2 posts tagged “wolf”

About a week ago, I was telling my mother about that mysterious word *ulkʷos and its odd reflexes in the Indo-European languages in general, and Germanic languages especially.

She kindly pointed out to me that there aren't that many words in Dutch that end in -olf. And in fact there aren't even many word that end in -lf either. I compiled a list, which I expect to be near-complete list of non-compounds nouns that end in -lf.

I also looked for some words that would maybe display an alternation between -lf and -lk, which wasn't quite as successful. But l'll post the results and the etymologies of these words.

• kolf 'backside of a rifle'
  
• golf 'wave'
  
• kalf 'calf' ??
  
• half 'half'
  
• zalf 'salve' ?
  
• zelf 'self'
  
• elf 'eleven' (and also twaalf 'twelve')
  
• delven 'to delve'
  
• welven 'to gulf'
  

I'll discuss these words individually

kolf
I'm not sure what the etymology of this word is. These days it's the backside of a rifle the Middle Dutch meaning was 'stick, club, bat'. etymonline suggests a root *kulþ-. But I'm not sure how to get the f  out of that word, Dutch tends to change f's to ch, but doesn't get f's from þ (see luft > lucht. graft > gracht kraft > kracht).

golf
golf < French golfe < Italian golfo < late Latin colpus <Greek κολπος
So not a Germanic origin.

kalf
kalf < PGm. *kalbaz
Gothic has kalbo which is a *eh2-feminine stem of a root *kalb- it also means 'female calf'.
It is sometimes connected with PIE *gelb(h)- from a root *gel- 'to swell' , the swelling of an animal womb. I don't find this explanation particularly compelling. either way it's not important for the comparison to 'wolf'.

half
half < PGm *halbaz
It's connected with the Indo-European root *(s)kel- 'to split'. Quite convincing, Also 'scalp' is related to this word (this time with the presence of the s-mobile).

It's interesting to see scalp have a *p-suffix and half have a *b-suffix. the actually reason for this is really difficult to trace though. We'd obviously like to connect the two, but there's no real reason fur us to do so except for 'they sound alike and related words use them'.

zalf
From a Indo-European root *selp- 'butter, fat'.

zelf
From proto-Germanic selbaz 'self' from Indo-European *sel-bho- from the base *s(w)e- "separate, apart" is wat www.etymonline.com says, makes you wonder what this -l root suffix is though. Or the bho part, I myself am not sure.

elf
From Proto-Germanic *ain-lif. litterarely one-leave. The leaving part from PGm. laibijan 'to cause to remain/to leave' from PIE root *leikʷ- There we have one! A *kʷ > *p /R_. Where R = i,l (and likely then also u,r).

delven
Apparently from an Indo-European root *dhelbh- 'to dig'.

welven
From PGm. *hwelban From Indo-European *kʷelp- To wich also Gk. κολπος is directly related.

So now we have two words!  *leikʷ- and *ulkʷo- Which have a *kʷ > *p shift. Both in a similar environment.

We can hardly draw conclusions from this, but it was definitely worth checking out the -lf words, and seeing which words have a *kʷ > *p shift.

My next post, I'll work the other way around, and I'll look for roots that have *kʷ/*p switches.

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.