Ciekawostki o rdzeniu swar/svar w j.angielskim…

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Swarog

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/swarga

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Swara
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Origin
In the general sense svara means tone, and applies to chanting and singing. The basic swaras of Vedic chanting are udatta, anudatta and svarita. The musical octave is said to have evolved from the elaborate and elongated chants of Sama Veda, based on these basic swaras.
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http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/swear
Making an oath, also known as swearing an oath

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/swart
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/swarthy
Adj. 1. swarthy – naturally having skin of a dark color; „a dark-skinned beauty”; „gold earrings gleamed against her dusky cheeks”; „a smile on his swarthy face”; „`swart’ is archaic”

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/slavic+mythology
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The name of Svarog is found only in East Slavic manuscripts, where it is usually equated with the Greek smith god Hephaestus. However, the name is very ancient, indicating that Svarog was a deity of the Proto-Slavic pantheon. The root svar means bright, clear, and the suffix -og denotes a place. Comparison with Vedic Svarga indicates that Svarog simply meant (daylight) sky. It is possible he was the original sky god of the pantheon, perhaps a Slavic version of Proto-Indo-European *Dyēus Ph2ter. Svarog can be also understood as meaning a shining, fiery place; a forge.
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Svarog is there identified with Hephaestus, the god of the blacksmith in ancient Greek religion…

P.S.
Czyli w sumie „nauka” nic pewnego o Swarogu nie wie…

Oto gdzie tkwią korzenie wypaczenia wszelkich nauk, nie tylko historycznych (także lingwistycznych, genetycznych, politycznych, biologicznych, archeologicznych, itp.), o czym ludzie wykształceni głębiej, -nie tylko przez powszechne licea i uniwersytety wiedzą od dawna:

Oświecenie, cytuję: – „wspaniała, wyzwolona z wszelkich więzów epoka, w której rozum ludzki miał być światłem rozjaśniającym drogę do poznania prawdy o świecie i człowieku”. Na ten propagandowy frazes stanowczo zareagował Einstein w liście do Wilhelma Reicha: „Podobnie idiotycznymi hasłami oznaczana jest niemal każda epoka, ale najtragiczniejsze jest to, że większość ludzi dała sobie wmówić wyższość Renesansu i Oświecenia nad pozostałymi epokami, co wytworzyło u nich fałszywy obraz dziejów. Obecnie przeciętny inteligent, w zasadzie będący pseudointeligentem, przeświadczony o presji wywieranej na niego przez społeczność podobnych mu pseudointeligentów, pozbawiony jest możliwości wystawienia swej osobistej oceny, jak też wszczęcia odważnego dyskursu czy podjęcia poważnej krytyki Renesansu i Oświecenia, o których to epokach nie posiada elementarnej wiedzy. Natomiast „wytresowany” jest w kwestii pozytywnej recepcji i akceptowania sloganów tych dwóch epok. W efekcie ów niedokształcony i bezmyślny pseudointeligent żyje w ciemnocie, przeświadczony, że Renesans i Oświecenie były epokami światłymi. Niestety, pseudointeligenci, stale poddawani niewidzialnej dla nich manipulacji, stanowią dziś większość w państwach Europy i Ameryki Północnej. Nie mają pojęcia, że istnieją dwie historie: historia w wersji oficjalnej, celowo skażona i zafałszowana – ta, której się naucza, historia „editio castrata, editio ad usum Delphini” – oraz historia tajna, przerażająca, gdzie tkwią prawdziwe przyczyny wydarzeń, historia haniebna. Wcześniej wskazywał już na ten problem Balzac. (…) Przez ostatnie dwieście lat zajmowano się głównie produkcją tej historii oficjalnej – zafałszowanej pseudonauki. Propagowano ją na skalę masową, skutkiem czego mamy społeczeństwa na niej wychowane. Teraz bez problemów można przekonać opinię publiczną, że zbrodniarz jest świętym.”

To bardzo ważne, bo może potwierdzić już niedługo niejako empirycznie na gruncie lingwistyki i genetyki, ową drogę od pierwotnej Wiary Przyrodzney Słowian z północy, z Europy, czyli drogę Wedy i Awesty os Słowian do Iranu i Indii – tak jak to mówią najstarsze podania, (Mit o Wygnaniu Panów przez Dziewannę-Krasę z Wyspy Kara).

BARDZO WAŻNE O SVAROGU,
O zapożyczeniach od proto/archeo/pra/słowiańskich/scytyjsko/aryjsko/hinduskich w tzw. językach indo-irańskich!!!

SLAVA SVAROGOVI !!!

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2011/article/making-archaeology-speak-archaeology-and-linguistics

June 2011
Making Archaeology Speak – Archaeology and Linguistics By Maciej Wencel
Although linguistics and archaeology have been working togother for at least a century, there is still little agreement on how to infer about ancient languages from archaeological finds. In this article, I discuss the pitfalls that await all archaeologists that aim at studying linguistic past and suggest potential solutions.
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http://borissoff.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/on-iranian-loans-in-slavonic/#more-705

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Taking religious terms, Svarog cannot be an ‘iranism’ because of the Initial /s/, as will be explained below. However, it organically correlates with Vedic स्वर्ग svarga ‘going or leading to or being in light or heaven, heavenly, celestial; heaven, the abode of light and of the gods’. The other ‘classic’ example бог bog ‘god’ has a clear relation both to Avestan baga- ‘distributor’ and Vedic भग bhaga ‘gracious lord, patron (lit. ‘dispenser’); good fortune, happiness, welfare, prosperity; the Sun’. After a lengthy and meticulous treatment of this word Trubačev had to admit that “we do not have so far the data for a positive reply to the question whether the Slav. bogъ is a loan from Iranian” [3]. Similarly, the next prominent religious word рай rai ‘paradise’ may also be an ancient inherited word and not an iranism but, if one chooses to treat it as a loan, it may equally be related to Vedic रै rai ‘property, possessions, goods, wealth, riches’ and not necessarily to Avesatan raē- ‘wealth’.

Trubačev is also known for the discovery of a residual layer of pra-Indo-Aryan language in the Crimea and along the northern shores of the Black Sea in the area which has been traditionally considered as the domain of Iranian speaking Scythians [4] . The ethno-linguistic identity of Scythians still remains a controversial issue but it is generally believed that they spoke Eastern-Iranian dialects which presupposes that they arrived to the Pontic-Caspian steppes from the region of today’s Central Asia and Iran. They represented, therefore, a back wave of an earlier eastward migration of pra-Indo-Aryans which probably originated in the Pit-grave culture on the northern shore of the Black Sea, supposedly, around the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd millennia BC [5]. If so, the language of the bearers of the Pit-Grave culture could well be considered as ‘proto-Indo-Aryan’ or even ‘proto-Sanskrit’ in terms of Vittore Pisani who used ‘proto-Sanskrit’ in the meaning ‘Indo-European’ as he believed that Sanskrit was the immediate continuation of the ‘lingua pilota’ representing the original Indo-European dialects [6].

It is generally accepted that the Pit-Grave culture was an organic Eastern continuation of the earlier Tripolye (Cucuteni) culture (4th millennium BC) and that it did not cease after the hypothetical departure of the proto-Indo-Aryans first to southern Siberia (Andronovo culture?) and then to today’s Iran and Hindustan. Therefore, we can reasonably presuppose that in the Circum-Pontic area there always remained an ethnos directly continuing the ‘proto-Sanskrit’ (non-Iranian) dialects. According to Trubačev, it was represented by the so-called ‘old Scythians’ while the newer returning wave of Iranians constituted the ‘young Scythians’.
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At least in the 1st millennium BC the right-bank Ukraine was already a part (periphery) of the Slavonic linguo-enthic space. Since the complexity of the ancient ethno-georgraphy of Scythia is now revealing itself more and more insistently and we are arriving at the constatation of the actual preservation in its part (parts) along with the Iranian (Scythian) also of the Indo-Aryan (pra-Indian) component or its relicts, there arises the rightful question about the reality of also Slavo-Indo-Aryan contacts approximately in the Scythian time [7].

The important implication, directly flowing out of this discovery, is that we should not necessarily seek the origin of presumed iranisms in Slavonic only in Avestan or middle and late Iranian dialects because, at least, some of them may also derive directly from (or continue) the residual proto-Indo-Aryan (proto-Sanskrit) dialects.
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http://borissoff.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/was-scythian-an-iranian-language/

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There is no doubt that some Iranian tribes and elements were present in the Circum-Pontic area in the last centuries B.C. and first centuries A.D. but it would be very short-sighted to brand the whole multitude of peoples populating the vast area from the Altai mountains to the Baltic Sea, whom the Greeks routinely named ‘Scythians’, as ‘Iranians’ and even more so to view them exclusively through the Ossetic language.
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Znamy wszystkie dyskusje toczące się na Histmagu i cieszymy się, że zdecydowano się przywrócić do Internetu archiwum tego forum. Na naszych stronach cytowaliśmy w 2011 roku i wcześniej fragmenty co ważniejszych wypowiedzi stamtąd w kontekście artykułów poświęconych genetyce i językoznawstwu – Znajdują się one na Czarnym Pasie. Niektórzy dyskutanci z Histmagu.org po zamknięciu tamtego forum zaczęli się pojawiać u nas na blogu i są obecni do dzisiaj – co jest dla nas bardzo ważne. Pozdrowienia dla nich wszystkich – to były bardzo cenne i solidne dyskusje i materiały.

BARDZO, BARDZO WAŻNA DYSKUSJA!!!
Na podobny temat i nie tylko:

http://histmag.org/forum/index.php/topic,10317.msg221384.html#msg221384

Krzysztofie,
może trochę za długie to wszystko wyszło, ale mam nadzieję, że było ciekawie i pośrednio odpowiedziałem Ci na pytanie o Kortlanda i jego przemiany. Ja już rozumiem znacznie więcej właśnie dzięki postom zacytowanym tu. Kentumizacja to zniekształcenie przez substrat nieIE, widoczny wszędzie w tzw. kentum. To jest wytłumaczenie fizyczne, przez zmianę sposobu wymowy. W drugą stronę nie ma wytłumaczenia, skąd tzw. satemizacja się wzięła… Pozdrawiam.
Posty kończące tę dyskusję, również w oparciu o DNA:

EastPole 2012-12-07, 23:57 #506

I like this comment by Kazanas:

One basic difficulty here is deciding what is archaic and what is new, as Schmitt himself points out. (See also Di Giovine 2009 and paper in this issue). It is generally claimed that Hittite is archaic or that it has archaisms. How do we know this? Well, comes the answer, it was the first to split away from the unified PIE community. And how do we know this? Here, nobody says plainly “Well, Hittite is ostensibly the first IE language to appear in writing c1650”, because this is not much of an explanation. So they say, “Well, it has archaic features like laryngeals, only two genders, a simple verbal system” and so on – which now becomes a circuitous mode of arguing, no better than the first explanation. So this matter of archaism vs innovation is (attempted to be) sorted out by reference to the speculative and unverifiable PIE “reconstructions” which are themselves based on this circularity!
This is the second problem with Schmitt’s effort: the use, almost invariably, as premises and/or criteria, of the “reconstructed” PIE which is entirely conjectural and exists (in incomplete form) only in modern books. Schmitt’s presentation is one of many examples where this fictional entity is treated as real fact! How a hypothesis that can in no way be verified – and in this case we need PIE itself, as we have Vedic, Hittite etc – is used so brazenly as fact, then premise and decisive criterion is beyond understanding. But comparativists have different values and so, without hesitancy, move year by year further away from linguistic actualities into nebulous speculations. Personally, I cannot take seriously such “reconstructions” and will not pay much attention to them

http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/Vedic_and_Avestan.pdf

More and more people are aware of manipulations used by Western “linguists” who instead of studying real languages and their relations try to replace them with some pseudoscientific reconstructions and assumptions which fit their agendas. Here Dhira Simha also wrote about it:

Quote Originally Posted by Dhira Simha View Post
How much „substratum” or mixture there should be for a language to cease to be Indo-European (or to become one)? What is IE after all?

If German is „are the most (or one of the most) divergent groups in IE” then what is, according to you, „the least divergent one”?

Still the question of whether these creole languages are IE or not has not been answered. When you say that they have two roots it is because we know how they formed. The problem with the „maximum parsimony reconstruction” is that we do not know if most (if not all) of the attested languages had undergone at various stages language mixture, creolisation, pidginisation etc. The method endeavours to accommodate them ALL and explain ALL their phonetic features as continuous genetic „evolution” in time with their „phonological system […] derived from PIE through regular sound changes”. So if Hittite had laryngeals then laryngeals should be included into the system. Suppose laryngeals were the result of Semitic or Deane-Caucasian language mixture? After all, Hittite is hardly recognizable as an IE language with some remnants of the IE grammar and a massive admixture of Semitic. Greek and German also have clear signs of Semitic influence.

The method appears scientific but what if we knew nothing about Latin. Could we have „reconstructed” it on the basis of Italian, Spanish, French and Romanian? Would this „reconstructed” linguistic Frankenstein be anywhere similar to Latin? What if we also added there the Mauritian Creole not knowing that it was a creole? What if we put Mauritian linguists to do this task?
It seems grotesque but this is the actual situation with your Proto-IE.
I also wrote about it here:

http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/sho…l=1#post542654

http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/sho…l=1#post586905

Reconstructed in XIX century by Germans Indogermanische Ursprache is BS, it is not a real language and was never spoken by anybody. It didn’t exist as Indogermanen didn’t exist. It is proved by genetics now that Germans and Celts didn’t come from the East but evolved in Western Europe.

To understand the history of languages real languages should be studied and real words. Especially those very archaic and conservative languages which evolved in PIE homeland and are still spoken there, ie. Slavonic, are very important for understanding the real history.

Polako 2012-12-08, 10:33 #512

See this post…

New branches of R1a1a1 – post all updates here plz #644
http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/showthread.php/13605-New-branches-of-R1a1a1-post-all-updates-here-plz?p=1047989&viewfull=1#post1047989

The current SNP structure of R1a dismisses any notions about large-scale migrations into and out of Poland since the Bronze Age.

Dhira Simha 2012-02-26, 13:23 #458

Quote Originally Posted by EliasAlucard View Post
It was a minor sound shift and it’s not like it made them into two entirely different language families.
There is. How would you explain Tocharian and Hittite being Centum then?

Sorry, but you seem not to understand the importance and true significance of Satem-Centum divide. It is much more that the change of /s/ to /k/. It reflects two opposing types of articulation: laringeal-centred and buccal-centred. The difference is typological and it effects the fundamental bases of phonetic systems.

As for Tocharian and Hittite, I think you either missed or did not understand my argument. Please re-read my posts. I clearly explained centumisation in them as the influence of laryngeally-centred languages with which they mixed. Tocharian is particularly controversial. We do have some quite recent texts written in a dialect which has signs of centumisation but there is no objective proof that their alleged ancestors (Tarim mummies etc. having „[…] predominantly East Eurasian haplogroup C with smaller numbers of H and K, while the paternal lines were all West Eurasian R1a1a.) spoke this form of language thousands of years earlier. But we know that they came from an area which is the prime candidate for the homeland of Indo-Aryans who, no doubt, were satem.

Your argument about Icelandic is useful but as a proof that the fundamental quality of a language is the tendency for preservation of its typological and structural stability. The driving force of structural changes is language contact. Only a massive external influence can change language’s typology. Icelandic managed to remain „frozen in time” specifically because it did not have much influence being confined to a remote island. It is a living proof of the absurdity of glottochronology.

There appears to be a direct correlation between the loss of original IE morphology and degree of centumisation. Tocharian and Hittite are excellent examples. Loss of grammar is the first sign of creolisation and piginisation. The only languages that still preserve most of the IE morphology are Balto-Slavonic and they are satem. One may say that centumisation (laryngeal-centred articulation) is incompatible with the IE morphology.

I repeat again that there is not of shred of objective proof that the bearers of R1a1a were at any point centum. On the contrary – there is a clear tendency: less R1a1a – more centumisation. Take German with its 25% of R1a – it is also only partly centum. Insular Celtic, which only has traces of R1a, is much more centum.
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Dhira Simha 2012-02-27, 19:15 #468

Maybe. I am no expert in genetics, as I said. The authors also share the out of India view which I currently do not uphold (but not exclude). Nevertheless, I agree with them on the following points:

The age of Proto-Balto-Indo-Aryan ( Satem dialect) should be pushed back below 10,000 BC and it pre dated farming and metalworking.

I support their linguistic evidence regarding the remarkable affinity of Balto-Slavonic and Indo-Aryan which is a level higher than the affinity between any other IE „families”

EastPole 2012-03-04, 22:22 #487

Yes, that’s true and therefore all those languages except Sanskrit are far away from PIE.
All Centum languages are heavily affected by substratum and therefore are not archaic and conservative form of IE languages and reconstructions of PIE shouldn’t be based on them.
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The languages that are least affected by not-IE substratum are Slavonic. It is because Slavs stayed in PIE homeland and didn’t mix. It has been proven many times. For example prof. Witold Mańczak in his book “The Method of Comparing the Vocabulary in Parallel Texts” analyzed many languages and by method of statistical analyses showed that lexically Polish is the closest to PIE in that it is the IE language with the fewest substratal borrowings. He also observed that statistically Polish vocabulary shows the most common etymological relatedness to all other IE languages.

Applying his original method based on the lexicostatistic analysis of parallel texts prof. Mańczak deduced that the IE Urheimat must be in or near Poland and that the Indo-European homeland is identical with that of the Slavs. He placed it in the basins of the Odra (Oder) and Vistula Rivers.

This very well agrees with the first unquestionably IE cultures, i.e. Globular Amphora/Corded Ware , expansion centre in Poland and the highest diversity of R1a1 in Europe in Poland.

Other linguists like Kortland agree that Slavonic speakers remained in PIE homeland, although he places PIE homeland east of Poland, which I think does not agree with genetic and other evidence.

There are also other attempts to explains Slavonic linguistic purity. For example Dr. Koenraad Elst in his work “Linguistic Aspects of the Indo-European Urheimat Question” writes:

European branches of IE are all full of substratum elements, mostly from extinct Old European languages. For Latin, this includes such elementary terms as altus and urbs , borrowed from a substratum language tentatively described as „Urbian”. For Germanic, it includes some 30% of the acknowledged „Germanic” vocabulary, including such core lexical items as sheep and drink. For Greek, it amounts to some 40% of the vocabulary, both from extinct branches of the Anatolian (Hittite-related) family and from non-lE languages. The branch least affected by foreign elements is Slavic, but this need not be taken as proof of a South-Russian homeland: in an Indian Urheimat scenario, the way for Slavic would have been cleared by forerunners, chiefly Celtic and Germanic, and though these languages would absorb many Old-European elements as substratum features, they also eliminated the Old-European languages as such and prevented them from further influencing Slavic.

http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/print/articles/aid/urheimat.pdf

Elias, what do you think about it? Proto-Celto-Germanic R1b tribes came from India first and indoeuropeized Europe and when Proto-Slavonic R1a1 came later there was no not-IE substratum to affect their languages. Interesting, isn’t it?

As I said before, in my opinion PIE lies somewhere between Sanskrit and Slavonic languages and PIE came either from India or from Poland. At the present I think that Poland is more probable and Proto-Slavonic = PIE.

There is no doubt that all other IE Urheimat theories must explain that special central position of Slavonic languages, lack of not-IE substratum and their archaic and conservative character.
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To see that similarity you have to know how those words are pronounced, for example five: Ved. ‘pañca’, Av.’ Panca’, Pers. ‘panča/panj’ are very close to Polish ‘pięć’ (pients’) or ‘piąta’(pionta).
Fivty: Skr. ‘pañcāśat’ (pan’chas’at) corresponds to Polish pieńdziesiąt (pien’dzesiant) or Russian ‘пятьдесят’(pjat’desjat) etc. Also notice that they are not only similar in form but also , as Dhira Simha explained earlier, are declinable in similar way.

Listing thousands of cognate words between Slavonic and Sanskrit maybe troublesome and time consuming and if somebody doubts that Slavonic languages are several times closer to Sanskrit than any other European languages like Lithuanian, Latin or Greek than it can be demonstrated by text analysis of Rigveda hymns.

Wojewoda 2012-08-27, 13:46 #500

Based on EastPole’s observation I would say that only languages which inherited the proto-Indo-European word for „sexual intercourse” can be regarded as truly Indo-European:

Quote Originally Posted by WIKIPEDIA
The original Indo-European root for to copulate is likely to be * h3yebh– or *h3eybh–, which is attested in Sanskrit यभति (yabhati), Russian ебать (yebat’ ), Polish jebać, and Serbian јебати (jebati), among others: compare the Greek verb οἴφω (oíphō) = „I have sex with”, and the Greek noun Ζέφυρος (Zéphyros) (which references a Greek belief that the west wind Zephyrus caused pregnancy).

Cail 2012-09-01, 04:35 #502
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The myth stems from real facts of Slavic and Baltic languages retaining a lot of archaisms, probably the most in the IE family.

This actually survived in Germanic too, even to the literary time, there are accounts of „eiba” being used as late as Old High German.

EliasAlucard 2012-09-01, 18:49 #503

Here’s a good explanation describing exactly why Vedic wasn’t proto-Indo-European:

“But language is never static. Linguists cannot be expected to accept Vedic as an immutable linguistic entity that somehow transcends the transformations visible in every language known to man (transformations that are, indeed, perceivable in the Vedic texts themselves). The discourse of an eternal, unchanging Veda is a legitimate one for the ashram, not the academy.”
— Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Oxford University Press, 2001 ISBN 0195137779, p. 73

^^ Although discussing Vedic, the very same principle is true of proto-Slavic, proto-Germanic and so on. I think the real question of this thread should be whether proto-Slavic was closer to proto-Indo-European than other proto-branches were to PIE. What’s true however, is that all proto-branches are more intelligible with each other than modern Indo-European languages are; a speaker of proto-Tocharian would have understood speakers of proto-Hittite, proto-Celtic, and so on, much better than modern speakers of English and Russian understand each other.

O starych językach i ich setemizacji lub raczej kentumizacji i powodach dlaczego tak a nie inaczej:

Dhira Simha 2011-12-19, 21:26 #429

With all respect, I do not think that you are objective in this particular case. I admit the East Pole indeed sounds nationalistic sometimes but I think he will grow out it The particular post to which you refer was remarkably balanced and informative.

His examples from Polish kole-j (koley): „turn; time”, kolei „next, then” were very useful. They made me immediately recall the Ukrainian koly „when”, O.Rus koliko „so much”, Rus. skol’ko „how many, how much” and kolot’ „to split (in parts)”. They make the connection between Skr. kal „to calculate or enumerate” and its nominal form kāla „a fixed or right point of time, a space of time, time (in general); measure of time; part, section” even stronger.

The Sungir evidence appears very important for several reasons

1) It refers to the time when our distant relatives had not yet split into Poles, Russians, Finns etc. This is our common ancestry and each of us may be directly related to these people.
2) It shows that our stereotype view on ancient hunter-gathers as savages dressed in ragged skins fighting for survival is wrong. We have evidence of amazingly high cultural level. People having elaborated clothing decorated with thousands of beads. etc. To make them would take thousands of hours which means that they had more spare time at their disposal than us. Definitely enough time to reflect of spiritual side of life.
3) We have evidence of established cultural tradition with sophisticated ritual objects. Again, to produce these discs would require a tremendous effort. The fact that they were put into graves (one disc was actually found by a girl’s temple and there are reasons to believe that it was placed on her forehead)is significant. Whatever Jaska may stubbornly say, the ancient Skr. kāla meaning, among other things, „time (as destroying all things), death, time of death (often personified and represented with the attributes of Yama, regent of the dead, or even identified with him)” would be more than appropriate to be put in a grave.
4) We just can not ignore the fact that such important features, usually attributed to Indo-Europeans: the wheel, the horse and red ochre graves, were found in such a distant past.
5) It is interesting that no „Venus” figurines were found in Sungir although they were widespread in Europe at that period, particularly in the nearby Kostyonki – the oldest known place of modern humans in Europe.

Dhira Simha 2012-02-23, 20:50 #443

Quote Originally Posted by EliasAlucard View Post
Tocharian was an older language than proto-Indo-Iranian, and Tocharian is almost as old Hittite. Tocharian split before the Satem innovation in late proto-Indo-European took place, so that’s why Tocharian was still Centum because when the Tocharians began migrating east, the proto-Indo-European community had still not not gone through Satemisation. And that’s also why Hittite was also Centum.

Actually, there is absolutely no proof that Tocharian is „as ancient as Hittite”. Their texts date to AD800. The fact that Tarim Basin mummies (1800 BC) were definitely identified as IE and there were traces of A1a1a does not automatically warrant that they spoke the form of Tocharian preserved in the texts. In fact, what we call „Tocharian” is the last stage of disintegration of an IE language before it was completely dissolved in the neighbouring languages. It has lost practically all IE grammar, had massive non IE loans and is hardly recognizable as an IE language! The clear Centum features may well be the influence of the highly laryngealised (back centred) basis of articulation which is a common feature among neighbouring Altaic and Cino-Tibetan languages. This backing of the articulatory basis could had led to the loss of palatalisation, increase of velarisation, laryngealisation and debuccalisation. In this way it is similar to Celtic which is another highly centumized language and is also located on the fringes of the IE core and also has signs of heavy admixture (Vasonic and Semtic).
Same story about Hittite. It is also a half semitisized language and the first thing we should presuppose, if one were unbiased, would be that the centum features are the influence of Semitic (and also Dené–Caucasian) languages having laryngeal-centred basis of articulation (khrr languages). By the way, we do not even know HOW Hittite actually sounded. Many words are unreadable at all because they are written as akkadogrammes or shumerogrammes. The whole idea that languages on the extreme fringes of the IE core should have preserved the „original” phonetic features (having lost most of their grammar and vocab.) better is an absurdity. It is the last possible option! Is it not is strange that all clearly centum languages are located at the extreme borders of the IE continuum and have all signs of not IE admixture? There is no objective proof (and can not be in principle) that the original IE was centum or satem, so, if we want to remain unbiased and at least apparently scientific, we should explore BOTH possibilities.

EastPole 2012-02-24, 00:28 #445

Elias, I have explained earlier that centum/satem concept is completely useless and should not be used in modern linguistics. There are no satem and centum languages because s/z>h/k and h/k>s/z shifts happen all the time in all IE languages: http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/sho…5&postcount=16

Just to give you an example. You consider Tocharian a centum language. Then explain to me why ‘wife’ in Tocharian is ‘śana’ and not ‘gana’. A dictionary of Tocharian B Douglas Q. Adams page 621.

http://books.google.pl/books?id=8sycj-dozxAC&pg=PA53&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%C5%9Bana%20%28nf.%29%20%27woman%3B%20wife%27&f=false

Sanskrit has two words for wife ‘jani’ and ‘gnā́’

Old Prussian has ‘genna’ but Lit. ‘žmona’ and Lat. ‘sieva’

Rus. ‘жена’ (žena), Pol.’żona’ (žona) and most other Slavonic languages have ‘žena’.

PIE should be ‘žona’/‘žena’.

Why do I think so?
Because in Polish or other Slavonic languages we have all the sounds that are used for ‘wife’ in other languages i.e. we don’t have problems with pronouncing ‘g’, ‘ś’ or Sanskrit ‘j’ (Polish ‘dż’(dž)).
Other languages however don’t have Slavonic ‘ž’ and they cannot pronounce ‘žena’ and therefore had to approximate sound ‘ž’ by ‘g’, ‘dž’, ‘ś’ as in ‘gena’, ‘śena’ or ‘jena’(džena).
It can be easily observed in Greek where we have either ‘ž’>‘g’ or ‘ž’>‘z’.
Pol.’żona’ / Rus. ‘жена’ (žena) > Sanskryt ‘jani’ (džani)/ ‘gnā́’ ~ Greek ‘γαμετή’(gamete) / γῠνή (gyne)

Another example:
Pol. ‘żywy’ (živi) / Rus. ‘живой’(živoy) > Sanskrit ‘jīv’ (dživ) ~ Greek ‘ζωή’(dzoe) – life.

Reconstruction of PIE should be based on Slavonic languages and not on mixed languages with limited phonetic system. It has not been done and therefore IE linguistics is a total mess now. Everything should be started anew.

Dhira Simha 2012-02-24, 00:50 #446

Quote Originally Posted by EliasAlucard View Post

I don’t think Centum is the result of Semitic and Vasconic; it could be, but it’s unlikely that all modern Centum dialects independently of each other converged to Centum at some point. Centum most likely dates back to proto-Indo-European. And besides, isn’t Lithuanian sort of in between Centum and Satem? I’d imagine the SH-sound in šimtas is exactly what happened when they shifted from K to C and S.

It is not a coincidence that R1a1a peoples are carriers of Satem languages. Tocharians, being of the same genotype were part of the same stock. Tocharians were effectively a splinter of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) which was definitely satem. The centum split does not fit here at all. Note that the nature of Tocharian centumisation is different than, say Hittite or Celtic centumisation. This may be because the substratum and hybridisation conditions were different. As for Lithuanian, you are right that it is in the middle between satem-centum. It is quite natural. There is a good reason why Lithuanian, being generally satem, has some centum (in a broad sense) features like Skt jīva = Lt. gývas. Your [ʃ] also fits here. If you look at their genetic profile you will see that although by mother’s line they are almost identical to Slavonic peoples, on the father’s side they are more Finno-Ugrian. http://borissoff.files.wordpress.com…ithuanians.pdf

The Finno-Ugrian influence in Baltic languages is well known, there are lots of articles on this. Now, please note that Finno-Ugrian languages are known for their retracted basis if articulation :

„If we consider the relative front or back position of the tongue, Finnish will occupy the last place in the series French, Swedish, German, English and Finnish

(A. Sovijärvi, „The Finno-Ugrian Languages”, in Kaiser, L., ed., Manual of Phonetics (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1957), pp. 312-324.) If you check the phonetic system of Finnish you will see the consequences. It is also well known for its debuccalisation effects. Lithuanian might actually became partly centumised due to the influence of Finno-Ugrian substrate.

Dhira Simha 2012-02-26, 01:13 #453

Quote Originally Posted by EliasAlucard View Post
I’ll answer that post later. But there are Centum and Satem languages. Centum-Satem shouldn’t be regarded as the be-all end-all solution to Indo-European. As I see it, it’s a minor sound shift that tells us something about the age of the language and when it separated from proto-Indo-European.
With all respect, I can not agree that this was”a minor sound shift”. That was a complete change of typology – a major a structural change. Major changes do not just „happen”. There should be a substantial socio-linguistic cause. It reflected a cardinal change of the basis of articulation.

There is absolutely no objective proof that centum (laryngeal) type was the primordial state. It is just a presumption made by a purely deductive method. I have already said it before, and I shall say it again – it it so happened that German were a Satem language, I do not have a shred of doubt that the r”reconstructed PIE would look absolutely different. This is how deductive method works; change the departure point or direction and you will arrive to a completely different result.

Please explain on what grounds you associate R1a1a with centum???. Have you misspelled?

Dhira Simha 2012-02-26, 01:35 #455

On what grounds do you make the assertion that „The proto-Indo-Europeans were all Y-DNA R1a1a and Centum (*ḱm̥tóm) at one point” ? R1a1a is a hallmark of satem languages as opposed to R1b. There is no objective proof that R1a1a had anything to do with centum.

The „Satem innovation” is a myth. Such global structural change spanning from the Baltic sea to the Hindu valley could not just „spread” like a virus. Note also that the only living languages which preserve most of the original morphology are satem languages, specifically Balto-Slavonic. This, and the remarkable stability of their dominating R1a1a profile could be the proof that they never experienced a drastic demographic change which is a necessary condition of a typological change.

Finally, are you serious about your assertion „Important to understand here, is that the Centum languages are from an earlier stage of proto-Indo-European and while they do have non-IE substrates, they are also ‘frozen in time’ from”?

Perhaps you mean by this Celtic which is essentially a Vasonic-Semitic mixture (type Celtic – Semitic in Google – you will be amazed how much info is there on this), Germanic, notorious for its substratum debate ( read Theo Vennemann to start), Hittite, which was half semiticised, Tocharian which was subjected to massive influence of surrounding languages etc.? Perhaps you mean German with its pathetic remnants of the ancient IE grammar and the series of fundamental sound shifts? Is it what you call „frozen in time”? You must be joking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis