13 posts tagged “greek”

A while ago I posited the idea that the paradigm for 'foot' in Indo-European might have a phonotactic schwa insertion. Glen Gordon spook out against this, saying it was paradigmatic levelling rather than a phonotactic constraint. I didn't want to believe him, simply because phonotactic constraits are so much nicer than paradigmatic levelling, but I found some examples which shows that he's probably right.

So let us look at the paradigm for 'foot'. We have the root *ped- With a paradigm like this:

Nom. *pṓd-s
Gen. *ped-ós

The ō in the nominative is due to mono-syllabicity of the word. The vocalism of this word is then perfectly acceptable.

The genitive though is slightly more problematic. From the idea of syncope, we'd rather see a word like **pd-ós, which we clearly don't. My idea was then that a *e was inserted (which was previously a schwa), due to phonotactic constraints, after all /pd/ is a rather difficult cluster to pronounce initially, even Greek, known for it's sometimes rather strange initial clusters doesn't allow such a cluster. Glen Gordon argued that this is not so much a phonotactic constraint, but rather the tendency of Indo-European to avoid asyllabic roots alternating with syllabic roots in one paradigm.

At first I did not see why one would assume this, and then I suddenly remembered the root *peth₁- 'to fly'. This root is well attested in many languages, including English (feather). But the Greek word πτερόν 'wing' is the one I'd like to talk about. As we can see, Greek has a perfect zero grade in the root for this word, a Indo-European reconstruction of this word would be:
*pth₁ró-m
By the phonotactic constraint I first proposed such a cluster would be forbidden. I would expect a form **peth₁ró-m, so I have to re-evaluate my theory. I'm not quite feeling into giving into Glen's theory yet, and would like to change my theory a bit;

When there's a initial cluster of two consonants of which one of the two elements is voiced, a schwa is insterted between the two.

I believe Greek agrees with me on this one, since there's no clusters like bd, gd, pd, bt etc. to be found in the Greek language initially. Nevertheless I'm going to have to search for words to disprove me again; If you're feeling in a particularly productive mood, I encourage my readers to do the work for me!

Just a little side not to finish this post of, it might be interesting to know that Sanskrit in fact does have the phonotactic constraint that I posited the first time, the word for 'wing' in Sanskrit is patram पत्रम्. Which is a problematic word as well since it brings up some of Sanskrit's sporadic laryngeal vocalisation, but we'll leave that for some other time.

Sanskrit does allow such clusters medially though. The third person plural perfect in Vedic Sanskrit of patati पतति 'to fall/fly' is paptuḥ पप्तुः While in Classical Sanskrit by a bizarre analogy from sad- 'to sit' it became petuḥ पेतुः. To sit in 3ppl perf. is seduḥ < *sazduḥ < *sasduḥ. This e-vocalism rather than a medial CC cluster was generalised to all reduplicating perfects that have identical initial reduplication (Labials, dentals and fricatives). Seems like Sanskrit wasn't particularly fond of the medial zero-grade roots after a while either.

Last post I started telling you about how the present seemed to be some kind of vowel heightening form the perfect; due to its type of suffixes. In retrospect I consider this to be very wrong. I sometimes have days I try to merge everything with everything; which turns out wrong.

I still think the reduplication was originally reduplicated with the same vowel. I just think that the *e found in the present stem somehow motivated this pretonic-epenthetic-like schwa to be heightened by this *e or maybe it's a form of dissimilation (continuing on the idea that the present *e was originally a schwa as well).

Then we have two types of verbal stems, those with *e as the root vowel and those with *o. I can't stop thinking about how this *i/*e alternation might somehow be the clue to proving Pre-Indo-European syncope. Because, despite it being fairly obvious to me, from a logical point of view it's very hard to prove that the Genitive of 'father' ph₂trós originally had an unaccented *ə in between the *t and the *r, quite simply because it's not there.

Now if indeed the reduplication reflex of *ə before another *ə was *i, and this can be proven; we have definite proof that a Ø-grade used to have a *ə there.

Let me explain:
the verb 'to give' *deh₃
In full grade, that is in the singular we find
*di-déh₃-mi
while in the plural we find
*di-dh₃-més

If the preceeding Pre-IE *ə (> PIE*e) does indeed influence the heightening of *ə to *i, then also in the plural the *ə must have been there to cause this heightening.

So my job right now is twofold: Either find convincing proof that this heightening is true by collecting a big collection of reduplicating verbs in Sanskrit/Greek and maybe Tocharian; Or proof that all pretonic *ə followed by a *ə are heightened to *i.

And this is what I've been doing lately, collecting examples to prove this; so far, not incredibly fruitful though.

On a completely different note:
Some sharp readers may notice my self-contradiction. I'm currently placing reduplication in a pre-Indo-European stage, while previously I held a big argumentation that reduplication was an exclusive feature of Greek/Indo-Aryan. You're absolutely right please forgive me. I'm currently only placing the reduplication in such an early stage because I think it might work; which would mean I'd have to review my previous theories.
 
I now believe that loss of reduplication is far easier than I considered it before though. We have to realise that due to Haplology ( Or Haplogy? ;-) ) things like reduplication have a tendency of disappearing. Even within Greek we find Haplology *αμφι-φωρα > αμφωρα 'amphora (litt. that which is carried on both sides)'.

Let's hope this isn't a dead end. Even if it is, it'll be interesting to research.

What I've always found fascinating about Indo-European is that there seems to be many isoglosses that alternate certain vowels. *e/o alternations in, for example the genitive *-es/-os. Then there's the *i/e alternation in reduplications. Where we find i in Present/Aorist reduplications, and e in perfect reduplication (although we find many variants of the reduplication where the root vowel seems to influence the reduplicated vowel). And last but not least there's the *i/u alternation, which is what I'll talk about today.

I have no idea what may be the solution to this odd alternation, but I thought I'd bring it up to our collective awareness.

Sanskrit has the locative plural -su सु/षु. This is  apparently related to the Greek dative plural ending -σι(ν). As you can see u/i seem to alternate. But this doesn't always happen between Sanskrit and Greek. For example the prefix *dus- seen in both Greek and Sanskrit both display proof for an original *u. Sanskrit has the prefix dus- दुस्- And Greek has δυσ-. For example in Sanskrit you have the word durjanaḥ दुर्जनः 'a bad man' which is quite similar to the greek word: δυσγένεια 'low of birth'.

But then if we look at the Latin equivalent of this prefix we find dis-! It's the dis- we find in dislocation for example. So somehow the *u/i alternation does not seem to be a steady, or split by isoglosses that can be strictly defined in the modern day languages.

I applaud anyone willing to come up with an explanation to this bizarre alternation. I for one, do not have a clue where it came from.

For some time I've been wondering about the Indo-European genitive forms; Which anyone who reads my blog with any regularity has surely noticed.

As some of you may know, Indo-European has a different genitive form the nominal inflection than for the pronominal inflection. Later on the o-stems have taken up a lot of features of the pronominal inflection, as well as the pronominal genitive, but Hittite has convincing proof that this was not always the case; there Nominative and Genitive of a-stems (< PIE o-stems) are identical, ending in -aš.

The Indo-European pronominal ending is *-eso or *-oso; while the nominal ending is *-os or *-es. I believe I have found a way to unify these two forms as an originally identical ending.

To explain this I'll first have to bring in some theories which Glen Gordon has been working on considering a Pre-Indo-European syncope. Let me just stress that everything I present here are my theories, I'm not doing this to get respect and honour, but just so people won't think badly of Glen Gordon's awesome work if I make some terrible mistake in my reasoning.

Now for some spelling conventions. I am fairly traditional in displaying *e as *e and *o as *o, while it is quite likely that in fact the *o was an *a at some earlier stage. For an unknown vowel in my reconstructed pre-Indo-European forms I will use *a. Well, on to the actual theory now then!

For a word like 'father' we find the following paradigm
Nom. *ph₂tḗr
Gen. *ph₂trós

Now considering the 'Quasi-Penultimate Accent Rule' (QAR) and the syncope of almost all, if not all vowels outside of the accent we'd expect a Pre-Indo-European paradigm like this:

Nom. *p(a)h₂téro=so With pseudo-suffix *so-/to- 'this'
Gen. *p(a)h₂teró-sa With a true suffix and thus agreeing to the QAR.

The *so suffix later gave rise to a *rs cluster which lost the *s with compensatory lengthening, hence *ḗ. A similar process is later seen in classical Greek.

The syncopated final letter *o which appears in the genitive could also be the vowel *e, which gives a very nice explanation why most languages have generalised the *-ós suffix, while some (like Latin) show an *-és suffix.

Having shown this, let's now get to the really interesting part, the pronouns.

The previously mentioned stem *so-/to- 'this'(with it's curious alternation of stem *so- in the nominative *to- in the oblique) is great to show as an example.

Nom. *so(s)
Gen. *toso

The *-s ending in the nominative is obviously highly curious if it is indeed from the stem *so-/to- because you'd be saying *so=so 'this-this' in  Pre-Indo-European. Luckily there's some proof that this is not the original form. Greek has the form ὁ which goes back to *so, and definitely not to *sos. Also there's the Sanskrit form of this word सः saḥ which has a variant 'Sandhi' form स sa. Although this variant isn't usable in all contexts, the form is not a regular sandhi variant, which makes it likely that this is in fact the older form.

I think with that I have sufficient proof to not reconstruct this nominative *-s for pre-Indo-European

Now onto the pre-Indo-European forms

Nom. *so
Gen. *to-so

What can be said about these forms?
First, the nominative taking the penultimate accentuation into account, should be accented before itself, which is not even unthinkable (accentless words in Greek can do this). How come it didn't syncopate then? Well, that can have several reasons. Either the form *so was in fact *só dealing with the impossible accentuation by simply placing the accent on the only possible position. We do not have much proof for this though. It is in fact likelier that this particle was just 'unaccented'. How come it didn't undergo syncope? Well the fact that the word would've then be **s might be an indication. Another reason is that really short particle-like words like *so-/to- tend to be very resistant to such syncopations which normal words regularly take part in.

Although the Genitive could in fact have been accentuated as **tóso giving a later form like **tós it clearly didn't. An explanation for this might be that the stem *so-/to- wasn't accentuated in the nominative and was thus felt as an 'unaccentable word'. Besides that this is of course still one of these particle-like words, even though it's in the genitive. Therefore not taking an accent but still being strangely resistant to syncopation.

Now, if we put next to each other the reconstructed genitive of father, and that of this we see the following:
Gen. *p(a)h₂teró-sa
Gen. *to-so

Where in the first form the suffix' vowel was still a mystery vowel, from the pronominal form it is quite clear that this should be *-o thus giving:
Gen. *p(a)h₂teró-so

With this the two forms of the genitive have finally been unified into a single suffix *-so. So obvious that I'm astounded it hadn't occurred to me sooner. Besides that it's also so obvious I'm sure it has occurred to other people too. nevertheless I'm here to inform both myself and my readers, so even if I'm the last one to discover this, it's still useful for me.

A while ago I quite quickly accepted the possibility of a contraction of Homeric Greek genitive ending -οιο to -ου, as seen in the most dialects.

Now I'd like to argue this once again! First of all, this is not the commonly expected contraction of any dialect; And I'd rather avoid explaining strange forms by irregular sound contractions. In this post I opted that -οιο seems to reflect a form PIE *-osio where -ου reflects PIE *eso or *oso. The first one would correspond with Sanskrit -asya, while the second form agrees with forms like the one we find in Gothic -is.

Of course our high sense of lumping everything together as some kind of Proto-Greek would make us want to delete once of these forms. But I think we might have to consider that maybe Proto-Greek at its very earliest stage already had dialectal variations, which may have even been carried over from Indo-European.

It might be worth noting that -οιο is not only seen in Homeric Greek, but also in Mycenean. Bonfante went as far as suggesting that Homeric text was originally a Mycenaean text in his article "Homer Text is Mycenaean"[1]. I would not go this far, throughout Homer there's such an enormous amount of evidence that the main dialect was Ionic, that it seems absurd to claim that it's Mycenaean just because of a Mycenaean-like genitive and evidence of a once existent waw (which all dialects must have had at some point, not just Mycenaean).

I'd sooner think that -οιο was loaned from Mycenaean because it is metrically a lot more pleasant to work with, for a dactylic hexameter. But that idea is sort of denied due to the almost exclusive use of -οιο rather than a metrical whim deciding whether to use -οιο or -ου.

So when we indeed believe that -οιο and -ου are from different etymological sources, which is in my opinion more probable than a sporadic contraction, especially because we find both *-osio and *-eso reflexes in other languages, then we can conclude that there is some kind of switch between *-si- and *-s-, this would be a bizarre assumption if it was only found in the genitive, but lo and behold, such a switch is found in the formation of the future as well!

In Greek, to create the future, you take the verbal root, and add a -s-e/o suffix to it. For example πίμπλημι 'to fill' is a reduplicated present of the stem πλη/πλα- Then the future is: πλήσω. The sigma, in some environments disappears, but this is a post-proto-greek development, and not very important for this discussion.

Now, let's have a look at the Sanskrit future! Sanskrit doesn't insert a -s-a- suffix, like you'd expect looking at the Greek form, but a -sy-a- suffix, and just like Greek it's added to the full grade of the verbal root. For example: tiṣṭhati तिष्ठति 'to stand' stem: sthā- स्था The future is sthāsyati स्थास्यति.

aha another s/si switch. What exactly does this mean? Why does it happen? Why does Greek have both a *s and *si variant for the genitive?

I think this is an indication that Greek and Indo-Iranian languages may have been a lot closer than we think. But why this *s *si alternation seems to be taking place is beyond me.

It might also be worth mentioning that Greek and Indo-Iranian are in fact the only two branches that have a future with *s. Most Indo-European languages don't have a future at all. Why do we reconstruct this future as something from PIE? Because one day someone came up with the arbitrary rule: If it's in a European PIE languages, and an Asian PIE language, than it must be PIE. This idea is nonsensical, it might be helpful to establish true PIE roots, but for grammatical information like this, such rules should not be applied.

Once again, I find it difficult to go as far as saying that Graeco-Iranian was once an actual separate branch, but there's so many unique features to this group of languages not found anywhere else that it's quite idiotic to take the rules found in these languages and propose them as Indo-European, rather than the Graeco-Iranian dialect. Proof of the things we find in Graeco-Iranian is technically absent in all the other languages. Just because both branches have been extremely conservative doesn't mean that non of their shared features are archaic, rather than shared innovations.

[1] Bonfante, Giuliano 'Homer Text is Mycenaean' JIES 1996

[EDIT] Thanks to Glen for pointing out my terrible misspelling of Giuliano's name. Hah. I should look up whether this article also has the typo, because I was fairly sure I directly copied it.

I promised a while ago that I'd be writing down the phonology of Hittite on this blog. I am still at it, it's turning out to be enormous. But please be patient, while you wait I'll have some musings on the origin of the Indo-European wolf.

Wolf is a very odd word, because finding the 'right' root is actually far more difficult than you'd think. Traditionally we reconstruct *ul̥kʷos (*l is vocalised, your fonts may not place the vocalisation circle correctly.)

But normally we'd expect the reflex of *kʷ in Proto-Germanic to be *ƕ [ʍ] or the Verner variant *gʷ, not *f as seen in English, German and Dutch Wolf. *f can only come from PIE *p. To explain this odd switch between *kʷ and *p some people have proposed a sound law like the following:

*kʷ  > *p /R̥_ Or: *kʷ becomes *p after a vocalised resonant. Other such ad hoc explanations could be found, to explain the shift, simply because the environment is quite rare. I for one, would not know any other root with the same environment. Since there's no real way to disprove or approve such a law, we should be careful with accepting it.

But we haven't run out of odd Germanic cognates yet. We also have the word whelp. Arguably this word could be completely unrelated, but the build up is rather similar. Cognates to this word are O.S. hwelp, O.N. hvelpr, Du. welp, Ger. hwelf

A proto-Germanic form of this word would be expected to be *ƕelpaz. The most natural reconstruction of this word in PIE would then be *kʷélbos. Bizarre, I know but the similarity in root is striking. But the Indo-European word has a *b, which immediately makes it suspect. It looks like whelp actually developed in Proto-Germanic rather than Indo-European.

Proto-Germanic form of wolf is *wulfaz. *ƕelpaz looks as if the *w devoiced, and the  *f hardened. Besides that  the root has e-grade instead of Ø-grade. There really is no proper way to explain such changes, and maybe I'm completely wrong in assuming a relation between the two. But it's worth mentioning in this blog entry about the word wolf. Some propose the word to be onomatopoeic, but the same could be said for the Indo-European word for wolf.

There's one more very odd word ON. Vargr 'Outlaw, Wolf', but ModIc Vargur means 'fox', the Old English word is Warg, and referred to a particularly evil kind of wolf.

This word, if related to the above cited root for wolf, has also gone through some very odd sound changes. The hypothatical proto-Germanic form would be **wargʷaz
First of all, it seems to have a a-grade in the root. Then there's the *g which is a Verner variant of *ƕ. This would then mean at some point the accent would have been on the last syllable at some point. In PIE we'd expect *uolkʷós. Another odd thing is of course the *r rather than the *l. But this shouldn't surprise us too much, r/l switching is a 'common' sporadic shift.

I suggest we now leave the confusing  bunch of words that we know as the Germanic wolf-words and focus on some other languages.

First Greek. In Greek we find the word λὐκος. I can see you guys frowning! That's right, the *l and *u switched places, besides that this word reconstucts perfectly fine: PIE *lukʷos. This is not a normal process, not in Greek not in any language. Greek is known for its funky metathesis though (compare γυμνος to 'naked'), but even for Metathesis-happy Greek this metathesis is very funky.

There is a possibility that the word λὐκος comes straight from *ul̥kʷos though. One could assume a Proto-Greek form *ϝλάϙος /wlákʷos/ after which the labial element influenced the ά to colour to ὐ. Not something intirely dissimilar happens to κὐκλος <*kʷékʷlos where the é is influenced by the labial element. We have no indication though, that this happens to *a as well, and even less evidence that this labial-colouring occurred after the appearance of a through the vocalisation of the *l and in fact that seems fairly unlikely to me.

Let's take another word! Latin this time, lupus. Again a *lu- variant rather than *ul-. Interesting back in the days that people suggested that Latin and Greek may have been closely linked, but by now we know this isn't at all the case, which makes it all the more puzzling. I don't know much of Latin but lupus seems to only be able to go back to *lupos. Both the *p variant and the *lu variant in one word! Can it get any crazier? No it can't, and that's why we're now going to discuss Sanskrit!

Sanskrit has वृकः vṛkaḥ. Wow that one goes right back to *ulkʷos! Coincidence? I think not. This is yet another example of the shameless Sanskrit-centricity in almost anything we reconstruct in Indo-European. Something we should discourage. How is it that of the Major branches only this branch truly displays *ulkʷos and therefore, for some reason gets a more important status than the rest? Just because Sanskrit has a lot of archaisms, we can not just assume every word that's different from the rest is an archaism.  But okay enough venting of frustrations on Sanskrit-centricity (Hah! how's that for a neologism!).

So, now having discussed several appearances of the word 'wolf' what kind of conclusions are we going to draw from this? In fact I could still continue for example, telling about the seemingly similar root for 'fox' and also 'lynx' which looks like an n-infixed form of lycos. But that would make this entry even bigger than it already is, so I might discuss that some other time.

There's quite a few things we could come up with, and none of them are absolutely convincing. But let me mention just a few ideas worth mentioning

I'm not a great fan of Pokorny, and in my humble opinion, no one should be one. But he does have quite a nice explanation for this word. He proposes that the root *uelkʷ- is somehow related to the verbal root *uelp- 'to yelp', howl etc. This is in fact quite interesting, it would explain the seemingly random *kʷ/p alternations. I don't know of any other roots, but I do know it's not uncommon that *kʷ alternates with *p. Why this is, is absolutely beyond me. But it does give some nice options. Though it leaves the *lu~ul  metathesis unexplained.

Other explanations would say that the 'fear' for such wild animals as wolves would give birth to Taboo words, explaining the odd root formations. I find this absolutely implausible. Simply because such metatheses as *lu~ul are much to 'subtile'. When we see words being inverted, as for example in verlan, we see that this is not done per phoneme but often per syllable. It's not very likely that this is truly a taboo formation.

Another theory, which I've been theorising myself (although undoubtedly other people thought of it too) is the following.
Obviously what we know as Proto-Indo-European was not a sole linguistic entity in the area. It's likely there were other languages, and not just other language families, but sister languages of Indo-European itself too. Similar to how Dutch is a sister language to English. If countless languages develop from English and thus becomes the proto-language of a new family tree, while Dutch dies out, it doesn't mean Dutch never existed. Loan words from other such Indo-Europaic languages are not at all unlikely. Nor is it unlikely that such a sister language had a shift like **kʷ>**p. Did we loan the word for wolf from one of these sister languages? We can never be sure.

We could also explain the *lu- variants with this. In one of these sister languages, it's not at all unlikely that a vocalic *l  developed to *lu giving a **wlu-like cluster. I find it unlikely any language would retain a horrible cluster like **wl- which would lead to the disappearance of **w.

It is then absolutely possible to imagine sister languages with realistic sound shifts giving the results Indo-European has. But what would be the reason for taking over the word for wolf from these odd people? Why not keep our own?

Another idea might be that there was a substrate language, maybe even something Finno-Ugric, without the phoneme *kʷ, making it *p by sound substitution. Similarly a vocalic *l is easily pronounced *lu when said language has no such thing as vocalic consonants. But once again, why did a substrate language have such great influence on a word that doesn't have little importance within one's basic vocabulary of a prehistoric culture?

All very nice ideas very little conclusions. Feel free to add any idea's, no matter how crazy, I'm interested in what you think.

DISCLAIMER
I'd just like to thank Glen Gordon for making me realise that of course there must have been Indo-Europaic languages around Proto-Indo-European, and not just languages of other languages families. This possibility never occurred to me before, while it's actually so obvious.

So, I had my Hittite 2 test today. It included Hittite, Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian. It went fine, but as I was busy working with it, I stumbled upon the last question of the test which went as follows: What can you tell about the genitive in Anatolian languages?

The answer was easy enough, and I'll give it as an introduction that is to come.

Anatolian languages seem to have two separate ways of creating a genitive construction. One is by the typical genitive ending suffixed to the possesor. This is Proto-Anatolian *-as (Hitt. -aš, Luw. -as, Lyc. -eh). This just goes back to the typical Indo-European genitive suffix *-ós (although some might argue it's the other way around).

What is interesting about the *-ós suffix though, is that it is also seen in the Anatolian a-stems (PIE o-stems), while in the later PIE languages we tend to find the pronominal *-eso, or even a *-esio (and maybe *-eio).

The other way of creating a genitive construction is the -ssi- suffix (Luw. -esi, Lyc. -ehi), oddly enough this formation seems to be absent in Hittite, while it is dominant in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian, and the only formation in Cuneiform Luwian. This formation is typically Anatolian and works quite different from what you're used to.

I'll give an example of both the traditional genitive construction, and the Anatolian genitive.

Both forms can be found in a Lycian trilingual on the founding of Xanthos (a Lycian city). The *-as genitive is used as a so called onomastic genitive (a genitive used for names), while the *-ssi- genitive is used for nouns.

ẽke Trm̃isñ χssaϑrapazate Pigesere Katamlah tideimi 
'When Pigesere son of Katamla became Xadrape of Lycia....'
The Genitive construction here is Katamlah tideimi. where -ah goes back to *-as (though we would expect **-eh, but there's still many things we don't fully understand about the *a>e shift in Lycian.)

se-t-ahñtãi χñtawatehi χbidẽñnehi sey-ArKKazumahi
'and to be of the king of Kaunos, and of Arkesima'
And there we have, not one, not two, but three -ssi-genitives!
χñtawatehi, χbidẽñnehi, ArKKazumahi. What's interesting (though not particularly visible in this example), about the -ssi- suffix, is that it makes it a new noun, which afterwards, just conjugates like any normal noun. So *-ssi-s is the Nominative, *-ssi-n is the accusative, etc.

So here is approximately where I ended my answer, and, my answer had less cool examples and diachronic notes, but you get the point.

So, now that we have an overview of Anatolian genitives. Let's look at some other Indo-European languages.
First Greek:
Standard for all consonant stems is the -ος genitive. For example:
πατηρ > πατρος
o-stems though, work differently. they end in -ου. For example:
ἱππος > ἱππου
This ending could come from a variety of sources.
Some idea's are: *eso, *eo, *ejo but definitely not *esio. The first *e could also be an *o, and technically the final *o could be an *e if the first letter is an *o. *eo is dismissable if we're to assume it's from an Indo-European origin.

*eso is the most likely, since this is what we see in the pronouns, which in most cases seem to work the same as the o-stems.

Gothic has -is, which should be safely derrived from *eso as well.

But then comes Sanskrit to screw it all up!
Taking the same examples (etymologically) as Greek:
pitā > pituḥ पिता > पितुः
This formation is rather weird, I believe it points to a *-r-s ending, and thus proterodynamic rather than hysterodynamic as seen in Greek. It's not that relevent though, the word for horse (an a-stem (PIE *o-stem)) shows a very odd genitive:

aśvaḥ > aśvasya  अश्वः > अश्वस्य

An -asya suffix. This could be from a variety of sources, the likeliest ones are *esio or *osio. It might just be me, but I think the -sy- part looks an awful lot like the Anatolian *-ssi- suffix e-si-o. An *e thematic vowel, *-si- suffix, and an *-o ending. What exactly this *o-ending would be is unclear. Maybe it's an *-e, and then it would be an old vocative suffix. Maybe it's based on the pronominal ending *-eso which might have sounded enough like *-esi to start influencing each other.

When I presented this idea to a fellow student of mine, he pointed out the rather odd dative plural of consonant stems in Greek, which is made with a -σι(ν) suffix as well!

It's hard to explain how a genitive *-si- ended up in a dative plural. But the current explanation isn't too satisfying either. People generally compare it with the Sanskrit locative suffix -su सु/षु. But an ablaut of i/u isn't what we like to see in Indo-European.

So to conclude. There's two types of genitive constructions in Anatolian languages. The true genitive *-as and the genitival stem extension *-ssi-. There are some indications, especially in Sanskrit, that this suffix may have already existed in Indo-European itself, but only ended up being productive as a separate category in the Anatolian languages.

I am quite sure there's other Indo-European languages that have evidence for a -si- genitive like Sanskrit does, maybe Slavic languages? I'm not sure, but if you know, please leave a message.

I've read in several places, that Gothic alphabet is believed to be the Greek alphabet combined with runes and the Latin alphabet. Personally I am strongly opposed to the last notion, and am, in fact convinced it's solely the Greek Alphabet filled up with Germanic Runes when dear Wulfila ran out of runes. I'll discuss the runes individually, and by this I'll show that there's not a single time that a possible Latin variant might not be derived from Runic inscription.

There's also good reason to believe Wulfila did not use the Latin alphabet. Wulfila first of all used the Greek alphabet to fill up as many positions as possible. When he still had some left, he started using runes. It's not a realistic thought to think that he used both Runes and Latin alphabet to fill up the gaps. Why on earth would he want to do that?

Let's start with

𐌰 Phonemic value is /a/ or /ā/, although highly abstract, there's still some indication that this sign was derived from Upper Case α, thus: Α. it could be argued that it's from runic ᚨ, but I consider it unlikely.
𐌱 Phonemic value is /b/. This might go either way, it could be from the Greek Uppercase β: Β, or from runic ᛒ. Assuming that Wulfila first filled up the alphabet with Greek letters, I'm inclined to believe it's from the Greek alphabet.
𐌲 Phonemic value is /g/ Not a doubt here, clearly from upper case γ: Γ
𐌳 Phonemic value is /d/ Again clearly from upper case δ: Δ.
𐌴 Phonemic value is /ē/ This one is clearly from the Greek ε, though it somehow seems closer to the lower case than the upper case Ε, which is not really what we'd expect (Did greek have a lower case at al back in those days?)
𐌵 Phonemic value is /q/ This is an interesting one, First of all, it's in the alphabetical position, and has the numeral value equal to the greek Waw (ϝ). What's interesting is that the sign itself, is a turned around rune /u/ ᚢ. Apparently wulfila recognised that the /q/ and /u/ both had a labio-velar element, so he created a 'like /u/ but different' sign.
𐌶 Phonemic value is /z/ Clearly derrived from uppercase ζ : Ζ.
𐌷 Phonemic value is /h/. This one is probably the most difficult. Greek doesn't really have an /h/ letter around this time anymore η was already used for /ǣ/. But it can't really come from Latin either, although it has a striking resemblance with lower case h, simply because there was no such thing as a lower case in Latin those days. So the only one that's left is the Rune ᚺ. Not too convincing, but due to lack of any other thing to speak against it, I think we have no choice but to conclude this must be right.
𐌸 Phonemic value is /þ/. Of course derived from Greek ψ/Ψ
𐌹 Phonemic value is /i/. Derived from Greek ι/Ι
𐌺 Phonemic value is /k/. Derived from Greek κ/Κ
𐌻 Phonemic value is /l/. Derived from Greek λ/Λ
𐌼 Phonemic value is /m/. Derived from Greek Μ
𐌽 Phonemic value is /n/. Derived from Greek Ν
𐌾 Phonemic value is /j/. This is another one of those terrible controversial letters. Many people will claim that this letter came from Latin G. But honestly, this does not make much sense to me. Latin G has never had the value /j/. The striking resemblance between the Latin G and this letter is thus only coincidence. The real letter it was derived from is the Runic ᛃ, which has quite a similar shape and does have the value /j/.
𐌿 Phonemic value is /u/. This one is not really open to discussion, clearly comes from the Runic ᚢ.
𐍀 Phonemic value is /p/. Derived from Greek π/Π.
𐍁 No phonemic value, purely a numeral '90'. This is an odd letter. It's in the position where we'd expect the Ϟ. While in shape I think it most resembles the Stigma: Ϛ.
𐍂 Phonemic value is /r/. This is a very interesting letter, many people like to connect it with Latin R. But they're silly, it's just from the Rune ᚱ. The real issue here is, why didn't Wulfila just use Greek ρ/Ρ? Surely this would've helped us confused scholars to not mix up k and r up all the time (Notice the near Identical shape). The fact that Wulfila did not want to use the ρ is indirect proof that the Greek sound was quite different from the Gothic. Either Gothic r was [ʀ], or the often assumed aspiration of the Greek ρ thus: [rʰ] was too dissimilar to [r] to Wulfila's ears to use the same letter. Most likely is that the Gothic value of /r/ was [ʀ] though.
𐍃 Once again one of those controversial letters! It looks just like Latin S. It also looks a lot like lower case Greek ς, but like I said, I'm not sure how wide spread the lower case script of Greek was at the time. Therefore I believe this letter comes from the Runic ᛋ, or actually the slightly more tilted version as seen in the 'SS' sign. Because if you believe that  /j/ Was derived from ᛃ, it's not hard to believe that also ᛋ received round shapes. The shapes of these runes isn't all that dissimilar.
𐍄 Phonemic value /t/. Clearly from Greek τ/Τ
𐍅 Phonemic value /w/, and possible /y/ in some Greek loanwords. Without doubt from the Greek Υ.
𐍆 Phonemic value /f/. Some people might want to connect this to Latin F, but it's way to similar to Runic ᚠ to assume another relation, Although the branches are in the wrong directions, they both start at the main branch, while the Latin F has the top bar go over the main branch.
𐍇 Phonemic value unclear probably /kʰ/, It's solely used in Greek loanwords and is thus also clearly related to the Greek χ/Χ.
𐍈 Phonemic value /ƕ/. It seems odd to map this letter to the Greek Θ, but it's without a doubt what happened.
𐍉 Phonemic value /ō/. From Runic ᛟ. An interesting use, why didn't Wulfila just use Ω? An explanations is that Ω was most likely closer to the sound /ɔ̄/. Some might also Argue that this letter isn't from the Rune, but from the Greek Ω after all.
𐍊 The final letter! No Phonemic value just means '900'. The Greek letter for '900' is ϡ. Gothic seems to use the Runic ᛏ with the phonemic value /t/. Pretty mysterious choice, but that's the way it is.

An interesting feature of the Indo-European verbal (and sometimes nominal) system is so called 'reduplication'.

Reduplication in Indo-European is the repetition of the first consonant plus an extra vowel before the action root.

A famous example is the Indo-European word for 'wheel' one of the few nominal roots with reduplication:
*kʷe-kʷlo-
Note that the reduplication is solely the first consonant, never the cluster. Well never is, of course, a big word. It does seem to happen sometimes.

Typically in Indo-European we reconstruct two types of reduplication, one with a vowel *e after the reduplicated consonant, one with the vowel *i. Obviously we like to reconstruct some kind of earlier **ə that gave both reflexes, but in the latest phase of PIE these two were definitely there.

Are these reconstructions really that natural though? Maybe not. Many languages seem to indicate a different system. For once Sanskrit was not authoritative in the opinions of the earlier Indo-Europeanists (typically, when there's doubt, the Sanskrit form is considered correct). No, this time it's Greek. Greek knows solely two types of reduplication. i-reduplication in presents (and very rare aorists), and e-reduplication in the perfect.

When we have a look at three other languages with attest reduplication, we get a very different view though. The languages I will discuss are Gothic, Sanskrit and Tocharian B. I've been told that Latin also displays some non-standard reduplication, but since my Latin isn't much better than 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori', I'll leave that languages for people with more expertise.

First, let's talk about Gothic. Gothic is a nice language, for it displays reduplication often, and consistently throughout it's full history (which is awefully short, but still), unlike any other Germanic language. There's some proof of reduplication in other languages (I believe an odd Old-English form for 'rowed' was 'roard' (though spelling is probably wrong)). The other for is what we see in the preterite of do  did < *deda. But the *deda discussion is a different one all together where no consensus has been found yet.

Gothic reduplication, occurs in the preterite. This is exactly the way we like it in Indo-European reconstructions. There is one main issue though. The vowel use for reduplication is <ai> which phonetically is [ɛ] (some people are pro diphthong, especially in the long variant, I disagree, it has to be a monophthong).

This is not the vowel we expect in reduplication. PIE *e consistently became Gothic i in all contexts. Later though i was changed to ai in several contexts (this all happened before our first Gothic textual attestation).
 *i > ai/_r,h,ƕ This is linguist speak for 'e became <ai>  before r,h and ƕ (Similarly als *u > au/_r,h,ƕ for you symmetry lovers).

Not all reduplication verbs start with r,h or ƕ though. In fact I can't think of any. So a verb like letan you'd expect to have a preterite **lilot. What we actually have is lailot. Some people have desperately tried to explain this to say that the vocalism is analogy from the reduplicating verbs that do start with r,h and ƕ. Personally I do not find this very convincing. Nevertheless, it's very hard to have any <ai>  in Gothic outside of the above mentioned  position. Ony if it were the long variant of <ai> (not visible in writing), we would be able to have that vowel outside of that position.

If <ai> in reduplicating verbs is not from earlier i, we would expect it to be from an earlier *ai < PIE *oi, which is not at all convincing either. Because of this (and several other reasons), I think there might be reason to assume that reduplication in Gothic is not a direct descendant of Indo-European reduplication (this assumption is going to academically kill me :P),

If it is old though, we have either a very odd Indo-European reduplication, or a very odd development in Gothic. You choose ;).

Now, let us discuss Sanskrit. Sanskrit uses reduplication in much the same contexts as Greek. It's used in some presents/aorists (which, I believe, use exclusively the i-vocalism). Besides that the i-vocalic reduplication is used in desideratives and intensives (some indication of this, is also, and solely available in Greek (even more proof for my pro-Graeco-Iranian theory :P)). In the perfect though, we see a different situation all together. We don't see the velar-palatalising a that we would expect as a reflex of PIE *e. No, it reduplicates the sonorant semi-vowel or vowel of the root in the zero grade.

What does that mean? Here let me show you:
Stem: puṣ- present: puṣyati perfect: pupoṣa (< Vedic pupauṣa). So it actually reduplications the u. This is odd in many ways, especially because the sound u is not actually immediately following the first consonant when the verb is in the perfect. In the perfect plural it is though, so likely it got it from there.
This reduplication is also seen when the semi-vocalic consonant is an i. Also the a is reduplicated when it's in the zero grade of the root, or if the second consonant is a vocalic r. But to be honest, this might be the Indo-European *e, especially since it palatalises the reduplicated velars.

Note that this semi-vocalic root vowel even crosses cluster boundaries. So the root śru- gives śuśro-.

Another distinctive feature of Sanskrit reduplication is the way the consonants are treated. When a voiceless non-aspirate is reduplicated, the same consonant remains. An example was given above.

If a voiced aspirate and h < *gh, is aspirated, a voiced non-aspirate. For example
dhāv- > dadhāv
This is not that different from Greek, it's Grassmann's law. Only Greek has voiceless aspirates, and they thus give the voiceless non-aspirate. (τιθημι).

But in some roots, and this is really weird, a voiceless consonant reduplicated sometimes gives the most bizarre reflexes. One that comes to mind right now is the verb pibati 'he drinks' with the root pā-. That's right, the root shortened it's ā to a, then the root consonant became b while the reduplicative consonant remains p. Absolutely insane, but very real nevertheless. This is but a minority though. Most voiced reduplicated consonant remain voiced.

This is, once again, a very different form of reduplication than the one we see in Greek. I've been told that something similar happens in the few Latin verbs that have reduplication. But someone else is going to have to give examples.

Now we get to the last, and really crazy part. That's right, Tocharian B. Tocharian B (and probably also Tocharian A :P) is always crazy. It fails to conform to any type of normal behaviour. I love it.

Tocharian B has reduplication in only one class. The Preterite Participle.

The most normal Preterite Participle is perfectly normal. CäCaw (a<accented ä). Example:lätaw from the root lät-
The second group is C1eC1aw (a from accented ä). Example śeśaw. Though this looks like a perfectly normal reduplication, this is already bizarre. Because TochB e does not come from IE *e, rather it comes from IE *o. This o is also nowhere to be found in the root. śä-
The third group is C1eC1aC2äw (a from accented ä), For example lyelyakäw from root läk-
Next group is C1eC1éC2äw Example:  teteku (u = äw) from täk-, At last here we find a decent reduplication of the root vowel.
(j)VCäw where V is accented. For example: yáku root: yäk-
C1aC1áC2äw for example: lalālu (ā = accented a) from root: la-. TochB. a comes from Indo-European *h2e.
The next class is rather normal (no reduplication!) CäCáu for example: krämpau root: krämp-
The before last class is C1aC1áC2au for example kakārpau root: korp-
The last class I don't have any example of, but luckily isn't reduplicating either. áCau.

So in Tocharian we have reduplication with o, or h2e. And not once with *e or *i. Nor is the root semi-vowel reduplicated as we'd hope to see considering Sanskrit.

So there we have it! Three completely different reduplication systems, which are opposed directly against the Greek and reconstructed Indo-European form. Why we are still reconstructing the reduplication the way we are is actually a bit mysterious. It's the easiest, that's for sure. All these systems might have also undergone some analogy, especially Sanskrit and Gothic.

This leaves us with Tocharian B though, which went about being it's own crazy self (he likes to do that). Now we might want to mention that Tocharian split of from the Indo-European family well before the rest of the languages started branching off (but well after Anatolian branched off). Maybe this was indeed the crazy reduplication system PIE used to have, but then all reduplication was reduced to a schwa.

One thing is sure, the last word has definitely not been spoken about Indo-European reduplication, it's no where near as straight forward as some people like to think (Though in all honesty, to keep your sanity, I can imagine you'd rather think it's that simple than look at Tocharian; What can I say? I'm a linguistic masochist :P).

So, in two weeks times we got 'all the grammar' there is to know of Lycian. That's 4 whole pages. This is both saddening, as fun. Picking up 'a little language' in two weeks gives a nice addition to your inventory. But naturally, languages that require but 4 pages to explain everything there is are filled with question marks.

Lycian is a language which is almost exclusively written on grave stones inscriptions, giving us a very limited vocabulary, also because the gravestones were written in an extremely formulaic fashion. Nevertheless I thought it'd be fun to show you all a small 'semi bilingual' of a Lycian-Greek gravestone text. Unicode 5.1 in fact has Lycian encoded, but due to the very few people that actually have support on their computer for Unicode 5.1, I'll make a little picture using the (Unicode 5.1 compliant) Aegean font. But just for kicks, I'll add the Unicode text, so all of those nuts like me who collect all fonts so they can have the whole Unicode can have a little benchmark (it's working for me!).

I'm sorry that I don't have the real inscription. But I guess that is one of the curses of the internet and obsucre languges

The Inscription:
𐊁𐊂𐊚𐊑𐊏𐊚:𐊑𐊗𐊀𐊗𐊀:𐊎𐊚𐊏𐊁𐊓𐊕𐊑𐊏𐊀𐊇𐊙𐊗𐊚:𐊓𐊒𐊍𐊁𐊊𐊏𐊅𐊀:𐊎𐊒𐊍𐊍𐊆𐊊𐊁𐊖𐊁𐊛:𐊖𐊁:𐊅𐊀𐊓𐊀𐊕𐊀:𐊓𐊒𐊍𐊁𐊊𐊏𐊅𐊀𐊛:𐊓𐊒𐊕𐊆𐊛𐊆𐊎𐊁𐊗𐊁𐊛
𐊓𐊀𐊑𐊏𐊁𐊈[𐊆]𐊊𐊁𐊛𐊆:𐊛𐊕𐊓𐊓𐊆:𐊍𐊀𐊅𐊀:𐊁𐊓𐊗𐊗𐊁𐊛𐊁:𐊖𐊁𐊗𐊆𐊅𐊁𐊆𐊎𐊁:𐊖𐊁𐊆𐊊𐊁:𐊗𐊆(𐊁)𐊖𐊁𐊕𐊆:𐊗𐊀𐊅𐊆
𐊗𐊆𐊋𐊁:𐊑𐊗𐊀𐊗[𐊀]:𐊁𐊂𐊁𐊛𐊆:𐊎𐊁𐊆𐊊𐊁:[𐊗𐊒𐊂𐊁𐊆𐊗]𐊆:𐊓𐊒𐊏𐊀𐊎𐊀𐊉𐊉𐊆:𐊀𐊍𐊀𐊅𐊀𐊛𐊀𐊍𐊆:𐊀𐊅𐊀<
ΤΟΥΤΟ:ΤΟ:ΜΝΗΜΑ:ΕΡΓΑΣΑΤΟ:ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙΔΗΣ:ΜΟΛΛΙΣΙΟΣ:ΚΑΙ:ΛΑΠΑΡΑΣ
ΑΠΟΛΛ[Ω]ΝΙΔΟΥ:ΠΥΡΙΜΑΤΙΟΣ:ΟΙΚΕΙΟΙ ΕΠΙ:ΤΑΙΣ:ΓΥΝΑΙΞΙΝ:ΤΑΙΣ:ΕΑΟΤΩΝ
[ΚΑ]Ι:ΤΟΙ[Σ]:ΕΓΓΟΝΟΙΣ:ΚΑΙ ΑΝ:ΤΙΣ:ΑΔΙΚΗΣΗΙ:ΤΟ:ΜΝΗΜΑ:ΤΟΥΤΟ
ΕΞΩΛΕΑ:[Κ]ΑΙ:ΠΑΝΩΛΕΑ:ΕΙΗ:ΑΟΤΩΙ:ΠΑΝΤΩΝ

Source:

http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/anatol/lycian/lycco006.htm
There is a certain different in the transcription I use, and the website. The one I use is of what I got in class, the difference is the way the last line is filled in for the part in between brackets (unrecoverable/hard to read text.)
I have: [tubeit]i
TITUS has this: [httẽm]i
Those are two radically different bits of text. I honestly wouldn't know what httẽmi means, so I have absolutely no idea which of the two is more plausible

Transcription:
ebẽñnẽ ñtata me ne prñnawãtẽ pulejnda mullijeseh se dapara pulejndah purihimeteh
prñnezijehi hrppi lada epttehe se tideimeseije tiseri tadi
tike ñtata ebehi me ije tubeiti punamaθθi aladahali ada5
τοῦτο τὸ μνῆμα ἐργάσατο Ἀπολλωνίδης Μολλίσιος καὶ Λαπάρας
Ἀπολλωνίδου Πυριμάτιος οἰκεῖοι ἐπι ταῖς γυναιξίν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν
καὶ τοῖς ἐγγόνοις. καὶ ἄν ἀδικήσῃ τὸ μνῆμα τοῦτο ἐξώλεα καὶ πανώλεα εἴη ἀυτῳ πάντων

Translation:

ebẽñnẽ ñtata me-ne prñnawãtẽ pulejnda mullijeseh se dapara pulejndah purihimeteh prñnezijehi
this.acc-encl.3sg.pron.acc burial chamber.sg.acc ptcl. encl.3sg.pron.acc build.prt.3pl-encl.3sg.pron.acc Apolonides.nom.sg Mullis.gen.sg and Laparas.nom Apolonides.gen Pyrimatis.gen house.gen-adj.pl.nom
' Apolonides of Mullis(might be a patronym or an ethnonym) and Laparas of the house of Apolonides of Pyrimatis built this burial chamber.'
(Note the massive amounts of encl-3sg pronomen. This was originally the enclitic shown by nasalisation, but it seems that it started spreading as part of several paradigms.)

hrppi lada epttehe se tideime
on behalf of wife.pl.dat his./theirpl.dat and child.pl.dat
'for their wives, and their children'

seije tise-ri tadi tike ñtata ebehi me-ije tubeiti punamaθθi aladahali ada5
and-encl.prn.3sg.dat indef.prn.nom.sg-rel.pron.nom.sg place.prs.3sg indef.prn.sg.acc burial chamber.sg.dat this.sg.dat ptcl.-prn.3sg.dat punish.prs.3sg P. Care of the grave.sg.dat 5 ada(currency)
'and he who will place something in this burial chamber, now him Punamaththi will punish. For the care of the grave: 5 ada.'
(note tise-ri < tise-ti with rhotacism, typical for Luwian, not as commonly seen in Lycian.)

In the last sentence we have difficult with the word punamaθθi. We're not sure how to translate it, maybe it's a personal name. Also the last part aladahali ada 5 Is a difficult sequence. It's translated as 'for the care of the grave (the fee is) 5 ada.' Because we see it more often, also when not warning grave robbers. So it's possibly not part of the curse, but just a note on how much it cost to make the grave, or to have it cleaned, or something like that.

Now the Greek text is much easier to understand:
τοῦτο τὸ μνῆμα ἐργάσατο Ἀπολλωνίδης Μολλίσιος καὶ Λαπάρας Ἀπολλωνίδου Πυριμάτιος οἰκεῖοι
this.n.sg.acc the.n.sg.acc gravestone.n.sg.acc build.aor.med.3sg Apollonides.m.sg.nom Mollisis.m.sg.gen and Laparas.m.sg.nom Apollonides.m.sg.gen Pyrimatis.m.sg.nom Relatives.pl.nom
'Apollonides of Mollisis and Laparas Relatives of Apollonides of Purimatis built this gravestone,'
(Puzzling is the 3sg aorist, rather than 3pl)

ἐπι ταῖς γυναιξίν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν καὶ τοῖς ἐγγόνοις.
for the.f.pl.dat wife.f.pl.dat the.f.pl.dat poss. himself.m.pl.gen and the.n.pl.dat children.n.pl.dat.
'for their own wives, and children'

καὶ ἄν ἀδικήσῃ τὸ μνῆμα τοῦτο ἐξώλεα καὶ πανώλεα εἴη ἀυτῳ πάντων
and modal.ptcl dishonour.aor.conj.3sg the.n.sg.acc gravestone.n.sg.acc this.n.sg.acc complete destruction.f.sg.nom and  complete destruction.f.sg.nom be.opt.3sg him.sg.dat all.pl.gen.
'And may complete and utter destruction be upon he who dishonours this grave.'

Definitely a lot more terrifying than the Lycian version and also absolutely no mention of 5 ada, therefore not a true bilingual text.

I hope you all found this as fun as I did ;)