[tied] Re: Earth and Thorn

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-
language@...> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: elmeras2000<mailto:jer@...>
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com<mailto:cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2005 8:20 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Earth and Thorn
>
>
> --- In

cybalist@yahoogroups.com<mailto:cybalist@yahoogroups.com>, "Patrick
Ryan" <proto-

> language@...<mailto:language@...>...> wrote:
>
> [Jens:]
> > You don't? Fair enough. The word for "earth" is Hitt. tekan,
> gen.
> > tagnas, which must represent a more original form of the
> paradigm
> > which was changed in the other branches by introduction of

the

> > product of the cluster *d(h)g^h- as it had been in the

locative,

> **d
> > (h)g^h-ém(-i) > IE *g^h{th}ém(-i) (Ved. ks.ámi). This is one

of

> the
> > mainstays of the understanding of the "thorn" clusters in

IE. It

> is
> > of course also one of the basic arguments for an Indo-

Hittite

> model,
> > indicating as it does that Anatolian was the first branch to
> split
> > away from the IE unity. This is all classical knowledge by

now.

>
> [Patrick:]
> > Some very competent linguists of the past (Benveniste, for

one)

> looked at the disconnect between Hittite and _ALL_ the other IE-
> derived languages, and concluded that Hittite introduced the
> metathesis; so the original form was *g^h-Dem- (I will use -D

for

> bar-d, thorn).
>
> [Jens:]
> Did he really? Then he was wrong, and everyone who has chosen to
> follow him has been wrong too.
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> And Benveniste was backed in his opinion by Pokorny, who, might

be said, to have been somewhat knowledgeable.

>
> As usual, whoever does not share your opinion is simply wrong.

No real arguments necessary since you have looked at all the
evidence and made up your mind for us all.

What other status could one's opinions have? If I did not think they
were correct, why would I have them? I am not above changing an
opinion when confronted with unexpected contrasting evidence, but
this is one of the cases where the field has really been steadily
progressing to an ever increased degree of clarity. Indeed, this
particular case is generally deemed such a success that its salient
formulae have been used as an illustration on the cover of Meier-
Brügger's Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft, and again on the
translation Indo-European Linguistics.

>
> By the way, I went along with Miguel's calling ð thorn so as not

to seem to be knitpicking but since you decided to name your thread
with 'thorn', I guess I am going to have to point out that the word
we have been discussing (*g^hðém-) has 'edh' not 'thorn', which is Þ.

Stick to the point, please. This problem is constantly referred to
as "thorn", not by me, but by a tradition that needs some common
ground to be able to communicate; that should not be sabotaged.

> Of course, I already anticipate your reponse: you think the word

is better reconstructed with Þ than ð, am I right?

No, there is no such difference in this matter.

>
> [Patrick:]
> > In order for _ALL_ the other IE-derived languages to have

made

> the metathesis instead of Hittite, we are forced to assume a
> theoretical unity of _ALL_ non-Hittite languages which is barely
> theoretically possible but highly unlikely.
>
> [Jens:]
> That amounts to a very strong load of praise to those who saw

this,

> the only viable solution, anyway. It goes to the credit of a

series

> of scholars, including Paul Kretschmer, Brandenstein, Burrow and
> Schindler. The still living representatives Jón Gunnarsson and
> V.V.Ivanov might take a bow on behalf of all. I wouldn't say

with

> reference to any of these or any other scholars, " And if you

have

> never heard his name, you are simply underread for this

discussion

> and discussion list: this is not Sprachenkindergarten." I for

one am

> not above giving a free class to someone who needs it; I would

have

> preferred a more pleasant climate of discussion, though.
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> "the only viable solution", why there we have it again! How

could Pokorny and Benveniste have been so idiotically blind as not
to see, as you can, there was _only one_ answer: YOURS.

They may have had other things on their minds. And their
shortcomings have not prevented later serious scholars better
focused on this matter from getting it right. You may do well to
read the entry on tekan in Johann Tischler's Hethitisches
etymologisches Glossar which has been appearing in Innsbruck for
decades. The relevant fascicle is from 1993; Tischler is nobody's
child and simply reports and comments upon all opinions ever
presented in the scholarly literature. I trust you will find the
evidence favouring connection with khthó:n etc. overwhelming.

> I am all for a free class once in a while but I do not do brain

implants.

Then you should read some more on your own, instead of just
reflecting upon wrong "facts".

> [Jens:]
> The fact is that the Anatolian paradigms are of a more archaic
> makeup than the one unanimously pointed to by the other

branches. In

> fact, the Hittite paradigm has precisely the ablauting
> (amphikinetic) structure one would assume as the starting point

of

> the levelled "zero-grade of root plus ablaut of suffix"-

structure

> seen in Greek, Indo-Iranian, Old Irish, Balto-Slavic and

Albanian.

> You may do wisely to consult the relevant paragraphs of the
> introductions by Szemerényi, Meier-Brügger or Fortson. Our

mutual

> hero Sihler uses it correctly too.
>
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> There we go again. "The fact is ..." I guess no one on the other

side of the question had any facts at all. Well, let us thank our
lucky stars that at least ONE PERSON is smart enough to recognize
a "fact" when he sees it.

It actually is very hard to see what facts any "other side" might
have. You have not produced any.

>
> The fact really is you have absolutely no way of really knowing

if Hittite preserves a form that predates the split of Hittite and
non-Hittite or not. The Hittite form, tikan, could be the Hittite
solution to a consonant cluster; or, it could be only the way they
wanted to spell /tkán/. Or it could be from a different root
altogether, like *dhig^hóm.

Hey, what kind of swindle is this? The Hittite form is not "tikan",
but /te:kan/, commonly spelled <te-e-kán> or <te-kán>. Since both
<te> and <e> are unambiguous signs in the Hittite syllabary being
both opposed to i-signs <ti> and <i>, there is no possibility of
reading the form with an i-vowel. The Luwian counterpart of
Hitt. /e:/ is <i>, as indeed it is in tiyammi-, so these two fit
exactly. I do not think there are plene writings of unetymological
vowels, and now that we have the Luwian in-zgan showing what did
come out of the cluster produced by zero-grade, any opposition
becomes even more pitiful. The weak-case forms of the Hittite
paradigm, such as the genitive /tagna:s/ <ták-na-a-as>, completely
rule out any possibility that the root had an i-diphthong (and an i-
vowel in the zero-grade).

>
> I hope we all, at least, can agree that the root had the form

*CVC before any suffixes were added.

This one did, but why are you toying with the CVCC-root *dheyg^h-
then?

>
> If the root was *g^hedh-, adding -*óm would produce *g^hdhóm,

the form we find reconstructed in Pokorny except that the pedants
have insisted on ð for dh: *g^hðóm.

>
> If the root was *dheg^h- as Jens and Miguel etal. say, adding -

*óm would prodce *dhg^hóm.

>
> Now *dhg^hóm could work for Tocharian tkaM but it cannot work

for tikan.

>
> Precisely, some will say. Hittite tikan shows an archaic form

that pre-dates zero-grade Ablaut: *dheg^hóm.

Actually *dhég^h-o:m (with reservations for the initial aspirate
which could also be *d-).

> But if it does, Tocharian tkaM cannot be directly related since

it shows zero-grade in the root.

That form is identical with Gk. khthón-a.

> Also, as Peter kindly pointed out: "the Tocharian "earth" word

appears as tkam (Toch A) but also as ksaise

> (older Toch B) and this later form points to a pre-Tocharian kt-

cluster, not tek-."

My sources of information contain no such Tocharian form. While
Peter's information has been valuable and needed for you at least,
this item is in all probability not correct. There is no such word
in Adams' Etymological Dictionary of Tocharian B of 1999. I am not
sure what he means, perhaps TB s'ais.s.e 'Welt, Leute' (TA s'os.i)
which is a derivative from s'au-/s'ai- 'live' (IE *gWiH3wi-sk^io-
'that of the living', derived from *gWiH3wò- 'living'). I could be
wrong though, the state of the art changes all the time in Tocharian.

> So, to believe that the Tocharian A and Hittite forms are

related, we must assume that Tocharian A tkam derived from *dheg^hóm
as did Hittite; and Tocharian (A and B) later independently
innovated the zero-grade form for the root. Thereafter, Tocharian A
kept the inherited coronal-dorsal order while the Tocharian B found
them too hard to pronounce, and substituted by metathesis dorsal-
coronal.

Tocharian B dropped the coronal: TB kem.

> Or is it likelier that Tocharian A and B both inherited *g^hdhom-

, which Tocharian B kept (ksaise) while Tocharian A metathesized kt
into tk?

>
> I am for the second choice because it involves a lot less typing.

You may have a lot of typing to do, however, to convince critics
that the forms you stake everything on actually exist. I think you
should check up on the raw facts before you insist too much.

> We might also what you look at a real fact: several languages

display -*n forms with *dheig^h-, and some derivatives
mean 'earthen'.

>
> If Hittite tikan represented PIE *dhig^hón-, the -*i- would be

naturally explained as the zero-grade of -*ei-, and the expected
Ablaut pattern could be seen. There would be no need to postulate
the miraculous appearance of a pre-zero-grade Ablaut form; I wonder
if Jens and Miguel know of any other such unicorns in Hittite?

You are viciously reading nonsensical opinions into our postings
that were never meant. It is not the first time, and I can only get
the impression you are doing this on purpose. By the time Pre-Proto-
Anatolian split from Pre-Proto-Remainder, ablaut was already over.

>
> [Patrick:]
> > As far as "classical knowledge" is concerned, "classical
> knowledge" once held the world was flat although there were, at

all

> times, those who asserted it was round.
>
> [Jens:]
> And therefore you stick to good old preclassical lack of

knowledge.

> I refuse to follow.
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> At your peril. Many of the pre-classical natural philosophers

held _correctly_ that the world was round.

>
> The Academy thought that view "politically incorrect" so they

were maligned and ignored; and science was held back for a thousand
years.


So to Hell with science, scholarship, objective arguments, logical
inferences, the list, and the checking of facts!? I do refuse to
follow.

> ***
>
>
> [Patrick:]
> > Frankly, just the initial premise is preposterous.
>
> [Jens:]
> What do you mean by this? What premise?

I had expected an answer to this blunt accusation which is just
preposterous as it stands.

>
> [Patrick:]
> But then to explain it, as you seem to be doing, by an _ALL_ non-
> Hittite response to the phonological shape generated by the word

in

> the locative (really just an adjectival form) case, compounds
> preposterousness with sheer incredibility.
>
> [Jens:]
> The locative of a word meaning `earth' is hardly something

marginal.

> In an amphikinetic paradigm the loc.sg. should have the

structure *d

> (h)g^h-ém(-i) with zero-grade of the root and accented e-grade

of

> the suffix. The form may be endingless or extended by the ending

*-i

> (Vedic has both ks.ám and ks.ámi).
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Marginal? It is not even _on_ the margin! The nominative is

_already_ *g^hdhém- or *g^hdhóm-. Forming a locative with or
without -*i does not change anything.

You are not even trying to understand. The full paradigm had been
formed before ablaut operated, so the locative is not formed from an
ablaut variant of the stem. It was formed from the stem, and
subsequent ablaut shaped it later.

>
> ***
>
>
> Melchert has published an
> interpretation of Luwian /inzgan/ as meaning `into the earth' in
> which in- is the preposition *H1en- `in', and -z(a)gan is the

old

> accusative which he posits as Anatolian *dzg^ó:m, identical with
> Ved. ks.á:m and Avest. zaNm. I find it more likely that -zgan is

the

> endingless locative, if need be in the syntactic use as a Wohin-
> Kasus which is not uncommon in Hittite. In that case there would
> have been some development in the direction of assibilation or
> affrication in the locative, the only case where the oldest

paradigm

> had a real cluster, in all the IE we have. But even here the
> transposition of the dental or sibilant part (the "thorn" part)

to

> the final position of the cluster was posterior to the

separation of

> Anatolian from the rest of IE.
>
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Well, now Sturtevant is pre-classical: he does not know of a

locative case for Hittite. But, of course, since it is endingless,
who can say Jens is wrong? And the _fact_ that the locative case in
PIE indicates _absence of motion_ is, I guess, also a pre-classical
idea.

For Hittite, Sturtevant is most certainly preclassical. Anatolian
studies is perhaps the sector of IE studies that has progressed in
the most dramatical way over the last decades; it is one of the
subfields one must follow closely.

> Since both PIE -*om (neuter) and -*m (accusative) show up as -an

in Hittite, a form like z(a)gan, if it existed, would represent the
nominative/accusative of most Hittite nouns. If Luwian in-
means 'into', the accusative would be the likeliest case to expect.

That's what Melchert has opted for too. Still, he also says that e >
a in Luwian, and that *-en > -an in Hittite, and the actual locative
of Hitt. te:kan is indeed <ta-ga-a-an>, the "endingless" kind,
incidentally used as Wohin-Kasus in both quotes given by Tischler.
None of the other big dictionaries have reached T yet. If Luwian
shows in-zgan, this could very well be the old locative which was
then preserved in Luwian, while in Hittite it was adjusted to the
other weak cases to become taga:n. I find this unproblematic.

>
> Also, as an aside, those of you who read cuneiform know that it

is impossible to write inzgan with it. Perhaps it is Hieroglyphic
Luwian, which makes it even less possible. Annick Payne knows of
no "inzgan" so she must also be pre-classical.

The attestations are given in Melchert's paper in Proc.XIV UCLA IE
Conf. 2002 (publ. 2005), 145-46. Since this is the result of a new
and pioneering investigation, it is a point in which even Melchert's
own Cuneiform Luvian Lexicon is getting dated. Unfortunately and
suprisingly, as far as I can see Melchert does not spell out the
attestations in syllabified form. He writes them as <i:nzagan=za=pa>
and <inzaga:n>. The second one must then be spelled <in-za-ga-a-an>.

>
> And by the way, it should be "edh" part rather than "thorn part".

How nice to know.

>
>
> ***
>
>
> [Patrick:]
> > What on Earth leads you (or anyone else) to think that *g^h-

Dém-

> i- would, in any way, merit a different phonological

deveopmental

> response from *g^h-Dém-??? This, by itself, is highly suspect.
>
> [Jens:]
> Could you explain what you are referring to? It seems you should

be

> marched ack to your desk to read again and be ashamed. As a

special

> service, you need only look above.
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Ueni, uidi, uici

And back again.

>
> ***
>
>
> []
> [Jens:]
> Out of kindness, I snip something here. Again.
>
> [Patrick:]
> To my way of thinking, *-Dg^h- has no advantage whatsoever over

*g^h-

> D- as an initial cluster. Tell me what advantage you imagine

here.

> And forget about thorn. If our understanfing of thorn is based

on

> the premises mentioned above, the problem desperately needs a

new

> look.
>
> [Jens:]
> Your way of thinking would not account for the facts of Hittite:
> nom.-acc. te:kan has a vowel between the dental and the velar,

and

> the two come in that order. The two consonants are not

contiguous,

> so there is no reason to assume they have switched places. That

is

> evidence for the order of the elements. Luwian has tiyammi-s

from

> *De:g-om- with the usual weakening of g-sounds. The order of the
> elements also perspires, as Miguel points out, from the cases

where

> one of the stops is lost, because then it is always the velar

that

> remains which must then have been the second element. There is a
> fine little list if examples of this; the ones I remember are:

Ved.

> turí:ya- 'fourth', IE *k^m.tóm '100', Gk. kteíno:/kaíno: 'kill',

Gk.

> khamaí (and cognates).
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> First off, you and I both know that tekan and tikan would be

written the same in Hittite cuneiform.

No. There is no "tikan". Even in Sturtevant's strongly dated 1931
Hittite Glossary the word is correctly entered as "te:kan" with a
length mark representing the plene spelling. Where did this spurious
reading with -i- come into this? Your own invention? Or
Benveniste's? Pokorny gives te-e-kan quite correctly.

> As for Luwian tiyammi-s, it could certainly be cognate with

Hittite tikan; but that does not prove PIE *dhg^hém- was the basis
of metathesized *g^hdhém-; it could just as easily prove that a
Hittite-Luwian source for both was PIE *dhig^hém/n-; in fact, that
is far more likely.

>
> I am well aware that it is usually the second element of an

initial cluster that is retained although I am sure you also know
that when an infant is learning to speak he says /piz/ not /*liz/
for 'please'.

>
> But there are examples of words derived from *g^hdhém- where

the -dh-, the second element, is retained: e.g. De:mé:te:r.

The first vowel of Demeter is *-a:-: Doric Damate:r. If it is the
same word, it is not Greek.

> If this combination did not have special properties, there would

have been no reason for people to play around with edh (ð) now,
would there?

How true. So?

> [Patrick:]
> > You asked in an earlier posting about the "proof" for <*dh>

in

> the word: Greek <th> is the regular response to PIE <*dh>; and

the

> Greek reflex is khthó:n.
>
> [Jens:]
> You don't say? Well, Greek has no opposition between the

reflexes of

> d + gh and dh + gh, so its output /khth/ cannot show whether, in
> this case, it is from *dg^h or from *dhg^h. It is however

possiblé

> that Tocharian A tkam. (B kem.) excludes *d which is generally

lost

> in clusters; however, that language could still hold its

surprises.

> If reliable this would mean the denbtal involved in 'earth' is
> aspirated *dh (*t is excluded because of the iE root structure
> constraints).
>
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Sometimes you miss the point altogether.
>
> Greek<th> _is_ the regular result of PIE <*dh>. Tell me I am

wrong.

>
> Your example of what *d + *gh and *dh + *gh occasion might or

might not be true (I would like to have an example) but it is
irrelevant to the *g^h + dh which I am asserting.

No, it is the only thing relevant to the only point I was making in
the first place until you attacked my so viciously. I innocently
pointed out that the Greek evidence, indeed the Greek phonological
system, is incapable of distinguishing between *d and *dh in what
becomes a cluster <khth>. Therefore I asked on what basis that
decision had been made. I see now it had not really been thought
about.

>
> ***
>
>
>
> [Patrick:]
> > It is an gross example of inbred pedantic scholastic

thinking in

> its very worst sense to reconstruct a PIE phone (thorn) to

explain

> the aberrant reponses to *dh in this cluster for the sake of

three

> or four words. I do not believe I have ever seen a reputable

table

> of PIE sounds that included it.
>
> CORRECTION: not thorn but edh. PCR
>
>
>
> [Jens:]
> Out of sheer unkindness, I let those words stand as you wrote

them.

>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Now I am _not_ disappointed.
>
> ***
>
> [Jens:]
> I have seen thorn being treated many times, practically always

as a

> problem of phonemicization. Brugmann posited [{th}], [{dh}],

[{dh}h]

> in complementary distribution; he didn't care much about

phonemes,

> and he assumed IE age of Bartholomae's law. The problem

with "thorn"

> is of course whether it should be ranked a phoneme, a question

one

> cannot really decide for an imperfectly known language. For the
> earliest stage of the "Remainder-IE" left when Anatolian (and
> Tocharian?) had left the unity, it is even more aggravating.

Could

> there be a case of *t + *k at that node that would not end up as
> Greek /kt/, Sanskrit /ks./, Latin /s/? The Sanskrit sandhi

product

> of -t s'- is -c ch-, not anything like -k s.-, so the matter is

not

> just trivial. The core of it is perhaps just one of temperament:

We

> are still some who do not want to say more than we believe we

know.

> I have made it my habit to specify the thorn examples by using

the

> Icelandic "thorn" for all combinations, because there is no
> opposition between "thorn" and "edh" or even "aspirated edh". I

do

> not want to write the presumed input to the clustering if I do

not

> know what it was.
>
> [Patrick:]
> > The proper method is to reconstruct it as you seem to be

doing

> above as *g^hdhém-, and then seek to explain the aberrant

reflexes

> of _this_ cluster. This in no way necessitates or even makes
> desirable the postulation of a new phone which is simply

diletante.

>
> [Jens:]
> You are really putting your foot in it, aren't you? A

new "phone" it

> certainly was, discussion may be had over its phonemic status.

It

> does not seem to be an independent *morphophoneme*.
>
> [Patrick:]
> > I have come to expect a much higher level of argumentation

from

> you, Jens, and this line of reasoning seems, itself, 'aberrant'

to

> me.
>
> [Patrick:]
> > I have my own ideas about this word and its original
> significance; and I think it is mandatory to incorporate into

the

> semantic and phonological explanation the relationship of
> *g^hdhyés, 'yesterday', and *g^hdhu:, 'fish' to *g^hdhem-.
>
> [Jens:]
> This sounds alarming; tell me nothing about it.
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Again, no disappointment.
>
> But I cannot believe that _all_ reads of this list will be able

to brush aside even the question of a relationship among these three
identically initialed words.

I don't know all readers of the list. Those with a sober mind should
indeed be able to do that, just as we do not always see a particular
reason to connect words that happen to begin with *tr-. And what
if 'fish' had *g^hdh- as opposed to *dhg^h- in the zero-grade forms
of 'earth'? Or one of them had *dh, the other *d? Then they are not
so easily related. The semantics baffles me: did they use
yesterday's Earth Times to wrap up fish? Again, tell me nothing
about it.

>
> ***
>
>
>
> [Patrick:]
> > Sorry to have to be so negative but I am really disappointed.
>
> [Jens:]
> I wish I could say the same.
>
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> No disappointment there again. I guess you have just told me

that you expect nothing valuable from anything I write. Well, I
cannot say the same. So, even though your contempt is explicit now,
I will continue to soldier on.

I have come to agree completely.

> ***
>
>
> [Patrick:]
> > Now when you write back to tell me what an idiot I am, just
> remember, you are tarring Benveniste with the same brush.
>
> [Jens:]
> *Nobody's* mistakes should be accepted when they have been made

out

> to be that. Benveniste earned his laurels elsewhere.
>
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> Have your ever actually made one?

I wouldn't know.

Jens