7 Apr 2007

The origin of Indo-European ego

(The following uses a special font to render linguistic symbols. Please download and install the Code2000 font [zip] if you're having difficulties with the display. A single asterisk (*) represents reconstructed forms; double asterisks (**) mark implausible forms.)

This blog entry is not about a psycho-linguistic exploration of our collective ego, nor even my own deranged ego. I'm talking about the word 'ego' and its unsaid curiosities, how it relates to Indo-European languages, why Nostraticists are wrong, and where it really comes from. Depending on your personality, my explanation will either prove to be terribly more boring or wonderfully more exciting than you've probably read elsewhere. Bon apétit, mes amis.

The English word 'ego' comes directly from Latin egō 'I, myself', an ancient word used to convey the first person singular throughout the Indo-European family of languages (Old English ic, German ich, Greek égō, Sanskrit áham, Hittite uk, etc.), the common origin being Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵoh₂ or *h₁éǵom. (Often, simply the common pronominal stem *h₁eǵ- is cited.) Unlike the second person where we see a nominative form *tu, enclitic *twe and plural verb ending *-te-, we see a curious break in the pattern with first person nominative *h₁eǵ-, enclitic *me and 1pp *-me-. Many would expect something like **mu in the nominative instead. However we have to look outside of PIE altogether, in language groups suspected to be remotely related to it (Proto-Uralic *minä and Etruscan mi), before we see any evidence for this earlier pronoun in the nominative case.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was spoken around 4000 BCE until the people who spoke it significantly spread out in different directions. Various new languages sprang forth from it, now spoken throughout Europe and India six thousand years later. So we can conclude logically that *h₁eǵ- was first used in Indo-European sometime even before that date.

However, beyond this, intelligent discussion dies. Little of substance is mentioned in books or shared in online forums. Few competent people delve seriously into prehistoric linguistics. Few ask important questions like "Where did that word come form?" or "When exactly was that pronoun first used?" Few too resist idle fantasy when seeking answers to these important questions but we need to solve these questions scientifically, based firmly on facts and logic, not by lazy whim.

Many Nostraticists wrongly connect it to a seemingly identical first person pronoun ɣem in a Siberian language called Chukchi (eg. Joseph Greenberg). This is rejected by mainstream linguists because it relies on idle eyeballing of look-alikes and exposes a lack of knowledge in the languages in question. Most Nostraticists fail to get intimate with the protolanguages on which they write and they suffer much-deserved scorn by academics as a result. However, the same academics who reject this solution offer no real solutions of their own, shirking their duty as scholars to be inquisitive. Sufficed to say, there is a more logical solution already available that shows that this pronoun is a much later invention and unique to PIE.

PIE *h₁éǵ- always seems to have ended, regardless of dialect, in a first person singular suffix intended exclusively for verbs. The ending -oh₂ is specifically used for the indicative mood of so-called thematic verbs (ie. stems ending in *-e-) . So, PIE *bher-e- 'carry' was conjugated in the first person as *bhéroh₂. The ending *-om is likewise a first person ending, used in the thematic subjunctive to convey a hypothetical situation. Either way, this pronoun undeniably behaves as though it were a verb, not a pronoun. Yet, how can a verb be a pronoun?

Easily, actually. It turns out that *h₁éǵoh₂ or *h₁éǵom can be understood to have originally meant 'I (am) here', formed from the attested adverb *h₁e-ǵe "here". This pronoun was initially only necessary when introducing oneself as a new topic, as emphasis, since the verb of a sentence itself was always conjugated distinctly for each person. Numerous languages show similarly formed pronouns made like verbs. Look at Inuit (uvaŋa 'I' from uva- 'here' and -ŋa 'I'; ivvit 'you' with -it 'you'), Aleut (tiŋ 'I' from ti- 'here' and 'I'), Coptic (ntok 'you', ntof 'he', ntos 'she' with pronominal endings -k, -f and -s respectively), and even Chukchi (ɣem 'I', ɣet 'you' from a demonstrative stem ɣe- and endings -m 'I' and -t 'you'). Chukchi pronouns may not be related to PIE ones but they do show an independent, parallel development that's still useful here.

The only objection left to analysing the PIE first person pronoun as a verb derived from an adverb is the belief that adverbs aren't normally made into verbs like this in PIE. I encountered that objection once when discussing it online and I didn't know what to say about that until I encountered this informative article entitled Hittite hi-verbs from adverbs that eliminates that argument.

The article explains that a number of Hittite verbs conjugated with its first-person ending -hi are derived directly from adverbs such as āppai 'to be finished' (PIE *h₁ópi 'afterward'), parā- 'to come forth' (PIE *pro 'ahead'), šanna- 'to conceal' (PIE *sn̥h₁- 'without'). That Hittite first person ending, by the way, has already been related by PIE experts to the thematic ending, precisely the one we see in this first person singular pronoun! (See Piotr Gasiorowski's Homepage on IE grammar.)

So my job is done. The mystery of 'ego' is thoroughly solved. Yes, break out the champagne. The mystery is solved. The next mystery now is what the original Pre-IE pronoun that *h₁egoh₂ had replaced looked like...

23 comments:

  1. I don't know the field too well, but this looks like the kind of idea you should consider writing up and publishing.

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  2. Thanks for the generous comment, although I imagine selling maybe a total of 1.4 books <:( A lot of people find comparative linguistics dry. I love this subject because it's like time-travel. Way cheaper than a real vacation, and you can take that trip no matter where you go. No need to worry about gas prices. Bored at work? Hate your boss? Sick of the English language? Then take a mental vacation: Imagine you're having a conversation in Proto-Uralic with some herdsman, talking about the nature of the cosmos. That's what I do all the time, maybe too much. People see the glossed-over look I have all the time and they assume I'm drunk (which is also possible) but I'm really just having a "protolang moment". I guess I'm being lazy and always expecting somebody else to write my point of view for me. Thanks for poking some life-direction into me :)

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  3. Oh, I was actually thinking about a academic journal article. That way, you won't have to worry about sales, since there are no royalties (just "fame").

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  4. Oh okay. Well, I see no serious 'academic' journal for Nostratic or long-range comparative linguistics at all. Publishing through someone else with low academic standards would defeat the purpose, even if I really needed 'fame' all that badly.

    Maybe I haven't thought this through but to me it seems that an independently published book marketed to the general audience online, if anything, is a more realistic avenue for 'long-range' comparative linguists because academia itself still treats this like a hot potato topic. Ultimately one would be forced to pursue this endeavor independently no matter what.

    Besides, the compulsion to offer others your own hard work without compensation just to gain some small sense of validation from others is way overrated :)

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  5. Hi, sorry for digging up a sort of old post. I ran into you on Dnghu, commenting. And clicked on your name to find your website here.

    Then I saw this article, and was surprised to see that you were having the exact same idea as I was :D

    Except that you mention the *-om ending to be the subjunctive ending, while I've learned that it's the secondary ending, to form past tenses and such for thematic verbs.

    Besides that I'm curious where you got your h2 from in *-oh2. I've always learned it's *-oH, because there isn't any conclusive proof after an *o which laryngeal it should be.

    Is your reasoning: *h3 is o-colouring, but since it's an *o it is in dinstinctive from *h2, and *h1 is only attested at the beginning of words and after consonants.

    Because that's what I have been thinking of, but I'm not sure how feasible that theory is.

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  6. No problem. This is a "dig-friendly" zone :)

    The subjunctive first person as far as I understand is *-o-m, comprised of a thematic vowel *-o- and the real 1ps secondary ending *-m. (Note: The secondary endings don't have vowels before them but subjunctive endings do.) The subjunctive is made distinct from the indicative past by way of an added vowel in athematic verbs and added length in thematic ones. (Eg: *bherom [past] vs. *bherōm [subj])

    Note also that *o alternates with *e in the paradigm (*-om, *-es, *-et, etc). I believe that this alternation is the result of Pre-IE "voiced-conditioned vowel lengthening" of a former schwa, based on a reworking of Jens Rasmussen's theories.

    The secondary endings are used not only for the indicative but for the subjunctive, optative, injunctive, aorist, etc. They are actually "primary" to IE grammar despite the name :)

    The thematic 1ps presentive *-oh2 is commonly reconstructed as such. The *h2 is due to its etymological connection to the 1ps perfect ending *-h2e (Hittite -hi with h proving the existence of the laryngeal). The arguement to connect the 1ps thematic present with the 1ps perfect is made stronger by examining the relationship of the Anatolian mi-/hi-conjugation to non-Anatolian IE languages with a triaspectual system of durative, aorist & perfective.

    For oodles of brain-numbing fun, check out Jasanoff's Hittite and the Indo-European Verb.
    http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Linguistics/TheoreticalDescriptiveLinguistic/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5OTI0OTA1Mw==

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  7. Hmm, that link didn't show up correctly. Let's try this. The google search link to that book is here:

    http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=jasanoff+indo-european&meta=

    There. Stupid blogger website! :P

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  8. According to Beekes at any rate. Optative takes the secondary endings, and subjunctive just takes the primary thematic endings.

    so an athematic verb Like `to be'
    *h1ésmi would result in subjunctive
    *h1soh2 (*h1esoh2?) rather than *h1som. *h1som would be the hypothetical aorist of to be (which, as far as I know probably didn't exist).

    I would therefore sooner go for the hypothesis that egom comes from the augmentless aorist of `I am here'. Since the secondary ending goes with the imperfect and aorist.

    your reason for *-oh2 is convincing :)

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  9. This is gonna be a long one...

    Keep in mind that there's also the matter of some hankypanky going on between subjunctives, which as I said, have the "extra vowel" after the stem, and thematic presentives that also have an extra vowel. You may note that the only thing truly distinguishing aorists from thematic presentives, besides the *i-indicative, is that extra vowel in the stem.

    The current interpretation (via Jasanoff et al.) is that the thematic stems are derived from subjunctives (which would have secondary endings) that became presentives (thus obtaining the primary endings). This theory is meant also to explain Narten presents and such. So, as his story goes which I'm now inclined to agree with, original *bhe:rti (athematic with lengthened vocalism) had *bheret as a subjunctive. The subjunctive form in turn was used to create a new "thematic" present *bhereti that would replace former *bhe:rti. It sounds crazy at first but the details of it convince me and Anatolian languages don't seem to have much evidence for thematic verbs at all! Yes, this also means that the new subjunctive going with this new presentive would now be doubly marked (with a long vowel).

    The ending *-i was originally nothing more than a marker for indicative, not exclusively presentive or durative, and was not appropriate for unreal or hypothetical situations. Anatolian hi-conjugations afterall show us that *-i was more widespread. So in the parent language of both Anatolian and "the rest", there would have been no grammatical distinction between "durative" and "aorist", both having the same endings and forms. This then explains the athematic presentatives like *sédti "he sits" as remnants of this older, more "blurry" situation.

    So the 1ps subjunctive of *es- would end in *-o-m, with secondary 1ps ending because it describes a non-indicative state. It seems to me that *ég^oh2 would be the result of the subjunctive-presentive mixup and thus technically formed after Anatolian went its merry way (or possibly during).

    It all suggests to me that the earlier "pan-IE" form is *ég^om, a subjunctive of an otherwise unattested verb *eg^- "to be here". It can't be aorist in the oldest layers because there is no aorist :P

    In Anatolian, the pronoun's personal ending eroded after it was no longer clear to its speakers what the original meaning of the phrase was, as it did in other branches like Germanic.

    So I find people who reconstruct simply *eg^ as "I, myself" for the oldest IE layer to be mixing up the timeline and to fail to recognize the etymology of the word. Bomhard further teases **e- out of it (despite the fact that *e- already means "here") to desperately connect it to some faraway Nostratic fantasy pronoun. Sigh. I support the idea of Nostratic but that careless splicing irks me and I for one am convinced that the pronoun is not much older than 7,000 years because of other things. It would have been coined between 5000 and 4000 BCE and not connectable to Nostratic at all.

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  10. That indeed makes a lot of sense this way!

    But you mention Anatolian has next to no proof for thematic verbs. While this is true, they are still there.

    zinahhi, iyami, hatrami, and all the ske/o iteratives are thematic verbs.

    So your assumption is, that these forms were generalized from the subjunctive stem rather than the present stem?

    Maybe I should look up Jasonoff's book on the Hittite verb in the university library sometime soon.

    One more question though. If *-i only represent indicative.
    While thematic endings would give subjunctive.

    There's not that many ways to represent either the aorist or the imperfect.

    So you're saying there's no aorist. Should I also assume there's no imperfect then?

    And I can't really figure out how the hi verbs which in a later non-hittite indo-european stage become the perfect verbs. But how would these then take a subjunctive form. Because neither in Hittite or any of the other Indo-European language there is any proof for thematic perfects.

    Except the *-oh2 ending now I think of it, that's just the 1p present thematic version of *-h2e from the perfect. But wouldn't you expect *-h2i (with indicative marker) rather than *-h2e?

    Hittite shows both. (-hhi/-hhe) Which is also quite confusing.

    I should really look up Jasonoff's book sometime soon. But I must say, this system definitely makes a lot more sense, and explains many of the weird quirks in the verb. :D

    P.S. I sort of used this comment as a mind dump. If all of these questions can be answered by reading Jasonoff's book, don't bother answering them all :D

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  11. Phoenix: But you mention Anatolian has next to no proof for thematic verbs. While this is true, they are still there.

    Yes, but the point is that they are suspiciously small in number while the other languages show the opposite, an abundance of thematics and a handful of athematics. We must then suspect that Anatolian had left the core IE-speaking community at a time when thematics were just getting started.

    Phoenix: So your assumption is, that these forms were generalized from the subjunctive stem rather than the present stem?

    Not just my assumption but the assumption of many IEists nowdays. I'm personally convinced by it now because I already had theories of my own about pre-IE and it helped me combine the durative and aorist into a single "mi-conjugation" in a way that made sense without those pesky thematic verbs in the way. Long story short, I actually couldn't adequately explain the source of thematics in my pre-IE theory. Jasanoff cured my woes! :)

    Phoenix: Maybe I should look up Jasonoff's book on the Hittite verb in the university library sometime soon.


    Yes, do. It's worth the headache. Bring ibuprofen.

    Phoenix: One more question though. If *-i only represent indicative. While thematic endings would give subjunctive.

    I assume you mean "If *-i only represents indicative, _why_ would thematic endings give subjunctives?"

    Maybe you're confused? In "Stage I IE" (ie. active-stative stage which Anatolian is from), we have present *bhe:rti with subjunctive *bheret (without *-i). The indicative and subjunctive are opposites since the indicative is only used for present-future, affirmative, _non-hypothetical_ actions or states. The subjunctive is used for _hypothetical_ actions or states and therefore can't be marked with *-i. However... in Stage II, when subjunctives were marked with *-i, they magically became indicative durative presents. Tada! Thus present *bhereti from former subjunctive *bheret.

    Phoenix: So you're saying there's no aorist. Should I also assume there's no imperfect then?

    You should assume that in Stage I IE both the imperfect and aorist were part of the same "mi-conjugation" (or "active conjugation").

    Phoenix: And I can't really figure out how the hi verbs which in a later non-hittite indo-european stage become the perfect verbs. But how would these then take a subjunctive form.

    Ugh. Your questions are delightfully intense :) You'll have to consult Jasanoff for all that scary stuff because I didn't get all that part ironed out in my head either. If I understand Stage II IE (durative-aorist-perfect stage) at all, the subjunctive was formed with the mi-endings as was the mediopassive. It would seem to me that the general trend was that the mi-endings were gradually taking over the former domain of the hi-endings.

    Phoenix: Except the *-oh2 ending now I think of it, that's just the 1p present thematic version of *-h2e from the perfect. But wouldn't you expect *-h2i (with indicative marker) rather than *-h2e?

    Afaik, the indicative of *-h2e would have been *-h2oi. That pesky *e/*o ablaut from pre-IE. We also see *o in the mediopassive *-h2ór as well - same phenomenon. We should have expected **-o-m-i in the 1ps thematic indicative. I don't know if anyone can say for sure but perhaps after being altered to *-o-h2-i by analogy with the perfect in *-h2e, it was reduced to *-oh2 because the vowel-colouring interference of the uvular/pharyngeal *h2 made the word-final semivowel very difficult to perceive. Just a thought I had.

    Anyways, Jasanoff's book is really well worth it but I'm still hazy on some things myself. I think I also need to get a hold of that book again because I didn't absorb all of what he had stated, only the main points.

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  12. LINGUIST List 15.264
    This gives a run-down of the contents of Jasanoff's book.

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  13. Thank You for interesting question and dicsussion about self identification.

    I would like to discuss this idea
    based on the old information -

    Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was spoken around 4000 BCE until the people who spoke it significantly spread out in different directions.

    It was prooved recently by genetical research, that at the farming spreading time in the Europe the new population appeared was not extremly large - aproximately 20-25 percent. So, Renfrew's theory about indoeuropeans =agriculture wave from Anatolia collapsed and needed to be modified.

    Indoeuropean simmilarities appeared with the new farming technologies spreading adding the new linguistic and archaeological layer to the hunters and fismen style of life and languages.

    My native language -lithuanian is very conservative and we say 'The man - žmogus' but we still preserved the oldest one -MAN saying 'manau- (this mean) -thinking

    I suuppose that the question of the chronologisation is of great importance, and the problem about the first words used by the time of farming technologies spreading is extremly interesting

    Kest

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  14. I hate to encourage you, Kest. When people claim that the validity of a linguistic theory or the origin of a language was "proved recently by genetic research", it demonstrates a lack of understanding of genetics, linguistics and their relationship (or lack thereof) between the two.

    Anyone can look at their own family history and recognize points when one's ancestors switched to another language. Some of my family were from Stockholm and originally spoke Swedish. Did their DNA suddenly change when they adopted English in the New World? No. Is there a Swedish or Bengali gene? No.

    So quite obviously then, genetics has nothing to say about what language some ancient people spoke any more than they can predict what any of us speak today.

    The only thing that properly disproves the Out-of-Anatolia hypothesis in its various forms is historical linguistics. Among many other things, it's the fact that the earliest recorded Indo-European languages come into Anatolia (such as Hittite and Mitanni) that makes the whole notion of them first going out so immediately absurd.

    To claim that Indo-European originated in Anatolia would mean that we would have to believe that Indo-Iranian exited Anatolia, migrated all the way to the north, interacted with the Finno-Ugric (an interaction that is amply attested) and then came all the way back down south to precisely the same place that it had supposedly originated in order to establish the Mitanni kingdom at the prescribed moment in time. Ridiculous.

    Any wonder then why most IEists and historians can't discuss it in seriousness. This is entirely regardless of the many overhyped and faulty claims based on popscience.

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  15. Thanks Glen. Those questions and problems about interraction of different sciences are of great importance and must be disccused seryously.

    You say

    When people claim that the validity of a linguistic theory or the origin of a language was "proved recently by genetic research", it demonstrates a lack of understanding of genetics, linguistics and their relationship (or lack thereof) between the two.
    Absolutely exactly. Genetics does not affect linguistics directly. But the great INDOEUROPEAN PUZZLE said by Mallory to return again and again like Thor's goat is not only linguistical theory, but ETHNOGENESIS problem too. When archaeologist Renfrew have wrote, that indoeuropean speaking people spreaded out of Anatolia carrying discovered in the Golden crescent technologies of agriculture, he used archaeological and linguistic theories to built some ide people migration road theory - this is ETHNOGENESYS problem. But he was born perhaps to early - paleogenetical information appeared some decades later denied his clever and rational theory and this one of course must be improved. ETHNOGENESYS problems must be considered using linguistical, mythological, archaeological, paleogenetical, paleobotanical and paleoclymatological and even ethnomusicological facts and theories. I see, the global problems of ethnolgy and linguistics are:
    a) Do so called Ruhlen's and Greenberg proto-world langauge carries some information about first people migrations and language first travellers used?
    b) What kind of genetical groups community used words definied by NOSTRATIC theory? When this happend? According to Vl.Illich-Svitych it was aproximately 5 thousand years BC. According to Aaron Dolgopolsky his nostratic reconstruction was used 15 000 BC by hunters.
    c) Is there possibility to trace some roads of spreading of some words starting from beginning of Homo sapiens?
    The problem briefly is = Chronologisation and localisation of indeoropean, nostratic and proto-world simmilarities.


    No. Is there a Swedish or Bengali gene? No.

    There are some genetical markers characteristic for Swedish people and some for Bengalic and this information sometimes could be usefull.

    So quite obviously then, genetics has nothing to say about what language some ancient people spoke any more than they can predict what any of us speak today.

    Paleogenetics helps to trace migrations. Migrations could help to reconstruct spreading of some words.

    The only thing that properly disproves the Out-of-Anatolia hypothesis in its various forms is historical linguistics. Among many other things, it's the fact that the earliest recorded Indo-European languages come into Anatolia (such as Hittite and Mitanni) that makes the whole notion of them first going out so immediately absurd.

    If the murder does not leave the paper carrying some words, this daes not mean that we can't speculate what kind of Carribean dialect land he used.

    When I aquainted with the academical linguistical theory of indoeuropean built by prof.Mazhiulis, I dropped my hat down and wanted to built the monument for Baltistic studies. So complicated problems and so deep logics shocked me like in Yours investigation. But the linguistics was the leader of sciencies together with mathematics for two hundred of years and now some revision is needed tying facts from different sciencies. The GREAT PUZZLE.

    To claim that Indo-European originated in Anatolia would mean that we would have to believe that Indo-Iranian exited Anatolia, migrated all the way to the north, interacted with the Finno-Ugric (an interaction that is amply attested) and then came all the way back down south to precisely the same place that it had supposedly originated in order to establish the Mitanni kingdom at the prescribed moment in time. Ridiculous. I don't like such indoeuropean origin and protoland theories. I'we stressed, that indoeuropean simmilarities appeared by process of agriculture spreading changing the old dialects
    of hunters and fishmen. Protoindoeuropean and homeland never existed. We know only the simmilarities formed by very complicated way changing hunter's fishmen' speech.

    Any wonder then why most IEists and historians can't discuss it in seriousness. This is entirely regardless of the many overhyped and faulty claims based on popscience.

    I like academical and logically deep style of investigation. The problem of prof.Mažiulis was too deep specialisation and lack of facts from the ather sciencies. The same appears in linguistical studies too. Archaeolocists Gimbutas, Mallory, Renfrew tried to tie liguistics and archaeology to built ethnogenesis theory. Some linguists tried too. But the heap of different facts was too large. Thousands of vocabularies and ethymologies and thousands of discovered archaeological sites. I'm more than fifty. I play chess not looking at them. I was lucky to make some reconstructions
    finding some logics in those heaps. In my site I've presented a part of theory in a housewife understandible way not discussing eight ethymologies of BEAR-LOKIS proposed by scientists. I like mythological scandinavian LOKKI too and traces of curls - LOKON in Slavic and Danish. I hope that You Glen in Yours thirties having a strong and very deep linguistical education are able to solve questions I've rised. But You need to dig very deep not only in linguistics. This EGO and self identification theory is interesting and touchies strongly chronologisation background. But not all the rules of comparative linguistics works in the all situations. Sometimes we must use them, sometimes we need to postulate only that the backbone of the word consists of some basic sounds conected by easily changing vowels. When I escavated the stone age site on the coast of the lake in Lithuania and put on my hand some part of pottery with the signs of the fir tree and the other ones made 5 thousand years ago I revealed the possible way of the same type of pottery spreading from Mediterania coast to the Baltic. Some basic words traveled too. I'm trying to remember this EGO problem surrounding now. Andros in Greek, Chelovek in Russian, Žmogus in Lithuanian and the oldest one MAN from the paleolythic I suppose...Why such differencies appeared? When?

    Kest

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  16. Since the structure of your comments are erratic, I will never be sure what your point is if at all but let's go through some points you make that are decipherable:

    1. Keep ethnogenesis out of linguistics
    Your long-winded beliefs about ethnogenesis are evidently non sequitur and invalid by your own admission that genetics does not affect linguistics directly (although most times, not even at all).

    Since archaeologists and geneticists quite obviously can't distinguish based on empirical science the difference between IE-speakers, para-IE-speakers and non-IE-speakers, all three of which must have lived in the same region at the time we're discussing, to pursue your confused lines of reasoning further would be wasteful.

    2. "The Swedish Gene"
    It appears that you believe that societies are most often rigidly homogeneous somehow and that Swedes, for example, are supposedly easy to distinguish from Lapplanders or Estonians by means of their genetics alone. Scientifically baseless.

    3. BEAR-LOKIS folk etymologies
    When someone is this bent on ignoring linguistics and living in their own universe, it's doubtful you will understand what a folk etymology is and why these claims of yours that they're "scientific" go unheard by real scientists and linguists. Capitalizing your lexical finds only makes it seem all the more desperate. Amateurs often connect words together for fun and this idle pasttime has been enjoyed since the time of Dioscorides, although I think that Dioscorides was more skilled at it.

    4. Atrocious spelling in the age of spellcheckers
    Even when putting aside a horrible sense of logic, you need to be aware that consistently bad spelling in almost every sentence you type only adds comic effect to your comments. Statements like "I play chess not looking at them" are impossible to comprehend in any human language. So forgive me if I should think it's a sign that your thinking is disorganized to the core.

    I would suggest vastly improving your organization if you wish me to accept your comments on this blog further. Before posting, try imagining what you'd say to impress a Vulcan. Questions are welcome; ideas based on solid logical reasoning are welcome; baseless pet theories and lazy research however will be ridiculed.

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  17. Although I've been inclined to agree with this idea of yours about the origin of ego, I suddenly realised sometimes today:

    *h1éǵom Does NOT result in Sanskrit aham This h comes from either a cluster gH or the aspirated variant. So therefore Beekes also suggests the reconstructions *h1éǵoH and *h1éǵHom.

    I'm curious how you talk yourself out of that one ;)

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  18. Hahaha, and oh how I love to talk my way out of things. I should have been a lawyer ;) Okay, here we go...

    It's true that *h1éǵom does not result in Sans. aham. It's also true that it's either due to a cluster *gh or the so-called "voiced aspirated" stop *ǵʰ (which I like to think of as a "fully voiced" stop with an early voicing onset like in French contrasting the fortis half-voiced counterpart ). However, it's less assumptive to believe that there is no cluster here since we find the same dialectal variation of /*ǵʰ in the enclitic *ǵe/*ǵʰe. Since it's unnecessary to believe that the variation in this enclitic is the product of a stop+laryngeal cluster, Beeke's theory would appear inefficient.

    Instead we should recognize a larger pattern affecting these two words. So as IE was fracturing, some (Post-)Indo-European speakers must have been using the original fortis stop *ǵ in the enclitic and 1ps pronoun, while in other dialects, these oft-used words were understandably lenited to full-voicing due to issues of markedness, hence *ǵʰ. The most common words of a language, such as enclitics and pronouns, typically opt for the least marked phonemes of a sound system. You'll find that *d and are largely avoided in such words, as well as avoided in affixes, in strong favour of *bh, *ǵh and *dh instead.

    So to Beekes' *h1éǵoH and *h1éǵHom, I would offer this Post-IE2 alternative: *h1éǵoh₂/*h1éǵʰoh₂ & *h1éǵom/*h1éǵʰom. The oscillation of -oh₂ vs. -om is a matter of verbal morphology and would be expected if the subjunctive's usage and semantics shifted in the Late IE period as I theorize. I'm then implying that the original forms of these words in the core IE area before dialectal deviation were *h1éǵoh₂ and *ǵe.

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  19. (Whoops, a typo! That should read: "[...] either due to a cluster __*ǵh__ or the so-called "voiced aspirated" stop *ǵʰ [...]" I missed an important diacritic. Well then, carry on.)

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  20. I'm not a linguist but a mathematician, so much of what you write is above my head.

    However, I noted you wrote this:
    "Numerous languages show similarly formed pronouns made like verbs. Look at ...
    Coptic (ntok 'you', " ...


    Wouldn't this imply that the Semitic pronoun system has a similar origin as well, since Koptic and Semitic are related?

    There seems to be an "an"+suffix structure in Semitic 1+2p pronouns:

    Biblical Hebrew "An-okhi": I,
    Arabic "An-ta": You
    etc.


    Hope this makes sense ...



    Greetings, ragnar

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  21. Hi Ragnar,

    Coptic is the direct descendent of Ancient Egyptian, written in a Greek-derived alphabet which was adopted after the Ptolemaic period. It has been known for a couple of centuries that Egyptian is related closely to Semitic languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Babylonian and Amharic. The parent language that begat both Egyptian and Semitic must predate the "dawn of history" (c.3000 BCE) by several millenia.

    Semiticists who study these languages reconstruct Proto-Semitic (the ancestor of all Semitic languages) with a 1ps pronoun "I" as *ʔanāku. They reconstruct the 2ps pronoun "you" as *ʔanta. They do this by comparing Semitic languages together and working backward in time. In Hebrew, the Proto-Semitic vowel tends to become ō. There are handy resources online that offer some more info on Semitic languages, such as this pdf called Semitic morphology from the University of Western Australia.

    The Middle Egyptian pronoun *ʔanāka "I" which is written in hieroglyphs only as ỉnk and which becomes Coptic anok is indeed directly related to Semitic *ʔanāku. The ending *-ka in Egyptian that has been added to the pronoun for "you" is itself the 2ps possessive suffix meaning "your", hence ntok in Coptic. The words for "he" and "she" in Coptic are ntof and ntos which likewise carry possessive suffixes -f "his" and -s "her" respectively. These pronouns however have no correlates in Semitic and are an Egyptian innovation.

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  22. Your explanation of the form of the 1st person nominative pronoun as an extension of an adprep meaning "here" makes a lot of sense (compare the expression "Give it here", meaning "Give it to me"), especially considering non-Indo-European equivalents.
    Now, while I was reading the Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World, I came across a verbal root *h1eǵ-, meaning "(to) speak", based on Latin aio: "say", Greek e: "said", Armenian asem "say" and Tocharian A and B a:ks- (the colon here matches a macron in the book). Could that be an alternative possible root for the pronoun, with an original meaning as "I, the speaker"?

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  23. Seadog Driftwood: "Now, while I was reading the Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World, I came across a verbal root *h1eǵ-, meaning '(to) speak'[...]"

    Yes, it appears rather that *h₁eǵ- "to say" could potentially be a derivative of an original meaning "to be here", methinks.

    Consider "He there (*h₁éǵet): 'I hunted in the woods.'" versus "He said: 'I hunted in the woods.'" The verb would first serve as a device to point to the speaker of the following phrase and end up with the connotation of "to say" thereby expanding its usage.

    It's just a thought, at least.

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