ProtoLanguage-5.htm, 5 of 5

THE PROTO-LANGUAGE

(PART FIVE)

by Patrick C. Ryan

(9/14/98)

III. THE THIRD EVOLUTIONARY PLATEAU

Nominative-Type Syntax and Morphology

A. The Differentiation of Nouns and Verbs





1. Phonology


a. By the time of the onset of the nominative-type stage of evolution (40 K BPE), the innovating branch of the Proto-Language had developed glides: a palatal glide (^y) before PL E; and a velar glide (^w) before PL O; although before PL A, no glide had developed.


b. Based on the fact that most speakers of nominative-type languages were ethnically Caucasian (those speaking IE and Semitic languages), and because it appears that speakers of Caucasian languages underwent the same transformation of their phonology at the same time, I prefer the term Pontic to refer to this phonological development (60K to 40K BPE).



c. Languages now spoken in the Caucasus are generally characterized by paucity of vowels, and a large inventory of consonants: e.g. in Ubych, there are 82 consonants; on the other hand, there may be only one vowel with a closed allophone in Kabardian.



d. John Colaruso, a recognized expert on Caucasian languages and diplomat, believes that these glides point to a transfer of the contrasts formerly provided by vowel quality to consonantal edges.

e. There is an excellent article on The Early History of Indo-European Languages by Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, published in Scientific American (March 1990), which will be of great interest in this connection.











e. I assume in this essay that the people who would become speakers of Indo-European, Afrasian, and the Caucasian (including Hurrian-Urartian, and perhaps some others) languages, were located around the Black Sea as early as 60K BPE; and began emigrating en masse from that center during this period (60K to 40K BPE) and later.








2. Indo-European




a. Indo-European is unusual among the world's languages by having roots in the form of consonantal skeletons: e.g. the root 6. kel- means "call, cry, make noise, (re)sound". Since it can actually appear as kel-, kal- or kol-, depending on its grammatical employment, we are forced to conclude that the root is not kel- but kVl-.



b. By a regular set of correspondences, which will be demonstrated in the essay on Afrasian comparison, we can relate IE 6. kVl- to Egyptian xn, "speech, utterance, play music, clap hands", and Arabic ghulghulatun, "confused clamors".



1) Because Egyptian x originates from PL KX[H]O (through Nostratic *k^wa), we know that in earliest IE, *kVl- was distinguished from the fourteen other roots of the same skeletal outline (as listed in Pokorny) by being *k^wVl- as opposed to *kVl- or k^yVl-.



2) In the Caucasian languages, these Pontic responses remained, or developed on their own terms. In fact, the primary phonological differences between Caucasian and non-Caucasian languages are that these glides were mostly retained and the PL glottalized voiceless stops and affricates were retained in Caucasian whereas in the non-Caucasian languages, they were transformed into voiced stops (IE) or simply de-glottalized (Semitic; but note: they were initially retained in Afrasian)



c. In IE, what are called root-determinatives were added to the older bi-consonantal roots: *k^wVl-, "call", became, in Greek, *k^wVlVy-, kaléo:; while 5. kel-, "drive, drive into fast motion", originally from *k^yVl- (KX[H]E-N[H]A), became, in Greek kéllo: (probably from *k^yVlVt-); both contrasting with *kVl-, in 2. kel-, "stick", (KX[H]A-N[H]A), *kVlVw-, in Greek díkella, two-pronged hoe.



1) Obviously, the root-determinatives -y-, -t-, and -w-, were serving to distinguish roots that had earlier been distinguished by glides and no glide; and the glides had no functional reason for being maintained.



2) In most derivatives of IE, they were not maintained.



a) It is a law of language generally that any feature (which requires effort to produce) either serves a functional purpose, or, in an application of the law of entropy, is abandoned.





3) We might never have suspected a three-way contrast in IE were it not for the Slavic and Celtic languages, which conservatively maintain, at least, partially, this early set of contrasting consonantal features.



4) In the Germanic languages, we see little trace of these distinctions; and even in Old Indian and Iranian, we have a contrast between palatals and non-palatals only, and not in all articulatory positions.



5) But in Slavic, we have a three-way contrast, which may or may not have been maintained into modern Russian from its Old Bulgarian roots.



a) One can have a normal consonant (a-vocalism), a palatal consonant (^ya-vocalism), indicated by vowel conventions or the "soft sign" (myákhiy znak), or a velar consonant (^wa-vocalism), indicated by a vowel, ( I vs. i ), or, the now nearly obsolete "hard sign" ( tvyordIy znak).



d. Consonantal Quality



1) A strong confirmation of the original three-vowel contrast (really glide contrast) of the Proto-Language is found in the facts of Old Irish. As Rudolf Thurneysen (Thurneysen 1970:96-109) writes:





a)

"In Old Irish every consonant may have three separate qualities:


1. palatal or i-quality,


2. neutral or a-quality,


3. u-quality.



Modern dialects retain only the first two, the u-quality having coalesced with the neutral, for which development see # 174."





2) On page 97, Thurneysen describes the differentiated articulation of consonants⁽¹⁾ with these qualities that we suppose was similarly present in the Proto-Language with consonants followed by E, A, and O.





f. When we see this pervasive system in an IE language that has perpetuated an ancient situation, it is difficult to believe that it was not a feature of, at least, earliest IE, and, most probably Nostratic, from which IE and Afrasian among others are descended.



g. The current dogma among IEists is that palatal and velar articulations were occasioned by the presence of e or o after the consonant⁽²⁾ --- in spite of the fact that the palatalization or velarization of the consonants persists in other phonetic environments.



1) Let us look at the Modern Irish word for "noise (loud confused clamor, din)": cullóid. We recall that the reconstructed Nostratic form would be *k^wal-. We saw in Greek kaléo: that the root was differentiated from other "kel"'s by a final -y. It begins to looks very much like cullóid was derived from an early IE k^wa"lay (through k^wl-"loy), and that the ^w-glide can still be seen reduced in the MI u.



2) In Modern Irish scal, sting of a nettle, we see Nostratic s-mobile + *kal-; and in Modern Irish sceolang, "fleet, agile", we see s-mobile + Nostratic *k^yal-.



3) Now, consider Old Irish gáu, "falsehood", which occurs also in Middle Welsh geu, and Middle Breton gou. Since every Irish vowel has one of three qualities, which quality does the initial g have? An a-quality because of gáu? An e-quality because of geu? Or an o-quality because of gou?



4) Current Celtic theory cannot give a good answer. But, if we know that the PL basal form was PL K[?]XA-FA, "hang-ing =gaping=empty", then an a-quality for the g is expected. And, Pokorny does reconstruct the IE root as *ghawo-.



5) Irish was on the periphery of the former territory of the Celtic languages; and the usual observation is that peripheral territories are tenaciously conservative of older forms.



g. We could give many examples from Old Indian as well. One will suffice for now. In Old Indian, IE k[^], palatalized k, becomes S while non-palatalized k becomes k. IE e/a/o become Old Indian a.



1) Pokorny lists the root IE 2. k[^]eu-, "illuminate, bright". Remember that, according to current theory, IE k[^]V derives from the earlier sequence *ke. The first Old Indian cognate to notice is Sva-H, "tomorrow", supposedly from *Sa"va-H. Another derivative is Só-na-, "red"; another is Su-ddhá-, "pure". If a front vowel (e) caused k to be palatalized, why is it still palatalized when it is in direct contact with -v, -ó, and -u?



2) Current IE theory would have us believe that back vowels (-ó and -u ) came into contact with Old Indian reflexes from palatalized consonants (e.g. S) after the period when modifications of consonants by contact with vowels had passed but how believable is that really?



3) Since the roots were now differentiated by root determinatives, a change from S to k would hardly have affected the root semantically.



4) But if the motivation for Old Indian S had been k^y rather than simply ke, its retention when in contact with any vowel would be understandable.



5) It should be concluded that the correct explanation is that the IE k in question was not k but k^y, to which the Old Indian response was S no matter what vowel followed; and that Old Indian a preserves the earliest IE vocalism when glides differentiated among roots that were --- earlier yet --- differentiated by e/a/o.



6) We cannot see Ablaut (grammatical variation of e/a/o) in Old Indian but this is not because IE a/a:/e/e:/o/o: have become Old Indian a/a: but rather because Old Indian never participated in the development of Ablaut. Old Indian always had only a/a:. The variable responses in Old Indian to IE palatals are due to the circumstance that they represent k^y, which is not affected (usually) by whatever vowel may follow.



h. In IE daughter languages, in which there is Ablaut and a separate response to IE palatalized consonants (Slavic), we find that an IE root reconstructed as *C^yeC has the same initial consonant as a root reconstructed as *C^yoC.



1) If e occasioned the palatalization of C, why is the palatalization retained even when the vowel that supposedly occasioned velarization (o) is placed in the syllable as a result of Ablaut gradation?



2) However, if we assume that such a root had the form *C^yaC, then *C^yeC and *C^yoC are easily possible since the palatalization would have been independent of the vowel that followed it.



3) In addition, the idea that the earliest IE roots had the forms *CeC, *CaC, and *CoC, is contrary to the findings of Lehmann ("syllabicity" in 1955:109-114), the pre-eminent researcher in the field.









2. Afrasian



a. Though Bomhard (1996:52) still, in my opinion, incorrectly reconstructs a vowel system for IE of i/e/6/a/o/u, he does accept Diakonoff's (1975:134-36) correct Semitic reconstruction for Afrasian of 6/a (1996:73), which is puzzling since it seems contrived to imagine that a Nostratic vowel inventory of i/e/6/a/o/u (Bomhard 1996:87) was first reduced to 6/a in Afrasian and then re-expanded to i/a/u.



b. On the other hand, Ehret (1995:55), although aware of Diakonoff's Semitic reconstruction, neglects his findings in my opinion, and reconstructs incorrectly a vowel inventory for Afrasian of "i/ii/e/ee/a/aa/o/oo/u/uu" with the doubled vowels indicating vocalic length.

(TEMPORARY) END OF PART FIVE

TO BE CONTINUED

END OF The Proto-Language

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PROTO-LANGUAGE@email.msn.com

1.

"In palatal pronunciation the middle of the tongue is raised in the front position, and the lips brought closer together by drawing back the corners of the mouth. The characteristics of u-quality may be assumed to be: (a) rounding the lips, (b) raising the back of the tongue. Neutral represents an intermediate articulation (but cp. # 174). These articulations are, of course, possible only within the limits of the basic articulation of each consonant."

2.

As Thurneysen goes on to explain:

"These three qualities have their origin in the fact that at an early period, before the loss of vowels in final and interior syllables...every consonant was conditioned by the following vowel, being

(a) palatal before i/i: and e/e:,


(b) neutral before a/a: and o/o:,


(c) u-quality before u/u:...

Instead of u-quality it would sometimes be more exact to speak of o-quality."