Paleo-European languages

[Talskubilos]

I think WeepingElf is referring to how there's no obvious correspondence between these IE and East Caucasian words at all. For a lot of the correspondences you have proposed, it is rather easy to find way better matches, whether in East Caucasian or in any other outlier languages.

Really? I don't think so.

[WeepingElf]

I think WeepingElf is referring to how there's no obvious correspondence between these IE and East Caucasian words at all. For a lot of the correspondences you have proposed, it is rather easy to find way better matches, whether in East Caucasian or in any other outlier languages.

Just that!

[Richard W]

I don't know that loaning of a most of dozen pronouns and suffixes can be called hybridisation. If anything, borrowing a major part of the lexicon would be more of a reason. But I haven't seen any linguist claiming that something other than pidginisation, creolisation and maybe koineisation changes the language's genealogy.

But a lot of the English vocabulary is of Danish origin. If one looks at the Yakhontov 35-word list, one word is of unknown origin, dog, and three are North Germanic: die, egg and give. I didn't count how many could be from either source.

Hybridisation adds to a genealogy, rather than reroots it. Now, this process that incorporated the language of the Danes into English might be considered the absorption of a dialect - it's far from certain that the languages of the English and Danish weren't mutually comprehensible. Hybridisation is frequently rejected on principle.

[anteallach]

On the contrary, I think the study of pre-IE languages and the relationship between IE and other language families are topics neglected by most Indo-Europeanists.

True. Some Indo-Europeanists treat PIE as if it had fallen from the sky fully formed, though none except a few creationists or other crackpots actually believe so. They just say, "We don't know" - but don't try to change that. The pre-IE languages of Europe are seriously underexplored. But this is not an easy task; it is hard because there is so little that is certain here. This requires the full methodological rigour of conventional historical linguistics; just fishing dictionaries for wild lexical "correspondences" won't do the job.

But is there actually too little for conventional historical linguistics to get anywhere? We can speculate, but I get the impression that most serious historical linguists conclude there just isn't enough evidence to do anything with.

[Talskubilos]

But is there actually too little for conventional historical linguistics to get anywhere? We can speculate, but I get the impression that most serious historical linguists conclude there just isn't enough evidence to do anything with.

No offense intended, but I'm afraid comparative/historical linguists aren't among the best brains in the world, although there could be some exceptions, of course.

[Znex]

But is there actually too little for conventional historical linguistics to get anywhere? We can speculate, but I get the impression that most serious historical linguists conclude there just isn't enough evidence to do anything with.

No offense intended, but I'm afraid comparative/historical linguists aren't among the best brains in the world, although there could be some exceptions, of course.

Lol, good job on ingratiating people to agree with your argument

[Talskubilos]

Lol, good job on ingratiating people to agree with your argument

I didn't know that term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingratiation

[Skookum]

Having "the best brain" isn't necessary if you have a useful theory and methodology.

[bradrn]

I think WeepingElf is referring to how there's no obvious correspondence between these IE and East Caucasian words at all. For a lot of the correspondences you have proposed, it is rather easy to find way better matches, whether in East Caucasian or in any other outlier languages.

Really? I don't think so.

The closest match to *don- is really *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē? There truly isn’t anything closer? (I’m not even sure where you’re getting that protoform from; that paper you linked has *nə̄Hə̄cʼcʼwV.)

[Talskubilos]

The closest match to *don- is really *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē? There truly isn’t anything closer? (I’m not even sure where you’re getting that protoform from; that paper you linked has *nə̄Hə̄cʼcʼwV.)

Starostin's notations are non-std, and in his NCED (originally coauthored with Nikolayev), he uses /c̣_/ instead of /cʼcʼ/. By this and other reasons, I prefer to use IPA symbols.

The proposed correspondence *Hnēttsˀwǝ̄ (the updated protoform in the NCED) ~ IE *ned-o- leaves us with *ttsˀ ~ IE *d (apparently, there're no traces of the labial glide /w/), which makes sense in the framework of the glottalic theory. If this is correct, the metathesized variant *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē would correspond to IE *don-. However, regional IE *yoini- (presumably a substrate loanword) would derive from the same etymology but with different sound correspondences: the initial affricate gave /y-/ (as in other words) and apparently the labial glide gave /o/.

[bradrn]

The closest match to *don- is really *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē? There truly isn’t anything closer? (I’m not even sure where you’re getting that protoform from; that paper you linked has *nə̄Hə̄cʼcʼwV.)

Starostin's notations are non-std, and in his NCED (originally coauthored with Nikolayev), he uses /c̣_/ instead of /cʼcʼ/. By this and other reasons, I prefer to use IPA symbols.

The proposed correspondence *Hnēttsˀwǝ̄ (the updated protoform in the NCED) ~ IE *ned-o- leaves us with *ttsˀ ~ IE *d (apparently, there're no traces of the labial glide /w/), which makes sense in the framework of the glottalic theory. If this is correct, the metathesized variant *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē would correspond to IE *don-. However, regional IE *yoini- (presumably a substrate loanword) would derive from the same etymology but with different sound correspondences: the initial affricate gave /y-/ (as in other words) and apparently the labial glide gave /o/.

Hmm, that argument is starting to make a bit more sense now. Though I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if I had a few more examples of that same purported *ttsˀ ~ d correspondence. (I’d try finding some myself, except I have very limited knowledge of PIE.)

EDIT: By the way, I tried having a look at that database you linked, and some of that stuff is truly insane (and not in a good way either). For instance, here are some purported ‘long-range etymologies’:

Borean (approx.) : BVHV
Meaning : joy
Eurasiatic : *bVjV
Afroasiatic : *baH-
Reference : Suggested by V. Glumov.

Borean (approx.) : CV
Meaning : demonstrative pronoun
Eurasiatic : *sV
Afroasiatic : *šV 'he, that' (Sem., Eg., Cush.) + Eg. sw 'he, him', ECush *ʔis- 'self, oneself'
Sino-Caucasian : *[ź]V
Austric : PAN *si ia 'this, that'
Amerind (misc.) : *sa 'that' (R 740) [+ A]
Reference : ND 2006, 2135.

Borean (approx.) : CV
Meaning : you
Eurasiatic : *si
Sino-Caucasian : NC *źwV 'you' (pl.)
Austric : PAN *iSu 'thou', *Suʔu '2d sg. agent / possessor'
Amerind (misc.) : *Ci 'thou, you' (R 755 *ti) [+ K]

Personally, I don’t think a protoform of ‘CV’ inspires much confidence in this reconstruction, though clearly others find this sort of evidence convincing. I suspect a bad case of columbicubiculomania on the part of whoever compiled this list.

[Talskubilos]

Hmm, that argument is starting to make a bit more sense now. Though I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if I had a few more examples of that same purported *ttsˀ ~ d correspondence. (I’d try finding some myself, except I have very limited knowledge of PIE.)

Apparently, there're no more examples of *ttsˀ ~ IE *d but I could find one with *s instead: Caucasian *ttsˀăqˀV 'strength, power' ~ IE *seģh- 'to hold'.

This reminds me of the d ~ s alternation in *pard-/*pars- 'leopard' ~ Caucasian *bħĕrtsˀĭ (~ -ĕ) 'wolf, jackal' and *sinģh-o- 'leopard, lion' ~ Caucasian *tsˀæ:nqqˀV 'lynx, panther' I quoted before, so I bet it has something to do with the prehistory of PIE.

[Richard W]

Personally, I don’t think a protoform of ‘CV’ inspires much confidence in this reconstruction, though clearly others find this sort of evidence convincing. I suspect a bad case of columbicubiculomania on the part of whoever compiled this list.

At this level, read it as a compendium of suggestions, not as fleshed out reconstructions. I will admit that I don't think the use of capitals is unambiguous. Does it signify unexplained irregularity or unresolved protoform?

[WeepingElf]

On the contrary, I think the study of pre-IE languages and the relationship between IE and other language families are topics neglected by most Indo-Europeanists.

True. Some Indo-Europeanists treat PIE as if it had fallen from the sky fully formed, though none except a few creationists or other crackpots actually believe so. They just say, "We don't know" - but don't try to change that. The pre-IE languages of Europe are seriously underexplored. But this is not an easy task; it is hard because there is so little that is certain here. This requires the full methodological rigour of conventional historical linguistics; just fishing dictionaries for wild lexical "correspondences" won't do the job.

But is there actually too little for conventional historical linguistics to get anywhere? We can speculate, but I get the impression that most serious historical linguists conclude there just isn't enough evidence to do anything with.

Yes. The evidence is very scarce. Also, the field is an intellectual minefield: there is so much nonsense written in this field (by the sort of people Talskubilos is an example of) that most historical linguists do not want to jeopardize their scholarly reputations by speculating. This is regrettable but understandable.

[Talskubilos]

Also, the field is an intellectual minefield: there is so much nonsense written in this field (by the sort of people Talskubilos is an example of) that most historical linguists do not want to jeopardize their scholarly reputations by speculating. This is regrettable but understandable.

[Talskubilos]

I will admit that I don't think the use of capitals is unambiguous. Does it signify unexplained irregularity or unresolved protoform?

Apparently, /C/ doesn't stand for any consonant but some kind of dental affricate/fricative.

[Pabappa]

i jhavent been reading all of the links but yes its possible that the orthograpjhy here is being influenced by the pre-Internet nostratic conventions, where they piled diacritics on, used math symbols as letters, etc because any use of digraphs would create a hideous mess trying to find out where the morpheme boundaries are. it all makes sense, ....it just isnt the system that nearly everyone else uses because they did this all before ready access to IPA symbols was possible and perhaps also because even in the 1980s they were mostly a closed circle of researchers who communicated mostly with each other and therefore had more to gain by creating their own standard than adopting an outsdie one.

[Zju]

Hybridisation adds to a genealogy, rather than reroots it. Now, this process that incorporated the language of the Danes into English might be considered the absorption of a dialect - it's far from certain that the languages of the English and Danish weren't mutually comprehensible. Hybridisation is frequently rejected on principle.

Hmmm... there really are a couple of points here:

1. Is hybridisation even a linguistic term or an established linguistic phenomenon? If not, then we're just discussing semantics and to each their own. If yes, I'd like to know how it differentiates from mass loaning.

2. Tangent to the last point, I've left with the impression that just creolisation and pidginisation affect genealogy. If hybridisation also does, what's the threshold? How many words and grammatical elements? Certainly history is full of language A heavily influences language B scenarios and at this point we're looking at tanglewebs instead of just trees. Wasn't the point of cladistics to just study intrafamilial language relationships without being concerned about loaning?

3. In any case, the influence of French on English seems comparable, if not greater. Why not also add it to the list of ancestors or what-have-you? What about Latin and Ancient Greek? I'm not an expert in Old English, but from what I've read linguists are reluctant to call it a 'hybrid language'.

The proposed correspondence *Hnēttsˀwǝ̄ (the updated protoform in the NCED) ~ IE *ned-o- leaves us with *ttsˀ ~ IE *d (apparently, there're no traces of the labial glide /w/), which makes sense in the framework of the glottalic theory. If this is correct, the metathesized variant *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē would correspond to IE *don-. However, regional IE *yoini- (presumably a substrate loanword) would derive from the same etymology but with different sound correspondences: the initial affricate gave /y-/ (as in other words) and apparently the labial glide gave /o/.

Yeah... I'm not buying it. Seems much more likely to be just a chance resemblance. At least one or two dozen more instances of the same sound correspondances are necessary to be worth considered as anything more than that.

Hmm, that argument is starting to make a bit more sense now. Though I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if I had a few more examples of that same purported *ttsˀ ~ d correspondence. (I’d try finding some myself, except I have very limited knowledge of PIE.)

Apparently, there're no more examples of *ttsˀ ~ IE *d but I could find one with *s instead: Caucasian *ttsˀăqˀV 'strength, power' ~ IE *seģh- 'to hold'.

Neither phonetics nor semantics match here, not even parts of speech match. This is not even a resemblance.

[Talskubilos]

The proposed correspondence *Hnēttsˀwǝ̄ (the updated protoform in the NCED) ~ IE *ned-o- leaves us with *ttsˀ ~ IE *d (apparently, there're no traces of the labial glide /w/), which makes sense in the framework of the glottalic theory. If this is correct, the metathesized variant *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē would correspond to IE *don-. However, regional IE *yoini- (presumably a substrate loanword) would derive from the same etymology but with different sound correspondences: the initial affricate gave /y-/ (as in other words) and apparently the labial glide gave /o/.

Yeah... I'm not buying it. Seems much more likely to be just a chance resemblance. At least one or two dozen more instances of the same sound correspondances are necessary to be worth considered as anything more than that.

I disagree. Chance resemblances are quite a different thing.

Apparently, there're no more examples of *ttsˀ ~ IE *d but I could find one with *s instead: Caucasian *ttsˀăqˀV 'strength, power' ~ IE *seģh- 'to hold'.

Neither phonetics nor semantics match here, not even parts of speech match. This is not even a resemblance.

Not as sure as the fomer, but quite reasonable IMHO. Also remember that /e/ is one of the IE Ablaut vowels, so it doesn't count for external comparison.

[KathTheDragon]

I will admit that I don't think the use of capitals is unambiguous. Does it signify unexplained irregularity or unresolved protoform?

Yes. This means "an unknown consonant and an unknown vowel"