Indo-European language varieties

[Talskubilos]

Hi, welcome to this thread! I see you didn't receive your orientation pamphlet, so I'll bring you up to speed. In here, there is no scientific method, no null hypothesis, no evidentiary burden, and no productive discourse. Instead, we find words that are "similar," in some non-quantifiable sense, and delcare them to be derived form the same Basque monks or Pontic shepherds or whatever.

Bullshit.

[Zju]

How do we know that any one of those four words is cognate? It's all speculation based on one or few phonemes.

Hi, welcome to this thread! I see you didn't receive your orientation pamphlet, so I'll bring you up to speed. In here, there is no scientific method, no null hypothesis, no evidentiary burden, and no productive discourse. Instead, we find words that are "similar," in some non-quantifiable sense, and delcare them to be derived form the same Basque monks or Pontic shepherds or whatever.

Thanks! It all makes sense now.

[Travis B.]

How do we know that any one of those four words is cognate? It's all speculation based on one or few phonemes.

Hi, welcome to this thread! I see you didn't receive your orientation pamphlet, so I'll bring you up to speed. In here, there is no scientific method, no null hypothesis, no evidentiary burden, and no productive discourse. Instead, we find words that are "similar," in some non-quantifiable sense, and delcare them to be derived form the same Basque monks or Pontic shepherds or whatever.

Well put.

Agreed completely.

[Moose-tache]

To be slightly more helpful, the question that Talskubilos finds most difficult to engage with is "But what if not that, though?"

Let's try it. Here's a claim: "English boat and German Boot are cognates." We obviously need a reason, so let's start with "because they are similar."

The null hypothesis is something like: "nu-uh." How do we overcome this? We need to quantify how similar is similar. What is the probability of these words occurring by random chance? Now we multiply that probability by the number of words in the English or German dictionary, whichever is smaller, because if there is a similarity anywhere we're going to trot it out as a cognate. If the chances of a meaningless coincidence is one in ten thousand, then at least one meaningless coincidence is probably inevitable between English and German. Maybe we determine that the chances of a coincidence are one in a million. Now it's looking better that these words are cognate.

But the problem is, we still haven't overcome the null hypothesis. "Nu-uh" still stands undefeated, because our tripod is missing a leg. We have our conclusion, and we have one premise (i.e. that boat and Boot cannot be a coincidence), but we need a second premise to complete the proof: a second premise that connects ulikeliness of coincidence with being cognate. Something like "words whose similarity cannot be reaonsably attributed to coincidence are cognates." Just when things were going so well!

Alas and alack, this is pretty difficult to uphold. Real cognates tend to be less obvious pairings like "yellow" and "gold," or "wheel" and "chakra." There's no evidence that being more similar in form means being cognate. So "nu-uh" cannot be disproven.

This process is called science, and it's been chugging away for hundreds of years. If you want to hold up two words and say they are similar, fine. We all have hobbies. I make fun of books on the internet even though I can't write for shit. But if you can't disprove the null hypothesis, you're just stamp collecting.

[Raphael]

Wouldn't a case like that be at least partly decided by extensive philological research into occurrences of both words in written documents throughout the history of the West Germanic languages?

[Travis B.]

To be slightly more helpful, the question that Talskubilos finds most difficult to engage with is "But what if not that, though?"

Let's try it. Here's a claim: "English boat and German Boot are cognates." We obviously need a reason, so let's start with "because they are similar."

The null hypothesis is something like: "nu-uh." How do we overcome this? We need to quantify how similar is similar. What is the probability of these words occurring by random chance? Now we multiply that probability by the number of words in the English or German dictionary, whichever is smaller, because if there is a similarity anywhere we're going to trot it out as a cognate. If the chances of a meaningless coincidence is one in ten thousand, then at least one meaningless coincidence is probably inevitable between English and German. Maybe we determine that the chances of a coincidence are one in a million. Now it's looking better that these words are cognate.

But the problem is, we still haven't overcome the null hypothesis. "Nu-uh" still stands undefeated, because our tripod is missing a leg. We have our conclusion, and we have one premise (i.e. that boat and Boot cannot be a coincidence), but we need a second premise to complete the proof: a second premise that connects ulikeliness of coincidence with being cognate. Something like "words whose similarity cannot be reaonsably attributed to coincidence are cognates." Just when things were going so well!

Alas and alack, this is pretty difficult to uphold. Real cognates tend to be less obvious pairings like "yellow" and "gold," or "wheel" and "chakra." There's no evidence that being more similar in form means being cognate. So "nu-uh" cannot be disproven.

This process is called science, and it's been chugging away for hundreds of years. If you want to hold up two words and say they are similar, fine. We all have hobbies. I make fun of books on the internet even though I can't write for shit. But if you can't disprove the null hypothesis, you're just stamp collecting.

And just for the record, StG Boot is not an inherited cognate of English boat at all! At least according to the wizards at Wiktionary, all the similar words in Germanic languages with the same meaning, including ON bátr (and its cognates in modern NGmc languages), German Boot, and Dutch boot, along with French bateau and Occitan batèl, aside from ON beit and MD beitel (which are true cognates), are ultimately loans deriving, in the end, from OE bāt.

[WeepingElf]

I have two questions on IE languages.

1. What is the origin of the duals in -u in Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Proto-Celtic? The handbooks I know do not reconstruct such duals for PIE.

2. Gamkrelidze & Ivanov claim that the Proto-Celtic voiceless stops were aspirated. What is the evidence for that?

Thank you in advance for anyone who could help me here.

[Talskubilos]

1. What is the origin of the duals in -u in Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Proto-Celtic? The handbooks I know do not reconstruct such duals for PIE.

The numeral *Hoḱte-h₃(u) '8' has a fossilized dual suffix *-h₃(u) which I guess it's related to the Caucasian numeral '2', although a deeper research would be necessary.

2. Gamkrelidze & Ivanov claim that the Proto-Celtic voiceless stops were aspirated. What is the evidence for that?

From an internal point of view, modern Celtic languages such as Irish have got voiceless aspirated stops. From an external one, we've got Celtic loanwords into other IE languages such as Greek kanthós 'wheel rim'.

[Linguoboy]

From an external one, we've got Celtic loanwords into other IE languages such as Greek kanthós 'wheel rim'.

What's the evidence for this being a Celtic borrowing? The sense of "wheel rim" could have developed from the earlier meaning of "corner of the eye" which is attested in the works of Aristotle.

[2+3 Clusivity]

1. What is the origin of the duals in -u in Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Proto-Celtic? The handbooks I know do not reconstruct such duals for PIE.

The numeral *Hoḱte-h₃(u) '8' has a fossilized dual suffix *-h₃(u) which I guess it's related to the Caucasian numeral '2', although a deeper research would be necessary.

Caucasian numeral '2' ... right.

I do not subscribe to this, but it would make much more sense to look at something like the truncated PIE formant /*(H)wi-/ for two (c.f. "twenty" and "apart/again") ... or even, related or not, the various /-w- ~ -u-/ formants seen in dual pronouns in the nominative which in turn seem to be shared with the plurals.

[Travis B.]

1. What is the origin of the duals in -u in Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Proto-Celtic? The handbooks I know do not reconstruct such duals for PIE.

The numeral *Hoḱte-h₃(u) '8' has a fossilized dual suffix *-h₃(u) which I guess it's related to the Caucasian numeral '2', although a deeper research would be necessary.

Caucasian numeral '2' ... right.

It should be noted for the record that even a unified "northern Caucasian" much the less a "Caucasian" holds water like a styrofoam cup with the bottom cut out, so it is nonsensical to posit morphemes as having been borrowed from a language family which has not been discredited only for the reason that no one in their right mind (emphasis on "right mind") credited it in the first place.

[Talskubilos]

From an external one, we've got Celtic loanwords into other IE languages such as Greek kanthós 'wheel rim'.

What's the evidence for this being a Celtic borrowing? The sense of "wheel rim" could have developed from the earlier meaning of "corner of the eye" which is attested in the works of Aristotle.

As a matter of fact, ancient Celts were known for their mastership at making wheels and wheeled vehicles, and so Latin carrus 'cart, wagon' was a Celtic borrowing, most likely from Gaulish. In Alinei's opinion, Latin rota 'wheel' was also from Celtic: The Celtic origin of Lat. rota and its implications for the prehistory of Europe.

[WeepingElf]

The numeral *Hoḱte-h₃(u) '8' has a fossilized dual suffix *-h₃(u) which I guess it's related to the Caucasian numeral '2', although a deeper research would be necessary.

Caucasian numeral '2' ... right.

It should be noted for the record that even a unified "northern Caucasian" much the less a "Caucasian" holds water like a styrofoam cup with the bottom cut out, so it is nonsensical to posit morphemes as having been borrowed from a language family which has not been discredited only for the reason that no one in their right mind (emphasis on "right mind") credited it in the first place.

And for just these reasons, I consider T.'s post a non-answer.

[Talskubilos]

And for just these reasons, I consider T.'s post a non-answer.

[WeepingElf]

From an external one, we've got Celtic loanwords into other IE languages such as Greek kanthós 'wheel rim'.

What's the evidence for this being a Celtic borrowing? The sense of "wheel rim" could have developed from the earlier meaning of "corner of the eye" which is attested in the works of Aristotle.

As a matter of fact, ancient Celts were known for their mastership at making wheels and wheeled vehicles, and so Latin carrus 'cart, wagon' was a Celtic borrowing, most likely from Gaulish. In Alinei's opinion, Latin rota 'wheel' was also from Celtic.

The Celtic origin of Lat. rota and its implications for the prehistory of Europe.

Alinei is a patent crackpot, worth at least 300 millinylands. Paleolithic continuity is falsified nonsense.

[Talskubilos]

Caucasian numeral '2' ... right.

To be more precise, Daghestanian '2'.

[Talskubilos]

Alinei is a patent crackpot, worth at least 300 millinylands. Paleolithic continuity is falsified nonsense.

That's right, but this doesn't automatically disqualify his article.

[keenir]

Alinei is a patent crackpot, worth at least 300 millinylands. Paleolithic continuity is falsified nonsense.

That's right, but this doesn't automatically disqualify his article.

0.o
Then what would?

From an external one, we've got Celtic loanwords into other IE languages such as Greek kanthós 'wheel rim'.

What's the evidence for this being a Celtic borrowing? The sense of "wheel rim" could have developed from the earlier meaning of "corner of the eye" which is attested in the works of Aristotle.

As a matter of fact, ancient Celts were known for their mastership at making wheels and wheeled vehicles, and so Latin carrus 'cart, wagon' was a Celtic borrowing, most likely from Gaulish. In Alinei's opinion, Latin rota 'wheel' was also from Celtic: The Celtic origin of Lat. rota and its implications for the prehistory of Europe.

Um, if the Celts were the masters of making wheels, why wouldn't the Gauls borrow from the Celts?

[Talskubilos]

Um, if the Celts were the masters of making wheels, why wouldn't the Gauls borrow from the Celts?

But Gauls were Celts, weren't they?

[WeepingElf]

Alinei is a patent crackpot, worth at least 300 millinylands. Paleolithic continuity is falsified nonsense.

That's right, but this doesn't automatically disqualify his article.

It is IMHO typical of the intellectual contortions necessary to uphold this unsupportable hypothesis - if one assumes that PIE was spoken 40,000 years ago, the presence of words for wheels and other concepts unknown in Paleolithic times becomes a problem. I am OK, though, with Early Bronze Age Wanderwörter within IE, which at that time was a dialect continuum within which at least neighbouring dialects were mutually intelligible and innovations of all kinds could easily spread from dialect to dialect - as evidenced by the complex pattern of intersecting isoglosses we see throughout the family which makes drawing a family tree so hard.

And @keenir - Gauls are Celts. Talskubilos is right on this point.