tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45699854577709979492024-03-13T04:44:01.329+01:00Language EvolutionHow and why language varies and changesPiotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-4523165539577300382016-02-23T22:30:00.004+01:002016-02-23T23:31:03.708+01:00The Strange Case of the Jumbled Vowels<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Though
scattered traces of athematic reduplicated presents can be found in several
branches of Indo-European, it’s only Indo-Iranian and Greek that preserve them
well enough to enable reconstruction. Indo-Iranian evidence is especially
important, since that branch seems to distinguish two types reduplicated
presents, one with *<b>e</b> and the other with *<b>i</b> as the echo vowel. Moreover, the ablaut (vowel
alternations) in the conjugation of reduplicated presents can be seen there
more clearly than in Greek.<br />
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li>Vedic <i>bábhasti</i>, <i>bápsati </i>‘chew, devour’, as if from *<b>bʰe-bʰes-ti</b>, *<b>bʰe-bʰs-n̥ti</b> [1]; </li>
<li>Vedic <i>jígāti</i>, <i>jígati </i>‘go’, as if from *<b>gʷi-gʷah₂-ti</b>, *<b>gʷi-gʷh₂-n̥ti</b>.</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">Some
Indo-Europeanists believe that the two types are inherited and their
coexistence in Indo-Aryan is an archaism rather than an innovation. In the <i>LIV </i>(p. 16)
[2] they are reconstructed with different PIE vowel grades and accent patterns:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<ul>
<li>Type 1: *<b>dʰé-dʰoh₁</b>-/*<b>dʰé-dʰh₁</b>- (root *<b>dʰeh₁</b>- ‘put, place’); </li>
<li>Type 2: *<b>sti-stéh₂</b>- [*<b>stistáh₂</b>-]/*<b>sti-sth₂</b>- (root *<b>steh₂</b>- ‘stand’).</li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">In Greek,
on the other hand, the echo vowel is invariably *<b>i</b>, and the root vowel (when
accented, as in the singular) is always a reflex of *<b>e</b>. Note the characteristic
triad of examples (three very common verb roots, each with a different laryngeal):</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li>Greek <i>títʰēmi</i> ‘I put’, as if from *<b>dʰi-dʰeh₁-mi</b>;</li>
<li>Greek <i>hístēmi</i> ‘I cause to stand’, as if from *<b>s(t)i-steh₂-mi</b> [*<b>sistah₂mi</b>];</li>
<li>Greek <i>dídōmi</i> ‘I give’, as if from *<b>di-deh₃-mi</b> [*<b>didoh₃mi</b>].</li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhATiUhnIHpqgTesvqTDJ6IIUqI0O8DT63dB3hEM8oXznjoIInH0fYti6n17D22Zk-xYJ-p0Y3webOVIvvbqNX6cEuNHTxkaGz9jI2rMxi91GhYcXwDYooCVGXAHN61Nbc2ON5L4PeB9jI/s1600/Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhATiUhnIHpqgTesvqTDJ6IIUqI0O8DT63dB3hEM8oXznjoIInH0fYti6n17D22Zk-xYJ-p0Y3webOVIvvbqNX6cEuNHTxkaGz9jI2rMxi91GhYcXwDYooCVGXAHN61Nbc2ON5L4PeB9jI/s320/Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Type1 and Type 2<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde_poster_edit2.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">It seems
that Type 1 disappeared completely in the prehistory of Greek and all verbs
originally belonging to it were absorbed by Type 2. The <i>o</i>-grade reconstructed
in the <i>LIV </i>for Type 1 is not directly confirmed by Indo-Iranian evidence (all
non-high vowels merged as /a/ there); it is inferred from rather complex
assumptions about Proto-Indo-European vocalism. The only fact cited in its
support is the anomalous <i>o</i>-grade present of Germanic *<b>ðō</b>- ‘do’ (found only
in West Germanic). The idea that it represents dereduplicated
*<b>dʰé-dʰoh₁</b>- inherited from Proto-Indo-European is hard to reconcile with our understanding of other
reflexes of genuinely reduplicated *<b>dʰeh₁</b>- in Germanic (as we shall see).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Relics of reduplicated presents derived from *<b>dʰeh₁</b>- and *<b>deh₃</b>- [*<b>doh₃</b>-] can also be
found in Balto-Slavic. The former had <i>e</i>-reduplication there, as shown by
Lithuanian <i>dẽda</i> (3sg.) ‘lay, put’ and Old Church Slavonic <i>deždǫ </i>(1sg.) ‘put’
(< Proto-Slavic *<b>de-d-je/o</b>-, transferred to the *-<b>je/o</b>- conjugation). The
latter, curiously, is reduplicated with Balto-Slavic *<b>ō</b>, as in Lith. <i>dúodu</i>, OCS
<i>damь </i>(< *<b>dad-mь</b> < </span>*<b>dōd-mi</b>, with athematic inflections). This *<b>ō</b> reflects earlier
short *<b>o</b>, lengthened before non-aspirated
*<b>d</b> (Winter’s Law). We can therefore reconstruct parallel reduplicated stems at
an earlier stage of the Balto-Slavic parent language: *<b>dʰe-dʰ</b>- ‘put’, *<b>do-d</b>-
‘give’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s clear
that the “weak” form of the stem (with the root in zero-grade) was generalised
in each case, but why are the echo vowels different? The most parsimionious
explanation is that *<b>dʰe-dʰ</b>- is a straightforward reflex of PIE *<b>dʰe-dʰeh₁</b>-/*<b>dʰe-dʰh₁</b>- (levelled out in favour of the weak variant),
whereas in the Balto-Slavic descendant of PIE *<b>de-deh₃</b>- [*<b>dedoh₃</b>-]/*<b>de-dh₃</b>- the echo vowel was assimilated to
the laryngeally coloured root vowel of the “strong” stem (*<b>dedoh₃</b>- > *<b>dodoh₃</b>-). Subsequently, this new pronunciation was generalised across the paradigm (*<b>dedh₃</b>- >
*<b>dodh₃</b>- > Proto-Balto-Slavic *<b>dōd</b>-), and only the weak variant survived into historical times. For this hypothesis to work, it is
necessary to assume that the original strong vocalism of the reduplicated
present of *<b>dʰeh₁</b>- was *<b>e</b>, not *<b>o</b>; otherwise it would also display the echo-vowel assimilation visible only in *<b>dōd</b>- ‘give’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">It seems reasonable to conclude that Type 1 and Type 2 differed much less than the <i>LIV </i>reconstruction suggests. The ablaut pattern of the root
syllable seems to be the same in both types; the only significant difference between them concerns the choice of the echo vowel. This is how the two types are reconstructed e.g. by Don Ringe
(2006: 28)[2]:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li>Type 1: *<b>dʰé-dʰeh₁</b>-/*<b>dʰé-dʰh₁</b>-;</li>
<li>Type 2: *<b>stí-steh₂</b>-/*<b>stí-sth₂</b>-.</li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">Note the fixed accent on the echo syllable, consistent with most of the comparative
evidence. On the other hand, this reconstruction doesn’t tell us why the root
syllable alternates between <i>e</i>-grade and zero-grade. Nor does it help
to account for the different echo vowels. Is the occurrence of <i>e</i>-reduplication beside <i>i</i>-reduplication just a messy fact of life, or are we
missing something?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The two reconstructions can’t both be right, although they can both be wrong. I
actually believe that neither of them is correct, and I’ll try to justify my opinion
in the next post.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a><span style="text-align: justify;">]</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">———</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[1] The forms
cited here are 3sg. and 3pl. The sequence *<b>bʰs</b> must have developed into
something like Proto-Indo-Iranian *<b>bzʰ</b> as a result of progressive
breathy-voice assimilation (<a href="http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bartholomaes-law-the-name-given-to-a-rule-of-phonetic-assimilation-in-the-indo-iranian-and-probably-also-the-proto-indo-eu" target="_blank">Bartholomae’s Law</a>). Although it ended up as
voiceless [ps] in Vedic, the aspiration survived long enough to trigger the deaspiration
of the initial consonant of <i>bápsati </i>by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassmann%27s_law" target="_blank">Grassmann’s Law</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[2] Helmut
Rix, Martin Kümmel et al. 2001. <i>Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben</i> (2nd
edition). Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<span style="text-align: justify;">[3] Don
Ringe. 2006. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">A linguistic history of English</i><span style="text-align: justify;">. Vol. 1: </span><i style="text-align: justify;">From Proto-Indo-European
to Proto-Germanic</i><span style="text-align: justify;">. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</span>Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-90537851958647968362016-01-20T19:46:00.001+01:002016-01-21T17:02:29.047+01:00Ve-Verbs: A Brief Introduction<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There were
several types of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_verbs" target="_blank">Indo-European verbs</a> formed by reduplication. The most
important of them are listed below. Each type is represented by a verb in its 3sg form (of the active voice,
where relevant); for glossing purposes, a female subject is assumed:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">athematic
presents with a <i>Ci</i> or <i>Ce</i> echo: *<b>sti-stéh₂-ti</b> [*<b>stistáh₂ti</b>] ‘she’s rising to her
feet’ [1];</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">thematic
presents with a <i>Ci</i> echo: *<b>sí-sd-e-ti</b> [*<b>sízdeti</b>] ‘she’s taking a seat’;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">thematic aorists
with a <i>Ce</i> echo: *<b>wé-wkʷ-e-t</b> [*<b>wéukʷet</b>] ‘quoth she’;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">perfects
with a <i>Ce</i> echo: *<b>me-món-e</b> ‘she remembers’.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There are
also a couple of other reduplicated present types, marked by the use of derivational
suffixes. All of them have <i>Ci</i> echoes and are not very different from the second type above:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul>
<li>reduplicated <span style="text-align: left;"><i>sḱe</i>-presents</span>: *<b>dí-dḱ-sḱe-ti</b> [*<b>dítsḱeti</b>] ‘she accepts/learns’;</li>
<li>reduplicated desideratives: *<b>wí-wrt-h₁se-ti</b> [*<b>wíwr̥tseti</b>] ‘she wants to turn’.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIWhoeQb0LHEevSrtivldaf44rm0iCvgtVvWsPSlvdOJt4h7KMteaGtO3rmzsO_bgAwE1nlfoC_pEWugC8E12QyUuBazUr3smd_NhP37OP1EIgza32NaS0j6bp4fdNLjFaqkcsNyYv914/s1600/Fibula_Praenestina_Terme_Inv_Museo_Pigorini_2819.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIWhoeQb0LHEevSrtivldaf44rm0iCvgtVvWsPSlvdOJt4h7KMteaGtO3rmzsO_bgAwE1nlfoC_pEWugC8E12QyUuBazUr3smd_NhP37OP1EIgza32NaS0j6bp4fdNLjFaqkcsNyYv914/s400/Fibula_Praenestina_Terme_Inv_Museo_Pigorini_2819.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><br />
MANIOS׃MED׃<b>FHE⋮FHAKED</b>׃NUMASIOI<br />
A famous reduplication (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praeneste_fibula" target="_blank">almost too perfect to be true</a>)<br />
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fibula_Praenestina_Terme_Inv_Museo_Pigorini_2819.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Still other types can be found in some languages of the family but cannot be safely added to the inventory of Proto-Indo-European verb stems because they are are either too poorly attested or too restricted in their distribution. The former is true of athematic reduplicated aorists, and the latter of the Indo-Iranian intensives with “full” reduplication (more precisely, with a <i>CVC</i> echo). Attempts to demonstrate their PIE status have not been successful so far.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">I shall
begin with the first two types (“underived” reduplicated presents, both athematic
and thematic). I’ve already had to mention reduplicated presents in earlier posts. There is some kind of relationship between them and reduplicated nouns, and some of the same issues, like the *<b>e</b> ~
*<b>i</b> alternation in the echo syllable, will be revisited. The exact reconstruction of the reduplicated present is one of the hot problems of Indo-European
morphology, not yet settled to everybody’s satisfaction, but important enough
for people to keep trying. In the technical literature on the subject, you will find a variety of proposals which can’t all
be correct at the same time. I don’t insist that the analysis I’m advocating is
<i>the </i>solution; still, it’s more worthwhile to take the bull by the horns and tackle
a vexing question than just to report handbook stuff. Controversy makes for an interesting debate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">One
important special problem to be discussed separately is the reduplicated “present”
stem [2] of the root *<b>dʰeh₁</b>- ‘put, place’ (plus a dozen or two other meanings
it acquired in the early history of Indo-European). Next, I shall discuss the
Indo-European perfect, partly because of its importance for understanding the
origin of the Germanic “strong” past tense (English <i>sang</i>, <i>drove</i>, <i>bound</i>, etc.).[3]
The remaining loose threads will be tied up in the final post of this series.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a><span style="text-align: justify;">]</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">———<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[1] The reconstruction
in square brackets is more phonetic, taking into account the operation of assimilatory
processes, syllabification rules, and cluster simplification. The glosses are approximate: the exact shade of meaning produced by the combination of PIE tense, aspect and <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_aspect" target="_blank">Aktionsart</a></i> may be difficult to recover and even more difficult to convey in English.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[2] Why the
scare quotes? Because the “present” (imperfective) stem did not occur only in
the present tense, and it’s exactly the past-tense indicative of this stem, the
so-called “imperfect” of PIE *<b>dʰeh₁</b>-, that played a role in the development of
the Germanic verb system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<span style="text-align: justify;">[3] None of
them is reduplicated in Modern English, and few strong preterites remained
reduplicated even in Proto-Germanic.</span>Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-11362141145675545782016-01-19T12:28:00.000+01:002016-01-20T12:05:48.916+01:00The Root Question: Why *bʰer-?<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The verb
root *<b>bʰer</b>- has several paradoxical properties. On the one hand, it’s one of
the most securely attested Indo-European roots, documented in Tocharian, Armenian,
Greek, Phrygian, Albanian, Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Italic and
Celtic. On the other hand, it’s conspicuous by its apparent absence from Anatolian,
which means that despite its ubiquity in the rest of the family its Proto-Indo-European status is insecure (but see below on possible Anatolian reflexes).
The present stem *<b>bʰér-e/o</b>- is a widespread “simple thematic present”, so familiar as a handbook example that the whole class is often referred to as the *<b>bʰéreti</b>-type.[1] Still,
several languages (Latin, Greek, Vedic) show traces of an alternative athematic
stem without the *<b>-e/o</b>- suffix – probably a so-called “Narten present” with an underlying long vowel: *<b>bʰḗr-ti</b>,
*<b>bʰér-n̥ti</b>). Despite being so common, and despite having such a basic meaning as ‘carry,
bear’, the verb lacks some conjugational forms in some Indo-European languages, so that *<b>bʰér</b>- has to team up with other
roots to form a complete paradigm. In Latin, for example, the present (<i>ferō</i>),
the imperfect (<i>ferēbam</i>) and the infinitive (<i>ferre</i>) are derived from *<b>bʰer</b>-, but
the perfect tense (<i>tetulī </i>or <i>tulī</i>) and the perfect passive participle (<i>lātus
</i>< *<b>tlātos</b>) are provided by the root *<b>telh₂</b>- ‘lift, raise, support the weight
of’. In Greek, we again have reflexes of *<b>bʰer</b>- in the present and the
imperfect, while most other forms come from *<b>h₁neḱ</b>- ‘take, acquire’ (and
the suppletive future <i>oísō </i>does not even have an established etymology). In
Slavic, imperfective *<b>bьrati</b>, 1sg. *<b>berǫ</b> ‘take’ is paired with perfective *<b>ęti</b>,
*<b>(j)ьmǫ</b>, from PIE *<b>h₁em</b>- (Lat. <i>emō</i>).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL42vaf8LQ8N08kiFZUkOyCSPyfMeBVcrYwXKt1zZ6rFkOApDVhQYgcAqNAkQrNAC0mEgI_I_ZrCgZNMlfVhBHEGACMlWlsP-JXxWW7wwCf5r2_21BK8fMC2k90zS9tDxhNIQRUjkXpsQ/s1600/bobr-narewka.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL42vaf8LQ8N08kiFZUkOyCSPyfMeBVcrYwXKt1zZ6rFkOApDVhQYgcAqNAkQrNAC0mEgI_I_ZrCgZNMlfVhBHEGACMlWlsP-JXxWW7wwCf5r2_21BK8fMC2k90zS9tDxhNIQRUjkXpsQ/s320/bobr-narewka.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Always collecting stuff...</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Photo: Jacek Zięba, CC BY-SA 3.0</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Source: </span><a href="http://www.ekokalendarz.pl/dzien-bobrow/" style="font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">EKO KALENDARZ</a></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">The meaning
of *<b>bʰer</b>- is quite variable. In many branches its reflexes can be glossed as ‘carry,
bear’ (of course English bear is a good example), with connotations of movement
rather than static support, and of personal physical effort rather than vehicular
transport (in the latter case *<b>weǵʰ</b>- ‘cart, convey’ is used). But the root has
developed a large number of secondary senses: ‘take, take up, take away, collect,
lift, bring, yield, produce, bear offspring, endure’, etc., and in some
branches the core meaning has undergone a considerable semantic shift. Thus,
Slavic *<b>berǫ</b> means ‘take’, while *<b>nesǫ</b> from the root *<b>h₁neḱ</b>- (originally ‘take, acquire’)
has come to mean ‘carry’ (as if the two roots had swapped meanings). Lithuanian
also has <b>nèšti </b>(1sg. <b>nešù</b>) for ‘carry’, but the meaning of Lith. <b>ber̃ti</b>, Latv.
<b>bḕrti </b>is ‘scatter’ – so distant from ‘carry’ that doubts have been raised as to
whether the Baltic words really derive from *<b>bʰer</b>- (though a development
like ‘carry/take around’ > ‘circulate, distribute, disperse’ is quite
natural, cf. Latin <i>circumferō</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The oldest
reconstructible present, *<b>bʰḗr</b>-/*<b>bʰér</b>- probably meant ‘carry’ in a “telic”
sense (as an action with an endpoint: ‘bring or remove by carrying</span>’). The verb gave rise to a root agent
noun, *<b>bʰṓr</b> ‘one who takes away’ → ‘thief’ (Latin <b>fūr</b>, Greek <b>pʰṓr</b>). The
widespread simple thematic *<b>bʰér-e/o</b>-, which probably originated as the “mediopassive”
voice of the original present (with self-benefactive or passive senses),
basically inherited its semantics but emphasised the durative shade of the verb and its imperfective character (hence the need to employ some
other root to express the perfective and stative aspects).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Vedic alone
documents a clear contrast between telic *<b>bʰér(-e/o)</b>- (<i>bhárati</i>, also Rigvedic
<i>bhárti</i>) and atelic (iterative, habitual) *<b>bʰi-bʰ(é)r</b>- (<i>bíbharti</i>, Rigvedic
<i>bibhárti</i>, 3pl. </span><i>bíbhrati</i>), but given the fact that CV-reduplicated presents are generally a recessive
class of stems in Indo-European, reducing rather than enlarging its membership in the historically known languages, we are probably dealing with an archaism
rather than a local innovation.[2] In other words, the distinction between *<b>bʰḗr</b>-/*<b>bʰér</b>-
and a reduplicated present (indicating, respectively, events with an endpoint and without
one) may be at least as old as the Core Indo-European subfamily. It
might even be Proto-Indo-European in the strict sense, assuming that the
absence of the root *<b>bʰer</b>- from Anatolian is accidental and due to its having been ousted by (near-)synonyms such as Hittite <i>arnuzi </i>‘brings, sends, delivers’ or <i>pē-dai
</i>‘carries’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuwTJnNpWk8Xc5le4KZTzprbsNVhnvyqJHm526Jdn_kvfEDIs7GQ7hF2GM0iPC6oG4p62oHWyTpkdspb3XwYaCFLcYbIqehQJ5ICmgLNWuB09S5zLB1NdubXO8Z4UYit7XUGSFbBbbBcQ/s1600/Lodge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuwTJnNpWk8Xc5le4KZTzprbsNVhnvyqJHm526Jdn_kvfEDIs7GQ7hF2GM0iPC6oG4p62oHWyTpkdspb3XwYaCFLcYbIqehQJ5ICmgLNWuB09S5zLB1NdubXO8Z4UYit7XUGSFbBbbBcQ/s320/Lodge.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">... and piling it up.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">Actually, isolated
derivatives of *<b>bʰer</b>- may exist also in Anatolian. The Hittite word for ‘small
rodent, mouse’, <i>kapart</i>-, has been etymologised as *<b>ko(m)-bʰr̥-t</b>- ‘gatherer, collector’
(of “stolen” grain).[3] There’s also a possible Lydian cognate, <i>kabrdokid</i> ‘steals’,
a verb derived from an abstract noun supposedly meaning ‘hoarding away, stealing’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The notion
of collecting, gathering or bringing together often accompanies the use of *<b>bʰer</b>-.
Greek <i>pʰóros</i> (from *<b>bʰór-o</b>-) means ‘earnings, tribute’, and one of the meanings
of <i>pʰor</i></span><i>ā́</i> <span lang="EN-US">(*</span><b>bʰor-áh₂</b>) is ‘crop’. The abstract noun *<b>bʰr̥-tí</b>- (Ved. <i>bhṛtí</i>- ‘carrying,
bringing, support, maintenance’) acquires a concrete meaning in Armenian <i>bard</i> ‘pile,
sheaf (of corn)’. Assuming hypothetically that the reduplicated iterative
present could form a noun like Hitt. <i>mēmal</i> ‘groats’ (the product of grinding),
we might expect *<b>bʰé-bʰr̥</b> (of perhaps collective *<b>bʰé-bʰōr</b>) ‘the effect of
continual collecting, a growing pile’. Like, say, a beaver’s construction – a
dam or a lodge. The builder or inhabitant of a *<b>bʰébʰ(o)r</b>- would have been a *<b>bʰébʰros</b>
(or possibly *<b>bʰibʰrós</b>, or both; the accent in nominals of this type is hard to predict), and an appropriate epithet referring to the same animal’s
prominent behaviour – the assiduous collection
and transport of building materials to repair, strengthen and enlarge its constructions
– would have been *<b>bʰibʰrús</b> (or *<b>bʰebʰrús</b>) ‘one that’s always gathering stuff’ (timber, twigs, mud, etc.). I think the reduplication makes more sense with the
root *<b>bʰer</b>- than with any other similar verb that might refer to something that
beavers habitually do. The ability to cut down trees, for example, could be expressed by
forming a simple agent noun; iterativity would not need to be emphasised. The male beaver’s legendary defensive stratagem – biting
off its testicles and throwing them before hunters – would of course be a
one-time trick; and “being brown” is not even eventive, let alone iterative.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">So much for
beavers, and for the topic of Indo-European nouns showing CV-type
reduplication. The next post will be about reduplication in verbs.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a>]</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">———<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[1] The simple
thematic presents arose in the Core Indo-European group and are absent from the Anatolian
languages, as far as we know. Only a small number are known from Tocharian; *<b>bʰér-e/o</b>-
is one of them.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[2] The
alternative iterative stem, *<b>bʰor-éje/o</b>-, is attested only in Greek as <i>pʰoréō</i> ‘carry
around, wear, possess (a feature)’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[3] See
Lat. <i>conferō</i> ‘bring together, collect’, and compounds like Vedic <i>iṣu-bhṛ́-t</i>- ‘arrow-carrying’
(describing an archer).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-85007599374984807712016-01-18T00:33:00.000+01:002016-01-18T16:47:10.957+01:00Towards a More Realistic Beaver<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">When we
consider the known patterns of CV reduplication in Indo-European, we find that different
reduplicated adjectives or nouns with very similar meanings can be derived in
parallel from the same verb root. </span>One
pair <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/setting-scene-for-beaver.html" target="_blank">already mentioned</a> is Vedic <i>sásni</i>- (a <i>cákri</i>-type word) : <i>siṣṇú</i>-, both from
the verb root *<b>senh₂</b>- ‘gain, strive after, accomplish’. Both adjectives mean,
approximately, ‘constantly gaining/winning for oneself or others’. No CV-reduplicated
present derived from this root is attested. It forms an Indo-Iranian
reduplicated perfect (which, however, expresses a completed action and has no
iterative or habitual connotations), and a Vedic “intensive” present with full
reduplication (which does mean ‘gain/acquire repeatedly’ but is structurally different from the adjectives in question).[1] It is possible,
however, that once a productive derivational schema became established, it was not
essential that an actual CV-reduplicated present should exist. <b>E(e)-R(ø)-i</b>- or <b>E(i)-R(ø)-u</b>-
adjectives, as well as <b>E(e)-R(ø)-o</b>- (*<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-reduplication-manual-for-drivers.html" target="_blank"><b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type</a>) nouns could be formed directly
on the basis of a verb root. <span lang="EN-US">In
one of the Rigvedic hymns to Indra (Book 6, 23:4b) the god is described as
follows:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>babhrír </b>vájram <b>papíḥ </b>sómaṃ <b>dadír </b>gā́ḥ</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>carrying </b>the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajra" target="_blank">vajra</a>, <b>drinking </b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma" target="_blank">soma</a>, <b>giving </b>cows</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">(doing all
these things habitually, i.e. whenever he comes to attend a soma-pressing). </span>We
have no fewer than three <i>cákri</i>-type quasi-partciples here.[2] Note that they
take accusative objects, like the corresponding verbs. <span lang="EN-US">And yet, although all the three verbs form
CV-reduplicated presents in Vedic, the adjectives can’t be derived directly
from those presents. </span>The Vedic present of *<b>bʰer</b>- ‘carry’ (3sg./3pl.) is
<i>bi-bhár-ti </i>[3]/<i>bí-bhr-ati</i> with an <i>i</i>-reduplication[4]; from *<b>poh₃(i)</b>- ‘drink’ we
have <i>pí-b-a-ti</i>/<i>pí-b-a-nti</i>. At least in the latter case both the i-reduplication
and the voiced *<b>b</b> (by assimilation, from the sequence *-<b>ph₃</b>-, with a voiced
laryngeal) are very old, at least as old as the common ancestor of Vedic, Latin
and the Celtic languages.[5] The adjective <i>papí</i>- seems to have been formed
directly to the Indo-Aryan root <i>pā</i>-/<i>pī</i>-, using the <i>cákri</i>-type template. The type itself
is probably an Indo-Iranian innovation (especially productive in Vedic),
inspired by the use of *-<b>i</b>- rather than *-<b>o</b>- as the final vowel in
compound stems. The precursor of the <i>cákri</i>-type is essentially identical with the *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type
(except perhaps for an accentual contrast between nouns and adjectives, if the
final accent of <i>bhabhrí</i>- is original and the initial one in <i>cákri</i>- is a
Vedic innovation). Therefore the formation represented by <i>bhabhrí</i>- is a reworking of an older type which can be
reconstructed as *<b>bʰe-bʰr-ó</b>- ‘(ever-)carrying’ – or, when substantivised, *<b>bʰé-bʰr-o</b>-
‘habitual carrier’. A parallel <i>u</i>-stem with practically the same meaning may
also have existed, either *<b>bʰi-bʰr-ú</b>- (like Ved. <i>siṣṇú</i>-) or possibly *<b>bʰe-bʰr-ú</b>-
(like Ved. <i>(pari-)tatnú</i>- ‘surrounding’).[6] Thus, both the *<b>Ce</b>- ~ *<b>Ci</b>- variation
in the echo and the coexistence of stems in *-<b>o</b>- and *-<b>u</b>- can be explained with
recourse to known Indo-European word-forming processes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbTuXZU2Cefj0NuHn2a16xmz-I9tb1mnDPrT3vu_AHbag8ckNhZgXCmQ0pXgWHS4R35OF6EgTQTt4Z6WvutoChYZEzYU8eh8DMUFlHAPjTaPdLagxdjcgcSflg2xAr5bzrlcgCeA_Nc4/s1600/Otter_beaver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbTuXZU2Cefj0NuHn2a16xmz-I9tb1mnDPrT3vu_AHbag8ckNhZgXCmQ0pXgWHS4R35OF6EgTQTt4Z6WvutoChYZEzYU8eh8DMUFlHAPjTaPdLagxdjcgcSflg2xAr5bzrlcgCeA_Nc4/s320/Otter_beaver.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Two well-known Indo-European semiaquatic mammals</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Gessner" target="_blank">Conrad Gessner</a>, <i>De piscium et aquatilium animantium natura</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Above,_an_otter_eating_a_fish;_below,_a_beaver._Woodcut_afte_Wellcome_V0021198.jpg" target="_blank">Wellcome Images</a></span></div>
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
But wait a moment: *<b>bʰé-bʰr-o</b>- and *<b>bʰi-bʰr-ú</b>- look exactly like the reconstructed variants of the ‘beaver’
word. If beavers owe their Indo-European name not to their coat colour but to
some characteristic habitual activity, the verb describing that activity should
be similar to *<b>bʰer</b>- ‘carry’. There are, for example, a couple of known roots
of the shape *<b>bʰerH</b>-, one meaning ‘cut, strike, pierce, fight’ (with an unspecified
laryngeal) and the other ‘move rapidly, rush, chase’ (in which *<b>H</b> = *<b>h₂</b> or *<b>h₃</b>).
The laryngeal would have been lost in a reduplication containing the root in
zero-grade, so we would not be able to see any difference between the outcomes of *-<b>bʰr</b>- and *-<b>bʰrH</b>-.</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Stretching the imagination a little, one would be able to connect the meaning of any of these roots with the beaver’s habits. <span lang="EN-US">For example, the first *<b>bʰerH</b>- is glossed ‘mit sharfem Werkzeug
bearbeiten’[7] in the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexikon_der_indogermanischen_Verben" target="_blank">LIV</a></i>; and what are the beaver’s incisors if not “ein
sharfes Werkzeug”? Still, I would like to defend
the simplest solution, involving the most widespread and most securely
reconstructed of these roots, namely *<b>bʰer</b>- ‘carry’. </span>I will justify
my preference in the next post. <span lang="EN-US">Here,
let me only point out that no matter which root we choose, it makes sense to
assume that there were more than one related but independently formed variants
of the beaver’s name already at a very early stage – at least *<b>bʰébʰros</b> and *<b>bʰibʰrús</b>.
It seems that both of them were inherited by languages ancestral to some of the
branches of Indo-European. Their visible relatedness, and perhaps the existence
in some branches of recognisably related reduplicated verb forms could have
produced still more variants through a kind of lexical cross-pollination,
hence the attested variation of the echo vowel, the stem class, and the
accentuation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a>]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">———</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
[1] Reduplication in verbs will be discussed in blog posts
to come.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
[2] They are accented on the stem vowel, unlike <i>cákri</i>-
itself, but the accentual variation looks random and is not correlated with any
functional difference.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
[3] With the root syllable accented in the Rigveda. Later
the accent was shifted to the echo syllable: <i>bhíbharti</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
[4] When not reduplicated, the Vedic present (<i>bhárati</i>) usually has a telic
meaning, i.e. ‘bring’ (a complete one-time activity) rather than ‘carry, bear, wield’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
[5] The original forms were *<b>pí-ph₃-e-ti</b>/*<b>pí-ph₃-o-nti</b>, with
the second *<b>p</b> realised as [b].</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[6] Cf.
Germanic *<b>tetru</b>-, *<b>tetru-ka</b>- (or *<b>titru-ka</b>-?) </span>‘skin disease, scabies’
(OE <i>teter</i>, Mod.E <i>tetter</i>, OHG <i>zitaroh</i>), Sanskrit <i>dadru</i>-, <i>dadrū </i>(f.) ‘leprosy’, apparently
from *<b>der</b>- ‘tear, flay, peel’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[7] That is, ‘work on (something) with a sharp tool’ – a bit conjecturally, to be sure, since most of the attested meanings suggest the use of a weapon rather than a carpenter’s tool, or are figurative: ‘scold, rebuke’, etc.</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-20329987700189746492016-01-12T13:09:00.000+01:002017-12-17T14:32:34.286+01:00Enter the Beaver<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj12KOV0POp884fs0xQ7xu6H9-SLgqg7LniJSvAVTpS8l19LsYumC5MB92mr84F-VsF3Rlxve4CLIuNvRDYqOHpqx-4rnwnfTJdQJNDkIOSWHK987fwGULj-V5j_qh2WGqZy0iyMbIELj0/s1600/Beaver_rampant.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj12KOV0POp884fs0xQ7xu6H9-SLgqg7LniJSvAVTpS8l19LsYumC5MB92mr84F-VsF3Rlxve4CLIuNvRDYqOHpqx-4rnwnfTJdQJNDkIOSWHK987fwGULj-V5j_qh2WGqZy0iyMbIELj0/s320/Beaver_rampant.png" width="244" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Beaver rampant</b><br />
Arms of Biberach an der Riß<br />
<br />
Arthur Charles Fox-Davies<br />
<i>A Comp</i><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>lete Guide to Heraldry</i> (1909)<br /><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Beavers_in_heraldry#/media/File:Complete_Guide_to_Heraldry_Fig412.png" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Most etymological dictionaries, introductions to Indo-European studies, as well as online sources (including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Etymology" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> and <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beaver" target="_blank">Wiktionary</a>) inform the reader that the Proto-Indo-European word for ‘beaver’, *<b>bʰébʰrus</b>, is a reduplicate derivative of the root *<b>bʰer</b>- or *<b>bʰreu</b>-, meaning ‘brown’. The same root is often claimed to account for the Germanic ‘bear’ word, *<b>βer-an</b>- (a nasal stem), as if from *<b>bʰer-on</b>- ‘the brown one’. There are several problems with these etymologies.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To begin with, neither *<b>bʰer</b>- nor *<b>bʰreu</b>- is attested as a stem. At best, there are several words in different Indo-European languages which contain reflexes of *<b>bʰ</b> and *<b>r</b> (and sometimes of *<b>u</b>) and mean something like ‘brown’; it is, however, hard to connect them formally within a plausible etymon. We can agree that Modern English <i>brown</i>, Modern German <i>braun </i>and Modern French <i>brun </i>(borrowed from Frankish) are “basic colour terms” and can be used to describe the colour of a beaver’s coat. It doesn’t follow, however, that the same can be claimed of their Proto-Germanic ancestor, *<b>βrūna</b>-. In early Germanic languages the word meant ‘dark, swarthy, dusky’ (as well as ‘shiny, bright’, often with reference to forged metal or the sea), and while it could be used to modify virtually any hue for which there was a name, it was hardly a specific colour term itself. Its extra-Germanic connections are anything but secure: although Greek <i>pʰrū́nē</i> (f.), <i>pʰrũnos</i> (m.) ‘toad’ might or might not be cognate, there is no related Greek colour adjective. The “colour conspiracy” of the modern languages of Europe, which have developed identical or very similar basic colour systems, is a case of recent cultural convergence. As late as the seventeenth century, German <i>braun </i>could still refer to hues in the violet/purple range (e.g. the colour of the amethyst).</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivxueryac9Wkg02Z9d6A9SQuJEO6aSg3wHV4ReeXaFoZMQgFuRabX1PIzmQUTgtPIwnR3EglIwEQhMCfBkUCJcW-VoL65bUlXRvvGCfS69lIpZuRGRjyC1w_MFA8oaUC_rIwPQgcUVQ94/s1600/Wappen_Biberach.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivxueryac9Wkg02Z9d6A9SQuJEO6aSg3wHV4ReeXaFoZMQgFuRabX1PIzmQUTgtPIwnR3EglIwEQhMCfBkUCJcW-VoL65bUlXRvvGCfS69lIpZuRGRjyC1w_MFA8oaUC_rIwPQgcUVQ94/s320/Wappen_Biberach.svg.png" width="272" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Modern version of the same<br />
(we know so much more about beavers today).<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biberach_an_der_Riss" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lithuanian <i>bė́ras </i>does refer to shades of brown, but is used as a specialised horse-coat term (like English <i>bay</i>), not a generally applicable colour word, and can’t be directly connected with *<b>βrūna</b>- anyway. Vedic <i>babhrú</i>- means ‘deep brown, reddish-brown’ and is practically identical with the reconstructed ‘beaver’ word, but it is probably derived from the animal’s name, not vice versa. The ancient Indo-Aryans had migrated too far from the geographical range of the beaver to have retained the original meaning, but they did keep the derived descriptive adjective.[1] Secondarily substantivised, <i>babhrú</i>- may refer to several rather different animals of India, from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_brown_mongoose" target="_blank">brown mongoose</a> to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_cuckoo" target="_blank">Jacobin cuckoo</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The ‘bear’ connection is dubious too. A “weak” (<i>n</i>-stem) noun would presuppose an adjective like *<b>bʰer(o)</b>-, not recoverable as a Proto-Indo-European colour term (even the isolated East Baltic adjective mentioned above isn’t a perfect match), and there is an attractive alternative: the *<b>βer</b>- part can be derived either directly from the root noun *<b>ǵʰwēr</b>-/*<b>ǵʰwer</b>- ‘wild animal, beast’ (<a href="https://www.ling.upenn.edu/book/proto-indo-european" target="_blank">Ringe 2006</a>: 106) or more plausibly from the corresponding thematic adjective ‘wild, savage’ (cf. Lat. <i>ferus</i>). To be sure, the hypothesis that word-initial *<b>gʷʰ</b> and *<b>ǵʰw</b> yield Germanic *<b>β</b> remains somewhat controversial (there are a small number of examples), but the etymology of <i>bear </i>as ‘the ferocious one’ is semantically unassailable. The substantivisation of an adjective by turning it into an <i>n</i>-stem is a common morphological process.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Instead of trying to guess in advance what the *-<b>bʰr</b>- part of the beaver’s name stands for, let’s have a look at the full reconstruction first. It’s usually cited as a stem in *-<b>u</b>-, perhaps primarily because of the Sanskrit ‘deep brown’ word, but the total Indo-European evidence is indecisive:</div>
<br />
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">In Slavic *<b>bobrъ</b>, *<b>bebrъ</b>, *<b>bьbrъ </b>(note the variation of the echo vowel)[2] the final *-<b>ъ</b> may reflect *-<b>o-s</b> or *-<b>u-s</b>. Some old derivatives and toponyms plus accentual considerations suggest that the word was originally a <i>u</i>-stem in Slavic or perhaps vacillated between the two types, for there’s some evidence supporting an <i>o</i>-stem as well.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Baltic shows both <i>u</i>-stem and <i>o</i>-stem forms – the former in Old Prussian <i>bebrus </i>and in the Lithuanian variant <i>bebrùs</i>, the latter in Lith. <i>bẽbras</i>, <i>bãbras</i>,<i> </i>and Latvian <i>bȩbrs</i>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Iranian has an <i>o</i>-stem reflex: Proto-Iranian *<b>babra</b>- > Younger Avestan <i>baβra</i>-, with the variant <i>baβri</i>-; cf. also Pahlavi <i>babrag </i>< *<b>babraka</b>-, with the very productive “colloquialising” suffix *-<b>ka</b>-.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Latin has <i>fiber </i>(second declension), as if from *<b>bʰibʰro</b>- (with an <i>i</i>-echo), beside sparsely attested <i>feber</i>.[3]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">In Celtic, the inherited ‘beaver’ word has been buried under layers of lexical innovations (especially *<b>abankos </b>‘river animal’) and borrowings. It can be detected in some Gaulish, Old Brittonic and Old Irish toponyms, ethnonyms and personal names, but its exact Proto-Celtic form is difficult to recover: *<b>bebro</b>-, *<b>bebru</b>-, *<b>bibro</b>- and *<b>bibru</b>- possibly coexisted in early Celtic.[4]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Finally, the word is excellently preserved in Northwest Germanic. [5] We have e.g. Early Old English <i>bebr</i>, <i>bebir</i>, <i>beber</i>, later <i>befer</i>, <i>befor</i>, <i>beofor</i>; Old High German <i>bibar</i>, <i>bibur</i>; and Old Icelandic <i>bjórr </i>< *<b>bjǫβurr </b>< *<b>beβ(u)raz</b>. All these forms can in principle reflect Proto-Germanic *<b>βeβraz</b> < *<b>bʰebʰro</b>-, though a <i>u</i>-stem can’t be completely ruled out. [<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/enter-beaver.html?showComment=1452644086149#c34055675113991277" target="_blank">Afterthought</a>]</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The ‘beaver’ word has a relatively wide attestation, but since the animal itself has occurred mainly at northerly attitudes in historical times, it’s poorly attested in Indo-Iranian and Italic, and not at all in Armenian or in Greek (where we find <i>kástōr </i>instead, borrowed also into modern Albanian). Alas, although beavers lived in parts of ancient Anatolia, we don’t know what the speakers of Hittite or Luwian called them: they weren’t thoughful enough to write something about beavers for posterity. The Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages have preserved the word best, and it’s in Balto-Slavic that we find the greatest diversity of variants.[6] What shall we make of this variety?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
I will try to answer this question in the next blog.<br />
<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a><span style="text-align: justify;">]</span><br />
<br />
———<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[1] Cf. also Hurrian <i>babrunnu</i>, a technical horsey adjective borrowed from the language of the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_superstrate_in_Mitanni" target="_blank">Mitanni Indo-Aryans</a>”.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[2] The echo vowel in the modern Slavic languages most often reflects *<b>o</b> (found in all Slavic languages today). The minor variant with *<b>e</b> has a wide but scattered distribution (Serbian Church Slavonic, dialectal Bulgarian, Slovene, Upper Sorbian, Old Russian) and looks like a locally surviving relic (see also the Polish river-name <i>Biebrza</i>,<i> </i>and Romanian <i>breb</i>, borrowed from Slavic). The modern prevalence of *<b>o</b> may be due to a Slavic tendency (inconsistent and poorly understood) to introduce and generalise *<b>o</b> in CV-reduplications. Borrowing is less likely, though Iranian influence has been suspected (as an indication of prehistoric trade in beaverskins and castoreum). Western Lithuanian <i>bãbras </i>seems to be Slavic-influenced. The variant *<b>bьbrъ </b>is rare (Old Russian, Serbo-Croatian <i>dȁbar</i>, with a dissimilated initial stop). It could be regarded as an aberrant local innovation, were it not for the fact that (unlike *<b>bobrъ</b>) it has several exact counterparts in other branches (West Baltic hydronymic *<b>bibru</b>-, Lat. <i>fiber</i>, Celtic *<b>bibru</b>- ~ *<b>bibro</b>-).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[3] Replaced by loanwords (some related to it) in Vulgar Latin and Proto-Romance.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[4] It seems that beavers never colonised Ireland after the last ice age, which of course does not mean that the Irish Celts were unaware of their existence. “Beavery” tribal names could also have been brought to Ireland from Great Britain and/or the continent during prehistoric migrations.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[5] Its absence from the Gothic corpus is due to the usual reason: no beavers in the Bible.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[6] Some East Slavic dialects preserve a uniquely specialised, evidently archaic word for ‘beaver lodge’, *<b>zer(d)mę</b> < *<b>gʰerdʰ-mn̥</b>, with a curious “hyper-satem” treatment of the root *<b>gʰerdʰ</b>- ‘gird, encircle, fence about’, cf. Slavic *<b>gordъ</b> ‘fort, town’, Lith. <i>gar̃das</i> ‘enclosure, stall’, Vedic <i>gr̥há</i>- ‘house’, Albanian <i>gardh </i>‘fence’. The ‘beaver lodge’ word has been borrowed into standard Polish as <i>żeremie </i>(with a hypercorrect <i>ż</i>).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com86tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-85851405327921822722016-01-08T22:14:00.000+01:002016-01-09T10:07:37.664+01:00Setting the Scene for the Beaver<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In the
Proto-Indo-European derivational system, adjectives in *-<b>ó</b>- were rarely formed
directly from root nouns in zero-grade (often simply identical with verb
roots). Thus, they differed from some other adjectival derivatives involving
more complex suffixes, e.g. deverbal adjectives in *-<b>tó</b>-, *-<b>nó</b>-, *-<b>ró</b>-. When
just the bare thematic vowel *-<b>ó</b>- was added, the zero-grade was usually “reinforced” – in the simplest case, by inserting a full
vowel, *<b>e</b>, somewhere inside the root (not necessarily in the “correct” place, that
is, not always faitfully restoring the original <i>e</i>-grade). This, however, did
not have to happen if the root was the second member of a compound. Since
reduplications behave in many respects like
compounds (namely, like a root compounded with itself), it is possible that nouns
of the *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type should be traced back to adjectives like *<b>kʷe-kʷl-ó</b>- ‘revolving’,
and these in turn to reduplicated root nouns like *<b>kʷé-kʷ(o)lh₁</b>-,
expressing the action itself or its product (in this case, either ‘circular
movement’ or ‘circle, cycle’).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In fact,
such nouns are not purely conjectural. A few have left tangible reflexes in
historically known languages. For example, Hittite <i>mēmal</i> ‘groats’ is an
athematic neuter noun derived from *<b>melh₂</b>- ‘grind’ by means of CV-reduplication:
*<b>mé-ml̥h₂</b>. In theory, a *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type noun could easily be formed via thematicisation and accent retraction: *<b>mé-ml-o</b>- ‘something used in groat production’ (e.g. ‘quern,
millstone’); it just happens not to be attested (unless Armenian <i>mamul</i> ‘press’
is somehow derivable from it). As for
reduplicated adjectives, Vedic examples such as <i>vavrá</i>- ‘hiding, concealing
oneself’ and <i>sasrá</i>- ‘streaming’ can be quoted (the roots in question are, respectively, *<b>wer</b>- ‘cover,
protect’ and *<b>ser</b>- ‘flow’).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">There are,
however, other reduplication types, also based on verb roots but harder to
fit into the pattern proposed above. Superficially, they have the same
structure: <b>E(V₁)-R(ø)-V₂-</b>, where <b>R(ø)</b> is a verb root in zero-grade. However, <b>V₁</b> is *<b>i</b> rather than *<b>e</b>, or <b>V₂</b> is a high vowel (*<b>i</b> or *<b>u</b>) rather than *<b>o</b>; note only that <b>V₁</b> and <b>V₂</b> can’t both be *<b>i</b> at the same time. Here are a few characteristic
examples from Vedic (where such reduplications are particularly well represented):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Vedic word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">protoform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">PIE root<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>vavrí</i>- ‘hiding-place’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>we-wr-i</b>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>wer</b>- ‘cover’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>cákri</i>- ‘active, making’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>kʷe-kʷr-i</b>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>kʷer</b>- ‘cut, shape’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>babhrí</i>- ‘carrying’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>bʰe-bʰr-i</b>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>bʰer</b>- ‘carry’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>sásni</i>- ‘gaining repeatedly’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>se-sn-i</b>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>senh₂</b>- ‘gain’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>siṣṇú</i>- ‘ever-securing’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>si-sn-u</b>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>senh₂</b>- ‘gain’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>jigyú</i>- ‘victorious’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>gʷi-gʷj-u</b>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>gʷei</b>- ‘compel’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 153.0pt;" valign="top" width="204"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>(pari-)tatnú</i>- ‘surrounding’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.45pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>te-tn-u</b>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 110.5pt;" valign="top" width="147"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<b>tenh₂</b>- ‘stretch’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrcz1x6XM1-eH5uPpnZr2zwUaGtk5bTAYddT5ly-DpOfsCH19O5k2dxUXmvnzy6w8giE8QuqQND_Lwfpu0vg0RLMXdBTKnvKhFsL25ECqViLmmaPn-rd4jEVIHINy3Sf7jLDC0PCzagPM/s1600/Agni.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrcz1x6XM1-eH5uPpnZr2zwUaGtk5bTAYddT5ly-DpOfsCH19O5k2dxUXmvnzy6w8giE8QuqQND_Lwfpu0vg0RLMXdBTKnvKhFsL25ECqViLmmaPn-rd4jEVIHINy3Sf7jLDC0PCzagPM/s400/Agni.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Agni (with partial reduplication)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Most of these virtual “protoforms” are not likely to be of Proto-Indo-European
date; they only illustrate the operation of the derivational mechanism. Indo-European
i-stems were typically nouns (often with an agentive meaning) derived from
o-stem adjectives. There were also adjectival compounds in which the second
member was an i-stem corresponding to a thematic noun (with *-<b>o</b>- replaced by
*-<b>i</b>- ).[1] Both processes seem to have affected some of the reduplications
above. On the one hand, we have <i>vavrá</i>- (adj.) : <i>vavrí</i>- (noun); on the other,
<i>cákri</i>- (adjective) looks as if it had originally corresponded to a noun of of
the *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type, and acquired its *-<b>i</b>- by conforming to the productive
pattern of compound adjectives (as pointed out above, reduplications <i>are</i>
compound-like structures).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">But what
about adjectives like <b>jigyú</b>- ‘victorious’? In their case, derivation from a *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type noun does not seem to be possible. Note that we
have an adjectival doublet, <i>sásni</i>- ~ <i>siṣṇú</i>- [2], both derived from the same,
widely distributed Proto-Indo-European root, but apparently in different ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">As opposed
to “second generation” adjectives with stems ending in *-<b>i</b>-, <i>u</i>-stem adjectives are a very old
type. Some of them can be found on any list of basic Proto-Indo-European vocabulary. In some
cases the root to which the *-<b>u</b>- is added is simply adjectival (meaning that it
has no other known functions); but it may also be a recognisable verb root. </span>In the last common ancestor of the Indo-European languages the root normally had zero-grade, and the suffix was accented: <b>R(ø)-ú</b>-.
Here are a few typical examples: *<b>tn̥h₂-ú</b>- ‘thin’, *<b>pl̥h₁-ú</b>- ‘much, many’, *<b>h₁s-ú</b>-
‘good’, *<b>mr̥ǵʰ-ú</b>- ‘short, brief’, *<b>gʷr̥h₂-ú</b>- ‘heavy’, *<b>h₁ln̥g(ʷ)ʰ-ú</b>- ‘light, nimble,
quick’. In terms of function, this *-<b>ú</b>- is almost equivalent to the suffix
*-<b>ró</b>-, also found in many common adjectives (and often transparently deverbal), e.g.
*<b>h₁rudʰ-ró</b>- ‘red’, *<b>h₂r̥ǵ-ró</b>- ‘flashing, swift’, etc. There are even occasional pairs of (near-)synonyms: *<b>h₁ln̥g(ʷ)ʰ-ú</b>- ≈ *<b>h₁ln̥gʷʰ-ró</b>- (from the verb root *<b>h₁lengʷʰ</b>-
‘move briskly’).[3] One important difference between the two types is that *-<b>ró</b>- adjectives do not
occur in old compounds. We may therefore presume that if a “first generation”
deverbal adjectve was formed from a reduplicated verb, *-<b>ró</b>- was ruled out and *-<b>ú</b>- was the remaining option.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The frequent occurrence of </span>*-<b>i</b>- in the echo syllable of <i>u</i>-stem reduplications may
have something to do with the fact that *-<b>ú</b>- is normally added to an ablauting base in zero-grade.
Perhaps *-<b>i</b>- was once treated as a <i>weak</i> allomorph of full-grade *-<b>e</b>-.[4] The
recipe for a reduplicated <i>u</i>-stem adjective is therefore as follows: take a root
(e.g. *<b>senh₂</b>-), reduplicate it using a CV template (*<b>se-senh₂</b>-), make it weak
(*<b>si-sn</b>-), and add *-<b>ú</b>- (*<b>sisnú</b>-). Serve in a Vedic hymn to Agni the Bounteous (<i>siṣṇú</i>-).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In an <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1499772/The_Meaning_of_Life_PIE_gwih_u_" target="_blank">earlier article</a> (2007), I analyse the aberrant verb *<b>gʷíh₃w-e/o</b>- ‘live’
and the related adjective *<b>gʷih₃w-ó</b>- ‘living, alive’ as ancient reduplications:
*<b>gʷi-h₃w-ó</b>-(from pre-PIE *<b>gʷi-gʷw-ó</b>-) has retained an archaic weak vowel of the echo because its reduplicative structure became
obscured very early and protected from any kind of analogical </span>“repair”. Redupilcations in *-<b>ú</b>- are similar to those in *-<b>ó</b>-. However, <i>u</i>-stems are more likely to retain their
adjectival character, while <i>o</i>-stems can easily be substantivised by means of accent retraction
(so that “second generation” <i>cákri</i>-type adjectives must sometimes be generated to replace their lost thematic ancestors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">I am
awfully sorry if the discussion above seems too technical, but I shall need to refer to this formal background when presenting the hero of the next
post (to appear during the weekend) – <b>the Proto-Indo-European word for ‘beaver’</b>.
I was actually planning to deal with beavers today, but I realised that some
complicated stuff had better be clarified beforehand.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a>]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">———<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[1] Cf. Lat.
<i>inermis</i> < *<b>n̥-h₂armi</b>- ‘unarmed’ (literally ‘[having] no-weapon’) vs. <i>arma</i> ‘arms’
(an <i>o</i>-stem plural).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[2] To be
sure, <i>siṣṇú</i>- occurs only once in the <i>Rigveda</i> (Book 8, 19:31) as an epithet of Agni.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[3] Gk. <i>elakʰús</i>
‘small’, <i>elapʰrós</i> ‘light, quick, small’. Note that labiovelar stops regularly lost their labial component before *<b>u</b>/*<b>w</b> already in Proto-Indo-European.</span><br />
<br />
[4] Cf. the realisation of unstressed etymological /e/ as a high vowel [ᵻ] in many
English words, including obscured compounds (as in the traditional pronunciation of <i>forehead</i>, to rhyme with <i>horrid</i>).</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-53291218182228283532016-01-05T17:10:00.001+01:002016-01-05T17:16:04.985+01:00A Reduplication Manual for Drivers, Metalworkers, and Birdwatchers<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The case of *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>- is relatively clear, perhaps because the word is not as old as some other Indo-European vocabulary, and its derivation from a verb root is at least semi-transparent. The same goes for several other reduplications with the same structure (echo + known root in zero-grade + thematic vowel). Unlike *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-, they are less securely attested, appearing only in one or two branches of Indo-European. For example, Latin <i>aurum </i>‘gold’ has a nice Baltic cognate, Lith <i>áuksas </i>(dialectal <i>áusas</i>). A careful comparison of these words, taking into acount the Baltic tonal accent, leads to the reconstruction *<b>h₂áh₂uso</b>- (= *<b>h₂é-h₂us-o</b>-, originally neuter, as in Latin) for the common ancestor of Italic and Baltic.[1] The verb root here is *<b>h₂wes</b>- ‘light up, dawn’. Gold is therefore “that which glitters”, and we can speculate that the reduplication symbolically suggests the intermittent flickering of reflected light.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Another interesting example, this time restricted to Baltic and Slavic, is the word for ‘cuckoo’: Lith. <i>gegužė̃</i>, Old Russian <i>zegzica</i>, <i>žеgъzuľa</i> (< Proto-Slavic *<b>ž</b></span><b>е<span lang="EN-US">g</span>ъ<span lang="EN-US">z</span>а</b><span lang="EN-US">, extended with various suffixes).[2] The ancestral Balto-Slavic form can be reconstructed as *<b>geguźaH</b>. Because of its tongue-twisting, repetitious consonant pattern the word is often “explained” as onomatopoeic, though it bears little actual resemblance to any noise characteristic of the common cuckoo. If, however, we try to analyse it as a *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type reduplication and travel back in time beyond Proto-Balto-Slavic , its structure becomes clearer: *<b>gʰegʰuǵʰah₂</b> (= *<b>gʰe-gʰuǵʰ-e-h₂</b>), a feminine noun based on the verb root *<b>gʰeuǵʰ</b>- ‘hide’ (known from Indo-Iranian and Baltic). I’ll leave open the question whether the Balto-Slavs dubbed the cuckoo “the hiding one” because it is notorious for hiding its eggs in other birds’ nests, or because it’s frequently heard but almost never seen:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div>
<br />
<i>No bird, but an invisible thing,</i><br />
<i> A voice, a mystery.</i> [3]<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both explanations make enough sense to justify the etymology.[4]<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYd8iyTHABTHrSBzPHKxBnh0MMQN7jvuIybaO1jysb66kyKzSU5WFm0q0bh8ZMY4IYTyCri6mPSjdIZLWesDJCTNQDE_4jqIdBHQW_xKeQAZq7cWwCDYNgJZkUuwmuJSQAk4nedsVbiDI/s1600/cuckoo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYd8iyTHABTHrSBzPHKxBnh0MMQN7jvuIybaO1jysb66kyKzSU5WFm0q0bh8ZMY4IYTyCri6mPSjdIZLWesDJCTNQDE_4jqIdBHQW_xKeQAZq7cWwCDYNgJZkUuwmuJSQAk4nedsVbiDI/s320/cuckoo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A strange reduplication hiding in a reed warbler’s nest.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Let us use the following shorthand notation: <b>R</b> is a root morpheme and <b>E</b> is its reduplicative echo (filling a CV template). The vocalism of a morpheme will be shown in brackets: <b>R(ø)</b> means a root in zero-grade (without a vowel), <b>E(e)</b> means an echo in <i>e</i>-grade, and <b>E(é)</b> means that the <i>e</i>-grade echo is accented. A *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-type derivative can be defined as follows: <b>E(é)-R(ø)-o</b>-. The accent was shifted to the thematic ending when an <i>o</i>-stem formed a collective, and it’s possible that the vowel of the echo was phonetically weakened as a result, yielding <b>E(ə)-R(ø)-é-h₂</b>, but this was a superficial change, easy to reverse by analogically restoring the full vowel of the singular. Note that while ‘wheels’ often occur as a specific set, ‘gold’ is an uncountable mass noun and ‘cuckoos’ do not form natural assemblies. Therefore, of the reduplicated words discussed so far, only ‘wheel’ had a frequently used collective form.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The “thematic” suffix *-<b>e/o</b>- was very productive in the formation of adjectival derivatives. Proto-Indo-European adjectives had the same patterns of declension, and adjectives could be substantivised (converted into nouns) by so-called “internal derivation”: not by suffixation, but by modifying the accent or vocalism. Many thematic nouns must have originated as adjectives turned into nouns simply by retracting their accent from the thematic vowel. If this happened after the period of dramatic vowel changes – strongly sensitive to the location of stress – which produced the Indo-European ablaut patterns, the accent retraction did not affect the vocalism of the adjective. Some nouns retracted their accent just because they were nouns, even if thy had no adjectival counterpart.[5] When such a derivational pattern became productive, reduplicated thematic nouns could be formed from verb roots directly, skipping the adjectival stage, but the meaning of the noun was still “descriptive”, referring to a characteristic action carried out in an iterative or frequentative manner (“turning round and round”, “flashing again or again”, “hiding habitually”).</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Since we have examples of <b>E(é)-R(ø)-o</b>- from both Anatolian and Core Indo-European, the type must have originated already in Proto-Indo-European; but given the limited distribution of most of the nouns formed in this way, they were probably coined at the “dialectal” stage, when the descendants of Proto-Indo-European were already diverging into distinct languages. Younger derivatives are typically more transparent and less irregular than old ones – which is precisely what makes their derivation productive. In the next post, I shall try to argue that an older layer of reduplicated nouns, less transparent and harder to analyse, can also be identified.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a>]</span></div>
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">———<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[1] Michiel C. Driessen. 2003. *<i>h₂é-h₂us-o</i>-, the Proto-Indo-European term for “gold”. <i>Journal of Indo-European Studies</i> 31, 347–362.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[2] The accumulation of stops and fricatives makes the word prone to phonological distortion, so the ancestral sequence <i>ž…gz</i> may change into <i>ž…gž</i>, <i>z…gz</i>, <i>z…z</i> or <i>gž…gž</i> by assimilation at a distance. The Modern Polish word for ‘cuckoo’ is <i>kukułka </i>(an onomatopoeic innovation with a different kind of reduplication), but conservative forms, such as <i>zazula </i>and <i>gżegżółka</i>, have survived in regional dialects. Most Poles remember the funny-looking word <i>gżegżółka </i>(pronounced [gʐɛˈgʐuwka]) from the classroom spelling-tests they were tortured with in their school days. They may dimly recall that it referred to some sort of bird. Schoolteachers, however, rarely explain <i>which </i>bird it is – they probably aren’t sure themselves. <i>Gżegżółka </i>has therefore become an interesting example of a word which has no real communicative function but has been co-opted for a marginal social use (testing schoolchildren’s orthographic memory). See <i><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/08/le-mot-juste.html" target="_blank">zyzzyva</a> </i>for a similar phenomenon.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">[3] William Wordsworth, <i><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww258.html" target="_blank">To the Cuckoo</a></i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[4] The idea is mine, but you are free to share it as long as you credit your source. It has the additional advantage of making it possible to connect Balto-Slavic *<b>geguźaH</b> with the Proto-Germanic word for ‘cuckoo’, *<b>ɣaukaz</b>, on solid formal grounds. The similarity between them has been noticed before, but mere similarity means little without a detailed morphological analysis.</span><br />
<br />
[5] Note that many PIE thematic nouns were accented on a zero-grade syllable, e.g. *<b>h₂ŕ̥tḱos</b> ‘bear’ or *<b>wĺ̥kʷos</b> ‘wolf’.</div>
</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-49608171514597706022016-01-04T08:46:00.000+01:002016-02-23T22:40:05.118+01:00Reduplication: A Map<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the series grows, a table of contents with links to individual OP’s may be useful:</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[<span style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/12/sex-greek-and-rixs-law.html" target="_blank">Sex, Greek, and Rix's Law</a></b>] (not really part of the series, but it provoked the discussion of reduplication)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<ol>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-to-stammer-grammatically.html" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">How to Stammer Grammatically: Reduplication</a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/12/echoes-of-distant-past-fossil.html" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Echoes of the Distant Past: Fossil Reduplications</a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/12/wheels-are-made-for-rollin.html" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Wheels Are Made for Rollin’</a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/germanic-wheels-non-linear-evolution.html" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Germanic Wheels: Non-Linear Evolution</a>]</li>
<li>[<b><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-reduplication-manual-for-drivers.html" target="_blank">A Reduplication Manual for Drivers, Metalworkers, and Birdwatchers</a></b>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/setting-scene-for-beaver.html" target="_blank"><b>Setting the Scene for the Beaver</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<b><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/enter-beaver.html" target="_blank">Enter the Beaver</a></b>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/towards-more-realistic-beaver.html" target="_blank"><b>Towards a More Realistic Beaver</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-root-question-why-ber.html" target="_blank"><b>The Root Question: Why *bʰer-?</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/ve-verbs-brief-introduction.html" target="_blank"><b>Ve-Verbs: A Brief Introduction</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<b><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-strange-case-of-jumbled-vowels.html" target="_blank">The Strange Case of the Jumbled Vowels</a></b>]</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6Vtm0TAuji-iI7xOKPA8nPcDwKHP8QyC5b6Lv2CcLFZeTw7hV70ZVau6wfcrLWetJ74GzoLy1rwE0Jgi9nax1Fx-TeFZczi4bomQkHt5W6fGdt6P6Hvhf5TeC8RQ40VzkLMbSD8yaBY/s1600/Sanskrit_Grammar_by_Whitney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6Vtm0TAuji-iI7xOKPA8nPcDwKHP8QyC5b6Lv2CcLFZeTw7hV70ZVau6wfcrLWetJ74GzoLy1rwE0Jgi9nax1Fx-TeFZczi4bomQkHt5W6fGdt6P6Hvhf5TeC8RQ40VzkLMbSD8yaBY/s640/Sanskrit_Grammar_by_Whitney.jpg" width="393" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dwight_Whitney" target="_blank">Whitney</a>’s <i>Sanskrit Grammar</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-4874392580430859092016-01-02T00:19:00.001+01:002016-01-04T08:54:46.155+01:00Germanic Wheels: Non-Linear Evolution<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
As we have seen, the effects of the accent shift
accompanying the formation of Indo-European collectives were levelled out in
Greek and Vedic. Note that such analogical regularisation happens when speakers
find it difficult to make sense of the forms they are exposed to. Ancient
alternations lose their productivity and become obscured by accumulated layers
of sound change. If the outcome survives, it lingers on as a grammatical
irregularity. If the whole speech community gets rid of it, the evidence that could
be used to reconstruct the original alternation is lost. Fortunately for
historical linguists, speakers are not very consistent in “repairing” the
irregularities of their language. For example, in the prehistory of Greek the
accent and the vocalism of the singular and the collective of ‘wheel’ were
levelled out. Nevertheless, speakers didn’t mess with the inherited gender of
the word: <i>kúklos</i> remained a masculine despite having a neuter-like plural. We
can imagine that a different language could change the gender of the word but
preserve clear traces of the accent alternation. And that indeed is what
Germanic has done.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The
best-know features distinguishing the Germanic languages from the rest of
Indo-European are the consequences of two regular sound changes which operated
in the common ancestor of the group (Proto-Germanic): Grimm’s Law and Verner’s
Law. </span>Grimm’s Law affected all the inherited Indo-European stops,
changing their phonation type (voicing) or manner of articulation. The
pre-Germanic voiceless stops *<b>p</b>, *<b>t</b>, *<b>k</b>, *<b>kʷ</b> became voiceless fricatives with
the same or similar place of articulation: *<b>f</b>, *<b>þ</b>, *<b>x</b>, *<b>xʷ</b>. At roughly the same
time the inherited “voiced aspirated” stops *<b>bʰ</b>, *<b>dʰ</b>, *<b>gʰ</b>, *<b>gʷʰ</b> shifted into corresponding voiced fricatives: *<b>β</b>, *<b>ð</b>, *<b>ɣ</b>, *<b>ɣʷ</b>. A little later, the third part of Grimm’s Law was enacted: the remaining inherited stops *<b>b</b>, *<b>d</b>,
*<b>g</b>, *<b>gʷ</b> became devoiced, yielding Germanic *<b>p</b>, *<b>t</b>, *<b>k</b>, *<b>kʷ</b>. As a result, Proto-Germanic
changed from a language with a large number of stop phonemes into a language
with a rich system of fricatives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Verner’s Law applied to non-initial voiceless fricatives not
adjacent to another voiceless sound and preceded by an unaccented syllable. <span lang="EN-US">The fricatives affected were either
those generated by Grimm’s Law, or the only fricative phoneme inherited from pre-Germanic times, *<b>s</b> (the Proto-Indo-European </span><span style="text-align: justify;">“laryngeal” fricatives</span><span lang="EN-US"> had already disappeared). As a
result, *<b>f</b>, *<b>þ</b>, *<b>s</b>, *<b>x</b>, *<b>xʷ</b> became *</span><b>β</b><span lang="EN-US">, *<b>ð</b>, *<b>z</b>, *<b>ɣ</b>, *<b>ɣʷ</b> in the appropriate environment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOAo68MjAPUUNbPr2Uh-aYPfhb2ulEM0VZrVBsUW-rNhipAZH4ppyM0PkbJzv4i-poasT9FoZtHsCjnmvBNIhV4F3DIXZ2BkqW8ZLpQIj17NA6O7PP6HxDvwy4Bj2i84PNdtig4ebd1oE/s1600/Wheels.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOAo68MjAPUUNbPr2Uh-aYPfhb2ulEM0VZrVBsUW-rNhipAZH4ppyM0PkbJzv4i-poasT9FoZtHsCjnmvBNIhV4F3DIXZ2BkqW8ZLpQIj17NA6O7PP6HxDvwy4Bj2i84PNdtig4ebd1oE/s400/Wheels.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">From <span style="text-align: start;">*</span><span style="text-align: start;"><b>kʷékʷlos</b> </span><span style="text-align: start;">to</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span><span style="text-align: start;"><i>wheel</i>? It wasn</span><span style="text-align: justify;">’</span><span style="text-align: start;">t that simple.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Let us see
how these changes affected PIE *<b>kʷékʷlos</b>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Grimm’s Law applied to both occurrences of *<b>kʷ</b>, changing
them into *<b>xʷ</b>. Since neither of them was found in an environment triggering
Verner’s Law, they remained unchanged till the end of Proto-Germanic. Verner’s
Law would have affected the final *-<b>s</b>. but we can’t be sure it was there. The
‘wheel’ word is a neuter noun in Northwest Germanic. We don’t know if it survived in
Gothic, the only East Germanic language known from written texts. Most of the
preserved Gothic material consists of copies of one partial translation of the
Bible, and the text doesn’t happen to mention wheels. It’s obvious that the
shift from masculine to neuter in the singular noun took place because the
plural looked neuter, but we can’t tell whether it happened in pre-Germanic,
Proto-Germanic or the common ancestor of the Northwest Germanic languages.
Let us therefore ignore the gendered nom.sg. ending *-<b>s </b>and focus on the stem *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>-, which was the same for neuters and masculines. In the
passage from pre-Germanic to Proto-Germanic, *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>- > *<b>xʷéxʷla</b>-.[1]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
What happened to the the collective *<b>kʷəkʷláh₂</b>? The
laryngeal in the ending was lost long before Grimm’s Law, and the
vowel was lengthened by compensation. <span lang="EN-US">It seems that a full vowel was restored early in the initial syllable on the analogy of the singular, so we may start with the form *<b>kʷekʷlā́</b>,
serving as the plural of *<b>kʷékʷlo</b>- (whatever the latter’s gender). In
Proto-Germanic, *<b>kʷekʷlā́</b> became *<b>xʷexʷlṓ</b> by Grimm’s Law. Since the second *<b>xʷ</b>
occurred in a voiced environment after an unaccented vowel, Verner’s Law
applied, yielding *<b>xʷeɣʷlṓ</b> as the plural of *<b>xʷéxʷla</b>-.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">A few more
developments took place before the split of Proto-Germanic into the East and Northwest groups.
First, Proto-Germanic gave up contrastive accent in favour of fixed initial
stress. This means that although linguists can sometimes infer the original location of the word accent from the outcome of Verner’s Law, both *<b>xʷexʷla</b>- and *<b>xʷeɣʷlō</b> had predictable initial stress in late
Proto-Germanic, and the speakers of the language had no means of guessing where
the *<b>xʷ</b>/*<b>ɣʷ</b> alternation came from. The occurrence of “non-Vernerian” and
“Vernerian” variants no longer depended on stress-related factors. For historical reasons, they
were found tendentially in different grammatical forms, so speakers came to regard the
conditioning as morphological, not phonological. But since grammatical
contrasts are in most cases sufficiently signalled by other means (e.g. the use
of inflectional endings), the cost of maintaining an obscure consonantal
alternation may outweigh its functional importance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Although
the Germanic languages entered the historical scene rather late (in comparison
with Hittite, Greek, Vedic or even Latin), they preserved some remarkably
conservative features. The accent shift distinguishing some singular thematic
nouns (with stems ending in *-<b>o</b>-) from their plurals (original collectives) was
one of them. But the establishment of an initial-stress rule sounded the death
knell of the distinction. The voicing alternation in words containing medial
fricatives was not enough to keep it alive. Speakers of Late Proto-Germanic
eliminated most of the Vernerian alternations from the noun system,
generalising one of the variants at the expense of the other. In the
comparative material we can see only some scattered fossils instead of a
productive pattern.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Levelling
out could happen either way. Some speakers generalised the consonant of the
singular (*<b>xʷexʷla</b>-/*<b>xʷexʷlō</b> ), and others that of the plural (*<b>xʷeɣʷla</b>-/*<b>xʷeɣʷlō</b>). In the Proto-Germanic speech community the basic form of the noun was
effectively duplicated: it could be either *<b>xʷexʷla</b>- or *<b>xʷeɣʷla</b>-, both meaning
‘wheel’ and both occurring with the same case-endings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Still
before the breakup of Proto-Germanic, the status of labiovelar consonants
became precarious. The voiced labiovelar fricative *<b>ɣʷ</b> was eliminated from most
positions; word-medially it merged with the semivowel *<b>w</b>. Voiceless*<b>xʷ</b> lost its
labial accompaniment (lip-rounding) before consonants. The result was like
this: *<b>xʷexla</b>- ~ *<b>xʷewla</b>-. The correspondence between these variants was
anomalous, since the normal “Vernerian” counterpart of non-labialised *<b>x</b> was *<b>ɣ</b>, not *<b>w</b>. This must have caused
occasional transmission errors: *<b>xʷewla</b>- could be misheard and misinterpreted as *<b>xʷeɣla</b>- (by listeners who anticipated the voiced counterpart of *<b>x</b>). Thus, by the end of the Proto-Germanic period
three variants of the stem were in circulation: *<b>xʷexla</b>- ~ *<b>xʷewla</b>- ~ *<b>xʷeɣla</b>-.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The
resolution of a conflict between competing synonyms doesn’t happen overnight.
In fact, it can take centuries unless speakers have a good reason to prefer one
of the forms. In the case we are discussing, however, none of the competitors had a decisive
advantage over the others, so their evolution proceeded in a “neutral” fashion. If there is no systematic
bias, the relative frequencies of variants will vary randomly until
the least lucky one drops out of use and is seen no more. But the three forms
survived into the languages descended from Proto-Northwest Germanic before any of them reached fixation in the
speech community. To be precise, we can identify reflexes of *<b>xʷexla</b>- and *<b>xʷewla</b>-
in North Germanic, while all three can be found in West Germanic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Let us now adjust
the notations slightly to catch up with the phonological developments in the West
Germanic languages. In their parent language, the articulation of *<b>x</b> was
weakened in most positions, so that a glottal
aspirate [h] beacame its default pronunciation, with velar or palatal fricatives remaining as positional variants determined by the context. I will therefore use the transcription
*<b>h</b> rather than *<b>x</b> for this evolvoing phoneme. At that stage the surviving labiovelars were treated not as single phonemes but as sequences of
two segments, *<b>hw</b> and *<b>kw</b> (*<b>gw</b> was at best rare; it may have become *<b>g</b> by that time).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">We can thus assume
the existence of three variants </span>in Early Proto-West Germanic: *<b>hwehla</b>-, *<b>hwewla</b>-, and *<b>hweɣla</b>-. In West
Germanic there was a tendency for consonants to undergo gemination (or, in plain
English, doubling) when followed by *<b>j</b> or by one of the liquid consonants, *<b>r</b> or
*<b>l</b>. Before *<b>j</b> the doubling was regular and affected all consonants except *<b>z</b>
and *<b>r</b> (which soon merged as *<b>r</b>). Before *<b>r</b> and *<b>l</b>, it
was sporadic and restricted to non-sonorants. Some speakers doubled the second *<b>h</b> of *<b>hwehla</b>-, so a new pronunciation,*<b>hwehhla</b>-, was added to the already
existing pool of variants.[2] At a later
stage of Proto-West Germanic the stem dropped its final vowel in the nominative/accusative
singular. The four variants competing at that time were as follows: *<b>hwehl</b>,
*<b>hwehhl</b>, *<b>hwewl</b>, and *<b>hweɣl</b>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Soon
afterwards, the West Germanic-speaking Angles, Saxons and Jutes embarked on their
conquest of Britain. A few centuries later Old English began to be
written down regularly. Which ancestral forms survived into literary Old
English? The answer is quite surprising: none had been eliminated. Descendants of all the West Germanic variants
can be identified in the Old English corpus:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><i>hwēol</i> ~ <i>hwīol</i> < *<b>hwehl</b> and *<b>hwewl</b> (from both sources)</li>
<li><i>hweohhol</i> (<i>hweohl</i>- when inflected) < *<b>hwehhl</b></li>
<li><i>hweowol</i> ~ <i>hweowul</i> ~ <i>hweowel</i> (<i>hweowl</i>-) < *<b>hwewl</b></li>
<li><i>hweogul</i> ~ <i>hweogel</i> (<i>hweogl</i>-)[3] < *<b>hweɣl</b></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">To be sure,
their relative frequency was non-uniform; <i>hwēol</i> was by far the most common form, followed
by <i>hweow(V)l</i> (which was about half as frequent), with the others lagging behind;
but the competition was by no means over yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In Middle
English times (11th-15th c.) this variety was drastically reduced. The
variant <i>whẹ̄l</i> /hweːl/ (from OE <i>hwēol</i>) increased its frequency at the expense of all
alternative forms, ousting them almost completely.[4] The variants <i>whewel</i>,
<i>wheghel</i>, and even <i>whefyl</i> (apparently with with /f/ from /x/, as in <i>laughter</i> an <i>enough</i>) lingered on for
some time, but remained vanishingly rare and dialectally restricted. </span>Their
last remaining traces can be found in proper names, for example in the surname
<i>Whewell</i>. <span lang="EN-US">You must have heard
of William Whewell (1794–1866), the scholar who coined the words <i>scientist </i>and
<i>physicist</i>, but you probably didn’t know his name was a fancy variant of <i>wheel</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">As you can
well imagine, similarly complicated stories could be spun to present the evolution
of the ‘wheel’ word and its variants in other Northwest Germanic languages.
There are numerous interesting problems
that I can’t discuss here for want of space. For example: what happened to Germanic *<b>xʷexʷla</b>-
in High German? where did the odd-looking Old Frisian variants <i>fi</i></span><i>ā</i><span lang="EN-US"><i>l</i> and <i>t(h)i</i></span><i>ā</i><span lang="EN-US"><i>l
</i>come from? Well, I have to stop
somewhere. There are other words waiting to be discussed.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a>]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">———<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[1] The
mergers *<b>o</b>, *<b>a</b> > *<b>a</b> (for short vowels) and *<b>ō</b>, *<b>ā</b> > *<b>ō</b> (for long vowels)
are also characteristically Germanic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[2] There was
a phonetic difference between medial *-<b>h</b>- and *-<b>hh</b>- surrounded by vowels or
sonorants. The former underwent gradual weakening into a half-voiced glottal
glide [ɦ] and was eventually dropped in the individual histories of the West
Germanic languages, while *-<b>hh</b>- retained
a strong velar articulation [xx] and survived much longer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[3] OE <i>g</i> was
still a voiced velar fricative, [ɣ], in this context.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">[4] It was
spelt in about twenty different ways, which however indicate more or less the
same pronunciation. Rarer dialectal forms with Middle English /iː/ existed as well. The
vowel of Modern English </span><i style="text-align: justify;">wheel</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> /(h)wiːl/, however, comes from Middle English /eː/ via
the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Great Vowel Shift</a><span style="text-align: justify;">.</span></div>
</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-4066791362523729322015-12-30T22:14:00.003+01:002016-01-04T08:54:29.010+01:00Wheels Are Made for Rollin’<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Reduplicated
nouns certainly existed in Proto-Indo-European, but they are a poorly
investigated species. I will leave aside onomatopoeic reduplication, when the
echo consists of at least a CVC sequence, as in Proto-Slavic *<b>golgol</b></span><b>ъ</b> <span lang="EN-US">‘speech’, Greek <i>bárbaros</i> ‘foreign’
(that is, speaking incomprehensibly), Latin <i>murmur</i> (no gloss necessary), or when the
whole stem is repeated, as in Hittite <i>harsiharsi</i>- ‘thunderstorm’. </span>There
is a more interesting type in which reduplication is “grammatical” rather than purely
iconic, the echo template is CV, and only the consonant is copied from the
base. The showcase specimen is the celebrated word for ‘wheel’, *<b>kʷékʷlos</b>. <span lang="EN-US">It is not attested in the Anatolian subfamily,
so its Proto-Indo-European status is uncertain, but it dates back at least to
the common ancestor of Core Indo-European.¹</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqq0VpvUGyMzBrYnQPz_ZOMImEjupf-wMxZ49MhsnqTIMEItelvTEOqzO6soZ6mpbaQ-Vp0SI1N2KIocgqJpVg6H6Zabc2YeqgVmjasv_yYo0mZnxUEMHKQE0exgnqF4QHjBU7wy0dR_Y/s1600/Sun+Chariot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqq0VpvUGyMzBrYnQPz_ZOMImEjupf-wMxZ49MhsnqTIMEItelvTEOqzO6soZ6mpbaQ-Vp0SI1N2KIocgqJpVg6H6Zabc2YeqgVmjasv_yYo0mZnxUEMHKQE0exgnqF4QHjBU7wy0dR_Y/s400/Sun+Chariot.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Bronze Age sun chariot<br />
[source: the <a href="http://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-bronze-age/the-sun-chariot/" target="_blank">National Museum of Denmark</a>, Copenhagen]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
The ‘wheel’ word is interesting for several reasons. Not all
of them need to concern us here. Wheeled transport (in combination with horse
domestication) is supposed to have played a crucial role in the early migrations
of the Indo-European-speakers, and consequently in the expansion of the
Indo-European languages. The appearance of a “technological package” containing terms
for ‘wheel’, ‘axle’, ‘cart/wagon’, etc. marks the onset of these historical
processes. But I shall concentrate on the linguistic properties of the word,
not its cultural importance. The latter is relevant only as an “ecological”
factor favouring the frequent use of the word, its successful survival and rich
attestation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
*<b>kʷékʷlos</b> is an
original masculine – or, if it dates back to Proto-Indo-European after all, an
animate, non-neuter noun. <span lang="EN-US">One
of its forms is conspicuous by its unusually high survival rate – the
collective *<b>kʷəkʷláh₂</b> (see below for details of the reconstruction). It must have been used very
frequently, for it tends to occur instead of the expected masculine plural. In Homeric
Greek, for example, <i>kúklos</i> has an irregular plural, <i>kúkla </i>(as if the word were neuter rather than masculine). </span>This
is quite striking, because the use of the old PIE collective with animate
nouns, still productive in Old Hittite, became extremely rare in Core IE. <span lang="EN-US">The collective, co-opted already in PIE as the ordinary nominative/accusative plural
of the neuter gender, came to be associated exclusively with neuters in most daughter languages. Wheels, however, are more often spoken of as fixed sets (the two wheels of a chariot, the four wheels of a wagon) than as an
arbitrary number of individual objects. The fact that *<b>kʷəkʷláh₂</b> is preserved so
well shows that the word was applied to wheels as vehicle parts when the
collective was still a living grammatical category, contrasting with the count
plural.<o:p></o:p></span>³</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Let’s take *<b>kʷékʷlos</b> apart into its morphological
constituents: *<b>kʷe-kʷl-o-s</b>. The core part is *-<b>kʷl</b>-, in which we can recognise
the very common verb root *<b>kʷelh₁</b>- ‘move round, follow one’s course’ (with a
variety of secondary meanings, such as ‘become, stay around, inhabit, observe, cultivate,
take care of’ and the like). <span lang="EN-US">The
phonetic reduction of the root, resulting in the loss of the laryngeal segment
*<b>h₁</b>, is a normal phenomenon in compounds and reduplications. The reduplicated
noun is thematic (has a stem ending in the vocalic suffix *-<b>o</b>-), which suggests
adjectival origin. Collectives of <i>o</i>-stems were formed by adding the *-<b>h₂</b> suffix
to the stem-final vowel in the <i>e</i>-grade: *-<b>e-h₂</b> → *-<b>ah₂</b>. If the singular had
initial accent, the collective was accented on the ending (*-<b>áh₂</b>). This accent
shift happened early enough to affect the vocalism of some nouns (from a sufficiently old lexical stock). It is therefore probable that the collective
was *<b>kʷəkʷláh₂</b>, with a weak prop-vowel rather than a full-grade *<b>e</b> in the first
syllable. This would explain the development of the word in Greek: *<b>kʷəkʷ</b>- >
*<b>kukʷ</b>- (with the prop-vowel “stealing” lip-rounding from the preceding
labiovelar) > <i>kuk</i>- (with a regular delabialisation of *<b>kʷ</b> after /u/).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">As the
accentual difference between the singular and the collective became
non-productive, the paradigm was levelled out in various ways to eliminate the
mismatch; that is why the accent is consistently initial in Greek (generalised from the
singular) and consistently final in Vedic (from the collective).
Since *<b>kʷ(e)kʷláh₂</b> looks like a neuter plural, speakers were tempted to supply an
innovated neuter singular to match, *<b>kʷ(e)kʷlóm</b>, instead of the inherited
masculine (hence e.g. Vedic <i>cakrám </i>beside much rarer <i>cakrás</i>). The function of the “echo”
prefix *<b>kʷé</b>-/*<b>kʷə</b>- isn’t entirely clear, but judging from cross-linguistic
tendencies we can speculate that reduplication gave the underlying verb root an
iterative colouring (‘go round and round and round’ rather than ‘complete a turn</span>’).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">While rare,
the derivational pattern visible in the </span>‘wheel’ word (a thematic noun formed from a reduplicated verb
root) is not isolated, and can be found also on the Anatolian side of
the oldest split in the Indo-European family-tree. For example, the Hittite
word for ‘rake’ was <i>hah(ha)ra</i>-, plausibly reconstructed as *<b>h₂áh₂ro</b>- ← *<b>h₂e-h₂rh₃-o</b>-.
Here the root is *<b>h₂arh₃</b>- ‘break the soil, plough’, as in Greek <i>aróō</i>, Proto-Slavic *<i>orjǫ</i>, Old English <i>erian</i>
(all meaning ‘to plough’), or in the widespread Neo-Indo-European instrument noun *<b>h₂árh₃-trom</b> ‘ard, plough’ (Greek <i>árotron</i>, Old
Norse <i>arðr</i>).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The
behaviour of the ‘wheel’ word in Germanic so interesting and instructive that it deserves to be covered in a separate post (to appear soon).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a>]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">———</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
¹ My use of the terms “Core Indo-European” and “Neo-Indo-European” is explained <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2013/03/chaque-replicateur-son-histoire.html?showComment=1366910476420#c1777437149651448991" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
² Of course the restoration of *<b>e</b> on the analogy of the singular was possible, and it certainly happened in some branches of Indo-European.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
³ Note the semantic development in Tocharian, where *<b>kʷékʷlos</b> > Toch.A <i>kukäl</i>, Toch.B <i>kokále</i> came to mean ‘wagon, chariot’.</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-64562393710013754342015-12-28T09:41:00.000+01:002016-01-04T08:53:41.986+01:00Echoes of the Distant Past: Fossil Reduplications<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Modern English
has its normal share of nursery words, colloquial interjections, and
miscellaneous other onomatopoeic or expressive words involving sound-repetition:
<i>daddy</i>, <i>baby</i>, <i>nanny</i>, <i>sissy</i>, <i>pee-pee</i>, <i>bye-bye</i>, <i>ta-ta</i>, <i>goody-goody</i>, <i>ding-dong</i>, <i>pop</i>,
<i>riff-raff</i>, <i>hip-hop</i>, <i>bow-wow</i>, <i>cuckoo</i>, <i>hurdy-gurdy</i>, <i>tic-tac-toe</i>, <i>bubble</i>, <i>giggle</i>, <i>mumble</i>,
<i>google</i>, etc. English also has reduplicative words borrowed from other
languages: <i>dodo</i>, <i>can-can</i>, <i>dum-dum</i>, <i>yo-yo</i>. Some of such imports are
old and their reduplicative status is no longer obvious to non-specialists: <i>barbarian</i>, <i>purple</i>, <i>turtle-dove</i>. A few
echoic words exhibiting a repetitive pattern are at least as old as the English
language, whatever their ultimate origin; <i>cock </i>and <i>chicken </i>belong here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidYFB0gwG1rPo9AX0UVV3IfdcYpqC6jFaX2RRgYsqo9j5LPMPcPjtDbBdgmZu0Ajocyx198q1XY1mB8OyVpfmxeIasq11NOLHtrYUSw0gJ28iUdq63s9GaMmPalaV-fOk3BO59RDl4HQ0/s1600/Castor_fiber_tree_felling_5_brok_beentree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidYFB0gwG1rPo9AX0UVV3IfdcYpqC6jFaX2RRgYsqo9j5LPMPcPjtDbBdgmZu0Ajocyx198q1XY1mB8OyVpfmxeIasq11NOLHtrYUSw0gJ28iUdq63s9GaMmPalaV-fOk3BO59RDl4HQ0/s320/Castor_fiber_tree_felling_5_brok_beentree.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Traces left by a reduplication<br />
[Source: Beentree/<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castor_fiber_tree_felling_5_brok_beentree.jpg" target="_blank">Wikipedia CC</a>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Note, however, that the words listed above are
not <i>derived </i>by reduplication. For example, <i>giggle </i>cannot be traced back to a
simpler verb with only one occurrence of /ɡ/. In the overwhelming majority of cases
the repetition is merely phonetic, not morphological. Reduplication in the proper sense of the word (involving <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-to-stammer-grammatically.html" target="_blank">a base and an echo</a>) is not used
in English to perform any of its typical, cross-linguistically common tasks,
such as the formation of plural or collective nouns, verb stems of a particular
aspect or tense, intensive verbs or adjectives, deverbal nouns, etc. This is one
of those things that make English, together with some other languages of the northerly
latitudes, <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-normally-weird-language.html" target="_blank">a little weird</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Interestingly,
morphological reduplication is given looser rein in some English-based creole
languages, for example in Tok Pisin, where it seems to be on the rise as a
derivational device – presumably as a
result of contact with the heavily reduplicating indigenous languages of Papua
New Guinea. Here are some examples:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>kala </i>‘colour’ → <i>kalakala </i>‘colourful’<br />
<i>bruk </i>‘break, fall apart’ → <i>brukbruk </i>‘fall apart into many small pieces’<br />
<i>pilai </i>‘play’ → <i>pilaipilai </i>‘play round’<br />
<i>ron </i>‘run’ → <i>ronron </i>‘keep running’<br />
<i>tok </i>‘talk’ → <i>toktok </i>‘conversation’<br />
<i>wil </i>‘wheel’ → <i>wilwil </i>‘bicycle’¹</blockquote>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Has English
preserved any really old reduplications, with cognates in other branches of the
Indo-European family? Yes, but there are only a handful left, and most of them
show no transparent reduplicative structure any longer. Among those relics there are at least two nouns, <i>wheel </i>and <i>beaver </i>(probably also <i>tetter </i>‘skin disease’),
one adjective, <i>quick </i>(provided that my etymology of PIE *<b>gʷih₃wó</b>- ‘living’ in <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1499772/The_Meaning_of_Life_PIE_gwih_u_" target="_blank">Gąsiorowski 2007</a> is correct), and
two verbs in the past tense, <i>ate </i>and <i>did</i>. Despite the fact that the two irregular past tenses represent
the same modern category, they go back to different Indo-European verb forms, characterised by different reduplication patterns. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, the regular past-tense ending
– and not just the -<i>d </i>of <i>loved</i>, <i>watched</i>, <i>waited</i>, but also the -<i>t</i>/-<i>d</i> of <i>kept</i>, <i>brought</i>,
<i>sold </i>– vaguely reflects an ancient reduplication as well, and has in fact the same origin
as <i>did</i>. I will trace these connections later in this series.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a><span style="text-align: justify;">]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
———<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
¹ Since <i>wil </i>= Eng. <i>wheel</i>, which itself is an old reduplicated noun, Tok Pisin <i>wilwil </i>is a quadruplication, etymologically speaking.</div>
</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-80817857785844445992015-12-27T00:59:00.000+01:002016-01-04T08:53:01.503+01:00How to Stammer Grammatically: Reduplication<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Linguistic signs are mostly <i>arbitrary</i> in the sense that their
form is not directly related to the concept they express. For example, there is
nothing in the phonetic shape of the Malay word <i>ikan</i> to suggest its meaning – ‘fish’,
or, by extension, any ‘marine animal’ (turtle, whale, oyster, etc.). The sound
of the word is not intended to evoke swimming or splashing. <span lang="EN-US">It is just a
regular historical reflex of Proto-Austronesian *<b>Sikan</b> (with the same meaning
and also an arbitrary phonetic shape). </span>It has cognates in other Austronesian languages, for example Hawaiian <i>i‘a</i> [ˈiʔa].
None of them makes you say to yourself, “Methinks it is like a fish.” Indeed,
even if a word starts out as onomatopoeic, sound changes will in the long run alter its pronunciation beyond recognition, eventually reducing or destroying its imitative value (see <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2013/05/morphemes-are-forever.html" target="_blank">the etymology of English <i>pigeon</i></a>).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Affixes and auxiliary words are usually not iconic either. <span lang="EN-US">English regularly indicates the
plural number of nouns with the suffix -<i>(e)s</i> (pronounced [s, z, </span>ᵻ<span lang="EN-US">z], depending on the context); some nouns (including <i>fish</i>) form endingless
plurals. Neither the suffix nor its absence “portrays” plurality, whether by
resemblance or by analogy. The same can be said of irregular plurals like <i>goose</i> : <i>geese</i> or <i>child</i> : <i>children.</i> Is it possible at all to </span>express plurality <i>iconically</i> – that is, to make a linguistic sign
<i>sound</i> plural? Yes, it can be achieved by amplifying the
sign itself to indicate “more of something”; and one simple way to amplify it is to repeat it. Malay nouns are not inflected for number.
Plurality, if it matters in a given situation, may be signalled by the use of
numerals or quantifiers, or just inferred from the context. But the speaker may
also choose to emphasise the multiplicity of referents by doubling the noun:
<i>ikan-ikan</i> ‘fish’ (plural). This is similar to emphatic repetition occasionally
encountered in all languages, including English, as in:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span lang="EN-US">We rode for
<b>miles and miles</b>.</span><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span><span lang="EN-US">What do you
read, my lord? ― <b>Words, words, words</b>.</span></i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In English,
word repetition is a syntactic phenomenon; in Malay, it is used as a word-formation mechanism. Note, by the way, that many Malay nouns obligatorily consist of a double occurrence
of the same sequence and have no simplex counterpart, e.g. <i>biri-biri</i> ‘sheep’ (singular and plural), while others change
their meaning if doubled (<i>mata</i> ‘eye’ : <i>mata-mata</i> ‘spy, detective, police
officer’). Root-doubling can also be used with adjectives to indicate intensity
(<i>her wild, wild eyes </i>could serve as an English analogue), and with verbs to indicate repetitive or
prolonged action. In those cases the doubling is definitely iconic. But duplicated
verbs may also refer to a sloppy or leisurely execution of an action, e.g.
<i>makan</i> ‘eat’ : <i>makan-makan</i> ‘peck at the food’ (showing lack of interest or appetite). Here the iconicity is less self-evident.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The technical
term for such morphological doubling is <b>reduplication</b>. In the Malay examples above
the entire root is faithfully repeated, but numerous languages also employ
<b>partial reduplication</b> in which the repetition is just hinted at rather than
applied in full. Typically, a fixed pattern of consonants (C) and vowels (V) is
used as a simplified copy of the morphological base – most often a CV or CVC template.
Sometimes only the consonants are copied from the base, while the V position is
filled by a fixed default vowel (e.g. [ə]). Depending
on the language, the copy may be attached before the base (as a prefix) or after it
(as a suffix), or even inserted inside it (as an infix). The copy is usually called <b>reduplicant</b>,
but I prefer the handier and less esoteric term <b>echo</b>. We shall be mostly concerned
with reduplicative prefixes, that is cases when the echo is placed <i>before</i> the base. For example, in Yucatec Maya
CV reduplication is employed to form intensive adjectives and intensive or iterative
verbs:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>k’aas</i> ‘bad’ : <i>k’a’-k’aas</i> ‘evil’<br />
<i>p’iik</i> ‘break (something hard)’
: <i>p’i’-p’iik</i> ‘break into many fragments’</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Partial reduplication of this kind is not unlike stammering, which may also involve incomplete syllable repetition: </span><i>b—b—black</i> [b<span style="text-align: justify;">əb</span><span style="text-align: justify;">ə</span>ˈ<span style="text-align: justify;">bl</span>æk]. Of course there is an important difference: reduplication is controlled by the speaker, while stammering is involuntary and has no grammatical function. </div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Expressing
plurality, intensity, repetition or, more generally, “greater degree” is the
most natural use of reduplication, with a clear cognitive motivation. However,
once adopted as a derivational or inflectional device, reduplication easily acquires
secondary functions, gradually dropping its iconic character and evolving into another </span>“arbitrary” morphological tool. Reduplication, in its numerous variants, has a global distribution. It’s only in a circumpolar belt of the northern hemisphere, including Europe, Northern Asia and the
northernmost part of North America that reduplication
plays little role in derivational and inflectional morphology. From a
Eurocentric perspective grammatical reduplication may look exotic; we shall
see, however, that it had important functions in Proto-Indo-European and some of the languages
descended from it.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Reduplication.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Reduplication.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
See also: WALS Online: <a href="http://wals.info/chapter/27" target="_blank">Reduplication</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">REDUPLICATION: back to the table of contents</a>]</span></div>
</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-58208019309997660112015-12-17T11:50:00.001+01:002021-02-13T15:39:25.183+01:00Sex, Greek, and Rix’s Law<div style="text-align: justify;">
A recent <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/11/boontling-deek-rovin-gypsy-word.html?showComment=1450051199461#c5524968703953470542" target="_blank">comment by David Marjanović</a> made me reflect on a Sanskrit word, <i>yábhati</i> ‘have sexual intercourse’ (as the Monnier-Williams dictionary tactfully puts it). The verb is of special interest to <a href="http://blog.bulbul.sk/2006/08/iebh.html" target="_blank">speakers of Slavic languages</a>, because its exact cognate – Proto-Slavic *<b>jebe/o</b>- (with a host of Slavic derivatives) – remains one of the most favourite obscenities in all the languages belonging to that branch of Indo-European. Interestingly, the verb is only very sparsely attested in Iranian and seems to be completely absent from Baltic. In Modern Indo-Aryan its reflexes are quite numerous, though hard to recognise after more than two millennia of sound change, sometimes combined with euphemistic deformation.</div>
<div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By comparing Indo-Iranian and Slavic cognates, we arrive at the stem *<b>jébʰ-e/o</b>- (3sg. *<b>jébʰeti</b>, 3pl. *<b>jébʰonti</b>) as the most parsimonious reconstruction of their ancestral form. It’s a so-called “simple thematic present” – an imperfective stem built to the root *<b>jébʰ</b>-, with the vowel *<b>e</b> in the root and the “buffer vowel” *-<b>e/o</b>- added before personal endings. If the verb has a deeper origin in Indo-European, its oldest form must have been different. Simple thematic presents occur in large numbers in most of the branches of the family; for example, they accout for much of the third conjugation in Latin. However, they are absent from the most outlying lineage of Indo-European (the Anatolian languages), and their low number in Tocharian, the next group that split off before the divergence of the modern branches, shows that they evolved gradually in post-Proto-Indo-European times. Further speculation about the origin of *<b>jébʰ-e/o</b>- via internal reconstruction is difficult because simple thematics have more than one historical sources.</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9j50OfEhd7LqhxNDy7AhSDQy9KPk2imbJr6i8J9V-N0oOd3vN-ZGtzPlyytlfUapGAo__pBytzpvuKulmcE5agZSgWi44aIwibJFnWryWhDqrT4gr9E7dgSEPFQ1wuhFubQ8FVpsA2I/s1600/Greek.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9j50OfEhd7LqhxNDy7AhSDQy9KPk2imbJr6i8J9V-N0oOd3vN-ZGtzPlyytlfUapGAo__pBytzpvuKulmcE5agZSgWi44aIwibJFnWryWhDqrT4gr9E7dgSEPFQ1wuhFubQ8FVpsA2I/s320/Greek.jpg" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I hope it is not all Greek to you.<br />
[Source: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oinochoe_by_the_Shuvalov_Painter_(Berlin_F2414)" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When we run out of exact cognates, we can focus on next best thing – plausibly related words with a different morphological structure. Everybody agrees that Ancient Greek <b>oípʰō</b> (with the same meaning) must be a relative of <i>yábhati</i>. Pre-Greek *<b>jébʰ-e/o</b>-, however, would have produced Gk. ˣ<i>zepʰō</i> (here, ˣ, not to be confused with the <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2013/05/mind-asterisk.html" target="_blank">asterisk</a>, marks an unattested, incorrectly predicted form), so the origin of <i>oípʰō</i> must be different. Since the Greek reflex of the root morpheme (<i>oípʰ</i>-) contains an unexpected <i>o</i>, it is justifiable to suspect that one of the Proto-Indo-European “laryngeal” consonants, the one conventionally written *<b>h₃</b> (probably a voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ], if you prefer phonetic symbols) is lurking about. This consonant was vocalised in Greek as <i>o</i> in some positions; it could also (already in PIE) change an adjacent *<b>e</b> into *<b>o</b>. This is why the root we are discussing is often reconstructed as *<b>h₃jébʰ</b>- to accommodate the o-colouring fricative. Unfortunately, most sources just put the laryngeal there and don’t attempt to explain the Greek form in detail.<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">The trouble is that </span><i style="text-align: justify;">oípʰō</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> can’t be derived from *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃jébʰ-e/o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- either. According to recent work on PIE syllable structure (</span><a href="http://www.brill.com/products/book/indo-european-syllable" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Byrd 2015</a><span style="text-align: justify;">; see also </span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/11/boontling-deek-rovin-gypsy-word.html?showComment=1450105852204#c2143568121340412692" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="text-align: justify;">), the sequence *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃j</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- was simplified to *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">j</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- in word-initial positions very early in the history of Indo-European, so in this case too we should expect Gk. ˣ</span><i style="text-align: justify;">zepʰō</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, just as if the *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> weren’t there. Some authors propose that *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃jébʰ-e/o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- had a </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metathesis_(linguistics)" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">metathetic</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> byform *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃óibʰ-e/o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-, in which *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">j</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> and *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">e</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> had swapped places, which caused the latter to get coloured to *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">o</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> by the preceding *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃</b><span style="text-align: justify;">. Such a solution, however, is desperately ad hoc. There is no morphological or phonological motivation for the metathesis, and the wish to see the desired output is not enough.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">Another ad hoc solution is adopted in the </span><i style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexikon_der_indogermanischen_Verben" target="_blank">Lexicon der indogermanischen Verben</a></i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (Lexicon of Indo-European Verbs, LIV), where the root is listed as *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">jebʰ</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-, and its Greek reflex is reconstructed as a present stem with the zero grade of the root and the prefix *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-, that is, *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">o-ibʰ-e/o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-. The problem is that such an alleged verb prefix is vanishingly rare in Greek (so rare that its very reality is questionable), and its function (if any) is unspecified. Solving one mystery by creating another is not sound etymological practice.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">A more ingenious suggestion was made by Johnny Cheung in his </span><a href="http://www.brill.com/etymological-dictionary-iranian-verb" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> (2007). Cheung proposes that the Greek present was reduplicated. Grammatical reduplication in PIE involves copying the initial consonant, extending it with the vowel *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">e</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> or *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">i</b><span style="text-align: justify;">, and pasting it back onto the root as a prefix. There are several classes of Indo-European verb stems formed in this way. Following Cheung’s suggestion, we should reconstruct *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃e-h₃ibʰ-e/o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-, which after the laryngeal colouring of the first *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">e</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> yields *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃oh₃ibʰ-e/o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- and – hey presto – Gk. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">oípʰō</i><span style="text-align: justify;">.</span><br />
<br />
Alas, the formation of reduplicated presents is something we understand rather well – well enough to see a couple of problems with this reconstruction. First, although *<b>e</b> may appear as reduplication vowel in IE present stems, it does so only in so-called “athematic” ones (without the *-<b>e/o</b>- suffix). In thematic presents, <i>i</i>-reduplication occurs instead, as in *<b>si-sd-e/o</b>- ‘sit’ > *<b>sizde/o</b>- > Gk. <i>hízō</i>. Secondly, even in athematics, *<b>e</b> seems to have alternated with *<b>i</b>. The details of the alternation are still debated, but one thing is sure: Greek generalised <i>i</i>-reduplication thoroughly in this class, so that we find it in Ancient Greek present stems (thematic and athematic alike) to the complete exclusion of <i>e</i>-reduplication. Therefore, *<b>h₃e-h₃ibʰ-e/o</b>- just won’t float – not in Greek waters.<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">There remains another possibility, also considered by Cheung but qualified as less likely than the reduplicated root: a zero-grade thematic present, *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃ibʰ-é/ó</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-. Such a stem structure is also well-known; one typical example is *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">gʷr̥h₃-é/ó</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- ‘devour, swallow’ (Sanskrit </span><i style="text-align: justify;">giráti</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, Slavic *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">žьreti</b><span style="text-align: justify;">). Both *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃ibʰ-é/ó</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- and *<b>(</b></span><span style="text-align: justify;"><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃)jébʰ-e/o</b>- (with an early loss of *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃</b><span style="text-align: justify;">) could be independently derived from a still older common prototype, most probably a root verb without any suffixes. Why, then, should *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃e-h₃ibʰ-e/o</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- be “more likely” than *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃ibʰ-é/ó</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- as the source of </span><i style="text-align: justify;">oípʰō</i><span style="text-align: justify;">?</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
The problem here is that we aren’t really sure what happened to initial *<b>h₃i</b>- in the transition from PIE to Ancient Greek. There was a pre-Greek sound change, known as Rix’s Law, which changed any initial *<b>HR̥</b>- into Greek <i>VR</i>-. In these formulae, <i>R</i> stands for any liquid or nasal (<i>l</i>, <i>r</i>,<i> </i><i>m</i>, <i>n</i>), <i>R̥</i> is its syllabic variant, <i>H</i> is any of the three PIE laryngeals, and <i>V</i> is a vowel whose quality matches the phonetic “colour” of the laryngeal (<i>e</i>, <i>a</i>, <i>o</i> for, respectively, *<b>h₁</b>, *<b>h₂</b>, *<b>h₃</b>). To what extent the sequences *<b>Hi</b>- and *<b>Hu</b>- were also affected by Rix’s Law has been a matter of some dispute. PIE *<b>i</b>, *<b>u</b> can be regarded as syllabic variants of the corresponding glides *<b>j </b>and*<b>w</b>; therefore, it is at least thinkable that Rix’s Law could apply to them as well.<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">As for the sequence *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">Hi</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-, however, it can be demonstrated with good examples that no initial vowel developed if the laryngeal was *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₁</b><span style="text-align: justify;">. It has furthermore been suggested that the outcome could be Gk. </span><b style="text-align: justify;">hi</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- (with an initial aspirate) rather than simply *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">i</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- (</span><a href="https://www.academia.edu/5891228/Initial_Yod_in_Greek_and_the_Etymology_of_Gk._h%C3%ADppos_horse" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Bozzone 2013</a><span style="text-align: justify;">). For *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₂ </b><span style="text-align: justify;">and *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> the evidence is inconclusive (no unambiguous examples). But there is no clear counterevidence either to rule out *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₂i</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- > Gk. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">ai</i><span style="text-align: justify;">- or *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃i</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- > Gk. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">oi</i><span style="text-align: justify;">- (pace Peters 1980¹, who argues for *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">Hi</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- > Gk. *</span><i style="text-align: justify;">i</i><span style="text-align: justify;">- across the board). As for *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">Hu</b><span style="text-align: justify;">-, we have several convincing cases showing that *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₂u</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- > Gk. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">au</i><span style="text-align: justify;">-, one or two possible cases of *</span><span style="text-align: justify;"><b>h₃u</b></span><span style="text-align: justify;">- > Gk. <i>ou</i>-, but no examples at all of *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₁u</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- > Gk. ˣ</span><i style="text-align: justify;">eu</i><span style="text-align: justify;">-. This may mean that the Greek reflexes of *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₁u</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- are indistinguishable from *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">u</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- since both merged as Gk. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">hu</i><span style="text-align: justify;">-, while the other two laryngeals followed the pattern of Rix’s Law. It is therefore possible that *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">Hi</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- and *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">Hu</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- developed in parallel, and that the expected outcome of *</span><b style="text-align: justify;">h₃i</b><span style="text-align: justify;">- is Gk. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">oi</i><span style="text-align: justify;">-.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This insight has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the various combinations of *<b>i</b>/*<b>j</b> and *<b>u</b>/*<b>w</b> with the laryngeals in the prehistory of Greek, but I can only skim the surface of the topic in a blog post. It’s getting too long anyway, so it’s time for the moral. The hero of this little essay is a swear-word so obscene that some old ladies in my country might faint if they saw it printed in a newspaper. On the other hand, you can hear it all the time in the street, adorned with modifying prefixes, converted into derived nouns, adjectives and adverbs, and spawning lots of specialised meanings. It has functioned like that literally for millennia – taboo or no taboo. Living the merry life of an outlaw, it has become a respectable archaism, almost a living fossil, with an impeccable pedigree and aristocratic Vedic connections. Together with its equally naughty Ancient Greek cousin, it may provide a precious piece of crucial evidence needed to solve a vexing problem in Greek historical phonology. Not bad for a dirty little word.<br />
<br />
<span style="text-align: start;">———</span><br />
<br />
¹ Martin Peters. 1980. <i>Untersuchungen zur Vertretung der indogermanischen Laryngale im Griechischen</i>. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.<br />
<br />
[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2016/01/reduplication-map.html" target="_blank">See also: REDUPLICATION</a>]</div>
</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com104tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-73020706922989010952015-11-24T01:27:00.002+01:002015-12-12T19:49:30.536+01:00Boontling “Deek”: A Rovin’ Gypsy Word?<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
The little town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boonville,_California" target="_blank">Boonville</a> (Mendocino
County, California) was established in the early 1860s near a slightly older place called The
Corners. A local general store was moved from The Corners to the present
location of the town centre and then sold to Mr W. W. Boone, who modestly named the settlement after himself (it had briefly been called Kendall City in appreciation of another
local businessman). The inhabitants
of Boonville (now about 1000 people) refer to their town colloquially as Boont.</div>
<div class="Blogger">
<br /></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">What makes
Boonville special is its local ‘jargon’ which probably arose in the 1890s among children and young people (who then grew up without abandoning it). The community was quite isolated at the time, and kept no records to inform posterity why they chose to develop an extremely hermetic and highly inventive vocabulary of about 1500 words,
known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boontling" target="_blank">Boontling</a> (Btl.). Boontling was not originally meant to be written down,
but a semi-formalised spelling was developed for it in the 1970s. One of the
local words is <i>to boont</i> ‘to speak Boontling’. At present Boontling is dying out (Btl.<i> pikin</i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i> to the dusties</i>) despite having been discovered by linguists and made known to the general public. Many
Boontling words remain in circulation, but there are few fluent users left.
Boontling has never been a fully fledged dialect: it has a distinct vocabulary incomprehensible to outsiders, but </span><span lang="EN-US">the accent is
a rural variety of Northern California English (with historical affinities to
the Midwestern and Border South dialects), and Boontling syntax is in
nearly all respects the same as that of mainstream US English.</span></div>
<div class="Blogger">
<br /></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4LMzSpvEA0WWEX5jXrydHW0qCOZ33Bk5HYsTHaU0Ga1sbnvNLM1Qap4_3M-kiTSx_BfQBDz9S5WyXISqBnFyXqCrdy87bnevfP0QN3JeD246eKYZdNnYCY85wvocwCfW6zVgFNUj6I2I/s1600/Boontling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4LMzSpvEA0WWEX5jXrydHW0qCOZ33Bk5HYsTHaU0Ga1sbnvNLM1Qap4_3M-kiTSx_BfQBDz9S5WyXISqBnFyXqCrdy87bnevfP0QN3JeD246eKYZdNnYCY85wvocwCfW6zVgFNUj6I2I/s200/Boontling.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Old Machine Boys [<a href="http://pillowroad.com/blog/2008/09/14/kimmies-of-the-codgy-moshe/" target="_blank">source</a>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">Despite its
recent origin, Boontling vocabulary is etymologically opaque to a surprising
extent. Nevertheless, the vast majority of its words are coined from pre-existing elements rather than made up entirely from scratch. Often you have to know the history of the place and rely on anecdotes collected from elderly locals that “explain” the meaning of some words, especially those derived from personal names. (A professional etymologist has to verify their historicity, of course, and this is likely to be the toughest part of the job.) Some words reflect otherwise forgotten dialectal or slangy
vocabulary. Some were coined using Humpty Dumpty</span>’s technique of piecing together broken fragments of ordinary English words.
Some hide behind strange pronunciations that appear to have been borrowed from Scottish or Ulster Scots speakers. Some came from Spanish (approximately half the population is of “Hispanic or Latino” descent), and a few from the Pomoan languages indigenous to California (there are a few Native Americans as well).</div>
<div class="Blogger">
<br /></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">I’m intrigued by a few of them. For example,
one of the most common and persistent Boontling words is <i>deek </i>‘look, see, stare, notice’ (also
used as a deverbal noun). I’m not aware of the use of <i>deek </i>anywhere else in
North America. However, <i>deek </i>is a well-known colloquial Northernism in Britain.
It’s stereotypically associated with Geordie (the dialect of Newcastle and the Tyneside area), but it actually occurs throughout Northern England (including Cumbria,
Liverpool and Yorkshire) and much of Scotland. The word is a loan from Romani
or rather Angloromani – the Romani-derived lexicon embedded in the varieties of
English used by the British Romanies (see Yaron Matras, 2010, <i>Romani in
Britain: The Afterlife of a Language</i>, Edinburgh University Press). The
Angloromani verb (no longer inflected) is <i>deek</i>, <i>dik</i>, <i>dikkai </i>[diːk, dɪk, dɪkʰaɪ],
reflecting </span><span lang="EN-US">European
Romani <i>dikh</i>- ‘see’. There are, by the way, quite a few Romani loans in British dialects (some of them, such as <i>pal </i>‘brother, friend’, no longer dialectal). The <i><a href="http://www.dsl.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Dictionary of the Scots Language</a></i> gives, among others, these recent examples of
the use of <i>deek</i>:</span></div>
<div class="Blogger">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>Deek that gadgie.</i> ‘Look at that guy.’ (Edinburgh, 1988)</li>
<li><i>The gaffer wis anither big rough-deeking
gadgie...</i> (Aberdeen, 1990)</li>
</ul>
<span style="text-align: justify;">Here, in addition to </span><i style="text-align: justify;">deek, </i><span style="text-align: justify;">also </span><i style="text-align: justify;">gadgie </i><span style="text-align: left;">‘</span><span style="text-align: justify;">guy, bloke</span><span style="text-align: left;">’</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> is a
Romani loan (Angloromani </span><i style="text-align: justify;">gadji</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">gawdjo</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">gawdja </i><span style="text-align: justify;">< European Romani </span><i style="text-align: justify;">gadžo </i><span style="text-align: justify;">‘non-Gypsy’).</span><br />
<div class="Blogger">
<br /></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The root <i>dikh</i>- arrived with the ancestors
of the modern Romani all the way from Northwestern India. It is cognate to
Hindi <i>dekh</i>- and to Sanskrit <i>dṛś</i>-, <i>dṛkṣ</i>-, all of which continue a well-known
Proto-Indo-European root, *<b>derḱ</b>- ‘watch, see’. Incidentally, the Hindi word became independently borrowed into British English via the army slang of British soldiers serving in
India, hence <i><a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/have-a-dekko.html" target="_blank">have a dekko</a></i> ‘have a look’.</span></div>
<div class="Blogger">
<br /></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The Germanic languages also inherited a few
words derived from *<b>derḱ</b>-, but English has lost all of them. Old English still
had <i>torht </i>‘bright, splendid, illustrious’ from the PIE deverbal adjective *<b>dr̥ḱ-tó</b>-
(cf. Skt. <i>dṛṣṭá</i>- ‘seen, visible’). It was used almost exclusively in poetry,
but also served as an element forming personal names. For example, an Old
English gadgie called Torhthelm (Totta for friends) owned a farm called Totta’s
Homestead (<i>Tottan-hām</i>) in today<span style="text-align: left;">’</span>s north London. The <i>To-</i> part of <i>Tottenham
</i>is about all that has survived of the root *<b>derḱ</b>- in Modern English via direct
descent. A number of other reflexes, however, have reached English by horizontal transfer from
other Indo-European languages, the most spectacular of them being <i>dragon
</i>(ultimately from Greek <i>drákōn </i>‘starer’ → ‘serpent with a deadly stare’). </span>But I’m digressing.<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">I have no watertight proof
that Btl. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">deek </i><span style="text-align: justify;">is the same word as Angloromani, Northern English, Scots and
Scottish English </span><i style="text-align: justify;">deek</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, but I’d be very surprised if somebody proved that Btl. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">deek </i><span style="text-align: justify;">had a different origin. Still, I have no
idea how the word could have reached an obscure valley in Northern California and
become fixed in the local slang without leaving any other traces in American
English. If anyone among my readers comes up with an idea how to explain its trajectory in time and space, I’ll be
immensely grateful for sharing it.</span></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-5674710806548233672015-11-21T11:02:00.001+01:002015-12-11T18:03:01.161+01:00A Normally Weird Language<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
Every week, the digital magazine <i>Aeon
</i>publishes several ambitious essays, by competent writers, on culture,
philosophy, science, technology and other interesting subjects. One of last
week’s authors is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter" target="_blank">John McWhorter</a>, professor of linguistics and American studies
at Columbia University; the topic is the English language. The essay is
entitled “<a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages" target="_blank">English is not normal</a>”. Professor McWhorter argues not only that
English is genuinely “<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/08/de-extinction-mammoth-walks-again.html" target="_blank">weird</a>” (anyone who has followed his publications already
knows it) but makes a stronger claim that it “really is weirder than pretty
much every other language”. Now that is a really weird thing to say, so let’s
see how it is argued.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgc4_cOwJl11iQr6A36HJEkXLtg3TfBMH3NnadqgwDaRQ5hLRhL7uSz5VOtWvOz0sHXD8Um-g1pecvPWE7wJ_EoCBPhXwvV-TIkR0cyUAhL8vIKGOwgKvSkfZh0Yto0D4yQVHHFa3ZYgQ/s1600/Cleese.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgc4_cOwJl11iQr6A36HJEkXLtg3TfBMH3NnadqgwDaRQ5hLRhL7uSz5VOtWvOz0sHXD8Um-g1pecvPWE7wJ_EoCBPhXwvV-TIkR0cyUAhL8vIKGOwgKvSkfZh0Yto0D4yQVHHFa3ZYgQ/s400/Cleese.jpg" width="282" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">English is not normal</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">McWhorter begins by discussing English
spelling and its caprices (with the reservation that writing is secondary with
respect to speech). This is of course due to the conservative character of the
spelling system, which has not undergone any major reform since Late Middle
English. But English is by no means the only language with such a mismatch
between its spoken and written form due to the reluctance of its orthography to
catch up with sound change. French, for example, is just as weird. It has
plenty of ambiguous spellings with more than one possible pronunciation and
alternative spellings for one and the same phoneme in one and the same
position. It easily beats English when it comes to mute consonants: <i>vin</i>, <i>vins</i>
(verb and noun), <i>vain</i>, <i>vains</i>, <i>vint</i>, <i>vaincs</i>, <i>vainc</i>, <i>vingt </i>are all pronounced
/væ̃/. Massive mergers of this kind would surely have caused any normal
language to collapse, so French can’t be normal, can it? Irish spelling was
even worse before its mid-20th-c. modernisation, and still remains a pretty complicated
affair (regular, but you have to master quite a few rules to figure out how to
pronounce <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=499" target="_blank"><i>bhfaighidh</i></a>). Lhasa Tibetan has lost many consonant both in initial
and final clusters, but has retained their spelling representation. And while
we are in Asia, isn’t written Chinese even a little weird? Professor McWhorter
says that “in countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a
‘spelling bee’ competition”. To my knowledge, national spelling competitions
are organised in many countries, including Poland. I have finished runner-up in
one of them, and I can testify it was tough going. Is Polish a normal language?</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The next claim is that English is not similar
enough even to closely related languages to guarantee partial mutual
comprehensibility. Well, this depends on what we regard as a “related
language”. If, for example, we treat Scots as a close cousin rather than a
variety of English, we have to agree that English and Scots are partly
comprehensible to each other’s speakers (more so, I presume, than Standard
Dutch and High German). English and Frisian are more closely related to each
other than either is to the rest of Germanic, but they became separated
geographically more than 1500 years ago and, unlike Dutch and German, or
Spanish and Portuguese, have not remained in contact or been connected by a
continuum of intermediate dialects. If that makes English weird, Greek,
Albanian and Armenian are even weirder (not to mention such orphan languages as
Japanese, Burushaski or Basque).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">According
to McWhorter, English is the only Indo-European language without grammatical
gender. This sweeping statement is simply false. Let’s begin with the
observation that the “classical” three-way distinction (masculine : feminine :
neuter) probably did not exist in Proto-Indo-European itself, which only
distinguished neuters from non-neuters (a state of affairs thought to be
preserved by the extinct Anatolian languages such as Hittite). Once the three-gender
system emerged in the rest of the family, it was reduced again in some
branches. For example, although Latin had three genders, all the modern Romance
language descended from it have only two, having eliminated the neuter. Among
the Scandinavian languages, Danish and Swedish have merged the feminine and
masculine into one “common” (non-neuter) gender. English has gone one step further.
Already at the Early Middle English historical stage all morphological markers of
gender were abolished in nouns and adjectives. The only trace of the former
three-way system is a “natural gender” distinction in the third person singular
of personal pronouns (<i>he </i>: <i>she </i>: <i>it</i>). But even within the Germanic group we
find the same development in Afrikaans. If anything is “weird” about gender in English
and Afrikaans, it isn’t its loss in nouns, but rather the survival of natural
gender in pronouns: having pronominal but no nominal gender is very rare
cross-linguistically. As for the rest of the Indo-European family, there is no grammatical
gender in modern Persian, Balochi, Ossetic, and several other (though not all)
Iranian languages. Armenian (also Indo-European) has no gender either. Both the
genderless Iranian languages and Armenian are more consistent than English in
their elimination of gender: their personal pronouns are genderless too.
Armenian <i>na </i>means ‘he/she/it’; literary Persian has <i>u</i> ‘he/she’ (used only of
humans) contrasting with <i>ân</i> ‘it’ (non-human), but the latter has taken place of
the former in spoken Persian. As we can see, English is by no means alone even
in Indo-European. And since more than 50% languages worldwide have no
morphological gender or noun-class system, it is in good company.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The next
feature <i>is </i>genuinely weird – here I completely agree. No other language known
to
McWhorter or to me marks the third person singular of present-tense verbs
and leaves all the other forms unmarked (the sole exception is the present
tense of <i>to be</i>). This is of course due to a historical accident caused by
extralinguistic factors – the generalisation of the originally plural polite
pronoun <i>ye</i>/<i>you</i>, which led to the disappearance of 2sg. <i>thou</i>/<i>thee </i>together with all the verb
forms associated with it (<i>art</i>, <i>wilt</i>, <i>dost</i>, <i>hast</i>, <i>drink(e)st</i>). Nevertheless, it’s
strange, though hardly strange enough to justify the claim that English is “deeply
peculiar in the structural sense”.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Less
convincing is the case for the weirdness of <i>do</i>-support in questions requiring
inversion (<i>does she smoke?</i>), in negation (<i>she doesn’t smoke</i>), and in emphatic
statements (<i>she does smoke</i>). Professor McWhorter has for a long time argued
that the construction is due to Celtic influence and found exclusively in Brittonic
Celtic and English. This is doubtful for several reasons. Constructions
regarded as precursors of <i>do</i>-support occur sporadically in 14th-c. English, but
fully assume their modern functions and begin to spread rapidly after ca. 1500.
That’s 1000 years after the initial contact between the Anglo-Saxon and the
Brittonic Celts. Why so late? Perhaps the construction existed in informal
spoken English and didn’t make it into the written standard until the sixteenth
century? Such an explanation could work for Old English, but hardly for the
Middle period, from which we have a vast corpus of documents representing different
genres, styles, and grammatical registers. There is, furthermore, no evidence
of analogous constructions in Celtic pre-dating their début in English, so the
direction of influence is uncertain (if it’s influence at all, rather than
accidental convergence made likelier by the fact that inversion is used as a
syntactic device in both cases). The fact that the Celtic analogue of
<i>do</i>-support can also be found in Breton does not prove its great age. Contacts
between the Celtic populations of Brittany and Cornwall were regular and intensive
until the decline of an independent Duchy of Brittany in the 16th century.
Anyway, even if we are dealing with a pattern borrowed from Celtic, English
shares it with Welsh, Cornish and Breton, and so can’t be regarded as
<i>exceptionally </i>weird in this respect. Again, the claim that such a construction
does not occur anywhere else is exaggerated. <i>Do</i>-support analogues have been
reported from some Lombard dialects of Northern Italy (the use of the auxiliary
<i>fa</i> ‘do’ in questions), and even from Korean (in negation). A related
construction (with Old Norse <i>gera </i>‘prepare, do’) was used in Old Icelandic
negation. Even if the English-specific combination of functions is “special”,
its components can be found here and there.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The rest of
McWhorter’s essay is devoted to the “mongrel vocabulary” of English (with most of it being actually French, Latin or Scandinavian), the
richness of synonymy resulting from layers of borrowing, and the impact of Latinate
loans on the development of a complex stress system. Though remarkable, these
features are hardly unique of even rare. Plenty of languages have been
relexified with foreign elements to a comparable degree, and with equally dramatic consequences for
their morphology and phonology.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Of course
the essay is pop-linguistics, addressed to a general audience, so the author
has every right to simplify things for didactic convenience. He justly debunks the all-to-popular
idea of English as the “model” language, so ordinary that it can be regarded as
a safe testing-ground for linguistic theories (“let’s consider <i>any </i>language –
for example, English”). However, in doing so, he errs on the opposite side,
trying to make English look more extraordinary than it really is. English does
have its structural idiosyncrasies, but so does just about any other human
language. Tsakhur (a Northeast Caucasian language) has ‘tourquoise’ as a basic
colour term (it’s also weird in having at least about 70 consonant phonemes); Czech
is pretty much unique in having a fricative alveolar trill as a phoneme (a
sound so rare that the International Phonetic Association has not yet come up a
convenient symbol to transcribe it); Hawaiian has [t] and [k] as variants of
the same phoneme in its extremely small inventory of consonants; the West !Xóõ language
(in Namibia) has 43-111 different clicks (depending on how you analyse the system) in addition to a few dozen other consonants; Winnebago (Siouan) places the main
stress on the third mora in longer words, while Macedonian (Slavic) regularly stresses
the antipenultimate syllable; in Imonda (in Papua New Guinea) singular and dual
nouns are marked with special endings but plurals are expressed as bare stems; Hungarian
has 18 noun cases and two basic colour terms for different kinds of ‘red’.
Pirahã (in Amazonas, Brazil) has a dozen phonemes (at most), no numerals, and no
basic colour terms; the jury is still out on whether it has embedded clauses.
On the other hand, it has a rich verb morphology, with an unusually large
number od aspects and several shades of evidentiality (expressing the source/reliability of information). There’s a lot of weirdness out there.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Blogger" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The fact is
that the total weirdness of a language is not a quantifiable notion. It makes little
sense to say that one language is <i>generally</i> weirder than another (as opposed to
being weirder in some particular respect). Caprices of history have elevated
English to the status of global lingua franca. It doesn’t owe its unique
position to any structural features, although <b>the fact that it has an enormous
population of speakers is relevant for its current and future evolution</b>. Yes,
it has many eccentric features but hardly represents an extreme type of language.
“English is not normal”, while a catchy title, is at best a trivial statement
that could be true of any language (if you concentrate exclusively on a few selected
oddities).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Blogger">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="Blogger">
<br /></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-82185131408447717902015-09-23T14:32:00.002+02:002020-08-13T20:49:42.298+02:00Nucg Nucg, Winc Winc: The Anglo-Saxon Dairy Business<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;">Those
of my visitors who know something about Old English poetry may have realised
that the link between the F-word and churning butter (see <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-middle-english-dictionary-needs.html" target="_blank">the previous post</a>) is
not just etymological – it’s a literary allusion. </span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Among the famous Anglo-Saxon riddles preserved
in the <i><a href="https://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/history-heritage/cathedral-treasures/exeter-book/" target="_blank">Exeter Book</a></i> we find the following one (<i>Riddle 54</i>):</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">Hyse cwom gangan, þær he hie wisse<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">stondan in wincsele, stop feorran to,</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">hror hægstealdmon, hof his agen</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">hrægl hondum up, <hrand> under gyrdels</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">hyre stondendre stiþes nathwæt,</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">worhte his willan; wagedan buta.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">Þegn onnette, wæs þragum nyt</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">tillic esne, teorode hwæþre</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">æt stunda gehwam strong ær þon <hio>,</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">werig þæs weorces. Hyre weaxan ongon</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">under gyrdelse þæt oft gode men</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;">ferðþum freoga</span></i><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">ð</span></i><i><span lang="" style="background: white;"><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>ond mid feo bicgað.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;"></span></i><br />
<i><span lang="" style="background: white;"></span></i></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBGQJgQCqdgmNHyqFf5IMOwkjDjvfQSHsjru6RA_OlxErhwcJe0D_xVTFbvjqhnlSFzLigzGo66n0AB9C5KJ5OKXnUcyHFSurR_vHc0Zu2BhDA49cKpHspx2ACLVLqlPLsxPdrrk3nOFk/s1600/anglo-saxon-butter-churn-650x487.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBGQJgQCqdgmNHyqFf5IMOwkjDjvfQSHsjru6RA_OlxErhwcJe0D_xVTFbvjqhnlSFzLigzGo66n0AB9C5KJ5OKXnUcyHFSurR_vHc0Zu2BhDA49cKpHspx2ACLVLqlPLsxPdrrk3nOFk/s320/anglo-saxon-butter-churn-650x487.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An Anglo-Saxon churn lid, with the Freudian hole<br />
[<a href="http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art527388-archaeologists-find-fantastic-wooden-butter-churn-and-stakes-used-by-pagan-tribe-in-medieval-staffordshire" target="_blank">Link</a>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="" style="background: white;">The
<i>Exeter Book</i> (written more than one thousand years ago) is the largest extant
anthology of Old English poetry. It contains diverse stuff, from solemn
religious and allegorical poems, saints’ lives, elegies and fragments of heroic
legends to comic, somewhat naughty, light compositions, such as <i>Riddle 54</i>.
There are as many as 96 Old English riddles in the manusctipt (the genre is hardly
documented in any other source). Many of them have very serious religious solutions, but certainly not this one. Good translations of the riddles are hard to get by. Much
is lost in translation, and humour is usually the first victim. A specialist
can always enjoy the original, but for the sake of those whose Old English is
not very fluent I’m going to offer my own translation, for what it’s worth. At
least it isn’t a horrible <i>mis</i>translation (some others are) and it tries to capture the spirit of the original. I also hope it isn’t too stilted (for a piece of Old English verse).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="" style="background: white;">Some
things are practically untranslatable. For example, Old English had grammatical
gender, and the use of feminine personal pronouns (corresponding to Modern English
<i>she</i> and <i>her</i>) doesn’t mean that the pronoun indicates a female human being. It can refer
to any object whose Old English name is a feminine noun (e.g. <i>tunge</i> ‘tongue’, <i>b</i></span><span face="" lang="" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><i>ō</i></span><span lang="" style="background: white;"><i>c</i> ‘book’, <i>duru</i> ‘door’, etc.). It may suggest a woman,
but since the alternative possibility is also probable, the suggestion is much weaker
than in Modern English. This subtle ambiguity would be lost completely if <i>she
</i>were replaced by <i>it</i>, so I let it stay. Just remember that in Modern English not
only ships but also some tools and utensils can be conventionally personified by
their users and referred to as “she”. It isn’t quite the same thing as Old
English grammatical gender, but must suffice to justify my artistic licence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;">Another problem is that Old English is a dead
language and its written record if far from perfect. The words in angle
brackets represent editorial emendations in places where the text seems to be
corrupt. The first of the restored forms, <<i>hrand</i>> actually reads <i>rand </i>in
the manuscript, but this can’t be the word intended by the poet. The rules of Old English poetic
alliteration demand something beginning with <i>h</i> in the first stressed position of the second
half of the line. The most likely emendation is <i>hrand</i>. Unfortunately, such a
word-form does not occur anywhere else in the entire Old English text corpus.
The context requires a verb in the past tense here. A past tense like <i>hrand
</i>presupposes the infinitive *<b>hrindan</b>, past tense plural *<b>hrundon</b>, past
participle *<b>hrunden</b>, etc. But what might they mean? Not only is the verb
otherwise unknown from Old English; it has left no Middle of Modern English
descendants either. To use a technical Greek term, it’s a <i>hapax legomenon</i>, a
word appearing only once.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;">There’s nothing wrong with being a hapax. It’s
the inevitable consequence of the fact that words have wildly different
frequencies of use (a common motif in my blog posts). In fact, in any large
corpus of texts at least about 40% of the words (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type%E2%80%93token_distinction" target="_blank">types, not tokens</a>) occur only once.
The same is true of Old English: more than half of the entries in any
more-or-less complete Old English dictionary occur only once or twice in the surviving
texts. So <i>hrand </i>is not anything unusual, just a little enigmatic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;">What about possible cognates in other Germanic
languages? We have Old Icelandic <i>hrinda </i>(past tense <i>hratt </i>< *<b>hrant </b>< *<b>hrand</b>)
whose precise meaning is known: ‘push, hurl down’ and, figuratively, ‘launch’
or ‘expel, get rid of’ (the verb has survived in Modern Icelandic and Faroese).
The literal meaning roughly fits the context of <i>Riddle 54</i>. Most Modern English translations
use <i>thrust</i>; I prefer <i>shove </i>because of its greater semantic overlap with Scandinavian
<i>hrinda</i>, and also for the sake of alliteration. Last but not least, <i>shove </i>is
less dignified than <i>push </i>or <i>thrust</i>, and has the kind of colloquial vigour they
lack, which is an advantage in this case. All right, I’ve never tried it
before, so here goes!*)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">A lad came
walking to where, as he knew,<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">she stood
in a corner; stepped in from afar,<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">a brisk
bachelor, tucked up his own<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">shirt with
his hands, shoved under the girdle<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">of the one
standing a stout thingumajig<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">and worked
his will; both rocked back and forth.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">The
servant quickened up: at times he was of
use,<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">a handy
workman, he grew weaker though<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">with every
stroke, strenghtless too soon,<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">weary from
work. There began to form<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">under her
girdle that which good men often<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="" style="background: white;">dearly desire and procure with money.</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;">And the solution is </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span face="" lang="" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">―</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;"> yes, yes, you’ve guessed correctly! </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span face="" lang="" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">―</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;"> a butter churn, that is OE <i>ċyrn</i>. By the way,
this word occurs three times in Old English texts: once as <i>cyrin </i>(sg.), once as
<i>cyrne </i>(pl.), and once as <i>cirm </i>(misspelt by the scribe). As you can see even the citation forms that we use for convenience represent “Standard Old English” imposed by modern dictionary
editors rather than the actual language of the manuscripts.</span></span></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp00BRzJl170qVaE7LKK27qaeQIt0W1lw1y7Dtkn2B_vDcQ_KBAaFgqCWRIqMcva7MITrGfxE1K5dr3UN0xuyEiCSxwHhhZImKAuWIfLZ-41nRDjprIE5a1DSSaJxHBOjih6d2_7ApQ9g/s1600/Butter.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp00BRzJl170qVaE7LKK27qaeQIt0W1lw1y7Dtkn2B_vDcQ_KBAaFgqCWRIqMcva7MITrGfxE1K5dr3UN0xuyEiCSxwHhhZImKAuWIfLZ-41nRDjprIE5a1DSSaJxHBOjih6d2_7ApQ9g/s320/Butter.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An early 20th-century postcard<br />
[<a href="http://www.butterworld.org/" target="_blank">Butterworld</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;">Needless to point out, <b>ĊYRN</b> [<i>wink wink, nudge nudge, say no
more, say no more</i>] is the “formal” solution of the riddle. The informal one is as obvious to
us as it was to any Anglo-Saxon audience in the tenth century. Other ambiguous
riddles in the <i>Exeter Book</i> exploit the same risqué ambiguity: the alternative
interpretation is invariably bawdy. Their innuendo-laden humour may be crude,
but it still appeals to the modern reader. For the survival of the whole
collection we are indebted to Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, a well-educated
bibliophile, who died in 1072, bequeathing his impressive manuscript collection
to Exeter Cathedral. He apparently did not regard the riddles as subversive enough
to be denied the shelter of the cathedral library. <i>Riddle 54</i> helps us to
understand why, back in 1290, a chap from Ipswich, presumably a local dairyman,
was called Simon Fukkebotere. It offers us a glimpse into the secret world of naughty
associations that existed in the minds of Anglo-Saxon scribes and their
audience (and still exist in ours), so we are not making things up when we hypothesise
that the original meaning of <i>fuck </i>was ‘strike repeatedly’. Who knows, perhaps
the speakers of Old English could use the same word for churning and, with less
innocent intent, for [<i>know what I mean? nudge nudge</i>] the other thing.</span></span><span lang="" style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;"></span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="" style="background: white;">*) ... said the actress to the bishop.</span></span></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-5152681843558191512015-09-13T21:28:00.003+02:002021-03-13T21:08:58.219+01:00The Middle English Dictionary Needs a Fucking Update<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sorry, but
I have to comment on this topic. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The news
has already spread across the Internet, arousing the interest of several
bloggers:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.vice.com/read/this-historian-just-found-the-oldest-use-of-fuck-920" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://languagehat.com/antedating-gxddbov/" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/09/12/will-your-name-be-remembered-700-years-from-now/" target="_blank">here</a>, etc.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Somewhere among the indictment rolls of the county court of
Chester (1310/11), studied by Dr. Paul Booth of Keele University (Staffordshire), a man whose Christian name was Roger is mentioned three
times. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">His less Christian byname
is recorded as well, with minor orthographic variations. The repetition
guarantees that what the name contains is not an artefact resulting from a spelling mistake
but the real thing: to wit, the man’s full name was <i>Roger Fuckebythenavele</i>. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Though
Roger was finally outlawed by the court and never heard of again, his
legacy will make a lasting impact on English word studies. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Not only does his second name move back the earliest
attestation of <i>fuck </i>in its modern sense by many decades; it also, for the first
time, establishes it as a bona fide Middle English word. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Inevitably, the
question will be raised again whether </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fuck </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">is a native English word (a view
defended, among others, by Lass 1995) or a relatively late newcomer (as argued
e.g. by Liberman 2007: 78-87).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">dog </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(attested once about 1050 and then again some 150 years
later) and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">shark </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(</span><a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED39794&egs=all&egdisplay=open" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">attested once in 1442</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and then again in 1569), <i>fuck </i>has a “ghost
lineage” – a long attestation gap during which it must have existed, although no record of its use has survived. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">We do see several occurrences of
<i>fucke </i>in 13th-century bynames like <i>Fuckebotere </i>(= “Fuckbutter”, 1290) and <i>Fuckebeggar
</i>(1286/87), but in these, the verb seems to mean, respectively, ‘churn, beat’, and
‘punch, hit’ rather than you-know-what. Semantic associations leading from
such meanings to the rather obvious sexual connotations of Roger’s bizarre
cognomen are pretty natural, though. The coexistence of both ca. 1300 suggests that the
use of <i>fuck </i>for sexual intercourse is a semantic specialisation which took place a long
time ago. We find it not only in English but also (perhaps independently) in a few other Germanic languages. For details, you may consult the etymological information in the beautifully <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/75197" target="_blank">updated entry in the OED</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHcPpDlyxXuV2Gdyo8-AxXeVGXav16sWvMxUhnR6nIbM-YoHDyAmK6m-jny3tPSIyOGzgTDHFK-eI9o-YbHzHuXYsfLjKvDigVbWIZchylRSowUk9vSuNNpPpjcLyvuV_hOpDfNV2EL2Q/s1200/800px-City_limit_sign_of_Fucking%252C_Austria.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHcPpDlyxXuV2Gdyo8-AxXeVGXav16sWvMxUhnR6nIbM-YoHDyAmK6m-jny3tPSIyOGzgTDHFK-eI9o-YbHzHuXYsfLjKvDigVbWIZchylRSowUk9vSuNNpPpjcLyvuV_hOpDfNV2EL2Q/w213-h320/800px-City_limit_sign_of_Fucking%252C_Austria.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fucking, Austria<br />(renamed Fugging as of 2021),<br />probably unrelated</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />I side with those who believe that </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fuck </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">is old and has a respectable Germanic pedigree. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">The stem *<b>fukkō-</b>, with its characteristic double consonant, is easy to explain as a Germanic
iterative verb – one of a large family of
similar forms. They originated as combinations of various Indo-European roots
with *<b>-nah₂-</b>, a suffix indicating repeated action. The formation is not, strictly speaking,
Proto-Indo-European; the suffix owes its existence to the reanalysis of an
older morphological structure (reanalysis happens when people fail to analyse an inherited structure in the same way as their predecessors). Still, verbs of this kind are older than
Proto-Germanic.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One particularly clear example is English <i>lick </i>from Old Eng<span style="font-family: inherit;">lich
<i>liccian </i>< PGmc. *<b>likkō-</b>. Numerous cognates in other Indo-European languages show unambiguously that
the PIE root was *<b>lei</b></span><b style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px; text-align: left;">ǵ</b><b>ʰ-</b> ‘lick’. <span lang="EN-US">The expected Germanic reflex of *</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px;">ǵ</b><b>ʰ</b> is a voiced fricative or stop (*<b>ɣ</b>/*<b>g</b>)
resulting from</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> the operation of Grimm’s Law. A different
development in this case was caused by the suffix *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">-nah₂-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> , attached to the
root in pre-Germanic times to yield *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">li</b><b style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">ǵ</span></b><b style="font-family: inherit;">ʰ-náh₂- </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘lick (repeatedly)’. The root occurred in the reduced grade since the suffix carried the accent. After an
unaccented syllable, the sequence *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">-</b><b style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">ǵ</span></b><b style="font-family: inherit;">ʰn- </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">changed into *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">-gg-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">, which, as Grimm’s Law completed its course, became Proto-Germanic *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">-kk-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (if the preceding
vowel was short).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Many historical linguists don’t accept this development,
known as Kluge’s Law (discovered more than a century ago but neglected for many
decades). In recent years, however, so much evidence has been collected to support
it that it seems unfair to call it “controversial” (if not something worse) any longer. The outcome of Kluge’s Law is the same for originally voiceless, voiced and </span></span>“aspirated” (<span style="font-family: inherit;">breathy-voiced) Indo-European stops: all of them yielded a voiceless geminate
(double consonant) in the environment in which the law applied. After a long
vowel or diphthong, however, the geminate was simplified, leaving a single voiceless
stop.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There was a
Proto-Indo-European root usually reconstructed as *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">peug-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (or possibly *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">peu</b><b style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">ǵ</span></b><b style="font-family: inherit;">-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">),
meaning ‘stab, hit’ (cf. Latin </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pungō</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> ‘pierce’, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pūgnus </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘fist’, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pūgna </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘fight’, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pugil
</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘boxer’; Greek </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">púgmē </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘fist, fist-fight’). In combination with the *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">-náh₂-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">
suffix we would get *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">pug-náh₂-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> > PGmc. *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">fukkō-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> ‘strike repeatedly, beat’
(like, say, “dashing” the cream with a plunger in a traditional butter churn). Note
also </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">windfucker </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fuckwind </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">– old, obsolete words for ‘kestrel’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A number of
words in other Germanic languages may be related to <i>fuck</i>. One of them is Old
Icelandic </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fjúka </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘to be tossed or driven by the wind’ < *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">feuka-</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">; cf. also
</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fjúk</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> ‘drifting snowstorm’ (or, as one might put it in present-day English, a fucking
blizzard). These words fit a recurrent morphological pattern observed by Kroonen (2012): Germanic
iteratives with a voiceless geminate produced by Kluge’s Law often give
rise to “de-iterativised” verbs in which the double stop is simplified if the full vocalism or the root (here, *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">eu</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> rather than *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">u</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">) is
restored.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If the verb
is really native (“Anglo-Saxon”), one would expect Old English *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">fuccian </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">(3sg.
*</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">fuccaþ</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">, pl. *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">fucciaþ</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">, 1/3sg. preterite *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">fuccode</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">, etc.). If these forms already had “impolite”
connotations in Old English, their absence from the Old English literary corpus
is understandable. We may be absolutely sure that *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">feortan </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">(1/3 sg. pret. *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">feart</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">,
pret. pl. *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">furton</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">, p.p. *</span><b style="font-family: inherit;">forten</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">) existed in Old English, since </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fart </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">exists
today (attested since about 1300, just like </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fuck</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">) and has an impeccable Indo-European etymology, with cognates in several branches. Still, not a
single one of these reconstructed Old English verb forms is actually documented (all we have is the
scantily attested verbal noun </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">feorting </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘fart(ing)’).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One has to remember that
written records give us a strongly distorted picture of how people really
spoke in the past. If you look at the frequency of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fuck</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fucking </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">fucker </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">in
written English over the last 200 years, you may get the impression that these
words disappeared from English completely ca. 1820 and magically reappeared </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">140 years later</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Even the first edition of the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Oxford English Dictionary </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(whose ambition was to be exhaustive)</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">pretended
they didn’t exist. The volume that should have contained FUCK was published in 1900, and Queen Victoria was still alive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ffLxYSgPDch0Obzmx-HKzFYyvKA22wvG-ApLw_7cOFM4cisAdx8uuuKfuS12Emo1wEP7amKMsPWkIShtYhvrT3m41dWJl_ObFguFtJCiZtzE6Gc8qlvE2aJkyMdpJRExyzTSkG1h2KQ/s1600/Fuck.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ffLxYSgPDch0Obzmx-HKzFYyvKA22wvG-ApLw_7cOFM4cisAdx8uuuKfuS12Emo1wEP7amKMsPWkIShtYhvrT3m41dWJl_ObFguFtJCiZtzE6Gc8qlvE2aJkyMdpJRExyzTSkG1h2KQ/s640/Fuck.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/on4m3pc" target="_blank">Google books Ngram Viewer</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>References</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Booth, Paul. 2015. Roger the incompetent copulator is outlawed, 28th September 1311. [<a href="https://www.academia.edu/15644762/Roger_the_incompetent_copulator_is_outlawed_28th_September_1311" target="_blank">Academia.edu</a>].<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Kroonen, Guus. 2012. Consonant gradation in the Germanic iterative verbs. In: Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead et al. (eds.), <i>The sound of Indo-European: Phonetics, phonemics, and morphophonemics</i>, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 263-290.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Lass, Roger. 1995. Four letters in search of an etymology. <i>Diachronica </i>12(1): 99-111.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Liberman, Anatoly. 2007. <i>An analytic dictionary of English etymology: An introduction</i>. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.</div>
<br />Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-67515674129863800122015-09-06T23:14:00.000+02:002015-09-07T21:55:05.333+02:00A Jan’s Chance: The Fate of Innovations<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Imagine
that you start a linguistic innovation. One fine day you decide to replace the English
word <i>dog </i>with a new, hitherto unused word — for example, <i>jan</i>. As of now, you will
say, “I have to walk the jan”, “My jan’s
name is Bruno”, and, “The jan is man’s best friend”. You will substitute <i>jan </i>for
<i>dog</i> in set phrases such as “go to the jans” and “every jan has its day”. <i>Jan </i>would
do its job neither better nor worse than <i>dog</i>. Both are arbitrary sound
sequences (their pronunciation does not suggest what they mean); both are short
and easily pronounceable. <i>Dog </i>has only one obvious advantage over <i>jan</i>: it is
already an established, familiar, commonly used English word. There is no
compelling reason why people should find it a good idea to abandon it just like that and learn
to use a different word for the same concept. If you are really determined (and perhaps
slightly nuts), you can try persuading your family and close friends to humour
you and adopt your innovation when they are talking to you. You can bring up your children informing them that your family pet Bruno is a jan. But sooner
or later they will find out that everybody else calls jans (including Bruno) dogs.
Your experiment will almost certainly fail. Not because the word <i>jan </i>is useless,
but because the function you’d like it to have is already carried out equally
well by another word. It makes <i>jan </i>a “neutral” innovation — one that could play its role well enough but has no
functional advantage over a preexisting competitor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">On the
other hand, something similar to this thought-experiment really happened about
one thousand years ago. The word <i>docga </i>(the Old English ancestor of <i>dog</i>),
coined by an unknown innovator at an unknown date*), somehow became a widespread synonym
of the established Old English word <i>hund</i>, and after a few centuries managed to replace
it in the mental lexicon of every English-speaker of the time. Although its dethroned predecessor did not become completely
obsolete, its frequency of use dropped by at least an order of magnitude, and it had to undergo narrow semantic specialisation in
order to survive. Today, a hound is a special type of hunting dog, not just any dog
in general. And if you look at other languages, you will occasionally see similar cases of lexical replacement. French <i>chien </i>and Italian <i>cane </i>go back to Latin <i>canis</i>, as expected, but Spanish
<i>perro </i>is an innovation (about as mysterious as <i>dog</i>). It seems some new words for old things do catch on, albeit rarely. The
chances are slim but apparently larger than zero.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuIc2qtcG4rj89gXubi9gAR0q3l8Q-ZMutKhkosbxsM839UE-Ng-JMrGqXUQ56El2fRP3_7yl-JcvUZVP87nPsA1IwvK72o29wiL27DP8tjwRTd6TuEHWfanb-FgnFMLN_s4pRiCWOgRI/s1600/Selfie.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuIc2qtcG4rj89gXubi9gAR0q3l8Q-ZMutKhkosbxsM839UE-Ng-JMrGqXUQ56El2fRP3_7yl-JcvUZVP87nPsA1IwvK72o29wiL27DP8tjwRTd6TuEHWfanb-FgnFMLN_s4pRiCWOgRI/s320/Selfie.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A selfie with a jan (whose name is not Bruno)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
A lexical
innovation is more likely to succeed if it finds and conquers a functional niche not yet
occupied by any other word. In this way it makes itself useful, which may give
people a powerful incentive to adopt it. For example, the word <i>selfie </i>made <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/08/12/4065062.htm" target="_blank">its first recorded appearance</a> in September 2002, in Australia (or rather in the Australian sector of cyberspace). Within the next few years it
grew popular among (mostly young) English-speaking Internet users worldwide, slowly gaining the status of buzzword. Then it infected Facebook
communities and its popularity soared to the zenith (as did the number of selfies published
online). In 2013 the Oxford English Dictionary declared it <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/08/from-aardvark-to-zyzzyva-words-and.html" target="_blank">the word of the year</a>.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">How is it
possible for an innovation to become “fixed” in a large speech community? How
do the the chances of fixation depend on the functional value of the
innovation? What <i>is </i>that functional value? What happens to innovations that have
enjoyed some success but haven’t yet
reached fixation? This is what my next blog posts will be about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>Note:</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">*) Nobody knows for sure where Old English <i>docga </i>came from. My own modest etymological proposal can be found <a href="https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/jspui/bitstream/10593/2479/1/Dogga.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-40580125706465137362014-11-06T13:16:00.001+01:002014-11-06T13:24:55.310+01:00Second-Language Reciprocity<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here is a fascinating infographic presentation posted at <a href="http://lovelylittlelexemes.blogspot.com/2014/11/infographic-2nd-languages-around-world.html" target="_blank">Lovely Little Lexemes</a> (hat tip to Mrs. B!). A curious (and probably unique) relationship can be observed between the United Kingdom and Poland: the most common second language in the UK is Polish, and the most common second language in Poland is English.<br />
<br />
Click <a href="http://www.movehub.com/sites/default/files/main_images/second-languages-map-1350px.jpg" target="_blank">here</a> to see an enlarged version.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSKuAXagvBrtPi_HwFj-mU7GlUa13S86tJaH6o6P1eTVF_E4Hu6nZvfC5ME_knmg182Fzss4kofH2s9s5M31M0CwXPSxxo13G2byiL7u2G_HM2YF-6_OjmTqXEOAMfzKNOcBksxHshoZE/s1600/second-languages-map-1350px.jpg" /></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-58586378497796846772014-10-07T23:11:00.002+02:002014-10-26T13:45:21.256+01:00Two Is Company, Four Is a Party<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Neuter nouns
with the suffix *<b>-wr̥</b>/*<b>-w(e)n-</b> are relatively rare in most branches of Indo-European.
The only group where they can be found in great numbers is Anatolian. In
Hittite, the suffix productively formed
verbal nouns (names of actions), but there are also examples of nouns that had become independent lexical units, no longer
bound to a particular verb paradigm. They had usually acquired a concrete
meaning (referring to a thing or substance rather than an abstraction). One of
such nouns is Hitt. <i>pahhur</i>/<i>pahhuen</i><i>- </i>‘fire’, evidently an ancient word, preserved
in many branches of the family and showing evidence of archaic vowel
alternations and mobile stress: nom/acc.sg. *<b>páh₂wr̥</b>, gen.sg. *<b>ph₂wéns</b>, etc. It
may be etymologically connected with the verb *<b>pah₂-</b> ‘guard, protect’, but it’s doubtful
if even the speakers of Hittite were still aware of any such connection: the semantic
distance between the verb and its derivative was already too great.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Outside
Anatolian, the suffix does not play any major role. The nouns that contain it
are scattered remnants of a Proto-Indo-European pattern of word-formation.
Their attestation is very uneven. They are quite well represented in Sanskrit
and Greek, but only isolated examples are found elsewhere (the ‘fire’ word,
which became part of Indo-European basic vocabulary sufficiently early, is
exceptionally well attested). Here are a few typical *<b>-wr̥</b>/*<b>-w(e)n-</b> nouns
evidently connected with known verb roots:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ol>
<li>*<b>h₂árh₃-wr̥</b>,
gen. *<b>h₂r̥h₃-wén-s</b> ‘arable land’ (root
*<b>h₂arh₃-</b> ‘till, plough’);</li>
<li>*<b>snéh₁-wr̥</b>,
gen. *<b>sn̥h₁-wén-s</b> ‘string, sinew’ (root *<b>(s)neh₁-</b> ‘spin, twist’);</li>
<li>*<b>séǵʰ-wr̥</b>,
gen. *<b>sǵʰ-wén-s</b> ‘steadfastness’ (root *<b>seǵʰ- </b>‘conquer, take possession of;
hold, own’);</li>
<li>*<b>h₁éd-wr̥</b>,
gen. *<b>h₁d-wén-s</b> ‘food’ (root *<b>h₁ed- </b>‘eat’).</li>
</ol>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Their
reflexes in the historically documented languages rarely display the whole range of vowel, consonant and stress variations, most of which were levelled out analogically in prehistoric times. Still, these alternations are reconstructible thanks to the fact that different fragments of the pattern have been preserved
in different languages. They can be reassembled into a complete picture like
the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or the disarticulated skeleton of a fossil animal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-hO6n0z_QEDBmHwTaebJXtK28NAQ-ttrXFVpnWCkH0vOKfTKpYE7usxqtF0yVmxC3T4awgnxhifyaQn7JZvxZ781R0WlPWqnKAYFhLKfSP6kJf7jD7QS1IC75k42Dhlw9jt0KV2JqbtM/s1600/Cucuteni_toy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-hO6n0z_QEDBmHwTaebJXtK28NAQ-ttrXFVpnWCkH0vOKfTKpYE7usxqtF0yVmxC3T4awgnxhifyaQn7JZvxZ781R0WlPWqnKAYFhLKfSP6kJf7jD7QS1IC75k42Dhlw9jt0KV2JqbtM/s1600/Cucuteni_toy.png" height="244" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Got wheels?<br />
A four-wheeled toy from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni-Trypillian_culture" target="_blank">Cucuteni-Trypillian</a> culture;<br />
the early fourth millennium BC.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">Neuters of
this kind formed collectives by inserting a lengthened *<b>ō</b> into the suffix. The
collective of a count </span>noun denotes simply a set of objects (a collective
plural), while the collective of a mass noun like ‘fire’ denotes a particular quantity or sample of the thing in question (‘a fire, a burning mass’). This became one of the derivational mechanisms
by which Indo-European mass nouns could be transformed into count nouns. The accent was commonly shifted to the suffix in the process,
causing the reduction of the root vowel: *<b>páh₂wōr</b> (collective) > *<b>ph₂wṓr</b> > *<b>pwṓr</b> (a countable neuter with its own
case forms such as gen.sg. *<b>p(h₂)un-és</b>). Still later, the distiction between
the original mass noun and its collective could be blurred and abandoned, the younger form ousting
the older and serving in both functions (‘fire’ or ‘a fire’). The archaic Proto-Indo-European form *<b>páh₂wr̥ </b>is
unambiguously preserved only in Anatolian, while the remaining Indo-European
languages show reflexes of *<b>pwṓr</b> or its further modified descendants.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now we can view the reconstruction *<b>kʷét-wr̥ </b>in this light. Supposing it was derived from our hypothetical verb root *<b>kʷet-</b> ‘group into pairs’, the original meaning of *<b>kʷétwr̥</b> (as a <i>nomen actionis</i>) would be something like ‘pairing’, and its collective *<b>kʷétwōr </b>would mean ‘a particular result of pairing, a complete set organised into pairs’. In the Proto-Indo-European world, there were many “natural” sets of things conceptualised as consisting of <i>two </i>pairs: human hands and feet; fore and rear legs of animals; the wheels of a wagon; the four directions, whether cardinal (east and west, north and south) or relative (forward and backwards, left and right); paired organs of perception (two eyes and two ears). This could have provided sufficient motivation for treating ‘4’ as the prototypical case of an “even collective”. An interesting parallel can be seen in the “fraternal” numeral systems widespread in Amazonia. In the languages that employ them, the numeral ‘4’ is derived from an expression meaning ‘each has a brother/companion/spouse’. At a more primitive stage, preserved in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A2w_language">Dâw language</a>, there are only three “exact” lexical numerals, ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’. The values from 4 to 10 are described as ‘even’ (‘has a brother’) or ‘odd’ (‘has no brother’). The precise value can’t be expressed linguistically, but the words ‘even’ and ‘odd’ can be supplemented by clarifying hand gestures:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>Dâw
speakers indicate ‘four’ by holding the fingers of one hand separated into two
blocks; for ‘five’, they add the thumb; for ‘six’, they place the second thumb
against the first to make a third pair; and so on until for ‘ten’ all fingers
are grouped into five pairs, the thumbs together.</i></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
[Epps
2006: 265]</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Once
established as a concrete numeral (rather than part of an even-odd tally
system), *<b>kʷétwōr</b> (or *<b>kʷətwṓr</b>) was interpreted as an ordinary neuter plural, and –
like the numerals ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’ – formally an adjective, inflected not only
for case but also for gender. This resulted in the analogical creation of the
animate plural in *<b>-wor-es</b> (and the periphrastic feminine ‘four females’, soon
univerbated and phonetically mutilated in the process). Note that if the
adjective had been formed directly from the verbal noun *<b>kʷétwr̥</b>/*<b>kʷ(ə)twén-</b>,
its animate plural would probably have ended up as *<b>kʷet-won-es</b>. In addition to the Greek
and Vedic words for ‘fat’, <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/word-of-month-proto-indo-european-four.html" target="_blank">already discussed</a>, compare Greek <i>peîrar </i>(gen. <i>-atos</i>)
‘boundary’ < *<b>pér-wr̥</b>/*<b>pr̥-w(e)n-</b> versus the Homeric adjective <i>a-peírōn</i> (animate) ‘boundless,
endless’ < *<b>n̥-per-wōn</b>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">All this
suggests that the word </span>*<b>kʷétwr̥ </b>(coll. *<b>kʷétwōr</b>) was transparently derived from a verb root and
adopted as a cardinal numeral at a rather late date, perhaps in “Core Indo-European”
(the non-Anatolian part of the family) rather than in Proto-Indo-European
proper. It is a well-known fact that Anatolian has a different word for ‘4’,
*<b>meju-</b> (Hittite <i>meu-</i>/<i>meyau-</i>, Luwian <i>māwa-</i>). Since the jury is still out on
whether Hittite <i>kutruwa(n)-</i> ‘witness’ has anything to do with the numeral ‘4’*),
we should seriously consider the possibility that the familiar reconstruction *<b>kʷetwores</b>
is not <i>Proto</i>-Indo-European at all but represents a “dialectal” innovation which
replaced its older synonym in the common ancestor of Tocharian and the extant branches of the family.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">If this
were a journal article rather than a blog post, I would now be obliged to account
for every puzzling irregularity in the branch-specific reflexes of *<b>kʷetwores</b> and
its variants. I will spare my visitors such excruciating details, but if anyone
is really interested in discussing them, welcome to the Comments section.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">And now
back to other matters – next time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">*) A
witness in court could be denoted as ‘the fourth man’ (beside the
two contracting parties and the judge).</span></span></div>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></h4>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Reference</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Epps, Patience. <span lang="EN-US">2006. “Growing a numeral system: The historical development of numerals
in an Amazonian language family”. <a href="https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/dia.23.2/toc" target="_blank"><i>Diachronica </i>23(2)</a>: 259-288. [a
preprint version is available <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5064304/Growing_a_numeral_system_The_historical_development_of_numerals_in_an_Amazonian_language_family" target="_blank">here</a>]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/four-map.html" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;" target="_blank">back to the table of contents</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">]</span></span></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-17157796790049401592014-10-02T10:29:00.001+02:002015-11-06T22:18:05.194+01:00Only Connect: The Strange Triangle<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The Latin
adjective <i>triquetrus </i>‘triangular’ (neuter <i>-um</i>, feminine <i>-a</i>) is baffling. It’s
obviously a compound, and it obviously contains the compositional form of the
numeral ‘three’, *<b>tri-</b>. What else it contains is anything but obvious.
Unfortunately, it’s the only specimen of its kind. The mysterious element
-<i>quetrus</i> does not occur in any other Latin compound. It looks as if it could
have something to do with <i>quattuor </i>‘four’. When ‘four’ occurs as the first part
of a compound, it has the shape <i>quadru/i-</i>. This form must somehow go back to *<b>kʷətwr̥-</b>,
its metathetic variant *<b>kʷətru-</b>, or a hybrid combination of both, but the voicing of the *<b>t</b>
is odd, not to say perverse, because its exact opposite, *<b>dr</b> > <b>tr</b>, was a regular
change in the prehistory of Latin. The word ‘four’ is evidently such a fickle fellow that
it just can’t resist breaking some established rules. For greater
inconsistency, the adverbial numeral <i>quater </i>‘four times’, which in other IE
languages (and presumably in Latin as well) derives from *<b>kʷ(e)twr̥-s</b> ~
*<b>kʷ(e)tru-s</b>, shows no voicing. We see a voiced stop again, though, in the denominal verb
<i>quadrō </i>‘to square; put in order, arrange’ and a few related words such as <i>quadra
</i>‘square piece or slice, plinth, dining table, etc.’ and <i>quadrātus </i>‘square (n. and adj.)’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2bcHJk8I2Mh5l2XtNJbdo5HskZjNd5k75fPkhSoPNQKhNKiHQ3WbKOp_w6_FZ4zasrJnZSBvq7xpncIshyphenhyphenij0zlBvqW1HgFDFQJtlkMxHEpY5K_J6QibcOL_E632o5bQKO-inoSI3Qw/s1600/Penrose_tribar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2bcHJk8I2Mh5l2XtNJbdo5HskZjNd5k75fPkhSoPNQKhNKiHQ3WbKOp_w6_FZ4zasrJnZSBvq7xpncIshyphenhyphenij0zlBvqW1HgFDFQJtlkMxHEpY5K_J6QibcOL_E632o5bQKO-inoSI3Qw/s1600/Penrose_tribar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><div style="text-align: center;">
Some connections are impossible.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
[<a href="http://xylem.aegean.gr/~modestos/mo.blog/?p=46" target="_blank">credit: <span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: "open sans" , "century gothic" , "lucida grande" , "lucida sans unicode" , "lucida sans" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16.799999237060547px; text-align: start;"> </span>μο.</a>]</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">The second
part of <i>triquetrus </i>doesn’t simply reflect *<b>kʷetru-</b> (or *<b>kʷatru-</b> < *<b>kʷətru-</b>),
because the word is a second-declension o-stem, which means that its pre-form
ended in *<b>-tro-</b> rather than *<b>-tru-</b>. The form *<b>kʷetro-</b> (or possibly *<b>kʷatro-</b>,
since pre-Latin *<b>a</b> would have merged with *<b>e</b> in this position) does not
otherwise occur as a variant of ‘4’ in Latin, but since we are dealing with a
capricious word-family, it’s hard to rule out a connection. If it does mean
‘four’, however, why’s that? A triangle has three sides, it has three angles,
but has it got three “fours”? It would not be strange if a word for the <i>right
</i>angle had something to do with squares or rectangles, and therefore indirectly
with the numeral ‘4’, but a triangle can have at most one right angle,
certainly not as many as three (the <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PenroseTriangle.html" target="_blank">Penrose tribar</a>, shown on the right, would be an exception if it could exist in ordinary Euclidean space).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Can
external cognates help? It’s tempting to compare <i>triquetrus </i>with Old English
<i>þrifeoþor </i>(sometimes glossed as ‘triangular’ in reference books such as Bosworth and Toller’s <a href="http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/sites/default/files/img/bt_b1069.jpg" target="_blank">Anglo-Saxon Dictionary</a>). It has been suggested earlier by
one of the commenters on this blog [<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/08/de-extinction-mammoth-walks-again.html?showComment=1409196223395#c4993973984051797441" target="_blank">Douglas G. Kilday</a>]
that the Old English word is a loan from (unattested) Gaulish *<b>petros </b>‘corner’ (<
*<b>kʷetros</b>), which became Germanic *<b>feþra-</b> after the operation of Grimm’s Law. This
tantalising suggestion, however, can’t be correct. The word <i>þrifeoþor </i>appears
in Old English glossaries (Corpus, Erfurt, and Épinal) three times (spelt <i>ðrifeoðor</i>, <i>trifoedur</i>, <i>ðrifedor</i>),
and is translated into Latin as <i>triquadrum</i>. One might think that <i>triquadrum </i>is
a distortion of <i>triquetrum </i>caused by “folk etymology” (the mistaken
identification of the second part as the compositional form of ‘4’), but in
fact it’s no such thing. Old English authors took the adjective <i>triquadrus </i>from
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orosius" target="_blank">Orosius</a>, a Christian priest and scholar from the Roman province of Gallaecia (today’s Galicia, Spain). Orosius, active in the first decades of the 5th century, was the author
of several enormously influential works, including
<a href="http://www.attalus.org/latin/orosius.html" target="_blank">Historiae Adversus Paganos</a>, with a chapter on the geography of the
world. Here is the relevant passage (<a href="http://www.attalus.org/latin/orosius1.html" target="_blank">Book 1, Chapter 2</a>; emphasis added):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Maiores nostri <b>orbem totius terrae</b>, oceani limbo circumsaeptum, <b>triquadrum
</b>statuere eiusque tres partes Asiam Europam et Africam uocauerunt,
quamuis aliqui duas hoc est Asiam ac deinde Africam in Europam accipiendam
putarint.</i></blockquote>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">[Our elders
made a threefold division of the world, which is surrounded on its periphery by
the Ocean. Its three parts they named Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Some authorities, however, have considered them to be two, that is, Asia,
and Africa and Europe, grouping the last two as one continent.]</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The epithet
<i>triquadrus </i>refers to “the circle of all the earth” (<i>orbis totius terrae</i> = the
world). Orosius certainly doesn’t mean that the Earth is a triangular circle, or
that it has three corners. He means that the landmass of the world (as he knew
it) is tripartite, divided by most ancient geographers into three continents (in
this context, <i>quadra </i>means ‘part, division, area’, not literally a square). Anglo-Saxon translators coined a calque, mechanically replacing Latin
<i>quadr</i>- with <i>feoþor</i>- < *<b>kʷetwr̥-</b>, the compositional form of Old English <i>fēower
</i>‘four’. <i>Þrifeoþor </i>was never intended to mean ‘triangular’. Its second member is
the same <i>feoþor</i>- (= Late West Saxon <i>fiþer</i>-, <i>fyþer</i>-) that we find as the first
element in numerous Old English compounds, e.g. <i>fiþerfēte </i>‘four-footed’ (=
Latin <i>quadrupēs</i>).<br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">External
support for *<b>kʷetro-</b> thus evaporates, but <i>triquetrus </i>still has to be explained
somehow. I would suggest that its second element is a derivative of <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/twos-and-troops-sifting-evidence.html" target="_blank">*<b>kʷet-</b> ‘join pairwise’</a> with the instrumental suffix *<b>-tro-</b>. When the suffix was added to a
root ending in a dental stop, the last segment of the root was dropped already in Proto-Indo-European (this process is known as “the <i>metron
</i>rule”). Thus we get *<b>métrom</b> (Greek <i>métron </i>‘measure’) from *<b>méd-trom</b> (*<b>med-</b> ‘allot,
mete out’), and *<b>h₁étrom</b> (Vedic <i>átra-</i> ‘nourishment’) from *<b>h₁éd-trom</b> (*<b>h₁éd-</b> ‘eat’).
The noun *<b>kʷétrom</b> < *<b>kʷet-trom</b> would be ‘something that holds a pair of
things together’, hence ‘joint, connection’ or the like. There were several
Proto-Indo-European roots with similar meanings, and accordingly several nearly
synonymous nouns for things like woodworking joints; <i>joint
</i>itself comes (via French) from Latin <i>iunctus </i>‘connected’ (the root here is
*<b>jeug-</b>, as in <i>yoke</i>). <i>Tri-quetrus </i>(< *<b>tri-k</b></span><b>ʷetro-</b>) is built exactly like <i>tri-angulus </i>(a noun is
used as the second member of a compound adjective without altering its stem
class), and its etymological meaning is ‘having three connections (between
pairs of sides)’.<br />
<br />
The next
post, in which I shall return to the numeral ‘four’ itself, will be the last in this series.</div>
<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px; text-align: justify;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/four-map.html" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px; text-align: justify;" target="_blank">back to the table of contents</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px; text-align: justify;">]</span>Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-71122474565672198492014-09-29T16:24:00.000+02:002014-10-12T02:00:06.354+02:00Forgotten Derivatives and Their Sexual Implications<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
What kind
of noun is <i><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-name-of-game-jakobson-reads-vasmer.html" target="_blank">čët</a></i>? What is its relationship to our hypothetical verb root? One
cannot avoid asking such questions when proposing an etymology. A word is more
than a root; it has a derivational history. If you add an affix to a word, you
may alter its lexical category and its meaning of the base. We already know a good
deal about morphological processes in the Indo-European languages, which means
that we can tell plausible relationships between possibly related words from
unlikely ones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Let <b>R</b> be a
root morpheme. In Proto-Indo-European (and in many of the languages descended
from it), a root consists of a consonantal skeleton with a slot where a vowel can
be inserted. For example, the verb root *<b>{w_r</b><b>ǵ</b><b>}</b> ‘make, work’ is normally quoted
in the form *<b>werǵ-</b>, called its <i>e</i>-grade, symbolised as <b>R(e)</b>. Here, the slot is occupied
by the vowel *<b>e</b>. The same root also forms an <i>o</i>-grade, <b>R(o)</b>, realised as *<b>worǵ-</b>,
and a zero grade, <b>R(z)</b>, in which the vowel slot remains empty. In that case,
the liquid *<b>r</b>, sandwiched between two other consonants, has to play the role of a
syllable nucleus, and the root becomes phonetically *<b>wr̥ǵ-</b> (in the traditional
Indo-Europeanist notation, a tiny subscipt ring marks a syllabic consonant).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">One of the largest
and most productive classes of PIE nominals (nouns/adjectives) were the
so-called thematic nouns (also known as <i>o</i>-stems). Their stem ended in the vowel
*<b>-o-</b>, to which inflectional endings were attached. In the simplest case, the
vowel was added directly to the root; in more complex cases it was part of a
suffix (such as *<b>-to-</b>, *<b>-no-</b>, *<b>-tero-</b>, *<b>-tlo-</b>, etc.). Somewhat surprisingly, “simple
thematic” nouns of the shape <b>R(e)-o-</b>
were pretty rare in the protolanguage. The neuter action noun *<b>wérǵ-o-m</b> ‘work,
activity’ is well supported by the agreement between Germanic *<b>werka-</b> (Old
English <i>weorc</i>, German <i>Werk</i>) and Greek <i>érgon</i>; we also have Iranian (Avestan) <i>varəza-</i>, with
the same stem (and meaning) but with masculine inflections. Very few such nouns,
however, are truly old. More typically, the suffix *<b>-o-</b> was added to <b>R(o)</b>, as
in *<b>wóiḱ-o-</b> ‘house, dwelling’ (root *<b>weiḱ-</b> ‘enter, occupy’) and sometimes to <b>R(z)</b>,
as in *<b>jug-ó-</b> ‘yoke’ (root *<b>jeug-</b>, already mentioned in earlier posts).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Marc
Greenber (2001) doesn’t define the morphological status of his reconstruction
*<b>kʷet-</b> (‘two’ > ‘pair, partner’). In some places in the article he treats it
as if it were a root noun (with no suffixes), but the simplest form we actually
find in Slavic is represented by Russ. <i>čët </i>(cf. dialectal Polish <i>cot</i>), which appears to reflect a thematic masculine noun
*<b>kʷet-o-s</b> ‘even number’. How could it have originated? If *<b>kʷet-</b> was once a
verb root (with the approximate meaning of ‘arrange in pairs, pair up’), *<b>kʷet-o-</b>
makes sense as a kind of action noun that has acquired a resultative interpretation:
by pairing objects together, you end up with an even number of them. (By the
way, the verb root is not entirely conjectural: we can see it in Russian <i>četáť </i>‘form
pairs’.) The problem with *<b>kʷet-o-</b> is
that it represents a rare type of stem, at least in terms of PIE morphology. Is
it legitimate to posit it just like that?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">On the
other hand, </span>*<b>kʷet-o- </b>needn’t go all the way back to PIE. The deverbal formation <b>R(e)-o- </b>has enjoyed increased productivity in Slavic. We even
have doublets like <b>R(o)-o-</b> and <b>R(e)-o-</b>, where the <i>o</i>-grade variant is more
conservative (and has more external cognates), while the <i>e</i>-grade seems to be a younger innovation (with a more restricted distribution). Thus, the root *<b>tekʷ-</b> ‘run, flow’ has produced
Slavic *<b>tekъ</b> (as if from *<b>tekʷ-o-s</b>) ‘waterflow, leak, source’, which coexists
with *<b>tokъ</b> (< *<b>tokʷ-o-s</b>) ‘stream, current, flux; (figuratively) course, sequence
of events’. The former is an innovation directly connected with the Slavic verb
*<b>tekti</b> ‘leak, flow’ (3sg. *<b>tečetь</b> > *<b>tékʷ-e-ti</b>), whereas the latter is a relict form
which has drifted away from its etymological base, also semantically. Therefore,
if *<b>četъ</b> is a relatively recent derivative of a Proto-Slavic verb, it wouldn’t
be surprising if it had an <i>o</i>-grade cousin (possibly with a more “evolved”
meaning).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">As a matter
of fact, Greenberg mentions *<b>kotъ</b> ‘offspring (of animals), litter’ and *<b>kotiti
(sę)</b> ‘have young’ as possible members of the same word-family. A connection
with the homophonous noun *<b>kotъ</b> ‘domestic cat’ (a European <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderwort" target="_blank">Wanderwort</a> which spread with the introduction
of cats) is folk-etymological: the verb may be used of cats, but also of mice,
sheep, goats, roe deer, and a variety of other animals. It is used even in those
Slavic languages that have a different word for ‘cat’ (e.g. Serbo-Croatian </span><i>mačka</i>). The verb *<b>kotiti </b>could
be an “iterative/causative” built to the root *<b>kʷet-</b>. The structure of such secondary
verbs is <b>R(o)-éje/o-</b> (the final vowel of the stem alternates depending on which
conjugational ending is added). For example, the Slavic verb *<b>gъnati</b> (3sg. *<b>ženetь</b>)
‘drive on, drive away, rush’ has a corresponding o-grade iterative, *<b>goniti </b>(3sg. *<b>gonitь</b>) ‘chase,
run after’. These forms ultimately reflect PIE *<b>gʷʰén-</b>/*<b>gʷʰn-</b> ‘slay, kill with blows’ (a root verb, somewhat restructured in Slavic) and its PIE iterative *<b>gʷʰon-éje/o-</b>.
The verb *<b>tekti</b> (< *<b>tékʷ-e/o-</b>), mentioned above, forms a pair with the
causative *<b>točiti</b> ‘cause to flow, (cause to) roll’ (< *<b>tokʷ-éje/o-</b>). Note also such English
pairs as <i>lie </i>vs. <i>lay</i>, or <i>sit </i>vs. <i>set</i>, where the first member is a primary verb
and the second is its causative (e.g. ‘lay’ = ‘cause to lie’).<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNAYFm9mMdPKEN3j5WkDjVFLCFkbHg_GFtDV1bNJrHmA_0VYtwJ4A1aTOfX8PWy_r9B6am1JwK2eylonmxrRXDLFygaqPfBemTaX9vwgkg7xTmKrlsUtE-QdxLQnHTp36zH3hwqQqx9Y/s1600/Roe+and+fawns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNAYFm9mMdPKEN3j5WkDjVFLCFkbHg_GFtDV1bNJrHmA_0VYtwJ4A1aTOfX8PWy_r9B6am1JwK2eylonmxrRXDLFygaqPfBemTaX9vwgkg7xTmKrlsUtE-QdxLQnHTp36zH3hwqQqx9Y/s1600/Roe+and+fawns.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The consequences of forming a pair.<br />
[<a href="http://www.fotocommunity.com/pc/pc/display/31104099" target="_blank">source</a>; © gerald reiner]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">The stem *<b>kʷot-éje/o-</b>,
originally with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_(grammar)#Middle" target="_blank">middle-voice</a> inflections (whose function was taken over by the
reflexive/reciprocal pronoun *<b>sę</b> in Slavic), would mean ‘form a couple (together)’, hence ‘mate,
have sex’, and eventually ‘reproduce, have young’. If so, *<b>kotъ</b> ‘litter’ is not
a senior synonym of *<b>četъ</b> (with a hard-to-explain change of meaning), but more
likely a separate verbal noun back-formed from *<b>kotiti sę</b> (the consequence of
mating), on the analogy of formally similar denominal verbs: *<b>agniti sę</b> ‘yean’,
*<b>teliti sę</b> ‘calve’, *<b>žerbiti sę</b> ‘foal’.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The
feminine *<b>četa</b> can hardly be a collective (at any rate in the meaning ‘pair’).
Not only because it refers to just two things, but also because collectives in
*<b>-ah₂</b> to <i>o</i>-stem masculines are an archaic formation in Indo-European (as
opposed to neuter collectives, co-opted as ordinary plurals of neuter nouns and adjectives), and *<b>četъ</b> is
unlikely to be sufficiently ancient. But Indo-European *<b>-(a)h₂</b> was not only a
collective suffix and a marker of femininity; it was also employed to coin (formally feminine) abstracts, including action nouns. Quite a few deverbal masculines in
Slavic (and more generally in Balto-Slavic) have feminine synonyms like *<b>čarъ</b>
~ *<b>čara</b> ‘sorcery, enchantment’ or *<b>-tokъ</b> ~ *<b>-toka </b>‘flow, course’, *<b>-sěkъ</b> ~ *<b>-sěka</b> ‘cutting’ (in compounds). Note the familiar
morphological formations represented by Greek <i>tómos</i> ‘slice’ (result of cutting) versus
<i>tomḗ</i> ‘cut’ (an instance of cutting) – a nice parallel to *<b>četъ</b> (resultative)
vs. *<b>četa</b> (an individual instance of pairing).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In the
first post of this series I suggested that the stem *<b>kʷet-w(o)r-</b> was originally
a deverbal neuter of a familiar type. Before I develop this idea, let me briefly
suggest one other possible trace of the root *<b>kʷet-</b>: the second member of the Latin
compound <i>triquetrus </i>‘triangular’. The next post will be about it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/four-map.html" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;" target="_blank">back to the table of contents</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">]</span></span></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-73786366192137672092014-09-26T00:24:00.001+02:002014-09-26T15:22:44.390+02:00Twos and Troops: Sifting the Evidence<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-name-of-game-jakobson-reads-vasmer.html" target="_blank">Jakobson’s remark</a> about a possible connection between Russian <i>čët </i>and <i>četýre </i>is discussed in Blažek (1999: 212-213) and especially in Greenberg (2001). Both authors mention earlier, more sketchy treatments of the problem, and they both add more Slavic material to the Russian words originally listed by Jakobson (which were <i>čët</i>, <i>čëtka </i>‘even number’, <i>četá </i>‘pair, union’, and <i>čeť </i>‘quarter’). Blažek also notes an interesting potential cognate in Ossetian, an Indo-European language spoken in the north-central Caucasus (Ossetian is the only living descendant of the Northeast Iranian languages once spoken by the Scytho-Sarmatian inhabitants of the Eurasian steppe belt). The word in question is <i>cæd </i>‘pair of oxen yoked together’, as if from Proto-Iranian *<b>čatā </b>(the Digor dialect of Ossetian has preserved a more conservative disyllabic form of the word, <i>cædæ</i>).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Blažek does not follow up Jakobson’s suggestion (presumably because he favours a different etymology of ‘four’, proposed by Schmid 1989; see pp. 213, 215, 331 in Blažek’s book). Greenberg, however, regards it as convincing and develops it further. Like Blažek, he considers the predominantly South Slavic *<b>četa </b>‘troop, military unit’ (hence Serbo-Croatian <i>Četnici </i>‘Chetniks’) to be part of the word-family of <i>čët</i>, and tries to explain the accentual difference between the end-stressed word <i>četá </i>(< *<b>četa̍</b>) in Russian and the root-stressed South Slavic forms – Bulgarian <i>čéta</i>, Serbian/Croatian <i>čȅta</i>, Slovene <i>čẹ́ta </i>(< *<b>čèta</b>) – in order to defend their common origin.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
According to Greenberg, the word ‘four’ is derived from the root *<b>kʷet-</b> meaning ‘two’ extended with a multiplicative suffix, so that *<b>kʷet-wor-</b> means ‘(two) groups of two, twice two’. Greenberg also speculates that Proto-Indo-European *<b>kʷotero-</b> ‘which (of two)?’ (Greek <i>póteros</i>, English <i>whether</i>) contains the same root. This is hardly a good idea, since there is no compelling reason to question the straightforward standard analysis of *<b>kʷo-tero-</b> as the interrogative pronoun *<b>kʷo-</b> plus *<b>-tero-</b>, the IE suffix of binary contrast. The semantic gap between ‘two’ and ‘military unit’ is bridged by Greenberg as follows: Slavic *<b>četa</b> originated as the collective (in *<b>-ah₂</b>) of a word meaning ‘two, pair’, and ‘multitude of pairs’ evolved into ‘troop, group, band (of soldiers)’.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFc02oYiCamfap0lOjj-Ej5KoJDVN1P0v_QfhKi8HfkWEK4e-UccrG-pB_XZSs2ibAGykbjFw2T3DTZ4kA2d_yFGbZ4X-0_scdpeGgdLkkXTMG56yyLO9u6dOrjxmTsVBqzBVOQ36Cee0/s1600/Bullock_yokes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFc02oYiCamfap0lOjj-Ej5KoJDVN1P0v_QfhKi8HfkWEK4e-UccrG-pB_XZSs2ibAGykbjFw2T3DTZ4kA2d_yFGbZ4X-0_scdpeGgdLkkXTMG56yyLO9u6dOrjxmTsVBqzBVOQ36Cee0/s1600/Bullock_yokes.jpg" height="224" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arranged in pairs<br />
[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoke#mediaviewer/File:Bullock_yokes.jpg" target="_blank">source</a>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There are serious problems with this derivation. First, (East/West) Slavic *<b>četъ</b> means ‘even number’, not ‘two’ or ‘pair’, while, on the contrary, the supposedly collective <i>četá </i>can mean ‘pair’ in Russian (beside some related meanings: <i>ne četá</i>, accompanied by a dative, means ‘not on a par with, superior to…’). What appears to be its exact cognate in Ossetian means ‘pair of oxen’, not, say, ‘herd of cattle’. Furthermore, while it’s true that the semantics of Russian <i>četá </i>covers not only ‘pair’ but also ‘troop’ (the latter attested already in Old Russian), we are probably dealing with a lexical merger between a native East Slavic word and a borrowing from Church Slavic (Czech <i>četa </i>‘platoon’ is likewise a South Slavic loan, as are, ultimately, a number of similar “wandering words” in various neighbouring languages – Romanian, Hungarian, Albanian, and even Turkish). The non-attestation of intermediate meanings like ‘double column (of soldiers)’ makes it hard to justify the derivation of ‘troop’ from ‘pair’. Since the semantic difference is combined with a formal difference (conflicting accentuation), the etymology simply falls apart. It seems reasonable to conclude that the contrast between *<b>četa̍</b> and *<b>čèta</b> is old and distinguishes two words of different origin (notwithstanding their merger in Russian). [See <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/twos-and-troops-sifting-evidence.html?showComment=1411728130154#c4599903997268119331" target="_blank">this comment</a>, however.]</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Jakobson’s final hypothetical relative of ‘four’, <i>čeť</i> ‘fourth part (of land), quarter’ (Old Russian <i>četь</i> ~ <i>četъka</i>), is in all likelihood a popular truncation of <i>četverť</i> (~ <i>četvertka</i>) < Proto-Slavic *<b>četvьrtь</b> ‘quarter’ < *<b>kʷetwr̥-ti-</b>, a noun corresponding to the widespread ordinal *<b>kʷetwr̥-to-</b> ‘fourth’. It is of course related to ‘four’, but in a rather trivial manner.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Etymological dictionaries often attempt to connect <i>četa </i>(in either sense) with the Slavic verb *<b>čьtǫ </b>(inf. *<b>čisti</b>) ‘count, reckon, read’, derived from PIE *<b>kʷeit-</b> ‘notice, recognise’. This verb has produced numerous derivatives in Slavic (e.g. *<b>čislo</b> ‘number’); some of them may be accidentally similar to members of the <i>čët </i>group both in form and in meaning, e.g. Old Czech <i>čet</i> ‘count, quantity’ (Modern Czech <i>počet</i>, with a prefix). Note, however, the gen.sg. <i>čtu </i>~ <i>čta</i>. The disappearing root vowel reflects Proto-Slavic *<b>ь</b> (a reduced vowel continuing earlier short *<b>i</b> in the weak form of the root, *<b>kʷit-</b>). Despite their deceptive similarity, Russian <i>čet</i><i>á</i><i> </i>(or <i>čët</i>) and Czech <i>čet </i>have different etymologies.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If we remove all the false or dubious cognates, we are left with just the initial material: *<b>četъ </b>‘even number’, *<b>četьnъ</b> ‘even (of numbers)’ and *<b>četa</b> ‘pair’ – a word-family securely attested in East and West Slavic. We can safely add the Ossetian word (isolated in Iranian, as far as I know, but a perfect match for *<b>četa</b>, semantically and formally). There’s no evidence that the original meaning of the morpheme *<b>čet-</b> was ‘two’; nevertheless, it seems to have had something to do with arranging things in couples. Typologically, the Slavic “odd/even” terminology is parallel to <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/even-and-odd.html" target="_blank">what we have seen in Greek and Sanskrit</a>, even if different lexical roots are involved. If so, one could expect *<b>čet-</b> to be semantically close to the familiar Indo-European roots *<b>h₂ar-</b> ‘fit together’ and *<b>jeug-</b> ‘yoke, connect’. I shall therefore tentatively assume that *<b>čet-</b> continues a verb root like *<b>kʷet-</b>, with the approximate meaning of ‘combine into pairs’. Let’s see if we can work from here – next time.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">[</span><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/four-map.html" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;" target="_blank">back to the table of contents</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">]</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<h4>
<span lang="EN-US"><b>References</b></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Václav
Blažek. 1999. <i>Numerals: Comparative–etymological analyses of numeral systems
and their implications</i>. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita v Brně.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Marc L.
Greenberg. 2001. “Is Slavic četa an Indo-European archaism?”. <i>International Journal of Slavic Linguistics
and Poetics</i> 43: 35-39.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-19852138805280797922014-09-21T20:15:00.002+02:002014-10-07T23:20:39.626+02:00‘Four’: A Map<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">I didn’t
plan it this way, but since the discussion of the etymology of ‘four’ has unfolded into a small
saga in several acts, I have to organise it for convenience. Here is a map of
the route:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwP-X2V02iEmusq1FV-MaB-Ii_G4fR5zxhUkK3m53XQvb418DVSj_hSyKTrVCqjTF1KQffDmohze2S3dPpStq-60cKIwRbYTD47Vog2NTiEq0_aySXFGGn22R04Rigvi09kiXeamr9FKI/s1600/Poker-sm-23B-4d.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwP-X2V02iEmusq1FV-MaB-Ii_G4fR5zxhUkK3m53XQvb418DVSj_hSyKTrVCqjTF1KQffDmohze2S3dPpStq-60cKIwRbYTD47Vog2NTiEq0_aySXFGGn22R04Rigvi09kiXeamr9FKI/s1600/Poker-sm-23B-4d.png" height="200" width="142" /></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<ol>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/word-of-month-proto-indo-european-four.html" target="_blank"><b>Word of the Month: Proto-Indo-European ‘Four’</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<b><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/even-and-odd.html" target="_blank">Even and Odd</a></b>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-name-of-game-jakobson-reads-vasmer.html" target="_blank"><b>The Name of the Game: Jakobson Reads Vasmer</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/twos-and-troops-sifting-evidence.html" target="_blank"><b>Twos and Troops: Sifting the Evidence</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/forgotten-derivatives-and-their-sexual.html" target="_blank"><b>Forgotten Derivatives and their Sexual Implications</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/10/only-connect-strange-triangle.html" target="_blank"><b>Only Connect: The Strange Triangle</b></a>]</li>
<li>[<b><a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/10/two-is-company-four-is-party.html" target="_blank">Two Is Company, Four Is a Party</a></b>]<b><span style="color: red;"> NEW!</span></b></li>
</ol>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The End</b></blockquote>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4569985457770997949.post-85375172116622481872014-09-21T16:53:00.001+02:002014-09-25T17:07:28.493+02:00The Name of the Game: Jakobson Reads Vasmer<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>With the
vast and reliable etymological material put into circulation by Vasmer, a
number of new questions naturally arises. I should like to dwell on some
particulars.</i></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Roman Jakobson (1955) *) </blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The Slavs
played at “<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/even-and-odd.html" target="_blank">even and odd</a>” too. In Polish the game used to be called <i>cetno licho</i>
(or <i>cetno i licho</i>). The noun <i>licho </i>is still used as a mild euphemism for ‘devil’.
<i>Czego chcesz, do licha?</i> means “What the heck do you want?” Polish also has the
adjective <i>lichy </i>‘poor, inferior, in bad shape’. Historically, <i>licho </i>is a neuter form
of <i>lichy</i>, substantivised centuries ago, when the adjective had a wider range of
meaning, including ‘mean, evil’; licho
was therefore ‘something wicked’. The phrase <i>cetno i licho</i> lingers on on the fringes of
literary Polish (people are at best vaguely aware that it refers to some old game
of chance), but <i>cetno </i>no longer occurs on its own, and has no obvious relatives
in the modern Polish lexicon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYYi7Iy50OxMIaiTA85sCAin3FT3NuKV1SSVE-Emk0b20PuBXyYgXlXUmI0RcXddomwKK6cfUuetW07K1awwPMjIFs0IE_O6ifatRYo-93taqiI2xD6aSrK7eCDFADaNC_jOmIhwnSmk/s1600/Roman_Jakobson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYYi7Iy50OxMIaiTA85sCAin3FT3NuKV1SSVE-Emk0b20PuBXyYgXlXUmI0RcXddomwKK6cfUuetW07K1awwPMjIFs0IE_O6ifatRYo-93taqiI2xD6aSrK7eCDFADaNC_jOmIhwnSmk/s1600/Roman_Jakobson.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The man who read Vasmer's dictionary<br />
[<a href="http://monoskop.org/images/6/6f/Roman_Jakobson_2.jpg" target="_blank">source</a>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US">A few
hundred years ago (most examples come from 16th-century texts) <i>cetno </i>and <i>licho </i>could mean, respectively, ‘even number’ and ‘odd
number’. Though often contrasted with each other, they were not yet harnessed
together into a fixed phrase. <i>Cetnem </i>(instr.sg.) or <i>w cetnie </i>(loc.sg.) meant ‘(occurring)
in even numbers’; likewise <i>lichem </i>and <i>w lichu</i> ‘in odd numbers’. </span>This
usage has been completely forgotten.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>Licho </i>and
<i>lichy </i>go back to Proto-Slavic *<b>lix</b></span><b>ъ</b>
<span lang="EN-US">‘strange, irregular, rogue’. In the modern Slavic languages it
usually has pejorative conotations (‘bad, lacking, defective, lonely’, etc.); it can also mean </span>‘excessive, superfluous’. The meaning of <span lang="EN-US">Russian <i>lixój</i>, however, ranges</span> – somewhat schizophrenically – from <span lang="EN-US"><span lang="EN-US">‘bad, sinister, hard’ to </span></span>‘daring, valiant’ <span lang="EN-US"><span lang="EN-US">(the common ancestor was ‘extraordinary’,
whether in a positive or a negative sense)’. Like semantically similar words in
other languages (Greek <i>perittós</i>, English <i>odd</i>), *<b>lix</b></span><b>ъ</b> developed the arithmetical meaning
of ‘odd’, which survives here and there in the Slavic branch. For example, in Czech
<i>liché číslo</i> means ‘odd number’. As for its origin, *<b>lix</b></span><b>ъ</b><span lang="EN-US"> < *<b>leikʷ-so-</b>, from the
widespread Proto-Indo-European root *<b>leikʷ-</b> ‘leave, abandon’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So much for <i>licho</i>. Where does <i>cetno </i>come from? The Russian
term for “even and odd” is <i>čët i néčet</i>. <i>Čët </i>means ‘even number’ (=
<i>čëtnoe čisló</i>); <i>néčet </i>is its antonym. The adjective <i>čëtnyj </i>‘even’ (of a number) is
closely related to Polish <i>cetno</i>. Russian <i>č</i> normally corresponds to Polish <i>cz</i>, but
some regional varieties of Polish have
merged the affricate <i>cz </i>/tʂ/ with <i>c</i> /ts/ for centuries, and the standard language has borrowed
a number of dialectal pronunciations of this kind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">On the combined
evidence of Polish and East Slavic forms we can reconstruct Proto-Slavic
*<b>čet</b></span><b>ъ</b><span lang="EN-US"> (n.) and *<b>čet</b></span><b>ь<span lang="EN-US">n</span>ъ</b><span lang="EN-US"> (adj.). Russian also has the noun <i>četá</i> ‘pair,
couple’, which is formally and semantically close to them. There are several
other Slavic words that might or might not be related to *<b>čet</b></span><b>ъ</b><span lang="EN-US">, but it’s wiser at this stage to
exclude more difficult material so as to avoid the risk of contaminating a reliable set of cognates with spurious ones.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Back in the
1950s, as successive volumes of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Vasmer" target="_blank">Max Vasmer</a>’s monument<span style="font-family: inherit;">al <i>Russisches etymologisches W</i></span></span><i>örterbuch</i> <span style="font-family: inherit;">were published in Heidelberg, the great linguist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Jakobson" target="_blank">Roman Jakobson</a> (then at Harvard University) read the entire
dictionar</span>y (I mean, actually <i>read </i>it like a novel, page by page), jotting down comments on entries that attracted his attention. Those marginalia were published as a journal
article (see the reference below) and <a href="http://monoskop.org/images/b/b5/Jakobson_Roman_Selected_Writings_Vol_2_Word_and_Language.pdf" target="_blank">reprinted</a> in Jakobson’s <i>Selected Writings</i>
(Volume II: <i>Word and Language</i>). With regard to <i>čët </i>and its relatives, Jakobson remarked that they “seem to be archaic relics of the same word family as <i>četýre</i>” (the
Russian reflex of <a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/word-of-month-proto-indo-european-four.html" target="_blank">the Indo-European numeral ‘four’</a>). Having devoted one sentence to the
matter, he moved on to the next entry that had caught his eye, <i>čex </i>‘Czech’. The idea that <i>čët </i>and <i>četýre</i> are somehow related has been picked up by several other authors,
but hitherto published attempts to analyse *<b>kʷetwor-</b> in this light have the usual flaws of “root etymologies”: too little attention to
morphological details, and too much imaginative semantics. Nevertheless, I
think Jakobson’s idea is worth salvaging, so I’ll review those previous
attempts and try to see if I can do any better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="text-align: right;">*) Roman Jakobson. 1955. “While reading Vasmer’s dictionary”. </span><i style="text-align: right;">Word </i><span style="text-align: right;">11: 611-617.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="text-align: right;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="text-align: right;">[<a href="http://etymolog.ruslang.ru/index.php?act=contents&book=vasmer" target="_blank">link to a digitalised Russian translation of Vasmer's dictionary</a>]</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[to be continued]</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[<a href="http://langevo.blogspot.com/2014/09/four-map.html" target="_blank">back to the table of contents</a>]</span></span></div>
Piotr Gąsiorowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.com8