6 posts tagged “latin”

Not so much a very insightful post as a mere musing.

It has always puzzled me how one language can be so resilient to changing their phonologies when loaning words while others aren't.

There's languages that take on whole new phonemes purely from loaning from other languages. English Zoo has a word initial /z/ which in native words is illegal. Dutch goes even further, all instances of /s/ and /f/ are loan phonemes. It's highly dependent on the region in how much they merge with /z/ and /v/, but in my speech I have a clear distinction between fee 'fairy' and vee 'lifestock'. Other languages have taken on completely new illegal clusters in their language like āyiskrīm in Arabic with a CCC cluster. There's also some initial CR words though I can't think of them right now. Nevertheless Arabic always stayed quite resistant, often adapting loanwords to known consonant patterns.

bank 'bank' has a plural bunūk.

Other languages have gone even further completely taking over larger parts of illegal phonological traits. Swahili is probably a good example. stampu 'stamp' with a previously illegal st cluster at the beginning of a word.

It also amuses me that french has a word like scolaire after trying so hard to get rid of that cluster over the centuries creating école out of Latin schola.

And when you see languages this open to changes you wonder why Japanese after all this time and such an enormous influx of loanwords from english still refuses to pronounce love any different than /rabu/. Why, although often written as such, video is still pronounced /bideo/ and star trek is still /sutaatorekku/. Why is Japanese so resistant to changes in phonology and why aren't other languages?

The 'contact' or 'influence' argument gets you a long way, but doesn't fully cover the problems it brings. How can Latin be said to have such contact with French that it would influence their phonology, it's a dead language after all, that wasn't spoken widely either.

And maybe something could be said about English influence in Egyptian Arabic, but is such influence stronger than anglo-mania that currently spreads throughout Japanese? Not to mention the rather great, though not as great resilience to influence in Chinese loans as well. Sure it introduced some Cy clusters, but still Chinese loans sound, and never did, nothing like Chinese.

Maybe it has something to do with how limiting a phonology is? That would stand in the way why Swahili didn't follow Japanese's path. Maybe it is actually related to the orthography too?

Any musings are welcome.

I've been pondering about a problem for some time now. What is traditionally reconstructed as voiced aspirates, and is probably more accurately reconstructed as voiced stops in Indo-European at times seem to display voiced-fricative behavior rather than voiced or voiced aspirate.

Let me explain. The first thing that brought me on this thought is the odd reflex of *ǵʰ in both Sanskrit and Latin. They both reflect it as h. For example *ǵʰeiōm 'winter' is found as hiems 'winter' in Latin, and as hima- 'cold' (like in himalaya)in Sanskrit.

A *ǵʰ > h shift isn't that obvious. Taking it as a voiced stop it becomes slightly more probable, but still an intermediate stage must have been a voiced velar fricative [γ].

For Latin this is easy to understand the other voiced aspirates also become fricatives word initially (*dʰ > *ð > [*þ >] f, *bʰ > *v > f), but for Sanskrit this is a lot harder to imagine. Why would *ǵʰ become a fricative, while *dʰ and *bʰ become aspirates stops dh and bh respectively. It makes me feel that more is going on here.

Then there's the lovely Germanic languages.

Verner's law teaches us that the *f *þ *x *xʷ *s > *b *d *g *gʷ *z when directly followed by the Indo-European accent. This law can only be understood if *b *d *g *gʷ like *z were voiced fricatives rather than voiced stops. Which automatically implies that the reflexes of the Voiced Aspirates were in fact voiced fricatives.

Those are a whole bunch of voiced fricatives, or at least voiced stops that can't really decide on what they want to be. I'm currently thinking that the Voiced Aspirates were in fact voiced stops that alternated with voiced fricatives allophonically in some way. I'm just not completely sure in which way just yet.

Any thoughts?

*n stems in PIE traditionally end in *-ōn in the nominative which comes from an earlier *on-s (Known as Szemerenyi's law). While this is a very common reconstruction, much of the reconstruction is dependant on one language, Greek.

Greek n-stems indeed end in -ων, but I have my doubts whether that n isn't just an analogy from the other cases (for example the genitive is -ονος). If we look at Latin, Sanskrit and Gothic you would certainly get this impression.

For example Sanskrit rājan- 'king' loses its word final n in the nominative as rājā राजा. Also the Latin word for man homō, hominis clearly shows an absence of an n.

Lastly there's Gothic who has quite a few n stems. but the most interesting is guma 𐌲𐌿𐌼𐌰, mostly because it's cognate to Latin homō. Also guma is an n stem, its genitive is gumins and the accusative is guman.

With so much evidence that the *n disappears. Must we say that this is an PIE process? Or just a very common thing to happen in individual languages?

It is not usual for Sanskrit to lose the word final n if it is not in front of a long vowel, for Latin, I have no idea, Gothic, sadly, takes pleasure in taking off the last letter of almost any word.

It's actually quite difficult to determine when this shift then took place. But I prefer to go for the 'easier' solution, that it happened in one language, and then split into several languages retaining this development.

Assuming an isogloss after the split-up is also all but preferable. We like to see isoglosses between Greek and Sanskrit, not Sanskrit Latin and Gothic.

Another theory, which I'm not at all fond off, but that likes to pop up in articles every now and then is the 'sandhi' hypothesis.

This hypothesis claims that words ending in resonants usually had two variants, one in the form that it was followed by a vowel, and the other in the form when it was followed by a consonant. This for exmaple tries to explain the difference between the thematic Primary and Secondary endings.

*-om is the secondary ending and (according to these theorists) *-ō is the primary ending.

*ō would be the result of a pre-consonantal variant of the parent form *om, losing the m, with compensatory lengthening.
While *-om would be the pre-vocalic variant of the form *om, retaining the m, and of course, not undergoing compensatory lengething.

From there onwards, people can conclude that PIE was a SVO language, because a sentence final V would never have Sandhi variation (since nothing follows, usually). And though this idea is somewhat elegant (it allows to explain the medio-passive 3pl ending variation of *-ēr *-er *-r) I prefer to keep it simpler and going for the reconstruction of *-oh₂ for the primary ending rather than *ō.

This Sandhi idea could then also be stretched to the n-stems to explain why some languages retain it, and others don't.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, there's more readily available less exotic explanations for all these variations which have my preference.

So to conclude, my suspicion is that the disappearance of a word final *n before long vowels did indeed occur before the Indo-European languages split up, and where this *n does appear in one of its daughter languages, this is due to analogy from the other case forms.

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.

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.

Today, a bit later than planned, I will write another update. This time it won't be specifically about the translation of a certain text, but I'll show some stuff about my own language, Dutch, and some thoughts on etymology.

First of all a translation of the title:

Ook dat nog!

Which literally translates to: also that still!
Which is a rather odd construction which I can not fully explain, but the more natural translation would be `that's just great'.

It would be used in the context like this:

Imagine yourself working on a paper all night, and you suddenly find out you were supposed to also (the ook part) finish another paper. That's the moment you'd say `ook dat nog!'.

Ook is an interesting word. It would mean something as `as well, too, also'. I started wondering about it's etymology, and my first instinct said. it must be related to the Latin suffix -que, Gothic suffix -uh, which both mean `and'. -que is suffixed to the last word of an and-construction. Like: senatus populusque romanus `senate and people of Rome'.

-que goes back to PIE *kʷe. Tracing this to gothic, by applying Grimm's law you'd get **-ƕe. Supposing it's unstressed position cause it to lost the last vowel, you'd get a form like **-h (ƕ word-finally becomes h, saƕan > sah). Since -h is difficult to pronounce, especially after a consonant, you'd expect an epenthetic vowel. resulting in the attested form -uh. One can't help but think that this looks an awful lot like german `auch' (same meaning as Dutch ook).

Now there is one enormous problem in this supposed etymology. The k in ook would not be explained. If auch comes from a proto germanic -h. Then also Dutch would have a -ch. Now it just seems that the German version is from an original -k that underwent  the High German Sound shift. And there is no way that PWGm. *k comes from PIE *kʷ.

Now there's only one way out of this mess, and that's saying that the -k in Dutch might be dialectal or from Frisian. I'm not sure if it would work for Frisian, since I'm not well known with the language. But taking a look at the Woordenboek Der Nederlandse Taal (Dictionary of the Dutch language) quickly killed all my hope.

voegw. en bijw. Got. auk, ohd. ouh, auh, mhd. ouch, nhd. auch, ags. eác, eng. (verouderd) eke (zie nog andere vormen bij MURRAY 3, 66 c), on. auk, os. ôk, mnl. oec. De oorsprong van deze algemeen Germaansche partikel is niet met zekerheid te bepalen. Gewoonlijk brengt men ze in verband met den wortel auk-, vermeerderen, waarvan got.aukan, ohd. ouhhôn, ags. eácian, on. auka, os. ôkjan, mul. ooken (verg. ook nog FRANCK, Elym. Wdb.).

I don't feel much for give a word per word translation of this entry. But what anyone should note, is that Gothic actually already has a word for `ook' being `auk'. Which quickly kills of my fantasies of it being related to Gothic suffix -uh.

Another thing that is stated, that the origins of this particle are unclear, generally it is connected with the germanic root *auk-  which mean `to add'.

Now you see, how some, `blatantly clear' etymologies can actually be wrong as well. Oh well, it was a fun thought experiment.