The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel

[Kuchigakatai]

Does anyone know where the -t of English thou conjugations comes from? Proto-Germanic simply had -s/z, e.g. *spellōsi *spellōdēz > Gothic spillōs spillōdēs (cognates of "thou spellst, thou spelledst"), but Old English already shows with -st in both the present and past, in this case, spellast spellodest.

[KathTheDragon]

I read a theory that it comes from misanalysis of verb + *þu, i.e. the *þ gets copied to the end of the verb and becomes *t according to the Germanic Spirant Law, but I'm not sure how well accepted it is.

[Richard W]

Does anyone know where the -t of English thou conjugations comes from? Proto-Germanic simply had -s/z, e.g. *spellōsi *spellōdēz > Gothic spillōs spillōdēs (cognates of "thou spellst, thou spelledst"), but Old English already shows with -st in both the present and past, in this case, spellast spellodest.

For the preterite-present verbs, it seems to be a reflex of the -th₂e ending from the IE perfect. In some cases, it combines with the 't' of the stem to give 'st', which may have reinforced 2s -st from another source. I'm not sure why it should so regularly have hardened to /t/; sometimes the law of spirants applies.

[Pabappa]

Maybe proto-Germanic already had the /-t/ ... I mean, how would we know? It's a reconstructed proto-language. The postfixed -þu theory makes perfect sense to me, but there's no need to have it occurring separately in every Germanic daughter language. Why not project it back to the proto-language, where /t/ would have been the expected outcome all along?

edit: i should clarify, regarding Gothic, that an inherited form of this type can easily be lost by the same mechanism by which it appeared: /þþ/ > /þ/, which may be what happened in the Scandinavian languages.

[Richard W]

Does anyone know where the -t of English thou conjugations comes from?

Wouldst thou have us explain -st, or wilt thou settle for an explanation of mere -t?

[Kuchigakatai]

Does anyone know where the -t of English thou conjugations comes from?

Wouldst thou have us explain -st, or wilt thou settle for an explanation of mere -t?

I'm not sure what you would add to your previous explanation, which seemed decent enough, even though ironically I'm also sure there is always more detail to add... If you feel like writing more, I'd welcome it.

Maybe proto-Germanic already had the /-t/ ... I mean, how would we know? It's a reconstructed proto-language. The postfixed -þu theory makes perfect sense to me, but there's no need to have it occurring separately in every Germanic daughter language. Why not project it back to the proto-language, where /t/ would have been the expected outcome all along?

But /t/ is not the expected outcome from PIE in the 2SG, that's the thing! So whether *tu(H) got grammaticalized or -th2e spread, something strange must've happened right after or before Proto-Germanic.

[dhok]

The only thing that has to happen right before Proto-Germanic is for -s|tV to act phonetically, even if not grammatically, like a single word, in which case you have a phonetic presigmatized stop and Grimm's Law is blocked for a following tenuis. (Compare English stand, not **sthand.) Doesn't explain Gothic, though.

There are a number of verbal endings with unexplained "detritus" elsewhere in the family, too, like the Tocharian 3sg -ṃ /-n/. IIRC the best consensus that's been trotted out is that *nu 'now' somehow got attached, though this seems kind of ad hoc.

[Zju]

I always just assumed that at some point the 3.SG ending got stacked on top of the 2.SG ending.

[Richard W]

But /t/ is not the expected outcome from PIE in the 2SG, that's the thing! So whether *tu(H) got grammaticalized or -th2e spread, something strange must've happened right after or before Proto-Germanic.

It is the expected reflex from the perfect of a verb whose root ends in a stop consonant. This is relevant for the -t ending of the present-preterites. Now, the -st of the West Germanic simple past and normal present tense is something different, which is why I asked what you were asking about.

[Sol717]

But /t/ is not the expected outcome from PIE in the 2SG, that's the thing! So whether *tu(H) got grammaticalized or -th2e spread, something strange must've happened right after or before Proto-Germanic.

It is the expected reflex from the perfect of a verb whose root ends in a stop consonant. This is relevant for the -t ending of the present-preterites. Now, the -st of the West Germanic simple past and normal present tense is something different, which is why I asked what you were asking about.

I would tend to follow Ringe in assuming that -st was analogically generalised from the present-preterites (meaning that it can't etymologically be considered "something different"). In any case, -st can't go back to Proto-Germanic, since in OE, it was still in the process of replacing (well-attested) -s, ending in the Midland/Southern Middle English situation with only -st for the 2sg; I believe the same is true for OHG, and the absence of -st in Gothic and Norse is conspicuous. Forms in -s survived in Northern Middle English, though, and are probably the source of the modern English 3sg (!) ending in -s.

[Moose-tache]

This is more a Slavic question than PIE itself, but I thought it fit here better than the miscellany thread.

Why are Slavic adjective endings so completely different from noun endings? Baltic follows the general IE trend of having case/gender/number marking on adjectives that is transparently derived from (or even identical to) the same marking on nouns. But Slavic has virtually no overlap at all. Nearly all Slavic languages have very similar endings, so we can confidently reconstruct the adjectival endings from the 7th century or so. But aside from a few details (feminines have a stem vowel a, oblique cases tend to have labial nasals in them somewhere), there is almost nothing in common between adjectives and nouns, and no sound changes that could explain the differences. For example, the o-stem nouns kept their original ending (-as in Baltic, hard yer in Slavic), while their corresponding adjectives went from -as to -i. It's as if someone threw the existing paradigm in the garbage and wrote a new one at random. Can anyone link me to an academic explanation of this process, or (even better) walk me through how it happened?

[Richard W]

This is more a Slavic question than PIE itself, but I thought it fit here better than the miscellany thread.

Why are Slavic adjective endings so completely different from noun endings? Baltic follows the general IE trend of having case/gender/number marking on adjectives that is transparently derived from (or even identical to) the same marking on nouns. But Slavic has virtually no overlap at all. Nearly all Slavic languages have very similar endings, so we can confidently reconstruct the adjectival endings from the 7th century or so. But aside from a few details (feminines have a stem vowel a, oblique cases tend to have labial nasals in them somewhere), there is almost nothing in common between adjectives and nouns, and no sound changes that could explain the differences. For example, the o-stem nouns kept their original ending (-as in Baltic, hard yer in Slavic), while their corresponding adjectives went from -as to -i. It's as if someone threw the existing paradigm in the garbage and wrote a new one at random. Can anyone link me to an academic explanation of this process, or (even better) walk me through how it happened?

I think this may be the right thread, as the answer goes back to PIE. While general adjectives seem to have declined pretty much as nouns, 'pronominal' adjectives, especially demonstratives, had their own declensional system. Now in Russian at least, attributive adjectives go back to a fusion of adjectives with a trailing demonstrative pronoun, which is seen in the double inflection, which is very visible in Lithuanian - this suffixation is Balto-Slavonic, though thorough univerbation may be younger. They have therefore acquired the pronominal ending. Lithuanian fully declines adjectives both ways - see Wikipedia.

[Moose-tache]

So the Slavic definite adjectives took over as the default way to decline adjectives, and that's why they look so weird? That presents two problems:

1) It just pushes the problem back to why *jis had an unexplained declension paradigm seen nowhere else in the language, and

2) Lithuanian also has definite adjectives in *jis, and they do not show insane Slavic adjective endings like -ogo or -omu. They are mostly similar to nominal endings: -as > -asis, -o > -ojo, etc. We don't see, for example, -as > -i or -ų > -ux. Did *jis behave normally in Lithuanian, only to lose its mind in Slavic?

[Pabappa]

slavic dleeted all final consos, so a lot of weird things had to happen just to keep the language working. i even learned just yesterday that nouns also changed, e.g. PIE masculine -os > -as > -ъ, because if it had stayed /a/ it would have merged with some other things (possibly the feminine).

[Richard W]

So the Slavic definite adjectives took over as the default way to decline adjectives, and that's why they look so weird? That presents two problems:

1) It just pushes the problem back to why *jis had an unexplained declension paradigm seen nowhere else in the language, and

That's what makes this a PIE question.

2) Lithuanian also has definite adjectives in *jis, and they do not show insane Slavic adjective endings like -ogo or -omu. They are mostly similar to nominal endings: -as > -asis, -o > -ojo, etc. We don't see, for example, -as > -i or -ų > -ux. Did *jis behave normally in Lithuanian, only to lose its mind in Slavic?

In '-as > -i', the 'i' is comes from the 'j' plus the weakening of the preceding vowel. The Russian -oi n.s.m. ending is a better guide to understanding. The nominal dative singular masculine ending comes from something like -om, which reduced to -u in Russian. Stick two together, and you get -omu. (I'm very sloppy with the details, but the general pattern is right.) For the bizarre genitive singular, the best explanation I've seen is that it comes from -oo with hiatus resolution - with /v/ for Great Russian, but with velars for more southerly languages. The Slavonic adjectival genitive plural comes from copying the RUKIed instrumental plural for the genitive - I'm not familiar with the details across Slavonic. The masculine nominative plural -ov of Russian comes from the PIE -u declension (-o/-u merger as was happening in Latin) - one gets some weird and wonderful interactions in Polish. The -u declension was not a player in the system of the adjectives.

[Moose-tache]

So there are sound changes to justify these forms individually, just no explanation for why they apply only to adjectives and not to nouns? I guess that's an explanation. Thanks for your help on this; it's been really bugging me.

[Richard W]

So there are sound changes to justify these forms individually, just no explanation for why they apply only to adjectives and not to nouns? I guess that's an explanation. Thanks for your help on this; it's been really bugging me.

Remember that the inputs are different. However, there has been some haplology going on in the oblique plural at least - or the non-pronominal adjective has won out - in some case-number combinations. I also think the initial *j of the suffixed pronoun was a little unstable (might even have been optional).

[Talskubilos]

Or perhaps vice-versa; *h₂ep- 'water' is attested on most of the periphery and in the most archaic branches (Hittite, Tocharian, Indo-Iranian) while *h₂ekʷ- is only attested in Europe (in Germanic, Latin and perhaps Lusitanic and Slavic.) I think it's consensus that they're probably variants of each other.

Italic is supposed to preserve both variants, the latter in Latin aqua and the former in Oscan, which is supposed to continue the p-variant for Reasons even though *p and *kʷ of course fall together...but there is also Latin amnis (not **agnis), so both roots are continued in Latin.

The protoform *akw-ā (f.) > Germanic *áxwō 'river', Latin aqua 'water' would be a derivated noun from an adjective *aku- 'quick, fast' found in Latin acupedius 'swift of foot' and accipiter 'hawk', the latter with cognates in Greek ōkýpteros, literally meaning 'swift flyer' (ōkýs 'swift', pterón 'wing'), and Sanskrit āśu-pátvan- 'flying swiftly'. These correspondences suggest Paleo-European (or whatever name you choose) *aku- would correspond to late IE *ōḱu- 'quick' > Latin ōcior.

[WeepingElf]

Or perhaps vice-versa; *h₂ep- 'water' is attested on most of the periphery and in the most archaic branches (Hittite, Tocharian, Indo-Iranian) while *h₂ekʷ- is only attested in Europe (in Germanic, Latin and perhaps Lusitanic and Slavic.) I think it's consensus that they're probably variants of each other.

Italic is supposed to preserve both variants, the latter in Latin aqua and the former in Oscan, which is supposed to continue the p-variant for Reasons even though *p and *kʷ of course fall together...but there is also Latin amnis (not **agnis), so both roots are continued in Latin.

The protoform *akw-ā (f.) > Germanic *áxwō 'river', Latin aqua 'water' would be a derivated noun from an adjective *aku- 'quick, fast' found in Latin acupedius 'swift of foot' and accipiter 'hawk', the latter with cognates in Greek ōkýpteros, literally meaning 'swift flyer' (ōkýs 'swift', pterón 'wing'), and Sanskrit āśu-pátvan- 'flying swiftly'. These correspondences suggest Paleo-European (or whatever name you choose) *aku- would correspond to late IE *ōḱu- 'quick' > Latin ōcior.

Welcome back, Octaviano! It was fun before you left Let's hope your etymologies and your discussion behaviour have improved. But this etymology is indeed a good start. It is IMHO not all that implausible. I conjecture the word aqua to be a loanword from what I call "Aquan", a lost branch of IE associated with the Bell Beaker culture and having left traces in such substratum loanwords and the Old European Hydronymy - and it may indeed be related to Late PIE *Hoḱus 'swift', of which *h₁eḱwos 'horse' may be a derivative of (the horse thus named as 'the swift one'). Yet, all this is of course just speculation; we don't even know if Aquan even existed!

[Talskubilos]

Welcome back, Octaviano! It was fun before you left Let's hope your etymologies and your discussion behaviour have improved. But this etymology is indeed a good start. It is IMHO not all that implausible. I conjecture the word aqua to be a loanword from what I call "Aquan", a lost branch of IE associated with the Bell Beaker culture and having left traces in such substratum loanwords and the Old European Hydronymy - and it may indeed be related to Late PIE *Hoḱus 'swift', of which *h₁eḱwos 'horse' may be a derivative of (the horse thus named as 'the swift one').

Somebody said *Hoḱu- could be related either to *akwā or *h₁eḱwo- but not to both of them! I think the latter is a Wanderwort which originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppes and it's found in East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) *ɦɨ[n]tʃwi (~ -e) (NCED 211) and Sumerian anše 'donkey'.

Yet, all this is of course just speculation; we don't even know if Aquan even existed!

As much as the monolythic PIE with +2000 lexical items depicted by Mallory & Adams et al.