Day: March 26, 2016

Oxon is an abbreviation of  Oxonium, the Latin name of Oxford.

The Latin nominative of death is mors. Google tells me a fungus (does that count?) contains it: one species of Powdery mildew is Gooseberry mildew, Linnean name: Sphaerotheca mors-uvae. “Spherical container, death of grapes.” 

Partial answer: from St Anatolius: Anatolius of Laodicea and Anatolius of Constantinople. Saints’ names are the default source of given names in Orthodoxy.

The question then becomes, why this saint’s cult was so much stronger in Russia than in Greece—I’ve never heard of a Greek called Anatolios, and the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit has only 5 known people of that name in Byzantine texts from the 13th through 15th centuries.

This is self-indulgent of me, but this is how I presented the laryngeal theory to my poor Historical Linguistics students in 2002.

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Saussure (1879): let’s look at Ablaut in proto–Indo-European:

• e:o:Ø 
  Greek patéra, eupátora, patrós
  [father.ACC, of.good.father, father.GEN]
• eR:oR:R̩  where R is a resonant (jwrlmn):
•   R=w:
  Greek eleusomai, eiléːloutʰa, éːlutʰon
  [I.will.come, I.have.come, I.came]
•   R=l:
  Greek stélloː, stólos, éstalmai
  [I.send, sending, I.have.been.sent]
  [a: epenthesis and reflex of *ə]
• ē:ō:ə 
  Greek tí€tʰeːmi, tʰoːmós, Latin facio
  [I.put, heap, I.make]
• ā:ō:ə 
  Greek pʰaːmí, pʰoːnéː, pʰásis
  [I.say, voice, utterance]
  
• ō:ō:ə 
  Greek dí€doːmi, dôːron, Latin datus
  [I.give, gift, given]
  

Now hang on:

e  o  Ø
eR oR R̩ (j> i, w > u, l> l̩ > (a)l)
ē  ō  ə
ā  ō  ə
ō  ō  ə

Yuck. eR:oR:R̩ is just e:o:Ø put in front of R.

Why can’t ē:ō:ə be as nice? Why can’t it be… eə:oə:ə > ē:ō:ə ?

That way, we still have e:o:Ø + something, and a simple monophthongisation to wrap it up.

If we’re lucky, we might be able to account for ā:ō:ə and ō:ō:ə the same way.

Furthermore, Proto-IE phonotactics is typically (s)C(R)e(R)C:

• bʰer-‘carry’, k̂ei-‘lie’, kers-‘run’, pel-‘thrust’,
  spen-‘stretch’, sreu-‘flow’, lewk-‘light, bright’, melg– ‘milk’,
  plek-‘plait’, dʰwer-‘door’

But some roots are CV or VC—often with the same suspicious long vowels:

• aĝ-‘lead’, aug-‘increase’, dō-‘give’, ed-‘eat’,
  gʰrē-‘grow, green’, gnō– ‘know’, od-‘smell’, stā– ‘stand’

So in Ablaut, ē, ā, ō are kind of behaving like eə, oə (former diphthongs.)

In phonotactics, ē, ā, ō are kind of behaving like eC or Ce (where C can include j, w—so eC, Ce can still be a diphthong)

Saussure’s solution: there is something there: a ‘sonorant coefficient’, *X

With X, we can say:

e  o  Ø
eR oR R
eX oX X  >  ē  ō  ə
aX oX X  >  ā  ō  ə
oX oX X  >  ō  ō  ə

(cf. eR:oR:R̩, e.g. ew:ow:w̩ [= u])

We can also say:

• dō– ‘give’ <**doX= CVC
• gʰrē-‘grow, green’ < **gʰreX= CRVC
• stā– ‘stand’< **staX= sCVC

Only one more catch: where do a and o come from in the left column in the first place? (eX; aX;oX). Why can’t we just make do with e:o:Ø for all rows?

Hey! Let’s posit two sonorant coefficients:

eA  oA  A>  aA  oA  A  >   ā  ō  ə
eO̬  oO̬  O̬ >  oO̬  oO̬  O̬  >  ō  ō  ə

(to which others later added E:
eE  oE  E  >  eE  oE  E  >  ē  ō  ə)

A is ‘something’ to which e assimilates, giving a

O̬ is ‘something’ to which e assimilates, giving o

E is ‘something’ that leaves e alone

When A, E, O̬ drop out, compensatory lengthening or something for a, e, o; schwa for Ø.

If we have assimilation going both directions, we can now say:

aĝ– ‘lead’ <**Aeg = CeC
ed-‘eat’ < *Eed = CeC
od-‘smell’ < O̬ed = CeC

What’s this buying us?

• Consistent phonotactics: all stems are CVC (plus or minus R and #s).
• Makes sense of all kinds of Ablaut: it all boils down to e:o:Ø + something.
• Ablaut like ā:ō:ə now makes sense: it’s actually originally eA:oA:A.

Saussure tells the world…

… and noone cares. Who’d buy this bunch of abstract algebra? Who cares what the phonotactics of proto-Indo-European are? What’s wrong with just saying  ā  ō  ə? What’s the evidence that these phonemes ever even existed?

Saussure dies 1916. Around that time Hittite is deciphered: turns out to be Indo-European, though distantly related to other IE languages.

‘water’: Greek hýdoːr, Gothic watō, Old Church Slavonic voda, Gaelic u(i)sce, Albanian ujë ,proto-IE *wedōr

… Hittite watar.

1927: Jerzy Kurylowicz notices something:

Latin/Greek   Saussure  Hittite

mālum ‘apple’ < *meAl-      maḫl-

plānus ‘flat’   <*pleA-            palḫiiiš

ōs ‘bone’  < *Oes-                  ḫastai

anti ‘against’  < *Aent-         ḫanti

argēs ‘white’  < *Aerg-       ḫarkis

esti ‘he is’  < *Ees-               es-

A and O correspond to Hittite ḫ.

(E is no more attested in Hittite than in the rest of Indo-European)

Semiticists had noticed that the sonant coefficients, assimilating e to a or o, were behaving like Arabic laryngeals

… ḫ is a laryngeal.

So EAO must have been laryngeals: h1 h2 h3

Saussure was so right, even he would have been surprised.