Paleo-European languages

[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

Not impossible, but they would require consonant metathesis.

It would. So would *ttsˀwǝ̄nHē:

Proto-North Caucasian: *Hnǝ̄c̣_wē (/*c̣_wǝ̄nHē)
Sino-Caucasian etymology: Sino-Caucasian etymology
Meaning: reed, cane

Proto-Avaro-Andian: *c̣:ʷimʔa (/-nʔa)
Meaning: reed, cane
> Avar: muc̣:í / nuc̣:í
> Andian language: c̣:uma
> Akhvakh: c̣:ʷani
> Chamalal: ṣimi
> Tindi: c:ū̃
> Karata: c̣:un-di (pl.)
> Godoberi: c:uma
Comments: Av. paradigm B (muc̣:í-dul, muc̣:á-bi). Cf. also And. dial. (Khaidakov) c̣:ʷa, Cham. Gig. c̣:ima. Old Tind. > Inkh. c̣ũj 'reed'; Av. > Tsez. nuc̣i, Gin. nic̣u id.

Proto-Lezghian: *nac̣ʷa
North Caucasian etymology: North Caucasian etymology
Meaning: reed, cane
Lezghian: nac̣
Tabasaran: nac̣ (Khiv.)
Agul: nec̣
Rutul: nac̣
Tsakhur: nac̣
Comment: Cf. also Lezg. Khl. nac̣ʷ (preserving the original labialisation which was lost everywhere else); Tsakh. Gelm. nac̣a. The latter form unambiguously points to the PL paradigm *nac̣ʷa, *nac̣ʷä- (cf. also Rut. nac̣a-; Tsakh. Mik. nac̣, nac̣ɨ- is secondary). In Ag. there occurred a regular fronting *a > e before a hissing affricate in a closed syllable. 4th class in Rut., Tsakh.

The alternate form of the "Proto-North Caucasian" root is almost identical to its "Proto-Sino-Caucasian" source, *c̣wǝ̄́nHē.

How does mālum require metathesis?

*mhalV > *mahlV would be a metathesis.

Turkic alma would be metathesis, especially since Blažek lists Turkic forms with -ml-.

Blažek thinks there's no connection between the two words, but he only has examples for his color term in Latvian and Greek, and his rejected compound "slime apple" is entirely plausible as a name for a medlar, or maybe even a quince, a traditional source of pectin. It could also be a loan that was later characterized (cf. "satsuma mandarin" / "satsuma orange" and other examples I got from Wikipedia's list of fruits, such as "midgen berry", "bailan melon", and "muscadine grape" - presumably also "kola nut"), but the one image search result I can find that's clearly the right type of apple has some examples that look like quinces to me.

[Talskubilos]

Proto-North Caucasian: *Hnǝ̄c̣_wē (/*c̣_wǝ̄nHē)
Sino-Caucasian etymology: Sino-Caucasian etymology
Meaning: reed, cane

Proto-Avaro-Andian: *c̣:ʷimʔa (/-nʔa)
Meaning: reed, cane
> Avar: muc̣:í / nuc̣:í
> Andian language: c̣:uma
> Akhvakh: c̣:ʷani
> Chamalal: ṣimi
> Tindi: c:ū̃
> Karata: c̣:un-di (pl.)
> Godoberi: c:uma
Comments: Av. paradigm B (muc̣:í-dul, muc̣:á-bi). Cf. also And. dial. (Khaidakov) c̣:ʷa, Cham. Gig. c̣:ima. Old Tind. > Inkh. c̣ũj 'reed'; Av. > Tsez. nuc̣i, Gin. nic̣u id.

Proto-Lezghian: *nac̣ʷa
North Caucasian etymology: North Caucasian etymology
Meaning: reed, cane
Lezghian: nac̣
Tabasaran: nac̣ (Khiv.)
Agul: nec̣
Rutul: nac̣
Tsakhur: nac̣
Comment: Cf. also Lezg. Khl. nac̣ʷ (preserving the original labialisation which was lost everywhere else); Tsakh. Gelm. nac̣a. The latter form unambiguously points to the PL paradigm *nac̣ʷa, *nac̣ʷä- (cf. also Rut. nac̣a-; Tsakh. Mik. nac̣, nac̣ɨ- is secondary). In Ag. there occurred a regular fronting *a > e before a hissing affricate in a closed syllable. 4th class in Rut., Tsakh.

The alternate form of the "Proto-North Caucasian" root is almost identical to its "Proto-Sino-Caucasian" source, *c̣wǝ̄́nHē.

I don't think this would qualify as "Sino-Caucasian" root, nor I'd put my hand in the fire for that phylum (otherwise of some long-range correspondences between Sino-Tibetan and North Caucasian, of course).

[Talskubilos]

And the cognate of Greek pháranks in Celtic would be *baranks, which could be the source of Spanish barranco.

The thing is the source language must have a strong (trill) rhotic and this doesn't seem to be the case of Celtic loanwords (e.g. Portuguese buraco 'hole', probably from Gallaecian).

[WeepingElf]

And the cognate of Greek pháranks in Celtic would be *baranks, which could be the source of Spanish barranco.

The thing is the source language must have a strong (trill) rhotic and this doesn't seem to be the case of Celtic loanwords (e.g. Portuguese buraco 'hole', probably from Gallaecian).

I understand. Well, it was merely a guess (and I had forgotten about it when I saw your post today).

[Talskubilos]

I understand. Well, it was merely a guess (and I had forgotten about it when I saw your post today).

Thinking it over, Beekes considers pháranks to be a "Pre-Greek" loanword, like other words with the -nk- suffix. My guess is the source language would be a Baltoid language such as Thracian (cfr. Greek póros < IE *per-) and Ligurian/"Sorothaptic" (apparently conflated with Italoid/Lusitanian by Coromines). However, to account for the initial labial and the trill rhotic, barranco must have come through the intermediation of another language, possibly Iberian.

[WeepingElf]

I understand. Well, it was merely a guess (and I had forgotten about it when I saw your post today).

Thinking it over, Beekes considers pháranks to be a "Pre-Greek" loanword, like other words with the -nk- suffix.

The two /a/s with no *h2 anywhere in sight also point at a loanword!

My guess is the source language would be a Baltoid language such as Thracian (cfr. Greek póros < IE *per-) and Ligurian/"Sorothaptic" (apparently conflated with Italoid/Lusitanian by Coromines). However, to account for the initial labial and the trill rhotic, barranco must have come through the intermediation of another language, possibly Iberian.

What is "Baltoid"?

[Travis B.]

My guess is the source language would be a Baltoid language such as Thracian (cfr. Greek póros < IE *per-) and Ligurian/"Sorothaptic" (apparently conflated with Italoid/Lusitanian by Coromines). However, to account for the initial labial and the trill rhotic, barranco must have come through the intermediation of another language, possibly Iberian.

What is "Baltoid"?

I think Octaviano is referring to the supposed relation between Thracian and Balto-Slavic.

[Moose-tache]

The Thracian language is still very much undeciphered, but we can make some observations from the three extant texts. There is a high ratio of sibilants to velars, relatively few back vowels, and only two rows of plosives. These facts suggest that Thracian was a satem language, merged short a/o, and merged the second and third rows of plosives, just like Balto-Slavic. However, all of these assumptions are untestable, and all of these changes occur in other subfamilies, so it wouldn't be terribly farfetched if these changes occurred in Thracian by coincidence. A smoking gun would be if we could get a text that shows vowel quantity, because then we could see if Winter's Law is operant. But sadly we don't have that.

[Talskubilos]

What is "Baltoid"?

I think Octaviano is referring to the supposed relation between Thracian and Balto-Slavic.

That's right, but please don't call me "Octaviano".

Baltoid means "akin to Baltic". The Catalan linguist Joan Coromines posited a substrate language which he called "Sorothaptic" and would be somewhere between Italic and Baltic in the IE dialectal cloud (Villar reached to a similar conclusion independently of him). However, I think he actually conflated two different strata: an Italoid (i.e. akin to Italic) one, represented by Lusitanian and the language of the Arles lead foils (incomprehensibly ignored by most IE-ists), and a Baltoid one, which would be the source of some loanwords to Gaulish (Gallo-Romance) which I mentioned before and possibly to other languages as well (e.g. Etruscan).

Although I don't endorse him, the Spanish linguist Ramón Sainero has proposed Celtic actually originated in the Iberian Peninsula from a Thracian substrate.

https://www.amazon.com/lengua-celta-Lec ... 8417301127

[WeepingElf]

Although I don't endorse him, the Spanish linguist Ramón Sainero has proposed Celtic actually originated in the Iberian Peninsula from a Thracian substrate.

https://www.amazon.com/lengua-celta-Lec ... 8417301127

What the bleep does Thracian do on the Iberian Peninsula!?

[Talskubilos]

What the bleep does Thracian do on the Iberian Peninsula!?

I don't know about Thracian, but there's some evidence of Baltoid language(s) in Western Europe.

[WeepingElf]

Let me lay out at this point my current thinking about the spread of IE and lost IE lineages in Western Europe as it has changed since we last talked about it.

Archaeological and archaeogenetic research suggests that there were two wings of the migration movement of the Proto-Indo-Europeans from their Pontic Steppe homeland, both roughly at the same time. One was in the north, westwards into Central Europe north of the Carpathians and eastwards into Central Asia; this wing is associated with the Corded Ware culture and responsible for the spread of the Y-DNA haplogroup R1a. The other was in the south, along the Danube into the Balkan Peninsula, from there to Anatolia and also into southern Central Europe. This southern wing spread the Y-DNA haplogroup R1b, and the western part of it were (part of) the bearers of the Bell Beaker culture.

These two wings, which originated from different regions or different social classes in the Yamnaya culture (the kurgan graves have so far yielded mostly R1b but hardly any R1a, and these of course were graves of the upper class), were, that is my idea, connected with two primary branches of IE. Northern IE, spoken by the northern wing, includes all known non-Anatolian IE languages, while Southern IE, spoken by the southern wing, consists of Anatolian and - I admit that this is a quite adventurous speculation! - a number of lost languages of Southern and Western Europe. These Southern IE languages were later eclipsed by Northern IE languages, perhaps at the time of the Urnfield expansions around 1300 BC. Italic and Celtic descend from Northern IE languages that had moved into the Pannonian Basin, while Germanic descends from the language of the Corded Ware outlier in southern Scandinavia which had developed along its own idiosyncratic ways.

What regards the "Para-Celtic" languages Lusitanian (certain), Ligurian (probable) and Belgian (possible), these may just be branches of "Macro-Celtic" that were not reached by the spread of the Proto-Celtic weakening of PIE *p. This change, one of the main hallmarks of Celtic, may have been a shibboleth of the more advanced, iron-using Hallstatt culture and diffused through the Macro-Celtic dialect continuum, just as the later counterfeeding change *k^w > p which defines "P-Celtic" was a shibboleth of the still more advanced La Tène culture which had failed to reach the outliers in the Iberian Peninsula and Ireland. One highly speculative idea of mine is that the weakening of *p was originally due to a Southern IE substratum language that lacked *p due to having undergone a Germanic- or Armenian-like sound shift that had turned the PIE *b-gap into a *p-gap. The "P-Celtic" shift was of course just a way of repairing that *p-gap, though it seems plausible that it is somehow connected with the similar shift in Sabellic, though the latter had no *p-gap to repair.

[Moose-tache]

Reality: "Baltoid" as a linguistic term means literally nothing. Early Balto-Slavic is generic enough that any poorly-attested, undeciphered IE language can superficially resemble it.

This thread: So you're telling me it's in Spain!

[Talskubilos]

Ivan Duridanov (1969): Die Thrakisch und Dakische-Baltischen Sprachbeziehungen

[Moose-tache]

Oh, for the love of... OK, in case your German isn't up to the task, this is just non-comparisons all over again, closely related to Duridanov's public daydream of Balkan Baltic.

The first part of the text deals with geographic names, so... yeah. Moving on, obviously.

The second part is about ethnonyms, which is really no better. The very first example is that Getanoi, the Greek name for Dacian, sounds kind of like Lithuanian Girenas, an inhabitant of the woods. Aha! The Dacians are self-proclaimed woodsmen! But no, of course not. There's always going to be a Lithuanian word that's "close enough" when you're willing to accept things like t=r and i=e, and only one side is contributing any semantic information. You could play this same game with Basque.

Why are we still doing this?

[WeepingElf]

Also, the Balkan Peninsula is not in Western Europe, nor is it the same place as the Iberian Peninsula No part of the paper T. linked to makes any mention of Western Europe or any part thereof. But this kind of geographic confusions are something I have noticed before in T.'s posts. And that Thracian and Dacian have words in common with Balto-Slavic should surprise nobody: after all, both are IE languages, with some common developments (such as satemization and *D-*Dh merger) and not extraordinarily far away from each other, so one would expect some common lexicon

[Talskubilos]

Also, the Balkan Peninsula is not in Western Europe, nor is it the same place as the Iberian Peninsula No part of the paper T. linked to makes any mention of Western Europe or any part thereof. But this kind of geographic confusions are something I have noticed before in T.'s posts.

I'm afraid this is nothing of the kind, because I never said Thracian was spoken in Western Europe or the Iberian Peninsula. But I think Thracian could be itself a Baltoid (i.e. akin to Baltic) language.

On the other hand, Iberian baides 'witness' is a recurring term in inscriptions and it's surely a loanword from some reflex of IE *weid-.

[Moose-tache]

Or... not.

[Travis B.]

Also, the Balkan Peninsula is not in Western Europe, nor is it the same place as the Iberian Peninsula No part of the paper T. linked to makes any mention of Western Europe or any part thereof. But this kind of geographic confusions are something I have noticed before in T.'s posts.

I'm afraid this is nothing of the kind, because I never said Thracian was spoken in Western Europe or the Iberian Peninsula. But I think Thracian could be itself a Baltoid (i.e. akin to Baltic) language.

Something you linked did make that assertion, though. And as for Thracian and Baltic, it does not take much for two different branches of IE to vaguely resemble one another, especially when one is undeciphered.

On the other hand, Iberian baides 'witness' is a recurring term in inscriptions and it's surely a loanword from some reflex of IE *weid-.

Sure... <rolls eyes>

[WeepingElf]

Also, the Balkan Peninsula is not in Western Europe, nor is it the same place as the Iberian Peninsula No part of the paper T. linked to makes any mention of Western Europe or any part thereof. But this kind of geographic confusions are something I have noticed before in T.'s posts.

I'm afraid this is nothing of the kind, because I never said Thracian was spoken in Western Europe or the Iberian Peninsula. But I think Thracian could be itself a Baltoid (i.e. akin to Baltic) language.

Of course, Thracian was never spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, nor in Western Europe in general. But what I don't get is how the alleged connection between Thracian and Baltic (which is at least conceivable, even if the paper you linked to doesn't really make a good job proving it) supports your idea of a "Baltoid" language in the Iberian Peninsula?! That is what I mean by "geographic confusion": you argue that something has happened in one place because it happened in another very different place. This is not the first time you argue in this jumpy way, and it means nothing because that way, any kind of connection can be drawn. When will you understand that this won't convince anyone?

For instance, I could argue that Celtiberian must have had initial mutations because all Celtic languages have them in the British Isles. That's of course nonsense. The Iberian Peninsula is not the British Isles, so Celtic may have taken a different pathway there - and indeed, there are no initial mutations anywhere in the known Celtiberian material. Likewise, it is nonsense to say that a Baltoid language must have been spoken in the Iberian Peninsula because Thracian was one. There may be other reasons why the assumption of a Baltoid language in the Iberian Peninsula may make sense (show us!), but Thracian wouldn't have anything to do with them.

On the other hand, Iberian baides 'witness' is a recurring term in inscriptions and it's surely a loanword from some reflex of IE *weid-.

What does tell us that this is a loan specifically from "Baltoid", rather than from some other IE language (maybe a Southern IE one?), or just a chance resemblance? And where did you find the meaning of this Iberian word? I must say that you are underestimating us. We are not as gullible as to swallow the snake oil you have to offer!