Search found 1613 matches

by WeepingElf
Wed Mar 28, 2018 11:26 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

As you certainly know, I consider the three non-high PIE3 vowels to have emerged from a single PIE1 vowel, *a (which is of course unrounded), and it may well be that the antecedent of PIE3 *o was not yet rounded in PIE2, though I expect rounding to have happened already by that time. IMHO, in PIE2 *...
by WeepingElf
Wed Mar 28, 2018 7:24 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Still, a POA shift from velar to somewhere further back is possible on the way from PIE2 to PIE3. Certainly - imo merger into [h] is the final step, but it could take almost any route on the way. Fine. And perhaps the front velar was debuccalized earlier than the other two, as you suggested below. ...
by WeepingElf
Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:52 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Re the laryngeals once being stops in Anatolian - I knew I had read of an Anatolian languages where they were stops, so I looked it up in Fortson, and voilà (p. 194): in Lycian, *h2 is reflected by a stop, "variously spelled k , q , and χ " (these are the conventional transcription symbols for the L...
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:42 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Replies: 2827
Views: 613999

Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

I know of the English case, but in this case, things are different - /x/ and /h/ are different, constrasting phonemes. The protolanguage has these fricatives: /f s x j x x w h/. (There is a stop series at each of these POAs except glottal.) Of these, /f/ first becomes /h w /. What should happen then...
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:13 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Furthermore, the phonotactics of the laryngeals suggest fricatives. Fricatives could occur root-initially before stops (*h₁ger-) for instance, like *s, but unlike nasals. Similarly, they can occur root-finally after stops (*h₂eḱh₃-), again like *s, but unlike nasals. One more point - which should b...
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 27, 2018 11:00 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Replies: 2827
Views: 613999

Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

How could I achieve that /x/ is lost, but /h/ is preserved, and later becomes /x/? This is admittedly a weird change, one would expect /h/ to get lost easier than /x/; hence, some intermediate steps are probably necessary to do the job. All this would have to go its course in at most 2,000 years. Al...
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:56 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

What about Semitic and Berber? If these two are related, one would also expect Egyptian to be part of the relationship, as it sits right in the middle between the other two. Of course, it is conceivable that Egyptian was an unrelated language that entered later, driving a wedge between Semitic and ...
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:39 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

But isn't the only "evidence" for a rounded *h₃ the roundedness of *o? If you accept that *o need not even have been rounded at the time of laryngeal colouring, continuing to insist on a rounded *h₃ is nonsensical without new evidence, which I note you haven't offered. The vowel-colouring effects o...
by WeepingElf
Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:59 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Fine. I have no problem with an earlier stage of PIE possessing an unrounded antecedent of PIE3 *o. In fact, the rounding of PIE *o may have been a post-Anatolian matter, perhaps connected with the emergence of vowel colouring by laryngeals. Which brings us back to the qualities of the laryngeals. I...
by WeepingElf
Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:40 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

English has lost /x/ and preserved /h/ Imo this isn't a good parallel. [x] (not /x/) was a mere allophone of /h/ in coda position (after back vowels), whereas your putative laryngeals would have been contrastive in all positions. That [x] only existed in the coda makes its loss, against the retenti...
by WeepingElf
Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:09 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

PIE2 *xʲ > PIE3 *ʕʲ = *h1, Hittite zero PIE2 *x > PIE3 *ʕ = *h2, Hittite zero PIE2 *xʷ > PIE3 *ʕʷ = *h3, Hittite zero PIE2 *h > PIE3 *ʕ = *h2, Hittite h PIE2 *hʷ > PIE3 *ʕʷ = *h3, Hittite h I find it implausible that Anatolian *ḫ, which was clearly a velar/uvular fricative, should reflect glottal f...
by WeepingElf
Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:37 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

when your sound changes are: *t, *d, *r, *l, *n > *d and *ǵ,*g, *gʷ, *ǵʰ,*gʰ,*gʷʰ > *x ...you've got two options: a) the language underwent some massive mergers that cut across all of MOA, phonation and secondary articulations, and that yielded seemingly random outcomes (a voiced stop at one POA, a...
by WeepingElf
Sun Mar 25, 2018 3:38 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

The shared drift that happens in Sprachbunds can also produce lots of shared changes. Standard Average European has features in it that were definitely not inherited from PIE, the ancestor of most of the languages in this Sprachbund. For example, the definite and indefinite articles and the periphr...
by WeepingElf
Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:00 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

Most language families so far have been put together by "transitive obviousness". English is obviously related to Old English is obviously related to Gothic is obviously related to Latin is obviously related to Greek is obviously related to Sanskrit is obviously related to Middle Indo-Aryan is obvi...
by WeepingElf
Sat Mar 24, 2018 3:30 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

In my opinion (which I have voiced here before), the Proto-Uralic phonology is probably more conservative the PIE one, because the other Mitian languages are more similar in this regard to the former than the latter. Michael Fortescue has reconstructed, in his 1998 book Langauge Relationships across...
by WeepingElf
Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:11 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

mèþru wrote:I think that Pre-PIE was an active-stative language.
So do I.
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:57 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

Yes, I consider it plausible that the "Southeast Uralic" (i.e., Hungarian and Selkup) indefinite conjugation was cognate to the IE perfect/middle conjugation, though only the 1st person singular forms match well (the 2nd person is different in Hungarian and Selkup, and neither form looks like the IE...
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:32 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

is there anything especially appealing about an unmotivated general ejective > implosive shift, other than that it explains the dearth of /b/? Is this shift typologically common? It happened in Yucatec Maya (/pʼ/ > /ɓ/ only), and it happened several times independently in Afroasiatic. There doesn't...
by WeepingElf
Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:57 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

Evenki (Tungusic) also has personal endings. I didn't know that. If Eskimo-Aleut is so Mitian, where are the M-T pronouns? When I look at the pronouns of various EA languages, they're not M-T. And that puts it in the same category as Afroasiatic, Dravidian and Basque for me. Sure, the independent p...
by WeepingElf
Sat Mar 17, 2018 4:21 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

I concur with you that IE and Uralic are probably more closely related to each other than to Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic. It is uncertain, though, whether the latter three form a valid node or not. Turkic looks as if it was closer to Indo-Uralic than the other two, but that may be deceptive (the m...
by WeepingElf
Sat Mar 17, 2018 5:30 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Help your conlang fluency (2)
Replies: 6633
Views: 726520

Re: Help your conlang fluency

Tha man tladtraphas ý. A phragasa a samdenda. Dar gadach!
ESTAR-3SG:P I-DAT reckon-machine new and continue the band day good-EQU
I have a new computer. And the band continues. What a fine day!
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 13, 2018 9:10 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

While we're discussing the "name" word, it's interesting to note that Tocharian has *ñem, pointing to a "post-laryngealistic" *nēmn̥, which is a closer match for Uralic *nimi. It cannot be excluded that Proto-Uralic borrowed the 'name' word from an IE dialect (or a lost sister language of PIE) with...
by WeepingElf
Tue Mar 13, 2018 4:37 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

KathTheDragon wrote:
WeepingElf wrote:an (otherwise unknown) root *h3neh3-, perhaps 'to call'
Kloekhorst believes that the root can also be found in Hittite ḫannai "to sue, judge" < *h₃eh₃noh₃- (i.e. "call to court") and Greek ὀνομαι "to scold, blame, insult" < *h₃n̥h₃- (i.e. "call names")
Fine!
by WeepingElf
Mon Mar 12, 2018 8:31 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...
Replies: 217
Views: 79127

Re: Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Mitian, ...

Indeed, the "Haida and Na-Dene" thread is derailed, and I expect it to be locked by the mods soon, thanks to Vlürch's "Indo-Uralic can't be true because it would mean that our noble Finnish race would be related to the Swedish and Russian barbarians who oppressed us all that time" nonsense. And the ...
by WeepingElf
Mon Mar 12, 2018 7:54 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448568

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Fair. The main reason for ejectives rather than implosives is the paucity of the labial member, which is a trait more characteristic for ejective rather than implosive systems. But it may just be due to the kind of process that led to the emergence of what I prefer to call, agnostically, "emphatic" ...