Re: joatsimeo-Loan Words

joatsimeo wrote:
Þ OK, this is a good example of where you're misunderstanding how this
works. "Salt" is derived from PIE *sal. We can tell this because of the
forms the word assumes in IE daughter languages:
Þ Old Irish salann
Þ Welsh halen
Þ Latin sal
Þ Old Norse salt
Þ Old High German salz
Þ Gothic salt
Þ (Proto-Gemanic *saldom)
Þ Lithuanian solymas
Þ Latvian sals
Þ Old Church Slavonic solt
Þ Armenian al
Þ Old Indic/Sanskrit salia
Þ Tocharian A sale
Þ Tocharian B salyiye
Þ -- all of which, when you run the sound changes backward, give us
*sal. E.g., Welsh changes PIE (and proto-Celtic) initial *s to "h", and
so forth. If the word had been loaned into Welsh subsequent to the *s
==> h shift, it wouldn't have started with "h", and so forth. Just as
"bovine" shows up as a loanword because it hasn't undergone the *gw ==>
k shift characteristic of the Germanic languages, but instead the *gw
==> b. Furthermore, the example above includes most of the subsequent
branches of PIE, including ones separated by a great deal of time and
space. (Tocharian is attested for what's now western China, Irish from
Ireland.) Therefore we can say with a high degree of confidence that
the PIE word for "salt" was *sal. That is to say, when the
Indo-European languages were still one single ur-tongue (at least 5000
years ago), they said *sal for "salt". Where *sal came from, we cannot
say at all. That information is unrecoverable.
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I write:

You are very patient and very kind to take the time to go into such
detail with me. Because I am such a novice at linguistics in general
and anything Indo-European in particular, I am afraid that my questions
might be annoying. I appreciate your responses.
Let me say first that I agree from what you presented that the evidence
strongly suggests that the original word for Salt was a word present in
the PIE and derived by the various branches. I do not argue with your
conclusion for this particular example.

But I think my original point still had validity, and I want to use
PARTS of the sample above as a HYPOTHETICAL case. I would use real
examples if I was familiar with Indo-European Linguistics ¡V which I am
not ¡V and therefore have to resort to hypothetical cases to illustrate
what I am trying to say.

Piotr summarized beautifully what IS possible to know with near
certainty when he said in posting 574:
IN THEORY THEY SHOULD BE DETECTABLE IF THEY LOOK PHONOLOGICALLY ODD AND
DO NOT FIT THE NORMAL DERIVATIONAL PATTERNS. (This statement fits both
the case of loan words, and the case of ¡Va- being in the wrong place
for PIE in salt, (and hence, the possibility that it may be a loan word
at the PIE stage) and for other conditions where the words do not
follow a normal evolution).

The thing I was initially wondering about was: are there additional
tests to detect those words that may have been from an outside source
AND THAT DO NOT CREATE THOSE DEVIATIONS. As an illustration,
HYPOTHETICALLY assume that the original word from an outside source was
salt. And then HYPOTHETICALLY if the earliest languages we had to look
at were Gothic and Old Norse, the loan word would not be visible. Any
later derivative branches would show the expected derivations from
Gothic and Old Norse, and so not be suspected either. In this
situation, THE LOAN WORD DID NOT NECESSITATE A SOUND CONVERSION WHEN
INTRODUCED ¡V and so was not visible.

Another situation: IF THE LOAN WORD IS CONVERTED IN THE EXPECTED
FASHION WHEN IT IS FIRST INTRODUCED. Here I can only rely on personal
experience. I had a Professor who was of recent German origin. In
conversation he automatically inverted the V and W and C and K even if
the word was one he never heard before, in both speaking and writing.
And I have noticed in other recent migrants that they often feed back
words partially converted to fit their language of origin. It is even
noticeable in conversations between speakers of different regional
dialects, here. So the situation is if a loan word is converted when it
is introduced (because a letter is missing in the new language, or
because the new language user is not comfortable with the sound or
because of language conventions-your conversions-) then the loan word
is again not visible as a loan word. (I would think that this is most
likely when a loan word is used verbally - with the verbal
"corrections/alterations" for a period of time before it is written
down - which is also probably the most commonly occurring situation)

A third, closely related situation is the one Piotr provided, WHEN A
LOAN WORD IS INTRODUCED EARLY IN THE LANGUAGE (Karl etc.)

In all three situations, the outside words came into the language and
did not create any deviations, and so were not visible. (Because I
don¡¦t know the technical Jargon, I assume that this is what Piotr
means when he says there is no Morphological Structure change). But a
later linguist could look at the source language and the target
language and decide that there was a derivative relationship, (similar
words, similar meanings with the word structure expected for each
language) when one-in-fact did not exist.

I know my arguments are beginning to sound like they are begging the
point. From your examples I am beginning to get a deeper understanding
of the process that Linguists go through. Undoubtedly, one gains
confidence with language inter-relationships as more and more of the
expected connections are made. Even in the specific real world (not
hypothetical) case of the single word salt, I am comfortable with your
conclusion that there was a PIE root word. Not because it seems
impossible that one of the above exceptions didn.t happen, but by the
weight of so many instances of expected letter changes it seems
probable that it is true. Here, it is not proved conclusively, but is
persuasive by virtue of accumulated instances, hence very highly
probable. And in todays world of science, highly probable is about as
good as it gets.

You in your later posting, and Piotr earlier, answered my question
about an additional filter/test ¡V the reliance upon CORE words as
indicative of showing relationships and not intially relying upon words
related to commerce, technology or culture as a way of protecting
against the possiblities I raised. I find these core words convincing
not because they are used often, but because the involve the very basic
elements of living and daily life and were likely to have been created
within each culture at a very primative stage.
They would be the words children are likely to learn first, and could
likely underpin much of the later development of words within a culture
and hence be well ingrained in both the individual and their shared
culture. And because they were developed at an early stage, would be
least likely to be influenced by adjacent cultures, that would be
encountered during an expansive stage. This I find convincing.

Thanks again for your patience and detailed postings making this all
clear.

Best wishes
Brent