zompist bboard

After transcribing the data in the Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (Mallory & Adams), I have merged with with a list I already made based on a dump of Lubotsky's Inherited Indo-Aryan Lexicon with a few additions from Beekes and from Masatovic. This is all duly noted in the spreadsheet itself.

So anyway, here is what I put together. It's an .xls spreadsheet compressed in a .zip and available from my Google Docs account. It has a lot of notes, and lists the cognates for most roots.

Indo-European Lexicon

This is very impressive, how long did it take you to compile all of this together?

Elyndian wrote:This is very impressive, how long did it take you to compile all of this together?

Like freakin' forever. I've been working on the Mallory and Adams thing over the last two months, on and off. That was something like ~2300 entries. The Lubotsky thing was easier, because I was copying HTML tables off of the Leiden database, in table-mode. Still took a good hour though. And then it was several more hours trying to condense duplicate entries between the lists. There are probably a bunch more I can condense, but I got a lot of them.

Dude, you're awesome! Thank you so much for sharing this!

TheGoatMan wrote:After transcribing the data in the Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (Mallory & Adams), I have merged with with a list I already made based on a dump of Lubotsky's Inherited Indo-Aryan Lexicon with a few additions from Beekes and from Masatovic. This is all duly noted in the spreadsheet itself.

So anyway, here is what I put together. It's an .xls spreadsheet compressed in a .zip and available from my Google Docs account. It has a lot of notes, and lists the cognates for most roots.

Indo-European Lexicon

This is DAMN impressive, TheGoatMan!!!

I can say this because I attempted something similar twice, and didn't even remotely get so far in either case. First, with a friend we started to index (using Reflex Plus on the Macintosh) Buck's Dictionary of Selected Synonyms of IE languages. Secondly, I myself created a database on MS Access with the aim of creating a comprehensive and usable IE database, starting with the data in Delamarre's Vocabulaire Indo-Européen. Both projects petered out, I just didn't have your dedication.

Do you have plans to put this information up on an Internet site?

Wow. I'm speechless. Thanks a lot for this enormous effort!

Wow. I'm speechless. Thanks a lot for this enormous effort!

I echo this.

So then, how many sleepless nights, boxes of instant ramen, and cans of mountain dew did it take? =p

So I've performed a little bug hunt regarding OCS:

ostrŭs > ostrŭ (no final -s in OCS, particularly in native vocab)
začf ieti "begin" > should be: začęti
œ̌etyre "4" > should be: četyre
cĭto "what" > čĭto
měse fi cĭ "moon, month" > měsęcĭ
mǫdrǫ "wise" - why acc. fem.?
potĭ "way" > pǫtĭ
sěme "seed" > sěmę
kosu "blackbird" > kosŭ (as other ъ's are represented like that)
so- "with" > I believe sǫ- is meant, as in OCS сѫсѣдъ (oddly, modern Russian has сосед, though)
ras-tfiegǫ > ras-tęgǫ
tyšęsti > tysęšti
dese fi tĭ > desętĭ
jfi etro > jętro
lyuby 'love' > ljuby (you've written <ljudĭije> "people" after all)
imefi > imę
jfietry > jętry
ogli > ǫglĭ

I think all those f's are some encoding issue, but some ę's are displayed correctly on my computer (devętĭ).

IMHO not all the roots commonly reconstructed as being "PIE" are actually so. In particular, "regional" roots found only outside the Central Area (for example, those listed as "NW" or "Greek-Aryan" in Mallory-Adams) are probably substrate/adstrate loanwords.

But there're also lots of such loanwords in the "common PIE" lexicon. Of the most interest to me are those from Vasco-Caucasian, a hypothetical macro-family which embraces (among others) Basque and North Caucasian.

Intra-IE explanations for words like *H2ºrk'to- 'bear' or *pork'o- 'piglet' are actually folk-etymologies.

TheGoatMan,

That is bloody great! Cheers.

But there're also lots of such loanwords in the "common PIE" lexicon. Of the most interest to me are those from Vasco-Caucasian, a hypothetical macro-family which embraces (among others) Basque and North Caucasian.

... Basque? I'm sorry, but anything that tries to incorporate Basque into anything seems to fall flat on its face. Source? Link?

See my blog: http://vasco-caucasian.blogspot.com

Octaviano wrote:IMHO not all the roots commonly reconstructed as being "PIE" are actually so. In particular, "regional" roots found only outside the Central Area (for example, those listed as "NW" or "Greek-Aryan" in Mallory-Adams) are probably substrate/adstrate loanwords.

This is probably true of NW roots, although in some cases it may be just by chance that a root simply did not survive in Greek and Indo-Iranian (II).

I rather doubt that there are adstrate, let alone substrate, loanwords common to Greek and II. In my view, dialects ancestral to these two branches remained adjacent (in the North/NE Pontic area) to each other after speakers of the pre-NW dialects had wandered off in a W/NW direction.

These pre-Greek-pre-II dialects, already well distinguished phonetically (pre-II being satemized, for example), acquired common vocabulary and grammatical changes (the augment, for example). They may have been influenced by neighbouring, possibly non-IE, languages, but where would a substratum have come from? They hadn't actually moved yet, and their ancestors would have been in the north-Pontic area for millennia. Any substratum influence, from well before, would have entered the NW dialects as well.

Thanks for the OCS corrections, Piotr; my copy of Mallory and Adams is actually a PDF, and the encoding is inconsistent throughout the document. Most of the time, ogonek letters were the letter plus a non-combining ogonek. Actually, that was the case for almost all diacritics. I just ran a script to replace them with either their combining coutnerparts, or actualy letter+diacritic glyphs. The 'fi' thing eluded me though.

And there might be a few places were Greek ȋ shows up as <iu>, or places where <ff> is <V> and things like that. I tried to fix them, but I may have missed a few.

I've uploaded a new version. Link here and in the OP.

gsandi wrote:

Octaviano wrote:IMHO not all the roots commonly reconstructed as being "PIE" are actually so. In particular, "regional" roots found only outside the Central Area (for example, those listed as "NW" or "Greek-Aryan" in Mallory-Adams) are probably substrate/adstrate loanwords.

This is probably true of NW roots, although in some cases it may be just by chance that a root simply did not survive in Greek and Indo-Iranian (II).

Unless of course they've got cognates outside, as in the examples I gave earlier.

gsandi wrote:I rather doubt that there are adstrate, let alone substrate, loanwords common to Greek and II. In my view, dialects ancestral to these two branches remained adjacent (in the North/NE Pontic area) to each other after speakers of the pre-NW dialects had wandered off in a W/NW direction.

Well, this isn't very far from my own scenario. I place PIE homeland at the Balkans-Ukraine area in the Mesolithic. And although this is only a hypothesis, I think these "pre-NW" dialects spread along LBK culture in the Neolithic, an event probably triggered by the Black Sea flood around 5,600 BC.

PIE cannot be earlier than about 4000 BC, because it has words for metals, (probably) domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles. All of that was yet unknown at the time of the Black Sea Flood, or at the time of Catal Hüyük. A Mesolithic PIE is impossible.

WeepingElf wrote:PIE cannot be earlier than about 4000 BC, because it has words for metals, (probably) domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles. All of that was yet unknown at the time of the Black Sea Flood, or at the time of Catal Hüyük. A Mesolithic PIE is impossible.

I've heard of this before, but this argument can turn to be fallacious, as words relating to cultural innovations tend to diffuse from one language to another. This is why they're called Wanderwörter (singular Wanderwort).

The arguments in support of an older PIE come from the study of its relationships (either of contact or genetic) with other language families. It has also something to do with the concept of ecological niche applied to historical linguistics.

Words may diffuse, yes, but following the sound changes that language went through? Dude.

EDIT: I wouldn't use the word fallacious if I were you... your posts are nothing more than one logical fallacy after another.

krinnen wrote:Words may diffuse, yes, but following the sound changes that language went through? Dude.

Do you know how the word football is rendered in various languages other than English?

Perhaps the strongest argument against a post-Neolithic dating is PIE lacks a common lexicon relating to farming. most of it being independently borrowed by IE branches.

Octaviano wrote:

krinnen wrote:Words may diffuse, yes, but following the sound changes that language went through? Dude.

Do you know how the word football is rendered in various languages other than English?

Good way of not addressing the issue.

krinnen wrote:

Octaviano wrote:

krinnen wrote:Words may diffuse, yes, but following the sound changes that language went through? Dude.

Do you know how the word football is rendered in various languages other than English?

Good way of not addressing the issue.

I see you didn't get my point.

Octaviano wrote:Perhaps the strongest argument against a post-Neolithic dating is PIE lacks a common lexicon relating to farming. most of it being independently borrowed by IE branches.

I'm all agog to know what handwaving you're going to invoke to bypass all those securely reconstructed vocabulary items related to agriculture and pastoralism.

Dewrad wrote:

Octaviano wrote:Perhaps the strongest argument against a post-Neolithic dating is PIE lacks a common lexicon relating to farming. most of it being independently borrowed by IE branches.

I'm all agog to know what handwaving you're going to invoke to bypass all those securely reconstructed vocabulary items related to agriculture and pastoralism.

I'm sure you could give me some examples.

Octaviano wrote:

krinnen wrote:

Octaviano wrote:

krinnen wrote:Words may diffuse, yes, but following the sound changes that language went through? Dude.

Do you know how the word football is rendered in various languages other than English?

Good way of not addressing the issue.

I see you didn't get my point.

Illustrate, please

(EDIT: It would be so cool if you could somehow demonstrate PIE pedh- bhel- > brazilian portuguese /fut_Sib~ao/ through regular sound changes...or something)

Octaviano wrote:

Dewrad wrote:

Octaviano wrote:Perhaps the strongest argument against a post-Neolithic dating is PIE lacks a common lexicon relating to farming. most of it being independently borrowed by IE branches.

I'm all agog to know what handwaving you're going to invoke to bypass all those securely reconstructed vocabulary items related to agriculture and pastoralism.

I'm sure you could give me some examples.

Oh no, you first. Burden of proof resting on the lunatic fringe and all that.