Ghost words and anti-dictionaries

I've mused before that what we need is an Etruscan "anti-dictionary" to reference all the words that have been made up over the decades out of thin air due to misanalyses by various scholars. Lazy authors spread these infectious memes the most, of course, but even careful scholars can overlook things. These words end up being taken as 100% fact by more naive readers and it's difficult sometimes to talk them out of their factless stupor. The more everyone shares information however, the more we can crush these little fibs and understand our history just a little better.

Michael Weiss at OHCGL Addenda and Corrigenda likewise has noticed some phantom words in the Hittite lexicon and calls attention to *itar/*itnaš, explaining some details behind that inaccuracy.

Those who clutch on to the past have no future

"You can't rehabilitate shoehorn freaks like GG," blurts Douglas Kilday about me on Cybalist, a Yahoogroups forum originally devoted to Indo-European linguistics before devolving into a depraved gathering of angry lunatics hurling invectives to malign intelligent debate. And to emphasize just how depraved many of these sorts are online, this remark apparently arose simply because of a perfectly valid reference I cited a whole ten years ago and which, to boot, I no longer even believe. I've moved on and evolved considerably since 2001, unlike some apparently. However I've discovered that this is part of Kilday's larger campaign of trolling to slander any online contributors that threaten his little basement-dwelling life.^[1]

Kilday incites further: "Anyone familiar with the Etr. corpus will reject Gordon's /n/-genitive nonsense." Funny enough, the nonsense was published by Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante in 1983. It can't be "my" nonsense because I was all of 7 years old at the time! Indeed he may as well beat up a child to justify his drama-addiction because on page 70 of The Etruscan language: An introduction, it was verily alleged the following:

"There is also an archaic genitive in -n (-an, -un): so lautn: gen. lautun or lautn; puia: gen. puian."

Of course now I know that it's fabricated poppycock but that's a part of the learning process that some insecure people want to pretend they're beyond - that is, the process of trying something, getting it wrong, admitting it to oneself, and adapting accordingly. Some people get stuck at the first stage and never do a thing out of a crushing fear of failure. I suspect this is Kilday's more genuine issue.

There is no word *puian in Etruscan as we can now confirm online in Helmut Rix's Etruskische Texte. The closest form listed is puiam but this is composed of nomino-accusative puia plus phrasal conjunctive -m. It's one of several booboos they've published which give me the impression that the Bonfantes hadn't boned up on the linguistics side of their field before rushing to publish on it. I trust that in later versions of that book the claim of a genitive **-n in Etruscan was omitted, however little else had been updated after almost 20 years between the first and second editions. Their mistake is exacerbated by the fact that a published book is expected to be thoroughly thought-through before being printed and it can remain on library shelves for a very long time to misinform future readers, even several decades later.

I bring up this quote from the Bonfantes though because in a strange way it's comforting to know that even respected specialists can be fallible. It's comforting not through petty spite but because it reminds us that there's still so much knowledge for every one of us to discover and share with others openly. Once we get past our egos, that is.


NOTES
^[1] On Nostratic-L, Kilday concocted the claim, "it is quite clear that thesane cannot be a case-form of thesan," tripping over himself to provoke others with pompous pet theories and twisted strawman arguments despite Steinbauer and Pallottino maintaining exactly what he rejects. He forcibly mangles so much here that I really doubt his views are honest. Tellingly he cites no relevant references regarding his theory on thesan as a verb nor proffers a decent rationale in his favour. If it quacks like a duck...

A hairy little hair root

I've been looking back recently at my deviations and notice that my attention has veered away from Proto-Indo-European for quite some time as I obsessed over the separate topic of all things Etruscan, Rhaetic and Minoan. No particular reason for this, really, it just happened that way. Sometimes one's learning journey can be quite meandering like that, much like a spider weaving her web, connecting the dots of a large area, slowly filling in the spaces one thread at a time. Recently though I came across something that gives me cause to come back to that topic.

Among the pile of unlikely roots Julius Pokorny had attempted, *kais-^[1] (that is, *qais- in the revised PIE notation) is an ugly one but an interesting one. Just the three following cognates are indicated:

• Sanskrit केसर (kēsara-) 'hair'
• Latin caesariēs 'hair on head'
• Tocharian A śiśäk, В ṣecake 'lion'

Lumping words for 'lion' in with 'hair' is just too easy so, rejecting the Tocharian outliers, we are left with what was surely the only real impetus for the comparison, Latin and Sanskrit. Yet it's not enough to compare look-alikes blindly and many things need to be considered at once - sparse evidence, the unanalysable grammar of the root, the suspicious presence of rare *a^[2], etc. This alleged root then remains more a set of questions than a single, decisive answer. Because of this, I for one don't accept it as part of genuine Proto-Indo-European vocabulary. A better solution to explain these terms seems to involve non-Indo-European substrate.

Simultaneously, Proto-Aegean *zira 'hair' (presumably from Old Egyptian *θīra 'hair, thread', later written sr) explains away Greek kithara through Minoan *ki-zera 'three-stringed', exactly parallel to Persian seh-tar (سه تار), Chinese san-xian (三弦) and Japanese san-gen (三絃) which all mean the same. That Greek term has long been suspected to be a Minoan term anyway so I'm not saying anything terribly deviant. I can only expect that the proper reflex in Etruscan is *zir /tʃir/ which looks nice beside Latin cirrus 'tuft of hair, a lock, a curl' whose etymology otherwise appears unknown.

And so, addressing the unlikely PIE root above, in light of our collective ignorance on the matter, would it hurt to suggest an Aegean alternative, something like **kai-zera 'hair on head', for consideration?


NOTES
^[1] Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959), *kais- (see link); Wyatt, Indo-European /a/ (1970), p.31 (see link).
^[2] Upon some reflection, it's of course possible that, under the revised notation, the [a] is a uvularized allophone of *e in underlying *qeis- (ie. traditional "vowel colouring"). Nonetheless this helps naught in explaining its derivation.

Back to 'back'

Concerning the etymological 'back' problem I've been having since December, I might have found a decent cure. I had elaborated before that it's long been known that there appears to be a common word for 'back' or 'hip' across ancient Greece and Turkey: Classical Greek ischíon 'hip-joint' and Hittite iskis- 'back'. This pair just can't be a coincidence and an underlying Proto-Aegean term *iskʰis(a) seemed like a plausible fit to me.

However, I kept on feeling that unlike the previous words I've suspected to be Proto-Aegean, this one comes across as a little extra odd. Firstly I can't find a way of analysing the expected Aegean root into smaller meaningful morphemes and secondly the structure of the root seems unexpected for Proto-Aegean (eg. *s in syllable codae). Yet I know that this is at least better than the horrid attempts by Indo-Europeanists to reconstruct *h₁isgʰís- based only on two items from a very restricted geographical area. Surely this can't be correct either.

It was a tough problem so I did some yoga, smoked a spliff, watched some TV and then once my mind was distanced from the problem, I experienced a profound synaptic event. I realized that my subconscious mind had been wrestling with that initial i- for some reason. I was slow to heed my inner eye telling me of a common Hittite pattern. There's a long list of Hittite words which are the products of prothetic i- breaking up original clusters of the *sC(C)- sort. For example, ispant- 'to libate' < *spend-. So why then wouldn't iskis- be approached by IEists this way too? I suspect the answer is disturbingly circular since if one is hell-bent to deny the probability of a Greek loan from Hittite and is equally determined to make this a common IE root at all costs, then one must reconstruct this silly onset, *h₁i-.

Brainstorm time! Let's start from scratch and try this again. We have a common Greek and Hittite term for 'back' or 'hip'. Let's now just assume that the Greek word is a loan from Hittite, leaving only a single term to play with. Let's also assume that the initial i- in Hittite is prothetic like these other words. This gives us a Pre-Hittite term *skis-. Let's analyse this term as a native s-stem like some other body part terms implying that it's built on a verb stem *skei-. It just so happens that there is an identical IE root *skei- 'to cut, split'. Now, if this term originally referred to the 'spine' then it indeed 'splits' the back into two halves. Thus Pre-Hittite *skei-s- > iskis- would be 'that which divides' or 'that which is divided'. I suppose then that an Aegean or Minoan intermediary is unnecessary if the loan happened towards the closing of the 2nd millennium BCE.

Giving and having in Indo-European

In my last post, I was noticing the link between Etruscan genitives in "give" constructions which mark the recipient of a gift and clauses conveying "having", as per John's Newman's Give: A cognitive linguistic study (1996). On that note, there are some extraneous connections that come to my mind in other ancient languages I know of.

I've reasoned for a while now that the source of Indo-European's thematic genitives in *-osyo like *h₁éḱwosyo 'of the horse' is quite simple: the athematic genitive *-ós plus endingless relative pronoun *yo-. This construction would have first developed in Pre-IE (specifically Late IE) as *-asya, replacing former accented genitive *-ás, when Acrostatic Regularization risked making the nominative and genitive identical in the thematic paradigm. The addition of *ya (the original endingless form of the relative pronoun used for nominative, locative and inanimate accusative cases) helped disambiguate and reinforce thematic genitives. This resultant construction, instead of conveying the direct but potentially ambiguous phrase "of X", used the circumlocution "(with) which [is] of X".

With Newman's insights, we might even reinterpret "which [is] of X" as "which X [has]" since a lack of "to have" in Proto-Indo-European encourages a speaker to use the verb "to be" plus a genitive noun to express the possessor. The distinct but semantically equivalent phrases we take for granted in English like "the horse's speed", "the speed [which is] of the horse" and "the speed [which] the horse has" all become a little blurry in such languages.

Then I wonder further. I've already noticed that there's no rational motivation to reconstruct a distinct dative case in pre-IE, if not in IE itself^[1]. The dative in *-ei must have only later originated from the pre-existing locative ending in *-i and/or from analogy with *h₁ei- 'to go (to)'. So in pre-IE or IE, without an available dative form, what case is left to express the recipient in phrases using the verb *deh₃- 'to give'?


NOTES
^[1] Francisco Adrados, On the origins of the Indo-European dative-locative singular endings published in Languages and cultures: Studies in honor of Edgar C. Polomé (1988), p.29 (see link).

The bear taboo

According to The linguistics encyclopedia (2002), p.237:

"Taboos may even cause the loss of a word, as in the classical Indo-European case of the word for 'bear'. [...] Avoidance of the term is thought to have occurred in the northern Indo-European regions, where the bear was prevalent, and another name, (employed, perhaps, not to offend it), was substituted in the form of *ber- 'brown'; that is, 'the brown one'."

Now, upon reading accounts like this, the first question that comes to me is this: How can one know with any degree of certainty that this word had been displaced in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic because of taboo and not because of garden-variety lexical replacement? In Slavic, 'bear' is replaced by a new word meaning 'honey-eater', unrelated to Germanic's choice of 'brown one'. This is exaggerated as a 'circumlocution' in keeping with the assumption of taboo but if these sorts of creative epithets constitute in themselves evidence for taboo replacement, then could we not then claim that any new word coined is a "circumlocution" or "taboo" for the original term? Should we start insisting that Latin aqua 'water' is a taboo replacement for *wódr̥ too? It's rather convenient to pin taboo explanations on the vocabulary of obscure northern cultures that lacked written records.

Sure, no one can deny that the bear was a powerful symbol to northern European cultures for millennia, but if we replace 'bear' in the above quote with 'pickle', the emptiness of this taboo assumption becomes a little clearer.

Taking away another root

Ever since I began distinguishing between well-grounded Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots and mistaken ones built on historical confusion and an unhealthy denial of a non-IE Mediterranean-centered language family^[1], I can't stop finding more issues to write about! I sometimes wonder if the methodology used by Indo-Europeanists truly contrasts that by a Nostraticist or Proto-Worlder, but I try hard to suppress this rebellious, philosophical notion. I'm convinced now that many beloved PIE roots are in reality nothing more than a mirage built on a package of loanwords diffused from an Etrusco-Rhaetic language in the bustling Po Valley of early 1st millennium BCE. The previous reconstructed etyma that I've suspected openly on this blog show specific distribution patterns that imply such a geographical origin. I dare now suspect another cherished root: PIE *h₁em- 'to take'.

First of all, Julius Pokorny's 1950's work is online showing his pre-Laryngeal-Theory reconstruction, *em-, justified by evidence found in Celtic, Italic, Baltic, Slavic and Anatolian. At first blush, my skepticism appears too sensational. Yet we can first quickly peck away at the falsely segmented Hittite word *u-emiyami based on *actual* wemiyami 'I find'. The word has been connected with a quite different root, *gʷem-(ye-) 'to come', which happens to be a more convincing etymology.^[2] The habit of spelling the syllable we with two symbols, ú and e, instead of just one was a normal Hittite practice, it turns out.^[3]

So now we're just left with comparanda from Celtic, Italic, Baltic and Slavic - precisely the language groups easily accessible by trade from the Po Valley around 1000 BCE. The meaning of the verb also lends itself well to the language of trade and we may note the coincidence of Latin emere 'to buy' (hence caveat emptor 'buyer beware').

For the purposes of this revision, an Etrusco-Rhaetic verb *em 'to take' is in order to provide the source for the surrounding Indo-European forms. Etruscan evidence is rather easy to find. It's long been noted, thanks to the numerals expressed in the Liber Linteus, that numbers between 10 and 100 whose last digit is higher than 6 are conveyed by subtractive terminology. So while 13 in Etruscan is ci-śar (simply a compound of 'three' followed by 'ten'), 17 on the other hand is ci-em zaθrum, literally meaning 'three minus 20' much like Latin duo-de-viginti '18', literally '2-from-20'. Yet how do we analyse the grammar of this expression? Considering that the infinitive is expressed as the bare verb stem itself as in many other languages, this element em may very well not just mean 'minus' as the Bonfantes suggest but more specifically 'taking away from'. Thus ci-em zaθrum is literally 'taking away three from (ci em) twenty (zaθrum)'. Just like a proper SOV language is supposed to do, the infinitive verb is placed after the noun phrase and thus we know that 'three' is what is being taken away. Its simple preterite form, eme, is written twice in the continuous script found on a cup (TLE 366): nacemeuruiθalθileniθaliχememesnamertanśinamulu. In both these instances, in fact, the verb happens to follow two very common adverbs, nac 'when' and iχ 'thus', guaranteeing that I've properly divided these words.

We now need to explain what this root is doing in a non-IE language and the easy answer would be to blame it on loaning from an IE language into Etruscan, perhaps from a language like Umbrian (cf. emantur) or Latin (cf. emere). Yet lacking other evidence outside of this Po Valley trading circle, how can I be sure that this IE root even exists? Lacking further evidence, Occam's Razor guides me to the simplest answer, that it was my aforementioned Etrusco-Rhaetic root *em that spread throughout the northern territory into surrounding Indo-European languages. In a manner of comical speaking, these early IE peoples would not only have taken in novel goods from afar through exchange, but also would have taken the very verb 'to take' as well!


NOTES
^[1] Surely at the very least it's undeniable that the non-Indo-European language, Minoan, was positively influential on local languages up to 1400 BCE. Study of such a Mediterranean language family is abundantly warranted yet so entirely neglected.
^[2] In Hittite historical phonology (1999), p.297 (see link), Kimball must assume a compound dependent on a preverbal particle *u preceding an Anatolian root *em-, however note the original etymology given that doesn't require such a faith-based word-slicing in The Classical journal, vol 31 (1936), p.452 (see link) and Sturtevant, A comparative grammar of the Hittite language (1933), p.90 (see link) where the verb is derived squarely from *gʷem-ye-, a construction further attested outside of the Anatolian branch. As per the next note, the division of we- into u-e- based solely on spelling constitutes unnecessary assumption.
^[3] Melchert, Anatolian historical phonology (1994), p.25 (see link).

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).

Indo-Aegean kinship terms

Coincidental to the previously mentioned *pR-reduction in Etruscan, I've long noticed that if the Etruscan word for 'brother' which is generally accepted to be ruva (nb. inscription TLE 232) were instead *pruva, it could relate nicely to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) equivalent *bʰráh₂ter-. Of course it's ample speculation but I'd like to explore a possible set of Indo-Aegean kinship terms because, for anyone really knows, there may be some gold in that river of speculation.

Remember that I reason that the Indo-European language family is quite distinct from the Aegean language family but that nonetheless an ultimate pre-Neolithic relationship exists between them. I estimate that these two families would have diverged at most 9000 years ago. To reconstruct Proto-Indo-Aegean accurately, we need to first to reconstruct pre-stages of both Indo-European and Aegean first. This is an unending series of refinements, to be sure.


Reconstructing Pre-Indo-European kinship terms

Internal reconstruction shows that PIE's kinship terms are mostly unanalysable save for their oft-employed kinship suffix *-h₂ter-. I sense that these kinship terms are largely preserved from prehistoric times but that their shared characteristic suffix has been added quite recently in PIE's development by false segmentation and subsequent analogy from the only truly analyzable term in this set, *ph₂tér- 'father; provider' (< *peh₂- 'to feed, provide' plus actor suffix *-tér-). If *ph₂tér- were a like replacement for a reduplicated nursery term, *pápa-, pre-existing in the language then *máh₂ter- could easily have been coined by analogy to replace earlier *máma-. In turn, our analysis of PIE *bʰráh₂ter- and *dʰugh₂ter- suggest that the inherited stems from the earliest recoverable period are *bʰrah₂- and *dʰug-. We should consider that they once existed in isolation without the suffix.

Thus, I choose to reconstruct earlier Mid Indo-European nominative case forms *baráhʷa-sa and *déug̰a-sa since Syncope operates in the earliest part of the Late IE period, resulting in *brāu-z and *deug̰-z . Note that at this stage, the feminine is indistinguishable from the masculine since both are just subsets of a common animate gender. Then we can see how original *brau- plus kinship suffix *-xter- could be mashed together as *brá-xter-, shaped in both vocalism and accent position by analogy with 'mother', while *deug̰- adopts the zerograde and accent placement seen in 'father' to result in *dug̰-xtér- (and then due to regressive spread of uvularity from *x: *duɢ-xtér-).

Brother to mother as daughter to father. They say blood is thicker than water afterall, so why not also their associated labels?


Reconstructing Aegean kinship terms

On to the Aegean family, Etruscan ruva 'brother' and seχ 'daughter' might temptingly be derived from Proto-Cyprian *pruwa and *sikʰ with little hyperbole, in turn from Aegean *parówa 'brother' and *síka 'daughter'. The aforementioned Etrusco-Rhaetic *pR-reduction would take care of the missing *p in the first term and Cyprian Syncope follows my currently prescribed rules. The avoidance of word-final vowel loss in *parówa is understandable when compared with the expected Cyprian result, **pruw, which proves to be an awkward shape even by the phonotactic rules of later Etruscan (ie. word-final *-uv is entirely unevidenced in Etruscan as far as I know). I have yet to confirm these two kinship terms in Minoan but I would expect they'd be identical to these Aegean protowords unless I've erred in my extrapolation.

The Proto-Aegean words for 'father' and 'mother' are based on stronger evidence. Minoan a-ta-i is attested consistently on multiple libation tables and I do believe it's referring to their great Mother Goddess. The father term, *ápa, was likely in Minoan vocabulary as well, at least if we are to analyse Hittite god Appaliunas in Aegean terms: *ápa 'father' (Etruscan apa) and *launa 'leonine; of lion(s)' (Etruscan lev 'lion, lioness'). So I feel pretty secure in suggesting Aegean *ápa 'father' and *átai 'mother'. This results in Proto-Cyprian *apa 'father' (resisting syncope as a nursery term) and *ati which spawns identical Etruscan terms.


Are there Indo-Aegean kinship terms here? What can we conclude?

If we indulge further and compare our internally reconstructed terms in both language groups, the Mid IE kinship package (*pápa- 'father', *baráhʷa- 'brother' and *déug̰a- 'daughter') start to bear strong similarities to the Aegean set (*ápa 'father', *parówa 'brother' and *síka 'daughter'). We might assume that 'mother' has been replaced in Aegean and that Pre-Aegean *d, having first become *t by systematic devoicing of all inherited stops, lenites to *s before a front vowel.

For now, there's little to conclude with certainty other than that a relationship between Indo-European and Aegean kinship terms is within a realm of plausibility. However, this mental exercise opens our minds to new possibilities to investigate. Can we find other examples of Aegean palatalization in other shared words? Why would the word for 'mother' be replaced in Aegean and where does *atai come from? If correct, are there social or cultural implications to this kinship replacement? Or is there a simpler explanation for these similarities?

As always, more information is needed and these further questions will help confirm or reject what are for now admittedly shallow hunches. Open brainstorming like this however is still a constructive process, even when all we have is hunches... especially when all we have is hunches.


UPDATES
(04 Nov 2010) I decided to add something to "[...] while *deug̰- adopts the zerograde and accent placement seen in 'father' to result in *dug̰-xtér-." In light of commenter input, I felt the need to elaborate that *dug̰-xtér- becomes *duɢ-xtér- by assimilation of the velar stop by uvular laryngeal *x. (See comments below.) In traditional notation, by this assimilation, an unevidenced palatal *ǵ is therefore avoided.

The time-limit meme

Memiyawanzi recently quotes Jerzy Kuryłowicz from page 58 of The inflectional categories of Indo-European (1964): "One cannot reconstruct ad infinitum". No further commentary was added and so this hanging quote lured me to comment. Perhaps I read more into this than most but I notice a universe of issues in this deceptively simple quote. I'm just itching to elaborate.


Putting the quote in context

This quote showcases a certain irrational belief that has developed in modern comparative linguistics. From this belief arose a hypocritical attitude by many IEists towards more long-range theorists like Nostraticists. The reconstructions of long-range theorists deserve close criticism but it must be for the right reasons, otherwise we should dismount from our high-horse failing good methodology.

To avoid misinterpretation, we have to first understand that Kuryłowicz's above quote is followed by "We must be satisfied with stages bordering historical reality."^[1] and we can see that he really is making a strong assertion about the existence of a definable time limit (ie. "historical reality") beyond which comparative reconstruction magically becomes useless. Neither the word "bordering" nor "historical reality" is of any informative value to the reader and nonetheless can't be rationally proven even if accurately defined. Heeding this advice, arbitrary limits would shift depending on the different possible meanings each individual might give to this vague notion.

Why this principle is irrational

Potential knowledge is infinite and it can be safely said that Kuryłowicz's mind, brilliant as it was, was not. So it should be clear here why it's invalid to make bold claims about what we may or may not know in the infinite span of future time. One might call it the Oracle Fallacy. We may say that living to 400 years old will always be impossible, for example, but such predictions are drawn out of thin air. Kuryłowicz's statement simply has no noteworthy informative value, no matter how we choose to interpret it.

If we can't interpret it in a logical way, it's doomed to be misinterpreted and this is precisely what has happened.


Everybody plays the meme game

Alexis Manaster Ramer sees past these fallacies in his article "Some uses and abuses of Mathematics in Linguistics" (1999) where he made a tragic list of otherwise educated linguists making arbitrary assertions about a temporal bound to valid reconstruction. Kleiner, Lewin and Nichols - all guilty of the same statements devoid of logical proof. He notes how Kleiner insists 10 000 years before present is the upper limit of valid reconstruction while Nichols waffles between 7000, 8000 and 10 000 BP. As we can see, not only are these empty opinions but they might even be said to stray from Kuryłowicz' "border of historical reality". Many would not agree that 10 000 BP is anywhere near the border of "historical reality" since the first attested writing goes back merely to approximately 3200 BCE (ie. circa 5200 BP).


The fear that holds us all back

A common fear seems to be that by dismissing this arbitrary time limit for comparative reconstruction, it now gives carte blanche to any loon with multiple pocket dictionaries and a dream to reconstruct what they like. However, Occam's Razor is already limiting such far-flung reconstructions, so this bogus time limit rule of Kuryłowicz is not just baseless but completely unnecessary.

A much-maligned theory like Proto-World fails not because it's a theory on an exceedingly old stage of human language well beyond "historical reality" (however that may be defined) but because the theory is a ridiculous lump of unverified and currently unverifiable assumptions that pales in comparison to less extravagant theories available. Occam's Razor alone beats the pulp out of these extravagant claims so such concerns are unwarranted.


The hypocrisy

I've read many a famed Indo-Europeanist talk a good game about methodology and will often attack more long-range theories like Proto-Nostratic because they are less secure in their argumentation. This is of course inevitably true because the further back in time one investigates, the more difficult it tends to be to verify etymological claims.

However, as my previous blog entries like Sowing wild oats and plowing the fields reveal, many dubious roots have been reconstructed in the name of Proto-Indo-European. So it's conversely not necessarily true that the validity of a reconstruction increases the closer it lies to the present. Adams and Mallory fill their books with a large amount of shaky roots based on unacceptably sparse or geographically biased cognate sets. If these authors need to especially label a root "Western IE" in distinction to PIE proper, one must wonder what methodological standards, if any, guide their decisions. How are these standards nobler than those of the more self-indulgent Nostraticists who have published?


A final plea to reason

The healthier way to reason is simply to evaluate each claim based directly on the application of Logic itself, not secondhand through unverified mantras. It takes more effort to painstakingly reason things through for oneself instead of somnulently following thoughtless bureaucratic policies set up by others.


NOTES
^[1] Schmalstieg, Indo-European linguistics: A new synthesis (1980), p.127 (see link).

Vetch and pea sail to Italy

There are many things to discuss lately. For example, on Phoenix's blog, Proto-Indo-European reduplication is revisited and I might have a few more thoughts on this. However, for now I'll complete the short thread concerning my previous suggestion of Aegean roots for 'pulse' and 'vetch', this time slightly modified to *árapu (> Minoan *árapu > Gk ὄροβος 'bitter vetch') and derivative *árapinta (> Minoan *arápinta > Gk ἐρέβινθος 'chick-pea').

What I wanted to share is that there are further interesting comparanda apparently isolated in Western Europe that many other scholars also believe are indicative of some sort of substrate, although no one is very specific about its transmission. Of course, as always, it's this vagueness that drives me nuts, so let's explore this more:

• Latin ervum 'pulse, bitter vetch'
• Germanic *arwītō 'pea' (hence OHG arawiz)

As anyone can see, it's relationship to Gk ἐρέβινθος is clear. Yet trying to explain this away with Indo-European roots isn't the solution here. Some Indoeuropeanists have nonetheless attempted to reconstruct some ridiculous roots like (*)*orgʷindʰ- or (*)*h₃ergʷindʰ, for example, which fails to address the incoherence of Germanic *-w- beside Greek -b-, not to mention the erratic vocalism (ie. Germanic *ar- vs. Greek er-)! Surely a substrate word must be at work here, not an inherited Indo-European root with a whack-load of irregular sound changes.

Then there's also Latin arbōs ~ arbor 'tree'. According to the OED, Latin arbōs is of "unknown origin". As usual, some obsessive Indoeuropeanists have attempted to explain this word away as yet another IE root (eg. Julius Pokorny and *erəd- 'to grow'). These numerous "Western IE" roots fail to convince and it's interesting that arbōs is localized purely within the Italic branch. For that matter, what other Italic cognates exist alongside this Latin term, if any?

I'm also interested in the history of Latin herba 'grass'. If we include this and arbōs as part of the substrate evidence, could the meaning of this underlying root be more general such as 'sprout', I wonder. I'll have to look further and see what other ideas have been published on these interesting words.

If we trek onward and theorize an Etrusco-Rhaetic cognate in Italy, and given my latest rules of sound correspondence, we should then expect *arpu 'sprout', which would explain both ervum and arbōs in Latin, and *arpintʰ 'pea', which would explain Germanic *arwītō (perhaps via a Venetic intermediary, *arwi(n)ton).

From whence Sanskrit kapúcchala?

As I've probably mentioned before, I strongly suspect Julius Pokorny and followers have lazily lumped Sanskrit kapúcchala 'tuft of hair from the back of the head' in with other evidence supposedly supporting Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *kaput 'head', all just to give the illusion that the evidence is more robust and geographically dispersed than it honestly is. It's also a lot easier in any bureaucracy, including in academia, to simply go with the flow and ne'er question the status quo. However in this case, I'm fortunately not the only one out there that thinks this smells fishy. I insist that this PIE root never existed and that there are only Western European reflexes of this 'head' word, all attributable to loans from the Aegean family during the 2nd millennium BCE and later, ie. from either Minoan *kaupada (> Greek κεφαλή) or Etruscan *kaupaθ (> Latin caput; indirectly into Germanic as *haubidaz prior to Grimm's Law, perhaps through Venetic).

Though I found one lead online stating that Mayrhofer once dared to analyse kapucchala into a pejorative prefix ka- plus puccha- 'tail' (Mayrhofer, Kurzgefaßtes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen [1956], p.157), I've just come across a curious entry in both Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionary and Capeller's Sanskrit-English Dictionary that identifies the syllable क ka alone as 'head'. This tickles me. Since I knew already that पुच्छ puccha meant 'tail', this implies that कपुच्छ ka-púccha-la- with diminutive -la- just means 'little head-tail', perfectly fitting for a tuft at the back of the head.

If the word can be explained purely in Sanskrit terms, a PIE origin would be woefully extravagant by comparison and then easily dismissed as bunk. The other spelling kaputsala would be just an alternative phonetically-faithful rendering and certainly adds nothing to the arguments of the **kaput camp until they can substantiate both **kaput and **śala-. Even the justification for this unmotivated segmentation of the word is lacking. It seems to be based on wishful thinking.^[1]

That being said, now I'm having trouble confirming the source of the equation ka = 'head'. Is it attested somewhere directly? Or is this purely assumed by 19th-century Indicists attempting to etymologize Sanskrit vocabulary (in which case, an asterisked *ka is in order)? Oddly enough, there a few other words that strongly seem prefixed with this morpheme ka-: क-स्तम्भी kastambhī 'prop of a carriage-pole' (cf. स्तम्भ stambha 'post, pillar') and कं-धर kaṃdhara 'neck' (lit. 'head-bearer', cf. धर dhara 'supporting').

Rejecting PIE **kaput, what then is the etymology of Sanskrit क ka 'head'?


NOTES
^[1] After posting this, I managed to discover one tantalizing lead that may help settle this issue (see Brugmann/Streitberg, Indogermanische Forschungen, v. 3 [1894], p.236) which I subsequently posted in my commentbox. If I'm reading the German correctly, it seems like the authors are admitting that kaputsala was caused by a more modern modification of kapucchala, based on an etymological whim.

Sowing wild oats and plowing the fields

Observe the above picture of a man plowing the fields with his loyal quadruped. Do you notice anything pornographic here? You shouldn't, unless you're a sick creep. Let's move on.

Under my previous article Manly goats, the commentbox brims with input from readers. I continue to reject the validity of both *kapro- 'goat' and *kapr̥- 'penis' as true Indo-European (IE) roots. In fact, I'm starting to get the strong notion that the real reason why some Indoeuropeanists like Julius Pokorny had included Sanskrit kapr̥t- 'penis' into his cognate series under the 'goat' etymon was just to make it look less like a substratal loanword restricted to Western Europe and more like a fully attested IE root in order to fill out his 1959 book Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. It drives me nuts. It's so sloppy and obvious to me that a lot of these so-called Indo-European roots are bogus fabrications. If my current opinion ruffles a few hobbyists, so be it. A voice of doubt is needed in a world of safely treading yesmen and yeswomen from time to time.

(And this isn't to say that the more core roots of the traditional PIE lexicon like *ḱwon- 'dog' or *pénkʷe 'five' aren't competently justified. I simply urge balance and rational skepticism in all things. All humans are fallible - me, you, and even the most educated.)

Sharing recently some online leads hinting that the aforementioned Indic word kapr̥t- is fundamentally 'ploughshare' rather than 'penis', I've met some disbelieving resistance. Yet even in English, 'to plow' is used in naughty ways to refer to coitus. To further arm against the doubt, one may cite another classical term, Latin vōmer. It's primary meaning is 'ploughshare' and its secondary meaning is precisely 'penis' (or 'membrum virile' in VictorianSpeak, if you may).

Once we finally plough Pokorny's root into the mire where it belongs, his posthumous 'penis' can't get in the way of a more credible Tyrrhenian root for 'goat', backed up by Hesychius' own admission which Pokorny appears to have dismissed too eagerly as erroneous hearsay in a presumed classical age of ignorance perhaps.

Edward Sapir and the Philistine headdress

Browsing the web as usual I came across something that captured by attention. It turns out that Edward Sapir in his 1937 article Hebrew "Helmet," A loanword, and its bearing on Indo-European phonology had reconstructed a Philistine word *kaubaɣ- 'helmet' based on the Christian story of Goliath (1 Samuel 17:5). There in Samuel, the word for 'helmet' is recorded as either kōbáʕ (כובע) or qōbáʕ (קובע), a rather curious word of non-Semitic origin whose mystery has cultivated much academic curiosity. It's certainly connected with Hittite kupahis 'headdress' although exactly how this word was transmitted between Semitic and Anatolian groups is a riddle to solve. Note easterly Hurrian kuwahi too although seeking an origin of this word in Eastern Turkey seems most unlikely despite what Puhvel suggests (see Puhvel, Hittite Etymological Dictionary: Words beginning with K (1997), p.257).

Quite eerily, I've already suggested a Minoan word for 'head' or 'summit', *kaupaθa (read Paleoglot: A hidden story behind Cybele the Earth Mother?), but I was ignorant at the time of Sapir's published hypothesis. This Minoan etymon is my attempt at better explaining (via expected Etruscan *caupaθ) the source of both Germanic *haubida- and Latin caput in a way that an over-cited Indo-European root (*)*kaput- just can't convincingly accomplish without fiddling with the phonetics. Surely, given this particular set of uncannily similar yet phonetically irregular reflexes, we should seriously be thinking about recent loan transmission rather than leaping to the comparatively more contrived assumption of some long-ago Proto-Indo-European utterance. Add to this Greek κύπτω (kúpto) 'to bend forth, stoop forth' for which Beekes fails to find a credible Indo-European etymology and suggests Pre-Greek origin, much to my bookish delight. Nonetheless, some do try even to loosely etymologize the aforementioned Philistine word in Indo-European terms with no noteworthy success.


Matching the spirit of Sapir's whimsy while in honest desire to crack this Mediterranean puzzle, I wonder sometimes about the elusive Philistine language and its origins which scream 'Aegean' all over it. Unfortunately, the Philistine civilization also still screams 'mystery' all over it and with no forthcoming answers in sight. We must remember though the mention of the *Pirastu [prst.w] in Egyptian records, one of the 'Sea Peoples' listed to have attempted a minor coup on Egypt at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE.

Now, would it be unfathomable to posit the idea that the Philistine language could be a direct descendant of Minoan (or perhaps a Minoanized language) in which the word for 'head' (and subsequently for 'headdress' through metonymy) became, for the sake of public brainstorming, *kopað in this dialect? Semites, Hittites or some other intermediary might perhaps have misheard the voiced dental fricative /ð/ as a voiced pharyngeal fricative /ʕ/ (ie. ayin) or a voiced glottal /ɦ/. Stranger things have happened in loanwords, eg. the Semitic name of the famed North African city of Carthage which entered into Greek as Καρχηδών (Karchēdṓn), into Latin as Carthāgo, and into Etruscan as *Carθaza.