12 Dec 2010

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).

10 comments:

  1. That -ya extension as a relativizer reminds me of the way possessed in Salishan languages can translate as sentences meaning "X has Y". In Straits Salish, for example, there is a paradigm of possisive pronominals alongside one that would translate as "X is Y".

    That does violence to the sentence-hood of sentences containing a possessed noun, on the surface, but maybe that's not what's happening. Maybe the possessum as sentence obtained at one stage of the language and then got fossilized as a genitive as the typology of the language changed. PIE did not spring fully formed ex nihilo out there on the steppe; at some stage it may have looked quite exotic. There are lots of strange neighbors around there - maybe not as weird as Salishan, but still - and they may have been, probably were, a lot more widespread eight or nine thousand years ago.

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  2. Jim: "Maybe the possessum as sentence obtained at one stage of the language and then got fossilized as a genitive as the typology of the language changed."

    For PIE, I believe the genitive in *-ós is quite ancient (< Mid IE *-ása) and shared with the Aegean languages which show *-asa. So the introduction of *-yo was just a convenient circumlocution to avoid homophony with the developing thematic nominative in *-o-s (< Mid IE *-a=sa) after the rule of Syncope in the Pre-IE period I label early Late IE.

    It's interesting though that possession and existence in PIE are closely linked not only here but in the issue of the etymology of PIE *h₁es- 'to be' which I take to be a Pre-IE loan from Semitic copula *yiθ 'there is' from the triliteral *yθw 'to have'.

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  3. That makes a lot of sense. I bet if you ran a study cross-linguistically a huge percentage of linguistic change would turn out to be that same kind of chinese tiles effect -one change triggering others that trigger others.

    I think posession and existence are just logically closely linked. Look at 有 - intransitively it menas "exist', transitively it means 'have'. No borrowing into PIE at any point. The native intution in English seems to be that pssoession entials control, but when you look at the actual usage in the language that turns out to be rather far from the case.

    I have to wonder at any PIE loans from Semitic - the geography argues against it - and I am sure there are lots of counter-arguments I am unaware of. I know there are several etyma in the region that are believed to be Semitic - bull, wine, etc - but they look very much like Wanderwoerter. They are certainly that kind of term. Their orgin may be Semitc but that doesn't say anything about the transmission path. And wait - why would a word for wine originate in a Semitic language? Grapes are native to the Elburz and that region, not an area where a Semitic language has ever been spoken. Maybe the word just wandered through one.

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  4. Jim,

    Unanalyzable PIE *septm̥ 'seven' with the fully analysable Semitic *sabʕatum (a specifically masculine mimated form of the root *sabʕ-) is an unsurmountable argument and makes any rational denial of contact between Proto-IE and Proto-Semitic impossible.

    You should review what I've written in the past on Paleoglot about these interesting ties:

    Proto-Semitic as a second language

    A list of possible Proto-Semitic loanwords in PIE

    "Mid Indo-European", Semitic and Neolithic numerals

    From a linguistic standpoint, if PIE is most reasonably placed in the NW Pontic, Proto-Semitic could only have plausibly been in Turkey and Syria. If we use material archaeological remains or genetic studies in place of linguistic facts we're only deluding ourselves since linguistic movement isn't necessarily dependent on demic and genetic movement.

    "I know there are several etyma in the region that are believed to be Semitic - bull, wine, etc - but they look very much like Wanderwoerter."

    I will concede that for 'bull' and 'wine', this is possible. Not for 'three', 'six', 'seven', 'know' and 'be' however.

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  5. I'm missing something. All those etyma are reconstructed for PIE, not just for Mid IE. "Know' shows up in Sanskrit; i don't know about the rest. But it is very pausble that worsds laoned into Mid IE could be transmitted throught the continuum of IE dialects all the way to the Pamirs.

    I'm not quibbling about the origin of these etyma, just the path of transmission. It seems to me that unless we are certain that they were not also in Hattic or other languages in that area, whatever grouping is in dashion now, then we can't say for sure it was direct loans. That's whay I mean by Wanderwoerter. Even the presence of actual Levantine goods in sites from that area in that era are not proof of direct trade.
    just a quibble. I am sure this is the first question that came up and was addressed and then settled when this theory was advanced.

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  6. Jim,

    PIE *septm̥ can *only*, and I repeat *ONLY*, come from Proto-Semitic based on both phonetics AND well-attested, specifically **Semitic** grammar. It's directly equatable with the Semitic masculine mimated form in *sabˁ-at-u-m (*sabˁ- 'seven', *-at [feminine; numeric masculine], *-u [nominative] and *-m [mimation]).

    Hattic simply doesn't attest to any of these morphemes. The onus is yours if you wish to "quibble" about unevidenced what-ifs.

    "All those etyma are reconstructed for PIE, not just for Mid IE."

    Ignoring Proto-Semitic for a moment and based purely on internal reconstruction, the PIE etyma (*treis 'three', *sweks 'six', *septm 'seven', *woid- 'know' and *es- 'be') lead directly to Mid IE (*taréisa 'three', *sʷéksa 'six', *séptam 'seven', *waid̰- 'know' and *es- 'be').

    That these Mid IE values show quite regular correspondences with Semitic correlates (*θalāθu 'three (f.)', *šidθu 'six (f.)', *sábˁatum 'seven (m.mimated)', *wadāˁu 'know' and *yiθ 'be (copula variant)') only strengthens these pre-IE reconstructions.

    The nature of the borrowed words shows not only interaction but lengthy and/or profound contact, even bilingualism which is unsurprising in the context of prehistoric Mediterranean/Black Sea trade.

    Unfortunately while I know for certain that my reasoning is clear, I can think of many irrational reasons why the obvious is denied in favour of any lesser view no matter how weakly argued. This is an inconvenient truth for certain mentally sick people that frequent the Stormfront website afterall but my blog isn't designed for them.

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  7. I know about that psychology; sorry if that's what this sounded like. That has bedeviled IE form the beginning. It was just the matter of the geographic distance. But if what you are positing is influence from a trade language, then that makes a lot of sense. I don't think there is any question that number words would be core trade vocabulary.

    Based on your periodization of Mid IE there would have been more than enough contact with IE groups all across the region to spread this vocabulary. Which leads me to wonder if the fact that some etymon shows up across some number of daughter languages is enough reason to conclude that it derives from the common ancestor language. I don't think so - there are realted languages all across North America with English loan words and we can be quite sure these loans did not enter the common ancestor.

    Indeed when it comes to lengthy and profound contact there may be more in play than just this period of trade contact. Aside from the direct contact, either from trade missions or even trade colonies, there may have been direct contact earlier and farther east with communities that have vanished or language shifted, east of this contact on the Black Sea coast.

    Semitic would have been culturally dominant in the region, and it would have spread much firther inland pretty fsast. Even the Egyptians said that Byblos was the frst city, so that dominance must have been pretty old. It had to have been for a long time to have spread out of Africa in the first place, and it's likely that native groups language shifted too. The initial advantage may have had to do with cattle pastoralism, even if its gone from the region now. a community needs numbers for handling livestock, even more than for counting stores of agricultural products.

    BTW, that "know" etymon - I had seen it glossed as a participle of "see". Frankly a loan sounds more likely.

    Come to think of it, there are some completely non-trade or pastoralism related etyma too. "Wet/water" and "booth/house" look cognate with Semitic too.

    Then there is the matter of the eerily similar gender systems.

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  8. Jim: "Which leads me to wonder if the fact that some etymon shows up across some number of daughter languages is enough reason to conclude that it derives from the common ancestor language."

    Don't wonder. The final accent on *septm̥ is not attributable to attested Semitic accentuation at all. That in itself is a big tip-off.

    In PIE, oxytone accent explains both Classical Greek ἑπτά (heptá) and Sanskrit saptá. Proto-Tocharian has *śäpätä (Toch.A ṣpät, Toch.B ṣukt) yet both it and Anatolian diverged from the core IE area the earliest of all branches, retaining several proven archaicisms only exhibited in these two branches (eg. their very different conjugation paradigms). And Tocharian was located very far away in Xinjiang (yes, that's right: China).

    The presumed accent shift in Pre-IE is in turn explained by its association with 'eight', also with oxytone accent, some time after Syncope. Ergo MIE *séptam > eLIE *séptm (initial accent)> *septm (accent on *m).

    "BTW, that 'know' etymon - I had seen it glossed as a participle of 'see'. Frankly a loan sounds more likely."

    The two words are relatable semantically - mental sight versus physical sight.

    One may reconstruct a hi-class verb *wóid-e '(s)he knows' at the PIE level from which a post-IE thematic aorist *wid-é-t '(s)he comes to know, sees, realizes' was derived in some dialects.

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  9. "Don't wonder. The final accent on *septm̥ is not attributable to attested Semitic accentuation at all. That in itself is a big tip-off."

    That's what I meant. This example shows that timing matters.
    Intensity and terms of contact also matter. Considering that loans from Semitic are not all just trade related, extending even to syntactic patterns, the contact had be more than just trade or specific technologies.

    New subject - I came across a suggestion once that there had been a Punic lingua franca in Western Europe. It sounds plausible to me; is there any rela basis for it?

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  10. Unless you're looking for something more specific, I'd say that the general prominence of Carthage in Etruscan and Roman trade would guarantee this to be true one way or another.

    The Etrusco-Punic Pyrgi Tablets show just how much influence Carthage had even in Italy.

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