The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel

[Nortaneous]

Glottalic theory better explains Balto-Slavic (Winter's law) and Tocharian (*d > ts = *tʼ > *tsʼ > ts) as well as PIE phonotactics (*TeT *DheDh **DheT **TeDh), although Tocharian is probably a red herring here - it would've had to split before *Tʼ > Ɗ, but Anatolian has no sign of ejectives, and the sound correspondences are difficult (and frequently misrepresented in reference material (*d did not palatalize to ś in TB - śak 'ten' is the only exception, so is either irregular or a loan)

[bradrn]

All that being said, what are people's thoughts on the stop system of PIE? Personally, I think it's likely that the glottalic viewpoint was true at some point in pre-Proto-Indo-European history (which would account for things like the absence of *b), but then evolved into the traditionally reconstructed PIE system during the period leading up to the fragmentation of the Indo-European language varieties (which would account for things like the breathy-voiced consonants being attested in two different subfamilies.)

The true answer might also be some variation on this theme. For example, perhaps the *D and *D^h series were originally glottalized and plain voiced in pre-PIE, but the two changes (loss of glottalization in the *D series and breathy-voicedness of the *D^h series) happened as areal changes in separate regions, maybe even at different times, propagating through a late PIE dialect continuum with varied eventual results.

This has been my point of view for a while. It makes sense that the system started out typologically common, became a lot more unstable around the time PIE broke up, and then decayed into the variety of systems we see today.

[WeepingElf]

All that being said, what are people's thoughts on the stop system of PIE? Personally, I think it's likely that the glottalic viewpoint was true at some point in pre-Proto-Indo-European history (which would account for things like the absence of *b), but then evolved into the traditionally reconstructed PIE system during the period leading up to the fragmentation of the Indo-European language varieties (which would account for things like the breathy-voiced consonants being attested in two different subfamilies.)

The true answer might also be some variation on this theme. For example, perhaps the *D and *D^h series were originally glottalized and plain voiced in pre-PIE, but the two changes (loss of glottalization in the *D series and breathy-voicedness of the *D^h series) happened as areal changes in separate regions, maybe even at different times, propagating through a late PIE dialect continuum with varied eventual results.

The key thing is that the conventional analysis of PIE stops is very consistent with what is seen in multiple branches of IE (e.g. Indo-Aryan, Greek, Armenian, and even Germanic and Italic) while being sufficiently unstable to explain why it evolved in all kinds of different ways in PIE's daughters, while as WeepingElf says the glottalic hypothesis is too common and too stable to explain the diversity of outcomes in IE, and is not consistent with changes that explain said outcomes in different branches.

Just that. Also, there are no glottalized stops anywhere else in Mitian (except in Itelmen, a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language, where they are clearly a rather recent innovation from various consonant clusters emerging from the loss of unstressed vowels). However, the "Caucasian" substratum that some scholars (starting with Uhlenbeck in the 1930s) hold responsible for the typological differences between IE on one hand and Uralic and the other Mitian languages on the other may have had them (as does Semitic, which I now consider a somewhat better - though still not a very good - candidate for that substratum's closest known kin than any of the three Caucasian families, but then, the Transcaucasians who contributed to the genetic blend of the Yamnaya people were genetically not much like the Levantine farmers who probably spoke Proto-Semitic, so I may be barking up the wrong tree here).

[Zju]

I vaguely recall that someone over here mentioned how PIE *septm '7' has been compared to Egyptian sfḫt '7.FEM', but does anyone happen to know of a source that discusses this? My searches turned up nothing, and I also have some recollection that there was some Egyptian suffix with -m.

[WeepingElf]

I can't give you references since my PC has died and I am on my phone now, but the Nostraticist literature is full of such comparisons between IE and Afroasiatic.

[Raphael]

I can't give you references since my PC has died and I am on my phone now,

Good luck getting that sorted out!

[WeepingElf]

I can't give you references since my PC has died and I am on my phone now,

Good luck getting that sorted out!

Thank you! Fortunaterly I have backups of everything because it did not die out of a blue sky but had been acting up for some time, so I could prepare for it.

[bradrn]

Fortunaterly I have backups of everything because it did not die out of a blue sky but had been acting up for some time, so I could prepare for it.

Now that’s really foresighted. Nice to see a bit of good (well, not-so-bad) news here for a change!

[Travis B.]

I can't give you references since my PC has died and I am on my phone now,

Good luck getting that sorted out!

Thank you! Fortunaterly I have backups of everything because it did not die out of a blue sky but had been acting up for some time, so I could prepare for it.

Sorry to hear that your computer went kaputt but at least that you have your data all backed up must be a relief.

[Zju]

I can't give you references since my PC has died and I am on my phone now, but the Nostraticist literature is full of such comparisons between IE and Afroasiatic.

I may be mistaken, but I think I recall hearing it from somewhere rather more reputable - akin to the comparisons of PIE and AA words for 'star' and 'bull'.

[WeepingElf]

I can't give you references since my PC has died and I am on my phone now, but the Nostraticist literature is full of such comparisons between IE and Afroasiatic.

I may be mistaken, but I think I recall hearing it from somewhere rather more reputable - akin to the comparisons of PIE and AA words for 'star' and 'bull'.

Yes, it is pretty much accepted that there are meaningful lexical resemblances between these two families. I used to consider them Neolithic Wanderwörter, but now think that there is more to them - they were contributed by the AA language of the Transcaucasians.

[bradrn]

they were contributed by the AA language of the Transcaucasians.

By the what‽

[WeepingElf]

they were contributed by the AA language of the Transcaucasians.

By the what‽

Geneticists have found out that the Yamanya people who probably spoke PIE emerged from the mixture of two populations, one related to the probable speakers of Proto-Uralic, the other from south of the Caucasus. My idea is that the latter spoke an Afroasiatic language related to Semitic.

Some linguists, from Uhlenbeck to Bomhard, have speculated that a "Caucasian" substratum may be responsible for the typological difference between IE and Uralic (of which the latter seems to be more conservative, if you look at the rest of the "Mitian" bunch) - but which of the three Caucasian families? At one point, I realized that Semitic was a better match than any of the three.

Alas, this is very much speculation and may be utterly wrong-headed. The Transcaucasian people were genetically quite different from the Levantine farmers who probably spoke Proto-Semitic - but so are, for instance, the Hausa! This shows that genes and languages do not always travel together.

[Richard W]

Geneticists have found out that the Yamanya people who probably spoke PIE emerged from the mixture of two populations, one related to the probable speakers of Proto-Uralic, the other from south of the Caucasus. My idea is that the latter spoke an Afroasiatic language related to Semitic. That, however, is just speculation and may be utterly wrong.

There certainly seems to be a lot of churning in the area. Hurrian is suggested as North Caucasian,and even more exrtremely, there's Whittaker's Euphratic substrate in Sumerian. That latter one looks even less plausible with Renfrew's proposal that the Europe's early farmers spoke an Indo-European language no longer so plausible, but the late Jens Elmegård Rasmussen assessed Whittaker as giving a plausible presentation of his theory.

[WeepingElf]

The frequently cited paper by Haak et al. from 2015, while not saying which language the Yamnaya people spoke, effectively sets a terminus post quem for PIE about 3000 BC, which speaks against Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis. What regards the "Caucasian substratum", my idea that it actually was Afroasiatic does not exclude the possibility that PIE was also influenced by Proto-NWC, which had palatalized and labialized velars missing from Semitic and may have been spoken by the Maykop culture who are archaeologically but not genetically related to Yamnaya.

But all this is very adventurous speculation.

[Zju]

Alright, I don't know about ancient Egyptian, but apparently Akkadian has sebettum '7.MASC.FREE' and sebūtum '7th.FEM', and both are just a couple of vowel drops away from *septm. Infact, Proto-Slavic - and perhaps Proto-Germanic - rather point to *sebdm, and an alleged pre-form *sebtm nicely accounts for that.

[Ketsuban]

I feel like it has to count against loanword hypotheses for 7 that other loanword hypotheses for Indo-European numerals don't seem to hold much water. Blažek reviews them in passing for every numeral and only fails to reject any for 7 because there is no consensus on an internal derivation (the best he can find is the idea that *septḿ̥ is clipped from *septm̥mo-, a superlative derived from the root of Sanskrit सपति "worships" and Greek ἕπω which he reconstructs as 'the most honourable' and gestures to "the prominent position of the numeral 7 among Indo-Europeans").

[WeepingElf]

सपति

Would you mind transcribing that for those of us who are not familiar with Devanagari?

[zompist]

सपति

Would you mind transcribing that for those of us who are not familiar with Devanagari?

sapati

[WeepingElf]

सपति

Would you mind transcribing that for those of us who are not familiar with Devanagari?

sapati

Thank you!