makeshift linguistics blog

though phonology also gets much harder, once you go beyond “this is a closely knit dialect continuum” or “we present a reconstruction based on 100 basic vocabulary items”; mainly because etymological validity starts being a major problem. Is it tenable to analyze this unaccounted-for syllable as a suffix? Is this a reasonable semantic shift? Is this a loanword from one branch into another? Whoops this etymon was a loanword from a major contact language, do I now need to also learn Arabic / Fula / Mandarin / Tok Pisin / etc. to be sure there aren’t a dozen more of these in my data?

Gonna add this here because relevancy.

I hear conflicting things about Indo-Uralic. My general impression is that it has promise, but I really know very little.

If some individual has a point is much more variable. Most people who assert a more detailed theory seem to be able to find a bunch more data for it, but often this can be easily criticized by others pointing out that they're e.g. confused about some well-known loanwords, or have been over-applying one family's morphology or morphophonology to the other (usually Indo-European stuff for Uralic), or have been using unreliable data from one side or the other. For example no, we probably should not think that Uralic *uwa 'flow' segments as *u-wa and contains the zero grade of a root *we- from which 'water' has been derived (or was it that *uwa- is a full grade and *we- is some kind of a zero grade from it?), as long as we don't have reason to think that anything at all is "in zero grade" in Uralic; or that there exist nominal suffixes *-d-, *-tə or *-wa.

Since this has not been a topic particularly in the mainstream since uhh the 1920s, the research is also fairly scattered and most people since then don't seem to know each other's work in good detail (and note that this includes a requirement to trawl thru work on Nostratic for relevant stuff). If I was working on this, I'd start from the side of bibliography to see what "already is" known. Kortlandt has put together some decent arguments that focus on the long-known material, but I'm unsure if this either achieves much further accumulation or later results yet, or how many of the promising-looking bits are his own contribution. And then there's the issue where most work seems to have been from Indo-Europeanists who don't know comparative Uralic very well (K is definitely in this camp) or occasionally also, from Uralicists who don't know comparative Indo-European very well.

There remain in any case also many open questions because (P)IE and (P)U have a large bunch of typological divergences despite being neighboring families. Though it seems to me that this is shrinking the more we learn about Anatolian, which e.g. has basically no prefixes and does have possessive suffixes; or for another intriguing point, Anatolian was recently argued to have evidence for *mel- 'to think', which now compares better with Uralic *mälə 'mind' than classical PIE *men- does. I wouldn't know if there's a connection between these two PIE roots (is *men- maybe from pre-PIE *menl- which is by n-infixation from *mel-?)

"Anatolian, which e.g. has basically no prefixes " But the Indo-Anatolian proto-language it derived from did have adpositions as prefixes. Like we see e.g. in Hittite pa-izzi 'to pass', pe-ḫar(k)zi 'to hold ready', pe-iezzi 'to send', pe-dai 'to take somewhere', u-ššiezi 'to draw open', ú-dai 'to bring' etc.

"Anatolian was recently argued to have evidence for *mel- 'to think', which now compares better with Uralic *mälə 'mind'" With 'recently', do you mean 2008 in Kloekhorst's Etymological Dictionary (page 545-546)? There is also Greek mélō 'to care about'.

"over-applying one family's morphology or morphophonology to the other (usually Indo-European stuff for Uralic)" Why would the parent language of Indo-European and Uralic have none of IE's weird morphophonology? Indo-European has a very early attestation, millennia earlier than Uralic. All things being equal it should better reflect the older state of affairs. And leveling out this morphophonology is the natural development. There is no modern IE language where ablaut, nasal presents, s-mobile or IE style reduplication is still productive. And with examples like PU *lämpi 'warmth' ~ PIE leh₂p 'to glow', PU *wäntV 'to look' ~ PIE *weid 'to see', PU *jäŋɣi 'ice' ~ PIE *h₁i̯eg 'to freeze'. PU *śaŋka 'to sting, to stick' ~ PIE *stegʰ 'to stick' it is clear to me that assumption is probably invalid.

Ablaut and nasal presents are very much alive in Lithuanian, even if not “productive” in the sense “applied to recent loans”.

On the other hand, I doubt that there is a modern IE language which has no fossilized trace of ablaut. E.g., Modern Irish has nom. sg. bean ‘woman’, gen. sg. mná, gen. pl. ban - and this in a language which has gone through several periods of severe phonological and morphological change.

Indo-European has a very early attestation, millennia earlier than Uralic.

From this angle, I even think the notion of Indo-European "ablaut" is itself probably underspecified. If a language only has two proper vowels *e *o, asserting "*e ~ *o ~ zero" will refer to literally any possible vowel alternation that may happen for any reason in any environment. This is not a definition that can be consistently applied to any other language variety, and indeed everyone recognizes that secondarily arising umlaut or metaphony processes in IE languages are not ablaut. Within IE, we can continue to posit some lexical instances of vowel alternation as "ablaut" if and only if we can etymologize them as continuing PIE ablaut. This holds even if they're not synchronically distinguishable from other vowel alternations. English /ɪ/ ~ /oʊ/ "is ablaut" in ridden ~ rode (was ablaut already in PG *ridanaz ~ *raid), but "is umlaut" in gild ~ gold (is secondary from PG *guldijan- ~ gulθan).

Looking outside IE, I think we'd also need a similar level of evidence to claim something as "being ablaut" historically and not just descriptively. If we had distinct Uralic cognates for both nom.sg. *wod-r̥ and gen.sg. *wed-n̥-s, then sure, that would seem to be ablaut; but if you we find some vowel alternation, for some unknown reason, in entirely different lexemes — or even in partly same lexemes but in completely different parts of the paradigm or derivation tree — that's not going to be sound grounds to infer a connection.

And then "ablaut", which has no clear conditioning and applies in all sorts of places, seems to be itself most likely similarly heterogeneous and to represent multiple processes. Especially since it's three grades and not two, so at minimum it has to have two origins: one process that yilded *e ~ *o and another that yilded *e ~ zero (and maybe, though not by absolute requirement, *o ~ zero)

Beyond ablaut, it's then of course impossible for Uralic to have a cognate process or even any kind of an especially convincing trace of s-mobile or root zero-grades, when Proto-Uralic (or even most branch protolanguages) does not even have any stem-initial consonant clusters. A similar argument goes I think for morphological mismatches: PU only seems to have had agglutinative TAM marking, so finding any cognate for PIE perfect reduplication or present tense nasal infixation looks very unlikely on those grounds. (There is clearly room to reconstruct PU verb inflection in more detail though.)

Cushitic is old. And by old I mean, old. There’s reason to believe Cushitic was already diversified similar to what we see now as far back as the early 2nd millennium BC, which is wild. That’s just as far as Beja is concerned—which is distant enough from the other languages that Robert Hetzron arguably went to the grave arguing it was it’s own branch of Afroasiatic. There’s also indirect evidence of language spread as well, Omo-Tana within Lowland East was spread far and early enough that it was its speakers who likely adopted pastoralism from peoples journeying over from Southern Arabia; it’s hard to tell. And then you have the Savannah Pastoral Neolithic culture which is present in Tanzania around 1,300 BC, and seems to be undoubtedly related to speakers of South Cushitic—again another rather distant branch of Cushitic. I’ve had a person who works with the Highland East branch tell me that she has a hard time seeing how South Cushitic is related to the rest of Cushitic because of its divergence.

Japanese: Samui desu ne?

my teachers: its like a, a little rise at the end of a sentence, to show that you are seeking a response, while not warranting the -ka particle which would make it a proper question.

me: ok. i guess i get that??

this post: its like saying “innit?” 

pretty agnostic

when it's required in the roots of content words (nominals, verbs), that's not really that problematic, even if it is unusual – late PIE did have an *[a] in any case as a consequence of laryngeal colouring, which then became phonemic (that's how *tau̯ros 'bull' was borrowed into PIE with an *a). i don't think forcing a laryngeal explanation is the best way to go about solving the presence of a "primary" *a, not least because it often opens up new problems (e. g. *sh₂el- instead of *sal- 'salt' is viable, but *nh₂es- instead of *nas- 'nose' is not, because the syllabification would be *n̥h₂es- with a syllabic nasal), though as shown it can work in some cases. even less economical is positing a whole nother laryngeal (*h₄)

tune is a loanword from french, related to the word “tone”. idk how the o became a u, but that’s not important really. it’s the same deal as tube and tumor, it starts with the sound ty- in british english (and others), and the sound t- in american english. so, in american english, that y-sound was lost after alveolar consonants (t, d, n, l, r, s, z, and also probably th?). that’s why british people pronounce “new” like “nyoo” while americans say “noo”, that’s why british people pronounce “duty” like “dyooti” while americans say “dooti”, etc. so in that sense, “tyoon” is actually the original pronunciation of that word as far as english goes, anyway. pronouncing “u” as “yoo” comes from an approximation of the french “u” sound, which is made by saying the sound “ee” but with your lips rounded. english didnt have that sound, so it unpacked it into having an ee-like semivowel (y) glide into a rounded vowel (oo). 

pronouncing words like “tube” as “toob” is closer to their original pronunciation in latin, but that’s not why americans pronounce it that way. we know that this is a case of a y-sound being lost instead of the original latin pronunciation being retained because of words like “cube”, “pure”, “mute”, “unity”, etc. those all still have the y-sound that comes from how they were borrowed into english, instead of the plain u-sound that would come directly from latin. 

so, yeah, in a sense, “tune” was originally tyoon (and modern dialects have merged the t and the y into a ch sound since that’s an easier pronunciation and a very natural progression for those sounds that happens in countless, countless languages). but does that make it more correct? no lol, just like how “toon” isnt more correct. they’re both correct for their respective dialects.

correcting one and not the other doesnt make sense, because neither have any more authority than the other. there is no “correct” way to speak. imagine if a french person said “pur”, with that rounded “ee” sound in the vowel, with that odd french r-sound, and a spanish person came and said “um actually it’s pronounced ‘puro’”, with a plain oo-sound and an o at the end. which of them is right? “puro” is certainly not as far from latin “purus” as the french “pur” is, but does that make it more correct? no, lol, they’re two different languages that merely share a common ancestor (latin). likewise, which is correct between “toon” and “tyoon/choon”? neither, they’re two different dialects that merely share a common ancestor (english before general americal split off from it)

verbessern = to improve

reparieren = to repair

like, for example, “manure” didn’t originally mean cow shit, it comes from same old french word that “maneuver” does, which comes from the latin roots “manu-” and “operare”, so it literally just means “to work with your hands”. “manure” didnt mean the cow shit itself, it meant the act of doing farm labor, including spreading fertilizer and tending to crops and stuff like that by hand. in english, it originally came in as a verb. you would go manure the fields or whatever lmao. so like naturally it came to mean the fertilizer itself eventually.