The oddities of Basque

[Talskubilos]

Indeed, all of **Hɑmæ/lV/nV look like arbitrarily constructed words to get the initially desired result. And of course, we can drop and add consonants as much as we want to get from **Hɑmæ to uda.

Isn't it that way reconstructions are made?

No

Please explain why.

[keenir]

Indeed, all of **Hɑmæ/lV/nV look like arbitrarily constructed words to get the initially desired result. And of course, we can drop and add consonants as much as we want to get from **Hɑmæ to uda.

Isn't it that way reconstructions are made?

I can't help but wonder if this is, in part or in full, an explanation of why your theories look the way they do. (since you have yet to share any theories of yours that are more than a sentence long)

Maybe because the words are lookalikes and actually don't have anything to do with each other?

I don't think so.

why not?

By the way, you now assume a sematic development deriving "apple" from "warm" in two cases

Not exactly. As I mentioned before, the sequence would be: 'warm (season)' > 'ripe (fruit)' > 'apple/pear'.

but the problematic portion is, who or why would be using "warm season" and "ripe fruit" interchangeably to ease the transition?

[keenir]

Isn't it that way reconstructions are made?

No

Please explain why.

because its not?

[bradrn]

Isn't it that way reconstructions are made?

No

Please explain why.

I’m not really a historical linguist, but my understanding is that reconstructions are usually made via something like the following process:

1. Collect a large number of cognate sets (well, apparent cognate sets at this stage)
2. Look for and tabulate regular phoneme correspondences. Consider: is there any evidence of phoneme splits/mergers? What are the conditioning factors? Do the correspondences make phonological sense? etc.
3. For each correspondence set, postulate a protophoneme and regular sound laws
4. Reverse the sound laws you get to figure out what the original protoform must have been

For a simple worked example, consider e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20172324, the paper which proved that the Reefs–Santa Cruz languages are in fact Austronesian rather than Papuan. Ross and Næss start by comparing wordlists, and give sound correspondences between each modern language and Proto-Oceanic. The correspondences are eminently sensible; e.g. *r→l, *s→∅,s, *p→v. They then go through each phoneme in turn and discuss in detail how each is reflected in modern languages, discussing irregularities as they go: e.g. Äiwoo regularly adds initial nV- to nouns, which they link to POc *na, but also deletes the final syllable of many words, giving e.g. *raqan → nula (again reflecting *r→l). Though they don’t need to go as far as figuring out the protoforms themselves, since POc has already been reconstructed, the basic principle stays much the same. (Also, they spend an entire half of the paper discussing morphological evidence, which in general is far more convincing than phonological evidence given that morphology is almost never borrowed and is unlikely to have chance resemblances.)

[Talskubilos]

but the problematic portion is, who or why would be using "warm season" and "ripe fruit" interchangeably to ease the transition?

This only happens in the purported correspondence between NEC *mhălV- ~ *mhănV- 'warm' and IE *meh₂l-o- 'apple', which is collateral to the 'apple' Wanderwort.

[keenir]

but the problematic portion is, who or why would be using "warm season" and "ripe fruit" interchangeably to ease the transition?

This only happens in the purported correspondence between NEC *mhălV- ~ *mhănV- 'warm' and IE *meh₂l-o- 'apple',

wait wait wait - you just now said that the first two words mean "warm"...and the second word means "apple"........so, again, who/why would be using both meanings on the same word?

which is collateral to the 'apple' Wanderwort.

collateral?

I'm sorry, but I associate that word with a very different sort of loans: I have to put up collateral if I want to buy or borrow something of value.

what does it mean here?

[Talskubilos]

but the problematic portion is, who or why would be using "warm season" and "ripe fruit" interchangeably to ease the transition?

This only happens in the purported correspondence between NEC *mhălV- ~ *mhănV- 'warm' and IE *meh₂l-o- 'apple',

wait wait wait - you just now said that the first two words mean "warm"...and the second word means "apple"........so, again, who/why would be using both meanings on the same word?

Sorry, but I don't see your point.

collateral?
I'm sorry, but I associate that word with a very different sort of loans: I have to put up collateral if I want to buy or borrow something of value.

what does it mean here?

I mean the NEC and IE words don't belong to the 'apple' Wanderwort but still are linked to it. Quoted from Cambridge Dictionary:

collateral
adjective

connected but less important, or of the same family although not directly related:

collateral senses of a word
a collateral branch of the family

[WeepingElf]

Discussing historical linguistics with Talskubilos is about as meaningful as discussing evolution with a hard-boiled creationist.

[Linguoboy]

ProTip: You can quote a definition without making the words huge and bold. We’re all perfectly capable of reading ordinary-size words.

[Zju]

Since Talskubilos didn't present any more examples of the purported relations between that bunch of Eurasian protolanguages, it indeed looks like **Hɑmæ/lV/nV is yet another of his chance resemblances.

Indeed, all of **Hɑmæ/lV/nV look like arbitrarily constructed words to get the initially desired result. And of course, we can drop and add consonants as much as we want to get from **Hɑmæ to uda.

Isn't it that way reconstructions are made?

No. Look at what bradrn wrote.

*Hɑmæ > Basque uda 'summer'
*Hɑmæ-nV > Basque umao, umau, umo 'ripe, seasoned' ~ udare, udari 'pear'

The thing is /m/ was dropped in Paleo-Basque, apparently leading to a prosthetic /d/ (I mentioned other examples before), but in some varieties nasality was retained, hence the above doublet.

So we can drop and add consonants as much as we'd like to get from **Hɑmæ to uda, and we call the addition prosthesis.

Discussing historical linguistics with Talskubilos is about as meaningful as discussing evolution with a hard-boiled creationist.

Admitting being wrong about such a fundamental thing is a difficult thing to do, so most people kinda understandably double down.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

He might like the part of the board that does linguistics, but it's fiction.

[WeepingElf]

He might like the part of the board that does linguistics, but it's fiction.

Some crackpot ideas would indeed make agreeable fiction. I have once observed that about Erich von Däniken: the problem with his ideas is that he presents them as fact; if he instead had presented them in science fiction novels, nobody would have had any problem with them. An acquaintance of mine who was into UFO studies once said that what the ufologists believe in was "a space opera, like Star Wars or Star Trek". Or consider Lincoln, Baigent & Leigh vs. Dan Brown - the same idea (indeed, it seems as if Brown had picked it up from L, B & L), but once as bogus "fact" and once as compelling fiction. So, if Talskubilos wrote a novel set in Neolithic Europe, with conlangs based on his ideas, everything would be fine (as long as the novel is well written and has an interesting and believable plot, of course).

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Well, if his plots are anything like his theories in their wild implausibility, I expect he might produce some so-bad-it's-good melodrama, at very least. Perhaps even something that's actually good on its own.

[Nortaneous]

Indeed, all of **Hɑmæ/lV/nV look like arbitrarily constructed words to get the initially desired result. And of course, we can drop and add consonants as much as we want to get from **Hɑmæ to uda.

Isn't it that way reconstructions are made?

*Hɑmæ > Basque uda 'summer'
*Hɑmæ-nV > Basque umao, umau, umo 'ripe, seasoned' ~ udare, udari 'pear'

No.

You can't reconstruct, like, a word. If you try, you get a type error. In the strictest reasonable sense, lexical reconstruction is the process of assigning symbols to sound correspondences, which are established through correspondence sets necessarily containing multiple words.

For example, there are a number of words where New England English [ɔ] corresponds to [ɑ] in most other US dialects. A linguist reconstructing Proto-English could label this [ɔ]-[ɑ] correspondence *ɒ or *ɑu or something - it was probably something, and giving it a symbol (and a place in the putative phonological structure of the proto-language) is easier to reference than a full listing of the correspondences.

However, there are no [ɔ]-[ɑ] correspondences before /ŋ/ or /g/, and instead we have NEE [ɔ] - Mid-Atlantic and Southern [ɔ] - Western [ɑ]. So one could posit a change of the proto-phone *ɒ (or *ɑu, or whatever) to ɔ before its merger with ɑ.

And so on.

The problem is that you can't really do that with loans, so instead you need a lot of words that look similar enough, have no alternate explanations, and ideally have restricted distribution, although if the loan is old enough that may not be possible.

but the problematic portion is, who or why would be using "warm season" and "ripe fruit" interchangeably to ease the transition?

We have mayapples and juneberries here, although mayapples don't ripen in May. (They flower in May.)

Since Talskubilos didn't present any more examples of the purported relations between that bunch of Eurasian protolanguages, it indeed looks like **Hɑmæ/lV/nV is yet another of his chance resemblances.

What, for 'apple'?

PIE *h2ebol- 'apple'
Gk. mēlon 'apple, fruit'
Hitt. šamlu 'apple'
Hitt. māḫlaš 'grapevine'
Proto-Kartvelian *msxal- 'pear' (Fenwick suggests metathesis by reanalysis as a participle of earlier *sxmal)
Proto-Kartvelian *sxmarṭl 'medlar' (a fake-looking reconstruction of an extremely irregular word family)
Proto-Turkic *alma ~ *almïla
And then obvious loans like Mongolian alim, Udmurt ulmo, and Albanian mollë.

Has anyone checked NWC or Yeniseian? (Unfortunately all the dictionaries of the latter I can find are in Russian, and I haven't memorized the word for every common fruit in the Maleae... or at least the apple, the pear, the quince (which isn't always distinguished from the apple), and the medlar. A semantic drift of apple > juneberry, which is apparently in Maleae somehow, seems unlikely - they look and taste like blueberries.)

Wiktionary suggests a different 'apple' Wanderwort as well:
Armenian xnjor "apple"
Hurrian ḫenzūru
Akkadian ḫinzūru
Aramaic ḥăzzūrā
Classical Syriac ḥazzūrā
Sumerian ḫašḫur
To which one could probably add Archi änš, Chechen ʿaž, etc.

[Talskubilos]

PIE *h2ebol- 'apple'

This isn't a PIE-native word but a Paleo-European substrate loanword, so there's no point in reconstrucing *h₂ here.

[keenir]

PIE *h2ebol- 'apple'

This isn't a PIE-native word but a Paleo-European substrate

How can you tell?
(and is it possible to answer that question without saying "because PIE doesn't exist"?)

loanword, so there's no point in reconstrucing *h₂ here.

why not?

[Pabappa]

A lot of fruits .... in fact, I'd wager nearly all of them ..... have been heavily cultivated and look unlike anything elsewhere found in nature. My favorite example is the pineapple, which originated from a tiny seed-bearing structure found on the top of a single blade of grass. It's possible that these tasty, fist-sized apples we love so much in fact arose before human contact, and got so big because they attracted squirrels or some other animal, but even if this is true i suspect they've grown quite a bit larger in human history even so.

But yeah .... humans aren't botanists, even today .... I doubt that there would ever be a semantic shift from an apple to a juneberry or the other way around unless by some amazing coincidence they happen to taste almost exactly alike .... i doubt that, because again, we've cultivated apples so much that they don't even taste like each other.

[bradrn]

A lot of fruits .... in fact, I'd wager nearly all of them ..... have been heavily cultivated and look unlike anything elsewhere found in nature. My favorite example is the pineapple, which originated from a tiny seed-bearing structure found on the top of a single blade of grass. It's possible that these tasty, fist-sized apples we love so much in fact arose before human contact, and got so big because they attracted squirrels or some other animal, but even if this is true i suspect they've grown quite a bit larger in human history even so.

Are you sure about this? Most of the Bromelioideae seem to produce great big pineapple-like fruit. You may rather be thinking of how maize evolved from teosinte (image), which seems to fit your description. My favourite example however is the banana: the wild fruit is short and stubby with tens of hard seeds inside (image), quite different to the banana we all eat today.

[MacAnDàil]

A lot of fruits .... in fact, I'd wager nearly all of them ..... have been heavily cultivated and look unlike anything elsewhere found in nature. My favorite example is the pineapple, which originated from a tiny seed-bearing structure found on the top of a single blade of grass. It's possible that these tasty, fist-sized apples we love so much in fact arose before human contact, and got so big because they attracted squirrels or some other animal, but even if this is true i suspect they've grown quite a bit larger in human history even so.

Are you sure about this? Most of the Bromelioideae seem to produce great big pineapple-like fruit. You may rather be thinking of how maize evolved from teosinte (image), which seems to fit your description. My favourite example however is the banana: the wild fruit is short and stubby with tens of hard seeds inside (image), quite different to the banana we all eat today.

Sure, that wild banana looks more like anone / Kër-d'bëf (in Réunionese Creole) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Suga ... ection.jpg (called 'sugar apple' in English, notice) but it's closer to figue mignonne (https://www.supertoinette.com/fiche-cui ... anane.html) (again, semantic change from 'fig' in Réunionese Creole, and apprently other langues d'Oïl). I would like to eat the red ones more often though.

[Pabappa]

A lot of fruits .... in fact, I'd wager nearly all of them ..... have been heavily cultivated and look unlike anything elsewhere found in nature. My favorite example is the pineapple, which originated from a tiny seed-bearing structure found on the top of a single blade of grass. It's possible that these tasty, fist-sized apples we love so much in fact arose before human contact, and got so big because they attracted squirrels or some other animal, but even if this is true i suspect they've grown quite a bit larger in human history even so.

Are you sure about this? Most of the Bromelioideae seem to produce great big pineapple-like fruit.

I would assume those are all cultivars as well. i am skeptical that nature would ever evolve a fruit that grows on a plant that can't physically support that fruit.

We cant know for certain what went on before the advent of writing, but I think it would be highly unusual for a fruit the size of a pineapple to evolve in nature since the small, seed-pod version would propagate itself just as well and be a million times more efficient at growing without human intervention. Its the same story as with pumpkins, etc .... why would a pumpkin evolve in nature, when a smaller gourd-like fruit could spread its seeds just as quickly with a lot less calorie consumption?

photos like the one at https://florapix.nl/tropical/?gal=bsi&g ... 58#current show what i believe the ancestor of pineapples must have looked like, and although i admit it's hard to get a feel for the size of the plant when no scale is provided, i would assume that the grass is at least within the size range of that of the pineapple and therefore that the fruit is much smaller. and even that seems to be one of the larger ones.