using to justify saying
> anything new happened in that non-innovating residue.

The data that I have in mind comprise everything known about
the IE languages.  This discussion at this point is (if I
understand it correctly) about their actual history as it
may be (partly) modelled by tree structures, not about the
methodological details of some particular tree construction.

Brian M. Scott


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 31 11:42:55 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:42:55 +0300
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <200003292344.PAA02747@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.144255.0300.>

On Wed, 29 Mar, Richard M. Alderson III <alderson at netcom.com>
wrote:

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Robert Whiting (whiting at cc.helsinki.fi) wrote:

<snip>

>> Our tools aren't that good yet that we can afford to ignore
>> potential improvements.

>Agreed.

>The issue I have is with the terminology "innovating" vs.
>"non-innovating": *This* is what I think is misleading to a
>number of non-linguists, who do not see "non-innovating" as
>equivalent to "not innovating in the same way".  *I'm* not
>altogether comfortable with it in that meaning myself, and I
>understand what is meant by it.

Agreed again.  But innovating/non-innovating is a by-product of
the tree model, and I expect that most of us are not altogether
comfortable with the tree model either.  The tree model has
severe limitations and it is important to be aware of what these
limitations are.  Perhaps all trees should be required to have
a warning label something like "WARNING:  This tree does not
reflect reality except in certain narrow areas.  Do not try to
apply this tree to real life situations."  or "WARNING:  This
tree is an abstraction based on limited data.  Prolonged use
without constant reference to the data may be hazardous to your
mental health."

Even so, the tree model is still useful for certain things so it
can't really be dispensed with.  And anything that provides a
better model of the features that the tree doesn't, will probably
distort the features that are made clear by the tree, as well as
running the risk of being too complex to be comprehensible (e.g.,
isogloss maps or dialect geography).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 31 11:52:13 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:52:13 +0300
Subject: Of Trees, nodes,
 and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)
In-Reply-To: <4a.357a36c.26136f8c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.145213.0300.>

On Wed, 29 Mar, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 3/29/2000 3:38:01 AM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi wrote:

>(and Steve Long went astray when he assumed that a
>non-innovating branch from a node never innovated again until the
>next node),

>Quick note:

>In this matter, Steve Long never, ever 'went astray.'

Sure you did, Steve.  You just don't know enough different things
yet to be able to realize it.  I'm still waiting for conclusion
jumping to become an Olympic event so you can come into your own :>

>Steve Long (with admirable patience and civility) kept (and
>keeps) pointing out that if you are defining your tree in terms
>of ONLY CERTAIN 'shared innovations', then those 'other'
>innovations in the non-innovating branch are not in the data and
>NOT represented in your tree.  Remember that, like other
>cladistic modeled trees, the UPenn tree being discussed was
>entirely built on (in form at least) a narrowed sample of 'data'
>and therefore ENTIRELY excluded from the tree those innovations
>you are referring to.

And this is fine, and as long as you stick to the tree and
realize that the tree does not model reality but only a limited
part of it, then you won't get into much trouble.  But defining
the tree to do certain things doesn't redefine real life.  And
when you start saying that the tree represents real life, then
you are going astray.  You did this when you posted on Sun, 5 Sep
1999

     That is the way this tree is set up.  Whatever is
     "innovating" gets a node and a name.  But there is always a
     non-innovating language left over, for the next node to
     innovate way from.  (Otherwise, Graeco-Armenian is
     innovating away from Italo-Celtic.)  So, node after node,
     there is a language that does not innovate.  Left over for
     the next node to innovate away from.

     The only node on that tree that represents a non-innovating
     language is marked PIE.  And this tree also posits a group
     of speakers who are always non-innovators, node after node.
     And because they are not the innovators, they remain PIE.
     Right down to the last node.  Unless of course they are the
     last node.

As far as the tree is concerned, this is correct.  This is the
way all trees are set up.  They are based on binary oppositions.
But in real life, there is no such thing as a "non-innovating"
language.  And when real life conflicts with the model then you
have to say that the model is wrong, not that real life is.  So I
will amend my previous statement and agree with you that you did
not go astray by saying that innovation in the tree only takes
place at the nodes; *in the tree*, this is true.  So you didn't
go astray until you assumed that the tree represents reality.

Now you seem to have gotten a glimmer of this reality because on
Thu, 9 Sep 1999 you posted:

     The "nodes" represent certain specific innovations.  The
     "non-innovating" language that is assumed in the Stammbaum
     is only "non-innovating" as to that limited group of
     innovations.  Otherwise, that language could be quite
     innovative, I suppose.

This is precisely the point at issue, and I couldn't have put it
better myself (except for leaving off the "I suppose" and
perhaps adding "at that point in time" after "... as to that
limited group of innovations").  However, you seem to have
abandoned this tentative insight into reality since, less than a
week ago, you were right back at it:

     Sun, 26 Mar 2000
     Well, it is interesting to some of us.  Because it means
     that the methodology yields an IE language or set of IE
     languages which innovated nothing - within the scope of the
     innovations that were used earlier to differentiate all the
     other IE languages.  Depending on whether you call something
     an innovation or retention can of course completely change
     the identification of that language which 'innovated
     nothing.'

Once again, there is no such thing as a language which "innovates
nothing" in real life.  It may look that way on the tree, but the
tree is not a model of real life.  It is only a convenient way of
representing how we group languages based on shared innovations.
Innovations that do not result in a branching are not accounted
for in the tree.  Even more dangerous is the fact that, in real
life, isogloss lines may connect branches of the tree (this will
be a result of wave-effect changes affecting dialects still in
contact).  If there are enough of these, a tree model may even
become impossible.

Even your qualification "innovated nothing - within the scope of the
innovations that were used earlier to differentiate all the other
IE languages" does not make this true because a language can
always pick up an earlier innovation that it missed later.  For
example, Latin is a "centum" language (par excellence), but guess
how French <cent> is pronounced.  Now this is not the same as the
original palatal assibilation, because it results from a
different process and not all French /k/ has become /s/ (it
depends on the following vowel sound), but it does show that you
can't classify languages as non-innovating even to this extext
because the same innovation is likely to turn up sometime later
on the "non-innovating" branch precisely because innovations that
do not result in branchings are not accounted for in the tree.

Most IEists would probably, as an intuitive conclusion, classify
Lithuanian as being at the end of the minimal path through the
tree at least in the area of noun morphology, but it is clear
that Lithuanian is not on the "non-innovative" path through the
tree.  Therefore the "non-innovative" path through the tree does
not necessarily lead to the least innovated language in real life
and hence the "non-innovative" path does not necessarily have any
significance in reality.

Now I admit my culpability in prompting this 26 Mar posting
because, while I wanted to give you credit for the idea that
there will be a "least innovative" language, I did not make it
unequivocally clear how the concept of a "minimal path" through
the tree differs from that of a "non-innovative' path through the
tree.  The minimal path (a path from the top of the tree to the
bottom that has the fewest total innovations on it) has to exist
in real life unless all languages on the tree have innovated to
exactly the same extent.  The "non-innovative" path only has to
exist in the tree.  Now it is possible that the two may coincide,
but it is not intuitively obvious that it is likely.  One could
probably construct a tree so that the "minimal path" and the
"non-innovative" path do coincide, but that would just be
stacking the deck (there is a certain amount of deck-stacking
that goes on in trees anyway) and it is not needed as proof of
the existence of the minimal path.

And my example of a single-elimination tournament was not
entirely apt, because while in both trees the action takes place
only at the nodes, the single-elimination tournament does model
real life while the linguistic tree does not.  In a
single-elimination tournament the winner at a node proceeds to
the next node.  If something happens to the winner before the
next node, the next node is simply forfeited to the survivor. The
loser at the previous node is not brought back to play.

So I plead guilty to having carelessly led you back to your
untenable earlier assumption that because there is a
"non-innovative" path through the tree there must be a language
out there somewhere beyond the tree that has not innovated a jot
or a tiddle since PIE, and I apologize for negligently
contributing to your confusion.  Just hold your thought of 9 Sep
1999 and you should be all right.  There will be a language out
there that has innovated least, but it won't necessarily have
always been on the non-innovative branch of a node in the tree.

>Steve Long did and does walk the true path.

Yes, but to where? :)  The road to Hell is paved with good
intentions.  And again, I am sorry for inadvertently leading you
down the true path to recidivism.

>with admirable patience and civility,

Yes, your civility is appreciated and may your patience be
rewarded with eventual enlightenment.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri Mar 31 12:14:14 2000
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 15:14:14 +0300
Subject: Semantic alternatives (was Re: Dating the final IE unity,
 in particular the word for "horse")
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000328210154.00aeb280@mf.mailbank.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.151414.0300.>

At 10:43 AM 3/28/00 +0530, G?bor S?ndi wrote:

>Suppose the English word didn't exist: what would the Germans have called
>"television"? There are not that many semantic alternatives to "Fernsehen",
>are there?

There are lots and lots of semantic alternatives for just about
everything.  That's what makes a thesaurus so big.  It's also what makes
it possible for Ruhlen to reconstruct "Proto-World".  It's also what makes
crossword puzzles both possible and entertaining.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de  Fri Mar 31 07:51:00 2000
From: Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de (Hans Holm)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 07:51:00 GMT
Subject: "lumpers"
Message-ID: <FRI.31.MAR.2000.075100.GMT.>

Pat Ryan at march 31 wrote:

PR>For a (IMHO) very lucid discussion of the principles invloved in
PR>trees, I think some list-members might enjoy:

PR>Family Evolution, Language History and Genetic Classification by Ilia Peiros

PR>in

PR>Historical Linguistics & Lexicostatistics, edited by Vitaly Shevoroshkin and
PR>Paul Sidwell

PR>In addition, there are good discussions of glottochronology and
PR>lexicostatistics.

I would like to stress that no comparative linguist accepts any publication
combined with the names 'Shevoroshkin', Starostin, Bengtson, Ruhlen.....

These 'lumpers' do not have any competence in e.g. sound correpondences
nor in lexicostatistics at all.
Most list members discussing laryngeals in IE roots will not even react on
this 'recommendation'.

Regards
Hans J. Holm
D-30629 Hannover