Paleo-European languages

[Travis B.]

But in other words the correspondence is either *d or *s, thus ponting to different borrowing routes. For example, Caucasian *bħertsˀi(~ -e) 'wolf, jackal' ~ Greek párdos, párdalos 'leopard' but Hittite parš-ana- 'id.' There's also Caucasian *tsæ:nqqˀV 'lynx, panther' ~ IE *sinǵho- 'lion, leopard', a regional word.

Ah, different borrowing routes. That way, you can make anything "match" anything!

Gamkrelidze & Ivanov considered *pard-/*pars- to be a substrate loanword from some language of Asia Minor, whose alternation d ~ s would reflect a dental fricative. In fact, this is a Wanderwort who spread to other languages as well. On the one hand, to Indo-Iranian (Sogdian prwδnk, Pashto pr̥āng 'panther', Sanskrit pr̥dāku- 'tiger, panther') and Latin pardus, and on the other, Hattic ha-prašš-un 'of leopard (gen.)' and Persian pārs ~ fārs 'panther', in turn borrowed into Western Mongolian phars, bars 'snow leopard; tiger', Old Turkic bārs 'tiger' (although some Turkic languages preserve the meaning 'panther') and Russian bars 'leopard'.

Again, casually invoking Wanderwörter, and at the same time failing to explain why some Indo-Iranian languages get /d/ and others get /s/ - without justifying it in terms of a broader alternation across Indo-Iranian that holds up in terms of the comparative method.

[Talskubilos]

Again, casually invoking Wanderwörter, and at the same time failing to explain why some Indo-Iranian languages get /d/ and others get /s/ - without justifying it in terms of a broader alternation across Indo-Iranian that holds up in terms of the comparative method.

This is just one more example which illustrates the inadequacy of the classical genealogical tree model.

[Travis B.]

Again, casually invoking Wanderwörter, and at the same time failing to explain why some Indo-Iranian languages get /d/ and others get /s/ - without justifying it in terms of a broader alternation across Indo-Iranian that holds up in terms of the comparative method.

This is just one more example which illustrates the inadequacy of the classical genealogical tree model.

Saying that just because the conventional model may not be perfect we therefore get to just make up stuff is not an adequate justification.

See, if you were actually trying, you would say that there are two forms, one *Pars in Turkic that got loaned into Mongolian, western Iranian, and Russian, *pard in Indo-Iranian that got lost in western Iranian, and that Latin pardus may or may not be a coincidence or may, if *pard in Indo-Iranian were descended from an IE root, inherited from PIE. But no, you just have to invoke plain old nonsense. Even still, that's probably nonsense, but at least more easily justified nonsense.

[Nortaneous]

IE branches with such sweeping consonant shifts are found on the outer edges of the ancient IE dialect continuum (such as Germanic, Armenian or Tocharian), not in its centre.

Germanic and Tocharian were most likely close together in the dialect continuum; so were Armenian and Greek. Phrygian also shows a major consonant shift; how peripheral was it?

(As for the details of Tocharian, there's only one word at least in TB as evidence for *d palatalizing to ś, so better to treat śak as irregular IMO. I think there's a case to be made that *d > t but *dʲ > ts, which could be taken to suggest *T *D *Dh > *T *Th *T or something like that.)

Proximity during the process of IE disintegration does illustrate the inadequacy of the classical tree model, but it's not that big a deal - Greek and Armenian have enough similarities that they were probably close together, but AFAIK there's no evidence for a Greco-Armenian branch.

Cf. American English, where grammatical innovations tend to spread, but phonological innovations tend to drive regional differentiation, and some phonological innovations are shared with British English. In the far future, there could be cross-cutting isoglosses in the "Anglic" family - TRAP-BATH distinction (shared by most of the family, but not American English, except northern Mid-Atlantic as æ-tensing), FATHER-BOTHER distinction (shared by most of the family, but not American English, except New England), "y'all" (shared by, at that point, probably all of American English) - and there wouldn't be any way to get a tree out of that. There isn't any way to get a tree out of it now: sometimes things spread across dialects, and sometimes they don't. Probably the same was true of the augment, satemization, and so on.

Again, casually invoking Wanderwörter, and at the same time failing to explain why some Indo-Iranian languages get /d/ and others get /s/ - without justifying it in terms of a broader alternation across Indo-Iranian that holds up in terms of the comparative method.

This is just one more example which illustrates the inadequacy of the classical genealogical tree model.

It really isn't.

[WeepingElf]

IE branches with such sweeping consonant shifts are found on the outer edges of the ancient IE dialect continuum (such as Germanic, Armenian or Tocharian), not in its centre.

Germanic and Tocharian were most likely close together in the dialect continuum; so were Armenian and Greek. Phrygian also shows a major consonant shift; how peripheral was it?

Germanic and Tocharian close together? Are you serious? Tocharian is an outlier, probably a descendant of the language of the Afanasievo culture, a group of Late Yamnaya/Early Corded Ware who trekked far eastward and early lost contact to the rest of IE. Their language would be expected to stand entirely outside the IE dialect continuum (though not requiring, unlike Anatolian, an earlier stage of PIE), developing entirely by its own rules, and this is precisely what we see in Tocharian.

Armenian and Greek were close together until Armenian moved into Anatolia. Phrygian appears to occupy an intermediate position between Greek and Armenian (and the scholars are still debating whether it had an Armenian-like or other kind of shift at all). And yes, I'd speak of a peripheral position (within non-Anatolian IE) here, as I would with Germanic; even if Armenian met Iranian, which came to the same area from a completely different direction.

[Talskubilos]

See, if you were actually trying, you would say that there are two forms, one *Pars in Turkic that got loaned into Mongolian, western Iranian, and Russian, *pard in Indo-Iranian that got lost in western Iranian, and that Latin pardus may or may not be a coincidence or may, if *pard in Indo-Iranian were descended from an IE root, inherited from PIE.

It's sure Latin pardus was borrowed from Greek.

[Nortaneous]

IE branches with such sweeping consonant shifts are found on the outer edges of the ancient IE dialect continuum (such as Germanic, Armenian or Tocharian), not in its centre.

Germanic and Tocharian were most likely close together in the dialect continuum; so were Armenian and Greek. Phrygian also shows a major consonant shift; how peripheral was it?

Germanic and Tocharian close together? Are you serious? Tocharian is an outlier, probably a descendant of the language of the Afanasievo culture, a group of Late Yamnaya/Early Corded Ware who trekked far eastward and early lost contact to the rest of IE. Their language would be expected to stand entirely outside the IE dialect continuum (though not requiring, unlike Anatolian, an earlier stage of PIE), developing entirely by its own rules, and this is precisely what we see in Tocharian.

yes - Adams and Hamp both held this position, and more recently Fellner has argued against the early split scenario for Tocharian

[Travis B.]

See, if you were actually trying, you would say that there are two forms, one *Pars in Turkic that got loaned into Mongolian, western Iranian, and Russian, *pard in Indo-Iranian that got lost in western Iranian, and that Latin pardus may or may not be a coincidence or may, if *pard in Indo-Iranian were descended from an IE root, inherited from PIE.

It's sure Latin pardus was borrowed from Greek.

And at least according to Wiktionary (not a reliable source), that was borrowed from Indo-Iranian, and has cognates in both Persian and Sanskrit, which makes it unlikely to be a Turkic loan.

[Richard W]

Proximity during the process of IE disintegration does illustrate the inadequacy of the classical tree model, but it's not that big a deal - Greek and Armenian have enough similarities that they were probably close together, but AFAIK there's no evidence for a Greco-Armenian branch.

Gray & Atkinson derived a Graeco-Armenian branch, but it seems to be no stronger than the argument that Balto-Slavonic groups with Western IE rather than Indo-Iranian.

[Ares Land]

I've just found this example of a fictional lost IE language: A shared substrate between Greek and Italic

I'm sorry, but that paper is a great deal more convincing that what you've shown us so far.
They come up with some correspondances, acknowledge that four words is not sufficient, proceed to test their hypothesis on several words with unclear etymology... At least it seems more sound.

Hmm, maybe. This raises the question where (and when) such a language would have been spoken, if it had contact with Greek, Italic and Slavic (the latter per its identity with Temematic). A possible location would perhaps be Transylvania, if Italic came to Italy through the Pannonian Basin (which I consider likely).

If I understand the authors correctly, the speakers would have been, more or less, the "Pelasgians"; they would have lived in Greece and then crossed over to Southern Italy, much like the Greeks did.

[Richard W]

Germanic and Tocharian were most likely close together in the dialect continuum; so were Armenian and Greek. Phrygian also shows a major consonant shift; how peripheral was it?

Armenian and Phrygian wound up being the two wings of the non-Anatolian IE advance into Anatolia - that makes them pretty peripheral.

[KathTheDragon]

Random observation: since nobody posting here seems to really be interested in Octaviano's ideas, and he's clearly not going to give a single one of them up no matter what arguments you make, why bother responding to him at all?

[Richard W]

Random observation: since nobody posting here seems to really be interested in Octaviano's ideas, and he's clearly not going to give a single one of them up no matter what arguments you make, why bother responding to him at all?

• For the education of passersby.
• He may have something coherent to say. He may actually have gathered some real data on Indo-Iranian loans in Celtic. While following up on the notion that the Tocharian v. core IE division might not be real, I came upon a conclusion from computational phylogeny that there was set of Indo-Iranian loans in Celtic. Now that is interesting. Are we looking at a bizarre satem substrate as Tavi suggests, or a far-travelled Indo-Iranian influence?

[Moose-tache]

Random observation: since nobody posting here seems to really be interested in Octaviano's ideas, and he's clearly not going to give a single one of them up no matter what arguments you make, why bother responding to him at all?

I re-iterate my request to have this thread clearly labeled "Warning: Eddy Thread." These things are highly addictive. It's two simultaneous puzzles: figure out why it's crazy and wrong, and figure out how to convince the wrong person. It's like the human equivalent of one of those feather-on-a-stick cat toys. We just can't stop trying to get it, even though it remains always beyond our grasp.

[Ares Land]

Random observation: since nobody posting here seems to really be interested in Octaviano's ideas, and he's clearly not going to give a single one of them up no matter what arguments you make, why bother responding to him at all?

You're right, of course, but someone is wrong on the Internet!

[WeepingElf]

Random observation: since nobody posting here seems to really be interested in Octaviano's ideas, and he's clearly not going to give a single one of them up no matter what arguments you make, why bother responding to him at all?

You are right. Hardly anything he posts is worth discussing (though we have a saying in German: Auch ein blindes Huhn findet mal ein Korn 'even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain'), and our chance to convince him that his approach is flawed and yields far too many false positives is nil. He constantly dodges the question of regular sound correspondences, for instance, usually by pulling a new substratum language or loan pathway out of his hat that "just happens" to yield the sound correspondences he needs for the item in question. As I and others have said several times here and in various threads on the old ZBB, anything (and thereby nothing) can be shown that way!

Yet, I would regret if the moderators closed this thread. I see no reason to do so at this time. So far, Talskubilos has not resorted to ad hominem attacks (though he once took a criticism of his methods as one), and what he posts is mostly amusing rather than offensive. Also, the subject matter (Paleo-European languages) is one I and some others are interested in, and we wish to discuss it. Also, this is a topic at the outer limits of historical linguistics where it is not always easy to tell which ideas are misguided and which are promising.

So the best way is simply to ignore Talskubilos except when he happens to "find a grain" and say something (e.g. by pointing at a work that isn't to be rejected out of hand) that is actually worth discussing.

[Talskubilos]

I'm sorry, but that paper is a great deal more convincing that what you've shown us so far. They come up with some correspondances, acknowledge that four words is not sufficient, proceed to test their hypothesis on several words with unclear etymology... At least it seems more sound.

But their attempt to give an IE etymology to the hydronym Tiberis, completely ignoring Etruscan, is rather unconvincing.

The thing is with the proper ad hoc sound correspondences you can "derive" almost anything from PIE.

[Talskubilos]

You are right. Hardly anything he posts is worth discussing (though we have a saying in German: Auch ein blindes Huhn findet mal ein Korn 'even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain'), and our chance to convince him that his approach is flawed and yields far too many false positives is nil. He constantly dodges the question of regular sound correspondences, for instance, usually by pulling a new substratum language or loan pathway out of his hat that "just happens" to yield the sound correspondences he needs for the item in question. As I and others have said several times here and in various threads on the old ZBB, anything (and thereby nothing) can be shown that way!

I'm sure I'm rather untidy in my work, but I'm convinced consistent (a better term than "regular") correspondences are paramount.

For example, if I've linked Caucasian *ttsˀwǝ̄-nHē to IE *yoini is because I've also found other instances where a Caucasian affricate corresponds to IE *y. But this doesn't mean there couldn't be other correspondences as well. In fact, this is the main reason which have leaded me to think the classical monolithic PIE model is inaccurate.

Random observation: since nobody posting here seems to really be interested in Octaviano's ideas, and he's clearly not going to give a single one of them up no matter what arguments you make, why bother responding to him at all?

I'm always open to discussion, but I'm rather reluctanct to authority arguments based on the established PIE theory is a "hard science" like e.g. physics or mathematics.

[WeepingElf]

The thing is with the proper ad hoc sound correspondences you can "derive" almost anything from PIE.

Of course, but how is your work better than that?

[WeepingElf]

I'm always open to discussion, but I'm rather reluctanct to authority arguments based on the established PIE theory is a "hard science" like e.g. physics or mathematics.

Nobody in the field considers IE comparative linguistics a "hard science" on a par with physics, let alone mathematics. All reconstructions have to be taken with a grain of salt - this is precisely the reason why they are marked with asterisks. You are beating up a strawman here.