Paleo-European languages

[Talskubilos]

The standard explanation for "four" is lexical analogy to "five", something known to be extremely common (i.e. numbers being influenced by adjacent or near-adjacent numbers)

Technically, Germanic '4' and '5' could be loanwords from P-Celtic, although IMHO they would belong to a different linguistic layer than common IE lexicon, as in the case of 'bear' from IE *gh'wēr- 'wild animal'.

The word wolf arguably satisfies the prediction because of Latin lupus - unless we rule that out as a Sabine loanword and say Latin has /p/ but does not exhibit *p.

I'd say English wolf matches Latin vulpēs 'fox', but never mind.

[Ares Land]

There are indeed many Etruscan loanwords in Latin. (I'd like to see a cite for caesius being one of them, though!).

Several IE etymologies are given for Tiberis, none of them seem particularly solid. And you know, I actually agree with Talskubilos that an Etruscan origin woudln't be unreasonable.
I wouldn't go look for matches in Hurrian, though. That connection is too tentative to be really useable at this point.

As for Grimm and Werner's law, yes, the rule worked well enough to get the whole field of comparative linguistics started

Don't bother too much with the exceptions. We really specify that the correspondances mostly work; exceptions are to be expected.
There are plenty of irregularities in Romance for instance. Explanations include:

* Just plain irregularity. Why did ego, habeo and a few others lose the voiced medial consonants? Well, who knows?
* Borrowing from neighbouring dialects. French caillou instead of expected chaillou , abeille instead of ef (attested in old French)
* Analogy: aimons instead of amons

Any of these could explain irregularities within IE. Finding out which one is at play? With no written attestations and a timespan of millenia... good luck with that!


When it comes to Paleo-European, I feel that we are, metaphorically speaking, looking for our keys under the streetlight. Of course, whenever there's a difficult etymology, we're looking for connections with languages we know. But 'Paleo-Europe' could have had a lot more linguistic diversity than we give credit it for (plus layers of paleolithic, mesolitic, neolithic languages, when each language might conceivably have left a few words behind).
Imagine most written sources in English are lost, and linguists in the 7th millenia trying to make sense of US toponymy. Some place names they'd figure out, like 'Long Island', or even 'Brooklyn' and 'Staten Island'. But they'd never find anything satisfying for 'Connecticut', or 'Chicago', or 'New Mexico'.

I'd say English wolf matches Latin vulpēs 'fox', but never mind.

I thought so, but actually wolf is cognate with lupus (apparently a borrowing!), while vulpes is confusingly, cognate with Lit. lãpė and Sanskrit lopāśá

[WeepingElf]

I can underwrite everything you have written, Ares Land. Thank you for your post!

[Ares Land]

Thank you!

Another idea... Maybe research so far, has been undertaken on the wrong scale... It's natural to pick a pan-European scale (more data!) but I think we're getting too much noise.
It'd be interesting, I think, to pick a relatively restricted area, like the Dordogne département in French, continuously occupied since the Paleolithic, and go through all placenames, see which of them can't be satisfactorily explained and look for patterns... And then to redo the same study elsewhere.
(I'd save that for retirement myself.)

[Talskubilos]

There are indeed many Etruscan loanwords in Latin. (I'd like to see a cite for caesius being one of them, though!).

The proposal was from an amateur colleague in the old days of Yahoo groups.

Several IE etymologies are given for Tiberis, none of them seem particularly solid. And you know, I actually agree with Talskubilos that an Etruscan origin woudln't be unreasonable. I wouldn't go look for matches in Hurrian, though. That connection is too tentative to be really useable at this point.

Apparently, Etruscan has some Hurrian loanwords, as e.g. ci '3' ~ Hurrian ki-g, where -g is a remnant of an optional suffix for sheep counting, given the Nakh parallels.

Imagine most written sources in English are lost, and linguists in the 7th millenia trying to make sense of US toponymy. Some place names they'd figure out, like 'Long Island', or even 'Brooklyn' and 'Staten Island'. But they'd never find anything satisfying for 'Connecticut', or 'Chicago', or 'New Mexico'.

Don't forget Spanish toponyms such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and so on.

I'd say English wolf matches Latin vulpēs 'fox', but never mind.

I thought so, but actually wolf is cognate with lupus (apparently a borrowing!), while vulpes is confusingly, cognate with Lit. lãpė and Sanskrit lopāśá

IMHO, we aren't dealing with two separate PIE words for 'wolf' and 'fox', but rather a lexeme *(wV)lVp- ~ *(wV)lVkʷ-, with various developments in IE branches.

[Richard W]

Don't forget Spanish toponyms such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and so on.

There'll be a good enough etymology from Proto-Anglic! There'll be no need to invent a Hispanic substrate! That is, assuming that Spanish has not survived next door.

[Ares Land]

The proposal was from an amateur colleague in the old days of Yahoo groups.

OK, sure, but how do we substantiate it? Is that Etruscan word attested somewhere?

Apparently, Etruscan has some Hurrian loanwords (...)

It's even suggested they could be related. But at this stage, it's only tentative. First thing firsts! If a connection (whether borrowing or genetic) is established, then we can start deducing possible Etruscan from Hurrian!

Don't forget Spanish toponyms such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and so on.

Oh, yeah, these are good models too. Making again the parallel with paleo-European, hypothetical future linguistic could derive these from English 'angel', 'saint', 'sacred-', 'sacramental', with no hope of seeing the complex genetic/borrowing relationship with yet another distantly related language otherwise attested in 'Corpus Christi'.

IMHO, we aren't dealing with two separate PIE words for 'wolf' and 'fox', but rather a lexeme *(wV)lVp- ~ *(wV)lVkʷ-, with various developments in IE branches.

Yes, that's very tempting to assume something like that. But I don't think we should.
I have two main reasons for that: a linguistic one, and a cultural one.

On the linguistic front: imagine, again, a future linguist, dealing with reconstructed French *ʃvo, horse, *ʃamo, camel. Why shouldn't he consider that he's dealing with a single lexeme *ʃVvo/*ʃVmo?

On culture:
Our culture is urban, we have no close contact with wild animals, cattle-raising is a specialized profession, and we classify animals by genetic relationship.
IE culture was rural, with plenty of contact with wild animals, cattle-raising and agriculture were general concerns, and dangerous animals were subject to taboo.

To us, foxes and wolves are obviously in the same category of 'canines'.
For all we know, IE speakers didn't see things that way. Wolves are large, dangerous animals, especially to cattle but on occasion to human beings. Foxes are small, not particularly dangerous (remember: no chickens back then!) and probably hunted frequently. For all we know, to them, there was no obvious connection between the two.

A semantic connection that's obvious to us isn't necessarily so to a different culture. (And PIE -speakers had a very, very different culture.)

It's just as if our future linguist was living in an underground Martian city. To her or him, horse, camel, same difference.

Your connection between 'wolf' and 'fox' is entirely plausible, BTW. All I want to say is that without more evidence, it's best to handle these as different roots.

[Ares Land]

Oh, an amusing conlang example of the power of coincidence!
In Simbri, the conlang I'm working on these days, I have oyar, wolf and oyô, fox, completely unrelated. The proto forms are *hogar, *gugo, with just one consonant in common, and I never intended to have these be related...

Just to be clear: I didn't make these up to make a point. *hogar and *gugo were made up more than ten years old, with a random generator to boot. And my sound changes are conservative, compared to some real life ones.

[WeepingElf]

Thank you!

Another idea... Maybe research so far, has been undertaken on the wrong scale... It's natural to pick a pan-European scale (more data!) but I think we're getting too much noise.
It'd be interesting, I think, to pick a relatively restricted area, like the Dordogne département in French, continuously occupied since the Paleolithic, and go through all placenames, see which of them can't be satisfactorily explained and look for patterns... And then to redo the same study elsewhere.
(I'd save that for retirement myself.)

Yes, the regional aspect is often neglected. Words and names from one part of Europe (or elsewhere) are readily compared to ones from another part. One of my back-burner projects is to elaborate an atlas of the Old European Hydronymy - something I have never seen yet! - in order to see whether some of the roots and suffixes have regionally skewed distributions. Alas, this project doesn't have high priority right now, and I have other projects in the pipeline, including some more urgent yet very badly delayed ones.

[Talskubilos]

The proposal was from an amateur colleague in the old days of Yahoo groups.

OK, sure, but how do we substantiate it? Is that Etruscan word attested somewhere?

If I'm not mistaken, it's on the personal name Caisie.

Apparently, Etruscan has some Hurrian loanwords (...)

It's even suggested they could be related. But at this stage, it's only tentative. First thing firsts! If a connection (whether borrowing or genetic) is established, then we can start deducing possible Etruscan from Hurrian!

But in order to establish such a connection we need word correspondences first.

IMHO, we aren't dealing with two separate PIE words for 'wolf' and 'fox', but rather a lexeme *(wV)lVp- ~ *(wV)lVkʷ-, with various developments in IE branches.

Yes, that's very tempting to assume something like that. But I don't think we should. I have two main reasons for that: a linguistic one, and a cultural one.

On the linguistic front: imagine, again, a future linguist, dealing with reconstructed French *ʃvo, horse, *ʃamo, camel. Why shouldn't he consider that he's dealing with a single lexeme *ʃVvo/*ʃVmo?

I see your point, but PIE isn't a real language like French but a theoretical construct which IMHO agglutinates elements from several sources. At best it would be a crosss-section of the most recent stages of the IE family (not so recent if we include "laryngeals").

To us, foxes and wolves are obviously in the same category of 'canines'.
For all we know, IE speakers didn't see things that way. Wolves are large, dangerous animals, especially to cattle but on occasion to human beings. Foxes are small, not particularly dangerous (remember: no chickens back then!) and probably hunted frequently. For all we know, to them, there was no obvious connection between the two. A semantic connection that's obvious to us isn't necessarily so to a different culture. (And PIE -speakers had a very, very different culture.)

The thing is you take for granted PIE was a real language and possessed two different words for both animals, which is unlikely on the ground of irregular phonetic developments. Worse yet, Hittite ulip(pa)na- is the corresponding form of the 'fox' word but it means 'wolf'.

[Talskubilos]

Another idea... Maybe research so far, has been undertaken on the wrong scale... It's natural to pick a pan-European scale (more data!) but I think we're getting too much noise.
It'd be interesting, I think, to pick a relatively restricted area, like the Dordogne département in French, continuously occupied since the Paleolithic, and go through all placenames, see which of them can't be satisfactorily explained and look for patterns... And then to redo the same study elsewhere.
(I'd save that for retirement myself.)

Yes, the regional aspect is often neglected. Words and names from one part of Europe (or elsewhere) are readily compared to ones from another part. One of my back-burner projects is to elaborate an atlas of the Old European Hydronymy - something I have never seen yet! - in order to see whether some of the roots and suffixes have regionally skewed distributions. Alas, this project doesn't have high priority right now, and I have other projects in the pipeline, including some more urgent yet very badly delayed ones.

Speaking of hydronymy, regional IE *mori 'sea' corresponds to 'water' in Altaic languages: Mongolian *mören 'river', Korean *mɨ́r 'water'.

[KathTheDragon]

It's worth pointing out the Norse form ylgr "she-wolf" < PGmc *wulgī, which if it's to be related to *wulfaz "wolf" at all means both must descend from *wl̩kʷ-. If you don't allow for a change *kʷ >> *f in "wolf" (and it has been proposed to be regular!) then you lose the obvious and highly attractive connection between "wolf" and "she-wolf".

[Ares Land]

If I'm not mistaken, it's on the personal name Caisie.

OK, and how do we know it's not borrowed from Italic? And why would it be Baltic?

But in order to establish such a connection we need word correspondences first.

Why add Thefarie to the list of correspondance when you're not even sure it's not a borrowing?
When the Hurrian-Etruscan connection has been proven, and it hasn't yet, then maybe we can think of using Hurrian to explain Etruscan.
Otherwise, it's just circular reasoning: we posit an Etruscan word on the basis of a Hurrian form, then we demonstrate that Hurrian is related to Etruscan on the basis of that word.

IMHO, we aren't dealing with two separate PIE words for 'wolf' and 'fox', but rather a lexeme *(wV)lVp- ~ *(wV)lVkʷ-, with various developments in IE branches.

Yes, that's very tempting to assume something like that. But I don't think we should. I have two main reasons for that: a linguistic one, and a cultural one.

I see your point, but PIE isn't a real language like French but a theoretical construct which IMHO agglutinates elements from several sources. At best it would be a crosss-section of the most recent stages of the IE family (not so recent if we include "laryngeals").

The thing is you're taking for granted PIE was a real language and possesed two different words for both animals, which it's unlikely on the ground of irregular phonetic developments. Worse yet, Hittite ulip(pa)na- is the corresponding form of the 'fox' word but it means 'wolf'.

Do you have a source for that Hittite form? That could be interesting.

That Hittite word aside:
a) Yes, I'm aware of what PIE is, thank you. Maybe 'fox' and 'wolf' are variants of the same word across time/various dialects/whatever. Do we have any proof? Areas of the steppe where there are wolves but no foxes? Similar root alternations? (Again, I'd like to see cites for that Hittite form) If not, then maybe they're related, maybe they're not. So we take the conservative option of assuming they're not.
b) I don't see why it's "unlikely" to have different words for both animals. Most if not all PIE language distinguish foxes from wolves, why woudln't their ancestors have?
c) You're not the first one to look at these roots and think 'they sure look a lot like each other'. Yet no one seems to conflate the two. Why is that?

[Talskubilos]

If I'm not mistaken, it's on the personal name Caisie.

OK, and how do we know it's not borrowed from Italic? And why would it be Baltic?

Because there's no corresponding form in Italic and there're other Etruscan-Baltic correspondences.

When the Hurrian-Etruscan connection has been proven, and it hasn't yet, then maybe we can think of using Hurrian to explain Etruscan. Otherwise, it's just circular reasoning: we posit an Etruscan word on the basis of a Hurrian form, then we demonstrate that Hurrian is related to Etruscan on the basis of that word.

Not just this one but several other words.

Do you have a source for that Hittite form? That could be interesting.

It's quoted by Mallory & Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World, as well as in their former book. However, I couldn't find it in Kloekhorst's dictionary of the Brill-Leiden series.

That Hittite word aside: a) Yes, I'm aware of what PIE is, thank you. Maybe 'fox' and 'wolf' are variants of the same word across time/various dialects/whatever. Do we have any proof? Areas of the steppe where there are wolves but no foxes?

The steppe? At least I'd take the entire area where IE languages have been spoken.

Similar root alternations? (Again, I'd like to see cites for that Hittite form) If not, then maybe they're related, maybe they're not. So we take the conservative option of assuming they're not.

I disagree.

b) I don't see why it's "unlikely" to have different words for both animals. Most if not all PIE language distinguish foxes from wolves, why woudln't their ancestors have?

I suppose you meant "IE languages".

c) You're not the first one to look at these roots and think 'they sure look a lot like each other'. Yet no one seems to conflate the two. Why is that?

Probably because they adhere to the std PIE model.

[Ares Land]

Because there's no corresponding form in Italic and there're other Etruscan-Baltic correspondences.

OK, then list them , comprehensively.

Not just this one but several other words.

Then you just have circular reasoning with several words.

Do you have a source for that Hittite form? That could be interesting.

It's quoted by Mallory & Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World, as well as in their former book. However, I couldn't find it in Kloekhorst's dictionary of the Brill-Leiden series.

Which is actually an interesting connection, which you could have brought up to begin with, instead of claiming 'I'd say English wolf matches Latin vulpēs 'fox'' which, anyway, isn't tenable either even with Hittite evidence.

The steppe? At least I'd take the entire area where IE languages have been spoken.

Including Peru and Indonesia, then?
Seriously, though, if there is to be borrowing between branches/dialects, they must have been in reasonable proximity. Say the ancestor of proto-Italic borrowed a word from the ancestor of Hittite. That must have happened when "proto-proto-Italic" and "proto-Hittite" speakers could be in contact, not when proto-Italic speakers lived in Italy and Hittites in Anatolia.

Similar root alternations? (Again, I'd like to see cites for that Hittite form) If not, then maybe they're related, maybe they're not. So we take the conservative option of assuming they're not.

I disagree.

Well, it's your right. That makes your position completely unconvincing, but it's your right.

c) You're not the first one to look at these roots and think 'they sure look a lot like each other'. Yet no one seems to conflate the two. Why is that?

Probably because they adhere to the std PIE model.

It's perfectly all right to disagree with standard model, but you have to show solid evidence that your model is better than the standard one.
So far what evidence do we have? You've come up with a bunch of words, some of them quite dubious and you've made up etymologies for them.
I dunno about everybody else but as for me, I'll stick with the standard PIE model.

[Kuchigakatai]

There are indeed many Etruscan loanwords in Latin. (I'd like to see a cite for caesius being one of them, though!).

De Vaan says that, to link it to IE, it helps that Germanic and Baltic have words from a PIE root *koyd- or *koyt- related to the notion of 'bright, clear', and I'd add Sanskrit: Gothic haidus 'manner, appearance' (> related to German -heit), Old Norse heiðr 'bright, clear, cloudless (sky)', OHG heitar 'bright, clear', Latvian skaidrs 'clear (weather, air, sound)', Skt. citra 'bright, visible, multicoloured, wonderful'. The Germanic words seem to reflect *koyd-t- even, what Latin would need for the -s-! However, De Vaan mentions two problems:
1) this -s- that needs to come from *koyd-t- would involve a weird use of -t- in Latin, indicating colour
2) *koy- shouldn't be able to become cae-

No Etruscan etymon proposal though.

[Talskubilos]

Do you have a source for that Hittite form? That could be interesting.

It's quoted by Mallory & Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World, as well as in their former book. However, I couldn't find it in Kloekhorst's dictionary of the Brill-Leiden series.

Which is actually an interesting connection, which you could have brought up to begin with, instead of claiming 'I'd say English wolf matches Latin vulpēs 'fox'' which, anyway, isn't tenable either even with Hittite evidence.

You're right.

Seriously, though, if there is to be borrowing between branches/dialects, they must have been in reasonable proximity. Say the ancestor of proto-Italic borrowed a word from the ancestor of Hittite. That must have happened when "proto-proto-Italic" and "proto-Hittite" speakers could be in contact, not when proto-Italic speakers lived in Italy and Hittites in Anatolia.

I'm afraid you're a bit too confident in proto-languages and the classical genealogical tree model, which I think it's an oversimplification (a huge one in the case PIE). For example, Latin sanctus 'saint' and sacer 'holy' < *sa(n)k- is cognate to Hittite šāklāi-/šākli- 'custom, rule', and the only correspondences in other IE languages would be Greek hágios 'holy', házomai 'to dread' and Sanskrit yájati 'workships' < IE *yag'-.

It's perfectly all right to disagree with standard model, but you have to show solid evidence that your model is better than the standard one.
So far what evidence do we have? You've come up with a bunch of words, some of them quite dubious and you've made up etymologies for them.
I dunno about everybody else but as for me, I'll stick with the standard PIE model.

Time will tell.

[Talskubilos]

There are indeed many Etruscan loanwords in Latin. (I'd like to see a cite for caesius being one of them, though!).

De Vaan says that, to link it to IE, it helps that Germanic and Baltic have words from a PIE root *koyd- or *koyt- related to the notion of 'bright, clear', and I'd add Sanskrit: Gothic haidus 'manner, appearance' (> related to German -heit), Old Norse heiðr 'bright, clear, cloudless (sky)', OHG heitar 'bright, clear', Latvian skaidrs 'clear (weather, air, sound)', Skt. citra 'bright, visible, multicoloured, wonderful'. The Germanic words seem to reflect *koyd-t- even, what Latin would need for the -s-! However, De Vaan mentions two problems:
1) this -s- that needs to come from *koyd-t- would involve a weird use of -t- in Latin, indicating colour
2) *koy- shouldn't be able to become cae-

No Etruscan etymon proposal though.

Either this or the one I quoted before, a native (i.e. PIE-inherited) etymology is impossible, so an intermediate language is needed. The most likely candidates are Etruscan and Italic languages such as Umbrian.

[Kuchigakatai]

It is possible Proto-Italic may have borrowed it from pre-Proto-Germanic, or something, though, if OHG heitar really reflects -d-t-.

[Richard W]

There are indeed many Etruscan loanwords in Latin. (I'd like to see a cite for caesius being one of them, though!).

De Vaan says that, to link it to IE, it helps that Germanic and Baltic have words from a PIE root *koyd- or *koyt- related to the notion of 'bright, clear', and I'd add Sanskrit: Gothic haidus 'manner, appearance' (> related to German -heit), Old Norse heiðr 'bright, clear, cloudless (sky)', OHG heitar 'bright, clear', Latvian skaidrs 'clear (weather, air, sound)', Skt. citra 'bright, visible, multicoloured, wonderful'. The Germanic words seem to reflect *koyd-t- even, what Latin would need for the -s-! However, De Vaan mentions two problems:
1) this -s- that needs to come from *koyd-t- would involve a weird use of -t- in Latin, indicating colour
2) *koy- shouldn't be able to become cae-

Why do you rule out the e-grade? After a plain velar, the Latin e-grade has a strong tendency to wind up as /a/ - doesn't that also apply to diphthongs?