VascoEtruscan and IndoUralic - and their relation to MesoEuropean

For my MesoEuropean speculation, I'm trying to hammer out a type of "jargon" that would include Uralic, IndoEuropean, Etruscan, and Basque. While I don't think they're directly related, there are parallels between these that can be observed with closer inspection; though the problem of testability arises when you compare any two of these individually.

I've tried conquering this problem with subgrouping Uralic with IndoEuropean as a genetic entity, and Etruscan and Basque as a possible one, though it helps, it certainly doesn't fix the problem. The problem being any "cognate" forms may originate from none of these language families specifically, but may be present in all of them. Further, these "cognate" (really bad word for it) need not genetically be related to one another, but could have arisen areally.

For instance, haber and have in Spanish and English, used almost identically, but not technically cognate. Their similarity may or may not have influenced or influence the developement of either, but that doesn't change the fact that those communicating between these languages will tend to use a form "have" to translate "haber", even if the corresponding Germanic form of "haber" were to be used as well.

This creates an obvious testability problem to add to the already existing ones. Now, not only can't we distinguish what is loaned and what isn't (a problem even extending to both "subdivisions"), we can't even be sure what forms are really convergent by this (as I'm pretty sure haber and have developed ...)

An example of these likely common borrowings/convergences being:

A pronominal system with a specific type of vowel gradation holding specified meaning:

mu(n)/mo(n), mi(n)/me(n), ma(n)/mə(n)/m∅(n) - 1st Person

tsu(n)/tso(n), tsi(n)/tse(n), tsa(n)/tsə(n)/ts∅(n) - 2nd Person

su(n)/so(n), si(n)/se(n), sa(n)/sə(n)/s∅(n) - 3rd Indefinite/Human

tu(n)/to(n), ti(n)/te(n), ta(n)/tə(n)/t∅(n) - 3rd Person Definite

*/ts/ used because I didn't want to give the impression that both could be reconstructed at any branch, as it really does matter which you choose. With the only exception being IndoEuropean, which shows /s/ on verbs and /t/ in pronouns for the 2nd person, and the 3rd person forms show seperate roots for /s/ and /t/ in differing branches such as Uralic (assuming any validity to the speculation). For the 2nd person, Uralic shows /t/, like with Luwian, also an /ri/ developing from that /ti/ form. Though the 2nd person and 3rd person forms in IndoEuropean and Uralic "seem related", I can get to why, possibly some "thou, this" distinction that can be later explored.

Both "thou" and "this" correspond to the Basque "hi" and "hau" respectively. In the above, that would be ts > z /s/, and t > h.

Etruscan would show the same /z/ and /h/ developements as Basque in this framework.
Correction made: I confused the Basque singular "thou" hi with the plural zu. This does get rid of the association between /u/ and /i/ and number.Also ni "I" and gu "we" below.

*-(n) should be more accurately rendered -n, and is obligatory in PUralic it would seem, but optional (?) in PIndoEuropean, or at least both forms with and without it can be seen in the possessive forms. This has lead to the moi- moin- distinctions, maybe? Though it may have been dropped too, and have been originally necessary, this is unclear. Though both exist in Uralic and IndoEuropean, without the -n element, Uralic has it in its enclitic forms (which are nearly identical to their IndoEuropean counterparts). Not sure what the Basque and Etruscan would yield. Though I know that Basque lacks the final nasal. It appears like it may just differentiate pronominal and attributive forms, if this nasal ending is even to be differentiated at all from the base root (hence the parenthesis). As a very simple sound change could eliminate it from suffixes.

The very nature of a root without the -n appears like it could be problematic for both Uralic and IndoEuropean, despite being reconstructible for both.

*3rd Person definite forms are historically related both back to the plural suffixes and the demonstrative pronouns with definite meaning under this model.

Some have linked the PIE plural -s with the PU -t, but my own thinking is that these are somewhat seperate. The reason for this, is simplicity. Both s- and t- exist as indefinite and definite forms of demonstrative roots, and assuming its an enclitic demonstrative root in origin (easily reconstructed and uncontroversially as -es in PIE and -t in PU), and their parallel t- (deictic demonstratives in both, and technically all 4; often the reflexive pronoun in Uralic) and s- (IE 3rd Reflexive and PU 3rd Person pronoun).

Also, evidence from IndoEuropean using a collective ending for Neuter nouns and pronouns seems to suggest that these originally didn't decline for number in the singular ~ dual ~ plural like Human/Animate nouns originally did (Masculine by the time of PIE), rather, by an Individual vs. collective type distinction.

This gives us a clear PIE neuter singular demonstrative -d as cognate with the PU -t. Though these would have necessarily developed seperately. I'm going to come back to the reason why in the section on ablaut.

You can see the mess this would create, trying to resolve this as one common root, instead of a merger of two seperate roots into a suppletive type pronoun in either branch independantly developing, IndoEuropean or Uralic.

The ∅-grade and a-grade forms might possibly be seperate or they may not be. Their meaning seems to not necessarily have been distinguished in personal pronouns, but for demonstratives they lend a sort of general/distal deixis (giving a generalized meaning "that").

The i/e-grade form has two seperate usages, it would seem.
In demonstrative pronouns, this grade gave rise to the "near deixis", and is constructed the same way in PIE as that plural suggestion, and indeed -i- for near deixis in PU. Further, this form may actually be related to the PIE root "this" also beginning with j-, and the root kj- "this".

In some branches of IndoEuropean, this remained the plural ending, alternating with the plural -es in other branches. In yet other branches, the j- root actually gave rise to the definite declension such as with Lithuanian and Latvian, (as t- had done in Balkan Romance, Luwian, as well as Bulgarian and Macedonian). Curiously, Germanic shows -n- for that same definite declension (so-called weak stems), seemingly related to the word "a/an/one".

While the definite meaning clearly developed seperately, there seems to have been some construction similar to what we see in Basque as the original state for IndoEuropean. Whether or not the noun was always declined for case in these constructions, the following determiner became declined for case, gender and number. This easily explains the independant developements of these as independant case endings for the Indefinite and Definite declensions in some branches, but there is a controversial element to it. It may well get rid of some case endings.....

.... I'll get to that later, this has gotten way too long as it is, we'll deal simply with phonological issues for now.

While it doesn't seem related (for the most part), Sumerian also seems to have a similar system of Ablaut for its pronouns. It may not be related. Though a comparison can be drawn between Sumerian and IndoEuropean enclitic personal pronouns:

o/u-grade IndoEuropean and Sumerian genitive/possessive enclitics

e/i-grade IndoEuropean Oblique and Sumerian Ergative enclitics

a-grade If the same as zero-grade, this would be the equivalent of the root-form in Basque, IndoEuropean, and Sumerian.

Dative Plural -mos in Luwian?

For the article:
A Brief Introduction to Hieroglyphic Luwian


I noticed their enclitic 3rd Person Dative Plural pronoun was -mans, and couldn't help but notice a similarity to the Dative Plural -manza.

In Hittite the Nom.-Acc. Singular for this is -at, and plural is -ata. The Slavic variant of this (yes, they have the same enclitic) is Dative Singular mu. Basically, the same endings that often form case endings, are also enclitic pronouns when it comes to the Dative and several others in Slavic, with the Luwian evidence, we can see that clearly the -mi(s)/-mus and -bis/b(j)os distinction seems to arise from earlier enclitic suffixation.

I don't think the forms are identical -manza and -mus/-mi(s), but they're definitely appearing to be related. What do you think?

IndoUralic - Problems, Solutions and Unresolved Issues Part one - Phonological Issues

The problem with the IndoUralic hypothesis, isn't one of a lack of cognates, nor of a lack of strong correlations. It's one of a small reconstructible ProtoUralic grammar and lexicon, that has its entire history of being right side by side with IndoEuropean. The reason this is a problem is obvious, it means that the two language families have had almost (if not more than) 5,000 years to influence eachother. To those less familiar with either language family, that's the entire history of potentially both families.

From a geographical standpoint, both have their origins in the Volga-Kama river system, specifically originating in the area around the Middle Volga river area. For the ProtoUralic speakers, the Kama river and lower Ural mountains area, and for ProtoIndoEuropean with the expansion of the Yamna Cultural complex (to be specific, the spread of horse domestication), from the Middle Volga river part of the Pontic-Caspian Steppes.

The good news is, the earliest loanwords appear to be predictible. Then again, maybe not. For instance, we have loanwords in ProtoUralic from ProtoIndoEuropean itself (presumably), or an immediate descendant. They appear to be late PIE loans, but who knows? We know that they are loans though:

Early PIE nom (Nom.) ~ nomen (Obl.) "name" > PUralic nime (from the Obl./Indirect form)
Early PIE wodr (Nom.) ~ uden/weden (Obl.) "water" > PUralic weti (from the Obl./Indirect form)

*Source of PUralic reconstructed forms: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language - by David W. Anthony
*The difference between the a-dialects and the o-dialects, isn't so much one of ancestry, as it is a phonological rule that o>a (/o/ becomes /a/), which may or may not really go back to Late PIE, but is present in Hittite as far as we can tell, so it is assumed that this change would have been present at that state.



It's safe to conclude also, that ProtoUralic isn't an IndoEuropean language, so its not descended from PIE, so anything not traceable to either PIE or its daughter languages, may potentially be cognate at an earlier stage. The problem is, alot is covered in the form of earlier stages.

It may well be that all the similarities are traceable to those 5,000 years of contact, but this is a hypothesis to explore.

The War on Wikipedia

Now, obviously, Wikipedia is no primary source of information if you want to do research on any subject; but it makes for a decent place to begin. Whatever be the quality of their sources, people who contribute do also contribute their sources to those entries found there.

Sure... there's something to be said about unqualified people posting there. Not to mention trolls and even high school teachers (yes... I knew one that bragged about trashing wikipedia to get kids not to use it....), posting nonsense to sabotage the good efforts of others. Either way, it doesn't matter, because if you look further, it works. Any mistakes can be corrected.

Though there's something else lurking behind the distrust of crowdsourced information, a distrust of those not in a position of authority. This is kinda way off topic, but its something I've noticed that came from a criticism of my earlier work using wikipedia as a starting point.

What if PIndoEuropean Had Distinct Clusivity Pronouns?

What if ProtoIndoEuropean, or PreProtoIndoEuropean, had seperate pronouns for Inclusive and Exclusive 1st Person, dual and plural, personal pronouns?

If we were to lay out some of the reconstructions, for our example we'll use some enclitic pronouns from the Northwestern IndoEuropean branch for Illustration, it might look like this:

Potential Reconstruction of an Earlier System (Reconstruction and Hypothesis mine).

		Proto- Germanic	Common Baltic	Common Slavic	Western IndoEuropean
1st Sing.	Nom.			já	ja
	Acc.		men	mę	men
	Gen.	mī		mě	mē
	Poss.	mȳ		moj	moi
	Dat.	mē	mi	mi	mi
1st Incl. Dual	Nom.	wi	vě	vě	wē
	Acc.		vū	wy	wū
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.			wa	wa
1st Excl. Dual	Nom.				nē
	Acc.			ny	nū
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.			na	na
1st Incl. Plur.	Nom.				wos
	Acc.				wes
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.
1st Excl. Plur.	Nom.				nos
	Acc.				nes
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.				nas
2nd Sing.	Nom.	þū	tū	ty	tū
	Acc.		ten	tę	ten
	Gen.	þī		tě	tē
	Poss.	þȳ		toj	toi
	Dat.	þē	ti	ti	ti
2nd Dual	Nom.	ġi			jē
	Acc.		jū		jū
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.				ja
2nd Plur.	Nom.				jos
	Acc.				jes
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.				jas
3rd Sing.	Nom.			sy	sū
	Acc.		sen	sę	sen
	Gen.	sī		sě	sē
	Poss.	se	si	si	soi
	Dat.				si
3rd Dual	Nom.				sē
	Acc.			sy	sū
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.			sa	sa
3rd Plur.	Nom.				sē
	Acc.			sy	sū
	Gen.
	Poss.
	Dat.			sa	sa

*At least in some cases, ū is actually reconstructed as ō in Northwest IndoEuropean, but this distinction isn't such that it would have an impact upon the correlations noted above. (And in the case of my own speculative chart specifically, nearly all of them are reconstructible as /ō/)

*plural forms jos reconstructible as jūs/jōs; And may well derive from an adjectival form of this pronoun. Adjectival forms has -w- between the root and the vowel ending.

Any thoughts? Opposing? In favor? Uncertain?

ProtoIndoEuropean Dative Element -o

Accusative>Lative, Instrumental>Ablative

	Accusative-Dative			Instrumental-Ablative
	Sing.	Du.	Plur.	Sing.	Du.	Plur.
No Lative Element Acc-Ins	-m	-meh	-ns (<ms)	-bhi	-bhih	-bhis
Lative Element -o Lat-Abl	-mo -ei	-moh	-mos	-bio	-bioh	-bhios

*Note: -ei would have been derived from the Locative form, and the -e- element may not have been -o- for whatever reason. Anatolian evidence, especially with regards to Hittite, is that the dative and locative endings were the same, though they had -a for the Allative (which may have been the origin of the Dative case elsewhere).

For Hittites Allative -a, its hard to tell whether or not this represents an -he element or an -o element, as it underwent the o>a shift. At least as far as we can tell from its transcription into cuneiform.

Hittite also as:

Ablative -az (-ats)

Instrumental -it

It's hard for me to say the origin of the Ablative ending, though its definitely not from the Genitive -as ending. The /ts/ element is often a result of ti>ts, like in -anti>-anza. Not sure if this is the result of the same change or not.

*Note: Accusative dual forms merged with Nominative dual forms, this may have always been this way; though the above postulation for a seperate accusative dual form is based on the dative dual forms, and is entirely speculation. As is the Ablative dual/plural forms (though Instrumental singular -mi forms are attested from Baltic and Slavic evidence).

I've moved around Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, and Italic

I've redone some of how my site is organized, and subcategorized Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Italic, and Celtic under Northwestern IndoEuropean.

Natlangs Old and Young: Northwestern IndoEuropean

The underrated significance of smaller dialects

As you already well know, all languages either have or will have lesser dialects. Dialectical differentiation is a part of the evolution of languages, always has been, and always will be. It just is.

To make things even better for the historical linguist, all languages today are descended from prior dialects of previous languages, sometimes several dialects at a time. Sometimes, two languages may "combine" to form a new language. We can discuss creoles and pigins another day....

In the earlier history of english, there were many instances where Old English dialects contributed different things to what became Middle English, and on from dialects of Middle English into Modern. Just as an example. Sometimes, two dialects can produce different outcomes, and sometimes both outcomes will survive in a common dialect. Like is with the pronunciation of "bury" after the vowel shifts.

It's kinda a perfect example, though not really, since by now the different pronunciations are still so similar that most don't even notice it. Though they may also only sound similar to my english ears, because differentiating vowels in this highly intercommunicative language can be difficult, when one is so familiar with different dialects that one may be suprised that some are even mutually intelligible still!

Anyway, back to "bury".....

It's pronounced either /bəɻi/ or /bɛːɻi/.

From what I've read on the internet, take it for true or not, most dialects originally had these pronunciations as seperate outcomes based on soundlaws that occurred towards the end of Middle English. One of the two would have become the outcome in London-type english, and the other Southern English; But both wound up in London English due to them just liking the way it was pronounced in the south more.

Though where I'm from, its basically pronounced either way, there is no difference between the two as they're pretty much interchangeable. Though bəɻi tends to be used more in the past tense and bɛːɻi in the present or future tense. I'm not sure if this is common elsewhere, as I haven't really seen it described anywhere, but definitely seems to be a holdout from the old english ablaut (though may very well not be).

I've noticed that at times, small inconsistencies in reconstructing earlier types of sound changes may lead to the declaration that we either:

1) Can't reconstruct a sound accurately on the basis of said small sound change descrepancies
2) Need to invoke new phonemes that should have existed on the basis of those descrepancies
3) Need to declare that all languages evolved from Lithuanian, Vedic, Aryan, Insert-Language, etc....

Okay, so the third was kind of a joke....

Though descrepancies tend to be the rule, not the exception. Not all dialects of a language survive themselves, though sometimes they'll leave behind traces of themselves in cousin-languages. These traces may then be found by a historical linguist being unable to reconstruct a form in a historical language, because it violates the rules, sometimes very much so.

West Slavic Project

Procrastination.... my worst enemy. My own fault being that I started with a family I'm unfamiliar with prior to present, but at least there's more familiarity now than there was. It doesn't help that the new laptop doesn't have the proper fonts, and I'm weary about downloads, nor that my word processor keeps crashing so I've basically left things on the backburner.

Maybe I need a break from my work. My notebooks are full, I lack any kind of real excuse for my lack of progress. Just that I don't want to have to deal with the problems. Guess that's where things stand. Trying to find a different approach, maybe set a schedule and limit distractions.

My worst enemy is my own attention span.

Pronominal, Case, and Verbal Similarities between unrelated languages

It's funny how similar unrelated languages can be. It seems like, as much as there are mechanisms in place to drive languages apart with time, there's also mechanisms in place to bring them closer together. The more different groups communicate, the more similar their languages become (while at the same time distinct from how they used to be).

My instinct is to question how some apparently unrelated systems can come to mirror eachother nearly identically. Do entire pronominal systems, or even nominal declension systems get borrowed from one language to another? One look at Northeast Caucasian, and right away you'll see a system very similar to that of the IndoEuropean languages, but also the Uralic languages. Or maybe they developed independantly, can we know?

Go to the americas, and nearly the entirety of the two continents' languages have deeply embedded similarities. Some say there are 3 main groupings, but most of the "amerind" languages seem quite similar to the EskimoAluet and often the NaDene languages if analyzed in the same way individual Amerind languages were analyzed.

Are languages and their systems really that unanalyzeable and unreconstructible at vast time distances? What if there's enough surviving languages to build more data? I get that we may never take Burushaski and trace it back to some distant ancestor; being that it's just Burushaski and its many dialects that survive, kinda like Basque.....

But with the IndoEuropean languages, there are so many descendants, that we can reconstruct with a fair bit of confidence ProtoIndoEuropean and at least three major dialects, with hints at how it may have existed internally at a PreProtoIndoEuropean level! Quite astonishing, but probably only possible with the volume of data that exists for that family.