Thread 18092521

The Proto Indo-European word for bull and auroch "*táwros" appears to have been a borrowing from Proto-Semitic "*ṯawr-" (“bull, ox”).

>>18092521 (OP)
According to whom? You? Cool.

>>18092549
>According to whom?
J.P. Mallony.

>After Finno-Ugric, the possibility of Semitic-Indo-European relations has the greatest demand on our attention. Since well into the last century, and indeed still earlier, there have been frequent attempts to demonstrate parallels in vocabulary between the Indo-European languages and the Semitic languages of the Near East. The number of lexical comparisons, depending on one's source and to some extent imagination, is sizeable, and may approach 100-200 among its more ardent proponents. Some of the comparisons invariably find a place in Indo-European handbooks such as Proto-Indo-European *(s)tauro and Proto-Semitic *tawru '(wild) 0x', or Proto-Indo-European *septm and Proto-Semitic *saby 'seven' (alone of the numerals). In the more extensive lists of comparisons, agricultural words constitute approximately a quarter of all the words allegedly shared by Indo-European and Semitic

>Unlike comparisons between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric, the Semitic relations do not really have a general acceptance despite the fact that there are a number of most energetic supporters of genetic links between the two families. Certainly, any linguist running through some of the longer lists of comparisons encounters far too many cases of special pleading. Indeed, in a recent survey of the supposed Semitic — Proto-Indo-European loan words, especially those referring to agriculture and animals, Igor Diakonov has winnowed out almost all of the proposed comparisons except for goat, wild cattle and horn, all three of which he argued were probably derived from a common third source. Now there are, to be sure, some comparisons that will simply not go away such as Greek pelekeus, Indie parasu- 'axe' which is normally set beside Akkadian pilaqq 'spindle, spike', itself a possible loan from Sumerian balag. This would appear to be a typical 'wander word' moving along trade routes between various peoples from the Aegean to the Indus

>>18092521 (OP)
PIE obviously originated in like, Armenia.
At least on the other side of the Caucasus.
Close to Proto-Semitic speakers as well as Proto-Kartvelian speakers.

>>18092594
tl;dr

>>18092607
There are two schools of PIE connected to other language scholars: a more widely accepted mainstream (PIE-Finno-Ugric) and a less credible minority (PIE-Proto-Semitic).

Most of the similar PIE-Proto-Semitic words are related to agriculture.

A Russian scholar of Semitic languages named Igor Diakonov deboonked most of these PIE-Proto-Semitic similarities, with the exception of a few words that include bull.

>>18092619
>Caspian cattle culture with a large range spreads word to both.
Just throwing that out there. Where are Cows even native to?

>>18092521 (OP)
We formerly were Jews.

>>18092632
India.

>>18092632
Domestic cows originate from Anatolia. One theory is that as Anatolian farmers migrated out, they introduced their cattle to border cultures along the Eurasian steppe, who at the time were still hunter-gatherers.

>>18092521 (OP)
>auroch
The proto-semitic would be the word for bull, but not auroch or oxen. It would make no sense for late hunter-gatherers/early neolithic nomadic groups on the steppe to not have a word for auroch.

>>18092521 (OP)
The thing about this word is it's actually difficult to establish with certainty that it's a borrowing into Indo-European. There's a fallacy some will entertain anytime they see a good match between language families that it must necessarily involve borrowing rather than an inheritance held in common, but here it is the phonology of the word which is relied upon. The idea is because it contains /a/ it is non-IE. We can't rely on the fact that it is merely in Semitic in order to establish a borrowing event. For example, even the PIE nose word has a very good match in Arabic:
https://jolr.ru/files/(54)jlr2011-5(1-22).pdf
(p. 19)
I doubt this means there was a trade in noses or that Semites were going around teaching people a word for nose.

Strictly speaking there are words like this with intervocalic laryngeals in PIE, so in theory we could have *téh2uros but let's not use that as an ad hoc excuse. For the sake of argument I will assume it is *táwros with a phonemic /a/.
One issue I see is it's not obvious PS *ṯ and PIE *t are normally in correspondence. That needs additional examples.

The underlying assumption at play is that *a is not a PIE phoneme. That's not true though. *a is only marginal. There are still words like *atta and *kakka. It is true though that the main vowels are *o & *e (& *i, *u). PIE is often described as a two vowel system *o & *e, and two vowel languages actually do exist but the horizontal vowel system (mid vowel ~ mid vowel) reconstructed for PIE is basically unheard of typologically which may point to problems in our understanding of PIE's vowels and how they came to be.

So it's probably better to say PIE has three vowels *o, *e, and *a from laryngeal coloring to make it seem more normal. That doesn't help with *táwros directly but it is possible to infer that these 3 vowels are the result of a vowel shift from an earlier 2 vowel system which is typologically normal.

to be continued...

>>18094321
Now, a 2 vowel system which is close to *o ~ *e can be seen in a language like Abkhaz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhaz_language#Phonology
Abkhaz has *ɑ & *ə. This is open-back & mid-central. In other words the vowel dichotomy is diagonal instead of horizontal.

Supposing PIE *o was actually /ɔ/, a minor vowel shift ɑ > ɔ and ə > ɛ could produce the PIE system. But why would it shift? One reason would probably be the rise of *[a] which was just */ə/ colored by a laryngeal. *a & *ɑ are so close that */ɔ/ can restore some contrast. PIE *e /ɛ/ is much more frequent than *o /ɔ/, and this would make more sense if *e originally came from an unstressed vowel like */ə/. That would make *o the descendant of the original stressed vowel.

Finally, it's possible this shift /ɑ/ > /ɔ/ was mainly happening in final syllables first for whatever reason. Then preceding syllables were affected by /ɑ/ > /ɔ/ due to vowel harmony with the following syllable. It's actually not immediately obvious /ɑ/ > /ɔ/ was a global PIE vowel shift considering only some IE languages show *o > /o/. Others like Germanic and Sanskrit show *o > /a(ː)/.

If vowels shifted due to vowel harmony, it's entirely possible it was a conditioned change and only some words were affected, even if "some" is an overwhelming majority. (*atta had no vowel shift).

Would vowel harmony be blocked in *táwros? I of course do not know. It may even be difficult to discern the original conditioning factor since it may be expected that many root vowels were analogically replaced by ablaut. But *táwros isn't subject to root ablaut and that may have helped it retain an archaism.

My point is not that I know *táwros isn't a borrowing. Of course it still could be but the issue is the development of the PIE vowel system is poorly understood and has not been described systematically. We need an understanding of the origins of PIE's vowel system to make a competent judgement.

>>18094321
>>18094332
we had a thread that disappeared where it was proven how barbaric the PIE was to the point of borrowing several words from AA, even for things like meat and pastoralism.

>>18094963
Source or never happened.

>>18094963
>proven
>barbaric
Medications now

>>18094963
Based grugs

>>18094970
>>18094976
>>18094977
Sameflag...The teachings were the initial adoption of agriculture, which probably isn't even of PIE origin; pastoralism came from outside.
Probably associated with the term 'cow' *gwṓu– ~ Egyptian gw 'bull' ~ Sumerian gu4 ~ gud 'bull'. And also Grains, and even the damn Feast (imagine how ridiculous people are for borrowing such a banal word). Honey, Mill, Tranca, Field, and Herding cattle... that means even herding was taught to them.

>>18092521 (OP)
That's not how that works.

>>18095074
Its a Caucasian loan

>>18095096
That makes even less sense.

>>18095063
Wrong again moron

>>18094321
>There's a fallacy some will entertain anytime they see a good match between language families that it must necessarily involve borrowing rather than an inheritance held in common, but here it is the phonology of the word which is relied upon.
Yes.. Nostratic 100% confirmed