Zompist Bboard Again

mèþru wrote: ↑Sat Feb 02, 2019 8:41 pm Besides Grassman's law, is there any other linguistic reason to suppose Graeco-Aryan? (Yes, I know that it's a terrible argument)

The augment and basically the whole verbal system. Also aspirated reflexes of the Dʰ stop series (which is what triggered Grassman's law).

@WeepingElf: I was hesitating about replying to your post, because for me it is mostly just a rehash of old dogmas that I find unhelpful in linking IE to Uralic. There are more possibilities than the scenario you posted. Salmoneus already pointed them out. And the only way to find out what happened ...

Because, in the end, if you don't acknowledge the validity of criticism, how can you hope to make "progress" in your "research"? If it's not OK to point out the implausibility of one idea, how will you ever improve your ideas? If you genuinely want to link two languages together...

I have not read the book yet. I do want to. But somehow I always find more interesting works to spend my historical linguistics hobby budget on. One of the things that caught my eye is the sound change #sC -> z (IIRC) which is very similar to the sound change #sC -> ś that I see from Indo-Uralic to ...

*h₂ is, per recent results from Kümmel (though I'm still waiting to see the full paper), retained in SW Iranian as /h/~ /x/. Given also the Anatolian evidence, I think this nails this down as a voiceless back fricative pretty conclusively. Let us know when the paper comes out and where to find it. ...

It is out already, found in Alexander Lubotsky's Festschrift — though the publisher homepage unhelpfully currently has a broken link for the TOC. I'm looking forwards to this arriving online at some point in the future (I think Beech Stave Press allows authors to distribute articles online about a ...

There is another possibility: 4. The etymologies are bogus. I have seen etymologies rejected because of lesser problems.. Sure, but as far as I know there no regular Hittite s- ~ Luwian t- correspondence. So that would mean that you'd need to throw away these etymologies not only for Hittite but al...

Speaking of the devil, here is a new "thanks, I hate it" paper according to which *h₃…Kʷ results in Hittite š , Lydian s , Luvian-Lycian-Milyan t/d (an intermediate Proto-Anatolian *dž is proposed). The Anatolian Dissimilation Rule Revisited So on one hand that sure sounds like labializat...

I don't think that anyone is denying the importance of migrations to the spread of languages. The real data, as I'm aware, simply suggests that you can't blindly identify your genetic and linguistic ancestors as the same people. Nobody has claimed that you can. But I would say that it's misleading ...

Suter's ideas about IE zero-grade in Hittite are also very interesting. His ideas maybe somewhat out of the mainstream and in need of more work but he definitely deserves to be heard.

I'm more inclined to follow a theory where the palatovelars represent an innovation of the satem languages, though clearly relatively early, and probably any pre-satem dialect(s) may have co-existed during the time of PIE itself, but I am not convinced that the system currently reconstructed in a s...

And if you read the introduction of NIL you would know that it is far from comprehensive. In other words, there are serious gaps in the data set you are using. Which simply means that you can't draw any conclusions from the absence of anything in your data set. No, statistical discrepancies can be ...

Also, my chart compiles just the LIV+NIL data, which leaves out a lot of one-off nominalizations. For poorly attested roots many are probably dubious. (Sometimes even for otherwise clear ones. I would for example not accept Albanian ka 'ox' as a probative reflex of *kes-.) But then there is still A...

I don't know where the story comes from that PIE has few plain velars. But when I eyeball the data in LIV2 , I get a different impression. Look at their distribution too. E.g. the median distribution for roots beginning with clear *g- is 3 subgroups, none is found in more than 6, none have reflexes...

Uralic looks somewhat conservative in having bisyllabic roots and a decent amount of root-internal consonant clusters, but the first can be found across Altaic groups and the second in PIE just as well. By similar logic e.g. initial clusters in PIE could also be considered at least partly archaic. ...

the perfect denoted a state that was the result of a PAST action. Can a state ever be the result of something different than a past action? Can't see most states developing from a current or future action... Then please tell, what action makes someone young? Some biomedical researchers want to know...

KathTheDragon wrote: ↑Fri Sep 14, 2018 11:44 am The perfect was not "past-oriented", it was a tenseless stative.

This is not a fact, but at most a convincing assumption. Even in the earliest Ancient Greek and Vedic Sankrit the perfect denoted a state that was the result of a PAST action.

However, there are still reasons to assume *o was long at some point in the history of PIE. The non-coloring of *o by laryngeals creates an obvious parallel with Eichner's law (non coloring of *ē). But this does not apply when you assume early PIE did not have *ē or that Eichner's law is invalid. Gą...

Is there a particular reason why **sāl must be reconstructed as opposed to **selh₂? I assume the root itself mainly has this vowel because Anatolian either shows no laryngeal or lacks this word altogether? The Sonority Sequencing Principle . A vowel is more sonorous than a liquid. And liquid is mor...

While there may be merit to the idea that PIE *o was a long vowel, there is one problem. If PIE *o in PIE *genos was actually **genōs, then what was the PIE *ō in dʰéǵʰōm? You are simply confusing long vowels of different time periods. The long vowels of forms like *dʰéǵʰōm arose after the old oppo...