Paleo-European languages

[Talskubilos]

I will admit that I don't think the use of capitals is unambiguous. Does it signify unexplained irregularity or unresolved protoform?

Yes. This means "an unknown consonant and an unknown vowel"

Not exactly. As I mentioned before, /C/ doesn't stand for any consonant but a dental affricate/fricative, as /c/ = IPA /ts/.

[Richard W]

Apparently, there're no more examples of *ttsˀ ~ IE *d but I could find one with *s instead: Caucasian *ttsˀăqˀV 'strength, power' ~ IE *seģh- 'to hold'.

Neither phonetics nor semantics match here, not even parts of speech match. This is not even a resemblance.

The phonetics have a poor match, almost at the cakra v. wheel level, but at least there are sibilance and dorsality.

As to the semantics, something has been lost in translation. The IE root has connotations of domination and control - its descendants include German Sieg 'victory'.

[bradrn]

Hmm, that argument is starting to make a bit more sense now. Though I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if I had a few more examples of that same purported *ttsˀ ~ d correspondence. (I’d try finding some myself, except I have very limited knowledge of PIE.)

Apparently, there're no more examples of *ttsˀ ~ IE *d but I could find one with *s instead: Caucasian *ttsˀăqˀV 'strength, power' ~ IE *seģh- 'to hold'.

Sorry, then I can’t accept it. Such an ad hoc correspondence is almost certainly a chance resemblance, if you can’t find any other instances of the same alternation.

I will admit that I don't think the use of capitals is unambiguous. Does it signify unexplained irregularity or unresolved protoform?

Yes. This means "an unknown consonant and an unknown vowel"

Not exactly. As I mentioned before, /C/ doesn't stand for any consonant but a dental affricate/fricative, as /c/ = IPA /ts/.

Even when it’s capitalised? It’s usually lowercase ⟨c⟩ which is equal to /ts/; all the other instances of uppercase ⟨C⟩ I’ve seen have been used to represent an unknown consonant.

[Talskubilos]

Hmm, that argument is starting to make a bit more sense now. Though I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if I had a few more examples of that same purported *ttsˀ ~ d correspondence. (I’d try finding some myself, except I have very limited knowledge of PIE.)

Apparently, there're no more examples of *ttsˀ ~ IE *d but I could find one with *s instead: Caucasian *ttsˀăqˀV 'strength, power' ~ IE *seģh- 'to hold'.

Sorry, then I can’t accept it. Such an ad hoc correspondence is almost certainly a chance resemblance, if you can’t find any other instances of the same alternation.

I've already show you one: *pard-/*pars- 'leopard' ~ Caucasian *bħĕrtsˀĭ (~ -ĕ) 'wolf, jackal'.

Even when it’s capitalised? It’s usually lowercase ⟨c⟩ which is equal to /ts/; all the other instances of uppercase ⟨C⟩ I’ve seen have been used to represent an unknown consonant.

No wonder that site is called The Tower of Babel.

[bradrn]

Hmm, that argument is starting to make a bit more sense now. Though I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if I had a few more examples of that same purported *ttsˀ ~ d correspondence. (I’d try finding some myself, except I have very limited knowledge of PIE.)

Apparently, there're no more examples of *ttsˀ ~ IE *d but I could find one with *s instead: Caucasian *ttsˀăqˀV 'strength, power' ~ IE *seģh- 'to hold'.

Sorry, then I can’t accept it. Such an ad hoc correspondence is almost certainly a chance resemblance, if you can’t find any other instances of the same alternation.

I've already show you one: *pard-/*pars- 'leopard' ~ Caucasian *bħĕrtsˀĭ (~ -ĕ) 'wolf, jackal'.

Oh, sorry, I missed that one. In that case, you have two correspondences! Which isn’t really much better. I’d be curious to know, do you have any correspondences with more than 5 or so pairs?

[Moose-tache]

There are already examples of initial voicing of the dental fricative in native words, so "they" does not cry out for any special explanation.

It is not the voicing, but the vowel that calls out for explanation. Though the reflexes of Old English þæg(e)/þāg (and of þā in the north) and Old Danish þei (in English) eventually merge, they should have different Middle English reflexes, should they not?

Wait, we're using words like "should" in Anglo-Saxon phonology now? If I had a nickel for each time a word showed up in historical English spelling with a vowel that has no historical explanation, I would be a rich woman. Back vowels become front vowels. Front vowels become back vowels. It's madness. If we encounter a word in English with a non-sensical vowel, all that it tells us is that, yes, Middle English continues to Middle English.

[Talskubilos]

Oh, sorry, I missed that one. In that case, you have two correspondences! Which isn’t really much better. I’d be curious to know, do you have any correspondences with more than 5 or so pairs?

Unfortunately no, but the this d ~ s alternation can be seen in e.g. IE *dug-h2ter 'daughter' ~ Thracian suk(h)is.

[Richard W]

Hybridisation adds to a genealogy, rather than reroots it. Now, this process that incorporated the language of the Danes into English might be considered the absorption of a dialect - it's far from certain that the languages of the English and Danish weren't mutually comprehensible. Hybridisation is frequently rejected on principle.

Hmmm... there really are a couple of points here:

Wasn't the point of cladistics to just study intrafamilial language relationships without being concerned about loaning?

As to the point, I detect envy of the palaeontologists' trees. The drawing up of trees seems to be a pursuit of history for its own sake, with a hobbit-like desire for simplicity and clarity. There is of course a kingdomist preference for emulating the evolutionary trees of animals, disdaining the reticulate 'trees' of plants and the vine-laden speculative trees of prokaryotes.

The genome-based deductions about the splitting of the hominids serve as a reminder that reticulation also occurs in animals, or at least if one splits species too finely. The biggest joker is the 'separation' between Thalarctos maritimus (polar bear) and Ursus arctos (brown bear), which are the same species under the biological species concept!

1. Is hybridisation even a linguistic term or an established linguistic phenomenon? If not, then we're just discussing semantics and to each their own. If yes, I'd like to know how it differentiates from mass loaning.

Biologists have tools for extracting branching cladograms from tables of characters. The palaeontologists themselves have chants of "garbage in, garbage out", and have their specialist terms of denigration for uncooperative facts, such as "incomplete lineage sorting" and "introgression" (= dialect mixing). Having tried these tools, computational linguists have tried their hand with the botanists' tools for extracting reticulated cladograms. These tools integrally have the concept of hybridisation, which is not based on lingusts' usage.

3. In any case, the influence of French on English seems comparable, if not greater. Why not also add it to the list of ancestors or what-have-you?

I've seen the results of computational studies of reticulation on Indo-European, and remarkably enough, 'round' and 'mountain' don't lead to a deduction of hybridisation between English and French, and I see no sign of it in the reported outputs. (These meanings don't hold onto their words well.) Computational studies come up with English being distinct from the rest of West Germanic, and reinterpret the Anglo-Frisian group as a hybridisation event between English and Dutch yielding Frisian. What shows up in phylogenetic networks is the Scandinavianness of English within West Germanic.

What about Latin and Ancient Greek?

Presumably with Proto-Romance as the outcome. Nothing shows in the computational analyses. Conversely, Albanian does show up as a hybrid of Latin and something else; I think the something else was Indo-Iranian.

I'm not an expert in Old English, but from what I've read linguists are reluctant to call it a 'hybrid language'.

Do you mean Middle English? Middle English is a grade rather than a clade, and covers various combinations of Old English dialects and whatever became of East Norse. (I am not sure about specifically West Norse input.)

2. Tangent to the last point, I've left with the impression that just creolisation and pidginisation affect genealogy. If hybridisation also does, what's the threshold? How many words and grammatical elements? Certainly history is full of language A heavily influences language B scenarios and at this point we're looking at tanglewebs instead of just trees.

How does creolisation, as opposed to pidginisation, affect genealogy?

In biology, hybridisation is primarily an instantaneous effect. (There are slower processes, such as back-crossing and the loss of redundant chromosomes.) Koineisation can also be a very rapid process. By contrast, the acceptance of loans, especially as replacements, can be a cumulative process.

I don't have a threshold for hybridisation. The picture I have for Norse into English is the koineisation of late Old English with lects that were imperfectly learnt Old English with recourse to Norse.

[Nortaneous]

imo outside influence on English is generally overstated for anthropological reasons - "Middle English was actually a Norse/Celtic/whatever creole!!!" fits into Anglophones' view of English as an unusual and difficult language that "beats up other languages in alleys and steals their vocabulary", and increasingly there are obvious political motives for this as well, like how every long-distance trade artifact discovered in Scandinavia is somehow proof that Sweden is a 'nation of immigrants'

[Talskubilos]

The phonetics have a poor match, almost at the cakra v. wheel level, but at least there are sibilance and dorsality.

Celtic *longā 'boat, vessel' (but 'cinerary urn' in Cisalpine Gaulish lokan /longan/) is a loanword related to Caucasian *lĕqˀV̆ 'a kind of vessel'. Latin lanx 'dish' also comes from this etymology, presumably through Etruscan.

[bradrn]

Oh, sorry, I missed that one. In that case, you have two correspondences! Which isn’t really much better. I’d be curious to know, do you have any correspondences with more than 5 or so pairs?

Unfortunately no …

In that case, I am forced to consider this relationship ‘very unproven’, if not completely non-existent. Please inform us when you have enough regular correspondences to show that these aren’t just chance resemblances.

[Richard W]

Celtic *longā 'boat, vessel' (but 'cinerary urn' in Cisalpine Gaulish lokan /longan/) is a loanword related to Caucasian *lĕqˀV̆ 'a kind of vessel'. Latin lanx 'dish' also comes from this etymology, presumably through Etruscan.

The Celtic word means 'ship'; the Caucasian word typically means a holder for food or liquid. The Celtic word is generally held to derive from Latin.

[Talskubilos]

The Celtic word means 'ship'; the Caucasian word typically means a holder for food or liquid.

For example, English vessel refers to both, so semantics isn't a problem.

The Celtic word is generally held to derive from Latin.

Ranko Matasović (2009): Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic thinks this is a genuine Celtic word without IE etymology, and I agree with him.

[Talskubilos]

In that case, I am forced to consider this relationship ‘very unproven’, if not completely non-existent. Please inform us when you have enough regular correspondences to show that these aren’t just chance resemblances.

Quality is always preferrable to quantity. I'm sure we don't need a complete skeleton to identify an extinct hominid species, for example.

[bradrn]

In that case, I am forced to consider this relationship ‘very unproven’, if not completely non-existent. Please inform us when you have enough regular correspondences to show that these aren’t just chance resemblances.

Quality is always preferrable to quantity.

What do you mean by ‘quality’ in this particular case?

I'm sure we don't need a complete skeleton to identify an extinct hominid species, for example.

Yes, I quite agree with this. But there is a limit: you cannot identify a species as a hominid, for instance, from the shape of a single tooth. The analogy should be obvious.

[Talskubilos]

What do you mean by ‘quality’ in this particular case?

It has something to do with the amount of bibliographic work and the skills needed to filter spurious data (i.e. noise).

I'm sure we don't need a complete skeleton to identify an extinct hominid species, for example.

Yes, I quite agree with this. But there is a limit: you cannot identify a species as a hominid, for instance, from the shape of a single tooth. The analogy should be obvious.

I think we've recovered more than just a single tooth.

[Richard W]

...You cannot identify a species as a hominid, for instance, from the shape of a single tooth.

Do you really need a fingertip (or tip of a toe) as well? H. Denisova didn't start out with any more than those. The lectotype of Iguanadon anglicus is a single tooth.

[bradrn]

What do you mean by ‘quality’ in this particular case?

It has something to do with the amount of bibliographic work and the skills needed to filter spurious data (i.e. noise).

OK, so how do you know that your correspondences are not spurious, i.e. are regular and not just chance resemblances? The usual way of doing this is by finding enough cognates that we know they must be regular, which is why I am placing such an emphasis on quantity.

I'm sure we don't need a complete skeleton to identify an extinct hominid species, for example.

Yes, I quite agree with this. But there is a limit: you cannot identify a species as a hominid, for instance, from the shape of a single tooth. The analogy should be obvious.

I think we've recovered more than just a single tooth.

True, I was a bit uncharitable there: with the amount of evidence you’ve shown us so far, it feels as if we have a single tooth, a fingerbone, and half a toe. Yes, it’s more than a tooth, but I wouldn’t go wildly drawing conclusions from such paucity of evidence either.

...You cannot identify a species as a hominid, for instance, from the shape of a single tooth.

Do you really need a fingertip (or tip of a toe) as well? H. Denisova didn't start out with any more than those. The lectotype of Iguanadon anglicus is a single tooth.

I believe the Denisovans were identified using DNA evidence, so that’s millions of data rather than just one datum. The Iguanadon case is interesting, and shows the perils of scarce evidence:

It is known from his notebooks that Mantell first acquired large fossil bones from the quarry at Whitemans Green in 1820. Because also theropod teeth were found, thus belonging to carnivores, he at first interpreted these bones, which he tried to combine into a partial skeleton, as those of a giant crocodile. In 1821 Mantell mentioned the find of herbivorous teeth and began to consider the possibility that a large herbivorous reptile was present in the strata … In May 1822 he first presented the herbivorous teeth to the Royal Society of London but the members, among them William Buckland, dismissed them as fish teeth or the incisors of a rhinoceros … In 1824 Buckland described Megalosaurus and was on that occasion invited to visit Mantell's collection. Seeing the bones on 6 March he agreed that these were of some giant saurian—though still denying it was a herbivore. Emboldened nevertheless, Mantell again sent some teeth to Cuvier, who answered on 22 June 1824 that he had determined that they were reptilian and quite possibly belonged to a giant herbivore. In a new edition that year of his Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles Cuvier admitted his earlier mistake, leading to an immediate acceptance of Mantell, and his new saurian, in scientific circles.

Note the various misidentifications: crocodiles, fish and rhinoceroses. The correct identification came only after much more comparative evidence was found (namely the skeleton of Megalosaurus).

[Talskubilos]

OK, so how do you know that your correspondences are not spurious, i.e. are regular and not just chance resemblances? The usual way of doing this is by finding enough cognates that we know they must be regular, which is why I am placing such an emphasis on quantity.

Well, I think the case of the 'reed' words is solid enough. On the one hand, we've got a Caucasian protoform with two metathesized variants, and on the other, two IE protoforms with consistent sound correspondences.

[bradrn]

OK, so how do you know that your correspondences are not spurious, i.e. are regular and not just chance resemblances? The usual way of doing this is by finding enough cognates that we know they must be regular, which is why I am placing such an emphasis on quantity.

Well, I think the case of the 'reed' words is solid enough. On the one hand, we've got a Caucasian protoform with two metathesized variants, and on the other, two IE protoforms with consistent sound correspondences.

Yes, I agree that this is the most solid of your correspondences. But metathesis is common enough that, while suspicious, I don’t see this coincidence as enough evidence for a genealogical connection.