Zompist Bboard Again

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 1:11 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 12:50 pm

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 12:41 pm In my opinion, among the +2,000 lexical items reconstructed for PIE there must be hundreds of borrowings of different chronologies (substrates, cultural loanwords, Wanderwörter, etc.), while the true native lexicon remains obscured.

I may regret asking this, but if all these things are not the ‘true native lexicon’, then what do you think is?

If we were able to identify and classify all those loanwords (by means of external comparison, internal analysis, etc.), the remainder must be the native lexicon, although there probably would be still a number of dubious items for lack of enough information. For example, some kindship words have a *-h₂tēr suffix attached to a lexeme which can be further compared (in the case of 'father' and 'mother' they're the nursery words pa/ma.)

Would you care to list any more examples, besides pa and ma?

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 1:12 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 7:12 am Also, it presupposes the "Clovis first" theory, which since then has been falsified.

You've got that the wrong way round. While Amerind may follow from Clovis first, it doesn't require it. The same linguistic results would follow (to first order) if the descendants of Clovis simply replaced everything else.

OK. Amerind doesn't require Clovis first, but the main reason for assuming Amerind has fallen away with the falsification of Clovis first. And Greenberg probably did not exclude Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene for linguistic reasons, but because the people speaking them were considered late-comers who came to North America well after the Clovis people arrived. It wouldn't surprise me if a sufficient number of "Amerind" words could be found in them as well.

But we are digressing. This is the Proto-Indo-European Thread, after all, and all of us (except, as it seems, Talskubilos) probably agree that PIE is a model of a language once actually spoken somewhere, even if this model is not perfect, and, as the language is not attested, we have to draw conclusions about the where and when indirectly. It is not a conlang in the way, say, Quenya or Klingon are conlangs, but not the real thing either. Hence linguists mark reconstructed forms with an asterisk, to remind the reader that it is only a reconstruction which may be erroneous, and not attested material.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 1:36 pmWould you care to list any more examples, besides pa and ma?

I've already quoted 'wolf' (e.g. Latin lupus) and 'fox' (e.g. Latin vulpes), which together with 'wool' share a nucleus *wl̥ 'fur, animal hair'.

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 3:29 pm

alice wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 2:24 pm

Ketsuban wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 5:23 amI do so love when Talskubilos (né Octaviano) shows up again

What, that's the legendary Octaviano? At last, someone to back up my theories of Proto-Vasco-Caucasian and its influence on PIE and Uralic, which I've so far been terrified to post here for fear of ridicule!

I no longer support the Vasco-Caucasian theory, at least in its original form, coined by Bengtson.

(expletive) There goes all my hard work again.

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 12:41 pm For example, both 'wolf' (e.g. Latin lupus) and 'fox' (e.g. Latin vulpes) share a nucleus *wl̥ with 'wool', suggesting they're derivated from a common lexeme referring to animal hair.

Okay, you have a hypothesis. (The existence of the root *welh₁- "depilate, pluck" is convenient for you.) Now you need to address the competing hypotheses. For lupus, the metathesis from *wĺ̥kʷos to *lukʷos is attested in Hellenic, so either it was loaned from Hellenic into Osco-Umbrian, regularly became *lupos and was loaned into Latin or said Osco-Umbrian language underwent the same metathesis independently. vulpes is a separate root *h₂wl̥p-, which doesn't look as much like *welh₁- (I'll let you have the *h₂ since it's also in *h₂wĺ̥h₁neh₂, but where did the *p come from?).

This is made more complex by the fact that largely unexplained *kʷ > *p is also reflected by PGmc *wulfaz.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 3:25 pm This is made more complex by the fact that largely unexplained *kʷ > *p is also reflected by PGmc *wulfaz.

*wulfaz is not the only Germanic word with such a *f; there are others, such as *fimf 'five'. Perhaps there was a 'P'/'Q' division not only in Italic and Celtic, but also in Pre-Proto-Germanic, except that the 'P' branch is extinct and lost, and words like *wulfaz and *fimf were borrowed from that lost 'P' branch into the sole surviving 'Q' branch.

Ketsuban wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 3:13 pmOkay, you have a hypothesis. (The existence of the root *welh₁- "depilate, pluck" is convenient for you.)

Quoted from Brigit A. Olsen (2023): An Archaeolinguistic Approach to Indo-European Wool Terminology, in The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited. Part IV - The Bronze Age Chariot and Wool Horizons:

As we have seen, the root for ‘pluck’, underlying the Indo-European word for ‘wool’, can be reconstructed as *(hₓ)u̯elh₁- with or without an initial laryngeal if Hittite *ḫulana- is excluded from the equation, and with *h₂-, i.e. *h₂u̯elh₁-, if the Hittite word is indeed a cognate. In Hittite texts, the word for ‘wool’ is almost always written with a Sumerogram, so unfortunately the attestation is rather poor. However, a stem *ḫulana- has been deduced from a sort of rebus, found in a vacillation between the two renderings of a river name [... which] probably means ‘the winding, twisting one’ or something similar, “apparently referring to the ‘meander-like’ nature of many Anatolian rivers” [...] From *h₂u̯elh₁- ‘pluck’, we may thus maintain the derivational chain *h₂u̯elh₁mn̥ ‘plucking’ (> Armenian gełmn ‘fleece’) →*h₂u̯elh₁náh₂ ‘what is plucked’, lexicalized as ‘wool’ from Hittite ḫulana- to Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, and Balto-Slavic, and adding the s-stem *h₂u̯elh₁os → Latin vellus ‘fleece’ and the verb *h₂u̯(e)l-neh₁- → Latin vello ‘pluck’.

Ketsuban wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 3:13 pmNow you need to address the competing hypotheses. For lupus, the metathesis from *wĺ̥kʷos to *lukʷos is attested in Hellenic, so either it was loaned from Hellenic into Osco-Umbrian, regularly became *lupos and was loaned into Latin or said Osco-Umbrian language underwent the same metathesis independently. vulpes is a separate root *h₂wl̥p-, which doesn't look as much like *welh₁- (I'll let you have the *h₂ since it's also in *h₂wĺ̥h₁neh₂, but where did the *p come from?).

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 3:25 pm This is made more complex by the fact that largely unexplained *kʷ > *p is also reflected by PGmc *wulfaz.

They look like two similar words:
-*wl̥k-: Tocharian B walkwe, Sanskrit vŕ̥ka- 'wolf', vr̥kī́ 'she-wolf', Old Norse ülg-r, ülgja 'wolverine', Albanian ul'k 'wolf', metathesized as *luk-: Greek lýkós 'wolf'.
-*wl̥p-: Hittite ulippanna- 'wolf', Avestan urupi- 'marten?', Middle Persian gurpak 'domestic cat', Germanic *wulfaz 'wolf', Latin vulpēs 'fox', metathesized as *(h₂)lup-: Greek alōpēx 'fox', Sanskrit lopāka-, lopāśá- 'jackal, fox', Latin lupus 'wolf'.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 4:15 pm*wulfaz is not the only Germanic word with such a *f; there are others, such as *fimf 'five'. Perhaps there was a 'P'/'Q' division not only in Italic and Celtic, but also in Pre-Proto-Germanic, except that the 'P' branch is extinct and lost, and words like *wulfaz and *fimf were borrowed from that lost 'P' branch into the sole surviving 'Q' branch.

I've got the impression the Germanic numerals *fedwōr '4' and *fimf '5' were borrowed from P-Celtic.

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 4:31 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 4:15 pm*wulfaz is not the only Germanic word with such a *f; there are others, such as *fimf 'five'. Perhaps there was a 'P'/'Q' division not only in Italic and Celtic, but also in Pre-Proto-Germanic, except that the 'P' branch is extinct and lost, and words like *wulfaz and *fimf were borrowed from that lost 'P' branch into the sole surviving 'Q' branch.

I've got the impression the Germanic numerals *fedwōr '4' and *fimf '5' were borrowed from P-Celtic.

This would require a borrowing before the Germanic consonant shift but after the *k^w > p shift in P-Celtic. While I think that the Germanic consonant shift was quite late (at any rate, later than the earliest Celtic loanwords in Germanic), I don't think the P-Celtic shift was earlier; but I may be mistaken in this point. It seems as if Germanic *x^w had a tendency to shift to f, but I can't say anything about under which conditions that happened.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 3:25 pm This is made more complex by the fact that largely unexplained *kʷ > *p is also reflected by PGmc *wulfaz.

One suggested explanation is descent from a rather unstable *pʷ, which could be resolved as *kʷ or as *p.

/wl/ might simply be a phonaestheme. It doesn't have to be a morpheme to act as an indicator of antiquity. Or are they merely indicators that the words are well-integrated, rather than that they are of of long-standing?

Richard W wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 8:42 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 3:25 pm This is made more complex by the fact that largely unexplained *kʷ > *p is also reflected by PGmc *wulfaz.

One suggested explanation is descent from a rather unstable *pʷ, which could be resolved as *kʷ or as *p.

I think *pʷ is an unnecessary crutch - labialized velars easily enough change into labials, as it happened in large parts of Italic and Celtic. And I think that /xʷ/ even more likely becomes /f/ than /kʷ/ becomes /p/.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 9:47 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 8:42 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2026 3:25 pm This is made more complex by the fact that largely unexplained *kʷ > *p is also reflected by PGmc *wulfaz.

One suggested explanation is descent from a rather unstable *pʷ, which could be resolved as *kʷ or as *p.

I think *pʷ is an unnecessary crutch - labialized velars easily enough change into labials, as it happened in large parts of Italic and Celtic. And I think that /xʷ/ even more likely becomes /f/ than /kʷ/ becomes /p/.

The question, though, is that it becomes awfully coincidental that anomalous *kʷ > *p occurs in this specific root in both Latin and PrePGmc.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 12:14 pm The question, though, is that it becomes awfully coincidental that anomalous *kʷ > *p occurs in this specific root in both Latin and PrePGmc.

Unless it was *p in the first place: Latin vulpēs ~ Germanic *wulfaz and Latin lupus ~ Greek alōpēx.

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 10:23 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 12:14 pm The question, though, is that it becomes awfully coincidental that anomalous *kʷ > *p occurs in this specific root in both Latin and PrePGmc.

Unless it was *p in the first place: Latin vulpēs ~ Germanic *wulfaz and Latin lupus ~ Greek alōpēx.

The only problem with that hypothesis is that the vowels don't work right ─ Latin ē simply wasn't borrowed as PGmc *a.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 11:29 pm

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 10:23 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2026 12:14 pm The question, though, is that it becomes awfully coincidental that anomalous *kʷ > *p occurs in this specific root in both Latin and PrePGmc.

Unless it was *p in the first place: Latin vulpēs ~ Germanic *wulfaz and Latin lupus ~ Greek alōpēx.

The only problem with that hypothesis is that the vowels don't work right ─ Latin ē simply wasn't borrowed as PGmc *a.

I don't think the Germanic word was borrowed from Latin, but rather different outputs from *wl̥p-.

I don't buy the assertion that lupus can't possible be from *wĺ̥kʷos because of the p when the metathesis to *lukʷos is attested in Hellenic and Latin was adjacent to and had borrowed words from related languages with a documented sound change *kʷ > p (leading to doublets like coquina "kitchen" / popina "diner, eatery, restaurant"); the only appeal to unknowns is that we don't know if *lupos was regularly derived in Osco-Umbrian from *lukʷos or if it was a loanword through Osco-Umbrian from Hellenic. As Weeping Elf pointed out, xʷ > f is an even more common sound change than kʷ > p, so it's not so weird that Germanic *wulfaz shows it; the derived *wl̥kʷíh₂s "she-wolf" shows both unaltered (Norse ylgr) and altered (Old English wylf) variants which we can probably chalk up to analogy (e.g. with foxe > fyxe).

The more I look at the words for "fox" the less I feel like this is a loanword too; vulpes and ᾰ̓λώπηξ are messy if you don't look at anything but those two, but the root *h₂welp- seems fairly clear in (e-grade, albeit with a metathesis to *h₂lewp- which needs explanation) Indo-Iranian *Hláwpiš, (o-grade with schwebeablaut) Hellenic *alṓpēks and Indo-Iranian *Hrāpāćás (> *Hrawpāćás due to influence from *Hrewp- > *Hraup- "break, rob, tear", hence the o in Sanskrit lopāśá) and (zero-grade) Latin volpes. The loanword hypothesis seems to rely on assumptions about Luwian ulipna-/walipna- (Wiktionary can't even make up its mind which of those is correct) and I've seen a few too many bits of cute gibberish from Talskubilos hinging on Basque words they found in their arse to take them at face value until I can find an expert on Luwian talking about it.

Ketsuban wrote: ↑Wed May 27, 2026 2:08 amI don't buy the assertion that lupus can't possible be from *wĺ̥kʷos because of the p when the metathesis to *lukʷos is attested in Hellenic

How so? Greek lýkos has no trace of *kʷ. I think the protoform was *wĺ̥k-o-, not **wĺ̥kʷ-o-.

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Wed May 27, 2026 6:50 amGreek lýkos has no trace of *kʷ.

No trace is to be expected; in accordance with the boukolos rule (named after a word in where it applies), PIE *k^w became /k/ after /*u/ in Greek (boukolos goes back to PIE *g^wow-k^wolo-).

hwhatting wrote: ↑Thu May 28, 2026 4:20 am

Talskubilos wrote: ↑Wed May 27, 2026 6:50 amGreek lýkos has no trace of *kʷ.

No trace is to be expected; in accordance with the boukolos rule (named after a word in where it applies), PIE *k^w became /k/ after /*u/ in Greek (boukolos goes back to PIE *g^wow-k^wolo-).

OK. Are there other evidences of *kʷ in this word?