23 Oct 2010

To conceal a dead tongue

As already suggested in the works of those like Larissa & Giuliano Bonfante, the meaning of celu or cel as 'earth, ground' is well-founded. In more detail, we find calu in Old Etruscan and due to the regular raising of low a to mid e before resonants, the root eventually evolved to Late Etruscan cel(u)- which is why Liber Linteus shows locative forms like cel-i 'upon earth' (< *calv-i) and cel-θi 'in earth' (< *calv-i=θi). This word is usually however confused with the gloss Celius which was claimed centuries ago as a month in the Etruscan calendar.

Simultaneously, Indo-Europeanists have reconstructed a root *ḱel-/*kel- meaning 'to conceal, to hide' and since Indo-Europeanists seldom if ever dabble in the Etruscan language, as I hope to explain, there is a subtle logic conflict here. Ultimately I believe that this IE root may be yet another misidentification of a non-IE verb.

It's striking that Etruscan calu can so readily mean '(that which is) covered' by supposing an Etruscan verb root *cal- 'to cover' plus the transitive participle ending -u. This idle assumption isn't substantial in itself, of course, but it is when all direct evidence of the competing Indo-European root just so happens to be restricted to Europe.

The comparanda for PIE *ḱel-/*kel- has been from Germanic (*haljō- 'underworld' and *haljanan 'to hide') and Latin (cēlāre 'to conceal, hide, cover'). Some scholars will add Greek καλύπτω 'to cover, to hide' yet as Robert Beekes notes, the word is unanalysable in IE terms and shows a non-IE suffix *-u[p/b]- (cf. καλύβη 'hut, cabin'). It should also be asked why the Greek term should contain *a in its root. Some push a little too far, implicating "Indian šaras- 'skin over milk'"[1] (which I'm having trouble verifying) in an apparent try to capitalize at once on r/l-alternation, satemization and shifting semantics to build an even flimsier house of cards. This strategy is far too easy and unconvincing. Adams and Mallory simply label it "WC" (West Central)[2] which is a quiet way of admitting that the evidence is restricted to Europe and that they can't validate it as a genuine Indo-European root. All in all, while the root has become part of accepted Indo-European vocabulary, it nonetheless appears to be weakly justified.

This is where it may be wiser to look to Proto-Aegean to explain why the root is restricted to the west and why Etruscan looks in all appearance to be built on the so-called "Indo-European" root even though Etruscan isn't an Indo-European language. If we propose Proto-Aegean *kal- 'to cover over', then Greek καλύπτω and καλύβη is sourceable to a derivative *kalúpa. It's certainly better already compared to racking our brains wondering why the odd a-vocalism and suffix conflicts with IE grammar and with other identified cognate forms to the west. Likewise, the resultant Etrusco-Rhaetic transitive verb *kal can then explain the source of the Etruscan 'earth' word (perhaps also reflected in Rhaetic as χelθi 'in the earth'(?) in Schum SZ 12) while supplying a source for both Latin cēlāre and a Pre-Proto-Germanic *kal- whose initial plosive shifted to *h by Grimm's Law sometime after 1000 BCE. As with so many of these other curious Etrusco-Germanic correspondences, a language intermediary (Venetic *kal- ?) is plausible.


NOTES
[1] Szemerényi, Scripta minora: Selected essays in Indo-European, Greek, and Latin, vol 63, part 4 (1991), p.2042 (see link).
[2] Mallory and Adams, The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world (2006), p.492 (see link).

19 comments:

  1. I am unsure if it matters, but one of the Minoan Linear A tablets from Haghia Triada (HT31) also features the term KA-RO-PA3 (*kalopha? *kalúppa?) as a name of a particular vase-type. From the image it seems to be a krater with a big hande.

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  2. The Germanic evidence also includes *helanan and *huljanan, thus various ablauts. And then we have Old Irish celid, thus a full Italo-Celtic-Germanic package.

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  3. Gråhatt, but how do we distinguish an inherited verb from Indo-European from a loaned verb in Pre-Germanic, Celtic, etc. that had time to develop native ablaut patterns? It still remains a problem that the root isn't attested outside of Europe.

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  4. Bayndor, one could also relate KA-RO-PA3 to Etruscan crapś-ti (LL 4.viii) if from craφ in our ignorance. I'd question why "to conceal" is used to derive a noun for these types of vessels. Also, it would be nice to see confirmation of /l/ in, say, other wanderworts in neighbouring languages related to this term.

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  5. Monier-Williams confirms that śaras- means 'cream, film on boiled mil; a thin layer of ashes'.

    Which might be related, but I agree that the word is much to obscure in semantics to be sure.

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  6. I agree that a PIE origin for this word is far from certain. As with the caput/haubuda case, though, I think a fitting loaning periode for common “Western IE” words would be during the Tumulus culture (being more or less ancestral to the three groups), which also had vital connections with the Aegean world. Pre-IE languages of the area could also be a major source. It is difficult to evaluate one of these “Western” words at a time, all candidates should be seen in connection, and I think a list of “Western”-Aegean correspondences would gain more weight and ease the analysis, if possible.

    Admittedly, such a list requires a series of exactly the kind of probing suggestions which this post represents, so please continue! My input was just material, not critique.

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  7. Gråhatt: "As with the caput/haubuda case, though, I think a fitting loaning periode for common “Western IE” words would be during the Tumulus culture [...], which also had vital connections with the Aegean world."

    The Tumulus culture is just too early. All loans can only have happened around the onset of the 1st millennium BCE based on linguistic considerations. Remember that archaeology doesn't often reflect the language situation so don't use it as "proof" of something.

    "Pre-IE languages of the area could also be a major source."

    Aegean roots are evident by their special distribution. They tend to be widely distributed into Italic, Germanic and Celtic languages (sometimes also Venetic) without direct cognates in any of the other IE branches.

    Often a Greek word is noticed as seemingly connected yet it can't be done by IE sound correspondences. So it is this special pattern that helps to distinguish between Aegean loans, IE roots and other Pre-IE loans not caused by sea trade.

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  8. By the way, if we're going to point to an archaeological culture to frame these Aegean loanwords, let's look instead at the Urnfield and Hallstatt cultures. This is a more appropriate time period. In fact, the distribution of the culture shown by the graphic currently on Wikipedia seems to favour an interactive chain of "Italic ↔ Etrusco-Rhaetic ↔ Venetic ↔ Germanic" as I've currently come to think.

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  9. If the word is a borrowing into Greek, whence the -u(p/b) suffix?

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  10. Mordrigar, as I said, Beekes already considers it a "Pre-Greek" suffix (ie. "non-IE") and I agree. More specifically, *-upa might be an agentive suffix in Minoan.

    The main point here is that no one has convincingly shown that these ablaut patterns and suffixing are caused by Proto-Indo-European as we know it (and we know it well at this point).

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  12. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. Is this suffix attested anywhere in the Aegean languages?

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  13. Glen: “The Tumulus culture is just too early.”

    Too early for Etruscan, but quite right for correspondences between the Western IE languages. Or what linguistic considerations did you have in mind?

    Glen: “Remember that archaeology doesn't often reflect the language situation so don't use it as "proof" of something.”

    Hear, hear. I did not. The Tumulus culture is not interesting for linguistic considerations because some kind of pottery seems to fit some hypothetical language distribution. The Tumulus culture represents the small-scale expansion and assimilation of a warrior aristocracy (with more or less Aegean role models) which is known to have eventually dominated the large part of the Western IE world at the time. This is a good scenario for the spread of certain prestigious language material.

    By the time of the Hallstatt culture, Latin was already in Latinum (trusting leonard Robert Palmer: The Latin Language), and the Germanic world was to a large extent excluded from “world trade” by the monoplizing Hallstatt princes. Not a good scenario for extensive shared linguistic material between the three groups.

    The Urnfield culture, on the other hand, I agree, is another good candidate. In fact, this culture represents the ripening of the Tumulus culture in close contact with the last phase of the Mycenaean culture. My only worry is that I cannot find just as good all-encompassing social mechanisms that could account for the spread of language again throughout the same area. That may be due to the limited evidence of archaeology, though.

    In the Urnfield scenario, the Etruscan loans should come rather early, though, not later than, say, 900 BC (regarding the Germanic evidence). Is that a good scenario?

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  14. "Warrior aristocracies" are surely more to do with Mycenaeans yet since a Greek origin is not possible for this set of "Western IE" roots like (*)*kel-, this isn't germane to our topic.

    However we can agree that the Urnfield culture is a good fit, if not the best fit.

    "In the Urnfield scenario, the Etruscan loans should come rather early, though, not later than, say, 900 BC (regarding the Germanic evidence). Is that a good scenario?"

    Yes, but to correct slightly: The *Etrusco-Rhaetic* loans must have entered *Pre-Proto-Germanic* (eg. PGerm *haubidaz 'head' vs. ER *kaupatʰ) at the onset of the 1st millennium BCE. This would date Grimm's Law to after 900 and this is compliant with the usual dating of Proto-Germanic proper to the mid-1st m. BCE.

    "My only worry is that I cannot find just as good all-encompassing social mechanisms that could account for the spread of language again throughout the same area."

    Erh, perhaps the "social mechanism" you're looking for is simply "trade". Trade not only promotes shared material goods but also shared idioms, ideas and belief systems.

    The way I see it, vast trading networks existed before Etrusco-Rhaetic languages entered the region (as shown by the Tumulus culture). It may have been precisely these pre-existing trading networks that attracted Etrusco-Rhaetic to the area in the first place! From what I understand, it's during the later Urnfield culture that cremation burials become popularized. Of course, the Etruscans cremated their dead.

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  15. Glen:“"Warrior aristocracies" are surely more to do with Mycenaeans yet since a Greek origin is not possible for this set of "Western IE" roots like (*)*kel-, this isn't germane to our topic.”

    I see some other possiblities. First, “Greek” didn't exist during the heyday of Myceneaen culture (13th century BC): the later Dorians presumably still lingered in the iron-producing South Morava valley (now S. Serbia), integrated in the Myceneaen system, but still a very separate culture. Neigbouring them to the north, we have our emerging Urnfield culture in the South-Mid Danube valley. Finds of inferior European weapons in the Aegean points to the presence of Tumulus/Urnfield mercenaries, in line with the Homeric descriptions. And then to my point: Mycene was not the only power in the area; following Homer, we may guess at a similar presence of Balkanic mercenaries in an Aegeo-Lydian Troy. Therefore, the Aegean connection (in a geographic sense) should not be dismissed as an option.

    Glen:“The way I see it, vast trading networks existed before Etrusco-Rhaetic languages entered the region (as shown by the Tumulus culture). It may have been precisely these pre-existing trading networks that attracted Etrusco-Rhaetic to the area in the first place!”

    I agree entirely. But can we not from this also infer the possibility of Etrusco-Rhaetic trading colonies in the area before the settlement? E.g. in the 13th century or even well before? Then we have the early scenario which even fits the Tumulus spread from the southwest (as opposed to the Urnfield spread from the southeast).

    To sum up, I see these possibilities for early Aegean/ER loans into “Western IE”:

    * Adriatic trading colonies -> Tumulus spread: 18th/17th centuries

    * Adriatic trading colonies -> Western Urnfield tradition: 13th century or 12th/11th centuries (after Mycenean collapse)

    * “Troy” mercenaries -> Urnfield spread: 13th century

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  16. (a couple of comments more, Google though I wrote too much in the first comment ...)

    Glen:“Erh, perhaps the "social mechanism" you're looking for is simply "trade". Trade not only promotes shared material goods but also shared idioms, ideas and belief systems.”

    Quite right. Just ignose my comment, I was thinking about some other common Western IE features which we are not talking about now. In our scenario, loan words pertaining to elite ideology (weapons, tools, religion) would certainly find their way rather easily. Both *kel- (whence “hell”) and *kaupatʰ (if also connected to the meaning “helmet”) could fit well into that pattern.

    Glen:“From what I understand, it's during the later Urnfield culture that cremation burials become popularized. Of course, the Etruscans cremated their dead.”

    Urnfield culture has its name from cremation burials in urns. However, cremation was widespread already in eastern Tumulus culture. If connected to Etruscan cremation, we must seek it in a pre-settlement scenario.

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  17. I get the feeling you're not making a strong enough distinction in your head between "culture" and "language". The Mycenaeans were certainly "Greek speaking" (ie. an earlier form of Greek) and yet can't be the ultimate source of the vocabulary package I'm talking about here.

    As for the Mycenaean culture, its spread across land from Greece into more northern and western territories seems to me a natural byproduct of a growing trade network that benefited the Mycenaeans enough to embolden them to take over the Minoans in the end. (Or in other words, the Mycenaeans cut out the middle man.)

    Naturally then, cremation would manage to spread to *eastern* Tumulus cultures at an early date, as you say. (Just not in the west yet.)

    Also my point about the *popularization* of cremation in the Urnfield culture is to justify the presence of suddenly more intensive trade from the Po Valley by an Etrusco-Rhaetic speaking population by c.1000 BCE. It's at this later point that cremation begins to increase throughout the former Tumulus cultures. The Etrusco-Rhaetic culture must have promoted a new world-view throughout the region to cause burial patterns to change like this, I figure.

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  18. My comment about Greek not existing at the time only reflects that the Dorian dialects were separated geographically until the Dorians moved into Macedonia, and the convergence of Ancient Greek as we know it could only start from this point. Dorian and Achaean may have been separate IE dialects for a long time before that. Anyway, that's not to the topic.

    Our “word package” here is an imagery for élite culture (at least perceived so in the north), i.e. words of technology and religion. It seems that you want to tie cremation to this package as a visible tracer. Interesting. It could well be.

    In that case, if I'm correctly updated, cremation in Greece didn't occur before post-Mycenean, which leaves out Mycene as the source of these words. That is in line with the linguistic material you have presented, where related words in Greek are somewhat deviating.

    But cremation spread early to the Carpathian Basin, we are talking about 2000 BC and the Otomani culture, the first Bronze Age “key” commercial contact with the Aegean world. In this case, the trading contact went through the Danube and to the Marmaran. This is close to Lydia, the probable homeland of Etrusco-Rhaetic, with which the “Western IE” forms correspond well.

    Taking cremation as a tracer thus yields an even earlier spread of these words into Balkan/the Carpathians, whence they could spread further north and west with the resurging eastern Urnfield culture.

    In the uppermost Danube, this effect coincides with the Etruscan-Rhaetic presence to the south, thus making the question of influence more blurred.

    In any case, if we allow a “big picture”, we see a millennium-long connection between Aegean-speaking peoples and the Otomani/Tumulus/Urnfield complex, giving ample occasion to the borrowings, and giving less priority the the actual date of these borrowings, in particular before or after the ER settlement in Northern Italy.

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  19. Gråhatt: "In that case, if I'm correctly updated, cremation in Greece didn't occur before post-Mycenean, which leaves out Mycene as the source of these words."

    Yes, you're correctly updated; Mycenaean cremation was indeed rare (see Schofield, The Mycenaeans [2007], p.190). You also know that I'm right about a noticeable rise in cremation westwards into Europe specifically by 1000 BCE (see Scullard, A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 BC (2002), p.11). I understand this cremation practice to be tied to heliocentric belief systems stemming from the Cretans and Western Anatolians.

    "But cremation spread early to the Carpathian Basin, we are talking about 2000 BC and the Otomani culture, the first Bronze Age “key” commercial contact with the Aegean world."

    I really think this is outside the relevance of the linguistic material I'm pondering (although certainly an interesting trading link in itself!). My general impression is that, in the 2nd m. BCE, it is *Minoa* (ie. Keftiu), not Alashiya or Arzawa, which is the dominant trading force here. Aside from being "close to Lydia", do you note other considerations for me to ponder on?

    "Taking cremation as a tracer thus yields an even earlier spread of these words into Balkan/the Carpathians, whence they could spread further north and west with the resurging eastern Urnfield culture."

    That's a good theory but if we *know* that the Mycenaeans were trading in the Po Valley (see Castleden, Mycenaeans [2005], p.194) and if we can see that this sea trade could so easily have fasttracked the spread of cremation and a heliocentric cult, it all fits together without the need for further assumptions about land trade in the northern boonies, no?

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