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.

ProtoIndoEuropean and Tsezic

Was cruising the interwebs for a "next project", when I stumbled upon the wikipedia page for Tsezic. My oh my! There're some intriguing resemblances between Tsezic and the IndoEuropean languages (though the other Northeast Caucasian languages as well):

Regarding case endings

ProtoIndoEuropean		Tsezic
		Khwarshi		Tsez		Hunzib
Nom.Sg	-s, -Ø	Abs. Sg.	-∅	Abs. Sg.	-∅	Abs.Sg.	-∅
Ins. Sg.	-(e)h₁	Erg. Sg.	-(j)i	Erg. Sg.	-ā	Erg. Sg.	-y
Gen. Sg.	-s,-os, -es	Gen. sg. 1	-s	Gen.Sg.1	-(e)s	Gen. Sg.	-s
		Ins. Sg.	-z	GenSg.2	-(e)z
Voc. Sg.	-Ø, -ĕ	Voc. Sg.	-ju
						Ins. Sg.	-d1 / -do2

Quite a neat resemblance, eh? Well, that's nothing. Not only is this mirrored pretty much acrossed Northeast Caucasian, you can expand this to ProtoUralic, and you'll find even more similarities. This isn't just limited to nominal endings, but extends to similarities between their pronominal systems as well. Likely, these features seem to have been borrowed in one direction or another. Given the degree of similarities between these obviously, otherwise unrelated languages:

PIndoEuropean		Tsezic						ProtoUralic
		Khwarshi		Tsez		Hunzib
NomSg	-s, -Ø	Abs. Sg.	-∅	Abs. Sg.	-∅	Abs.Sg.	-∅	Nom.Sg.	-∅
Ins.Sg.	-(e)h₁	Erg. Sg.	-(j)i	Erg. Sg.	-ā	Erg. Sg.	-y
Gen.Sg.	-s,-(o/e)s	Gen. sg.	-s	Gen.Sg.1	-(e)s	Gen. Sg.	-s
		Ins. Sg.	-z	GenSg.2	-(e)z
Voc.Sg.	-Ø, -ĕ	Voc. Sg.	-ju
Abl. Sg.	-(e)d					Ins. Sg.	-d/-do	Abl. sg.	-ta
Acc. Sg.	-m							Acc. Sg.	-m

There are also similarities with the pronominal endings, and between pronominal endings and nominal endings. These aren't dealt with here. There's also similarities between numeral endings. While ProtoIndoEuropean is primarily inflectional, it has no true means of forming new plurals, outside adding the nominative -es, many of its endings do seem to exhibit a plural -s, and a dual -h1 (which was most likely a glottal stop).

ProtoUralic had -k- in the dual, and -j-/-t in the plural.

Northeast Caucasian seems to have had some variation on a postalveolar -s- or -z- just before the case (like we see in ProtoUralic, but unlike what we see in Protoindoeuropean.

Similarities of this sort aren't uncommon between unrelated languages. Though there are alot of them in this general area, too many in fact, to just brush off the similarities. In my own view, it seems as if, alongside the prepositions of ProtoIndoEuropean, seem to have been borrowed from a common source. Or that there was alot of contact between these languages, that they became more similar with time at some point in recent prehistory.