WeepingElf's Europic thread

[Colzie]

In his book Des steppes aux océans, Martinet gives 4 possible allophones for PIE *H2:

Voiceless: uvular fricative [χ] or pharyngeal fricative [ħ]
Voiced: uvular fricative [ʁ] or pharyngeal fricative [ʕ]

*H3 is the same than *H2 but labialized.
*H1 is either a glottal stop [ʔ] or a voiceless glottal fricative [h].

That doesn't answer the question why. If you've read this book, what's the author's argument for that? If you haven't, why do you believe them?

[Octaviano]

The only book of Adrados I have read is Historia de las lenguas de Europa, in German translation.

I'm affraid this book has disappointed very much, among other things because it's directed to a wider public than its previous works. It even contains false statements like "there's no proto-caucasic to which Basque could be comparated". Apparently he doesn't know about Starostin's work.

I'd recommend you Nuevos estudios de lingüística indoeuropea (CSIC, 1988).

[Octaviano]

In his book Des steppes aux océans, Martinet gives 4 possible allophones for PIE *H2:

Voiceless: uvular fricative [χ] or pharyngeal fricative [ħ]
Voiced: uvular fricative [ʁ] or pharyngeal fricative [ʕ]

*H3 is the same than *H2 but labialized.
*H1 is either a glottal stop [ʔ] or a voiceless glottal fricative [h].

That doesn't answer the question why. If you've read this book, what's the author's argument for that? If you haven't, why do you believe them?

If I understood well, he compares the a-coloring effect of *H2 with the emphatic stops found in languages like Arabic, and hence concludes it must be either an uvular or a pharyngeal.

[Etherman]

It even contains false statements like "there's no proto-caucasic to which Basque could be comparated". Apparently he doesn't know about Starostin's work.

Or he's well aware of the quality of Starostin's work.

[Octaviano]

No, he doesn't even mention him. I think his book should be renamed as "Historia de las lenguas indoeuropeas de Europa".

[Octaviano]

Getting back to the original point, I think OEH (aka "Alteuropïasche") looks more than a sibling of PIE than its ancestor. My view is this:

PIE I (=Europic)
.....-> OEH (=Alteuropäische)
.....-> PIE II (=Indo-Hittite)
...............-> Anatolian
...............-> PIE III (=Late PIE)
.........................-> PIE III A (=Indo-Greek)
.........................-> PIE III B
...................................-> Tocharian
...................................-> Old European

[Etherman]

No, he doesn't even mention him. I think his book should be renamed as "Historia de las lenguas indoeuropeas de Europa".

Probably because Starostin's work is not worthy of mention.

[TaylorS]

regarding the PIE Laryngeals IMO:

H1 was /h/ and/or /?/.
H2 was /x/.
H3 was /x_w/.

I would reconstruct the inventory as:

Code: Select all

b   d   ɡ   ɡʷ  ɢ
    d̰  ɡ̰  ɡ̰ʷ ɢ̰
p   t   k   kʷ  q   ʔ
    s   x   xʷ     h
m   n
    r
    l
a ə w j

In central dialects the velars and uvulars shifted forward into palatals and velars, respectively.

In southern dialects the voiced and creaky-voice plosives shift to breathy-voice and voiced plosives respectively.

The creaky-voice plosived are derived from "proto-Europic" ejectives.

[marconatrix]

What you're suggesting W.E. then is a sort of 'two-wave' theory, which would get around the problem that follows from IE (as we know it) being too late to have expanded across Europe with agriculture. So we have a sister language to IE spreading with cultivation, and then later IE as we know it, spreading with horse and wheel etc. Since the two were related it would be difficult to recognise traces of the first wave in the IE languages. I like the boats idea too. Would that suggest an early expansion into the Agean also? Was Anatolian the leading edge of the wheeled expansion, or did it slightly predate it maybe?

The problem seem to be that if agriculture passed from Palastine via Anatolia to the Agean/Balkans, then there's no problem with a group of boat-people picking it up there and taking up the Danube into the heart of Europe. However if these people had escaped from the Black Sea flood how could they alread have had agriculture? Since if agriculture had already reached the north of the Black Sea basin, it would no doubt also have begun to penetrate Europe. Well maybe they had some innovation that allowed them to grow crops in cooler wetter climates or whatever. [Just thinking aloud really ]

[Octaviano]

What you're suggesting W.E. then is a sort of 'two-wave' theory, which would get around the problem that follows from IE (as we know it) being too late to have expanded across Europe with agriculture. So we have a sister language to IE spreading with cultivation, and then later IE as we know it, spreading with horse and wheel etc.

Yes, I agree that OEH was a sister to IE, but it's also possible the actual chronology was older than the proposed by WeepingElf. If only we could identify Neolithic lexicon in it, we could stablish the missing link with LBK farmers.

Since the two were related it would be difficult to recognise traces of the first wave in the IE languages.

Not so, because there're significant phonetical and morphological differences like predominance of vowel a, no Ablaut, *H2- ~ PIE *s-, etc.

I like the boats idea too.

I've suggested Celtic *longā 'boat, vessel' could be linked to PNC *leq’V 'a k. of vessel'.

Was Anatolian the leading edge of the wheeled expansion, or did it slightly predate it maybe?

I think so.

The problem seem to be that if agriculture passed from Palastine via Anatolia to the Agean/Balkans, then there's no problem with a group of boat-people picking it up there and taking up the Danube into the heart of Europe. However if these people had escaped from the Black Sea flood how could they alread have had agriculture? Since if agriculture had already reached the north of the Black Sea basin, it would no doubt also have begun to penetrate Europe.

This is more or less the same objection I raised before.

[WeepingElf]

What you're suggesting W.E. then is a sort of 'two-wave' theory, which would get around the problem that follows from IE (as we know it) being too late to have expanded across Europe with agriculture. So we have a sister language to IE spreading with cultivation, and then later IE as we know it, spreading with horse and wheel etc.

Yes.

Since the two were related it would be difficult to recognise traces of the first wave in the IE languages.

The language changed substantially from Proto-Europic to PIE proper. One of the innovations of PIE proper is the *e/o/0 ablaut, while Proto-Europic simply had *a - as seen in the Old European hydronymy.

I like the boats idea too. Would that suggest an early expansion into the Agean also?

At the time when the Black Sea Flood happened? No way; that would mean climbing the most enormous waterfall human beings have ever seen But it is of course possible that after the event, Europic speakers from the lower Danube area entered the Balkan peninsula and sailed from there into the Aegean.

Was Anatolian the leading edge of the wheeled expansion, or did it slightly predate it maybe?

Anatolian was the leading edge of the wheeled expansion. At the time Anatolian split off, which was perhaps 1000 years before the disintegration of the remaining PIE unity, PIE had not fully reached the shape portrayed by the standard model, but it was close.

The problem seem to be that if agriculture passed from Palastine via Anatolia to the Agean/Balkans, then there's no problem with a group of boat-people picking it up there and taking up the Danube into the heart of Europe. However if these people had escaped from the Black Sea flood how could they alread have had agriculture? Since if agriculture had already reached the north of the Black Sea basin, it would no doubt also have begun to penetrate Europe. Well maybe they had some innovation that allowed them to grow crops in cooler wetter climates or whatever. [Just thinking aloud really ]

I am indeed not sure about that. I think the Proto-Europic homeland, at the time just before the Black Sea Flood, was on the northern edge of agriculture. Most of the neighbours still were hunter-gatherers.

[TomHChappell]

Starostin's work

Are there more than one linguist named Starostin?
Are there more than one linguist named Starotsin?
Does anybody besides me have trouble keeping straight which linguist someone is talking about when they only use the last name to refer to them? At least, when the only name they use is either Starostin or Starotsin?

[WeepingElf]

Starostin's work

Are there more than one linguist named Starostin?

Yes. Sergei Starostin and his son George Starostin.

Are there more than one linguist named Starotsin?

Not to my knowledge.

Does anybody besides me have trouble keeping straight which linguist someone is talking about when they only use the last name to refer to them? At least, when the only name they use is either Starostin or Starotsin?

Yes. However, in the case of the Starostins it is such that the younger one continues the work of his father.

[WeepingElf]

One note re: Bell Beaker and Celtic - I don't think the Bell Beaker people were Celtic-speaking. The time depth of Celtic doesn't seem to be greater than 3000 years to me, and the separation from Italic only about 4000 to 4500 years ago. At 3000 BC, when the Bell Beaker culture began to spread out of the Netherlands, Indo-European had not yet reached the site of Budapest. It reached a line running from Szczecin to Trieste about 2000 BC, the Rhine about 1500 BC, the French Atlantic coast about 1000 BC, and Britain and the Iberian Peninsula perhaps around 600-500 BC.

I am not alone in this dating; see the maps on Wikipedia.

[TaylorS]

What you're suggesting W.E. then is a sort of 'two-wave' theory, which would get around the problem that follows from IE (as we know it) being too late to have expanded across Europe with agriculture. So we have a sister language to IE spreading with cultivation, and then later IE as we know it, spreading with horse and wheel etc.

Yes.

Since the two were related it would be difficult to recognise traces of the first wave in the IE languages.

The language changed substantially from Proto-Europic to PIE proper. One of the innovations of PIE proper is the *e/o/0 ablaut, while Proto-Europic simply had *a - as seen in the Old European hydronymy.

I like the boats idea too. Would that suggest an early expansion into the Agean also?

At the time when the Black Sea Flood happened? No way; that would mean climbing the most enormous waterfall human beings have ever seen But it is of course possible that after the event, Europic speakers from the lower Danube area entered the Balkan peninsula and sailed from there into the Aegean.

Was Anatolian the leading edge of the wheeled expansion, or did it slightly predate it maybe?

Anatolian was the leading edge of the wheeled expansion. At the time Anatolian split off, which was perhaps 1000 years before the disintegration of the remaining PIE unity, PIE had not fully reached the shape portrayed by the standard model, but it was close.

The problem seem to be that if agriculture passed from Palastine via Anatolia to the Agean/Balkans, then there's no problem with a group of boat-people picking it up there and taking up the Danube into the heart of Europe. However if these people had escaped from the Black Sea flood how could they alread have had agriculture? Since if agriculture had already reached the north of the Black Sea basin, it would no doubt also have begun to penetrate Europe. Well maybe they had some innovation that allowed them to grow crops in cooler wetter climates or whatever. [Just thinking aloud really ]

I am indeed not sure about that. I think the Proto-Europic homeland, at the time just before the Black Sea Flood, was on the northern edge of agriculture. Most of the neighbours still were hunter-gatherers.

IMO the common ancestor of PIE and Etruscan had a vowel system of /a @ i u/. Then /i/ and /u/ merged into /@/, and the old /@/ merged with /a/ in unstressed syllables, creating a vertical vowel system and a set of labialized consonants. Most of these labialized consonants became reanalyzed as /Cw/ clusters. Uvulars (late central PIE Velars) develop from velars when old /@/ and /a/ merged. A hypothesis I found via Glen Gordon at Paleoglot.

Thus
/a @ i u/
becomes
/a @ 1/
then
/a @/

and unstressed /ka/ becomes /qa/, unstressed /k@/ becomes /ka/.


I would say that this Proto-Europic existed on the NW coast of the Black Sea, around Romania, Moldavia, and Western Ukraine. The branch that went into the Aegean and farther west became Etruscan and Minoan. The branch that went eastward into the steppes became PIE.

[WeepingElf]

IMO the common ancestor of PIE and Etruscan had a vowel system of /a @ i u/. Then /i/ and /u/ merged into /@/, and the old /@/ merged with /a/ in unstressed syllables, creating a vertical vowel system and a set of labialized consonants. Most of these labialized consonants became reanalyzed as /Cw/ clusters. Uvulars (late central PIE Velars) develop from velars when old /@/ and /a/ merged. A hypothesis I found via Glen Gordon at Paleoglot.

I won't say that such a relationship was impossible, though I am somewhat skeptical of Glen Gordon's hypotheses. He sometimes interprets Etruscan words in controversial ways. I frankly don't know where to put Etruscan in the scheme of things; there are some tantalizing similarities to Indo-European in morphology, but those morphemes are to my knowledge highly controversial (I have seen at least three mutually incompatible grammar sketches of Etruscan - not all of them meaningfully similar to Indo-European!) and few in number, and even the most basic vocabulary is utterly different. It seems that Uralic is closer to IE than Etruscan; at least, there appear to be more cognates, especially in morphology. One idea that sprang to my mind is that Etruscan's closest living kin is not IE but Kartvelian, but I know too little about those languages to assay the validity of that idea.

I would say that this Proto-Europic existed on the NW coast of the Black Sea, around Romania, Moldavia, and Western Ukraine. The branch that went into the Aegean and farther west became Etruscan and Minoan. The branch that went eastward into the steppes became PIE.

We can say nothing about Minoan because neither the Cretan hieroglyphs nor Linear A have been successfully deciphered yet. The later Eteocretan language is recorded in Greek letters, but the number of inscriptions is small and the language is not understood (see this site); it does not appear to be similar to Etruscan, nor to Indo-European.

[Octaviano]

One note re: Bell Beaker and Celtic - I don't think the Bell Beaker people were Celtic-speaking. The time depth of Celtic doesn't seem to be greater than 3000 years to me, and the separation from Italic only about 4000 to 4500 years ago. At 3000 BC, when the Bell Beaker culture began to spread out of the Netherlands, Indo-European had not yet reached the site of Budapest. It reached a line running from Szczecin to Trieste about 2000 BC, the Rhine about 1500 BC, the French Atlantic coast about 1000 BC, and Britain and the Iberian Peninsula perhaps around 600-500 BC.

I strongly disagree. Celtic was already at the Atlantic fringe by 1,000 BC. This also includes SW Spanish were Tartessian Celtic was written since 700 BC.

Italo-Celtic is another dubious entity.

[WeepingElf]

One note re: Bell Beaker and Celtic - I don't think the Bell Beaker people were Celtic-speaking. The time depth of Celtic doesn't seem to be greater than 3000 years to me, and the separation from Italic only about 4000 to 4500 years ago. At 3000 BC, when the Bell Beaker culture began to spread out of the Netherlands, Indo-European had not yet reached the site of Budapest. It reached a line running from Szczecin to Trieste about 2000 BC, the Rhine about 1500 BC, the French Atlantic coast about 1000 BC, and Britain and the Iberian Peninsula perhaps around 600-500 BC.

I strongly disagree. Celtic was already at the Atlantic fringe by 1,000 BC. This also includes SW Spanish were Tartessian Celtic was written since 700 BC.

Oh, I am not going to quarrel about those pesky centuries. But 1000 BC is still much later than the 3000-2000 BC timeframe of the Bell Beaker culture, and in my opinion there is no way Celtic could be 5000 years old! What regards the Celticity of Tartessian, I am not convinced yet. I have an interlibrary loan request for Koch's book underway, and am curious for the evidence he has to offer. What I have seen of Tartessian so far, doesn't look much like Celtic.

Italo-Celtic is another dubious entity.

Sure, it's controversial. But to me it makes much more sense than most of the long-range relationship proposals I have seen so far.

[TaylorS]

I won't say that such a relationship was impossible, though I am somewhat skeptical of Glen Gordon's hypotheses. He sometimes interprets Etruscan words in controversial ways. I frankly don't know where to put Etruscan in the scheme of things; there are some tantalizing similarities to Indo-European in morphology, but those morphemes are to my knowledge highly controversial (I have seen at least three mutually incompatible grammar sketches of Etruscan - not all of them meaningfully similar to Indo-European!) and few in number, and even the most basic vocabulary is utterly different. It seems that Uralic is closer to IE than Etruscan; at least, there appear to be more cognates, especially in morphology. One idea that sprang to my mind is that Etruscan's closest living kin is not IE but Kartvelian, but I know too little about those languages to assay the validity of that idea.

We can say nothing about Minoan because neither the Cretan hieroglyphs nor Linear A have been successfully deciphered yet. The later Eteocretan language is recorded in Greek letters, but the number of inscriptions is small and the language is not understood (see this site); it does not appear to be similar to Etruscan, nor to Indo-European.

Well, Glen Gordon's stuff is the only decent thing I have been able to find on Etruscan online that isn't full of wacky "ETRUSCAN IS ALTAIC" ideological crack-pottery, so I guess I'm biased in that respect.

[Etherman]

Does anybody besides me have trouble keeping straight which linguist someone is talking about when they only use the last name to refer to them?

I'm unaware of George Starostin doing any major work on Proto-North Caucasian. I figured given the subject matter it would be obvious I was talking about Sergei. Sorry for the confusion.

[Octaviano]

Does anybody besides me have trouble keeping straight which linguist someone is talking about when they only use the last name to refer to them?

I'm unaware of George Starostin doing any major work on Proto-North Caucasian. I figured given the subject matter it would be obvious I was talking about Sergei. Sorry for the confusion.

Yes, although Georgij Starostin is a comparative linguist like his deceased father, it seems he prefers to play guitar and write reviews of rock music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiy_Starostin

[Octaviano]

2. If PIE I and the Old European hydronymy were Mesolithic, when and where was PIE I spoken?

The Spanish Indo-Europeanist Francisco Villar, in his last book Vascos, celtas e indo-europeos. Lenguas y genes (coauthored with Blanca M. Prosper), made an statistical study of a sample of ancient toponymy roots (not just hydronyms) and found out its center of distribution was located in SW Europe, possibly associated with the repopulation of Europe from that area after the Younger Dryas (roughly 9,500 BC) proposed by the Belgian archaeologist Marcel Otter.

The actual distribution of OEH as well as its relative chronology are incompatible with WeepingElf's hypothesis of it being spoken by LBk farmers.

[Nortaneous]

Yes, although Georgij Starostin is a comparative linguist like his deceased father, it seems he prefers to play guitar and write reviews of rock music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiy_Starostin

"he believes that rock music has been becoming steadily worse since the 1960s to the point that it is now "dead""

if he isn't a linguistic crackpot, he sure as hell is a musical one

[alice]

Yes, although Georgij Starostin is a comparative linguist like his deceased father, it seems he prefers to play guitar and write reviews of rock music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiy_Starostin

"he believes that rock music has been becoming steadily worse since the 1960s to the point that it is now "dead""

if he isn't a linguistic crackpot, he sure as hell is a musical one

Come on. Don't you know that music was better in the sixties, man?

[Nortaneous]

Yes, although Georgij Starostin is a comparative linguist like his deceased father, it seems he prefers to play guitar and write reviews of rock music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiy_Starostin

"he believes that rock music has been becoming steadily worse since the 1960s to the point that it is now "dead""

if he isn't a linguistic crackpot, he sure as hell is a musical one

Come on. Don't you know that music was better in the sixties, man?

nah, 80s and 90s

but I'm a massive industrial freak so what do you expect