Paleo-European languages

[Richard W]

The thing is the genealogical tree doesn't account for lateral relationships (substrates and adstrates), so we need better models.

If you think there ought to be a way of representing language history that represents lateral transfer, that's one thing - maybe the microbiologists have something figured out here - but genealogical trees are not trying to do that.

Indeed they have - just google images for lateral transfer. The cleanest example is at the wikipedia last universal common ancestor article. The computational linguists have their phylogenetic nets. The transfer links have been called 'vines'. Plant geneticists have their tree symbol for hybridisation, and I've recently found a computational linguistics paper on applying the techniques. The results were presented in a vein of, 'Now, what's the truth behind this result?'. While some results were reasonable - Albanian was assigned minority Latin ancestry - Scandinavian or French loans in English resulted in Frisian being identified as a hybrid of English and Dutch!

[WeepingElf]

To quote an example, Germanic *xandu- 'hand' comes from the same lexeme *ḱmt- fossilized in some IE numerals.

You do know you are making an extraordinary claim - do you have extraordinary evidence to back it up?

I think the Germanic and the PIE lexemes are related to Semitic *χamʃ '5', and I bet their common ancestor would be *kamtʃ- or something like that.

You have become quite a Semitophile lately, no? I'd rather suspect an Aquan[1] loan into Germanic here. 'Hand' > 'five' and 'pair of hands' > 'ten' IMHO make good sense; the reverse, not so much. Of course, the Semitic word may once have meant 'hand', too, but the whole thing seems quite far-fetched to me.

[1] If someone has missed it: "Aquan" is a hypothetical lost branch of IE associated with the Bell Beaker culture and leaving traces in the "Old European Hydronymy". This branch may have been even more archaic than Anatolian. It is named after the word for 'river' which appears to have been borrowed into Italic and Germanic.

[Travis B.]

To quote an example, Germanic *xandu- 'hand' comes from the same lexeme *ḱmt- fossilized in some IE numerals.

You do know you are making an extraordinary claim - do you have extraordinary evidence to back it up?

I think the Germanic and the PIE lexemes are related to Semitic *χamʃ '5', and I bet their common ancestor would be *kamtʃ- or something like that.

Did you read what I just said?

[Talskubilos]

You have become quite a Semitophile lately, no? I'd rather suspect an Aquan[1] loan into Germanic here. 'Hand' > 'five' and 'pair of hands' > 'ten' IMHO make good sense; the reverse, not so much. Of course, the Semitic word may once have meant 'hand', too, but the whole thing seems quite far-fetched to me.

I'd rather think the source would be "Europic" instead of "Aquan", but never mind. The thing is loanwords relative to agriculture point to the languages spoken by Neolithic farmers in the Balkans area being close to Semitic (see for example this paper). But this doesn't necessarily mean the word 'hand' was originated in the Near East, where Semitic was spoken

[Talskubilos]

Did you read what I just said?

How about Latin carpō 'to harvest' ~ Germanic *xarb-ist- 'autumn' ~ Semitic *XarVp- id.?

[Travis B.]

Did you read what I just said?

How about Latin carpō 'to harvest' ~ Germanic *xarb-ist- 'autumn' ~ Semitic *XarVp- id.?

What I meant was you keep making these claims without providing a shred of evidence! Since when is there anything resembling evidence for significant contact between PIE or early post-PIE-speakers in the first place. The burden of proof is on you to provide this evidence.

[Nortaneous]

It isn't the job of the genealogical tree to account for lateral relationships! If you think there ought to be a way of representing language history that represents lateral transfer, that's one thing - maybe the microbiologists have something figured out here - but genealogical trees are not trying to do that. And lateral transfer is in most cases readily distinguishable from and much weaker than genealogical inheritance, so this would only be relevant for, like, Bai and Wutun. It's also much harder to demonstrate: Tocharian probably has significant Uralic (or Yeniseian??) influence, but the developments could conceivably have been internal, and I don't know of any convincing Uralic loans in Tocharian. This was likely not out of any constant language-specific resistance to loaning - there are plenty of Indo-Iranian and Sinitic loans.

I'm afraid Indo-European can't be accounted for without lateral trasnafers, even at the "PIE" level. To quote an example, Germanic *xandu- 'hand' comes from the same lexeme *ḱmt- fossilized in some IE numerals.

I think that's overstating the importance of loanwords. Micmac has loanwords from Basque - is this worth representing on a genealogical diagram? And what percentage (or percentage range) of PIE roots do you think are identifiable as likely loans?

What I meant was you keep making these claims without providing a shred of evidence! Since when is there anything resembling evidence for significant contact between PIE or early post-PIE-speakers in the first place. The burden of proof is on you to provide this evidence.

I'm not sure if PIE-PSem contact is universally accepted, but it's at least taken seriously. The claim of contact isn't so extraordinary.

(Talskubilos, part of the reason you're getting a bad reception here is that you aren't citing sources anywhere near enough. If you're unfamiliar with the literature, you should fix that before making sweeping statements about the state of the field (or burning effort reinventing wheels); if you're familiar with it, you should cite it, if only because not everyone is.)

[Travis B.]

I'm not sure if PIE-PSem contact is universally accepted, but it's at least taken seriously. The claim of contact isn't so extraordinary.

Partially I was just exasperated by Octaviano's reflexive invocation of borrowing without evidence. In this case Latin carpō and English harvest can be traced back to a perfectly good reconstruction as PIE *kerp-.

[Talskubilos]

What I meant was you keep making these claims without providing a shred of evidence! Since when is there anything resembling evidence for significant contact between PIE or early post-PIE-speakers in the first place. The burden of proof is on you to provide this evidence.

As I said before, the evidence are loanwords relative to agriculture in European IE languages, as apparently Eastern branches don't share this kind of lexicon.

[Talskubilos]

Partially I was just exasperated by Octaviano's reflexive invocation of borrowing without evidence. In this case Latin carpō and English harvest can be traced back to a perfectly good reconstruction as PIE *kerp-.

Only that there's no evidence of an e-Ablaut in this word. The conclusion is we're dealing with a pre-PIE loanword relative to agriculture.

[Talskubilos]

(Talskubilos, part of the reason you're getting a bad reception here is that you aren't citing sources anywhere near enough. If you're unfamiliar with the literature, you should fix that before making sweeping statements about the state of the field (or burning effort reinventing wheels); if you're familiar with it, you should cite it, if only because not everyone is.)

I've already quoted this paper (which somebody else pointed to me before): http://loanwords.prehistoricmap.com/wp- ... bulary.pdf

[Travis B.]

Partially I was just exasperated by Octaviano's reflexive invocation of borrowing without evidence. In this case Latin carpō and English harvest can be traced back to a perfectly good reconstruction as PIE *kerp-.

Only that there's no evidence of an e-Ablaut in this word. The conclusion is we're dealing with a pre-PIE loanword relative to agriculture.

[citation needed]

[Nortaneous]

(Talskubilos, part of the reason you're getting a bad reception here is that you aren't citing sources anywhere near enough. If you're unfamiliar with the literature, you should fix that before making sweeping statements about the state of the field (or burning effort reinventing wheels); if you're familiar with it, you should cite it, if only because not everyone is.)

I've already quoted this paper (which somebody else pointed to me before): http://loanwords.prehistoricmap.com/wp- ... bulary.pdf

Yes, I linked that. But that's one paper, and I'm surprised you didn't already know about it. If you review the literature, I think you'll find that some of your suggestions have been proposed and debated before.

I'm not sure about Semitic connections in "hand" (a connection with *ḱmt- is commonly proposed, e.g. here, but Kroonen disagrees and says *handu- is derived from *hinθan- "to reach for" < *(ḱ|k)ent-e- and compares it to *huntōn- < *(ḱ|k)n̥t-néh2), but Starostin suggested a connection to Proto-Uralic *käme(-ne-), although this seems weaker than a connection to *χamʃ. For a numeral loan, your best bet is "seven", mentioned in the Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics as a potential borrowing one way or the other. (Also *treyes ~ Akkadian šalaša, but this seems like a reach.)

Unfortunately I'm not a Semitologist (and not really an Indo-Europeanist either) so I can't provide a comprehensive bibliography.

[Richard W]

Only that there's no evidence of an e-Ablaut in this word. The conclusion is we're dealing with a pre-PIE loanword relative to agriculture.

It's just as well for your argument that OCS počrěti and Latin carpō don't exist. See also non-existent Russian čérpatʹ.

[Richard W]

(Duplicate post.)

[WeepingElf]

You have become quite a Semitophile lately, no? I'd rather suspect an Aquan[1] loan into Germanic here. 'Hand' > 'five' and 'pair of hands' > 'ten' IMHO make good sense; the reverse, not so much. Of course, the Semitic word may once have meant 'hand', too, but the whole thing seems quite far-fetched to me.

I'd rather think the source would be "Europic" instead of "Aquan", but never mind. The thing is loanwords relative to agriculture point to the languages spoken by Neolithic farmers in the Balkans area being close to Semitic (see for example this paper). But this doesn't necessarily mean the word 'hand' was originated in the Near East, where Semitic was spoken

What do you mean by "Europic"? Probably not what I meant before I abandoned it, as this presupposed the validity of the standard model of IE, and I remember that you attacked it when I was maintaining it. Anyway, that would be a dead horse that won't take you anywhere, so I assume that you mean something different. Please explain.

And how is 'hand' an agricultural term? Foragers have the same body parts as farmers

[Talskubilos]

For a numeral loan, your best bet is "seven", mentioned in the Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics as a potential borrowing one way or the other. (Also *treyes ~ Akkadian šalaša, but this seems like a reach.)

The numeral '7' originated from Semitic and spread as a Wanderwort to other languages. In fact, the lexeme *ʃabʕ- is quite similar to *sˀibʕ- 'finger', so it could be semantically motivated. Apparently, IE *septm derives from a Semitic femenine *ʃabʕ-at-um, while Germanic *sibun would come from the masculine form *ʃabʕ-um.

[Talskubilos]

It's just as well for your argument that OCS počrěti and Latin carpō don't exist. See also non-existent Russian čérpatʹ.

Sorry, but this is a completely different IE etymon, although similarly sounding.

[Richard W]

And how is 'hand' an agricultural term? Foragers have the same body parts as farmers

But English fist and finger may derive from five or rather its forerunners, as in modern English bunch of fives for 'fist'. So the 'hand' sense could come from the number, rather than vice versa.

I presume the connection of 'seven' with 'finger' is through being an abbreviation of a phrase meaning 'a hand and two fingers'; I had brief visions of 7-fingered farmers!

[Talskubilos]

But English fist and finger may derive from five or rather its forerunners, as in modern English bunch of fives for 'fist'. So the 'hand' sense could come from the number, rather than vice versa.

I don't think so, and in fact IE '5' appears to be a loanword from East Caucasian *fimkˀwV 'fist' (NCED 1008).

I presume the connection of 'seven' with 'finger' is through being an abbreviation of a phrase meaning 'a hand and two fingers'; I had brief visions of 7-fingered farmers!

Probably not 7, but apparently 6-fingered persons do exist, as shown by the Spanish name Seisdedos '6 fingers'.

On the other hand, the Caucasian numeral '6' seems to derive from a lexeme 'hand' found in Yenisseian and Burushaski, and then it was borrowed into Sino-Tibetan through sheepherding interchanges in the Asian highlands.