Monday, December 14, 2015

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?

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

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.