# Are we being mocked by PIE linguists/phonologists ?



## linguaquraan-alm

Are we being mocked by PIE linguists/phonologists ?

Once i was looking for the Etymological base of the Eng. Adjective ''fierce ''I found (almost) the same about its PIE root , in all etymological dictionaries i got, for example : 
Webster's New World Dictionary -New College Edition 1993 
[ME.ferse<OFr. Fers,fier<L.ferus,wild,savage<IE base*ghwer-,wild animal,whence Gr. ther,animal] 

I wondered how long distance between „fierce'' and hypothetical base *ghwer ( i mean phonetically ).....there was a discussion about the way of how the PIE linguists reach this result and the plausibility of such technique , I said finally :OK, let me believe this , but would you tell me how such a word (i mean *ghwer- )can be pronounced by our modern time. The discussant said :you need practice ,practice Labio-velars are not particularly difficult when practicing 
-Ok but how ??
- I think you have to find a speaker of a language that have those things -- Berber might be the easiest; or a native speaker of the Pacific Northwest .
He gave me a website contains some recordings of _Voices of the First People_ ,even though i did'nt able to find a word which can be compared with ''*ghwer-“ within .
Later , i emailed 2 websites who are dealing with PIE roots ,explain the matter and moreover added:
'''Can one simplify the matter like this “* gh=x (as it is in modern IE), then *ghw” approximated to xʷ t hen we have “ghwer-” >>>> xʷ +e+r , or (xw)+e+r !!!!>>>>>> like in a Spanish name Khwan for example Khwan Carloss !!!! ''' 
One answer was „really not quite sure „ the other was „I am not experiencing too serious problems pronouncing that I think „“


Conclusion : It could be that i was asking not so-qualified people on these websites ,but nevertheless i think there are a lot of implausibility in these roots !!! Remember I am speaking about simplest root not about roots like „h2éǵroi or méh2tr …...etc .


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## Ben Jamin

linguaquraan-alm said:


> Are we being mocked by PIE linguists/phonologists ?
> 
> Once i was looking for the Etymological base of the Eng. Adjective ''fierce ''I found (almost) the same about its PIE root , in all etymological dictionaries i got, for example :
> Webster's New World Dictionary -New College Edition 1993
> [ME.ferse<OFr. Fers,fier<L.ferus,wild,savage<IE base*ghwer-,wild animal,whence Gr. ther,animal]
> 
> I wondered how long distance between „fierce'' and hypothetical base *ghwer ( i mean phonetically ).....there was a discussion about the way of how the PIE linguists reach this result and the plausibility of such technique , I said finally :OK, let me believe this , but would you tell me how such a word (i mean *ghwer- )can be pronounced by our modern time. The discussant said :you need practice ,practice Labio-velars are not particularly difficult when practicing
> -Ok but how ??
> - I think you have to find a speaker of a language that have those things -- Berber might be the easiest; or a native speaker of the Pacific Northwest .
> He gave me a website contains some recordings of _Voices of the First People_ ,even though i did'nt able to find a word which can be compared with ''*ghwer-“ within .
> Later , i emailed 2 websites who are dealing with PIE roots ,explain the matter and moreover added:
> '''Can one simplify the matter like this “* gh=x (as it is in modern IE), then *ghw” approximated to xʷ t hen we have “ghwer-” >>>> xʷ +e+r , or (xw)+e+r !!!!>>>>>> like in a Spanish name Khwan for example Khwan Carloss !!!! '''
> One answer was „really not quite sure „ the other was „I am not experiencing too serious problems pronouncing that I think „“
> 
> 
> Conclusion : It could be that i was asking not so-qualified people on these websites ,but nevertheless i think there are a lot of implausibility in these roots !!! Remember I am speaking about simplest root not about roots like „h2éǵroi or méh2tr …...etc .



I think you are:
1. Confusing the difficult graphical representation of the sounds with imagined difficulty of pronouncing them.
2. The linguist you were speaking with was not a good phonetician.
Besides, being a native Arabic speaker you can certainly prononunce many different laryngean sounds, while your interlocutor couldn't.
I'm not good in phonetics, but I believe that gh here corresponds either to an aspirated g (then the h should be written as a superscript) or represents a voiced velar fricative like in Spanish "digno" /diɣno/, not a voiceless velar fricative /x/.


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## entangledbank

We are, if anything, being mocked by Indians, Lithuanians, and Irish, and that's just the Indo-Europeans. I also find some of those reconstructed PIE words unpronounceable, but last night and this morning I was studying Urdu, which means I have to say the breathy aspirated stop of [ɡʱər] "house". Making that labialized should be comparatively easy. In the last couple of days I have also been studying Lithuanian, which means I've got to get the palatalized stops in words like [ɡʲi:vˇɛ:nam] _gyvename_ "we live", and give the accented syllable a rising tone without making it sound like I'm yodelling. Irish has the same problem of palatalized stops, and I've given up even pretending I'm ever going to learn any Irish.

As an English speaker, I find these quite difficult – Arabic is easier for me. I don't believe that anyone actually _speaks_ Cantonese or Thai. I mean, you couldn't possibly _communicate_ with such delicate variations of tone, surely? And shifting from phonetics to grammar, I'm pretty certain that the Basques invented their auxiliary system to make fun of linguists, and don't ever use any of it at home.

Yet, somehow, people do use Urdu and Cantonese and Basque, not to mention Nuxalk and Tashelhiyt Berber and Abkhaz . . . faced with these, I'm prepared to take reconstructed PIE as pretty realistic.

Note also that /f/ didn't actually come from /ɡʰʷ/, it came from a chain of much more subtle changes, with intermediates like (if I remember rightly) /dʰ/ then dental fricatives voiced and voiceless. Each sound change is very plausible.


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## berndf

First of all, nobody actually knows how /gʷʰ/ was actually pronounced. It is just a notational convention following _one possible _reconstruction. What really matters is that PIE plosives must have had two secondary modifiers that produced labialization /ʷ/ and aspiration /ʰ/ in daughter languages.

Each of these modifiers are quite plausible. Aspiration /ʰ/ is a common phenomenon. You find it e.g. in Germanic languages (like English or German) in /p/, /t/ and /k/. Labialization you also find in English, in dialects that still distinguish between _were _and _where_, like Scottish English or same American dialects. If you listen to Italian _*qu*ello _it is quite easy to see where the sound of _*wh*ere_ comes from before /k/ changed to /h/ in Germanic. In European language you find both only in unvoiced stops but Indic languages also have aspirated voiced stops such as /gʰ/ in Hindi घर /gʰər/ = _home_.

In brief, pronouncing /gʷʰ/ as transcribed is not really that difficult and implausible but if this was really accurately the way it was pronounced isn't known nor does it really matter. This is quite common in reconstructed languages that we have a good idea what phonemes a language must have distinguished without knowing its precise articulation.

See here for an alternative reconstruction of the PIE system of stops discussed in the literature.


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## ahvalj

Ironically, there was no *_ghwer_-, it was *_g'hwer_-, with a palatalized aspirated _g _followed by a separate sound_ w. _This word is still recognizable in the modern Lithuanian _žvėris_ and Russian _зверь/zver'_, where _g'h_ has regularly produced _ž_ and _z_, a change that can be seen in hundreds of other words where the IE _g'h_ is reconstructed.


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## fdb

Are we being mocked? Perhaps we are.

The pioneers of IE studies in the 19th century thought they knew exactly how PIE was pronounced, in all its niceties. The “glottalists” of the present seem to be of the same persuasion. But I think it is more prudent to regard the letters used to spell the reconstructed forms as essentially “algebraic” symbols. For example “bh” is an abbreviation for “the putative IE phoneme continued by bh in Sanskrit, ph in Greek, f in Latin, b in Germanic etc.” Similarly with h1, h2, hx  and the like. As I said, it looks more like algebra than like a real language.


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## ahvalj

These are not just random letters and signs: IE had restrictions on the cooccurrence of certain kinds of sounds in the same root, and assimilations and sandhi operated as well, all of which provides tools to correlate these reconstructed forms with phonetic realities known from living languages. E. g., the driving forces for the development of the glottal theory were analogies between IE and languages that possess glottal sounds.


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## Dib

To the thread-starter:
You may be interested in this: http://www.archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/1302-proto-indo-european-schleichers-fable

===

I, personally, do not believe that it is possible to accurately reconstruct the phonetics (or even, phonology) of any proto-language at any specific time-depth. There is no reason to believe that the "proto-phonemes" (if I may say so) have all been reconstructed to the same time-depth. Then there is, of course, the inherent uncertainty in the phonetic characteristics of each "proto-phoneme", as fdb pointed out. But educated guesses can be made, and have been made - and, hence I feel free to share the link to such recordings - as one set of educated guesses.

Also agreeing with berndf, this inherent weakness of reconstruction, however, does not diminish its usefulness in other respects - above all, to prove the language families. It does not matter, if we find conclusive proofs tomorrow that PIE *gʷʰ was actually pronounced like an English /t/ (just a random example, I am not claiming this is likely), it won't weaken the evidence of IE family the slightest bit; though it will probably shake up some other fields of linguistic research (phonetics for example).


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> These are not just random letters and signs: IE had restrictions on the cooccurrence of certain kinds of sounds in the same root, and assimilations and sandhi operated as well, all of which provides tools to correlate these reconstructed forms with phonetic realities known from living languages. E. g., the driving forces for the development of the glottal theory were analogies between IE and languages that possess glottal sounds.


Not totally random but to some extent. These restrictions are eventually what fdb said, an algebraic calculus.

In addition, we don't really know if PIE really had this complex system of 14 or 15 stop phonemes. It is quite possible that this was just a system of allophones of a smaller phonemic inventory. When the phonological system of a language breaks up it is not unusual that the different phones rearrange to a different set of phonemes giving the impression from the point of view of the daughter languages as if these phones all were different phonemes. We can reconstruct certain properties of the PIE phonological system but I don't think we can ever know with some degree of certainty how the language actually "sounded"; unless of course someone invents a time machine.


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## ahvalj

I'd like to remind that IE is often localized between Dnieper (east of Trypillian culture) and Volga, immediately north of Caucasian languages, whose consonant inventory comprises everything postulated for IE (except aspirated voiced stops) plus much more, including long tongue-twisting consonant clusters, 1 or 2 vowel phonemes per language (Abkhasian) etc. It is thus equally possible that the IE consonant inventory was richer than we can reconstruct.


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> everything postulated for IE



hmmm.... "everything postulated" by scholars whose overt purpose is to construct a "Nostradic" common ancestor for IE and Kartevelian. I would beware of circular arguments.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> hmmm.... "everything postulated" by scholars whose overt purpose is to construct a "Nostradic" common ancestor for IE and Kartevelian. I would beware of circular arguments.


I mean traditional IE reconstructions with three laryngeals, three sets of velars, basic _e/o_ vowel etc. The nostratic theory is being developed by another set of enthusiasts. By the way, to my knowledge, the nostraticists didn't alter the accepted IE reconstruction.


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## ahvalj

One more thing to consider. There are more and less disputable moments in the reconstruction. For example, in the abovementioned word *_g'hwer_- there are no doubts about _w, e_ and _r, _as there are no doubts that the first consonant was or at least became at some moment palatalized — the discussion goes around the quality of the sound behind the letters _gh_: was this indeed a voiced sound or something else? As far as I know, no mainstream hypothesis denies that it was a velar, it was weak (i. e. not a German _k_ but rather a German _g_, voiced or voiceless) and that it was aspirated (judging from Bartholomae's law and the development into voiced or voiceless aspirated stops or voiced or voiceless fricatives in many branches). So, basically, we come to two basic variants: either _g'h_ or a weak _k'h_, the latter being more probable because there are virtually no attested languages with voiced aspirates but no voiceless ones (and this is what the traditional _k—g—gh _implies) — on the other hand, the diverging post-IE development may suggest a shift from a less typical [and possibly short and intermediate] IE stage with _gh_ to more typologically frequent stages found in various IE branches.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> One more thing to consider. There are more and less disputable moments in the reconstruction. For example, in the abovementioned word *_g'hwer_- there are no doubts about _w, e_ and _r, _as there are no doubts that the first consonant was or at least became at some moment palatalized



Is it necessary to assume this (i.e., the palatal quality of *_gh_)?

I recall once hearing a theory that "satemization" was caused by ablaut-based analogy: i.e., there were some IE dialects in which *_k_ became *_č_ and *_g(h)_ became *_ž(h)_  before front vowels, and this palatalization was then generalized (though not perfectly consistently) to other ablaut grades of the same roots. If *_ko_ became *_čo _by analogical extension, then there is no need to assume that *_k_ and *_g_ ever became palatal, except in the usual palatalizing environments (i.e., before front vowels and palatal glides).

I've always been curious about the fact that IE (as traditionally reconstructed) is full of palatal "k"s and "g"s in virtually all environments, not just before front vowels/glides or at morpheme boundaries (where a conditioning vowel or glide might have been lost). Are there any attested languages in which this is the case?


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## ahvalj

This has been debated to death since the middle of the 19th century with the only one result: there is no way to reconstruct just two sets of velars for the IE, we always come to three sets, whether we like this or not. How to explain, e. g., *_ok'toH_ "eight" and *_nokwts_ "night": in both cases the palatovelar and the labiovelar stand before a consonant (and show no vowel in any attested language) as well as are followed by a non-palatal and non-labial element?

As a centum language speaker, you find palatovelars less natural and would like to eliminate this set, but other people may find labiovelars more odd (actually, the only labiovelar sound in modern European IE languages is the English _wh_, whereas palatovelars are present in many, even as positional variants like e. g. in French _que_, _qui_). 

Since we had mentioned the nostratic theory, it provides a nice explanation of the IE situation. Nostratic vocalism is reconstructed following the Uralic one, and it is estimated that, with the development of the strong vowel reduction and the ablaut in IE, the vowels lost much of their distinctive features (which is obvious for IE even if we don't accept the nostratic origin), but the velars inherited the quality they had before the original vowels, i. e. _ka_>_ke_, _kä/ke/ki/kü_>_k'e_ and _ko/ku_>_kwe_ (plus the vowel drops made some of these sounds appear before consonants). E. g., the word "who" is reconstructed as **_ku_ (cp. Finnish _ku-ka_), which gave **_kwe_ and, in later IE the reconstructed *_kwos_ and *_kwis_. Again, this explanation is promising even without the nostratic context: it is obvious that IE vowels survived a process of deep restructuring and elimination caused by a strong stress (cp. the declension types), so the explanation of three sets of labials as results of original distinctions of subsequent vowels is the most typologically plausible.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> This has been debated to death since the middle of the 19th century with the only one result: there is no way to reconstruct just two sets of velars for the IE, we always come to three sets, whether we like this or not. How to explain, e. g., *_ok'toH_ "eight" and *_nokwts_ "night": in both cases the palatovelar and the labiovelar stand before a consonant



Of course I don't know how to explain this, but here are some facts that could be relevant:

- Reconstructed *_okto_: has a sequence of two consonants (*kt), whereas *_nok(w)ts_ has a sequence of three (at least in the nominative singular).

- Depending on how the -_t_- of *_okto_: was pronounced, it might have had a fronting effect on the *_k_. Compare, maybe, the change of Latin _ct_ > Spanish [tʃ].

- There are several examples within the satem languages where a sequence of *k + [consonant] seems to be treated inconsistently: e.g. Lithuanian _klausýti_ vs. Slovene _slišati_ "hear". *_okto_: may simply have been a word where the outcomes were less diverse.



> As a centum language speaker, you find palatovelars less natural and would like to eliminate this set,



It's not that I want to eliminate them for no reason, it's just that I have not (yet) seen a language in which unconditioned [kj] and [gj] exist alongside "plain" [k] and [g] in equal or greater abundance.

Russian has palatalized _k_, but how many words or morphemes does it have beginning with [kja], [kjo], [kju], [kjr], and so on?


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## ahvalj

I won't be able to cite the volumes written on this topic for the last 150 years, with examples and counterexamples. Your argumentation suggests analyzing everything on a per-word basis: in one word for some reasons the velar became palatalized, in another one (in the same conditions) it didn't, in the third we find a labialized variant etc. This can't become the basis of a working approach. In any case, even if you are right, there is no guarantee that this situation is entirely post-IE and didn't start already within IE, in which case you'll come to the same three sets of velars for late IE.

Russian has a nice example of the inconsistent satemization: _приклонить/priklonit'_ vs. _прислонить/prislonit'_. By the way, in the word *_g'hans_- "goose", which is _žąsis/zoss_ in Baltic but _gǫsь_ in Slavic, what are the phonetic reasons for the palatalization of _gh_? There is no doubt that the palatalization and labialization may have been limited in certain conditions in the course of the development of separate branches or already in IE, but this only slightly decreases the amount of these non-plain velars, but doesn't eliminate them. 

By the way, the widespread suffix *-_ko_- almost always has a plain _k_, the examples like Latin _antīquus_ (<_kʷ_) or Sanskrit _yuvaśaḫ_ (<_k'_) being almost non-existent. Why is it so? Where is the analogy? Isn't it more probable that this suffix contained the plain _k_ already in the IE?

Lithuanian has countless examples of stable _kia_, _kio_, _kiu_ and _gia_, _gio_, _giu_ opposed to their non-palatalized varieties (_sakau_ "I say" vs. _sakiau_ "I said").

Polish and Russian show how an opposition of the IE type can arise: Late Common Slavic _sŭnŭ_ "sleep" and _p'ĭsŭ_ "dog" developed in Polish into *_sǝn_ and *_p'ǝs_ and then to the attested _sen_ and _pies_, with the new opposition of a hard/soft consonant before the same _e;_ Russian went another way, but has come to a similar situation: _сон/son_ vs. _пёс/p'os_.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> Russian has a nice example of the inconsistent satemization: _приклонить/priklonit'_ vs. _прислонить/prislonit'_. By the way, in the word *_g'hans_- "goose", which is _žąsis/zoss_ in Baltic but _gǫsь_ in Slavic, what are the phonetic reasons for the palatalization of _gh_?



Haven't some people suggested a connection bewteen *_ghans_ and the root *_ghe_:- "gape, yawn", which would have had a palatalization-triggering front vowel?



> By the way, the widespread suffix *-_ko_- almost always has a plain _k_, the examples like Latin _antīquus_ (<_kʷ_) or Sanskrit _yuvaśaḫ_ (<_k'_) being almost non-existent. Why is it so? Where is the analogy? Isn't it more probable that this suffix contained the plain _k_ already in the IE?



If ablaut-based analogy is the reason for the split into palatalized *_š_ and velarized *_k_ in the satem languages, then the suffix *-_ko-_ would probably have been less susceptible to this analogy, inasmuch as it didn't have a front-vowel variant *-ke-.



> Lithuanian has countless examples of stable _kia_, _kio_, _kiu_ and _gia_, _gio_, _giu_ opposed to their non-palatalized varieties (_sakau_ "I say" vs. _sakiau_ "I said").



In _sakiau,_ the -_iau_ seems to be part of a different morpheme. How many of the examples of _kia_/_kio_/_kiu_/etc. in Lithuanian appear at morpheme boundaries?



> Polish and Russian provide a good example how an opposition of the IE type can arise: Late Common Slavic _sŭnŭ_ "sleep" and _p'ĭsŭ_ "dog" developed in Polish into *_sǝn_ and *_p'ǝs_ and then to the attested _sen_ and _pies_, with the new opposition of a hard/soft consonant before the same _e;_ Russian went another way, but has come to a similar situation: _сон/son_ vs. _пёс/p'os_.



If PIE had a stable opposition between palatal *k'/g'/gH' and non-palatal *k/g/gH, why didn't such a contrast extend to other consonant series, as it does in Slavic? E.g., why do we have no clear evidence (that I know of) for palatal *_s'_ or *_t'_ in IE?


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> Haven't some people suggested a connection bewteen *_ghans_ and the root *_ghe_:- "gape, yawn", which would have had a palatalization-triggering front vowel?


This etymology can't be proved. *_G'hans_- is the form to which all the attested variants come, and any further etymologizing is pure fantasy. In any case, why *_a, _what a strange element _-*ns-_?



Gavril said:


> If ablaut-based analogy is the reason for the split into palatalized *_š_ and velarized *_k_ in the satem languages, then the suffix *-_ko-_ would probably have been less susceptible to this analogy, inasmuch as it didn't have a front-vowel variant *-ke-.


It had -*_ke_ in the Vocative and sometimes also -*_keı̯_ in the Locative, -*_keH₁_ in the Instrumental and -*_keed_ in the Ablative (Latin _rūsticē_), not to mention the derived adjectives and nouns on -*_kı̯os_ (Latin _patricius_, Lithuanian _jaunikis_).



Gavril said:


> In _sakiau,_ the -_iau_ seems to be part of a different morpheme. How many of the examples of _kia_/_kio_/_kiu_/etc. in Lithuanian appear at morpheme boundaries?


See here for the word-initial position: _Lyberis A · 2005 · Lietuvių-rusų kalbų žodynas _(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJM3F1LTF2aERxc3M/view?usp=sharing) 



Gavril said:


> If PIE had a stable opposition between palatal *k'/g'/gH' and non-palatal *k/g/gH, why didn't such a contrast extend to other consonant series, as it does in Slavic? E.g., why do we have no clear evidence (that I know of) for palatal *_s'_ or *_t'_ in IE?


This I don't know but is it different from your explanations? You are suggesting yourself that the palatalization developed in the satem languages before the front vowels in the velars and at the same time it didn't develop for the non-velars. This question has no answer. It just happened: before late IE (as most of the humankind believes) or after it (as you're suggesting).


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## ahvalj

Back to the _satem/centum_ problem. Isn't your argumentation concerning the palatovelars equally valid for the labiovelars? They occur in exactly the same positions, including before consonants, moreover in living IE languages the opposition of _kʷ/k_ is not attested at all (may be somewhere in Iranic?), in IE kʷ and ku̯ were clearly distinct, and IE even had _k'u̯_ (*_ek'u̯os_>_aśvaḫ_ in Sanskrit, *_ek'u̯eH₂_>_ašva_ in Lithuanian), _g'u̯_ and _g'hu̯_ (*_g'hu̯er_- above in this topic) as it had _kʷı̯, gʷı̯ _and _gʷhı̯. _I am afraid we necessarily come to a pre-late IE stage as the source of all these phenomena. Plus, there are languages — Albanian and some among the Anatolian — that seem to give different reflexes of all the three rows of velars.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> This etymology can't be proved. *_G'hans_- is the form to which all the attested variants come, and any further etymologizing is pure fantasy. In any case, why *_a, _what a strange element _-*ns-_?



I'm not sure about the *-_ns_. The *_a_-vocalism may have to do with the element (a laryngeal?) that causes the lengthening in *_gHe:_-, if the two stems are related.



> It had -*_ke_ in the Vocative and sometimes also -*_keı̯_ in the Locative, -*_keH₁_ in the Instrumental and -*_keed_ in the Ablative (Latin _rūsticē_), not to mention the derived adjectives and nouns on -*_kı̯os_ (Latin _patricius_, Lithuanian _jaunikis_).



Well, maybe the front vowel variants were not common enough to influence the ultimate development of -_ko-_ (except in a few cases like the "young"-word, which is reconstructed with "palatal" *k).



> This I don't know but is it different from your explanations? You are suggesting yourself that the palatalization developed in the satem languages before the front vowels in the velars and at the same time it didn't develop for the non-velars.



I think velar consonants have a greater tendency (on average) to be affected by front vowels than other consonants: this is shown by the cross-linguistic frequency of changes such as [ki]/[ke] > [tʃi]/[tʃe], as compared to changes such as [ti]/[te] > [tʃi]/[tʃe].

(Specific changes such as [ti] > [tʃi] may be more common than [ki] > [tʃi], but I am talking about palatalization before all front vowels, not just _.)__

So, if *ki-/*ke- were fronted to *či/*če early in the history of the Satem languages, it doesn't seem necessary to assume that a palatal/non-palatal contrast must have simultaneously developed for all other consonants.




ahvalj said:



			Back to the satem/centum problem. Isn't your argumentation concerning the palatovelars equally valid for the labiovelars? They occur in exactly the same positions, including before consonants, moreover in living IE languages the opposition of kʷ/k is not attested at all (may be somewhere in Iranic?),
		
Click to expand...


I'm not sure I understand. English contrasts kw and k: kit vs. quit, kill vs. quill, etc.

Even if you are just talking about inherited IE words, English at least has the pair of quern vs. kernel._


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> I think velar consonants have a greater tendency (on average) to be affected by front vowels than other consonants: this is shown by the cross-linguistic frequency of changes such as [ki]/[ke] > [tʃi]/[tʃe], as compared to changes such as [ti]/[te] > [tʃi]/[tʃe].
> 
> (Specific changes such as [ti] > [tʃi] may be more common than [ki] > [tʃi], but I am talking about palatalization before all front vowels, not just _.)__
> 
> So, if *ki-/*ke- were fronted to *či/*če early in the history of the Satem languages, it doesn't seem necessary to assume that a palatal/non-palatal contrast must have simultaneously developed for all other consonants._


_
Could you please explain then why every satem language preserved velars before e and i, including word-initially? If during satemization k/g/gh were palatalized and assibilated before front vowels, what was the source of Lithuanian k and g before front vowels, Latvian c and dz, Slavic č and ž, Iranic c and j, Indic c, j and h in words that didn't contain a labiovelar (for examples see e. g. Pokorny's dictionary)? I won't accept as an explanation the leveling after the o-grade: history tells that in the beginning of the roots such levelings never occur. Also, I don't understand then why e. g. the Slavic Voc. Sg. in ko-words like *attike "o, daddy!" successfully escaped satemization but palatalized later within Slavic into *atiče>otьče and has persisted with this č (the only one in the entire paradigm!) for at least two millennia up to now with no leveling that should have been so powerful during satemization according to your concept?



Gavril said:



			I'm not sure I understand. English contrasts kw and k: kit vs. quit, kill vs. quill, etc.

Even if you are just talking about inherited IE words, English at least has the pair of quern vs. kernel.
		
Click to expand...

English doesn't have labiovelars (except wh, but this is not a stop): your examples contain two adjacent phonemes: k and u̯ (likewise: tweet, sweet, dwindle). An analogy with palatalized sounds: there is a difference between C' and C(') + ı̯ (e. g., Russian семя/s'em'a vs. семья/s'em'ja) and the English ku̯ is analogous to the second case. Gothic had nice examples of the true labiovelars occurring word-finally in the Perfect Sg. 1 and 3 and Imperative Sg. 2 of some verbs, e. g. saƕ, neƕ, sagq: this proves that ƕ and q were each a single sound (compare the same behavior of the palatalized consonants, whereas in C + ı̯ the sonorant either vocalizes to i or gets/preserves a vowel before: Russian дыня/dyn'a — дынь/dyn' [palatalized consonant preserved word-finally] vs. печенье/p'eč'en'je — печений/p'eč'en'ij [the sonorant j follows a supporting vowel that existed in the past throughout the paradigm but has disappeared in other forms]).

Update. I know about Swedish cases like färg pronounced as färj and thus with j occurring word-finally after r, but this is a recent development from a stop, not an ancient sonorant with a typical behavior._


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## berndf

Well, not quite the recent. Palatalization of /g/ is a common Germanic phenomenon.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Well, not quite the recent. Palatalization of /g/ is a common Germanic phenomenon.


Yet in English it [becoming velarized and labialized] develops a supporting vowel _o_: _folgian>folwen>follow_, _borgian>borwen>borrow_.

I just wanted to illustrate that Germanic had at some point true monophonemic labiovelars with a standard behavior for single consonants.


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## berndf

At times, but not e.g. in _enough_, _yellow_ or _day_.

Anyway, what are these examples of subsequent developments supposed to demonstrate?


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> At times, but not e.g. in _enough_, _yellow_ or _day_.
> 
> Anyway, what are these examples of subsequent developments supposed to demonstrate?
> 
> What are these


That a) English _qu_ and _gu_ aren't monophonemic and thus aren't labiovelars;
b) that Germanic had monophonemic labiovelars in the past and that their monophonemic character is proved by the fact that in Gothic they can occur word-finally (hence the explanation of the different behavior in the end of the word of single phonemes vs. consonant + _j/w_);
c) that Gavril's suggestions about the post-IE development of palatovelars within the satem languages can be equally applied to the situation with labiovelars within the centum branches (and in reality none works since there are too many problems, so we come to the proved view that three sets of velars existed in late IE).


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## berndf

I am just not seeing quite yet what borrow and follow have to do with that.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> I am just not seeing quite yet what borrow and follow have to do with that.


A _j_ or _w_ after a consonant, when occurring at the end of a word, normally either vocalize or develop a supporting vowel. In Swedish we see that _-rj _and_ -lj _are tolerable, which is very rare across languages to my knowledge, and the English examples illustrate that _rw_ and _lw_ even in a related language behave in a standard way developing a supporting _o_. I needed this sidenote to decline the assumption that Gothic examples exhibit biphonemic -_hw_ and -_kw_ that in principle could have been tolerable like in Swedish, but since the Swedish situation is a clear exception, it is safer to regard those Gothic sounds as monophonemic and thus as illustrating the monophonemic nature of the ancient Germanic labiovelars. OK, now back to the jungles of IE reconstructions.


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## berndf

Why is that rare? German _Burg_ is also palatal. The modern pronunciation as a plosive is mid-late 20th century spelling pronunciation except in Upper German.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Why is that rare? German _Burg_ is also palatal. The modern pronunciation as a plosive is mid-late 20th century spelling pronunciation except in Upper German.


But the Swedish _färg_ ends in a plain _j_, the same as in _you/Jahr_: it is not a palatalized _gh_, at least in the modern language. Is _Burg_ really pronounced as _burj_ anywhere in German?


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## berndf

Of course devoiced as if spelled _Burch_ as usual in final obstruents. _Borgen _is pronounced like _borjen_ in Low and Middle German. The development into plosives in Standard German is, as I said, 20th century spelling pronunciation (in Upper German it is native). Classical stage pronunciation still requires the original fricative pronunciation.

Old English _burg_ was certainly palatalized in at least some dialects as well as evidenced by the reflex _bury_.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> Could you please explain then why every satem language preserved velars before _e_ and _i, _including word-initially? If during satemization _k/g/gh_ were palatalized and assibilated before front vowels, what was the source of Lithuanian _k_ and _g_ before front vowels, Latvian _c_ and _dz_, Slavic _č_ and _ž_, Iranic _c_ and _j_, Indic _c_, _j_ and _h_ in words that didn't contain a labiovelar (for examples see e. g. Pokorny's dictionary)? I won't accept as an explanation the leveling after the _o_-grade: history tells that in the beginning of the roots such levelings never occur. Also, I don't understand then why e. g. the Slavic Voc. Sg. in _ko_-words like *_attike_ "o, daddy!" successfully escaped satemization but palatalized later within Slavic into *_atiče_>_otьče_ and has persisted with this _č_ (the only one in the entire paradigm!) for at least two millennia up to now with no leveling that should have been so powerful during satemization according to your concept?



I don't have evidence as yet that such a process (i.e. leveling based on the o-grade) can never occur, so it remains a possible explanation for me of why *k appears before front vowels in the Satem languages.

As far as _otьče, _there seems to have been plenty of selective analogical restoration/preservation of _k_ in the individual Slavic languages: Slovene _otok_ "island", plural _otoki_ versus _otrok_ "child", plural _otroci_. Some Slavic languages were codified into writing at an earlier date than others, and this probably led to them retaining more palatalized forms (on average) than languages in which analogy had had more time to operate at the spoken level.



> English doesn't have labiovelars (except _wh_, but this is not a stop): your examples contain two adjacent phonemes: _k_ and _u̯ _(likewise: _tweet, sweet, dwindle_).



By what criteria does English [kw] fail to be a labiovelar? We may not have [kw] in word-final position, but I'm pretty sure that neither did PIE according to the standard reconstruction.


I don't doubt that it is possible to theoretically distinguish [kW] from [kw] using subtle phonetic criteria, but I don't think it is necessary to posit an absolute distinction between *kW and *kw in Indo-European. Apparent instances of *kw (what you call a sequence of two phonemes) may simply be the syllable *ku- preceding a vowel: e.g. the word for “dog” may have been pronounced *ku(w)o:n in the nominative singular, and the word for “horse” may have been pronounced *eku(w)os.


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## Gavril

One other thing about _otьče_: the ablaut-based explanation of satemization supposes that ablaut was a very active process when satemization occurred, perhaps more active than in any attested branch of IE. By the time Slavic split off, the e/o-alternation would not have been such a dominant a feature of the grammar, so it would not have been available (or would have been much less available) as a mechanism for restoring _č _to _k_.

Edit: It is possible to explain Satemization through ablaut without giving up the idea of three velar series. For example, you could say that the starting point was *k/*q/*kW, and that *_k_ was then palatalized to *č before front vowels, and that this palatalization was then generalized to other ablaut grades (and ultimately to environments such as *_okto:_ where there may never have been a following vowel at all). The fronting of *kW to *k before front vowels could have helped to move this process along.


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## ahvalj

You know, science can be called science as long as it follows predictable and transparent procedures. The traditional reconstruction of three sets of IE velars reflects the fact that we are unable to explain convincingly the reasons for the distribution of plain velars, palatalized velars and labialized velars within the daughter languages and don't pretend to know more than the material allows to extract. If you eventually manage to present a more parsimonious explanation or at least prove that the data available strongly suggests against in-IE or even pre-IE origin of three (or two) sets of velars, please present it. So far your suggestions look, as I had written yesterday, as per-word guesswork.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> By what criteria does English [kw] fail to be a labiovelar? We may not have [kw] in word-final position, but I'm pretty sure that neither did PIE according to the standard reconstruction.
> 
> 
> I don't doubt that it is possible to theoretically distinguish [kW] from [kw] using subtle phonetic criteria, but I don't think it is necessary to posit an absolute distinction between *kW and *kw in Indo-European. Apparent instances of *kw (what you call a sequence of two phonemes) may simply be the syllable *ku- preceding a vowel: e.g. the word for “dog” may have been pronounced *ku(w)o:n in the nominative singular, and the word for “horse” may have been pronounced *eku(w)os.


What is the difference between _quit, sweet, tweet_ etc.? And between them and _cute, suit, tune_? Why do you think that _qu_ is a phoneme while other instances of C + _w_ or C+ _j_ aren't? A phoneme necessarily represents one sound and behaves as such. For example *_kʸu̯ōn_ (by the way, what is the source of _k__ʸ_ here? the _e_-grade is not attested for this word, also in *_H₁oH₁kʸu_ "fast" where is the palatalizing agent?) becomes *_kʸunos_ in the Gen. Sg. vs. *_gʷenH₂_ "woman" that becomes *_gʷneH₂s; _likewise *_nokʷts_ has three adjacent consonants. The word for horse is reconstructed as *_H₁ekʸu̯os_, with a kind of _k_ that has produced _aśvaḫ_ in Sanskrit and _ašva_ (feminine) in Lithuanian, so it wasn't a labiovelar phoneme even for the most enthusiastic authors.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> You know, science can be called science as long as it follows predictable and transparent procedures. The traditional reconstruction of three sets of IE velars reflects the fact that we are unable to explain convincingly the reasons for the distribution of plain velars, palatalized velars and labialized velars within the daughter languages and don't pretend to know more than the material allows to extract. If you eventually manage to present a more parsimonious explanation or at least prove that the data available strongly suggests against in-IE or even pre-IE origin of three (or two) sets of velars, please present it. So far your suggestions look, as I had written yesterday, as per-word guesswork.



Part of science is the acceptance that there are sometimes no definitive conclusions to be drawn from the data, and guesswork is the most that can be done until further data is found (or newer analytic methodologies are developed).


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> Part of science is the acceptance that there are sometimes no definitive conclusions to be drawn from the data, and guesswork is the most that can be done until further data is found (or newer analytic methodologies are developed).


There is such thing as Occam's razor: when we cannot convincingly reduce three classes of objects to one or two, we find it more parsimonious to keep them as separate entities rather than suggest individual explanations for every particular case. By the way, I still haven't understood, according which logic you consider palatovelars to be satem innovations while not assuming the same for labiovelars (for centum branches) that in my view behave in an entirely parallel way.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> What is the difference between _quit, sweet, tweet_ etc.? And between them and _cute, suit, tune_? Why do you think that _qu_ is a phoneme while other instances of C + _w_ or C+ _j_ aren't? status of The phoneme necessarily represents one sound and behaves as such. For example *_kʸu̯ōn_ (by the way, what is the source of _k__ʸ_ here? the _e_-grade is not attested for this word, also in *_Ho₁H₁kʸu_ "fast" where is the palatalizing agent?) becomes *_kʸunos_ in the Gen. Sg. vs. *_gʷenH₂_ "woman" that becomes *_gʷneH₂s; _likewise *_nokʷts_ has three adjacent consonants. The word for horse is reconstructed as *_H₁ekʸu̯os_, with a kind of _k_ that has produced _aśvaḫ_ in Sanskrit and _ašva_ (feminine) in Lithuanian, so it wasn't a labiovelar phoneme even for the most enthusiastic authors.



According to the theor(ies) I mentioned above, the *k in *kuon- and *oku- would have been fronted to *š by analogy with other words (in which e-grade was present) that contained *k.  There was never necessarily a stage where the *k in these words was pronounced *kj -- it may simply have gone to *š right away via analogy.

I didn't say that the -kw- in *ekwos was a labiovelar phoneme. It might have been pronounced *_ku_ or similar.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> There is such thing as Occam's razor: when we cannot convincingly reduce three classes of objects to one or two, we find it more parsimonious to keep them as separate entities rather than suggest individual explanations for every particular case. By the way, I still haven't understood, according which logic you consider palatovelars to be satem innovations while not assuming the same for labiovelars (for centum branches) that in my view behave in an entirely parallel way.



I'm not sure there ever were any palatovelars (i.e., palatalized *_k_), there may simply have been a sound change of *k > č before front vowels that spread to other instances of *k.


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## linguaquraan-alm

Part1
I would like to  thank  all contributors who enriched  the topic with their worthy notices.
 “berndf “” are u sure  they have 14 or 15 stop phonemes.?? it's two much if I am an PIE linguist  I would reduce them to 7 

“Dib”  thanks for the recordings on the web site ,it's funny   

“ahvalj “I dunnu  know  if there is a big difference   when writing  the  relevant  base   in this form *_g'hwer   please see :_

_http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=fierce&searchmode=none_



My principle and my  motto, according to which my reply will be based on is this “”

The Languge has no borderlines and can jump over the borders !!it's we who made these borders !!!!   
 ”So be ready I will jump over these borders    

Since I left this thread here I was searching and searching ( after reading ur discussion of coures )for something to confirm or  refute completely  the existince of such base “_*ghwer- “_

_two words jumped to my mind suddenly and I said to myself  why not ? _ 
1-  jaguar :  from Tubi who lived   thousands years  before the comming of  Portuguese to Brazil ,jaguar used by them  to  denote  any larger beast of prey ,was a general use before  
they give to a certain wild animal. I would suggest  that this word is constructed from
ja+ guar  and very very probable that the prefix (ja) refers to bigness of that animal compared to any other “guar “ ((compare Pan+ther which come later )
The problem that the PIE root(s)   left open  from one side (right ) , the relevant root (_*ghwer-) as example.what about the prefix if any ?_
I will give  a  similar example from arabic language regarding  agglutination of a prefix without been remarked by a lot of Arabic linguists  :the word ''nimr”is one of the tiger names (in Ar. Language  there is remarkable note :the tiger has more than
20 names,the lion has about 30, the sword has more than 50),so they bring a prefix 'sin” just like the german suffix  “-chen “ in “brotchen :small bread ,both means small except that the this “Affix” is added in Ar.word  to the left (prefix)and in german word to the right(suffix) -this is  one of language subtle technique which we are not always  aware to ) now the word became (sin+nimr),but wait there is some other additional  subtle procedure , the sonorant “”m” in “nimr” must be changed to “w” so the final word is “sin+newr=sinnewr “ which is in use  now as a name of the 'cat “ and precisely “ tomcat'....language was  not waiting the PIE linguists to come and put its hypothetical root ,”she”  works alone and silently.
2- I will quote a text from “ahvalj” he said  
 “”””Ironically, there was no *_ghwer_-, it was *_g'hwer_-, with a palatalized aspirated _g _followed by a separate sound _w._This word is still recognizable in the modern Lithuanian _žvėris_ and Russian _зверь/zver'_, where _g'h_ has regularly produced _ž_ and _z_, a change that can be seen in hundreds of other words where the IE _g'h_ is reconstructed. “””
I would please you to go to this site where you listen to these two words “
http://www.forvo.com/search/žvėris/
as for Russian word  
http://www.forvo.com/word/зверь/#ru


Now compare these two words with Persian ''Schier = lion“شير  
http://www.forvo.com/search-fa/شير/


have you noticed  the difference ???
Now according to the discussion beween ((  (ahvalj and Gavril )  
ahvaj “"""””One more thing to consider. There are more and less disputable moments in the reconstruction. For example, in the abovementioned word *_g'hwer_- there are no doubts about _w, e_ and _r, _as there are no doubts that the first consonant was or at least became at some moment palatalized “””""
Gavril;
 “”””Is it necessary to assume this (i.e., the palatal quality of *_gh_)? “””””


I hope I have understood their agreement well  and need no more quotaions to bring here from their discussion ,and hence I would ask  
Which consonants can stand ,and give the  alternative  of    *_gh_  whether -according to discussants- here voiced or unvoiced  _?  __I would suggest that the “missing link” you are looking for , which fulfils your requirements does exist in
semitic/arabic emphatic consonants , the Arabic emphatic consonants have a very distinguished features according to wikipedia “”the members of this series may be realized as pharyngealized, velarized, ejective, or plain voiced or voiceless consonants. “””” also :in Arabic emphasis is synonymous with a secondary articulation involving retraction of the dorsum or root of the tongue, which has variously been described as velarization or pharyngealization depending on where the locus of the retraction is assumed to be._
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphatic_consonant_


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## linguaquraan-alm

_continue............Part2  (Please see first   ,part 1 of this reply )
I will give an example of  the feature of one of these emphatics .i'ts “ tˤ  ط “An english discussant in another  forum has attracted my attention to an important  note  when he said  an  emphatic like “tˤ “  _ط _i s  pharyngealized  as   if it's a combination of “ t+ pharyngeal  ayn ʕ “ for me it means that  tˤ   has 2 components  and may appear outside it's  Ar. environment as  either 't' or  something else. _ 



_In her thesis (Towards a Comparative Typology of Emphatics Across Semitic and into Arabic Dialect Phonology ) Dr. Alex Bellem (Durham University ) had quoted from “Sibawayh:an Ar. Ancient grammarian “ the description that he gave to some Ar.consonants including the emphatics where he  called them“ alhuruf al mustaʕliya”  because their articulation is related with  elevation movement of the tongue “to the upper palate “ She also added “”This notion of the uvulars and_
_emphatics being commonly ‘elevated’ persists throughout the Arabic tradition.”””_


_also Sibwayh _ notes that ‘these  four [precisely  the emphatics consonants] have two places on the tongue ,one with the upper palate  and other part of the tongue opposite the velum .  
_You find the quotation of Dr. Bellem on page 23-24 here with _ 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ivqyxzeulmhyr74/DR.Allex BellemThesis.pdf?dl=0




This  means  that  the semitic/Ar.emphatics has such “””tendency to change"" their basic position /articulation  , thus appears in different forms  when they leave  their  semitic  environment , for example a consonant like _dˤ_ ض  can appear as “z” or “d” or ð  ذ  or even  “th”


Here comes my point  …..the Ar.   word  (ضار : dˤar   ) has exactly the same meaning  as (fierce  whose  PIE  base is  *ghwer ) it means wild animal , or precisely  according to  Lane Arabic -English lexicon [_Animals accustomed to prey; rapacious,_ or _ravenous, beasts;_ and particularly] _lions._  And according  to  Hans Wehr Dictionary  ( voracious ,ferocious,savage)_-from this root came another word “  _ضرغام _dˤergham  “ lion …..now if we compare this word with the Greek “ ther “ we find the same .(also compare panther which came from pan+ther )_
When we compare  _žvėris_ and Russian _зверь/zver'_, with Persian  “Schier ' we find that  “we” or “ve” has appeared  in Persian word   as  long vowel like in ar.َ ضار .so  ضار has came from “_dˤ_ wer”

which is not different than other IE words .
As you see now, we do'nt need so much complications to find out an IE root  if we search everywhere outside our closed environment .

_in my  opinion _ it's those  pioneers of IE studies in the 19th  who  made   some  unnecessary hypothesis  which led  then to  tear into pieces  the unity of the word languages and made such borderlines ,The languages unity is indeed indivisible and when we divide  the  “one “  we will be taken to  endless maze that we have to deal with symbols which i think is well described  by “fdb “ when refers to them as ”algebraic  symbols  "


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## Hulalessar

The IE pioneers surely took the first step in showing how at least some languages previously thought to be unrelated were in fact related. The difficulty in going back further is the lack of any written record. The best that can be done is to look at known cases of how languages change, formulate some rules and then apply them. That will produce a hypothetical proto-language. Given the difficulties in some cases in establishing whether some living languages are genetically related, any conclusions drawn from comparing proto-languages have to be regarded as extremely tentative. The history of human language just goes back too far to be able to prove (or for that matter disprove) any theory about the monogenesis of language.


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> This  means  that  the semitic/Ar.emphatics has such “””tendency to change"" their basic position /articulation  , thus appears in different forms  when they leave  their  Ar. environment , for example a consonant like _dˤ_ ض  can appear as “z” or “d” or ð  ذ  or even  “th”


This is because the original pronunciation of ض wasn't [dˤ] and underwent different sound changes in different Arabic dialects. In some dialects ض became [dˤ] and in others it merged with ظ which originally sounded like an emphatic ث. This merger happened in many other Semitic languages as well and even a further merger with ص, notably in Canaanite languages (including Hebrew and Phonetician) and Akkadian. In Aramaic, the mergers are a bit more complex. I can't really see what all this has to do with developments in IE languages.


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## Dib

linguaquraan-alm said:


> _in my  opinion _ it's those  pioneers of IE studies in the 19th  who  made   some  unnecessary hypothesis  which led  then to  tear into pieces  the unity of the word languages and made such borderlines ,The languages unity is indeed indivisible and when we divide  the  “one “  we will be taken to  endless maze that we have to deal with symbols which i think is well described  by “fdb “ when refers to them as ”algebraic  symbols  "



As Hulalessar mentioned, nobody in their right mind - including the "pioneers of IE studies" - claimed to have successfully demonstrated that various language families had independent geneses. All they did was show that languages tend to form "families", i.e. some are more closely related to each other than to others. I hope you'd agree that Arabic is more closely related to Hebrew, for example, than, say, to English - even if they can be shown to be related. It is possible that English and Arabic are after all related, and you are welcome to try to establish that _systematically_. In fact, some scholars and enthusiasts are already trying similar things - the Nostraticists, for example; but unfortunately, the results are not very encouraging so far.

Also about the "algebraic symbols" of reconstruction, I do share fdb's point of view here. I also think (and most likely fdb does too), they are extremely useful for their purpose, i.e. in demonstrating the relationships between different languages in the family in a concise way. It is no way a "maze", unless you want to make one out of them.


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> _in my  opinion _ it's those  pioneers of IE studies in the 19th  who  made   some  unnecessary hypothesis  which led  then to  tear into pieces  the unity of the word languages and made such borderlines ,The languages unity is indeed indivisible and when we divide  the  “one “  we will be taken to  endless maze that we have to deal with symbols which i think is well described  by “fdb “ when refers to them as ”algebraic  symbols  "


The Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic groups might have had a common ancestor. I would assume most linguists do indeed think so, even those who reject the Nostratic hypothesis. They just say that we do not know enough about such a putative common ancestor say anything about it that would be more than baseless speculation.


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## linguaquraan-alm

berndf said:


> This is because the original pronunciation of ض wasn't [dˤ] and underwent different sound changes in different Arabic dialects. In some dialects ض became [dˤ] and in others it merged with ظ which originally sounded like an emphatic ث. This merger happened in many other Semitic languages as well and even a further merger with ص, notably in Canaanite languages (including Hebrew and Phonetician) and Akkadian. In Aramaic, the mergers are a bit more complex. I can't really see what all this has to do with developments in IE languages.




  I will use a similitude  here to explain my POV:

If I gave a part (only a part ) of a puzzle game (or let me say a full picture which I had already torn into different pieces )  to somebody ,and asked  him to fully describe what is between his hands . If he believes (wrongly from the 1st moment )  that the part he  already has , is the unique part of the whole picture (or game ) he will tend to make a lot of  assumptions (maybe unnecessarily )to describe  the whole picture ,but if he realized (from the 1st moment )that what is between his hands is only a part of (a complete picture ,of a whole system ,) ,he will tell me : '''no, I cann'nt describe the the whole picture ,unless you show  me the other parts ,so that I can reconstruct them together in order to give you my final explanation '''.He will be  absolutely right in his last statement , since the “whole ” can't be explained by 'its parts “ individually, but  by all  parts  altogether.As I told before the “one “ is a complete system , we are  not allowed to subdivide it unless we  make mistakes,and  lose the way.

Accordingly , if the earlier  pioneers of IE studies ,has taken the “so-called :semitic or whatever they called them “ into consideration when reconstrucing the PIE roots , they did'nt need to go in unnecessary assumptions as for some “non-human sounds or maybe apps sounds like in   (*h₁oh₁ḱ-u- )  means:quick  (( Can you pronounce this root or even visualize it !!! can  you really ...tell me frankly ???????)) 
My suggestion was :it could be as I said that such symbols had come from semitic consonants  which  decomposed( or dissolved )  outside their environment ,i mean when leaving their original lands  ,as can happen  for example with the Semitic “ _dˤ “ which can occur in so many forms ( more than the examples I gave in my previous reply) _


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> Accordingly , if the earlier  pioneers of IE studies ,has taken the “so-called :semitic or whatever they called them “ into consideration when reconstrucing the PIE roots , they did'nt need to go in unnecessary assumptions as for some “non-human sounds or maybe apps sounds like in   (*h₁oh₁ḱ-u- )  means:quick  (( Can you pronounce this root or even visualize it !!! can  you really ...tell me frankly ???????))
> My suggestion was :it could be as I said that such symbols had come from semitic consonants  which  decomposed( or dissolved )  outside their environment ,i mean when leaving their original lands  ,as can happen  for example with the Semitic “ _dˤ “ which can occur in so many forms ( more than the examples I gave in my previous reply) _


We are trying to find out what really happened and not just to tell a nice story, don't we. For that linguists try to create systems that explain as many developments in as many languages as possible at once so that it is next to impossible for these observed correspondences to be mere chance coincidences.

Your attempt to relate _fierce _to ضار is an ad hoc explanation and like all ad hoc explanation it gives us no way to tell if there is any real basis for it or if it is just a nice piece of fiction.

As I told you before, we know actually a bit more about the history of ض than that "decomposed". And the changes we know about happened within its environment and not outside. We also know that is was certainly *not* [dˤ] in original Semitic, not even in original Arabic.


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## linguaquraan-alm

berndf said:


> This is because the original pronunciation of ض wasn't [dˤ] and underwent different sound changes in different Arabic dialects. In some dialects ض became [dˤ] and in others it merged with ظ which originally sounded like an emphatic ث. This merger happened in many other Semitic languages as well and even a further merger with ص, notably in Canaanite languages (including Hebrew and Phonetician) and Akkadian. In Aramaic, the mergers are a bit more complex. I can't really see what all this has to do with developments in IE languages.



   It could be that you were not aware that in your very reply has proved my POV ,because what you said will drop a question ...if this happen to "[dˤ] inside it's own environment then what changes can  be expected outside its own environment ???? I have only concentrated in my previous reply  on the  [dˤ] only as example  but it's not the unique one , there are 3 other emphasis that  can encounter the same sound change , besides other non-emphasis . I was only giving example  about the tendency of 'dramatic sound changes " whether inside or outside . Do you know that ض itself appear in Hebrew as "ts" like in German "z"....compare AR. Ardˤ =earth and Hebrew  ארץ  as you hear it here 

http://www.forvo.com/search/ארץ/


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> It could be that you were not aware that in your very reply has proved my POV ,because what you said will drop a question ...if this happen to "[dˤ] inside it's own environment then what changes can  be expected outside its own environment ???? I have only concentrated in my previous reply  on the  [dˤ] only as example  but it's not the unique one , there are 3 other emphasis that  can encounter the same sound change , besides other non-emphasis . I was only giving example  about the tendency of 'dramatic sound changes " whether inside or outside . Do you know that ض itself appear in Hebrew as "ts" like in German "z"....compare AR. Ardˤ =earth and Hebrew  ארץ  as you hear it here
> 
> http://www.forvo.com/search/ארץ/


If you say "anything goes" than you can't demonstrate anything, really. Everybody would be thrilled if we managed to reconstruct beyond PIE and PS and arrive at a common ancestor. The Nostratic theory attempts that. But it is not at all easy. Randomly dropping ad hoc explanations won't do the job, I'm afraid.


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## linguaquraan-alm

berndf said:


> We are trying to find out what really happened and not just to tell a nice story, don't we. For that linguists try to create systems that explain as many developments in as many languages as possible at once so that it is next to impossible for these observed correspondences to be mere chance coincidences.
> 
> Your attempt to relate _fierce _to ضار is an ad hoc explanation and like all ad hoc explanation it gives us no way to tell if there is any real basis for it or if it is just a nice piece of fiction.
> 
> As I told you before, we know actually a bit more about the history of ض than that "decomposed". And the changes we know about happened within its environment and not outside. We also know that is was certainly *not* [dˤ] in original Semitic, not even in original Arabic.


 let me start first with a very full meaning quotation from a great physicist and mathematician
“” I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.””Isaac Newton  


this is an open discussion I guess ,has nothing to do with “we” and “you”, WE +YOU” are all humans who  try to explore the truth whenever it is , irrespective of being IE's or Afro-Asian's .  

 I placed the quotation above , from that great,great scientist “Isaac Newton'' I was meaning it , I meant first myself that I am like that boy ,Newton mentioned ,and on the other hand to let others know that the facts can be more deeper than they think,and there is no ultimate knowledge (maybe excluding knowledge based on mathematics,physics ....and applied scientific kowledge and engineering ) .  
So,anything outside mathematics,physics ....and applied scientific knowledge and engineering (I mean undoubted facts and matters ) is debatable  .

I'm not here to impose my POV , with not evidences I gave sufficient ones  I guess . In my POV I attempt my best to be  inside “ the word of reality “ and not as u siad “attempt to relate _fierce _to ضارis an ad hoc explanation and like all ad hoc explanation it gives us no way to tell if there is any real basis for it or if it is just a nice piece of fiction. “””  

That is the the "world of reality" ,since Ar.Language does exist in the “world of reality “ on this  very  planet ,can u deny its existence ?? or it would be better to stay with hypothetical primitive roots, nobody knows if it is  piece of fiction or  what else !!!!


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## Dib

@ linguaquraan-alm:

I am trying to understand what you are trying to say. So, let me ask a couple of simple questions. Hopefully your answers to them will help us understand your position more clearly. Right now, you are using a vocabulary/line of argument, none of us here seems to be able to follow.

1) Is your objection to the concept of family of IE languages based on the fact that the proposed reconstruction of the Proto-IE language is apparently unpronounceable? Or at least, is that one of the objections?

2) Are you proposing Arabic as the "mother-language" or "proto-language", or whatever you call it, for English, etc? More concretely, do you mean that English "fierce" may have descended from Arabic ضار? Or, are you saying that both of them might have descended from some other unattested common earlier form, that we just simply don't know what it looked like?

---

Btw. I find your puzzle simile quite relatable. What the philologists and historical linguists are trying to do is to solve small parts of the puzzle at a time, and then hopefully put those already arranged parts together in future to solve bigger and bigger parts of the puzzle. Those small parts are the proposed language families. That's anyway how most people would try to solve a 6000-piece jigsaw puzzle (taking the number of attested languages to be somewhere like 6000). Trying to tackle them all at a time is almost bound to fail. Since you are an engineer, I am confident you are familiar with the concept of modular/hierarchical design. That's exactly what the historical linguists are trying to do.


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## rayloom

linguaquraan-alm said:


> I will give  a  similar example from arabic language regarding  agglutination of a prefix without been remarked by a lot of Arabic linguists  :the word ''nimr”is one of the tiger names (in Ar. Language  there is remarkable note :the tiger has more than
> 20 names,the lion has about 30, the sword has more than 50),so they bring a prefix 'sin” just like the german suffix  “-chen “ in “brotchen :small bread ,both means small except that the this “Affix” is added in Ar.word  to the left (prefix)and in german word to the right(suffix) -this is  one of language subtle technique which we are not always  aware to ) now the word became (sin+nimr),but wait there is some other additional  subtle procedure , the sonorant “”m” in “nimr” must be changed to “w” so the final word is “sin+newr=sinnewr “ which is in use  now as a name of the 'cat “ and precisely “ tomcat'....language was  not waiting the PIE linguists to come and put its hypothetical root ,”she”  works alone and silently.



Probably because the Arabic prefix _sin_-, just as much as the suffix -_al_ (from the khurda thread):



linguaquraan-alm said:


> I will tell you  Inshaallah  the  etymology of the word (Xurda) >>>>you find it's  origin in  Quraan .....Have you heard the Quraanic word "Xerdel" Sura 31-Ver 16   and Sura 21 verse 47, It means something which is very very small  ,indeed Xerdel=Xerd(small)+ intensive suffix al =xerdel  very very small  !!!!




*don't exist in Arabic!*


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## linguaquraan-alm

Dib said:


> @ linguaquraan-alm:
> 
> I am trying to understand what you are trying to say. So, let me ask a couple of simple questions. Hopefully your answers to them will help us understand your position more clearly. Right now, you are using a vocabulary/line of argument, none of us here seems to be able to follow.
> 
> 1) Is your objection to the concept of family of IE languages based on the fact that the proposed reconstruction of the Proto-IE language is apparently unpronounceable? Or at least, is that one of the objections?
> 
> 2) Are you proposing Arabic as the "mother-language" or "proto-language", or whatever you call it, for English, etc? More concretely, do you mean that English "fierce" may have descended from Arabic ضار? Or, are you saying that both of them might have descended from some other unattested common earlier form, that we just simply don't know what it looked like?
> 
> ---
> 
> Btw. I find your puzzle simile quite relatable. What the philologists and historical linguists are trying to do is to solve small parts of the puzzle at a time, and then hopefully put those already arranged parts together in future to solve bigger and bigger parts of the puzzle. Those small parts are the proposed language families. That's anyway how most people would try to solve a 6000-piece jigsaw puzzle (taking the number of attested languages to be somewhere like 6000). Trying to tackle them all at a time is almost bound to fail. Since you are an engineer, I am confident you are familiar with the concept of modular/hierarchical design. That's exactly what the historical linguists are trying to do.



Dib,
Was my POV is so unclear ?? However , as for your 1st question  yes  that was my objection , not only  unpronounceable  but also implausible . This was  my main topic when I started this thread .What comes after was a only a trial from  me to explain why that  had happened to be so. If you read back my first reply ( after waiting all discussants  including you, to drop their opinions ) you will see it clear .There was a  secondary discussion between  “ahvalj “ and Gavril' about  a possible  Palatalization of *_gh as a solution to the  relevant root ,then I contributed with a suggestion  regarding semitic and Ar. Languge and their emphatics  because I think that neglecting an important languages like Ar. And other semitic was one of the reasons why the  earlier Pioneers of PIE  have placed unnecessary hypothesis  on the rules of  PIE reconstruction  and so lead to a lot of ambiguity and implausibility,  I never said  or claim something    like  proposing Arabic as the "mother-language" or "proto-language" !!!  have I ? Suggestion the existence of IE root in Ar. does'nt mean that Arabic is a mother or (father ) of any .I had counted about 30 words in Webster where he claims that the origin of these words is Ar. It does'nt mean that Webster or any other Etymolgical dictionaries say something like that , so don't burden me   something I didn't say ._


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## Dib

Thanks, linguaquraan-alm, for your answer. That makes your position a little easier to follow. But if I may, I'd like to ask a couple more questions to understand if we share any base at all or not.



linguaquraan-alm said:


> However , as for ur 1st question  yes  that was my objection , not only  unpronounceable  but also implausible .




Could you kindly explain what - apart from their alleged unpronounceability - is implausible about them? You probably have said this before, but as I said, I didn't understand. 



linguaquraan-alm said:


> This was  my main topic when I started this thread .What comes after was a only a trial from  me to explain why that  had happened to be so.




Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you essentially said that IE linguists came up with what you called implausible reconstructions - because they didn't give the due attention to Arabic. Right? But that is relevant only if you explain what is "implausible" about those reconstructions, as I asked above. So, I wait for your clarification on that point, before going forward. 




> There was a  secondary discussion between  “ahvalj “ and Gavril' about  a possible  Palatalization of





> *gh as a solution to the  relevant root




Yeah, I could mostly follow the bit of discussion between ahvalj, gavril, berndf, etc.



> ,then I contributed with a suggestion  regarding semitic and Ar. Languge and their emphatics  because I think that neglecting an important languages like Ar. And other semitic was one of the reasons why the  earlier Pioneers of PIE  have placed unnecessary hypothesis  on the rules of  PIE reconstruction  and so lead to a lot of ambiguity and implausibility,



Firstly, of course, I didn't understand what is "implausible" about the IE reconstruction. In any case, to borrow another engineering design analogy - comparative linguistic reconstruction is an extendible design, more concretely speaking - when new evidences turn up from new languages, and the languages are indeed related closely enough, it is possible to, and historical linguists regularly do incorporate them into their reconstruction and the proposed family tree. Within the IE family, the linguists have incorporated the Hitite and Tocharian evidence when they turned up in early 20th century. One of the most exciting developments (in my view) to happen in the field of historical linguistics in the recent years (in the last 10 years, let's say) is the ongoing process of demonstrating links between Na-Dene languages from North America and Yeniseian languages from central Siberia, again demonstrating the extendability of the approach of comparative linguistic reconstruction. The same has been tried and is being tried - notwithstanding your wrong claim - on Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic (including Arabic) languages, especially under the aegis of Nostratic theory or its variants. But unfortunately, the results are not yet very encouraging. It is very easy to find similar-sounding words within any two languages in the world (provided their phonetic systems are not too different) at an ad-hoc basis, and precisely that makes it useless in establishing historical relations between the languages.

EDIT: Here is an interesting write-up about the probability of chance resemblance among different languages:
http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm




> I never said  or claim something    like  proposing Arabic as the "mother-language" or "proto-language" !!!



Thanks for clarifying that. And sorry, if I sounded like claiming, you did. I was honestly confused. 



> Suggestion the existence of IE root in Ar. does'nt mean that Arabic is a mother or (father ) of any .I had counted about 30 words in Webster where he claims that the origin of these words is Ar. It does'nt mean that Webster or any other Etymolgical dictionaries say something like that.



Okay. Thanks for clarifying, again.


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## linguaquraan-alm

rayloom
 i think you do'nt need to jump from  another topic ,and involve your self here .It is very easy to belie me  here if (and only if )you bring me the Etymology of the Ar.word  (sinnewr) or (xerdal ) otherwise  you have some choices: 1- u do'nt know  at all, or at least  do'nt care about the etymology of ur language   2-  ur mother tongue ( Arabic) has no etymology and its origin is not  known  3-it's a random language ,a language which is a product of nature  or those Bedouins themselves  . 4- these two words are loanwords  , then tell me from which language they came ????    waiting to hear from you .


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## rayloom

I'll give you a choice as well:
Give me other Arabic words with these affixes, in which they serve the same function!


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## linguaquraan-alm

_Hi Dib,
 let me first end up reading  your interesting website and  assimilate its content before replying  your questions  , it seems interesting  , meantime I would say I  am here to  learn more and more .Some suggestions i presented  here were not my own product , i am mostly a reader and the suggestion about the relation between the Ar, word _ضار _and the relevant PIE root ,besides lots  of common roots (between Ar. and IE's)  was proposed  in 1983 by Dr.Lewis Uwadh from Egypt in his book "An introduction to Arabic Philology " مقدمة في فقه اللغة العربية where  he suggested an Etymological Dictionary of Ar.Language ( because there is not, and till now there is not )....he was severely attacked by a lot of Arabs ( educated and non-educated ) and was taken to the Court ,he was accused with abusing ,insulting the Ar.Language ,just because of saying there are common roots between Ar.and IE. So, this is not new idea, but belongs to the eighties of the last century , the problem is that very little people  (as i think ) have  read this book  whether (accepting or refusing )and this work was not appreciated  by  the IE linguists at all.
till  then__  _


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## linguaquraan-alm

<...>

Dib:
As I told you , when I have time I will answer your questions in details , it seems my POV has been overloaded more than necessary .


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## fdb

linguaquraan-alm said:


> _“An english discussant in another  forum has attracted my attention to an important  note  when he said  an  emphatic like “tˤ “  _ط _i s  pharyngealized  as   if it's a combination of “ t+ pharyngeal  ayn ʕ “ for me it means that  tˤ   has 2 components  and may appear outside it's  Ar. environment as  either 't' or  something else._



As you are a speaker of Arabic, I am sure you will agree that /t/ + /ʕ/ in, for example, /ʔatʕabu/ أتعب does not sound the slightest bit like ط.


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## linguaquraan-alm

For honesty , finding out the relation between the PIE root *_ghwer  and Arabic _ضار _belongs to Dr.Lewis Uwadh ,in his work “Introduction to Arabic Philology _مقدمة في فقه اللغة العربية _which was  published in the last century ,as I mentioned before .By the way this man was _ 

 Egyptian Coptic  and has nothing to do with Islam and Quraan,he claimed a lot of things against Quraan language ,even though I would respect his opinion as  a free thinker , and he tried also   to reconstruct  Proto-Ar. roots  in comparison with semitic sisters ,and having an etymological dictionary which the Ar. Language does'nt have .

Here you find what he said   about the  above- mentionrd relation  on P.190, P.191, i have copied the position where he mentioned that .
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hs0ejw5b43f9dcx/DR.LewisUwadh.pdf?dl=0


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## Dib

linguaquraan-alm said:


> rayloom
> i think you do'nt need to jump from  another topic ,and involve your  self here .It is very easy to belie me  here if (and only if )you bring  me the Etymology of the Ar.word  (sinnewr) or (xerdal ) otherwise  you  have some choices: 1- u do'nt know  at all, or at least  do'nt care  about the etymology of ur language   2-  ur mother tongue ( Arabic) has  no etymology and its origin is not  known  3-it's a random language ,a language which is a product of nature  or those Bedouins themselves  . 4- these two words are loanwords  , then tell me from which language they came ????    waiting to hear from you .



My guess is, Sibawayh, whom you have refered to above, would give  the credit to the Bedouins for sure. (I am refering to the anecdote of  the grammatical debate between him and some other scholar, where  Sibawayh conceded himself to be wrong on the basis of what the Bedouins  actually said. I'm sure you're better acquainted with the details than I  am.) 




linguaquraan-alm said:


> For honesty , finding out the relation between the PIE root *_ghwer  and Arabic _ضار _belongs to Dr.Lewis Uwadh ,in his work “Introduction to Arabic Philology _مقدمة في فقه اللغة العربية _which was  published in the last century ,as I mentioned before ...._
> 
> Here you find what he said   about the  above- mentionrd relation  on P.190, P.191, i have copied the position where he mentioned that .
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/hs0ejw5b43f9dcx/DR.LewisUwadh.pdf?dl=0



Thanks for the link. But unfortunately, I don't know enough Arabic to make much sense of it. On the other hand, it is very likely that this work, having been written in Arabic, has escaped the attention of most of the IE-ists (who happen to be mostly based in Europe and North America), and probably even Nostraticists. And, I am obviously in no position to evaluate Arabic data anyway; but because you are acquainted with the work, I'd like to ask you whether the writer goes beyond listing similar sounding and similar meaning words between Arabic and others (which, as I mentioned before, are no evidence per se in demonstrating linguistic relationships - they are at best preliminary leads to be investigated), and establishes regular sound-correspondences as the traditional comparative linguistics demands, or at least proposes an alternative methodology to demonstrate such linguistic relations. 





> By the way this man was





> Egyptian  Coptic  and has nothing to do with Islam and Quraan,he claimed a lot of  things against Quraan language ,even though I would respect his opinion  as  a free thinker , and he tried also   to reconstruct  Proto-Ar. roots   in comparison with semitic sisters ,and having an etymological  dictionary which the Ar. Language does'nt have .



I don't know what his religious affiliation has to do with this. I am pretty sure there are more (universally acknowledged) Indo-European speaking Muslims in this world than there are Arabs.

Anyways, there are very knowledgeable people here in this forum in the domain of Arabic and Semitic linguistics. I am sure they can guide you to the standard resources in those fields - of course - only if you ask for it.


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## linguaquraan-alm

Dib said:


> .........or at least proposes an alternative methodology to demonstrate such linguistic relations.
> I don't know what his religious affiliation has to do with this. I am pretty sure there are more (universally acknowledged) Indo-European speaking Muslims in this world than there are Arabs.
> Anyways, there are very knowledgeable people here in this forum in the domain of Arabic and Semitic linguistics. I am sure they can guide you to the standard resources in those fields - of course - only if you ask for it.



Really I don't like  to speak about the   special and peculiar  methodology  of this man ,because I am not  satisfied about his way , he tried  to demonstrate such genetic connections  between Ar.and IE. I do care only about the linguistic comparison he made and how much serious they seem to me.
He claimed that Arabs was not the original Indigenous inhabitants of Peninsula , before them, the Peninsula  
 was inhabited by Hyksos Who were ruling Egypt over approx. 100 years , After defeating  the Hyksos in Egypt ,and ending their dominating there they escaped , and emigrated toward Peninsula .Till now there was nothing called Arab according to him , but later on, some Caucasian Tribes   emigrated from Caspian Sea  and Black Sea  coast to Peninsula and mixed with Hykson ,from here came the Arabs in his opinion and their language as he claimed is a mishmash from IE and Semitic (because the Hyksos was originally multi-ethnic Semitic people , before ruling Egypt ).Look this story is like _*One Thousand and One Nights*_ stories .  
As for his religious affiliation , he tried to say ( according to a very peculiar approach )that some words in Quran confirmed trinity not monotheism,and Mohammed was not aware to this point  ......You see I don't like his way .....I said I only care about "linguistic study "in his work not anything else.


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> ... “non-human sounds or maybe apps sounds like in   (*h₁oh₁ḱ-u- )  means:quick  (( Can you pronounce this root or even visualize it !!! can  you really ...tell me frankly ???????))


If we only knew how h1 was pronounced. There are several theories but none of it anything more than speculation. The only thing can reasonably assume is that there were three distinct laryngeals. By convention they are called h1, h2 and h3. You live in Germany, so I assume you are familiar with German pronunciation. Lets for simplicity assume, h1, were pronounced like the German _ach_-Laut (خ) and let's approximate _ḱ_ by <tsch> (/kʲ/ simply doesn't exist in German, so we have to approximate it by a sound not too far off). Then it would sound like _chochtschu _which is approximately like a Swiss would pronounce _kocht Schuh _(i.e. the initial <k> replaced by an _ach_-Laut).


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## Dib

linguaquraan-alm said:


> I do care only about the linguistic comparison he made and how much serious they seem to me.



So, I take it that he has neither gone through the standard comparative linguistic procedure of establishing systematic sound-correspondences between IE and Arabic/Semitic/Afro-Asiatic, nor proposed an alternative linguistic methodology. In that case, you should be able to perform an analysis in the style of the web-page, I shared, to estimate whether his claims are statistically significant or not.


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## linguaquraan-alm

With all respect to all discussants here and there , without meaning any bad intention I would quote  this text  from the American Writer   (Max Eastman)

 “”””A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.””””
 
 Dib:

I was  waiting an  opportunity to write something regarding your last questions about Plausibility and  Implausibility , now “” berndf “”has given  me  the tool to hunt two birds with one stone when he dropped his last interesting reply .Thanks berndf you gave me the starting point .
Regarding unpronounceability I think I have answered it ,although  I start my thread about its difficulty or sometimes impossibility !!! I will concentrate only on plausibility .



 To speak about plausibility  Vs. implausibility  ,let me start with „historical plausibility „of the available  theories about the origin of language , would you tell me please  which of these 6 theories -as examples  only -can be plausible  ?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/48631/6-early-theories-about-origin-language



 <...>
*Moderator note: Not within the scope of this forum.*

 In his last reply 'berndf '' said {{{{If we only knew how h1 was pronounced. There are several theories but none of it anything more than speculation. The only thing can reasonably assume is that there were three distinct laryngeals. }}}}}
Speculations,assumptions  that is the end of our journey .Don't you think that this a real challenge to the  Human intelligence  or ??? Can't those who reconstruct such roots like the one “berndf “ has commented on , or like this one for example “”*h₃órbʰos : means orphan”, can't they sit together with Computer Scientists and Programmers or with artificial speech producer ( I hope this is the right technical term ) and say” we are in trouble ,because we have assumed some sounds  supposed to reconstruct proto roots , but we don't know how were they , and how to pronounce them  ,help us by using your knowledge in computer to reproduce those sound and words and speech  so that we convince anyone , anytime ??””

Everybody is  knowing and hearing   in our times about  the revolutionary evolution in the computer science   which make  lots  in our daily life !!!!! If there were such sounds, I am  sure the computer can reproduce them easily  !!!!!


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## fdb

linguaquraan-alm said:


> (*h₁oh₁ḱ-u- )  means:quick  (( Can you pronounce this root or even visualize it !!! can  you really ...tell me frankly ???????))



I am not sure that this will clarify anything, but....: Not all Indo-Europeanists believe in the three-laryngeal hypothesis in the same way that not all physicists believe in the big bang. (I have spent a lot of time discussing the big bang theory with my physicist and astrophysicist colleagues in the Senior Common Room and can assure you that this is the case.)There is a difference between wiki-wisdom and academic scepticism. As I have said before, the currently fashionable version of proto-Indo-European does not look like any real language that I know.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> I am not sure that this will clarify anything, but....: Not all Indo-Europeanists believe in the three-laryngeal hypothesis in the same way that not all physicists believe in the big bang. (I have spent a lot of time discussing the big bang theory with my physicist and astrophysicist colleagues in the Senior Common Room and can assure you that this is the case.)There is a difference between wiki-wisdom and academic scepticism. As I have said before, the currently fashionable version of proto-Indo-European does not look like any real language that I know.


Well, the big-bang hypothesis of better to be compared to the PIE hypothesis as such. When we get down to levels of detail like the laryngeal hypothesis there are huge holes in the cosmological standard model at least as big as the laryngeal hypothesis. The dark-matter and dark-energy postulates are exactly like the laryngeals. There must have been some, but don't know what they were and how many there were.


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## Dib

linguaquraan-alm said:


> To speak about plausibility  Vs. implausibility  ,let me start with  „historical plausibility „of the available  theories about the origin of  language , would you tell me please  which of these 6 theories -as  examples  only -can be plausible  ?
> 
> http://mentalfloss.com/article/48631/6-early-theories-about-origin-language



I don't know. Maybe none of them, maybe all of them in  different proportions. There is simply no evidence, I am aware of, that  will let me choose any.



> <...>



<...> comparative linguistics - the sort that is concerned with reconstructing  proto-languages and working out language families, is applicable only  in that part of recent human history when human linguistic faculty has  been essentially same as now, so that the empirical observations made  today and conclusions derived from them are still valid throughout that  period. Obviously, this cannot take you as far back in history as the  stage implied by your "at the best mostly  imitating apes and /or animal  voices,infants voices and nature sounds …....without referring to the  human intelligence..." You are confusing two completely different time  scales. Comparative linguistics can only uncover the linguistic history  (so far) on the order of maximum 5-10 thousand years by rough estimates.  Most paleontologists, linguists, etc. would place the genesis of  human language-like systems itself to a much more remote past - in the  order of million years or so. Whether you accept this timeline or not,  the important point is that comparative linguists do *not* claim to be  able to probe into the very beginning of language ability of humans. It  is an underlying assumption that any ancestor language* derived by  comparative method (e.g. Proto-IE or Proto-Semitic or  Proto-Afro-Asiatic) would essentially have a general structure that is  also observed in present day languages all over the world. Given the  shallow time-depth this method claims to probe (as of now), it is not an  unreasonable assumption as we have direct attestation of languages for  the last 5000 years of so (e.g. Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian), and they  do not present any significantly different structure from modern  languages (i.e. they are no more "primitive" or "animal-like" or  whatever). So whether you have problems with (old? Old opposed to what?)  Darwinism or origin-theories of languages, etc. it is not directly  relevant to the discussion of comparative linguistics. Yes, it is weakly  structured on the analogy of biological geneology, especially in the  terminology used (daughter language, language family, etc.) but I don't  think there is any good parallel to the doctrine of "survival of the  fittest" in the framework of comparative linguistics, while that is the  central doctrine of Darwinism. In any case, language evolution is much  easier to observe than biological evolution. I myself know a couple of  languages in their forms separated by about 2000 years, and I see the  evolution clearly, and I can check the principles of  historical/comparative linguistics directly against them, without  referring to such debates as creationism vs Darwinism.

*  Confusingly, the term "proto-language" may be used in two completely  different senses - one in the context of the origin of human language  faculty, where it may be used to designate an early language-like  system, that may not yet be as "sophisticated" as the human languages as  we know. However, when used in the context of comparative historical  linguistics, it simply means an unattested reconstructed ancestor of a  proposed language family. It does not imply any lack of  "sophistication", in fact due to the basic assumptions of the  methodology, it is expected to show all sorts of linguistic  sophistication that any modern language is expected to show. Please  don't confuse these two. Proto-IE is not expected to be any less  sophisticated or less human-like than modern IE languages. It is just an  expected older version of all of them.





> In his last reply 'berndf '' said {{{{





> If we only knew how h1 was pronounced. There are several theories but none of it anything more than speculation. The only thing can reasonably assume is that there were three distinct laryngeals. }}}}}
> Speculations,assumptions  that is the end of our journey.Don't you think that this a real challenge to the  Human intelligence  or ???




Of  course, it is a challenge, that is one of the things that makes the  field interesting. It's true that we do not yet know for sure what h1  sounded like, but we know a lot of its circumstantial properties, and  subsequent development history. Frustrating as it is, not all  information is always retrievable in historical studies. Linguistic  evolution happens to be a "lossy transmission". A lot can be retrieved  through clever linguistic detective work, but not everything. Whether we  can establish a quality for h1,  etc. in future or not, is of course unknown to us, but our lack of  knowledge does not make it implausible. Let me take an analogy from the  field of physics. The basic concept of "mass" is not yet understood.  There are tonnes of theories about the exact origin of mass (search for  "mass generation", and you'll see the mess). We cannot even prove that  gravitational and inertial masses have to be proportional, and yet our  whole concept of mechanics and gravitation is built around this "mass",  which we do not even know what it is. Does that make "mass" implausible?  In my honest opinion, no. I have faith in human intellect, and  hopefully we'll one day find out what it is. Similarly, we cannot answer  all the questions about linguistic reconstructions today. But given  that the trend has always been to find more and more answers, I am  hopeful that many such problems will find resolution in future. (Though  naturally, the questions of theoretical physics, like the nature of  "mass", are not constrained by lossy transmission, like linguistic  evolution. So, historical linguists will obviously have to remain  satisfied with much more modest results than physicists.)




> Can't  those who reconstruct such roots like the one “berndf “ has commented  on , or like this one for example “”*h₃órbʰos : means orphan”, can't  they sit together with Computer Scientists and Programmers or with  artificial speech producer ( I hope this is the right technical term )  and say” we are in trouble ,because we have assumed some sounds   supposed to reconstruct proto roots , but we don't know how were they ,  and how to pronounce them  ,help us by using your knowledge in computer  to reproduce those sound and words and speech  so that we convince  anyone , anytime ??”



I am not sure how computers can help here. As far as I understand,  they are absolutely brilliant in performing repetitive tasks extremely  quickly, but they do not know anything beyond their simple set of  opcodes/instruction sets, and a human programmer has to write a program  in that IS to tell the computer what to do (with the help of some other  programs like editor, compiler, linker, etc. which have also be written  by other humans using the same ISA - you, as an electrical engineer,  would obviously know the ins and outs of it). So, basically, computers  cannot do anything that humans do not KNOW how to do. They can only help  with problems that humans know how to solve, but are either too lazy or  too slow  or too error-prone to solve in realistic time. I don't think  finding pronunciation of h1 or h₃ falls in that category. We simply don't think that we have the necessary evidence (or "input" to the corresponding program).


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## aruniyan

Veru*gu* is a kind of wild cat and  *veru, veri, veruppu *are words that denotes fierce, furious,animosity/hate in Tamil.


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## Ben Jamin

aruniyan said:


> Veru*gu* is a kind of wild cat and  *veru, veri, veruppu *are words that denotes fierce, furious,animosity/hate in Tamil.


What relevance has this information in this thread?


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## linguaquraan-alm

Ben Jamin said:


> What relevance has this information in this thread?


Sorry Ben Jamin
viewing things is relative sometimes ,I think this note has a  relevance to this thread ,i will take it in my regard soon after my next reply to "Dib,berndf,fdb", because this note has inspired me something .


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> Sorry Ben Jamin
> viewing things is relative sometimes ,I think this note has a  relevance to this thread ,i will take it in my regard soon after my next reply to "Dib,berndf,fdb", because this note has inspired me something .


Before you reply, please take good note of this:


Dib said:


> the important point is that comparative linguists do *not* claim to be able to probe into the very beginning of language ability of humans.


To focus this discussion, it is important for you to be aware what the PIE hypothesis implies and even more important what it does *not* imply.

The PIE hypothesis implies that the group of languages we call Indo-European today consists of languages that developed out of a single language that existed *at one point in time*.

It does *not *imply that this language was original, i.e. was the first (complete) language men ever used. It does not imply that speakers of this language were isolated for other groups, e.g. Semitic.

The PIE hypothesis also does *not *exclude the possibility that PIE and the proto languages of other groups, e.g. Proto-Semitic, developed out of a common language that existed before.


linguaquraan-alm said:


> To speak about plausibility Vs. implausibility ,let me start with „historical plausibility „of the available theories about the origin of language , would you tell me please which of these 6 theories -as examples only -can be plausible ?
> 
> http://mentalfloss.com/article/48631/6-early-theories-about-origin-language


The PIE hypothesis make *no *assumption *whatsoever *about the "origin of language". It only makes assumption how a specific group of known, attested languages (alive or dead) developed out of a *specific *hypothetical older language which at the time existed alongside other languages just as modern languages exist alongside today.

*Moderator note: All discussion about "origin of language" as such is off topic in this thread. If you think you have good reason to believe that the PIE hypothesis necessitates a specific assumption about the origin of language approach me by PM and we can discuss it.*


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## linguaquraan-alm

*Dear Discussants ,if you think  my Point of  View has exceeded any limits or beliefs or hurt any of our dear linguists  feelings  here , let me know …..We are  (including me ) here to discuss with pure sportsmanship without any bad intentions ,!!!!*
 

*berndf    : the    relevant root  ““**(*h₁oh₁ḱ-u- ) means:quick** “” has  one of  3  laryngeal consonants  while  the approximation you brought   was something else and  has nothing with Laryngeals  I guess   



			“””
		
Click to expand...

*


> Then it would sound like _chochtschu _which is approximately like a Swiss would pronounce _kocht Schuh _(i.e. the initial <k> replaced by an _ach_-Laut). „“““





Fdb:



> I am not sure that this will clarify anything, but....: Not all Indo-Europeanists believe in the three-laryngeal hypothesis in the same way that not all physicists believe in the big bang. (I have spent a lot of time discussing the big bang theory with my physicist and astrophysicist colleagues in the Senior Common Room and can assure you that this is the case.)There is a difference between wiki-wisdom and academic scepticism. As I have said before, the currently fashionable version of proto-Indo-European does not look like any real language that I know.


Dib ;

 yes it's true what you have said ,  

{{{{{So, basically, computers cannot do anything that humans do  not KNOW how to do. They can only help with problems that humans know how to solve..}}}}}  
I will regard this as a  good argument on behalf of  those  who said  “you are talking about something ,you yourself, don't know “of course without meaning you personaly .
    Comparing, the weakness or  incompetence in such  hypothesis  for the sake of PIE linguists who reconstructed  such  implausible   (or at least  debatable ) roots, with  the argument between  physicists    and  astrophysicist   regarding the  big bang theory as “Fbd' has referred , excuse me  , if I say it's a justification , because the comparison  between these 2 topics is  substantially  not  in  anyone's  behalf , it's a comparison between  the whiteness of  salt   and  whiteness of  suger ,both are white but  substantially of different taste .   Whatever said about Bing Bang , still “”The dark-matter and dark-energy postulates are not (and never  be ) exactly like the laryngeals “””in contrast with  wha t“berndf 'has declared . In worst conditions , the Big Bang was based on Physics and Mathematics ,those two powerful tools  which enabled  Newton to find the weight of the earth and sun while he was sitting on his own desk , which make Einstein regreted  for his  “greatest  .blunder.”by  introduction  (unnecessarily) so -called  the  cosmological constant  in his formula otherwise he would expect  mathematically (from his own  house )the expansion of the universe before Hubble . Now which of these “Hypothesis “ in  PIE reconstruction including   *laryngeal Hypothesis"  has stood on any mathematical  formula, any kind of Math. Logic , minimal statistical estimations ,any  probability theory applications , if you know any please tell me because I am not  aware .*

*On the other hand ,a hypothesis like “ Laryngeals “ has two serious indications  if we still don't know how are they , and as  Wiki says they  have disappeared , means  “obsolete” and no longer exist.This means either things like these don't belong to our “world of reality “ or the evolution of our vocal system had gone in the reverse direction, and costed us loss of  three-laryngeals , in place of increasing our vocal abilities !!!*


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> *berndf : the relevant root ““**(*h₁oh₁ḱ-u- ) means:quick** “” has one of 3 laryngeal consonants while the approximation you brought was something else and has nothing with Laryngeals I guess*


You mustn't take "laryngieal" at face value. We don't know how this phonemes were pronounced, not even if the were real laryngeals. h1 could well have been [x]. The most wide spread assumptions, though, is that it was either  or [?]. 


linguaquraan-alm said:


> *On the other hand ,a hypothesis like “ Laryngeals “ has two serious indications if we still don't know how are they , and as Wiki says they have disappeared , means “obsolete” and no longer exist.This means either things like these don't belong to our “world of reality “ or the evolution of our vocal system had gone in the reverse direction, and costed us loss of three-laryngeals , in place of increasing our vocal abilities !!!*


Nothing like that. The theory only says that *this particular language* (late PIE or its immediate successors) has lost these phonemes and that's why we can't tell what is was. Loss of phonemes in languages happens all the time and sometimes they come back. Latin had the phoneme /h/ which was lost in Vulgar Latin. In Old French it came back only to be lost again in Modern French. Often lost phonemes leave traces. E.g. English has lost the "gh" sound as in _light_. Before the "gh" was lost, the <i> was short. As a result of the loss of "gh" the "i" became long which we know because it is now pronounced [aI] which is the outcome of an earlier [i:]. If we knew only modern English we couldn't say what "gh" stood for. Fortunately we know the same word in closely related languages (_Licht_ in German or _licht_ in Scots) so we know it was /x/ with a possible allophonic realisation [ç].


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## linguaquraan-alm

aruniyan said:


> Veru*gu* is a kind of wild cat and *veru, veri, veruppu *are words that denotes fierce, furious,animosity/hate in Tamil.



The reply posted by “”aruniyan” has attracted my attention , and accordingly “”I will suggest without willing to be involved in endless discussion “ ,two words currently being used in an IE language -German , the other in Semitic language- Arabic.
1- The German verb “fressen” referes to the manner an animal eats up(very rarely referred to human )except when he eats up like an animal ,they describe him “er isst nicht, er frisst (wie ein Schwein) “He is not eating {like human}he is devouring like a pig .Means eating up hungrily greedily and quickly. The other synonyms of this verb “verschlingen ,aufessen ….“ The etymology and original meanings of this verb , is well-established and followed by „Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm '' which can be seen here 
http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GF08681#XGF08681


2--In Ar. As well the verb “ferese فرس '' being used in exactly the same way .

From which the forms participle,and past participle are '' (mu)f(te)ris مفترس ,and “feriesa :فريسة whose meanings and the verb meaning you find here according to “A dictionary Of Modern Written Arabic-Hans Wehr”

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8l5yx8ww9iw3u19/MeaningOf-ferese.pdf?dl=0


you have seen ,the root of “ 'eng. fierce” has been finally found ,distributed on different languages English- Tamil- German – Arabic- and probably more . That was what I was meaning when I referred to the “Unity 'of word languages ,it can be seen clearly sometimes .


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> you have seen ,the root of “ 'eng. fierce” has been finally found ,distributed on different languages English- Tamil- German – Arabic- and probably more . That was what I was meaning when I referred to the “Unity 'of word languages ,it can be seen clearly sometimes .


Except that all you said is pure fiction.

In this case were don't need to go back to hypothetical recontructions. We know from recorded history that _firece _is derived from Latin _ferus_ (_wild_) and _fressen _from _fraetan _("for-eat"). The English cognate of_ fressen_ is to _fret_. In Old English and in Old High German, fretan and frezzan were already two syllable words but in Gothic, the oldest Germanic language of which we have written records, it was still a three syllable word: _fraitan_.

*You cannot base "similarity" of words only on their modern appearances*. Different languages underwent different systematic sound shifts and High German underwend a sound shift from /t/ to /s/ in under certain conditions. This sound shift was specific to that dialect group and didn't occur in other closely related languages or dialects, notably not in Dutch, Low German and English. Many words spelled with <z>, <tz>, <s>, <s> or <ß> were original /t/ or /tt/ sounds. And we know which <s> in modern German words were originally /t/ or /tt/ because, before _Haus _and _aus _rhymed, those /s/-like sounds that derived from earlier /t/ or /tt/ were spelled differently. In older German _Haus _was spelled _hu*s*_ (compare English_ hou*s*e _and Low German _Hu*s*_) and _au*s* _(compare English _ou*t *_and Low German_ u*t*_) was spelled _u*z*_.


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## Dib

linguaquraan-alm said:


> Now which of these “Hypothesis “ in PIE reconstruction including *laryngeal Hypothesis" has stood on any mathematical formula, any kind of Math. Logic , minimal statistical estimations ,any probability theory applications , if you know any please tell me because I am not aware .*



It is a valid objection, and I am really happy you raised this - because I find it far more worth discussing than any of the _resemblances_ you can find between Arabic and English, for example. It is true that statistical theories have not been used in historical linguistics that much, and as a consequence, concrete estimations of "levels of confidence" of reconstructions of particular language families is missing. The page I gave link to before, however, does provide us with a tool to do some rough calculations. Time permitting, I'll work out some examples, and share them here.

Until  then, the most important difference between superficial similarities  and the methods of comparative linguistics is that the second is  extremely strict on the definition of phonetic match. So, once the  following correspondences between Latin and Germanic (for example) are  worked out (these are parts of the celebrated Grimm's and Verner's  laws):
Lat. h ~ Ger. g (e.g. hostis - guest)
Lat. p ~ Ger. f or b* (e.g. pater - father)
Lat. k ~ Ger. h or g* (e.g. cord- - heart)

even  such enticing examples as German "haben" (root: hab- "to have") and  Latin "habeo" (root: hab-/stem: habe- "to have") are no more accepted as  "matches", even though their roots have exactly the same phonetic  make-up. As it happens, the Germanic word does have a Latin "match" -  "capio" (root: kap- "to hold") which asks for some semantic lee-way but  matches the expected form perfectly. This strict form of phonetic  matching takes out the subjectiveness of what is considered "sounding  close", reducing the degree of freedom in phonetic matching per sound in  any root to almost 1, greatly reducing the probability of chance  resemblances (so that we are no more duped into thinking that Latin  habeo and German haben are related, even though they are both  Indo-European languages). On the other hand, it throws up phonetic  "matches" where nobody would otherwise even imagine looking for it (like  German haben and Latin capio). This is what makes comparative  linguistics with its concept of sound correspondence so much more  reliable in establishing linguistic relationships than the plain "they  sound similar" approach.

---
* The distribution of in which  words/word-forms Lat. p corresponds to Germanic f and in which to b, and  similarly k to h or g, is also phonetically predictable, but I won't go  into the details, as you can read up about the two afore-mentioned laws  if you want more information. Actually, you should be already familiar with them, if you are critiquing IE comparative linguistics, as they are as basic to IE-linguistics, especially Germanistics, as the concept of limit is to calculus.


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## linguaquraan-alm

berndf said:


> Except that all you said is pure fiction.*..................You cannot base "similarity" of words only on their modern appearances*..



"""Dreams can be fulfilled one time ,visions come true sometimes """"  this is said by unknown author but i like .
But ,why "*similarity"  *becomes a "powerful tool " when  IE roots reconstructed , but a sin outside  ??? A principle is a principle , must be the same here and there or  ???


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> """Dreams can be fulfilled one time ,visions come true sometimes """"  this is said by unknown author but i like .
> But ,why "*similarity"  *becomes a "powerful tool " when  IE roots reconstructed , but a sin outside  ??? A principle is a principle , must be the same here and there or  ???


I said "You cannot base "similarity" of words only on their* modern appearances*." In the rest of by post I explained in detail what that means. Dib explained the same thing in his #77.


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## linguaquraan-alm

Dib said:


> It is a valid objection, and I am really happy you raised this - because I find it far more worth discussing than any of the _resemblances_ you can find between Arabic and English, for example. It is true that statistical theories have not been used in historical linguistics that much, and as a consequence, concrete estimations of "levels of confidence" of reconstructions of particular language families is missing. The page I gave link to before, however, does provide us with a tool to do some rough calculations. Time permitting, I'll work out some examples, and share them here.
> 
> Until  then, the most important difference between superficial similarities  and the methods of comparative linguistics is that the second is  extremely strict on the definition of phonetic match. So, once the  following correspondences between Latin and Germanic (for example) are  worked out (these are parts of the celebrated Grimm's and Verner's  laws):
> Lat. h ~ Ger. g (e.g. hostis - guest)
> Lat. p ~ Ger. f or b* (e.g. pater - father)
> Lat. k ~ Ger. h or g* (e.g. cord- - heart)
> 
> even  such enticing examples as German "haben" (root: hab- "to have") and  Latin "habeo" (root: hab-/stem: habe- "to have") are no more accepted as  "matches", even though their roots have exactly the same phonetic  make-up. As it happens, the Germanic word does have a Latin "match" -  "capio" (root: kap- "to hold") which asks for some semantic lee-way but  matches the expected form perfectly. This strict form of phonetic  matching takes out the subjectiveness of what is considered "sounding  close", reducing the degree of freedom in phonetic matching per sound in  any root to almost 1, greatly reducing the probability of chance  resemblances (so that we are no more duped into thinking that Latin  habeo and German haben are related, even though they are both  Indo-European languages). On the other hand, it throws up phonetic  "matches" where nobody would otherwise even imagine looking for it (like  German haben and Latin capio). This is what makes comparative  linguistics with its concept of sound correspondence so much more  reliable in establishing linguistic relationships than the plain "they  sound similar" approach.
> 
> ---
> * The distribution of in which  words/word-forms Lat. p corresponds to Germanic f and in which to b, and  similarly k to h or g, is also phonetically predictable, but I won't go  into the details, as you can read up about the two afore-mentioned laws  if you want more information. Actually, you should be already familiar with them, if you are critiquing IE comparative linguistics, as they are as basic to IE-linguistics, especially Germanistics, as the concept of limit is to calculus.


 



Reading the first 4 lines of your reply ,i thought you have  accepted my view , that I  was cheerful  and stopped reading further , till 'brndf'  awakened me from my cheerfulness  and  asked me to read your complete reply  .However , I am still  not convinced  and  need more evidences   or explanations about my question /request regarding  *any mathematical formula, any kind of Math. Logic , minimal statistical estimations ,any probability theory applications , on which the reconstruction of PIE  was based on !! * 

You only confirmed what everybody knows .No one denies ( except blinds)the genetic relations , phonetical similarities( or match as you called them )in your examples   between German and Latin.Who denies that  ???  

But  not on the way IE  linguists try to visualize . In the same way no body (unless blind ) denies such connections between Arabic   and other sisters in the semitic , but not in the  way  they want to visualize ….. Why a lot of such similarities between IE and other languages families are purposely neglected and denied , while they  can prove some kind  of deeper relations than expected !!!!I have shown  in this very thread some  remarkable of such similarities between Ar.as a Semitic language and IE  ,but it is all denied and neglected ????Why ? Because the decision( by the earlier  pioneers of IE studies in the 19th century )had been earlier  taken ,and established  as final ,that no other further  facts will be accepted whatever plausible  they could be  .

1- Statistical estimations don't base  on “very  carefully selected ,prearranged examples by the Supporters of the   a certain  View “ through which they say to their Opponents “have  you seen how strong and right our argument is  !!!!”” no, not in this way !!!!

I have understood  that you, according to“Sense of  possession /ownership „have built a  phonetic matching between Germanic „habe Vs.Latin "capio" (root: kap- "to hold"), i would not ask you about the Logical relationship between „possessing a thing and holding it  or seizing it ,since  to „“seize means taking  hold of  something suddenly and forcibly. „ but i would request you if these two sentences „ are semantically  identical  {{I will  do  nothing except changing the meanings of the words which you describe as perfect match }}  „

 “ I   have gone to the market , I have accompanied my wife „ and  „“I possess/hold  gone to the market ,I possess  accompanied my wife““ ????
Or these two „I have to  take a shower''   Vs.  „I possess/hold   to take a shower   ???and so on.....
Where is the Math. Logic I request to see, in PIE reconstructed root  !!!You have not mentioned  anything related to the „“semantic similarities or reason ability„ between a word and it's root , lack of logic,   lack of  reasonability or let me say plausibility  , here are examples :

They tell you that an English  word like ''speed '' came from a root '*spe- '' which means  

"success, a successful course; power, prosperity, riches, wealth …....“does this make any sense ???
Please give a look to  this website who tells  you why ''fish was called a fish '' click on 'example' to read the story of the fish  


https://korpling.german.hu-berlin.de/~amir/IE_Correspondences.php#


It was called a fish because it is ''slippery '' and he says at the end ''Semantically the connection is reasonable ''' How many things are slippery in our daily life but none of them was called a 'fish““ nobody for example dares  to say to a bald  man  „you have a fish on your head !!!

 A lot of evidences encounter me (regarding the lack of reason-ability between the meaning of a  word and its root meaning)every time when I  search  for   a  root of modern words of our times ,that sometimes I ask  my self   is that the logic on which languages based on  ??

 In order to justify such  unreasonable connection between the root and its semantic indications ,we can say  that the IE linguists were  victims of homonymy  or con-similarity ( words with similar  writing structure but of  absolutely different meanings ) .I think we have to be always careful and not let comparative linguistics fall  in  the 'Trap  of homonyms ''which makes studies seem unreasonable/implausible.

*2- If somebody wants to fulfill requirements of ''minimal statistical estimations ,any probability theory applications “”*
As I request before , let him take (for example , otherwise there is a lot to be done ) a simple word ,thought to be in use  by the ancient people as a root  say ,with C1-V-C2 and   calculate  the possibilities  of C1 sound changes  meaning sounds that C1 can undergo later, within (the total numbers of  sound  or alphabet of that time ) ,same must be done with respect to C2 , then  finding  total possibilities of the whole root change and compare to the number  of languages  of the same family that are still using words derived from that hypothetical root …...and so  on


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## linguaquraan-alm

I have already remembered  a discussion ,last year about  the etymology of   ''finger ''  which is according to most Etymological dictionaries  came from ''PIE *penkwe-,  meaning "five."  Somebody denied this  and said  how can I believe that 'finger' means 'five „ and he suggested a very reasonable suggestion  , he said it would be better if they say that 'finger 'came from same root of the German verb“fangen =to catch , to grasp firmly ''also he added that ''fänger in German means catcher or something which support a good semantic relation …...I supported him in this reasonable  suggestion , but others rejected  his view because the etymological dictionaries have not said what he had said  .  This is what i  meant  ,we have  not  to  fall in the trap  of homonyms which make things unreasonable and implausible


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## myšlenka

linguaquraan-alm said:


> Now which of these “Hypothesis “ in  PIE reconstruction including   *laryngeal Hypothesis"  has stood on any mathematical  formula, any kind of Math. Logic , minimal statistical estimations ,any  probability theory applications , if you know any please tell me because I am not  aware .*


I'm curious. How would you apply statistics, probability theory and formal logic to establish a genetic link between languages?


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## fdb

linguaquraan-alm said:


> I have already remembered  a discussion ,last year about  the etymology of   ''finger ''  which is according to most Etymological dictionaries  came from ''PIE *penkwe-,  meaning "five."  Somebody denied this  and said  how can I believe that 'finger' means 'five „ and he suggested a very reasonable suggestion  , he said it would be better if they say that 'finger 'came from same root of the German verb“fangen =to catch , to grasp firmly ''also he added that ''fänger in German means catcher or something which support a good semantic relation …...I supported him in this reasonable  suggestion , but others rejected  his view because the etymological dictionaries have not said what he had said  .  This is what i  meant  ,we have  not  to  fall in the trap  of homonyms which make things unreasonable and implausible



DWDS writes:

*Finger* m.  ‘jedes der fünf Endglieder der Hand’, ahd. _fingar_ (8. Jh.), mhd. _vinger_, asächs. _fingar_, mnd. _vinger_, mnl. _vingher_, nl. _vinger_, aengl. engl. _finger_, anord. _fingr_, schwed. _finger_, got. _figgrs_. Germ. _*fengra-_ kann auf eine Bildung mit ie. _ro-_ Suffix zur ie. Form des Zahlworts  fünf  (s. d.) zurückgehen, so daß ie. _*penku̯ro-_  anzusetzen wäre, das dann für  ‘einen aus der Gesamtheit der fünf  Finger’ gelten würde.* Aber auch Anschluß an die Verbalwurzel von fangen (germ. *fanhan  ‘fassen, ergreifen’) mit einem Ansatz ie. *penkro- ist möglich. *


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## Dib

linguaquraan-alm said:


> However , I am still not convinced and need more evidences or explanations about my question /request regarding *any mathematical formula, any kind of Math. Logic , minimal statistical estimations ,any probability theory applications , on which the reconstruction of PIE was based on !! *




And I promised I'd do some rough calculations. So, here you go:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m0dqkmlryc70w1z/PIE_probability.pdf?dl=0




linguaquraan-alm said:


> You only confirmed what everybody knows .No one denies ( except blinds)the genetic relations ,





linguaquraan-alm said:


> phonetical similarities( or match as you called them )in your examples between German and Latin.Who denies that ???
> 
> But not on the way IE linguists try to visualize .



Firstly, subjective phonetic similarity and sound correspondence-based matches are not the same thing - not just "as I call them". That was all my "haben, habeo, capio" example was about. Or, are you arguing that subjective similarity is statistically more significant than sound correspondences? If you do, then just go through the calculations in the website I previously gave link to. I am repeating again for easy reference:
http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm




linguaquraan-alm said:


> Why a lot of





linguaquraan-alm said:


> such similarities between IE and other languages families are purposely neglected and denied , while they can prove some kind of deeper relations than expected !!!!




Three points I'll like to address here:
1) No, the similarities you are proposing are not such as the correspondences in IE or Semitic.
2) It's a big allegation of dishonesty to say that they are "purposely" neglected. What purpose?
3) Yes, they have been denied so far, as enough evidence for a relation between IE and Semitic. The reasons are in the same line as those in the zompist web-page, only the style of presentation may be different. But that is not the end of the story. As has been mentioned time and again before, there are serious, linguistically informed scholars who are trying to gather actually statistically significant data. <...>


linguaquraan-alm said:


> I have shown in this very thread some remarkable of such similarities between Ar.as a Semitic language and IE ,but it is all denied and neglected ????Why ? Because the decision( by the earlier pioneers of IE studies in the 19





linguaquraan-alm said:


> th century )had been earlier taken ,and established as final ,that no other further facts will be accepted whatever plausible they could be .




Let me make it simple. There is obviously a difference between what you consider "remarkable evidence" and what historical linguists do. Under such circumstances, I don't see any other way than to do an actual statistical analysis. Obviously, I am not asking for an accurate full-fledged calculation, as that will be too huge an undertaking. Instead, just choose the evidence that you think is the most significant, and make an approximate estimation of its statistical signifiance. I have done the same for what I thought was some of the best evidence for a part of the IE family.



linguaquraan-alm said:


> 1- Statistical estimations don't base on “very carefully selected ,prearranged examples by the Supporters of the a certain View “ through which they say to their Opponents “have you seen how strong and right our argument is !!!!”” no, not in this way !!!!



To use statistical jargon, you are talking about sampling bias. It's a valid objection, and in my write-up, I address this problem in Section 4.2. Let me know your thoughts on that.




linguaquraan-alm said:


> ... but i would request you if these two sentences „ are semantically identical {{I will do nothing except changing the meanings of the words which you describe as perfect match }} „





linguaquraan-alm said:


> “ I have gone to the market , I have accompanied my wife „ and „“I possess/hold gone to the market ,I possess accompanied my wife““ ????
> Or these two „I have to take a shower'' Vs. „I possess/hold to take a shower ???and so on.....




May I suggest you read up a bit about the process of grammaticalization? How lexical elements become grammatical elements? The "have" in "I have gone" or "I have to go" are such grammaticalized elements. Etymonline says, the second usage even showed up as late as 1570s for the first time. Nobody claims that linguistically uninformed mechanical comparisons can give us the best result. I also addressed this issue in my write-up: the mechanical comparison in Sections 2,3, and linguistically informed one in Section 5.

On the other hand, it is perfectly true that it is hard to quantify what constitutes good semantic match. The zompist website tries to quantify it in some ways. In any case, IE linguistics is not insulated from this problem, but the IE linguists have tried to minimize the problem in various ways, one of the most effective ones, in my opinion, is to compare grammatical elements and numbers (See, my write-up Sec 4.1).



linguaquraan-alm said:


> You have not mentioned anything related to the „“semantic similarities or reason ability„ ...





linguaquraan-alm said:


> They tell you that an English word like ''speed '' came from a root '*spe- '' which means "success, a successful course; power, prosperity, riches, wealth …....
> Please give a look to this website who tells you why ''fish was called a fish '' ... It was called a fish because it is ''slippery ''



Yes, I also find these far fetched semantic connections. I won't dare to build my theory of PIE reconstruction and IE language family based on such flimsy connections. So, why do IE linguists still talk about them? Because, IE family proposal is not based on such flimsy proposals, but is already very well-established based on more solid evidence. And only once we are already confident about these relationships, that such more tenuous semantic links are entertained as possible - more in the spirit of not contradicting what has already been established. There may be some people out there who would bet their life on such semantic connections; I am not one of them. If I had no other evidence to prove the sound-correspondences between Sanskrit and English, I'll most certainly pronounce "fish ~ picch-ala" as inconclusive.



linguaquraan-alm said:


> In order to justify such unreasonable connection between the root and its semantic indications ,we can say that the IE linguists were victims of homonymy ... I think we have to be always careful and not let comparative linguistics fall in the 'Trap of homonyms ''which makes studies seem unreasonable/implausible.



Perfectly valid concern, and IE linguists are aware of the problem. So, it is especially important at the initial phase of the proposal of any new linguistic connection to be able to have perfect control over these whimsical semantics. IE linguists achieved that partly using grammatical elements, partly using only very basic words, like numbers - one is one - there is no semantic leeway there. But once you have the structure in place, and if you are on the right track of reconstruction, you'll start to see more and more phonetic matches with a bit more lax semantic match. But when evaluating the soundness of a claim of linguistic relationship, these should always be regarded as weaker/secondary evidence.


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## Dib

linguaquraan-alm said:


> *2- If somebody wants to fulfill requirements of ''minimal statistical estimations ,any probability theory applications “”*
> As I request before , let him take (for example , otherwise there is a lot to be done ) a simple word ,thought to be in use by the ancient people as a root say ,with C1-V-C2 and calculate the possibilities of C1 sound changes meaning sounds that C1 can undergo later, within (the total numbers of sound or alphabet of that time ) ,same must be done with respect to C2 , then finding total possibilities of the whole root change and compare to the number of languages of the same family that are still using words derived from that hypothetical root…...and so on


What you are proposing does not sound very different from what comparative linguists actually do. They formulate through sound laws, specific to each descendent language, that under such and such phonetic circumstances (e.g. at the end of a word, or before s, or even across the board), the sound A becomes the sound B in a particular descendent language. So, given a root of structure C1-V-C2, they can theoretically predict exactly what phonetic shape it will have in each of the descendent languages. This way of describing the procedure is accurate, but a bit like putting the cart before the horse, because normally in the beginning we only know the forms in the descendent languages, and have no idea about what it might have looked like in the ancestral one, or even whether there was a common ancestral language to start with. The rest of the activities of the comparative linguists is to work out which of these forms might be related, what their ancestral form might be, and what are the sound laws involved in the development of each of the descendent languages. I fail to see what improvement you are proposing.


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## berndf

linguaquraan-alm said:


> It was called a fish because it is ''slippery '' and he says at the end ''Semantically the connection is reasonable ''' How many things are slippery in our daily life but none of them was called a 'fish““ nobody for example dares  to say to a bald  man  „you have a fish on your head !!!


This was a side remark about Sanskrit and rather unimportant. What matters far more is that _fish_, Latin _piscis_ and Russian _пескарь _are a exact matches with respect to the root _pVsk_.

What matters for establishing group relationships is to be able to derive systematic shift patters that *simultaneously* produce a large number of (obvious) matches. "Hand crafted" explanations for individual words are almost always meaningless because you can't know, if it is a chance coincidence or not.



linguaquraan-alm said:


> I have already remembered  a discussion ,last year about  the etymology of   ''finger ''  which is according to most Etymological dictionaries  came from ''PIE *penkwe-,  meaning "five."  Somebody denied this  and said  how can I believe that 'finger' means 'five „ and he suggested a very reasonable suggestion  , he said it would be better if they say that 'finger 'came from same root of the German verb“fangen =to catch , to grasp firmly ''also he added that ''fänger in German means catcher or something which support a good semantic relation …...I supported him in this reasonable  suggestion , but others rejected  his view because the etymological dictionaries have not said what he had said  .  This is what i  meant  ,we have  not  to  fall in the trap  of homonyms which make things unreasonable and implausible


As fdb quoted, etymological dictionaries quote a relation to _*penkʷros_ only as *one* possibility. A relation the the verb _fangen _is also possible though not a derivations from the noun _Fänger_ as that word is younger than _finger_ and linguists don't believe in time-travel.

_Finger _is a word that is only attested in Germanic languages and any reconstruction further remote in time that Proto-Germanic is therefore always doubtful.


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## Erkattäññe

Gavril said:


> I don't doubt that it is possible to theoretically distinguish [kW] from [kw] using subtle phonetic criteria, but I don't think it is necessary to posit an absolute distinction between *kW and *kw in Indo-European. Apparent instances of *kw (what you call a sequence of two phonemes) may simply be the syllable *ku- preceding a vowel: e.g. the word for “dog” may have been pronounced *ku(w)o:n in the nominative singular, and the word for “horse” may have been pronounced *eku(w)os.



There is evidence for what you say. Confront greek "kyo:n" and not **k(f)o:n and for "horse" I've read it may be a thematiced u stem.


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## Erkattäññe

Two "satem" reflexes for g'a:ns without palatalization: _*Polish* gęś, *Alb.* gatë

_Conclusions: 
1: the root *did* participate in ablaut.
2: another counterexample for reconstructing palatovelars beside pure velars.


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