About the Egyptian symbol of life <ânkh>

On this Egyptian wall painting the king Tut receives <ânkh> from Hathor. The jackal-head god Anubis also holds a <ânkh> in his right hand. He was the measurer of souls: light souls with no guilt are saved, heavy souls are doomed.

The conventional reading <ânkh> is made up of consonants only [ˁ n x]: a voiced pharyngeal, a nasal and a voiceless velar fricative. This word is attested in Coptic as anaš ‘to breathe’ with the usual palatalization of velar fricatives. Coptic anaš translates Greek αναπνευειν. This Egyptian word is an obvious cognate of PIE *H2enH1- ‘to breathe, to blow’, from which Latin anima and Greek ανεμος are derived. It can be noted that the laryngeal H1 is [x]: a voiceless velar fricative.   

As regards the symbol <ânkh> itself it must be underlined that it has nothing to do with souls, gods or life. Its origin is very modest and derives from another homophonous root ‘to bind’. The symbol is the drawing of a sandal shoe strapping.

In the meaning ‘to bind’ the root [ˁ n x] is cognate with PIE *s-neH1- ‘to bind, sew’, with s-mobile as in the English word needle < *neH1-tl-om. Here again the laryngeal H1 is [x] a voiceless velar fricative.

All the best. A.

About the Glottalic Theory of Proto-Indo-European

The Proto-Indo-European language, or PIE in short, is the ancestor of most European languages, apart from Basque, an isolate, and Finno-Baltic and Hungarian, which are Uralic. English derives from Proto-Germanic, itself from PIE.

According to the traditional reconstruction PIE had three types of consonants: (1) voiceless ones like k, p, t, (2) voiced ones like g, (b), d, and (3) voiced aspirate ones like gh, bh, dh. The voiced labial *b was extremely rare. It has long been noted that this system of stops is impossible and does not fulfil the requirements of typology and theoretical phonology. For that matter phonologists have proposed to reinterpret the traditional features in a new framework called the Glottalic Theory: (1) voiceless stops remain the same: k, p, t, (2) voiced stops are relabeled glottalized: like g < kˀ, (b < pˀ), d < tˀ, (3) voiced aspirate stops are just voiced: g, b, d. Aspiration is irrelevant in the Glottalic framework.

Most Indo-Europeanists do not adhere to the Glottalic Theory, but in the past days we have examined several loanwords that were adjusted in Indo-European languages with aspirates instead of “voiced” phonemes when they should not if so-called “voiced” phonemes were really voiced. (1) *ib ‘elephant’ > Latin ebur, Sanskrit ibha, (2) Berber *bid ‘monkey’ > Greek pithekos, (3) Luwian *barz ‘iron’ > Latin ferrum, Englis brass, (4) Sumerian gude ‘lute’ > Greek kithara, (5) Hurro-Urartean dabiri ‘blacksmith’ > Latin faber.

These numerous examples show that the so-called “voiced” phonemes cannot have been voiced originally and that the so-called aspirates were indeed voiced.

Best. A.

About blacksmiths, swords and iron (Part III)

Today, I will explain the origin of the words: Latin ferrum and English brass.

It would seem that the inventors of iron-casting were the Hattis in Central Anatolia. In Hatti and Hurrian iron is called habalgi. This word is the locative of a place called Balgi: ha- ‘in’ and Balgi in Hatti. Hurrian is a direct borrowing of Hatti. The place name is attested as URU Hawalgina and URU Hawargina (not on the map above). Note that this place name has either l or r.

Another set of words for ‘iron’ is based on *barz-:

- Kartvelian Svan berež ‘iron’

- Semitic with b: Ugaritic brdl, Phoenician brzl, Arabic firzil ‘iron’

- Semitic with p: Akkadian parzillu, Aramean przl, Epigraphic South Arabic frzn, Arabic firzil ‘iron’

This root *barz is the origin of Latin and English. It can be noted that Phoenician was probably borrowed in Berber: Tachelhit wuzzal, etc.

Apparently habalgi and *barz, *barzil cannot be connected but it must be first noted that the suffix –illu of barzillu is Luwian. Next this language has a sound change ğ > z, so that the unprefixed form balg, barg can be compared with barz. Luwian is the intermediary language which changed Hatti (ha)balgi, (ha)bargi into barz and passed it on to Semitic languages and then western mediterranean countries.

Best. A.

About blacksmiths, swords and iron (Part II)

The English word sword with its skeleton of consonants swr-d can be compared with some ancient Anatolian words : Hurrian sawri, Urartean sure, which was borrowed into Armenian sour, sor. This is the second word of Hurro-Urartean origin, after dabiri, dabrinni 'blacksmith', in relationship with metallurgy.

The next point which will require more developments is the case of Latin ferrum 'iron' when compared to English brass. Both words are coherent with a pseudo-root *bhers-. This root can then be compared with Near-Eastern words like Hebrew barzil 'iron'. It can be noted that this is one more word where *b becomes a pseudo-aspirate *bh.


Interestingly, Latin and English can then be compared according to these three words:


- dabiri, attested in Latin faber, not in English,
- sawri, not in Latin, attested in English sword,
- barz, attested in Latin ferrum and English brass.


It is quite obvious that these three words have travelled around the Mediterranean together as a semantic group of loanwords.


Best. A.

About Blacksmiths, swords and iron (Part I)

Anatolia is well-known for its contribution to the development of metallurgy and iron-casting. Among the numerous loanwords in Armenian that can be traced to the Hurro-Urartean substrate, a particularly interesting one is: darbin blacksmith < unattested Urartean dabrenni, attested Hurrian tabrenni. This word was also borrowed into Sumerian as tibira.

The most interesting feature is that on the surface Armenian darbin could also be compared with Latin faber. Both words correspond well enough to reconstruct a pseudo-root *dhabh-r-. It is quite clear that Latin is also a loanword from this Anatolian source.

Once again it can be noted that voiced phonemes become so-called voiced aspirated in Indo-European languages.

Wanderworts seldom travel alone. Next time I will explain the words sword and brass.

Best. A.

About luths and guitars

This is a very ancient depiction of a Sumerian man playing luth. This instrument was called gude in that language. Quite certainly this Sumerian word is in turn the origin of Greek κιθάρα, itself the etymon of the word guitar.


It can be noted that apparently the consonants of the root κιθ- of Greek κιθάρα seem to differ from those of Sumerian gude. But this is an illusion. Once borrowed gude or maybe gide (?) becomes *ghidh- hence Greek kith-, with the predictable dissimilation of aspiration in Greek. This word is another example of PIE aspirates corresponding to voiced phonemes.

This is a Kurdish Tambûr, a direct continuator of Ancient gude.

All the best. A.

About elephants and ivory

The word ivory comes from Latin ebur with the same meaning. Etymological dictionaries of Latin usually do not provide a particular origin for ebur itself. Ebur is quite certainly an Ancient Egyptian word. It can be compared with three words with similar shape and related meanings:

- Coptic ab, eb 'elephant' from Egyptian jb, hence from *ˀib, with vowel *i according to the same sound change as in *lis 'tongue', hence Coptic las, les. This word has a derivative *jbr 'ivory' from which Latin most probably comes.
- Egyptian ḥb 'ivory', from which Semitic words most probably derive: Akkadian sinn-iburi 'tooth of ivory', Ugaritic ḥbn 'ivory', etc.
- Egyptian ˁb 'tooth'.

All three words have a guttural /ˀ/, /ḥ/, /ˁ/ followed by /b/ in relationship with elephant, ivory or tooth. This amounts to a kind of phonosemantic matrix. What is interesting is to compare Egyptian *ˀib 'elephant' with Sanskrit ibha with the same meaning. This is certainly not a chance coincidence. Sanskrit ibha is a loanword from some Indian substrate *ib. It can be noted that the phoneme /b/ of Egyptian and of the Pre-Sanskrit substrate has become /bh/ in Sanscrit.

More to come soon.

A.

About Greek pithekos 'monkey'

Pithecanthropus (noun). An extinct primate postulated from bones found in Java in 1891 and originally designated as Pithecanthropus erectus because it was thought to represent a species evolutionarilybetween apes and human beings. Pithecanthropus is now classified as Homo erectus.
[Scientific Neo-Latin, genus name : Greek pithekos, ape + Greek anthropos, man.]

Greek πίθηκος 'ape, monkey' is a loanword of undetermined origin.
I propose to compare it with Berber *abidaw 'monkey', a masculine word based on a root bid, and Chadic *bidi 'monkey'. It is interesting to note that the voiced phonemes of Berber and Chadic root R=*bid have been adjusted in Greek as Pre-Greek *bhidh, that is Greek pith, instead of **bid.
This is in line with the Glottalic theory of Proto-Indo-European and this issue will be discussed in coming posts.

Greetings. A.

About the word cumin

It seems that the word cumin has never been etymologized. It derives from a Near-Eastern source through Latin and Greek. Greek κύμινον itself seems to share a triliteral root kmn with a number of Semitic languages, for example Old Akkadian kamūnum, or Arabic kamūn كَمُون. This can be shown to be an illusion. This plant comes from Central Asia where it is frequently called the ‘black seed’: Tadjik siyoh dona (‘black seed’) or Hindi kala jeera (‘black cumin’).

There exists an Afrasian root *km ‘black’. It can be found in Hieroglyphic Egyptian: km ‘black’, Coptic kmom ‘to become black’, hence a Feminine form km-t for the earth, the mud that Egyptians farmers used to till, and by metonymy Egypt itself: Coptic kême, from an ancient vocalic scheme *kūmat. It must be noted that the skeleton kmn of Greek is an illusion because κύμινον is in fact a base κύμ- suffixed by -ινον, a productive suffix that exists in other lexemes like σέλινον ‘parsley’. In that paradigm of plant names accent falls regularly on the first syllabe. What must be explained is therefore only the base *kum, for the suffix -ινον is Greek. The origin of the base can be found in Aramean (ˀa)kūm ‘black’. Both names are attested in Mycenian Greek: ku-mi-no and se-ri-no. The third nasal is identical by chance coincidence because Semitic words are independent derivatives of the root *km ‘black’.

About the English word 'house'

The English word 'house' derives from *huus, a Germanic root of non-Indo-European ancestry.
It would seem that *huus can be satisfactorily compared with a Semitic word *hus.s.u 'hut', attested in Arabic hus.s.u 'reed hut', which probably also has connections with Yeniseian *hu?s 'house'. The Semitic word was borrowed into Armenian huts' 'hut, room, cellar'.
Germanic is probably a loanword but this root is ancient, potentially of Nostratic origin.

All the best. A.

some information about me

Dear All,

I noticed that I now have three followers. I must say that I am very much moved by this new feature happening on my humble blog. People who are interested in learning more about me and my papers are invited to go at the following address:
http://independent.academia.edu/ArnaudFournet

I've posted one survey of Kassite, among others.

All the best.

A.

Sumerian supposedly a Uralic language

A recent theory has it that Sumerian is to be considered closely related to Uralic. It is proposed by Simo Parpola, an assyriologist:
<http://www.s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/42TurkicAndSumer/SimoParpola_Altaic-UralicAndSumerEn.htm>
This is not the first time that such an idea is proposed: other people have proposed that Sumerian was closely related to Hungarian. The difference in that case is that the theory is proposed by a scientist, well-known for his expertise on Assyrian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_Parpola

***
So what is to be thought of that "new" theory?

To start with:
On the whole, issues of genetic relationships are twofold:
Q1: why should Sumerian be considered related to Uralic at all?
Q2: why should Sumerian be considered more related to Uralic than to other families?

Just to take one example, the paper states that Sumerian may have had labiovelars like *kw or *gw and alternations like b/g may originate in such phonemes. Why not after all?
But this raises a number of issues:
Q1: is this the only way to explain that graphic alternation? => I'm afraid not.
Q2: now, assuming that the idea is correct, then we can see that Sumerian igi, ibi "eye", possibly from *igwi according to that line of reasoning, is structurally the same as Proto-Indo-European *Hekw "eye". So we can just as well promote the idea that Sumerian has ties with PIE as well.
Q3: note that Uralic Vogul-Mansi has a verb ankw- "to see", suggesting that ultimately all these languages: Sumerian, PIE, Uralic may be related. It's not unusual that Uralic has a kind of infixal -n-.
=> in that case the correct framework to investigate Sumerian's relationships is Nostratic.
It is indeed probable that Sumerian is to be included in the Nostratic superfamily. The issue is then: in which place and which subfamily?

Next,
The theory proposed has it that Sumerian is closely related to Uralic at a very recent dating. In fact this dating, about 5000 years ago, would make Sumerian a Uralic language, if Sumerian is indeed related to any single one Uralic language on that basis. Relationship at such a recent dating means *inclusion* within Uralic perimeter not relationship with Uralic.
=> this seems impossible at first glimpse.

The common lore about Proto-Uralic is that the original Uralic community originates in a Paleolithic culture. This is a point that Mr. Parpola does not seem to know, assyriology being his core expertise. The claim that there are "common words for cereals, sowing and harvesting, domestic animals, wheeled vehicles, and the harness of draught animals" between Uralic and Sumerian is not far from nonsense. From the Uralic point of view, such words can only be either loanwords, wanderworts or innovations. Most of them happen to be of PIE or IE origin.
A typical case for example is:
Sumerian urudu "copper"
PIE *Hreudh- "red"
Finnish rauta "ore"
A clear wanderwort of probable PIE origin.
Similarly (eastern dialectal) PIE *yewos "grain" => ancient loanword PU *yuw, Finnish jyvä. One more wanderwort. Etc.

Next,
It must be borne in mind that Finnish and more generally Finno-Baltic is not especially representative of (Proto-)Uralic phonology. These languages have a high frequency of vowels in words and a rather simple syllabic structure of the CvCv type. This feature makes it easy to compare Finnish (or Finno-Baltic) with about anything else with a similar structure.
For example Finnish can be easily compared with Tamil or Dravidian. Most of these comparisons crumble when they are put back in the Uralic perspective.
In that respect it is especially troublesome that Sumerian seems to have strong ties with Finno-Baltic and very poor ties with Altaic. This is a telltale indication that the conclusion of the theory is an artefact of the comparanda taken into account.
In all cases the discussion of the relationships between Uralic and Sumerian only makes sense, when putative close relatives of Uralic like Yukaghir are involved. What does that theory teach us on the relationship between Uralic and Yukaghir?

For example, as regards the word "brain": 1. Sumerian ugu, "top of the head," "brain."
2. From the Uralic PoV the reconstruction as *ajkwo "brain, top of the head" is completely unacceptable and procrustean. The usual reconstruction for Finno-Ugric is *ajN "temple, skull", secondarily "brain, marrow". Samoyedic is *oN-pu "temple". It is possible that Finno-Ugric *ajN is a kind of compound < *aj-oN- or the like. What is to be compared is *oN- with ugu. Apparently Sumerian is ugu not **ug~u. So it does not work on phonetic grounds. => Status: highly dubious.
In all cases it makes no sense to compare Sumerian with Uralic when Uralic data are not properly dealt with.

Miscellaneous issues,
there is no Volgaic word kurok "mountain". In Mordvin kurok means "quick, soon" = Russian skoro. In all cases, kurok, if it exists at all and is not a recent borrowing of Russian gora, can be related to some reflex of PIE *gwer- mountain, which makes sense as a cognate of Sumerian kur "mountain". And we are back to the starting point that Sumerian has fairly strong ties with PIE, which may be much clearer and more workable than the alleged ties with Uralic.

As a preliminary diagnosis, I would classify that theory as amateurish and underinformed. I'm afraid there is no "constructive criticism" possible.

Best

A.

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