Paleo-European languages

[Talskubilos]

And my search for substratum loanwords in western IE languages failed to find anything useful, too. Sure, there are quite a few words in western IE languages that lack cognates in eastern branches such as Greek or Indo-Iranian, but I found that they mostly show no structural features that betray loanwords. They are apparently just dialectal forms within the post-PIE dialect continuum, which may simply have been lost in the east.

Any examples?

There are plenty; here a few I found in Pokorny's dictionary:

*bhei- 'bee' (Gmc, Celt, Slav)
*dhreibh- 'to drive' (Gmc, Balt?)
*ghosti- 'stranger' (Gmc, It, Slav)
*lendh- 'loin' (Gmc, It, Slav)
*meldh- 'thunderbolt' (Gmc, Celt, Balt, Slav)

... and many others (the full list I have compiled, which I shall not post here, has 227 entries, but there are some which indeed look suspicious - unexplained *a-vocalism and other unusual shapes of the root; surely, something like *abon- 'monkey' is from some - unknown - non-IE language). We don't know whether they are from a western European substratum language, or just lost from the eastern IE branches, but there is nothing in them which points at a non-IE origin. Given the vast amount of synonyms found in Pokorny's dictionary, there probably was a lot of dialectal variation in Late PIE. Of course, as I know you, you'll find non-IE etymologies for all of them

Not all of them, but being a domesticated animal, bee seems to be a Wanderwort of Egyptian origin (BTW, cats were domesticated also there).

[Pabappa]

then how would you explain the existence of a common PIE root for honey? and evidence that beekeeping goes back quite some time.

[dewrad]

then how would you explain the existence of a common PIE root for honey? and evidence that beekeeping goes back quite some time.

Itinerant Egyptian bee-keepers, wandering from nomadic encampment to encampment with their hives, trading bees for honey as they hadn’t yet worked out the connection between the two (because the Vasco-Caucasians hadn’t explained it to them), obviously.

[WeepingElf]

I have now uploaded the whole list. It is raw material, though, with glosses in German, unmodernized spellings and other warts.

[Talskubilos]

then how would you explain the existence of a common PIE root for honey? and evidence that beekeeping goes back quite some time.

Despite the fact there's a common IE for 'cow', some branches (i.e. Latin lactis, Greek galaktós) have a foreign word for 'milk', which seems to be a Wanderwort also found in Sinitic.

[Travis B.]

then how would you explain the existence of a common PIE root for honey? and evidence that beekeeping goes back quite some time.

Despite the fact there's a common IE for 'cow', some branches (i.e. Latin lactis, Greek galaktós) have a foreign word for 'milk', which seems to be a Wanderwort also found in Sinitic.

Where is this extraordinary evidence such an assertion requires?

[Richard W]

then how would you explain the existence of a common PIE root for honey? and evidence that beekeeping goes back quite some time.

Despite the fact there's a common IE for 'cow', some branches (i.e. Latin lactis, Greek galaktós) have a foreign word for 'milk', which seems to be a Wanderwort also found in Sinitic.

Where is this extraordinary evidence such an assertion requires?

The beast word itself looks as though it also turns up in Sino-Tibetan (as *ŋwa}. And the Indic form turns up as khoː 'cow' on Thai milk cartons, just to prove it's still a wanderer - despite Thai having a perfectly good 'native' form of the word.

[Nortaneous]

then how would you explain the existence of a common PIE root for honey? and evidence that beekeeping goes back quite some time.

Despite the fact there's a common IE for 'cow', some branches (i.e. Latin lactis, Greek galaktós) have a foreign word for 'milk', which seems to be a Wanderwort also found in Sinitic.

Where is this extraordinary evidence such an assertion requires?

Not too extraordinary - there are early IE (mostly Tocharian) loans in Chinese, and at least one suspected IE-ST Wanderwort:
- PIE *markos
- PST *mVraŋ (~ *sVraŋ? possibly secondary, cf. certain Mon-Khmer branches where monosyllabic words are padded in very different ways in different languages due to the development of a minimum word size restriction - I haven't been able to find this goddamn paper for years, but I'm pretty sure it exists)
But also Manchu morin, Proto-Mongolic *mori, etc. A connection with Proto-Vietic *m-ŋəːʔ seems implausible.

I'm not sure which word this is. Wiktionary claims possible areal diffusion of both 奶 (MC neiX / ɳˠɛX) and 乳 (OC *noʔ), but neither of those look like lactis, and both words may have originally referred to breasts.

[Travis B.]

Note that I was not ruling out the possibility of loans from IE into ST via Tocharian or Indo-Aryan or loans from ST into Tocharian or Indo-Aryan, which are perfectly plausible, or even transmission of words in either direction w.r.t. Iranian via Turkic. I was just stating that when making assertions of longer-range transmission a greater degree of evidence is needed - not that it is impossible, as after all Latin got its word for banana from some Papuan language.

[Talskubilos]

- PIE *markos

I don't think this could be a PIE word, given it's only attested in Celtic and Germanic.

- PST *mVraŋ (~ *sVraŋ? possibly secondary, cf. certain Mon-Khmer branches where monosyllabic words are padded in very different ways in different languages due to the development of a minimum word size restriction - I haven't been able to find this goddamn paper for years, but I'm pretty sure it exists) But also Manchu morin, Proto-Mongolic *mori, etc. A connection with Proto-Vietic *m-ŋəːʔ seems implausible.

It looks like the velar stop in *marko- would derive from ST *ŋ with Schwebeablaut.

[WeepingElf]

- PIE *markos

I don't think this could be a PIE word, given it's only attested in Celtic and Germanic.

In this point, I think you are right. The a-vocalism also speaks against a PIE origin of this word.

[Hallow XIII]

But also Manchu morin, Proto-Mongolic *mori

I am curious as to whose reconstruction this is from. In all Mongolic varieties I am familiar with, this word is an n-stem: Buryat морин, Kalmyk мөрн, Khalkha мор(и)н- (this latter one does have the nominative form морь, but deletion of final -n in the nominative is regular; see also "water" Kh. ус, Gen. усны, B. уһан, K. усн). That said, there are good reasons to suspect Kalmyk/Oirat forms a subgroup of Mongolic with Buryat and Mongolian Proper, and I don't know what the situation here is in Mangghuer or Moghol.

[Nortaneous]

But also Manchu morin, Proto-Mongolic *mori

I am curious as to whose reconstruction this is from. In all Mongolic varieties I am familiar with, this word is an n-stem: Buryat морин, Kalmyk мөрн, Khalkha мор(и)н- (this latter one does have the nominative form морь, but deletion of final -n in the nominative is regular; see also "water" Kh. ус, Gen. усны, B. уһан, K. усн). That said, there are good reasons to suspect Kalmyk/Oirat forms a subgroup of Mongolic with Buryat and Mongolian Proper, and I don't know what the situation here is in Mangghuer or Moghol.

It's just the form listed on Wiktionary. (Which really shouldn't be the standard reference resource, but everything else is either bad or nonexistent.)

[fusijui]

But also Manchu morin, Proto-Mongolic *mori

I am curious as to whose reconstruction this is from. In all Mongolic varieties I am familiar with, this word is an n-stem: Buryat морин, Kalmyk мөрн, Khalkha мор(и)н- (this latter one does have the nominative form морь, but deletion of final -n in the nominative is regular; see also "water" Kh. ус, Gen. усны, B. уһан, K. усн). That said, there are good reasons to suspect Kalmyk/Oirat forms a subgroup of Mongolic with Buryat and Mongolian Proper, and I don't know what the situation here is in Mangghuer or Moghol.

It's just the form listed on Wiktionary. (Which really shouldn't be the standard reference resource, but everything else is either bad or nonexistent.)

Mongolian is a really young/shallow language tree, like on the order of English (not West Germanic, English). Internal reconstruction doesn't often get you anywhere too exciting. The variation in how the roots & stems get presented is, I think, just the variation in how different reconstructors wanted to handle derivational morphology (i.e., *-n). Anyway, I'm not an expert, but if you're looking for the purest, cleanest, truest "roots" I'd recommend working with *mori- and not *morin-with-n-deletion-here-and-there.

There's better sources for Mongolian philology than Wiktionary, yes. They're not online though, I don't think; which, at least in my pathetic, outmoded experience, doesn't constitute nonexistence

[Ketsuban]

For what it's worth Wiktionary says something different depending on what page you look at - it has *mori on the page for морь, but *morïn on the page for Proto-Tungusic *murin. Digging a bit deeper, Janhunen writes *mori/n to indicate the deletion in oblique forms and says that the final -n is "generally well preserved in Buryat in the absolute form (nominative)".

[Talskubilos]

I have now uploaded the whole list. It is raw material, though, with glosses in German, unmodernized spellings and other warts.

Quite interesting.

*ablu- 'apple' looks like a Wandwerwort with correspondences elsewhere: Hittite šam(a)lu-, Uralic *omɜrɜ ~ *omena 'apple', probably also Nakh-Dagestanian *mhălV- ~ *mhănV- 'warm', with some kind of prefix (cfr. Basque udare, udari, madari 'pear'.

*akʷā 'river' is an OEH item derived from the adjective root *Hōk´u- 'quick' and therefore not related to other 'water' words.

*bhar(e)s- 'barley (or other similar cereal)' is a loanword from the language(s) spoken by European Neolithic farmers. It has correspondences elsewhere, including Etruscan *phers- 'husk' > phersu 'masked character' (from which *phersu-na > Latin persona 'theather mask').

*joini 'reed' is surely a substrate loanword related to Daghestanian *Hnǝ̄ttsˀwē/*ttsˀwǝ̄nHē 'reed, cane'.

*skwoi- 'thorn, needle (from conifers)' has Altaic and Uralic cognates and it also would be related to the above root, probably by way of compound.

To be continued...

[Nortaneous]

*ablu- 'apple' looks like a Wandwerwort with correspondences elsewhere: Hittite šam(a)lu-, Uralic *omɜrɜ ~ *omena 'apple', probably also Nakh-Dagestanian *mhălV- ~ *mhănV- 'warm', with some kind of prefix (cfr. Basque udare, udari, madari 'pear'.

also Latin mālum and Turkic alma

*akʷā 'river' is an OEH item derived from the adjective root *Hōk´u- 'quick' and therefore not related to other 'water' words.

what

*joini 'reed' is surely a substrate loanword related to Daghestanian *Hnǝ̄ttsˀwē/*ttsˀwǝ̄nHē 'reed, cane'.

*skwoi- 'thorn, needle (from conifers)' has Altaic and Uralic cognates and it also would be related to the above root, probably by way of compound.

no

[Talskubilos]

*ablu- 'apple' looks like a Wandwerwort with correspondences elsewhere: Hittite šam(a)lu-, Uralic *omɜrɜ ~ *omena 'apple', probably also Nakh-Dagestanian *mhălV- ~ *mhănV- 'warm', with some kind of prefix (cfr. Basque udare, udari, madari 'pear'.

also Latin mālum and Turkic alma

Not impossible, but they would require consonant metathesis.

*akʷā 'river' is an OEH item derived from the adjective root *Hōk´u- 'quick' and therefore not related to other 'water' words.

what

??

*joini 'reed' is surely a substrate loanword related to Daghestanian *Hnǝ̄ttsˀwē/*ttsˀwǝ̄nHē 'reed, cane'.

*skwoi- 'thorn, needle (from conifers)' has Altaic and Uralic cognates and it also would be related to the above root, probably by way of compound.

no

The bisyllabic root *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē could be analyzed as fossilized compound of two monosyllabic roots *ttsˀwǝ̄-nHē, where *ttsˀwǝ̄ would be related to Uralic *ʃuje ~* ʃoje 'prick, tip', Altaic *ʃiỳjò 'thorn, needle (of a conifer)'. The semantic shift 'needle (of a conifer)' > 'reed' is straightgforward.

[Travis B.]

*ablu- 'apple' looks like a Wandwerwort with correspondences elsewhere: Hittite šam(a)lu-, Uralic *omɜrɜ ~ *omena 'apple', probably also Nakh-Dagestanian *mhălV- ~ *mhănV- 'warm', with some kind of prefix (cfr. Basque udare, udari, madari 'pear'.

also Latin mālum and Turkic alma

Not impossible, but they would require consonant metathesis.

How does mālum require metathesis?

[Talskubilos]

How does mālum require metathesis?

*mhalV > *mahlV would be a metathesis.