PhDniX's blog

Wolves, wolps, and lupes

I promised a while ago that I'd be writing down the phonology of Hittite on this blog. I am still at it, it's turning out to be enormous. But please be patient, while you wait I'll have some musings on the origin of the Indo-European wolf.

Wolf is a very odd word, because finding the 'right' root is actually far more difficult than you'd think. Traditionally we reconstruct *ul̥kʷos (*l is vocalised, your fonts may not place the vocalisation circle correctly.)

But normally we'd expect the reflex of *kʷ in Proto-Germanic to be *ƕ [ʍ] or the Verner variant *gʷ, not *f as seen in English, German and Dutch Wolf. *f can only come from PIE *p. To explain this odd switch between *kʷ and *p some people have proposed a sound law like the following:

*kʷ  > *p /R̥_ Or: *kʷ becomes *p after a vocalised resonant. Other such ad hoc explanations could be found, to explain the shift, simply because the environment is quite rare. I for one, would not know any other root with the same environment. Since there's no real way to disprove or approve such a law, we should be careful with accepting it.

But we haven't run out of odd Germanic cognates yet. We also have the word whelp. Arguably this word could be completely unrelated, but the build up is rather similar. Cognates to this word are O.S. hwelp, O.N. hvelpr, Du. welp, Ger. hwelf

A proto-Germanic form of this word would be expected to be *ƕelpaz. The most natural reconstruction of this word in PIE would then be *kʷélbos. Bizarre, I know but the similarity in root is striking. But the Indo-European word has a *b, which immediately makes it suspect. It looks like whelp actually developed in Proto-Germanic rather than Indo-European.

Proto-Germanic form of wolf is *wulfaz. *ƕelpaz looks as if the *w devoiced, and the  *f hardened. Besides that  the root has e-grade instead of Ø-grade. There really is no proper way to explain such changes, and maybe I'm completely wrong in assuming a relation between the two. But it's worth mentioning in this blog entry about the word wolf. Some propose the word to be onomatopoeic, but the same could be said for the Indo-European word for wolf.

There's one more very odd word ON. Vargr 'Outlaw, Wolf', but ModIc Vargur means 'fox', the Old English word is Warg, and referred to a particularly evil kind of wolf.

This word, if related to the above cited root for wolf, has also gone through some very odd sound changes. The hypothatical proto-Germanic form would be **wargʷaz
First of all, it seems to have a a-grade in the root. Then there's the *g which is a Verner variant of *ƕ. This would then mean at some point the accent would have been on the last syllable at some point. In PIE we'd expect *uolkʷós. Another odd thing is of course the *r rather than the *l. But this shouldn't surprise us too much, r/l switching is a 'common' sporadic shift.

I suggest we now leave the confusing  bunch of words that we know as the Germanic wolf-words and focus on some other languages.

First Greek. In Greek we find the word λὐκος. I can see you guys frowning! That's right, the *l and *u switched places, besides that this word reconstucts perfectly fine: PIE *lukʷos. This is not a normal process, not in Greek not in any language. Greek is known for its funky metathesis though (compare γυμνος to 'naked'), but even for Metathesis-happy Greek this metathesis is very funky.

There is a possibility that the word λὐκος comes straight from *ul̥kʷos though. One could assume a Proto-Greek form *ϝλάϙος /wlákʷos/ after which the labial element influenced the ά to colour to ὐ. Not something intirely dissimilar happens to κὐκλος <*kʷékʷlos where the é is influenced by the labial element. We have no indication though, that this happens to *a as well, and even less evidence that this labial-colouring occurred after the appearance of a through the vocalisation of the *l and in fact that seems fairly unlikely to me.

Let's take another word! Latin this time, lupus. Again a *lu- variant rather than *ul-. Interesting back in the days that people suggested that Latin and Greek may have been closely linked, but by now we know this isn't at all the case, which makes it all the more puzzling. I don't know much of Latin but lupus seems to only be able to go back to *lupos. Both the *p variant and the *lu variant in one word! Can it get any crazier? No it can't, and that's why we're now going to discuss Sanskrit!

Sanskrit has वृकः vṛkaḥ. Wow that one goes right back to *ulkʷos! Coincidence? I think not. This is yet another example of the shameless Sanskrit-centricity in almost anything we reconstruct in Indo-European. Something we should discourage. How is it that of the Major branches only this branch truly displays *ulkʷos and therefore, for some reason gets a more important status than the rest? Just because Sanskrit has a lot of archaisms, we can not just assume every word that's different from the rest is an archaism.  But okay enough venting of frustrations on Sanskrit-centricity (Hah! how's that for a neologism!).

So, now having discussed several appearances of the word 'wolf' what kind of conclusions are we going to draw from this? In fact I could still continue for example, telling about the seemingly similar root for 'fox' and also 'lynx' which looks like an n-infixed form of lycos. But that would make this entry even bigger than it already is, so I might discuss that some other time.

There's quite a few things we could come up with, and none of them are absolutely convincing. But let me mention just a few ideas worth mentioning

I'm not a great fan of Pokorny, and in my humble opinion, no one should be one. But he does have quite a nice explanation for this word. He proposes that the root *uelkʷ- is somehow related to the verbal root *uelp- 'to yelp', howl etc. This is in fact quite interesting, it would explain the seemingly random *kʷ/p alternations. I don't know of any other roots, but I do know it's not uncommon that *kʷ alternates with *p. Why this is, is absolutely beyond me. But it does give some nice options. Though it leaves the *lu~ul  metathesis unexplained.

Other explanations would say that the 'fear' for such wild animals as wolves would give birth to Taboo words, explaining the odd root formations. I find this absolutely implausible. Simply because such metatheses as *lu~ul are much to 'subtile'. When we see words being inverted, as for example in verlan, we see that this is not done per phoneme but often per syllable. It's not very likely that this is truly a taboo formation.

Another theory, which I've been theorising myself (although undoubtedly other people thought of it too) is the following.
Obviously what we know as Proto-Indo-European was not a sole linguistic entity in the area. It's likely there were other languages, and not just other language families, but sister languages of Indo-European itself too. Similar to how Dutch is a sister language to English. If countless languages develop from English and thus becomes the proto-language of a new family tree, while Dutch dies out, it doesn't mean Dutch never existed. Loan words from other such Indo-Europaic languages are not at all unlikely. Nor is it unlikely that such a sister language had a shift like **kʷ>**p. Did we loan the word for wolf from one of these sister languages? We can never be sure.

We could also explain the *lu- variants with this. In one of these sister languages, it's not at all unlikely that a vocalic *l  developed to *lu giving a **wlu-like cluster. I find it unlikely any language would retain a horrible cluster like **wl- which would lead to the disappearance of **w.

It is then absolutely possible to imagine sister languages with realistic sound shifts giving the results Indo-European has. But what would be the reason for taking over the word for wolf from these odd people? Why not keep our own?

Another idea might be that there was a substrate language, maybe even something Finno-Ugric, without the phoneme *kʷ, making it *p by sound substitution. Similarly a vocalic *l is easily pronounced *lu when said language has no such thing as vocalic consonants. But once again, why did a substrate language have such great influence on a word that doesn't have little importance within one's basic vocabulary of a prehistoric culture?

All very nice ideas very little conclusions. Feel free to add any idea's, no matter how crazy, I'm interested in what you think.

DISCLAIMER
I'd just like to thank Glen Gordon for making me realise that of course there must have been Indo-Europaic languages around Proto-Indo-European, and not just languages of other languages families. This possibility never occurred to me before, while it's actually so obvious.

Genitivesis Issue or the Genitivos Issue?

So, I had my Hittite 2 test today. It included Hittite, Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian. It went fine, but as I was busy working with it, I stumbled upon the last question of the test which went as follows: What can you tell about the genitive in Anatolian languages?

The answer was easy enough, and I'll give it as an introduction that is to come.

Anatolian languages seem to have two separate ways of creating a genitive construction. One is by the typical genitive ending suffixed to the possesor. This is Proto-Anatolian *-as (Hitt. -aš, Luw. -as, Lyc. -eh). This just goes back to the typical Indo-European genitive suffix *-ós (although some might argue it's the other way around).

What is interesting about the *-ós suffix though, is that it is also seen in the Anatolian a-stems (PIE o-stems), while in the later PIE languages we tend to find the pronominal *-eso, or even a *-esio (and maybe *-eio).

The other way of creating a genitive construction is the -ssi- suffix (Luw. -esi, Lyc. -ehi), oddly enough this formation seems to be absent in Hittite, while it is dominant in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian, and the only formation in Cuneiform Luwian. This formation is typically Anatolian and works quite different from what you're used to.

I'll give an example of both the traditional genitive construction, and the Anatolian genitive.

Both forms can be found in a Lycian trilingual on the founding of Xanthos (a Lycian city). The *-as genitive is used as a so called onomastic genitive (a genitive used for names), while the *-ssi- genitive is used for nouns.

ẽke Trm̃isñ χssaϑrapazate Pigesere Katamlah tideimi 
'When Pigesere son of Katamla became Xadrape of Lycia....'
The Genitive construction here is Katamlah tideimi. where -ah goes back to *-as (though we would expect **-eh, but there's still many things we don't fully understand about the *a>e shift in Lycian.)

se-t-ahñtãi χñtawatehi χbidẽñnehi sey-ArKKazumahi
'and to be of the king of Kaunos, and of Arkesima'
And there we have, not one, not two, but three -ssi-genitives!
χñtawatehi, χbidẽñnehi, ArKKazumahi. What's interesting (though not particularly visible in this example), about the -ssi- suffix, is that it makes it a new noun, which afterwards, just conjugates like any normal noun. So *-ssi-s is the Nominative, *-ssi-n is the accusative, etc.

So here is approximately where I ended my answer, and, my answer had less cool examples and diachronic notes, but you get the point.

So, now that we have an overview of Anatolian genitives. Let's look at some other Indo-European languages.
First Greek:
Standard for all consonant stems is the -ος genitive. For example:
πατηρ > πατρος
o-stems though, work differently. they end in -ου. For example:
ἱππος > ἱππου
This ending could come from a variety of sources.
Some idea's are: *eso, *eo, *ejo but definitely not *esio. The first *e could also be an *o, and technically the final *o could be an *e if the first letter is an *o. *eo is dismissable if we're to assume it's from an Indo-European origin.

*eso is the most likely, since this is what we see in the pronouns, which in most cases seem to work the same as the o-stems.

Gothic has -is, which should be safely derrived from *eso as well.

But then comes Sanskrit to screw it all up!
Taking the same examples (etymologically) as Greek:
pitā > pituḥ पिता > पितुः
This formation is rather weird, I believe it points to a *-r-s ending, and thus proterodynamic rather than hysterodynamic as seen in Greek. It's not that relevent though, the word for horse (an a-stem (PIE *o-stem)) shows a very odd genitive:

aśvaḥ > aśvasya  अश्वः > अश्वस्य

An -asya suffix. This could be from a variety of sources, the likeliest ones are *esio or *osio. It might just be me, but I think the -sy- part looks an awful lot like the Anatolian *-ssi- suffix e-si-o. An *e thematic vowel, *-si- suffix, and an *-o ending. What exactly this *o-ending would be is unclear. Maybe it's an *-e, and then it would be an old vocative suffix. Maybe it's based on the pronominal ending *-eso which might have sounded enough like *-esi to start influencing each other.

When I presented this idea to a fellow student of mine, he pointed out the rather odd dative plural of consonant stems in Greek, which is made with a -σι(ν) suffix as well!

It's hard to explain how a genitive *-si- ended up in a dative plural. But the current explanation isn't too satisfying either. People generally compare it with the Sanskrit locative suffix -su सु/षु. But an ablaut of i/u isn't what we like to see in Indo-European.

So to conclude. There's two types of genitive constructions in Anatolian languages. The true genitive *-as and the genitival stem extension *-ssi-. There are some indications, especially in Sanskrit, that this suffix may have already existed in Indo-European itself, but only ended up being productive as a separate category in the Anatolian languages.

I am quite sure there's other Indo-European languages that have evidence for a -si- genitive like Sanskrit does, maybe Slavic languages? I'm not sure, but if you know, please leave a message.

A bit of Tangut

I'm not spending nearly as much time on Tangut as I hoped I would when I started this blog. But that's okay, there are many other very interesting languages I post regularly about. But recently I have found myself a Tangut Dictionary[1], so I can finally properly commence my translation endeavours. I decided I'd first start making word-per-word analyses of sentence I already have someone else's translation of.
Here then are some of the results so far:

Tangut1

dzjwo2	gjɨ	ŋa2	·jij1	lạ1	kjɨ1	zow2	ŋa2
person	one, indef.	I, me	gen-abs	hand	perfective	grab	1sg

'Some person grabbed my hand'
Grammatical notes:
kjɨ is a perfective prefix connected with the verb zow. There's 6 of these prefixes, which one belongs to which verb is mostly lexically fixed. Apparently there's some indication that it used to be an indication of direction (which is still seen in some of Tangut's sister languages like Qiang).
This 6 prefix system is also seen with the Optative prefix, of which one day we'll surely see more. But it's very rare.

ŋa is the agreement suffix, always placed directly behind the verb (tense marking can still follow). Note how this is the exact same character/sound as I. This should actually be seen as a verbal conjugation that happens to be homophonous to the pronoun rather than pronoun repetition. Agreement in Tangut is quite complex, but technically speaking it agrees to the pronoun in the sentence if there is one. But not only the suffix is part of the agreement, also the vowel of the preceeding verb ablauts giving extra accuracy. Not all verbs have ablaut though. I hope this is one of them.
Because it looks like a theme 2 verb. theme 2 with 1sg suffix means that first person is subject, and 3rd person is object.
While a theme 1 verb with a 1 sg suffix means first person is object and either 2nd or 3rd is subject.

A quick searched turned out that there does not seem to be an ablauting form of this stem. Therefore the meaning technically speaking is ambiguous. Obviously though, it's far more sensical that it means 'Someone grabbed my hand'  rather than  'my hand grabbed someone'.

·jij This is the genitive-absolutive suffix. When it's placed between two objects, it will create a possessive construction. While, when it's just placed after a noun phrase, it's the marker of the absolutive (Subject of intransitive verbs, object of transitive verbs). I'm quite sure the genitive use is limited to not be used as the subject of a transitive verb. There the relation would just be expressed by juxtaposition of two nouns. But don't pin me down on that, we'll see about this later.

dzjwo gjɨ It's interesting to see that this subject of a transitive verb does not take the ergative marker. The ergative marker is often elided, and the formation gives the impression that it might be artificial. More about that later.

[1] Tangut Dictionary

[EDIT] O and I almost forgot, happy new year to everyone who's reading!