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.

Comments

[Glen Gordon]

[这个好]

Thanks a lot for the plug :)

I would reckon that in order to begin to establish the existence of a para-dialect of a protolanguage, much like establishing the validity of the protolanguage itself, one needs to find systematic changes in a particular region, at least as a base for whatever further evidence one finds to justify its shadow presence.

One can't logically deny a possibility that *welkʷ-/*welp- is the product of substrate influence. However, speaking as a devil's advocate, we need more to go on. Perhaps one would then look for evidence of a systematic change of /kʷ/ to /p/ in known IE dialects and non-IE languages that entered that region at that time. The problem is that such a sound change isn't uncommon and is a minor event. It requires no substrate to occur and ergo, by Occam's Razor, the hypothesis of "There is no discernible substrate to be seen in this" is the optimal solution. Basing the existence of a particular para-IE substrate on a trivial sound change probably won't yield much result.

I'm of course saddened to say mean things like that. If only it was easier to nab para-dialects in the act. So while I think language waves have so much potential, they also require a vast amount of effort, combing through data and heavy contemplating, much like... say... finding planets based on minor gravitational/optical irregularities in stars. Basically, we're looking for a linguistic "Doppler Effect" in the data.

 

[PhoeniX]

[this is good] I realise that the sound change isn't uncommon. Therefore it can be
hard to find it in the Celtic languages, and to a lesser extent in
Greek. But most other Indo-European languages have not had such a *kʷ>*p shift, not until recorded history at any rate.

What I'm trying to get at, is that in Indo-European there seems to be a sporadic alternation between*kʷ and *p. The explanation I opted of some para-Indo-European language which may have had this shift is far out there I know. Therefore don't consider this blog entry as trying to prove that this is the case. I'm only suggesting that there might be reason to look further into it.

And in fact, as I was on Snowboarding holiday my head exploded with ideas how to further look into it (Linguistics never leaves you alone, not even while going down the mountain with dizzying speeds :D). So expect an update soon ;)

[Ivan Štambuk]

Beside Indo-Iranian, *wl̥kʷos was regularly reflected also in Balto-Slavic (Lith. vilkas, EPSl. *wilku > LPSl. *vьlkъ (OCS vlьkъ), Tocharian B  walkwe, and Albanian ulk.

Latin lupus was either borrowed from Oscan-Umbrian where *kʷ regularly gave p (just as in P-Celtic), or one can, because of a tabu, reconstruct earlier *lukʷos with *l and *w metathesized. Sometimes the alternative variant *wl̥pos is reconstructed which would account for Germanic *wulfaz and Hittite ulippana. However, in that case one has to add meaning "fox" to it because it would give also yield Latin volpes.

Alternatively, one can assume that the noun *wĺ̥kʷos was in fact petrified adjective *wl̥kʷós "bad", which was reflected in Old Irish olc, Hittite walkuwa- and Vedic vṛ́ka-tāt "rapacity". Deadjectivalization is indicated in stress shift (on ablaut *o instead of a syllabic liquid), which is typical of deadjectival nouns (cf. Vedic kṛṣṇá ́"black" as an adjective vs. kṛ́ṣṇa "black, darkness" as a noun). Similar semantic shift can be seen in Germanic: Old Norse vargr both "wolf" and a "criminal, villain", 

[PhoeniX]

I'm a huge opponent of the 'tabu'-theory. It does not seem logical to me that Indo-Europeans had such a well established view of their own phonology that they'd actually be able to switch up two phonemes following each other.

Besides that I'd like to add that Tocharian B's walkwe is rather dangerous to call a known cognate. Although it looks a lot like it; it's a rather inverse translation.

We translate walkwe as 'wild beast' because it looked like *wl̥kʷos, rather than that it is absolutely clear from the context. I don't think there are any other words known in Tocharian that accounts for a vocalic *l, which makes it even more dangerous. :D

And yeah, I thought Balto-Slavic also reflected that word. But since I have next to know knowledge of Balto-Slavic, I'd rather not discuss it, and leave it up to people who, apparently, have better knowledge of it, like you ;-).