The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

[KathTheDragon]

I'm not overly sure what you're trying to say here.

re: syntax, I don't have the greatest understanding of theoretical syntax either, so perhaps someone else can weigh in?

[Vijay]

I thought 2+3 clusivity was just pointing out some coincidence regarding Indo-Aryan languages of personal interest given what you said about PIE.

Kath -- my grasp of syntax isn't great, I had thought that the NPs were daughters of optional DPs. Does it just depend on your theoretical bent?

Yes.

[----]

There's a hypothesis that posits the existence of "determiner phrases" in which the head of, for example, the phrase "the sentence" is 'the'. I find this idea very silly but it has support from serious people.

[Vijay]

It's partly based on the idea that pronouns are more like determiners than like nouns, IIRC (especially when you consider that in various languages, it's possible for something to be both a determiner and a pronoun but not a noun, e.g. this in English).

[hwhatting]

I can only say that in my experience, demonstratives seem to work like complements, not like heads when talking about word order, e.g in relatively strictly head-final languages like the Turkic family, demonstratives come before nouns and adjectives. OTOH, it seems that postponed demonstratives are rare in general.

[WeepingElf]

According to WALS, postponed demonstratives are common in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, especially in the Austronesian family. Also, they correlate with VO word order, which is consistent with the notion that they are complements rather than heads.

[Zju]

Not very likely, but could PIE voiced stops actually have been creaky voiced, giving it an unusual system of creaky-breathy-plain stops? Some idle thought I had.

[KathTheDragon]

It's certainly possible, but a more likely resulting system would have the aspirates as modally voiced.

[Daedolon]

Is there any IE language that preserves the triple velar series; labiovelar, palatovelar (or palatal) and "true" velar ?

[KathTheDragon]

Most famously, Luwian (though apparently the distinction was not unconditional). Many satem languages also preserve traces of the former labiovelars (notably Albanian, where they are conditionally palatalised, where post-velars* are not; the others typically reflect the distinction in vowel changes).

*I prefer the non-committal terms 'pre-velar' and 'post-velar' over 'palatovelar' and '(plain) velar', since it is much more likely that they were phonetically velar and uvular.

[Zaarin]

Is there any IE language that preserves the triple velar series, labiovelar, palatovelar (or palatal) and "true" velar ?

Armenian preserves all three as distinct in certain environments, but not as such.

[Soap]

Is there any IE language that preserves the triple velar series, labiovelar, palatovelar (or palatal) and "true" velar ?

Armenian preserves all three as distinct in certain environments, but not as such.

Could you explain please? Proto-Armenian was a satem language, yes, but I dont see any evidence of it standing out specifically as a conservative one that preserved the three purported stop series before later merging them and becoming like the other satem languages.

[Pole, the]

Is there any IE language that preserves the triple velar series, labiovelar, palatovelar (or palatal) and "true" velar ?

Armenian preserves all three as distinct in certain environments, but not as such.

You mean, Albanian?

[Soap]

Wikipedia does say Armenian preserves them, but without explanation, and on another Wikipedia page it denies this anyway, so I was hoping he would have more information.

I was going to make a thread but this is probably not important enough of a question for its own thread. Wikipedia says s-mobile is found before voiceless stops and sonorants, but Wiktionary says that "steam" and "fume" are cognates, which means that it must trace back to a PIE form beginning with (s)dʰ. And I'm pretty sure I've seen a PIE word with sbʰ- somewhere. Is this just a theory or is s-mobile widely documented b efore voiced sounds?

[Pole, the]

I was going to make a thread but this is probably not important enough of a question for its own thread. Wikipedia says s-mobile is found before voiceless stops and sonorants, but Wiktionary says that "steam" and "fume" are cognates, which means that it must trace back to a PIE form beginning with (s)dʰ. And I'm pretty sure I've seen a PIE word with sbʰ- somewhere. Is this just a theory or is s-mobile widely documented b efore voiced sounds?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebs%27_law

[Soap]

I was going to make a thread but this is probably not important enough of a question for its own thread. Wikipedia says s-mobile is found before voiceless stops and sonorants, but Wiktionary says that "steam" and "fume" are cognates, which means that it must trace back to a PIE form beginning with (s)dʰ. And I'm pretty sure I've seen a PIE word with sbʰ- somewhere. Is this just a theory or is s-mobile widely documented b efore voiced sounds?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebs%27_law

OK thanks, and in fact, that's where I saw the sbʰ- word. So Wikipedia contradicts itself a little bit here. "Sphere" might be another examp, but wiktionary says it might be a loan. I know that ancient Greek sometimes shows aspirates in loans, though s+consonant at the beginning of a word is something of an IE specialty, so if it's a loan it's probably from another IE language.

[Zaarin]

Is there any IE language that preserves the triple velar series, labiovelar, palatovelar (or palatal) and "true" velar ?

Armenian preserves all three as distinct in certain environments, but not as such.

Could you explain please? Proto-Armenian was a satem language, yes, but I dont see any evidence of it standing out specifically as a conservative one that preserved the three purported stop series before later merging them and becoming like the other satem languages.

I'm not personally very familiar with Armenian; I've simply seen it described in a number of places as not conforming to the centum/satem split and preserving the three-way distinction in conditioned environments. I'm afraid I don't know more than that.

Is there any IE language that preserves the triple velar series, labiovelar, palatovelar (or palatal) and "true" velar ?

Armenian preserves all three as distinct in certain environments, but not as such.

You mean, Albanian?

No, I meant Armenian. I don't know enough about Albanian to make any meaningful statement about it, except that it's late attestation makes it an intriguing mystery.

Wikipedia does say Armenian preserves them, but without explanation, and on another Wikipedia page it denies this anyway, so I was hoping he would have more information.

A brief search shows that the Wikipedia page on Centum vs. Satem says that Armenian and Albanian may distinguish the labiovelars from the plan velars before front vowels, but other linguists dispute this claim.

[Zju]

I was going to make a thread but this is probably not important enough of a question for its own thread. Wikipedia says s-mobile is found before voiceless stops and sonorants, but Wiktionary says that "steam" and "fume" are cognates, which means that it must trace back to a PIE form beginning with (s)dʰ. And I'm pretty sure I've seen a PIE word with sbʰ- somewhere. Is this just a theory or is s-mobile widely documented b efore voiced sounds?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebs%27_law

OK thanks, and in fact, that's where I saw the sbʰ- word. So Wikipedia contradicts itself a little bit here. "Sphere" might be another examp, but wiktionary says it might be a loan. I know that ancient Greek sometimes shows aspirates in loans, though s+consonant at the beginning of a word is something of an IE specialty, so if it's a loan it's probably from another IE language.

Note however that s-mobile + any voiced or voiced aspirated velar likely resulted in *sw- instead, as discussed earlier in this thread, there was a paper about it.

Taking in account that and likely metathesis, it may as well turn out that all of swamp, *gǫba, fungus and sponge are cognates - has anyone proposed this connection?

[hwhatting]

Note however that s-mobile + any voiced or voiced aspirated velar likely resulted in *sw- instead, as discussed earlier in this thread, there was a paper about it.

Just a cautionary note - while it's an interesting proposal, that idea isn't yet widely accepted.

[Soap]

Im on a phone, sorry for not usong Quote.

Don't ALL satem langs2 distinguish the labiovelars from the plain velars?? If alb&arm were centum, thtd be noteworthy, but this doesn't seem to tell us anything new.

Edit, whoops I mixed them up, sorry for this post.

[KathTheDragon]

As I observed, most of them do preserve traces of the distinction, but in all meaningful senses every satem lang merged the labiovelars and post-velars. Also, I don't recall Armenian doing anything terribly special with the labiovelars - can someone point me at a source?

[Zaarin]

As I observed, most of them do preserve traces of the distinction, but in all meaningful senses every satem lang merged the labiovelars and post-velars. Also, I don't recall Armenian doing anything terribly special with the labiovelars - can someone point me at a source?

The Wikipedia page I mentioned cited Quiles & López-Menchero A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, Pederson Mélanges linguistiques offerts à M. Holger Pederson (on Armenian), and Pisani Ricerche Linguistiche (on Albanian).

[Porphyrogenitos]

Could anyone direct me to some sources (especially ones available online - but whatever will do) about the hypothetical tree and bird substrate languages that contributed vocabulary to early IE?

[hwhatting]

Could anyone direct me to some sources (especially ones available online - but whatever will do) about the hypothetical tree and bird substrate languages that contributed vocabulary to early IE?

Some material:
Guus Kroonen: "Non-Indo-European root nouns in Germanic: evidence in support of the Agricultural Substrate Hypothesis" (PDF)
Ranko Matasovic: "SUBSTRATUM WORDS IN BALTO-SLAVIC" (PDF)
EDIT: The "bird language" was argued by Schrijver:
Schrijver 1997 - Schrijver P. Animal, vegetable and mineral: Some Western European substratum words // Sound law andanalogy / Ed. A. Lubotsky. Amsterdam, 1997. P. 293-316.
Schrijver 2001 - Schrijver P. Lost languages in Northern Europe // Early contacts between Uralic and Indo-Europeans. Linguistic and archaeological considerations / Eds. C. Carpelan, A. Parpola, P. Koskikallio. Helsinki, 2001. P. 417-429
I haven't found these articles online, perhaps you can access them through a library.

[Zju]

Gitxsan has a dorsal plosive inventory of /c kʷ q cʼ kʷʼ qʼ/ with /c cʼ/ being realised as [k kʼ] before /s l/. It's parent language, Proto-Tsimshian, has a dorsal plosive inventory of /k kʷ q qʷ kʼ kʷʼ qʼ qʷʼ/, and while no sound changes were listed, it's rather obvious where palatals came from.
All this might be a bigger or smaller parallel of the development of dorsal plosives in PIE, showing us how a language can have /c/ but not /k/.