42 posts tagged “linguistics”

One of the greatest problems with Indo-European, is that the common reconstruction of the language's  phonology is typologically unlikely to impossible. Lately I've been focussing on the vocalic system.

The general idea is that there were two or four vowels depends on how you treat *i and *u; For the sake of this article it will be easier to view it as four vowels. The four vowels are *e, *o, *i, *u. This system is unlikely; if anything we'd at least expect the vowel *a. There is also some reason to believe that there might be the vowel *a; but the actual phonetic distribution of this vowel is so incredibly small, that the system is still extremely unlikely.

I'd rather not deny this system never existed; But I'd like to find an older, more logical system behind all this. My 'gut' tells me that *o was *a at some point, especially considering Hittite having /a/ for *o. A system like *a, *e, *i, *u. Though a lot less unlikely still doesn't quite feel right. To account for seemingly random *e/o and *i/e alternations in some situation we might like to see a *ə. And I'd want to assume that then all later *e's are in fact secondary developments from *a or *ə.

So that's a lot of assumptions; now let us take a look at some of the things that might agree with me. First know that, as Hittite seems to indicate, Perfect and Present used to be two completely unrelated categories of verbs, rather than forms of one verb system. Therefore a Perfect and Present can both be in the present tense and past tense; as odd as that may sound.

Now let's look at the reduplicated forms of both a present and a perfect (I believe pre-Hittite-Indo-European did have reduplication). I only gave first, second and third singular, and third plural respectively; With the 1st and 2nd plural I'm not very confident on how archaic those forms are; They don't quite function like the rest.
 
Present                 Perfect        
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-m+i        *de-dóh₃-h₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-s+i         *de-dóh₃-th₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-t+i          *de-dóh₃-e
*dʰi-dʰh₁-ént+i         *de-dh₃-ér     

There's several remarkable things about these two paradigms. First the Present
 has e-grade in the root, while the perfect has o-grade. But not only that, the present has a reduplication with *i, while the perfect has a reduplication with *e. Last but not least, the perfect has three endings ending in *e; while according to the rules of syncope, we wouldn't like to see final *e's or *o's at all. And in general we do not wish to see the vowels *e and *o outside of the accent at all. Nevertheless they're there, it'd be crazy to deny that.

Now let's look at both version of these forms as I would reconstruct them in their Pre-Syncope-Indo-European.
Present                  Perfect       
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-me+i        *de-dóh₃-h₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-sa+i         *de-dóh₃-th₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-to+i          *de-dóh₃-e
*dʰi-dʰeh₁-énta+i        *de-doh₃-éra 

Somehow though the *e's I reconstruct for the perfect did not syncopate like the one in say *-me did. This brought me to think that these vowels might be of a fundamental different nature than the normal *e. Let's assume that this vowel is *ə

For the sake of unification we'd like the reduplication vowels to originally be from the same source as well. And dare I say it, I'd personally feel for unifying the root vowels as well, into an *a from the *i,*u,*a,*ə-stage of Pre-Indo-European. One again quite a lot of assumptions but let's look at the paradigm first before I continue.

Present                   Perfect        
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-me+i        *də-dáh₃-h₂ə
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-sV+i         *də-dáh₃-th₂ə
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-to+i          *də-dáh₃-ə
*dʰə-dʰah₁-éntV+i      *də-dah₃-érV 

Note how I'm now using *V for unknown vowel because the previously used placeholder vowel <a> is now being used for an actual *a. Also note how in endings -me, -to and -érV I'm still writing the previous' stage's vowels. I do not pretend to know what these forms would be in this stage of Indo-European, but writing them all down as V would be silly, as we have significantly more data what they become in a later then the vowels I've denoted as V. And since *e nor *o overlap with the proposed system, they're not in the way.

Right so now onto the forms; what can we say? You'd almost like to assume that the *+i caused i-umlaut on all vowels; but this is sadly impossible for the secondary endings (without *i) also display e-grade, and it would be too far a stretch to assume that this was analogy. The other difference is that the all Present endings only have non-ə vowels for endings. Somehow this seems to have heightened the *ə and *a to *i and *e respectively.

Now sharp readers might want to point out the -érV is also a non-ə ending. They would be right, but realise that the vocalisme of the root becomes Ø in modern Indo-European, so there is a chance that the pre-syncope vowel there was actually *e and not *o, as we would expect from the present.

This heightening of the vowel because of non-high-vowels is very difficult to support phonetically though. I have tried to fit in some syncopated *i somewhere to account for the vowel-heightening, but this would be too far fetched. It almost looks like a sort of anti-vowel-harmony, where the vowels preceding the suffix disharmonise with the suffix vowel. I'm curious if anyone knows such a language, please tell me if you do.

I do not pretend to know how this will solve itself; nor am I sure if I'm thinking in the right direction, I'm going to need more proof (maybe in the nominals?) and more plausible soundshifts to be able to support this theory fully myself. But I just decided to put down my thoughts here, so that people can think along. So please any thoughts or questions are welcome.

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.

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'm not spending nearly as much time on Tangut as I hoped I would when I started this blog. But that's okay, there are many other very interesting languages I post regularly about. But recently I have found myself a Tangut Dictionary[1], so I can finally properly commence my translation endeavours. I decided I'd first start making word-per-word analyses of sentence I already have someone else's translation of.
Here then are some of the results so far:

dzjwo2	gjɨ	ŋa2	·jij1	lạ1	kjɨ1	zow2	ŋa2
person	one, indef.	I, me	gen-abs	hand	perfective	grab	1sg

'Some person grabbed my hand'
Grammatical notes:
kjɨ is a perfective prefix connected with the verb zow. There's 6 of these prefixes, which one belongs to which verb is mostly lexically fixed. Apparently there's some indication that it used to be an indication of direction (which is still seen in some of Tangut's sister languages like Qiang).
This 6 prefix system is also seen with the Optative prefix, of which one day we'll surely see more. But it's very rare.

ŋa is the agreement suffix, always placed directly behind the verb (tense marking can still follow). Note how this is the exact same character/sound as I. This should actually be seen as a verbal conjugation that happens to be homophonous to the pronoun rather than pronoun repetition. Agreement in Tangut is quite complex, but technically speaking it agrees to the pronoun in the sentence if there is one. But not only the suffix is part of the agreement, also the vowel of the preceeding verb ablauts giving extra accuracy. Not all verbs have ablaut though. I hope this is one of them.
Because it looks like a theme 2 verb. theme 2 with 1sg suffix means that first person is subject, and 3rd person is object.
While a theme 1 verb with a 1 sg suffix means first person is object and either 2nd or 3rd is subject.

A quick searched turned out that there does not seem to be an ablauting form of this stem. Therefore the meaning technically speaking is ambiguous. Obviously though, it's far more sensical that it means 'Someone grabbed my hand'  rather than  'my hand grabbed someone'.

·jij This is the genitive-absolutive suffix. When it's placed between two objects, it will create a possessive construction. While, when it's just placed after a noun phrase, it's the marker of the absolutive (Subject of intransitive verbs, object of transitive verbs). I'm quite sure the genitive use is limited to not be used as the subject of a transitive verb. There the relation would just be expressed by juxtaposition of two nouns. But don't pin me down on that, we'll see about this later.

dzjwo gjɨ It's interesting to see that this subject of a transitive verb does not take the ergative marker. The ergative marker is often elided, and the formation gives the impression that it might be artificial. More about that later.

[1] Tangut Dictionary

[EDIT] O and I almost forgot, happy new year to everyone who's reading!

For this special day, I have a lovely thematised blog update. In Dutch we call Christmas 'kerst' or 'kerstmis'. Which is odd, to say the least. After all Jezus' name was Jezus Christ, not Jezus Kerst/Chirst/Cherst. The second part comes from the Greek word χριστος 'anointed one'.

Dutch seems to have metathesised the vowel and the /r/. Also there has been a slight change in vowel, but this is understandable in a loaning of a foreign word.

Metathesis of /r/ is not an uncommon feature in Germanic, but it's especially productive (as far as a sporadic sound change is productive) in English.

Some examples are:
brid > bird
hros > horse (Du. ros)

I've told before about how Germanic seems to enjoy metathesising resonants all the time. I had an idea it might be some kind of cultural linguistic game, although a fun idea to sport, probably not very feasible. Nevertheless, this tendency of metathesis is a fun thing to keep in mind.

Dutch though, tends to avoid such very late resonant metathesis, and then it happened in such a (in those time anyway) essential word as Christmas.

This suddenly popped into my mind this morning after having gone to a party which lasted from 23.00 until 07.00. Comparative linguistics is a curse that will haunt you forever, even at times you'd rather be sleeping it will wake you up and tell you about such words as 'kerst'. And I'm still haunted by it because I can not explain the metathesis.

Irish (and the other Celtic languages, where they haven't lost it) has two really eerie features. One, conjugation is done almost exclusively through initial and internal mutation, rather than than word final. Second is the word order, VSO (Verb-Subject-Object).

From an Indo-Europen point of view, these features are both very odd. In Indo-European the word order traditionally is considers SOV, though some argue that it's SVO, either way, it's definitely not VSO. Secondly, Indo-European is heavily reliant on suffixation (and internal mutation to some extent) to conjugate anything from verbs to nouns.

The interesting thing is. In SOV languages, we generally find suffixation, while in VSO languages we find prefixation. These are so called 'language universals'. I'm not a big fan of these universals, because they're disproved quite often, but right here it's not uninteresting.

Another famous VSO language is Arabic. Arabic makes use suffixation, but mostly relies on prefixes and internal mutation for the greatest differentiation. Now, the development of Irish initial mutation was a perfectly normal sub-phonemic process, which later became phonemic and grammatical. The great question is of course. Did these forms become grammatical because the word order shifted to VSO. Or did these initial mutations give rise a VSO word order.

It's as if some invisible force in our minds seems to have moulded this language into the 'universal' for no compelling reason except that it's not unusual to happen. But why? Very very interesting indeed.

Sorry I can't give any definite answers on this, it's currently far to mysterious, but I thought it would be worth mentioning

Today I'll, for the first time in this blog, dedicate an entry to my Mother tongue. Of course I wouldn't ever do that if it didn't have any philological worth, so I will be discussing Old Dutch rather than modern Dutch.

Hebban Olla Vogala is often, falsely called 'the first Dutch text'. It is in a way the first Dutch text which has some literary value, although it's but a scribble to try out one's pen or a Probatio Pannae the text is as follows:

Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic andu thu. Uuat unbidan uue nu?
Which roughly translates to:
Have all birds begun nests except me and you. What are we waiting for?

Assuming that this text is in fact a Dutch text (it has been argued that this is in fact an Old English text), there are some striking things about this text which I wouldn't want to keep from you.

First it's the personal pronoun 'I' written hic. This spelling is one of the major reasons why we think that it might be a southern Dutch text (Flemish dialect).

The Dutch first person pronoun has been 'ik' for a very long time. It's been spelled ic, ick etc. But has always been /ik/. Therefore it's odd that one would write an h in front of this word. hic is a form that is quite commonly seen in Flemish scriptures in Middle Dutch, along side other words getting an h that it should have.

This is becomes Flemish lost its word initial h. This is a tendency which is still seen today. Where I come from people still say ebbe rather than hebben. In Middle Dutch times, the different Dutch speaking peoples were clearly aware of different dialectal regions. Therefore Flemish writers would often write an h in the place they new where it was present in other dialects. But very often, due to hypercorrection this h would show up in all sorts of words which are not supposed to have it. This looks exactly like such an instance.

But what is fascinating about this hypercorrection that we're no talking Middle Dutch  here but Old Dutch. Old Dutch was a language which has next to no written attestations, and was not really used as a written language except for Probatio Pennae and glosses of Latin texts. But a hypercorrection of hic, clearly points towards to some kind of uniformity of spelling of Dutch, which our anonymous poet was trying to conform to.

This truly goes against our expectations of the state of the Old Dutch language as a written one. If the person was truly a Flemish speaking writer we'd expect the text to be:
Ebban olla vogala nestas agunnan inase ic andu thu. Uuat unbidan uue nu?

It's quite mysterious. It, in my opinion, indicates that there may have been a more lively written tradition of Old Dutch then we currently think.

Another interesting thing I'd like to touch upon is another personal pronoun thu. This clearly is the reflex of the Proto-Germanic *þū as still seen today in the German du.

This is not the word we find in our modern speech. These days we have jij  which is actually a palatalised form of gij. Palatalisation in Dutch?! Yes, it's very rare, but it happens if there's enough North-Sea Germanic influence which did palatalise consonants.

But back to thu. It's interesting to see that Old Dutch still had þ, or maybe ð as a phoneme which becomes d in Middle Dutch. It's especially odd, because the German shift þ>d is often placed around the 6th/7th Century, and you'd expect the Dutch development to be part of that same wave (after all Old Dutch/Old Saxon/Old High German form quite a linear Dialect Continuum.) Apparently þ > d was then a later development in Dutch.

That's all for now, I hoe you enjoyed this little bit of insight into the Old Dutch language.

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).

Just to avoid this blog drying up completely due to my lack of inspiration, I'll write about a funny little thing I noticed in Irish the other day.

In Irish if you greet someone you can say either "Dia dhuit" or "Dia duit", which is then answered with a "Dia 's Muire dhuit" or "Dia 's Muire duit".

this difference between 'duit' 'to you' and 'dhuit' also 'to you', is a matter of lenition. The first form is the grammatically correct form, you don't expect an intial d to be lenited in this environment.

Typically, lenition occurs intervocally, which also happened in Irish. It's usual for intervocalic lenition to only occur within word boundaries. This for example also happens in spoken Dutch, and even in some forms of written Dutch:
goede > goeie 'good', this one is considered very normal in speech.
oude > ouwe 'old', also very common in spoken Dutch.
bloeden > bloeien 'to bleed' , this one is looked down upon, since the verb becomes homophonous to bloeien 'to blossom', which gives some very odd sentences, as you can imagine. But especially in the south, people seem to have no problem with this seemingly not unimportant issue.

Some examples of the d lenition that has snuck into proper Dutch speech is:
broeder > broer 'brother' where broeder is used in a religious sense, while broer is the standard word for brother.

So in pseudo-Irish orthography goede with lenition would be written 'goedhe'.

What is special about Irish though, and as a matter of fact special for all of the Celtic languages, is that this lenition also crossed word boundaries. So feminine words ending in Pre-Celtic *ā would lenite the following word, since the word would end in a vowel.
This lenition later became grammatical, while the original lenition over word boundaries disappeared. It became grammatical because for example the Pre-Celtic *ā elided leaving only the lenition in the next word to show there once was a preceding vowel.

So let's get back on track, what happend to Dia duit vs Dia dhuit. Apparently, when lenition became grammatical rather than a typical phonological rule, either they were already greeting each other with Dia dhuit, and it lexicalised this way, or maybe some form of awareness that intervocality lenites remained, giving a way past disappearance reinsertion of lenition in the Irish language.

The first option is unlikely since the Proto-Celts definitely were not Christian, so saying 'God is with you' seems odd. So it must be the second option. It's interesting how such a long lost sound law can suddenly spasm a bit, way past its disappearance.

I hope this was remotely coherent.