You do realise that Irish and Serbian are both Indo-European languages, right? As such they already share IE language and mythology, as do all IE descendents.
Old European refers to the Pre-IE/Pre-Uralic paleolithic languages in Europe that no longer exist (even though Basque is often regarded as a possible descendent).
Thus you cannot use Old European hydronyms in analysing IE languages, or vice versa.
Hypotheses of explicit phonosemantics will also be met with a great degree of scepticism.
As such there is very little of your hypotheses that I can in all honesty take seriously.
Recently, automatic emotion recognition from speech has achieved growing interest within the human-machine interaction research community. Most part of emotion recognition methods use context independent frame-level analysis or turn-level analysis. In this article, we introduce context dependent vowel level analysis applied for emotion classification. An average first formant value extracted on vowel level has been used as unidimensional acoustic feature vector. The Neyman-Pearson criterion has been used for classification purpose. Our classifier is able to detect high-arousal emotions with small error rates. Within our research we proved that the smallest emotional unit should be the vowel instead of the word. We find out that using vowel level analysis can be an important issue during developing a robust emotion classifier. Also, our research can be useful for developing robust affective speech recognition methods and high quality emotional speech synthesis systems.
Also the whole term "Indoeuropen" needs to be seriously reevaluated, as latest genetic data are connecting Indo European directly with R1a haplogroup and to lesser Extent R1b haplogroup only.Can you explain what you mean here? I don't get the connection between the gene markers and why that means the term Indo-European needs evaluating. Are you connecting that to the Irish-Serbia thing? Irish populations have large distributions of both R1a and R1b. Yeah, the comment warrants a further explanation.
Yes I do realize this. However certain things found in Irish and Serbian do not exist in any other Indo European languages, and are clearly pre Indo European.
Also the whole term "Indoeuropen" needs to be seriously reevaluated, as latest genetic data are connecting Indo European directly with R1a haplogroup and to lesser Extent R1b haplogroup only.
Both Irish and Serbian (South Slavic) languages have very large layer of paleolithic language, and have preserved the oldest language roots. You can build "PIE" roots using roots found in Serbian and Irish. This is how old this stuff is.
Actually you can. Languages don't replace each other, they are layered on top of each other. Comparing Irish and Serbian, which are very distant languages which should not have but do have a lot of common vocabulary and grammar, you can find these old layers. If you connect them to archaeology and ethnology, you can actually date them.
A lot of "Pre Indo European" hydronimes and toponimes, god names have clear etymologies in Serbian. How do you explain this?
I don't mind skepticism. I approach everything with skepticism myself. But outright dismissing is what you seem to be showing ...
How can you know that what I am presenting is without value, without actually reviewing any of the material i listed? Not a very scientific approach, don't you think?
It seems that you are not informed about the latest research in the area of voice analysis. There has been a lot of research done in this field as i discovered yesterday. It seems that i am on the right track here...They already use vowels to automatically detect emotions in speech analysis engines...
However certain things found in Irish and Serbian do not exist in any other Indo European languages ...
... and are clearly pre Indo European.
Both Irish and Serbian (South Slavic) languages have very large layer of paleolithic language ...
I don't honestly have time to read through all of the material you posted on the chance you might be right.
Further, the preliminary arguments you posted are both contradictory to common understanding.
...and it is not plausible to me.
DNA is not related to language.
It seems that you are not informed about the latest research in the area of voice analysis. There has been a lot of research done in this field as i discovered yesterday. It seems that i am on the right track here...They already use vowels to automatically detect emotions in speech analysis engines...QuoteRecently, automatic emotion recognition from speech has achieved growing interest within the human-machine interaction research community. Most part of emotion recognition methods use context independent frame-level analysis or turn-level analysis. In this article, we introduce context dependent vowel level analysis applied for emotion classification. An average first formant value extracted on vowel level has been used as unidimensional acoustic feature vector. The Neyman-Pearson criterion has been used for classification purpose. Our classifier is able to detect high-arousal emotions with small error rates. Within our research we proved that the smallest emotional unit should be the vowel instead of the word. We find out that using vowel level analysis can be an important issue during developing a robust emotion classifier. Also, our research can be useful for developing robust affective speech recognition methods and high quality emotional speech synthesis systems.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6012003&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6012003
(http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6012003&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6012003)
I don't know how they arrived to their conclusion, probably using statistics, but they came to the same conclusion that i came to using comparative linguistics, that vowels are carriers of emotional message.
Their claim is completely different from yours. You are claiming that specific vowel categories are cross-linguistically associated with emotional states: one vowel category is associated with one emotional state or a group of emotional states. They are claiming that people pronounce all vowels with more variation and higher formant values when they have high arousal emotions: when people are excited, they speak with more extreme tongue movements, and with their tongue closer to the roof and front of their mouth.
Let me continue with the core language analysis:Please could you address the questions freknu has put to you twice now.
Well you will miss a lot of interesting reading, and i really couldn't be bothered repeating what i already said.A short summary that seems convincing would be fine.
I would again ask you to read through the material i posted links for. It is customary for any scientific paper review to actually read the paper first, then ask questions...There simply isn't time to consider every idea in science, and there must be some burden of proof on thoroughly investigating new ideas. That's the case for realizing the world was in fact not flat, for Einstein defending his ideas, and every other innovation. As for a peer review process, often it begins with an abstract that the editor will briefly consider and decide whether it is a candidate for peer review.
I know. I didn't start this thread because i wanted to "join the gang" and repeat "official" well known and "agreed" dogma. I started it because I believe that I have discovered something new, which doesn't fit into the "common understanding", because common understanding was developed before all the advances in genetics and new archaeological discoveries.That's entirely irrelevant. Agreeing or disagreeing doesn't make you right or wrong. I'm not suggesting you can't innovate; you should, if that's where the data leads. But innovation requires a convincing argument. Innovation just because it is new is irrelevant.
Both. The fact that your main arguments so far are based on potential coincidences and DNA make me very skeptical. I would be skeptical of that from a well established theory. And then you also are going against relatively widely accepted research.Quote...and it is not plausible to me.Why? Because it does not confirm to what you believe in, or because there is something wrong with my arguments?
I beg to differ. I believe that tribes are are carriers of languages. Tribes are family related, therefore genetically related groups. So languages and genes are quite well correlated.Sometimes. But languages can easily spread to speakers in different regions with very different genetic backgrounds. What typically happens is that a relatively small group moves to a new location and then they begin to inter-marry and the genetic code shifts while the language stays the same (or you could phrase it the other way around).
The reason why we have Common language, customs, between Ireland and Serbia, is because of old European R1a and I2 genes found in Ireland and language and culture they carried with them and R1b genes in Serbia and language and culture they carried with them. The reason why we have common language and customs between Slavs and Germanics is because of their common R1a and I genes and language and culture they carried with them. And so on.No... the genes aren't causing anything. It *might* be the case that the genes and language are distributed as they are because they were distributed by the same migrations of people.
The only reason i can use modern Serbian to give etymology for Vedic, Greek, Germanic, Celtic god names, which have no etymologies in Sanscrit, old Greek, Germanic of Gaelic, is because these goods were originally named in R1a or I2 language, preserved by R1a and I2 population of Ireland and Balkans...There is no other explanation for this. .Too many "coincidences" to be coincidences. Especially because Serbian and Irish language based etymologies solve some very old "mysteries" of the ancient world and make sense of a lot of "nonsense" in the old belief systems...Perhaps. But given that we already know all of these languages are related anyway, it's just a matter of determining the direction of change and so forth.
Please could you address the questions freknu has put to you twice now.
I'm suspicious of how you're not answering them. It would put my mind to ease and bring me back on track if you could provide a good answer.
But they continue using their old language at homeSometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. You can't hold a personal speculation about what seems right and then put it across as a scientific fact to which there would be no counter evidence and then use that as a logical backbone to the argument. If anything, that would only be an acceptable side-point about a potential tendency which backs up other evidence. There are so, so many incidents of people taking up a whole new language and not using the old one anymore. Look at the Normans, for example. It only took 2-3 generations for them to completely stop speaking Germanic and pick up the French surrounding them.
Sometimes new ruling elite, if it is small in numbers, completely addopts the language and customs of the local subdued population, bringing into the mix only few phrases, god names and such. The example are Normans in Ireland which became completely gaeicised.Ah, it was just, moments ago you were making the opposite argument. :o
Old Europe (pre 3000 bc) had no R1b population at all. The most dominant genetic type was R1a and I (I2)Ehhh? The daughter marker of R1b (R1b1) has been found in modern humans all around modern France and Spain during the last Ice Age, the last point of which ended 10,000 years ago. That places a clear massive string of R1b DESCENDANTS in a period that ended at 8,000BC. There are more holes in this argument than Swiss cheese. Is your argument that the pre-Ice age DNA was wiped out? Well, I'm here (R1b1b2a1a2f3) at least.
This is why it is possible for me to use cross section between Serbian and Irish to analize the roots of all thes "Indoeuropean" languages. They have both preserved the oldest layers of the building blocks of Indoeuropean languages, R1a, I2 and R1b tribal, old languages...You really did not even take any successful step in setting up the argument of what this has to do with the Serbian-Irish connection, nor did you even make any attempt to talk about the building blocks of languages. Genetic markers might be linked to populations that brought specific languages to specific places, but I can't pull a coherent argument out on the connection.
I will continue with answering freknu's questions soon.I haven't really seen you start answering them in any sort of academic fashion. How about sticking to agreeable premises and then providing a solid backing for why/how these distinctions can connect Serbian and Irish or something. I know this isn't stuff you might want to hear, but a theory needs to be a hell of a lot better presented than how you're doing now. You'd never get anywhere in the scientific world with that. Maybe this can be considered the first steps to honing in on how to present it - I doubt it, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I'm far from convinced. You're making assertions that don't strike me as factual in any way.
Can you cite any sources other than your imagination/observations?
I did say this is new, so no. New, Original, Inventive, Imaginative...Do you remember these words? They all have positive connotation.
If you really do know something about the theories you're rejecting, then I might be willing to see where your argument goes. If not, I don't see the point. Feel free to comment on that if you'd like.
Ah, it was just, moments ago you were making the opposite argument.
Are you going to let me do that? Do you really want to know what i have to present, or do you only care about the fact that i am not conforming to what you believe in?
What i was trying to explain, but you didn't get, is that languages don't get replaced by new languages. They merge with, they merge into, they get overlayed, but they don't disappear completely. There is always a trace of the old language left.
The past languages of Canada would like to disagree with you.
Nobody is stopping you from presenting what you have. The problem is that what you've presented so far is not very convincing. If you have some solid evidence that you have not yet presented, by all means, do so. What you're attempting to undermine is based on hundreds of years of systematic scientific method; that's not to say that it can't and shouldn't be overturned, it's simply saying that the body of evidence with which to overturn it needs to be exceptionally convincing.
Look at the Normans, for example. It only took 2-3 generations for them to completely stop speaking Germanic and pick up the French surrounding them.
Tove of the Obotrites, also called Tova, Tofa or Thora, (10th century) was a Slavic princess and a Danish Viking Age queen consort, the spouse of King Harald I of Denmark. Thora (Tova) was the daughter of Prince Mistivir of the Obotrites. She married King Harald in 970.
Harald 'Klak' Halfdansson (c. 785 – c. 852) was a king in Jutland (and possibly other parts of Denmark) around 812–814 and again from 819–827.[1]
The identity of Harald's father is uncertain. He had at least three brothers. Anulo (d. 812), Ragnfrid (d. 814) and Hemming Halfdansson (d. 837).[2][3] An 837 entry in the Annales Fuldenses calls Hemming a son of Halfdan.[4] This is the only mention of their father in a primary source.
The Royal Frankish Annals entries of 814 start with the death of Charlemagne. Louis the Pious became sole emperor and turned to diplomatic relations with other European powers. The Royal Annales then mention the continuation of the conflict among the Danes and that Harald Klak sought refuge in the court of Louis. "Heriold and Reginfrid, kings of the Danes, had been defeated and expelled from their kingdom the year before [813] by the sons of Godofrid, against whom they regrouped their forces and again made war. In this conflict Reginfid and the oldest son of Godofrid were killed. When this had come to pass, Heriold despaired of his cause, came to the emperor [Louis], and put himself under his protection. The emperor received him and told him to go to Saxony and to wait for the proper time when he would be able to give him the help which Heriold had requested."...The 815 entries of the Royal Annals focus on the campaign for restoring Harald to his throne. "The emperor [Louis] commanded that Saxons and Obodrites should prepare for this campaign, and twice in that winter the attempt was made to cross the Elbe. But since the weather suddenly turned and made the ice on the river melt, the campaign was held up. Finally, when the winter was over, about the middle of May, the proper time to begin the march arrived. Then all Saxon counts and all troops of the Obodrites, under orders to bring help to Heriold, marched with the imperial emissary Baldrich across the River Eider into the land of the Norsemen called Silendi....But the sons of Godofrid, who had raised against them a large army and a fleet of two hundred ships, remained on an island three miles of the shore and did not dare engage them.... "He [Louis] settled the affairs of the Slavs and of Heriold, and, leaving Heriold behind in Saxony, returned to his palace in Frankfurt."... Harald apparently continued operations against his rivals. An 817 entry of the Royal Annals reports "Because of the persistent aggression of Heriold, the sons of Godofrid, king of the Danes, also sent an embassy to the emperor [Louis], asked for peace, and promised to preserve it. This sounded more like hypocrisy than truth, so it was dismissed as empty talk and aid was given to Heriold against them"....A next attempt in 819, again with help from the Obotrites, met with more success and some kind of settlement seems to have been reached with the sons of Gudfred, since Harald was joint king with two of them in 821....In 823, tensions had appeared in Harald's relations with his co-rulers. Louis was asked to mediate....According to the Vita Ansgari by Rimbert, "After this it happened that a king named Heriold (Latin:Herioldus), who ruled over some of the Danes, was assailed by hatred and malignity, and was driven from his kingdom by the other kings of the same province....
During the reign of Louis the Pious, the Frankish Empire had no effective fleet, and this made the coast of Frisia a weak point in the defense of his realm. The motivation for granting Harald a fief in Frisia possibly had to do with Harald committing himself to defending the Frisian coastline against future Viking raids. The center of his fief was located in northwestern Germany, west of Oldenburg. This may have been the first piece of Frankish territory given to a Dane.
While quiet prevailed throughout the interior, Harold Bluetooth turned his energies to foreign enterprises. He came to the help of Richard the Fearless of Normandy in 945 and 963...
Motte-and-bailey castle
A motte-and-bailey castle is a fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised earthwork called a motte, accompanied by an enclosed courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to build with unskilled, often forced labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and Anjou in France, into the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century.
Fitz is a prefix in patronymic surnames of Anglo-Norman origin. This usage derives from the Norman fiz / filz, pronunciation: /fits/ (cognate with French fils < Latin filius), meaning "son of". In noble families, this was preposed to the name of the father (e.g. Fitz Gilbert, meaning "son of Gilbert"), mirroring the Scandinavian tradition of adding -son after (usually) the father's name. There are, however, exceptions in which the name of a more noteworthy mother (Fitz Wymarch) or a parent's title (Fitz Count, Fitz Empress) was used instead. Such surnames were later created for illegitimate children of royal princes.[1]
De: "of the": a Norman-French habitational prefix used by some of the most common Irish surnames among which are De Búrca, Le Brún, De Barra, De Cíosóg, Devane and de Faoite. 'De' historically has signaled ownership of lands and was traditionally therefore a mark of prestige.
-ić -vić -ović -ič -vič -ovič -ich, -vich, -vych, -ovich, -owicz: Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Republic of Macedonia (rare), occasionally Bulgaria. Yugoslav ex.: Petrović, means Petar's son. In Russia, where patronyms are used, a person would have two -(ov)ich names in a row; first the patronym, then the family name (see Shostakovich).
Fitz: a Norman-French word derived from the Latin word filius ("son"). It was used in patronymics by thousands of men in the early Norman period in Ireland (e.g. fitz Stephen, fitz Richard, fitz Robert, fitz William) and only on some occasions did it become used as an actual surname, the most famous example being the FitzGerald Earls of Kildare. Yet well into the 17th and 18th century it was used in certain areas dominated by the Hiberno-Norman of Ireland in its original form, as a patronymic. The Tribes of Galway were especially good at conserving this form, with examples such as John fitz John Bodkin and Michael Lynch fitz Arthur, used even as late as the early 19th century. A number of illegitimate descendents of the British royal family were given surnames with this element: some of the illegitimate children of King Charles II were named FitzCharles or FitzRoy ("son of the King"); those of King James II were named FitzJames; those of Prince William, Duke of Clarence and St Andrews (later King William IV) were named FitzClarence. Note that "Fitzpatrick" is not Norman: it is actually a Normanisation of the Gaelic surname Mac Ghiolla Phádraig.
In later times, similar forms were coined for members of the English and British royal family, who historically lacked a surname, and particularly for illegitimate children of kings and princes (Fitzroy, son of the king; Fitzjames, son of the king James II of England; and FitzClarence, son of the Duke of Clarence). From this later use, it has been inferred that the name indicates illegitimacy, which was not originally the case. More generally, the prefix has been used to connote nobility as is the case in Anthony Trollope's 1862 novel Orley Farm which features the rakishly aristocratic figure of Lord John Fitzjoly.
The Irish surname FitzGerald is thought to derive from Gerald de Windsor, a Cambro-Norman nobleman whose son and grandson were involved in the Norman invasion of Ireland.
The Irish name Fitzpatrick does not indicate a Norman origin of the family; it is the translation into English of the Gaelic surname Mac Giolla Phádraig. Other surnames beginning "Mac Giolla" were made into "McGilli-" (e.g. McGillicuddy), but the Fitzpatricks claimed Norman heritage in a time when the Normans dominated much of Ireland.
Fitz is also a stand-alone German surname originating in the Palatinate region of Germany.
How are you going to be convinced after reading three of my posts interspersed with all the "no no it is not possible"? Did you go and read any of the material on the external links? I bet you didn't. If you guys let me explain and elaborate you might get convinced. Are you going to let me do that? Do you really want to know what i have to present, or do you only care about the fact that i am not conforming to what you believe in?As with any new idea, the burden of proof is on you. This isn't me treating you unfairly. I'm treating you like I would anyone making new claims. Given that you have not summarized the information in a way that makes me suspicious of the old ideas or curiously intrigued by the plausibility of yours, I don't think that's unfair at all. Quite literally, you could be saying just about anything else ("Basque must be related to Japanese!!!!") and I would feel similar. Your arguments seem to rely on rejecting a lot of what has been established and are based on very controversial (at best) claims like an assumed close relationship between genetics and language.
First how do you know what I am rejecting?I asked you, and your ideas appear to be rejecting established ideas about Indo-European at least. For this to hold up, I think you'd need to reject a lot more. If you could reply by saying "oh, no, look, this can very conveniently fit into the existing theory in this way" and include some citations, I'd be more likely to buy your argument. Sweeping rejections, controversial evidence and just-new ideas don't make a convincing argument.
Secondly, i am not your student or your child so change your tone please. And actually i don't care if you don't are willing or not to participate in this discussion. If you want do it If you don't do something else. It is up to you.Then, sincerely, good luck. But you seem more interested in being defensive and making undefended sweeping claims (or telling us "no, it'll make more sense if you just believe me and read all of what I've written"-- it makes less sense as I read more, to be honest). You're welcome to claim/write whatever you'd like. I'm just asking for a summary addressing some basic points that strike me as implausible. Being right (or wrong) and getting others to believe you (or not) are two very different things!
But i have hundreds of pages of data on the links i posted in my first post. Did you bothered reading any of it?
In general as a simple example, I'm very concerned about your perceived association between genetics and language.
Are people who spoke these languages still with us? Can they disagree too, or are they all dead?
Ehhh? The daughter marker of R1b (R1b1) has been found in modern humans all around modern France and Spain during the last Ice Age, the last point of which ended 10,000 years ago. That places a clear massive string of R1b DESCENDANTS in a period that ended at 8,000BC. There are more holes in this argument than Swiss cheese. Is your argument that the pre-Ice age DNA was wiped out? Well, I'm here (R1b1b2a1a2f3) at least.
Early papers publishing results on European-wide Y-DNA marker frequencies, such as those of Semino (2000) and Rosser (2000), correlated haplogroup R1b-M269 with the earliest episodes of European colonization by Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH). The peak frequencies of M269 in Iberia (especially the Basque region) and the Atlantic façade were postulated to represent signatures of re-colonization of the European West following the Last Glacial Maximum.[81][82] However, even prior to recent criticisms and refinements, the idea that Iberian R1b carrying males repopulated most of western Europe was not consistent with findings which revealed that Italian M269 lineages are not derivative of Iberian ones.[83]
More recently, data and calculations from Myres (2011),[84] Cruciani (2010),[85] Arredi (2007)[86] and Belaresque (2010)[87] suggest a Late Neolithic entry of M269 into Europe.
These hypotheses appear to be corroborated by more direct evidence from ancient DNA. For example, Early Neolithic Y-DNA from Spain did not reveal any R1b, but rather E-V13 and G2a,[87] whilst a similar study from a French pre-Beaker Neolithic site revealed haplgroup G2a and I-P37.[88] It is only later, from a German Bell Beaker site dated to the third millennium BCE, that the first evidence for R1b is detected. Ancient Y-DNA results for the remains of Beaker people from Iberia have yet to be obtained.
Whilst Cruciani, Belaresque and Arredi support a spread of R1b from South-Eastern Europe, Klyosov (2012) postulates that "Western European" R1b-L150 entered Europe from Northern Africa, via Iberia, coincident with the spread of the Bell Beaker culture.[89]
The Age of the World, 2545. Rudhruidhe, son of Parthalon, was drowned in Loch Rudhruidhe, the lake having flowed over him; and from him the lake is called.
The Age of the World, 2546. An inundation of the sea over the land at Brena in this year, which was the seventh lake eruption that occurred in the time of Parthalon; and this is named Loch Cuan.
The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from a literal reading of the Bible by James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh (Church of Ireland). The chronology is sometimes associated with young Earth creationism, which holds that the universe was created only a few millennia ago by God as described in the first two chapters of the Biblical book of Genesis.
If you are implying that i could be racist let me tell you this: I don't know what my haplogroup is, i don't know what haplogroup any of my family members and friends belong to. And i don't care. Genes are not something we choose. They determine a lot of who we are, but we should strive to be as best human being as possible regardless of what tribe we come from. I was brought up not to care what culture, religion or nationality someone belongs to, and to take difference as positive and enriching.Great! That sounds like a good attitude (similar to mine).
Serbia is the best example, where we have every haplogroup known to man, all sharing the same language. But with different local dialects and customs, which you can identify as links to old cultures belonging to the original genetic tribe from which particular local family or clan came from.Whoa! Present-day minor cultural variation is due to ancient genetic and historical factors? This not only seems implausible (or at least unreliable) to me, but it seems to go against your theory that there are clear genetic indicators correlated with all speakers of Serbian.
I use genetics as a tool to track spread of cultures and languages.To me this seems like a very bad idea. Or at least it is a bad idea if it is your only source of data. As I've said, there is simply not enough data in the genetic data to deal with the minor variations in Slavic and Celtic dialects you're talking about.
So far i think it works. I know everyone cringes when they hear genes and cultures mixed together, but just because someone abused something in the past, doesn't mean that we should never use it again. Just because someone killed someone with a knife, should we never use knife again?Not at all. But there are two reasons people cringe:
Tribes develop from families, and families propagate genes. This is a fact and can not be ignored.True, but irrelevant.
Look at Slavs. From Central Europe to Siberia, they can all more or less understand each other.Hm?
They are all more or less R1a.That certainly doesn't cause anything. If anything, it's just a fortunate coincidence for a researcher. That's not a good feeling, that your research program is based on what you hope is a coincidence.
Their cultures are also very similar, and all that after crusades, conversions, occupations, exterminations, communism, nazism, huns, avars, mongols, turks, germans, austrians, hungarians, vikings and all the other invaders and conquerors.Sure.
After thousands of years, over two continents, the language and culture is the same where the population is the of the same genetic type (R1a). All this without schools and without books to codify the language.Perhaps. But so what? What does this say about Proto-Indo-European, in a case where there was a lot of migration?
Also the whole term "Indoeuropen" needs to be seriously reevaluated, as latest genetic data are connecting Indo European directly with R1a haplogroup and to lesser Extent R1b haplogroup only.
Both Irish and Serbian (South Slavic) languages have very large layer of paleolithic language, and have preserved the oldest language roots. You can build "PIE" roots using roots found in Serbian and Irish. This is how old this stuff is.
Let's make my questions even more direct:This is what I was referring to.
1) provide a list of Serbian and/or Irish words which you claim to be of a pre-PIE paleolithic substratum.
2) explain why you believe these words are of a pre-PIE paleolithic substratum.
- provide a list of Serbian and/or Irish words which you claim to be of a pre-PIE paleolithic substratum.
- explain why you believe these words are of a pre-PIE paleolithic substratum.
Great! That sounds like a good attitude (similar to mine).
I use genetics as a tool to track spread of cultures and languages.
To me this seems like a very bad idea. Or at least it is a bad idea if it is your only source of data. As I've said, there is simply not enough data in the genetic data to deal with the minor variations in Slavic and Celtic dialects you're talking about.
Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Church Slavic (often abbreviated to OCS; self-name словѣ́ньскъ ѩзꙑ́къ, slověnĭskŭ językŭ) was the first Slavic literary language. The 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius are credited with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek ecclesiastical texts as part of the Christianisation of the Slavic peoples. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica (now in Greek Macedonia).
Haplogroup R1a probably branched off from R1* around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (19,000 to 26,000 years before present). Little is know for certain about its place of origin. Some think it might have originated in the Balkans or around Pakistan and Northwest India, due to the greater genetic diversity found in these regions. The diversity can be explained by other factors though. The Balkans have been subject to 5000 years of migrations from the Eurasian Steppes, each bringing new varieties of R1a. South Asia has had a much bigger population than any other parts of the world (occasionally equalled by China) for at least 10,000 years, and larger population bring about more genetic diversity. The most likely place of origin of R1a is Central Asia or southern Russia/Siberia.
R1a is thought to have been the dominant haplogroup among the northern and eastern Indo-European speakers who evolved into the Indo-Iranian, Mycenaean Greek, Thracian, Baltic and Slavic branches.
The concept of the Insular Celtic languages being descended from Hebrew was part of Medieval superstition, but the hypothesis that they had features from an Afro-Asiatic substratum (Iberian and Berber languages) was first proposed by John Morris-Jones in 1900.[2] Some well-known linguists have been adherents such as Julius Pokorny,[3] Heinrich Wagner,[4] and Orin Gensler.[5] There has been further work on the theory by Shisha-Halevy [6] and Theo Vennemann.
The theory has been criticised by Graham Isaac[7] and by Kim McCone.[8] Isaac alleges, that the twenty points identified by Gensler are trivial, dependencies or vacuous, but without giving an rationale. Thus he considers the theory to be not just unproven but wrong.
Celtic languages – Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh – incorporate grammatical traits found in Afro-Asiatic tongues that are otherwise unrelated, according to research published last week in Science magazine.
Other Celtic languages that were spoken in continental Europe and have since died out did not have these grammatical quirks. Afro-Asiatic languages are currently spoken in countries across Northern Africa and the Near East. This points to the possibility that there was early contact between Celtic and North African populations in the British Isles.
Orin Gensler, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said the similarities would be explained if, when Afro-Asiatic people learnt Celtic from the new immigrants, they “perpetuated aspects of their own grammar into the new language”. Gensler has studied many grammatical features found in both Celtic and Afro-Asiatic languages. He found many of the shared features were rare in other languages.
Linguists have discovered surprising differences between Celtic languages and related languages such as French, while seeing striking resemblances between Celtic and Afro-Asiatic languages that are spoken in countries including Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.
Gensler examined features of the languages such as the order of words in a sentence. In Gaelic and Welsh the standard sentence structure is verb subject-object, which is a rare sequence. This is also the case in many Afro-Asiatic languages. Celtic languages that used to be spoken in continental Europe had the verb in the final or middle position.
Berniece Wuethrich, author of the Science article, said: “The only other non-linguistic evidence that could point towards this connection is in blood type, but it is not definitive. Irish and British people have different proportions of blood types to most Europeans. Where there are comparable proportions is in the Atlas mountains in Northern Africa, home of the Berber people.” Berber is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language group.
Geneticists say there is no evidence of North African ancestors in Irish genes. “There is no particular correspondence between northwest Africa and this island but that is not to say we won’t find something,” said Dr Dan Bradley of the department of genetics at Trinity College. “There is no good genetic evidence to support what the linguists are saying. You have to keep an open mind though.”
While in general clues about the identity of prehistoric inhabitants are gleaned from archeological remains and DNA, linguists say that certain elements of a language can preserve information about ancient times.
It is widely known that when the Celts invaded Ireland there were people already here. Man is first believed to have arrived on Irish shores about 9,000 years ago – the earliest-known archeological evidence for human habitation dates to 7,000BC.
Archeologists are not sure of the origins of prehistoric immigrants to Ireland. A team of scientists in Dublin and Belfast, including Bradley, is studying the genes of modern Irish people to find evidence of these origins, a project which is partly funded by the government’s millennium fund
These oddities of grammar still persist in the English language spoken in Ireland. They do have a slightly different way of composing a sentence.
’ What would you be wanting with your Guinness?’
Instead of
‘What do you want with your Guinness?’
EARLY GERMANIC ~ AFRO-ASIATIC (Proto-Berber)
baus (bad, evil, useless; German böse) ~ ba's (calamity, misfortune)
ela (eel) ~ 'il (snake)
gawi (district; German Gau) ~ gawad (land, with epenthesis)
kelikn (loft, upper story) ~ qal'a (fortress, hill, citadel [Skomal, 223ff])
land (land, country) ~ lha'nt (grassland, with collective suffix)
paþa (path) ~ put (to step along)
preu (awl, piercing tool) ~ par (to separate, cut apart, make an opening)
regen (rain; German Regen) ~ rayyn (well-watered, with noun suffix)
sek (to cut, mow; English sickle) ~ tsîk (to pluck up)
silver (silver) ~ azerfa (silver)
summer (summer) ~ asammar (hot weather)
werð (word) ~ werd (to call out)
English, Berber, Basque
tree ...saGar (pl.).. SAGAR (*)
Basque "sagar" actually means "apple"
to arrive ...fel.... HEL
Basque "(h)el-"
to attach...aGi ....ATXI
Basque "atxiki" (to add, to stick)
beef ....esu (t-esu-t "cow") ...ZEZEN
Basque "zezen" means 'bull'
wood.... saRir ....ZUR
Basque "zur"
to run fast .... azl ZAL
(no such word in Basque, but compare Basque "zaldi", 'horse')
to say ...... enn ERRAN, ESAN
Basque "esan", "erran" probably from earlier "esran"
to sleep..... eTTes ETZAN (to lie)
Basque "etzan"
sheet ......axawlil OIHAL
Basque "oihal" (cloth)
child .....araw (H)AUR
Basque "(h)aur"
enemy .....henGa ETSAI
Basque "etsai"
to sneeze .....usraG urtzinz
Basque "usin"
to do .....eG / ekn- EGIN
Basque "-gin-" (to do, make)
String.....ehed HEDE
Basque "hede"
gazelle ....ahenkoD AHUNTZ (goat)
Basque "ahuntz"
drop.... eTTeb ITOITZ
Basque "itoi"
seeds ....âllun ALE
Basque "ale"
to throw .....enDw ANDEatu
the Basque word for 'to throw' is "-gotz-"
milk ....ax ESNE
Basque "esne"
master..... mess messaw MAISU
Basque "maisu" means "teacher"
sick ..... iran -urn- ERI
Basque "eri"
name ......isem IZEN
Basuqe "izen"
smell ..... ûxem USAIN USNA
Basque "usain", from an earlier *usani
shadow ..... têle ITZAL
Basque "itzal"
nail...... êsker AZAZKAL
Basque "atzazal" means "finger nail", and it's a compound of "atz-" (finger) + "azal" (skin, bark).
Gold ......ûreR URRE
Basque "urre"
to milk ......eZZeG JEIXI JAITZI
Basque "jaitzi"
to chose .....ebres BEREXI
not a Basque word ("berezi" means 'special')
to find..... eGraw AURKItu
Basque "aurkitu"
valley.... eRahar HARAN
Basque "(h)aran"
calf .....ahRu ARATXE
The Basque word for 'calf' is actually "txahal", which requires an earlier *zanal or *sanal.
Linguist Jaime Martín, claims in his book "An enigma untangled: the origin of Basque" that he had found similarities between Dogon languages of Mali with Basque.
On linguistic structures, Dogon and Basque concur in sentence placement order, with the subject at the beginning, the verb at the end – which is the biggest difference from Romance languages – and the direct object in the middle. Also, demonstratives (this, that) go after the verb, as opposed to Latin and Spanish, where it goes before. “I was surprised”, he confesses. They differ in that Basque maintains declinations while Dogon does not have them.
As far as vocabulary goes, he compared 2,274 from both languages and found 1,633 similar pair, which represents 70% of the total.
According to the author, comparative linguistics from a %50 of similarity one can talk about a relationship between two languages.
Ten examples of almost identical words: bede/bide (path in Dogon and Basque, respectively); soro/soro (agricultural land); beri/bero (hot); gara/garai (high); bana/banandu (to separate); gogoro/gogortu (to hold on); kwiye/kuia (pumpkin); pipilu/pipil (bud); togi/toki (place); kose/gose (hunger).
He also found Basque words made up of two Dogon terms, such as “senide” (brother), which is “sani de” in Dogon. Furthermore, he noticed that most of the words were older in Dogon that in Basque. All that has taken him to the conclusion that the Basque language originates from Dogon.
Therefore, according to this professor, the Basque language, which has been the subject of multiple theories about his origin, none of them conclusive, would have an African origin.
He is not the first comparing Basque with other languages; as Martin points out, Koldo Mitxelena – the most famous Basque linguist – denied the correlation between Basque with African languages.
Another well-known linguist, Antonio Tovar, carried out a comparative study among Basque, Berber, Copto and Egyptian and three other Caucasian languages.
Tovar only found up to 7% of similitude with Berber, very little, but pointed out how similar Basque sentence structure was to other languages.
Great. So we can talk about languages, genes, customs and cultures calmly, impartially and without preconceptions rooted in bigotry. I hope. We can accept facts when they are presented to us and use logic and not emotions to evaluate each other's arguments.Absolutely. I never intended to imply anything else. However, we still seem to disagree about the validity of using genetic data for this purpose. That's a purely scientific concern. I'm not unwilling to be wrong about this, if your arguments are convincing.
I started by trying to understand very peculiar local customs, traditions and dialect characteristics of the South East Serbia, the Southern Carpatian region. They use "Celtic" standing crosses to mark the border between villages, their language is one of the oldest and most conservative dialects of Serbian language and it contains some constructs that, as far as I am aware, only exist in Irish. This was the start.The simplest hypotheses:
Most of my research is in the area of anthropology, archaeology and ethnography. Linguistics is a crucial part of this research. Languages, part of languages, survive when one language replaces another. As I said, when two languages merge, smaller or bigger percentage of the less dominant language survives inside the new mixed language.So maybe you can be right without challenging the PIE hypothesis in any way: you're hypothesizing a substratum that was spoken in modern Serbia and Ireland. That's possible. What you're seeing is the result of IE being adapted into the existing regions, and the same with the genetics. I'd be much more likely to accept this argument, although it's still very tentative.
OCS... This language is still spoken in south of SerbiaHuh? I took a class on Slavic linguistics (specifically historical development from PIE) and I don't think this fits in with that. OCS is dead, while I have heard that Bulgarians consider it "Old Bulgarian" because it evolved into that. Certainly dialects that descended from OCS (or it's spoken form, more specifically) might exist in Serbia, but don't confuse that with them necessarily being special or "old"-- all languages are equally old, given that each has an ancestor and so forth, at least for tens of thousands of years.
I started looking at genetic data only a few years ago. The available data is still very limited particularly data coming from "interesting" parts of the world, like north Africa, central Asia, even Balkans. People have no money to do expensive genetic tests. So when we say "15%" of population has R1a haplogroup, that means 15% of 0.01 percent of the population...Not something i would like to use as my main argument for anything. As more an more people get tested, data becomes "statistically" more reliable. But you know what they say about "lies, damn lies and statistics"?Another reason to be more skeptical of this. If you are going to rely on data, you better be able to rely on statistics. If not, that's even worse ;)
Now why do I then use genetic types to name languages? Because I can not use names like Irish or Slavic or Celtic to identify the language through time that spans millenniums. Languages like everything else get born (or created in case of slang languages) and then they evolve.That appears to me to represent fundamental misunderstandings that, for example, the class I teach is intended to correct. While some of this may just be your background and lack of familiarity with technical terms, "slang languages" is very concerning because of (what I think are) the implications of that. All languages are "slang" languages; some just happen to be socially perceived as "standard" and thereby valued. There is nothing whatsoever about the linguistic forms themselves that can be evaluated in such a way. Therefore, in historical linguistics, the standardization is all but irrelevant, except to the extent that it is a factor in determining the size and distribution of certain dialects.
As I said already, natural languages are born within genetically compact families.Sometimes. That's not entirely reliable. Intermarriage is very commonly practiced in some parts of the world (such as Australia, the Americas, and perhaps old Europe).
So originally every language was linked to some genetic type.That's possible. It's far from a clearly necessary assumption!
But what are we going to call that language before it became Vedic language? You can call it Proto Indo European. However this language has been through history directly linked to R1a population as all ancient dna from burial sites are confirming. The direct ancestor of this language is the language spoken by the direct genetic ancestors of the R1a Proto Indo Europeans, Slavs. Indo European languages were created by mixing of R1a language (and it's dialects) and other pre merge, pre Indo European people like R1b people, E1b people, various Asian people. This is, i have to repeat it again, the reason why we need redefining of what Indoeuropean, proto Indoeuropean and pre Indoeuropean means. I believe, based on archaeological, historical, ethnological, anthropological, linguistic and genetic data that i have collected and correlated, that R1a people were proto Indoeuropeans, the core component of all Indoeuropean languages, and what makes them related to each other.That may be entirely true. But (read Anthony (2007) The Horse, the Wheel and Language) the Indo-Europeans spread by conquering diverse populations. Whatever their original genetic makeup was, it is now very mixed in the daughter languages. (And the opposite can happen where a population loses its language.) Again, genes and languages are not necessarily correlated!!
... A man holding exactly the same torcs can be seen on a relief showing Scythians bringing presents to Persian king. ...Interesting. Again, see my alternative explanations above (coincidence, lack of loss).
- provide a list of Serbian and/or Irish words which you claim to be of a pre-PIE paleolithic substratum.
- explain why you believe these words are of a pre-PIE paleolithic substratum.
Serbian language and other South Slavic languages, have preserved a lot of the oldest pre mix (pre Indoeuropean) language roots and their meanings. These roots are used for building syllables and words. They are very much pre Indoeuropean. They come to us straight from at least Cro Magnon times. The vowels i presented are the core languages roots. "GL-LG" root is one of the oldest consonant roots of human language. It defines the length of your tong inward and outward. It defines binary code which can be used to describe any amount of information. Pronounced fast it creates "glg" sound which if pronounced sharp becomes "klick" sound, found in most primitive klick languages of Africa. I will after this go back to vowels and add few more things that made me conclude what i concluded about vowels and their meaning. I will also give examples of pre-Indoeuropean words from Irish and Serbian and explain why I believe they are pre Indoeuropean (older than 3000 bc).
The concept of proposing unknown substratums to explain change (or similarities across a region) was common practice for a while.
I took a class on Slavic linguistics (specifically historical development from PIE) and I don't think this fits in with that.
Certainly dialects that descended from OCS (or it's spoken form, more specifically) might exist in Serbia, but don't confuse that with them necessarily being special or "old"-- all languages are equally old, given that each has an ancestor and so forth, at least for tens of thousands of years.
Another reason to be more skeptical of this. If you are going to rely on data, you better be able to rely on statistics.
It has been suggested that the Funnelbeaker culture was the origin of the gene allowing adults of Northern European descent to digest lactose. It was claimed that in the area formerly inhabited by this culture, prevalence of the gene is virtually universal.[2] A paper published in 2007 by Burger et al. [3] indicated that the genetic variant that causes lactose persistence in most Europeans (-13,910*T) was rare or absent in early farmers from central Europe. A study published by Yuval Itan and colleagues in 2010 [4] clearly shows this. A study published in 2009, also by Itan et al.,[5] suggests that the Linear Pottery culture (also known as Linearbandkeramik or LBK), which preceded the TRB culture by some 1,500 years, was the culture in which this trait started to co-evolve with the culture of dairying.
Ancient DNA extracted from three individuals ascribed to a TRB horizon in Gökhem, Sweden, were found to possess mtDNA haplogroups H, J, and T.[6]
That appears to me to represent fundamental misunderstandings that, for example, the class I teach is intended to correct. While some of this may just be your background and lack of familiarity with technical terms, "slang languages" is very concerning because of (what I think are) the implications of that. All languages are "slang" languages; some just happen to be socially perceived as "standard" and thereby valued. There is nothing whatsoever about the linguistic forms themselves that can be evaluated in such a way. Therefore, in historical linguistics, the standardization is all but irrelevant, except to the extent that it is a factor in determining the size and distribution of certain dialects.
Broadly speaking, your approach is based on a biased sample of evidence. You gather many kinds of convenient evidence while not addressing those facts that do not support your point. You're using selective evidence to try to show that your point is correct, while the extreme lengths you need to go to for this is most likely an indication that either the evidence isn't there or your hypothesis is actually incorrect. Drawing together so many facts "and this... and this!" makes your argument appear to be solid because you have so much evidence, but that's just because the small percentage of evidence that happens to support your claims appears large when you take that percentage from as diverse sources information about lactose tolerance and click phonemes. And yet science has no way of definitively proving that you're wrong on this one, partly because of the lacking evidence in this case.
We can't talk about this, if the only argument you are going to use against my examples is chance, coincidence...How many coincidences do we need to start considering some other explanation?But that's the entire point. The fact that the data is intriguing does not mean that there is an equally intriguing explanation. It might just be chance. There's nothing wrong with me saying that it is possibly chance, but you're right that it doesn't start a very interesting discussion. The issue here is plausibility and burden of proof. Your ideas are pretty out there (non-mainstream) and, you must admit, not obvious in the larger picture. If there is some simpler explanation, then it must be considered.
If you have the same toponimes, hidronimes, grammatical structures, words and customs, traditions, and we know that for instance Celts lived in South of Serbia for a very long time how is this a coincidence? More troubling are all Serbian words, toponimes, hidronimes, grammatical structures, words and customs, traditions in Ireland, and that they are only explicable using Serbian language and additional set of customs. And we have no documented influx of Serbians (Balkan of Baltic) or Slavs into Ireland. And no late Celtic migration into Ireland either, which could have brought to Ireland things Celts picked from Slavs. This points at much older, common stuff. But then we come to the question: Why is the key to understanding this old stuff found only in Serbian?You're already assuming that your questions are well-formed. Coincidences do occur. Remnant traditions that have disappeared in other groups do occur. Ancient contact was possible. Certainly the answer isn't just "they aren't similar", but it's far from a necessary logical conclusion that we must abandon existing theories!
I am not proposing any new unknown language. Just saying that Indoeuropean as we see it today (or as you see it) is a mix of R1a proto Indoeuropean language and R1b and other Afroasiatic languages or old European (G, J, I2) languages. And these old, pre mix, pre Indoeuropean languages, are still here. You just have to look at the whole Indoeuropean term differently. Then it is easy to explain why we have certain language traits in only one part of Indoeuropean territory and not in others. It is not that everyone except Serbian and Irish forgot to use a certain grammatical construct, It is that it only developed where and when Serbs and Irish came in contact. No need to push this ridiculous thing about 99% of Indoeuropeans forgetting pert of their language, and only one percent still clinging to it. These local differences are due to local mixes of local R1a dialect and what ever local R1b or other Afroasiatic or old European dialect they mixed with on that territory.I'm totally lost. As I said, a clear 200-300 word abstract on exactly what you do want to claim would help.
I speak the local dialects I talk about.Oh no! :o
If you take old church Slavonic and give it to anyone in south of Serbia, Macedonia or Bulgaria, they will be able to read and understand most of it.Really? I'm interested in that detail. How literally do you mean this? Certainly the script isn't familiar.
Again PIE = old R1a language whose direct descendant is Slavic family.Not sure what you mean by "old R1a language", but... yeah, that's exactly what every book out there says: PIE split and the daughters became Slavic and other subfamilies (including Celtic). So again, it's very hard to figure out whether what you're saying makes any sense if it isn't clear what you're accepting and rejecting.
So you agree with me that languages survive for a long time.That entire statement is completely incoherent!!
People in Eurasia actually spoke before Indoeuropeans appeared.Absolutely, and obviously. There is a huge amount of evidence to that effect including written records-- Akkadian, Dravidian, Basque, Estrucan, Iberian. Etc.
When I say old, I mean probably older than R1a languages, or as old as them but from a different genetic family - I2.As I said, that's a completely incoherent point.
There are a lot of language traits in Serbian (South Slavic) dialects which are not found in other Slavic dialects, and which are specific to the I2 territory and tribes and families that come from that area. Some of these traits are also found in Irish language.It's completely absurd to think that Serbian is not part of Slavic. It's unclear to me how you can balance Serbian as slavic with Serbian is as special and connected to Irish. Beyond that, however you do manage to work that out, I cannot see why it's any less plausible to work it out within PIE rather than just within Slavic.
This territory also shares common cultural traits and customs with the Irish which are not found in Eastern Serbia for instance where R1b and R1a mix is dominant. And Celts never lived in that area. That was the land of Illyrians.So you keep saying. But why must your conclusion be the right one? Why not just deep shared history? In 3000 years the world might change significantly. Perhaps only Zimbabwe and Canada will remain democracies. But you wouldn't want to posit a theory that they were mysteriously related countries in contrast to all other countries. You would want to realize that the other countries also shared this (actively or passively) and lost it. Simple enough.
The way I do it is that I look at everything else first, then check various genetic data, to see what comes out. A lot of times you see genetic patterns which closely follow the linguistic and cultural ones.Eyeballing data is bad!!
I am not the first to link genes to cultures. Lactose tolerance is directly linked with Linear Pottery culture and their descendants.Sure. But how reliable is this? Is it reasonable to then assume that it has anything to do with language?
Every language is slang, created. Agreed.Then why say it?
Certain groups introduce slang to distinguish themselves from the rest of the tribe. Language evolves through slang.=Language evolve through speaking. Yes!!
But some languages, the oldest ones, are created from natural sounds, like the ones i posted in my opening post, and some are partially or completely artificial.Ack! :o
The reason oldest languages are built from natural sounds is because when they were built there was no grammar or language to give meaning to non natural sounds. I will elaborate on that in my next post.Ooh. I think I might get what you're saying a bit.
We have surviving religious customs, traditions, language and associated symbols that go back to at least 10,000 bc. They are linked to the fire worship, and particularly fire bird worship, and are tightly linked to R1a Arian people. I call them Arian because the symbols which are related to this culture are bird (eagle), swastika and god Agni, Fire, Triglav Trimurti. The root terms of this fire cult, the symbol names, god names, practice names, of which most either have no Etymology in their related languages, or have etymology which has nothing to do with their function, or is completely opposite to their function, have clear etymology in the language you get as overlap of Irish and Serbian. If such complex things as whole belief systems can survive so long (12000 years at least), language or some of it's parts, can survive even longer.In language, frequent lexical items retain irregularities longer. "Be" is irregular in so many languages because of this. Something like religion is so central to a culture that it might preserve that rather than something less important like specific linguistic properties.
I would really appreciate some argument against what i said, or agreement with me. Not we can't prove you are wrong but that does not mean you are right. What does that mean anyway? That I am right but you will refuse to accept it? I don't expect people to agree with me. I appreciate your critique and freknu's questions and comment very much. I never claimed to be all knowing. I came here so you can point at the mistakes i made. But actually point at them and say: this is wrong because...And not this is wrong because i can't believe it is right.Well, I've tried to provide some details above.
Thank you for your analysis. I will talk about it more in my next post. Sorry have to rush.
The Celtic or Keltic languages (usually pronounced /ˈkɛltɪk/ but sometimes /ˈsɛltɪk/)[1] are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group byEdward Lhuyd in 1707.[2]
Celtic languages are most commonly spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany,Cornwall, and the Isle of Man, and can be found spoken on Cape Breton Island. There are also a substantial number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Some people speak Celtic languages in the other Celtic diaspora areas of the United States,[3]Canada, Australia,[4] and New Zealand.[5] In all these areas, the Celtic languages are now only spoken by minorities though there are continuing efforts at revitalization.
During the 1st millennium BC, they were spoken across Europe, in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Atlantic and North Sea coastlines, up the Rhine valley and down the Danube valley to the Black Sea, the Upper Balkan Peninsula, and in Galatia in Asia Minor. The spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times. Celtic languages, particularly Irish, were spoken in Australia before federation in 1901 and are still used there to some extent.[6]
Pavel Serafimov
CELTO-SLAVIC SIMILARITIES
Abstract
Combined analysis of languages, historical sources, burial types, architecture and religion reveals that a part of the Gauls called also Celts were in fact a Western Slavic branch consisting of different tribes who inhabited the lands of ancient France, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, etc. These people were responsible for the spread of iron in Central and Western Europe and were also the ones to whom the ethnonym Celts was applied for the first time. Unless other ancient testimonies or new archaeological discoveries appear, it should be admitted that Slavic tribes inhabited not only Eastern, but also Central and Western Europe in the deep antiquity and were strong, highly developed people, who influenced many others. Novel evidence of Slavic presence in Western Europe and British Isles is presented in this paper. Scientific method demands that the opposing arguments and theories have to be considered. Counter evidence and counter arguments are welcome….
Pavel Serafimov, Giancarlo Tomezzoli
Slavic influences in the Ancient Gaul
Introduction
It is common opinion between the scholars and the people that the ancient gauls formed a compact set of Celtic tribes speaking the gaulish language or similar varieties of the same one [1]. The gaulish language also called Classical Celtic had practically nothing in common with Insular Celtic; it was very close to the Italic group of tongues and had grammatical forms similar to those of the Proto-Indo-European model [1]. however, the publication in a recent past of relevant works has animated the debate about the slavic cultural and religious influences and about the slavic presence in the ancient gaul. With this paper, after having reviewed said relevant works, we analyze in more details some origins of these influences and presence so as to introduce some more arguments and evidences into the debate.
In the proportion of pure light eyes, Ireland competes successfully with the blondest regions of Scandinavia. Over 46 per cent of the total group has pure light eyes, and of these all but 4 per cent are blue. Very light-mixed eyes account for another 30 per cent, while less than one-half of one per cent have pure brown. There is probably no population of equal size in the world which is lighter eyed, and blue eyed, than the Irish. The almost total absence of gray eyes corresponds to the equal paucity of ash-blond hair. Compared to eastern Norway, Sweden, and Finnic and Baltic groups, the eye color is disproportionately light in comparison to hair color. Regional differences, while not great, are of some importance. The ratio of pure blue eyes falls to 33 per cent in Kerry and Clare, and rises to 50 per cent in other regions - Carlow and Wicklow in the southeast, and Armagh, Monaghan, and eastern Cavan in the North. On the whole, the east is lighter eyed than the west, as it is lighter haired. At the same time the Presbyterians are blonder than the Catholics, who are in turn fairer than the members of the Church of Ireland.- Carelton Coon, The Races of Europe, Chapter X, Section 2.
Just because it worries me I'm going to deal with Germanic as well.
It's not an analysis, it's the current scientific knowledge, which your hypothesis is going against.
From Middle English sledde, from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German sledde (cf. Dutch slee, slede, Low German Sleden), from Proto-Germanic *slidô (cf. East Frisian sliede, German Schlitten, Norwegian slede). Related to slide.
From Middle English sliden, from Old English slīdan (“to slide”), from Proto-Germanic *slīdaną (“to slide, glide”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleidh- (“to slip”). Cognate with Old High German slītan (German schlittern, “to slide”), Middle Low German slīden (“to slide”), Middle Dutch slīden (Dutch sledderen, “to slide”).
èaladh, euladh
a creeping along (as to catch game), Irish euloighim steal away, Early Irish élaim, I. flee, Old Irish élud, evasio; German eilen, hasten, speed; root ei, i, go, Latin i-re, etc. Hence èalaidhneach, creeping cold. Strachan derives it from *ex-lâjô, root lâ, ela, go, Greek @Gelaúno (as in eilid, etc.). Stokes now *ass-lúim.
Why is this worrying you? This is a strange attitude to have towards linguistic claim?
QuoteIt's not an analysis, it's the current scientific knowledge, which your hypothesis is going against.
Ok. Let me then do some of my analysis of your scientific knowledge and see what your scientific knowledge has to say about it.
Cognate in Serbian "Baksuz" meaning bad luck, jinx and Bauk - evil creature, but also Puhati - to blow, Pushiti, to smoke, Puvati - to fart but Puvati se to enflate, to show off
PG. *ēlaz "eel" < PIE. *ēl- "line, strip". This is not the root. If line was the root then why is snake called snake? It is also a line like?
Root is most likely from ancient root sound "L", the sound of produced by sLiding the tip op your tong aLong the roof of your mouth, which is smooth and sLippery. You gLide, and sLide, and you have "Led" - Serbian for ice and sLed - thing you use to move on the Surface of Led.
No root etymology.
Now look at this etymology based on root natural language that I think I have discovered ...
cf. OInd. ālī, Grk. olinge (where did you find this word?) Is there any other word that is Cognate apart from Greek.
QuoteIf you take old church Slavonic and give it to anyone in south of Serbia, Macedonia or Bulgaria, they will be able to read and understand most of it.Really? I'm interested in that detail. How literally do you mean this? Certainly the script isn't familiar.
From Middle English line, lyne, from Old English līne (“line, cable, rope, hawser, series, row, rule, direction”), from Proto-Germanic *līnǭ (“line, rope, flaxen cord, thread”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax, linen”), from Proto-Indo-European *līn- (“flax”).
me: unsubstantiated, biased, assumptive claims
you: "rubbish"
Please tell me why is this wrong and what is my mistake in the examples i presented. Not just that you think it is rubbish and that you have nothing to talk to me about. That is not science, that is religion.
Now look at this etymology based on root natural language that I think I have discovered ...
From Middle English line, lyne, from Old English līne (“line, cable, rope, hawser, series, row, rule, direction”), from Proto-Germanic *līnǭ (“line, rope, flaxen cord, thread”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax, linen”), from Proto-Indo-European *līn- (“flax”).
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/line#Etymology_1
No root etymology
Now look at these words ...
There. That's your problem.
You have no evidence.
You are making claims and wild speculations based on data mining
Even more unsubstantiated and assumptive claims.
Did you miss the part about PIE. *līn-?
er-Cr. lizati "to lick" < PS. *lizati < PIE. *(s)leiǵh- "to lick"
Ser-Cr. ljubiti "to love; to kiss" < PS. *ljubiti < PIE. *leubh- "to love"
Ser-Cr. pljuvati "to spit" < PS. *pljuvati < PIE. *(s)pyēu- "to spit; to vomit"
Ser-Cr. bljuvati "to vomit" < PS. *bljuvati < PIE. *(s)pyēu- "to spit; to vomit"
Ser-Cr. ljigav < PIE. *lei- "slimy; to slip, glide"
Ser-Cr. ljaga "stain, blemish" < Rus. ljaga "adhestive, sticky" < PIE. *lei- "slimy; to slip, glide"
Ser-Cr. ulje "oil" < Lat. oleum "oil" < Grk. elaion "oil" < elaia "olive"
Ser-Cr. jegulja "eel" < Lat. anguilla "eel" < PIE. *angh- "worm, eel, snake"
Ser-Cr. lapati "to lap" < PIE. *lab- "to lick"
Ser-Cr. lokati "to drink, guzzle" < PS. *lokati < PIE. *lak- "to lick"
The following are passive sounds, used to describe the aftermath of a situation, and used to release accumulated emotions:
hoooo - mild frustration with small problem, forward looking
huuuu - lots of problems, hard work, but still not giving up, forward looking
haaaa - too many problems, giving up, present
eh - remembering something that failed recently and you wish it didn't, feeling sorry for yourself. recent past
ih - remembering something that failed long time ago. feeling bitter. distant past
Dublin, is it possible that you are wrong?
A good scientist is open to that possibility.
You seem to be opposed to your theory being wrong and instead assuming that the entire goal of this conversation is to support it and prove it right.
If you cannot understand the purpose, methods, and limitations of comparative linguistics
From Middle English cheri (loanword from Anglo-Norman, from Old Northern French cherise (“cherry”)- compare Old French cerise, which gave modern French cerise and later English cerise from this). Compare Old English ciris (“cherry”), (from Late Latin ceresia), which died out after the Norman invasion and was replaced by the French-derived word.[1]
The Middle English singular is a back-formation from Old Northern French cherise (“cherry”) (interpreted as a plural), from Vulgar Latin ceresia, a reinterpretation of the neuter plural of Late Latin ceresium, from Latin cerasium (cerasum, cerasus (“cherry tree”)), from Ancient Greek κεράσιον (kerasion, “cherry fruit”).
Ser-Cr. krv "blood" < PBS. *krouio < PIE. *kreu- *krū- "blood; flesh"
Ser-Cr. crn "black" < PS. *crn < PIE. *ḱer(s)- "black; dirty"
Ser-Cr. trešnja "cherry" < Lat. cerasia < Grk. kerasos < PIE. *ker- "cherry tree"
Three unrelated roots.
freknuQuoteSer-Cr. krv "blood" < PBS. *krouio < PIE. *kreu- *krū- "blood; flesh"
Ser-Cr. crn "black" < PS. *crn < PIE. *ḱer(s)- "black; dirty"
Ser-Cr. trešnja "cherry" < Lat. cerasia < Grk. kerasos < PIE. *ker- "cherry tree"
Three unrelated roots.
Are you blind or just out of your mind? Have you ever seen cherry? And what exactly is this root of kerasos *ker if not blood? Do you trust your books more than your logic and your eyes?
As for the natural language theory, I have presented part of it and in bad way, i admit it. I will write the summary today or tomorrow, describing what i the theory states and why i believe that the theory is valid.
As i said this is work in progress.Doesn't excuse it from scrutiny. You can't make a theory correct by fiddling with it to make it impervious to counterargument-- the basic ideas in the theory may still be wrong. The fact that you may be able to argue convincingly doesn't mean it's necessarily right. In the end, what matters is whether it is actually better supported by the evidence than other theories are-- only when you just consider your very limited selective evidence does your theory appear to make sense. Otherwise, the standard theory is much more widely supported.
But i don't think i am wrong. What would be the point in me presenting a theory here for validation if i thought it was wrong? Use logic please if you want to talk scienceActually, science involves being wrong a lot. Many hypotheses are put forward for testing because we want to know whether they are correct, and in some cases they're put forward specifically for the purpose of proving them wrong.
I am open to that possibility. This is what the point of review and validation is all about. You present your theory, describe the system or logic used to arrive to it as well as data on which base your theory.Yes, but that doesn't mean that in this case you are right.
So you know where I stand on that.Not so much. You have a lot of apparently scattered ideas based on selective evidence, and I'm not sure that overall it fits together or what the conclusions would be even if we assume that there are conclusions to be made from the argument.
This is work in progress and i have pile of data which is still not publish.This is not going to get published. It won't stand up to peer review. It's an exercise in a personal agenda to show that something works that you think intuitively should work, but it's against much better established theories, and it is not convincing. Further, and I genuinely don't mean to be offensive in this, many of your claims indicate a complete lack of understanding of certain central ideas in the field. If you want to prove something wrong, you must: 1) directly address it (rather than just navigating around it in your new theory), and 2) have a deep understanding of the existing theory and the evidence that supports it. If you want to show that the world is round, then you must also show that such a theory explains why the world appears to be flat.
As for the natural language theory, I have presented part of it and in bad way, i admit it. I will write the summary today or tomorrow, describing what i the theory states and why i believe that the theory is valid. I have presented some data which supports my theory. I have a lot more data available, and i will be presenting it here as i find time. You can use my theory, and the data i supply to support it, in any way you want. You can try to disprove my theory, and please do so, but use logic, and analysis and not quotes, and slogans. Show me where and why am i wrong. Show me what the alternative "right" thing should be.I don't get it. Why shouldn't we use quotes? The idea is that we refer to existing literature. In fact, you're the one citing most of the literature here (often from Wikipedia). It goes both ways.
As every scientist i believe that my theory is right.Incorrect assumption! See above. You appear to have faith, not science.
I spent lots of time and effort researching it and putting it together.Ultimately irrelevant. I could come up with some fairly complicated reasons why PIE is the lost language of Atlantis, but it doesn't matter how much effort I put into that-- it won't ever be correct.
You will not find one scientist who will work on a theory, and present it to public, if he thinks the theory is wrong. What would be the point of that.Scientists believe their work will contribute something to the greater knowledge of the field. We might be somewhat upset if our personal theories are wrong, but it is only counterproductive to rely on them being right. Often scientific research involves considering a theory and an alternative theory, discussion about the two, and then conclusions about which one seems best.
But not everyone is right about everything. Not all theories are valid, but a lot of times you need external input to see your mistake. I am completely prepared to accept that i am wrong completely or partially.Ok, so how should we convince you? No one here would tell you not to consider these ideas, but we would try to convince you why they won't end up being the right ones. They are simply inconsistent with everything else that is understood, even things that you probably are using yourself as part of your argument.
But i will not accept that i am wrong just because you or someone else says so. You will need to show me and everyone else that i am wrong and elaborate why. And you will have to do it using logical arguments. If i am found wrong, so be it. Let's get to work of me trying to prove that i am right and you trying to prove that i am wrong. We can both learn a lot from it, i believe.The best way to approach that would be for you to start reading the existing literature about the Comparative Method in reconstruction and trying to understand what the sum of all of the data suggests, rather than selective evidence that is (misleadingly) compatible with your theory. A theory must be supported by positive evidence and not unsupported by negative evidence.
Are you blind or just out of your mind? Have you ever seen cherry? And what exactly is this root of kerasos *ker if not blood? Do you trust your books more than your logic and your eyes?The "your books" here are based on very careful reconstructions that in the majority of cases can be seen with confidence to rule out other correspondences. You seem to prefer eyeballing the data for what looks like evidence for your theory rather than actually taking on the data based on more general patterns, such as sound change. This is a major methodological problem!
I do hope you read the two replies above this one carefully.
I think this could be a constructive exercise.
Funnily enough, I could make any of them fit with the definition of "cherry". That doesn't mean any of them are correct.
From Middle English line, lyne, from Old English līne (“line, cable, rope, hawser, series, row, rule, direction”), from Proto-Germanic *līnǭ (“line, rope, flaxen cord, thread”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax, linen”), from Proto-Indo-European *līn- (“flax”).
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/line#Etymology_1
I am not going to reply to your post because there is really nothing for me to say to something like this. Your attitude is completely negative from start, and you are excluding even possibility that i would be able to produce valid argument for my case.Feel free to produce a valid argument!
I hope you do too. Particularly what jkpate said:He was referring to what I suggested: write a <500 words abstract of your research. You haven't done that. Instead, you're just going to more and more inconclusive arguments that don't seem to tie together.QuoteI think this could be a constructive exercise.
I don't believe that it has been so far, mostly because yours and freknu's outright refusal to even consider that there could be something out there which you don't know about, and which might be valid and useful.Not at all. Please, write something clear, concise, coherent and convincing. As has been suggested repeatedly, state your claims clearly in a short abstract. Write one or two paragraphs. We can go from there. You have failed to convince us, so we have rejected your hypothesis. That's logical.
I am willing to do what jkpate suggested, but i would ask for a bit less preaching...Oh, c'mon. You're just telling us to believe your theory without making an even slightly convincing argument. We're not preaching to you. We're telling you that there is no observable reason to believe you. That's science. I'm not biased by the existing theories-- I'm sure they could be improved. I'm just completely unconvinced by yours. It's your job to make it convincing. Organize your thoughts. Write an abstract. We can possibly provide references to why it will be problematic to support your conclusion.
...and bit more talking.We've put a lot of time into this going back and forth and you still haven't really said anything specific to deal with. We've just been pointing out that your methodology and evidence isn't convincing for the point you're trying to make.
I am absolutely sure that no one has so far done any Serbian Irish comparative linguistic study.Absurd!!
Do you suppose there could be some data that if known could have changed something in these books?Even assuming you're correct, that's the problem you face as well: there is not enough data to support your argument, while on the other hand, there does seem like plenty of data to support theirs. Nothing in historical linguistics is ever certain. But some of it is pretty well established.
Didn't people know about lines before they made first ropes from flax? You are telling me people had no need for a word describing a line before that?Lexical items sometimes just change or shift. There isn't always a gap in a language when a new word or new usage is coined. That's a misleading assumption, just one example of why you aren't convincing at all in this discussion. "Line" in that case probably specifically meant a line of rope, then later generalized as a geometric figure.
QuoteFunnily enough, I could make any of them fit with the definition of "cherry". That doesn't mean any of them are correct.
No it wouldn't because only word meaning blood red describes cherry in one word.
You don't understand the point of words. The root is always from simple to complex. But people obviously don't get this because they come up with things like this:
QuoteFrom Middle English line, lyne, from Old English līne (“line, cable, rope, hawser, series, row, rule, direction”), from Proto-Germanic *līnǭ (“line, rope, flaxen cord, thread”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax, linen”), from Proto-Indo-European *līn- (“flax”).
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/line#Etymology_1
line comes from flax. Makes no sense.
Didn't people know about lines before they made first ropes from flax? You are telling me people had no need for a word describing a line before that? When line is one of the most basic abstract objects and is present everywhere.
Didn't people know about lines before they made first ropes from flax? You are telling me people had no need for a word describing a line before that?
Lexical items sometimes just change or shift. There isn't always a gap in a language when a new word or new usage is coined. That's a misleading assumption, just one example of why you aren't convincing at all in this discussion. "Line" in that case probably specifically meant a line of rope, then later generalized as a geometric figure.
Assumption.
That is utterly irrelevant.
But congratulations on using MS Paint to defend a linguistics argument. I haven't seen that beforewell if i am talking to "linguists" who don't understand language, maybe pictures will work.
There's no necessary correlation between concepts and words or especially particular derivations. You're assuming some kind of very clean one-to-one etymologies, and that's not realistic or supported by even basic evidence.
But, yes, lines existed with physics back then. I agree.
Use a different word. Or a different way of phrasing it. A metaphor. A different perspective. Consider "path" among many other things!
Do you genuinely believe yourself and believe that we will be convinced by random statements like "N means boundary"?
Please give me better explanation from the one i gave you?
Can you find better explanation why these words have "N" in them? Why "no" has "N" in it? Please i would love to hear it? Just point me to the explanation that you support if it exists? But i doubt it does...
ibarrere, can you translate your comment to me please. I don't speak "Thug" language, that you freknu and djr seem to understand so well. The language of people who when they have no arguments to support their opinion sink into ridicule and mocking. Very adult, and scientific. But I thank you for posting your "funny black person" joke, because after your "joke" and freknu's and djr's thanks, everyone can see you for who you are.
I am yet to hear one of you give me counter argument for why N is all the above words? Any ideas or are you all out?
We are under no obligation to give you any counterargument.
You are making the extraordinary claims, you need need to provide the extraordinary evidence.
They just have N. Like Zimbabwe starts with Z.
That's not how it works. The burden of proof is on you. It is your obligation to show why your hypotheses should be considered valid. So far you have presented no evidence and only a chain of assumptions.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I speak the local (Serbian) dialects I talk about.
Oh no! You're necessarily biased then. (If I told you that American English was really cool because X, you'd be right to wonder about my biases too!).
Whatever else goes on with this research, I urge you strongly to consider:
1. How this might be affecting you.
2. Whether someone else who knows what you know but isn't directly part of it would come to the same conclusions you have.
If nothing else, you're putting much more emphasis on the implications of this evidence than anything else. Your entire theory of, well, everything, is starting from the two dialects you just happen to speak. That's a big warning sign. It doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means that you're likely to have a biased perspective.
From Middle English no, na, from Old English nā, nō (“never”), from Proto-Germanic *nai (“never”), *nē (“not”), from Proto-Indo-European *ne, *nē, *nēy (negative particle), equivalent to Old English ne (“not”) + ā, ō (“ever, always”). Cognate with West Frisian né (“no”), West Frisian nea (“never”), Dutch nee (“no”), Low German nee (“no”), German nie (“never”), Icelandic nei (“no”). More at nay.
So do you think sir William Jones was biased? And if you don't, why do you think I am biast?Alright, fair enough. But... yes, he was biased. And in fact, he was wrong about many of the details. It just happened that he got the main ideas right and others improved his arguments later. So one important point there is that you must have convincing arguments so that others can extend/continue the work.
Let me show you another picture, which might help you understand the meaning of the term boundary:Haha. Entertaining. Not convincing.
Let me show you another picture, which might help you understand the meaning of the term boundary ...
Ser-Cr. u "in" < PIE. *h2eu-
Ser-Cr. na "on" < PIE. *h2no-
There are some language forms that stem from the fact that there is no verb to have in Irish. Instead, possession is indicated in Irish by using the preposition at, (in Irish, ag.). To be more precise, Irish uses a prepositional pronoun that combines ag "at" and mé "me" to create agam. In English, the verb "to have" is used, along with a "with me" or "on me" that derives from Tá … agam. This gives rise to the frequent
"Do you have the book?" – "I have it with me."
"Have you change for the bus on you?"
"He will not shut up if he has drink taken."
Plus, regardless, even if bias isn't a problem, none of this means you're right.
I am absolutely sure that no one has so far done any Serbian Irish comparative linguistic study.
Absurd!!
The Russian linguistic tradition has done an amazingly extensive job of working out in intricate detail all of the developments from PIE to Proto-Slavic to the modern languages including Serbian. There's just no question about that. So any discussion of PIE very reliably takes into account evidence from Serbian.
As for Celtic, a lot of work has been done there as well.
In the end, every discussion of PIE considers Irish and Serbian, it's just that they aren't compared directly because that's unmotivated.
Haha. Entertaining. Not convincing.
Ser-Cr. u "in" < PIE. *h2eu-
Ser-Cr. na "on" < PIE. *h2no-
Like someone who is defending the idea that god created the world in ten days, 4000 years ago, by quoting the lines from bible while staring at the dinosaur bones....
You are only proving that you do not understand in the least how comparative linguistics works. Ignorance on your part does not disprove current theories.
What exactly don't i understand about Irish that you have demonstrated? Also these are not dative constructs. They are Lokativ (where) not Dativ (to who, to where). These are connected but not identical. Did you read the Hyberno English explanation of the construct and how it is translated to English from Irish?
The idea is that possession is equated with having something with, on, in you. When you say "Da" (yes in Serbian) to give something to someone "Ti" (you in Serbian) you perform "Dati" (give in Serbian) from which you have Dativ. But the the thing is "of" the person when it is "on" the person. English "of" is the equivalent of Serbian "O", Irish "O", Slavic "Od" meaning "of". In Serbian "O" means hanging of something, or being around something, among other things. It defines belonging through being around, hanging of someone's horse, body (like a baby for instance)...So again we have the same idea of ownership through direct possession...
PIE dative, locative, and instrumental merged into one case in many languages, so where one language uses locative it corresponds to dative in those languages where it merged (or where the distinction is blurred).
Dative, locative, and instrumental are also very close semantically in PIE languages. Thus possession can be expressed with both dative and locative, and some cases even instrumental.
No but you can use this as an argument against what i am saying. I am not in this because I am trying to advertise any particular nation or language. It just so happened that I had the knowledge of South Slavic (and other Slavic) languages, English... when i was immersed in Irish. Coincidence, luck, (curse?) call it what ever you want, but it enabled me to see things that others didn't because they lacked the knowledge of both Serbian and Irish languages.Ok, well, as I said, fair enough. Perhaps your unique perspective allowed you to see something others didn't. Either way, that's irrelevant. I am, however, skeptical when you are presenting something so controversial based on your perceived similarity between the two groups-- I'd imagine others with similar but different backgrounds would observe other similarities elsewhere. That's really what I meant about bias.
I will show you that they did really bad job. A lot of stuff which exists in South Slavic languages does not exist in East Slavic ones, and clearly does not come from the same root language. Also a lot of Slavic words have proper roots only in South Slavic languages and Irish. Why?*Shrug*
As I said already, Gaelic is not Celtic language. This is a cardinal error and one which gave us "disappeared" Celtic languages. Real Celtic languages are mix of R1a, I and R1b languages of central Europe (Slavic, Germanic....).Ouch!
Well you will see that because no one compared Serbian and Irish directly, they missed a lot of stuff which is very important for understanding the development of the early language.Why not compare Japanese and Swahili?
The main thing in science is to know when to stop laughing...Only if the crazy theories stop. Until then it's simultaneously amusing and disturbing.
Irish does not use "na" to express possesion, "na" (plural of "an") is the definite particle.
From Middle English one, oon, on, oan, an, from Old English ān ("one"; same word as an), from Proto-Germanic *ainaz (“one”), from Proto-Indo-European *óynos (“single, one”). Cognate with Scots ae, ane, wan, yin (“one”); North Frisian ån (“one”); Saterland Frisian aan (“one”); West Frisian ien (“one”); Dutch een, één (“one”); German Low German een; German ein, eins (“one”); Swedish en (“one”); Icelandic einn (“one”); Latin unus (“one”) (Old Latin oinos); Russian один (odin).
n - (nuin ,the ash tree), the eleventh letter of the Modern Irish alphabet.
n - a remnant of case ending projected to the word following, producing what is called eclipsis
of the succeeding inital consonant. It remains n- before vowels, d and g; becomes m before
b, and affects the consonants t, c, p, f, making them sound like d, g, b, f, which latter are
respectively written before them thus dt, gc, bp, bhf. It is found after the numerals seacht,
ocht, naoi, deich; after the pronouns, ar, our; bhar, your; a, their; after prep. i (a); after
relative combined with prep.; after the article when a noun is governed by a prep., though
often aspiration of the initial consonant supplies its place (preps. do and de do not project n);
after preps, ending in a vowel before poss. pr., le n-a láimh, ó n-a cheann; feacht n-aon,
gach nduine, etc., are found in modern MSS.
ná - neg. part., used before imperatives, not, do not; ná buail, do not strike; before vowels h is
inserted, as ná hiarr, do not ask; used imperatively even in 1st sing.: ná cluinim, let me not
hear; used also before some optatives; e.g. ná rabhad, may I not be; dealbh go deo ná
rabhair, may you never be wretchedly poor; ná raibh an fhaid sin de tuigheachán bliadhna
ort; na rabhaid gan teacht, etc., etc. (with other verbs nár is used).
ná - conj., nor, neither; níl ór ná airgead agam, I have neither gold nor silver.
ná (nach), conj., that not, is fíor ná fuil, used indiscriminately with is fíor nach bhfuil, it is true
that there is not, etc. (ná is used generally in M., nach in Leath Chuinn); before pf. tense it
combines with ro, becoming nár (ná + ro), nachar (nach + ro). See nár and nachar.
ná - used as an enumerative and descriptive particle, namely, is iad na fir a bhí ann ná Tomás,
Seaghán, 7c. the men who were there were Thomas, John, etc.
ná - conj., for (Don. and Mayo); prob. the same as nó. See nó (3).
'na - abbrev. for i n-a, in his, in her, in its, in their, in whom, in which, in what.
na, gf. and also pl. of an, def. article, the.
-na - (and -ne), an emphatic particle used after 1st person pl., as ar bhfear-na, our man.
'ná - for ioná, than, used after comparatives; is feárr suidhe i n-'aice 'ná suidhe i n-'ionad, it is
better to sit beside it than sit in its place.
namá, ad., only, alone, except (obs.); old form of amháin.
n - from, in a nuas, a nìos, Irish, Old Irish an-; See a.
na - not, ne, Irish, Old Irish na: used with the imperative mood solely. It is an ablaut and independent form of the neg. prefix in (see ion-, an-), an ablaut of Indo-European nê, Latin nê, Greek @Gnc-; shorter from Latin ne@u-, Gothic ni, English not (ne-á-wiht), etc.; further Indo-European n@.-, Greek @Ga@'n-, Latin in-, English un-, Gaelic an-. See nach, which is connected herewith as Greek @Gou@'k, @Gou@'; the Welsh is nac, nag, with imperative, Breton na.
na - or, vel, Irish ná, Early Irish, Old Irish nó, Welsh neu: *nev (Stokes, who allies it to Latin nuo, nod, Greek @Gneúw, Sanskrit návate, go remove; but, in 1890, Bez. Beit.@+16 51, he refers it to the root nu, English now). It can hardly be separated from neo, otherwise, q.v. Strachan agrees.
na - than, Irish ná, Middle Irish iná, Early Irish inda, indás, Old Irish ind as, indás, pl. indate (read indáte); from the prep. in and tá, to be (Zeuss@+2, 716-7, who refers to the other prepositional comparative conjunction oldaas, from ol, de). The use of in in Old Irish as the relative locative may also be compared.
na - what, that which, id quod, Middle Irish ina, ana, inna n-, Early Irish ana n-; for an a, Old Irish rel. an (really neuter of art.) and Gaelic rel a, which see. Descent from ni or ni, without any relative, is favoured by Book of Deer, as do ni thíssad, of what would come. Possibly from both sources.
'na , 'na- in his, in her, in (my); the prep. an with the possessive pronouns: 'nam, 'nar, 'nad (also ad, Early Irish at, it), 'nur, 'na, 'nan.
From Middle English, from Old English þē (“the, that”, demonstrative pronoun), a late variant of sē (“that, the”). Originally masculine nominative, in Middle English it superseded all previous Old English forms (sē, sēo, þæt, þā), from Proto-Germanic *sa (“that”), from Proto-Indo-European *só, *to-, *tód (“demonstrative pronoun”). Cognate with West Frisian de, dy (“the, that”), Dutch de, die (“the, that”), Low German de, dat (“the, that”), German der, die, das (“the, that”), Danish den (“the, that”), Swedish den (“the, that”), Icelandic það (“that”).
an- (aspirates), neg. prefix un-, in-, not-; prefixed to nouns often it signifies bad or evil; cf. use of an in words like anfhlaitheas and anduine, which see.
an - intens. prefix very, when prefixed to adjectives, as tá an lá an-bhog, the day is very soft;
great, when prefixed to substantives, as bhí an-lá againn, we had a great day (pron. ana
very generally).
an - def. art., gsf. na, pl. na (aspirates nom. sing. f. and m. sing. gen., eclipses g. pl.); the,
sometimes also not translated into English, as an bás, death in general; is uaigneach an rud
an bás, death is a lonesome thing; but fuair sé bás, he died; talamh na hÉireann, the land of
Ireland. an is often used in close combination with preps., especially those ending with a
vowel, as do'n or don, i san, 's an or san, i sna or 's na, ó'n or ón, gus an, leis an, do na or
do sna.
an - interr. part., whether? sign of interrogation (eclipses): before past tense becomes ar in reg.
verbs, and aspirates.
án - a., noble; pure, pleasant; elegant.
From Middle English man, from Old English mann (“human being, person, man”), from Proto-Germanic *mann- (“human being, man”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *man- (“man”) (compare also *men- (“mind”)). Cognate with West Frisian man, Dutch man, German Mann (“man”), Norwegian mann (“man”), Old Swedish maþer (“man”), Swedish man, Russian муж (muž, “male person”), Avestan (manuš), Sanskrit मनु (manu, “human being”).
From Middle English wombe, wambe, from Old English womb, wamb (“belly, stomach; bowels; heart; womb; hollow”), from Proto-Germanic *wambō (“belly, stomach, abdomen”), from Proto-Indo-European *wamp- (“membrane (of bowels), intestines, womb”). Cognate with Scots wam, wame (“womb”), Dutch wam (“dewlap of beef; belly of a fish”), German Wamme, Wampe (“paunch, belly”), Danish vom (“belly, paunch, rumen”), Swedish våmb (“belly, stomach, rumen”), Norwegian vomb (“belly”), Icelandic vömb (“belly, abdomen, stomach”), Old Welsh gumbelauc (“womb”), Breton gwamm (“woman, wife”), Sanskrit वपा (vapā́, “the skin or membrane lining the intestines or parts of the viscera, the caul or omentum”).
From Middle English woman, wimman, wifman, from Old English wīfmann (“woman, female servant”, literally “female person, female human being”), equivalent to wife + man. Compare Dutch vrouwmens (“wife”, literally “woman-person”). Compare also Dutch vrouwspersoon (“woman”), German Weibsperson (“female person”), and dialectal German Fraumensch ("woman", literally "woman human-being").
... then we can assume that "na" in Irish originally meant "on" as in belonging, separateness, distinction.
... "Gaeilge na hAlban" meaning the language of (na) the Scots
No. Irish "an" comes from PIE. *sēm "one" or *so "this".
A lot of the latest claims are just made up things.
Ok, well, as I said, fair enough. Perhaps your unique perspective allowed you to see something others didn't. Either way, that's irrelevant. I am, however, skeptical when you are presenting something so controversial based on your perceived similarity between the two groups
I'd imagine others with similar but different backgrounds would observe other similarities elsewhere.
That's really what I meant about bias.
That's some of the most thorough work in historical linguistics. I don't know it personally that well, but it must have at least some merit, and you're just throwing all of it out.
Some of your claims are silly, such as that you expect a word to survive in all daughters. It might be a borrowing, and it might be a word only preserved in some daughters. That happens all the time. Nothing to be surprised by.
So please define these groups: Irish Gaelic isn't related to anything else? Is it related to Scottish Gaelic?
Manx? Welsh? Cornish? Breton?
Iberian Celtic is more distant (and I know little about it). Is that all you're excluding?
I don't know much about the Celtic languages, but from what I've read/seen, all of the insular Celtic languages are unquestionably related. They're just so similar. Are you really claiming that's not the case? Do you see how your claims are much harder to defend than the current theories?? Even if you're right, then explain how the striking similarities would exist among the so-called Celtic languages!
And, again, there's a reason no one compared them directly: they're CLEARLY not related closely.
Only if the crazy theories stop. Until then it's simultaneously amusing and disturbing.
If you don't see this then you are blind.
sa RSirAjanya adj. together with the royal RSis
sa RNa adj. having debts
sa adverb possession
sU adj. producing (with + product + in)
sU adj. begetting (with + offshoot + in)
sU adj. bringing forth (with + something + in)
sU adj. procreating (with + sffspring + in)
sU m. mother (with + baby + in)
sU m. one who begets (with + baby + in)
sU m. child-bearing (with + baby + in)
sU adverb good (what procreates, begets, gives birth, produces is good)
sU adverb well (what procreated, begetted, gave birth, produced has done well)
In Middle English, both the possessive singular and the common plural forms were regularly spelled es, and when the e was dropped in pronunciation and from the written word, the habit grew up of writing an apostrophe in place of the lost e in the possessive singular to distinguish it from the plural. Later the apostrophe, which had come to be looked upon as the sign of the possessive, was carried over into the plural, but was written after the s to differentiate that form from the possessive singular. By a process of popular interpretation, the 's was supposed to be a contraction for his, and in some cases the his was actually "restored." [Samuel C. Earle, et al, "Sentences and their Elements," New York: Macmillan, 1911]
so (adv.) Look up so at Dictionary.com
Old English swa, swæ (adv., conj., pron.) "in this way," also "to that extent; so as, consequently, therefore," and purely intensive; from Proto-Germanic *swa (cf. Old Saxon, Middle Dutch, Old High German so, Old Norse sva, Danish saa, Swedish så, Old Frisian sa, Dutch zo, German so "so," Gothic swa "as"), from PIE reflexive pronomial stem *swo- "so" (cf. Greek hos "as," Old Latin suad "so," Latin se "himself"), derivative of *s(w)e-, pronoun of the third person and reflexive (see idiom).
Old English swa frequently was strengthened by eall, and so also is contained in compounds as, also, such. The -w- was eliminated by contraction from 12c.
sva adj. of self
sva adj. her own
sva adj. our own
sva adj. their own
sva adj. thy own
sva m. one's self
sva m. friend
sva m. relation
sva m. human soul
sva m. kinsman
sva m. man of one's own people or tribe
sva m. relative
sva n. property
sva n. riches
sva n. Ego
sva n. second astrological mansion
sva n. one's own goods
sva n. wealth
sva n. plus or the affirmative quantity
sva poss. adj. own
sva poss. adj. one's own
sva poss. adj. my own
sva poss. adj. his own
svA f. woman of one's own caste
From Proto-Italic *kom, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm (“next to, at, with, along”). Cognate with Gothic- (ga-), Old English ge-, Old High German gi-, Russian ко (ko, “to”), Persian prefix هم (ham, “co-, same”), Old High German hansa (“company, host, troop”). More at hanse.
Old English man, mann "human being, person (male or female); brave man, hero; servant, vassal," from Proto-Germanic *manwaz (cf. Old Saxon, Swedish, Dutch, Old High German man, German Mann, Old Norse maðr, Danish mand, Gothic manna "man"), from PIE root *man- (1) "man" (cf. Sanskrit manuh, Avestan manu-, Old Church Slavonic mozi, Russian muzh "man, male").
Sense of "adult male" is late (c.1000); Old English used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late 13c. and was replaced by man. Universal sense of the word remains in mankind and manslaughter. Similarly, Latin had homo "human being" and vir "adult male human being," but they merged in Vulgar Latin, with homo extended to both senses. A like evolution took place in Slavic languages, and in some of them the word has narrowed to mean "husband."
"annoy by scolding," 1828, originally a dialectal word meaning "to gnaw" (1825), probably ultimately from a Scandinavian source (cf. Old Norse gnaga "to complain," literally "to bite, gnaw," dialectal Swedish and Norwegian nagga "to gnaw"), from Proto-Germanic *gnagan, related to Old English gnagan "to gnaw" (see gnaw). Related: Nagged; nagger; nagging.
Old English nacod "nude, bare; empty," also "not fully clothed," from Proto-Germanic *nakwathaz (cf. Old Frisian nakad, Middle Dutch naket, Dutch naakt, Old High German nackot, German nackt, Old Norse nökkviðr, Old Swedish nakuþer, Gothic naqaþs "naked"), from PIE root *nogw- "naked" (cf. Sanskrit nagna, Hittite nekumant-, Old Persian *nagna-, Greek gymnos, Latin nudus, Lithuanian nuogas, Old Church Slavonic nagu-, Russian nagoi, Old Irish nocht, Welsh noeth "bare, naked"). Related: Nakedly; nakedness.
Old English hnappian "to doze, sleep lightly," of unknown origin, apparently related to Old High German hnaffezan, German dialectal nafzen, Norwegian napp. Related: Napped; napping.
Old English nearu "narrow, constricted, limited; petty; causing difficulty, oppressive; strict, severe," from West Germanic *narwaz "narrowness" (cf. Frisian nar, Old Saxon naru, Middle Dutch nare, Dutch naar); not found in other Germanic languages and of unknown origin. The narrow seas (c.1400) were the waters between Great Britain and the continent and Ireland. Related: Narrowness.
c.1300, from Old French nacion "birth, rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe," literally "that which has been born," from natus, past participle of nasci "be born" (Old Latin gnasci; see genus). Political sense has gradually predominated, but earliest English examples inclined toward the racial meaning "large group of people with common ancestry." Older sense preserved in application to North American Indian peoples (1640s). Nation-building first attested 1907 (implied in nation-builder).
late 13c., "restorative powers of the body, bodily processes; powers of growth;" from Old French nature "nature, being, principle of life; character, essence," from Latin natura "course of things; natural character, constitution, quality; the universe," literally "birth," from natus "born," past participle of nasci "to be born," from PIE *gene- "to give birth, beget" (see genus).
nātūra f (genitive nātūrae); first declension
nature, quality of a thing
character, temperament, inclination
the natural world
(literally rare) birth
"hard seed," Old English hnutu, from Proto-Germanic *khnut- (cf. Old Norse hnot, Dutch noot, Old High German hnuz, German nuß "nut"), from PIE *kneu- "nut" (cf. Latin nux; see nucleus). Sense of "testicle" is attested from 1915. Nut-brown is from c.1300 of animals; c.1500 of complexions of women.
"grumble, chatter aimlessly, nag," 1829, northern England dialect variant of gnatter "to chatter, grumble," earlier (18c.) "to nibble away," probably of echoic origin. Related: Nattered; nattering. As a noun, 1866, from the verb.
It is interesting how no one made any comments about the data I gave you for the distribution of "with" words across the world.
Completely unfalsifiable (and therefore irrelevant).
Does your theory rule out djr33's example for "D"? Or any example that I might come up with for another "sound"?
Does your theory of phonosemantics make predictions?
The significance of an argument depends on both whether it can be supported and whether it can be supported better than other alternative arguments.
My theory says that original language was developed based on natural sounds which are logically linked to actions and situations through collective experience of a group which is in process of making a language. ...Maybe.
I already spoke about this when i explained why i think that people originally used characteristic sounds of animals as their names. ...
I can tell you that djr33's examples do not follow the most important principle of my theory, which says that original sound meaning has to be self explanatory. Sound "D" can not be linked to any action or situation which is obviously linked to a boundary. Sound "N" can be linked to boundary and all the boundary words with "N" in it, starting from "No" support that.Complete nonsense.
You have no alternative arguments. There is no other theory that goes this deep into the language structure and language development. No one tried to break down the "root" words to tell us how did people arrive to these "root" words.Completely incorrect. Lots of people have tried to do this. They have failed because it's either wrong in principle or very hard to do.
The question is "why do we say NO when we say NO and why do we say ROOT for instance"? What i am talking about is break these words down and tell me how they were made. If you have a theory that deals with this, please present it. Otherwise saying things like this is just laughable.This is entirely laughable and ignorant!! I agree. (But probably not in the way you intended.)
I can tell you that djr33's examples do not follow the most important principle of my theory, which says that original sound meaning has to be self explanatory. Sound "D" can not be linked to any action or situation which is obviously linked to a boundary. Sound "N" can be linked to boundary and all the boundary words with "N" in it, starting from "No" support that.
Complete nonsense. D is a perfect sound for the expression of a boundary because it is similar to the sound when an object/person crashes into a surface. It represents the fact that you can't pass through that surface.
And what about E as in "end" and "exit" and "enter"?
enter (v.)
late 13c., from Old French entrer, from Latin intrare "to go into, enter" (source of Spanish entrar, Italian entrare), from intra "within," related to inter (prep., adj.) "among, between" (see inter-). Related: Entered; entering.
exit (n.)
1530s, from Latin exit "he or she goes out," third person singular present indicative of exire "go out," from ex- "out" (see ex-) + ire "to go" (see ion). Also from Latin exitus "a leaving, a going out," noun of action from exire. Originally in English a Latin stage direction (late 15c.); sense of "door for leaving" is 1786. Meaning "departure" (originally from the stage) is from 1580s. The verb is c.1600, from the noun; it ought to be left to stage directions and the clunky jargon of police reports. Related: Exited; exiting.
exist (v.)
c.1600, from French exister (17c.), from Latin existere/exsistere "to step out, stand forth, emerge, appear; exist, be" (see existence). "The late appearance of the word is remarkable" [OED]. Related: Existed; existing.
bound (n.)
"limit," c.1200, from Anglo-Latin bunda, from Old French bonde "limit, boundary, boundary stone" (12c., Modern French borne), variant of bodne, from Medieval Latin bodina, perhaps from Gaulish. Now chiefly in out of bounds, which originally referred to limits imposed on students at schools.
border (n.)
mid-14c., from Old French bordure "seam, edge of a shield, border," from Frankish *bord or a similar Germanic source (cf. Old English bord "side;" see board (n.2)). The geopolitical sense first attested 1530s, in Scottish (replacing earlier march), from The Borders, name of the district adjoining the boundary between England and Scotland.
barrier (n.)
early 14c., barere, from Anglo-French barrere, Old French barriere "obstacle, gatekeeper," from barre "bar" (see bar (n.1)). First record of barrier reef is from 1805.
Science is the study of knowledge to make predictions
Science is not an art form where potential metaphorical correspondences are noted.
metaphor (n.)
late 15c., from Middle French metaphore (Old French metafore, 13c.), and directly from Latin metaphora, from Greek metaphora "a transfer," especially of the sense of one word to a different word, literally "a carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry over; change, alter; to use a word in a strange sense," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear" (see infer).
How is this falsifiable?
You really don't understand language. But to understand it you need to start looking at it, listening to it and thinking. Which apparently is not what linguists are supposed to do. They are supposed to just quote what others said.This is absurd and unrelated to your argument.
...Enter and exit are complex terms which describe actions in relations to place. But enter is related to boundary and exit isn't.Ok, great! Now we're getting somewhere. What possible reason would two terms that are opposites NOT both be related to boundaries?
What do you think? Coincidences, Statistical noise, or are we approaching statistical impossibility of this all being coincidence?What statistics!?
I predict that most English words containing sound N will be linked in meaning to boundary. I have already analysed quite a few of them and all of them are related to boundary. And I am planning to analyse all of them.Explain to me why a word is "related to boundary". For example, here are some words with N:
At what percentage of words with N sound, for which i can prove that they are linked to boundary, will you accept that there is an established correlation between sound N and meaning of boundary?You need to learn something about statistics. You need to consider a percentage of words with N, not a number. But more importantly, you need to compare it to the likelihood that the observed correlation is due to chance. That's how statistics works. So you need to determine how unlikely it would be. One method is to compare it to a sample of words that do not contain N and show that for some reason the words with N are much more likely to relate to boundaries.
Maybe you will never accept it. Because it will ruin everything you believe in and you teach. Talking about accepting mistakes...There are infinitely many useless and wrong ideas that would ruin everything I believe in and teach. Luckily, they're useless and wrong, and I can ignore them. I'm willing to consider your idea as potentially useful and correct, but you won't get anywhere by trying to convince me that I'm not listening. I am. You're not saying anything convincing. Stop circling around the fact that you have no coherent argument. Where's your abstract? Hasn't it been a week? Why are you still rambling?
Do you have any idea what language is for? It is used to transmit meaning. But finding meaning in language is obviously meaningless to you.Another vacuous ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) argument.
You are so bent on dismissing everything I say, that you are leaving your self exposed. You might end up being found wanting (metaphorically speaking)...There's a bit of poetry for you.I'm not opposed to you suggesting new ideas. I'm just telling you when in every way I consider them, they appear wrong and unjustified to me.
This is CRITICAL. Read up on it (easy to do online). Any scientist must understand the idea of falsifiability.QuoteHow is this falsifiable?You are using some big words there. I am but a humble linguist. You need to translate this for me into plain English.
The difference between the two, in my experience, is almost always the presence of a testable null hypothesis.Indeed.
There's actually some very good work being done in phonosemanticsAnything in particular you can post?
Anything in particular you can post?
What possible reason would two terms that are opposites NOT both be related to boundaries?
Enter = go in via a boundary
Exit = go out via a boundary
Seriously... how can your theory possible make predictions?
Is it acceptable if I just note that every word spelled with an P is related to pineapples? How would you actually argue against that?
Show me some data, a graph, and a statistical test.
As far as I know, no, certainly not. You're just making arbitrary observations that are neither falsifiable (or validated) or consistent by any obvious methodology.
Explain to me why a word is "related to boundary".
From Proto-Italic, from Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe (cf. the Italic *kʷ-kʷ, from *p-kʷ shift, also found in words like coquō; compare proto-Celtic *kʷinkʷe). Cognates include Sanskrit पञ्चन् (páñcan), Ancient Greek πέντε (pente), Old Armenian հինգ (hing) and Old English fīf (English five).
From fascinum (“a phallus-shaped amulet worn around the neck; witchcraft”). Of unknown origin; compare Ancient Greek βάσκανος (baskanos, “sorcerer”), possibly from the same European substratum.
From Proto-Balto-Slavic *galsas, from Proto-Indo-European *golHsos, from *gels- (“to call”). Cognate to Lithuanian gãlsas (“echo”), Latin gallus (“cock”) and possibly to Proto-Germanic *kalzōną (Old Norse kalla (“to call”)).
From Middle English singen, from Old English singan 'to sing, recite', from Proto-Germanic *singwaną (compare West Frisian sjonge, Low German singen, Dutch zingen, German singen, Danish synge, Swedish sjunga), from Proto-Indo-European *sengʷh- (compare Middle Welsh deongl (“to explain”), Ancient Greek ὁμφή (omphḗ, “voice, oracle”), Prakrit saṃghai 'to say, teach').
Middle English egge, from Old English ecg, from Proto-Germanic *agjō (compare Dutch egge, German Ecke, Swedish egg), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- (“sharp”) (compare Welsh hogi (“to sharpen, hone”), Latin aciēs (“sharp”), acus (“needle”), Latvian ašs, ass (“sharp”), Ancient Greek ἀκίς (akis, “needle”), ἀκμή (akmē, “point”), and Persian آس (ās, “grinding stone”)).
Explain why the first set of words is related to "boundary" and not the second set! Are you relying only on your assumption that N relates to boundaries? Or can you tell from these words?
You need to learn something about statistics. You need to consider a percentage of words with N, not a number.
But more importantly, you need to compare it to the likelihood that the observed correlation is due to chance. So you need to determine how unlikely it would be. One method is to compare it to a sample of words that do not contain N and show that for some reason the words with N are much more likely to relate to boundaries.
I'm willing to consider your idea as potentially useful and correct, but you won't get anywhere by trying to convince me that I'm not listening.
Where's your abstract? Hasn't it been a week? Why are you still rambling?
jkpate
Apologies for not submitting my summary yet. While i was writing I realized that I need to explain the core terms and concepts on which the theory is based. So it might take me a few days more to finish it.
Additionally, you may want to look into some assumptions you're making. Language may not be "for" anything-- it's an ability in the human mind. We do use it in communication, but you make the assumption that it is necessarily defined by that. This is a HUGE debate in the field. It may or may not be right. But arrogantly and ignorantly pursuing something without understanding your own assumptions is not going to result in good science. Sorry, but there's learning required if you want to make claims that others will listen to.
I mentioned far above that language is "an arbitrary pairing of form and meaning".
Would you prefer that everyone who has an opinion be treated as correct? Or are you a special exception?
For a hypothesis to be useful, we must be able to IN THEORY prove it wrong, if that data presented itself.
Take the theory of gravity: it's falsifiable because we might prove it wrong if we find observe that all objects float.
In the end, you are just making things up (also known as hypothesizing) without creating any way of testing whether those things are reliable (also known as testing or attempted falsification).
Please explain your problem with my approach to all this and what is not Scientific that I am doing.
The theory: There is a detectable correlation between sounds and meaning
Null hypothesis: All the "N" words that are related to boundary in English are all coincidences and there is no correlation between sound and meaning. The distribution of sounds in boundary related words is random
Null hypothesis proof:
Get all the words in English, separate the N words, separate the boundary related N words.
Get all non N words from English language, separate the boundary related non N words from the other non N words.
Compare percentages.
If percentage of N words related to boundary is less than the threshold percentage (?), we have random distribution and no correlation between sound and meaning.
If percentage of N words related to boundary is significantly more than the threshold percentage (?) go to stage two.
If percentage of non N words related to boundary is close to or bigger than the percentage of N words related to boundary we go to stage three.
Check if there is any other common sound in non N words related to boundary. Repeat the above steps.
In schools, there are two types of kids: those who are good at memorizing things and repeating them, and those who are good at figuring things out. I bet you were the first kind of guy. They usually go to study humanities, where there is a lot of memorizing and very little thinking.Your ad hominem argumentation style is getting old. Really, stop it.
You are still asking the same questions even though I have answered them many times.1. I asked for a short abstract. (We all did.) You haven't written it. Please do. If you don't, we will assume you can't coherently summarize anything meaningful from your claims. I can't at the moment either.
Either you don't understand English language, you refuse to understand or you didn't even bothered reading most of what i wrote, because you have decided at the start that it was all rubbish, just because it is not what you believe in.No, neither of those. Your arguments are unconvincing.
1. I never said that "N" is the only sound that carries the meaning of a boundary. I said that sound "N" carries the meaning of a boundary. There could equally be other sounds that carry the same meaning, like "Z" for instance. Spoken language is associated with situations, context. So you can have different sounds having the same meaning in different contexts.Phonosemantics is vacuous if any sound can have any meaning. If you are making a claim that only some sounds have "boundary" as a meaning and not others, then this should be testable. You have not demonstrated a way to objectively test it, just your own intuition.
2. When I made my prediction, I said this: "I predict that most English words containing sound "N" will be linked in meaning to boundary. I have already analysed quite a few of them and all of them are related to boundary. And I am planning to analyse all of them. ". So I fully expect that there will be words that contain "N" in English language which are not related to boundary.Ok. Good. This is a place to start. Some questions:
3. Group languages are invented by families. Families expand to clans, tribes, nations, races and propagate the language. They also propagate genes. This is why genes and languages are linked.Shouldn't we also be able to relate family recipes and language then? Also eye color. Also religions. Also location. Also political views.
Different families can use different logic to link context to sound. Some of them will use "N" to represent boundary, some will use "Z" and some will use "K" of what ever other sound they though was logically linked to the concept of a boundary in the environment they lived when they developed the language. These families merged, languages merged. Not all words in English come from the same "family" language.Ok! Very important. So: sound-meaning correspondences are entirely arbitrary. Languages vary, so "dog" in English is just coincidentally not like "Hund" in German or "perro" in Spanish.
4. Words change phonetically through time. This is due to the the fact that what we say is dependent on what we hear and our ability to reproduce it.Yes. They chance so much that any kind of analysis like this seems absurd, even if originally there were correspondences.
5. The meaning of words changes through time.
...When people invented traffic light language, red meant stop, green meant go, yellow meant press on the break, prepare to stop, red light is coming. Stop and go are critical and still mean the same. Yellow now has many meanings, of which most common is press on the gas, speed up, red light is coming.What is a "meaning"?
6. Words and sentences are linked to situations, context. This is how people learn language. And this is why you can not analyze the spoken language in isolation. You always need to link it to the context of which it is an integral part.Incorrect. See above. There are two different (and equally valid) kinds of analysis.
I asked you this questions: "What do you think? Coincidences, Statistical noise, or are we approaching statistical impossibility of this all being coincidence? At what percentage of words with N sound, for which i can prove that they are linked to boundary, will you accept that there is an established correlation between sound N and meaning of boundary? "Ridiculous. In answer to your question, then: no. You haven't shown that there is even a coincidence to begin with (no testable methodology), not to even consider whether it's statistically significant.
I asked you to think about it, and tell me from your point of view when is the frequency of coincidences too high to be a coincidence. But you didn't understand what I said. Again. Do you understand my question now and can you give me the straight answer. 10% or 90%? Instead you say this:
The key here is "As far as you know". You don't know everything. Use the methodology you preach about and tell me what percentage of hits removes the possibility of coincidence and confirms deliberate action.As far as I know pigs don't fly.
You were asking me for a null hypothesis. This is it: I presume that all the "N" words that I found so far linked to the meaning of boundary in English are all coincidences.Ok. So why can't they be coincidences?
I believe that if I analyze all of the "N" words in English, and large majority of them is linked to the meaning of boundary then i have proven that this is not a coincidence.How do you determine "is linked"? Do you mean that you can make up something then report it to us as a fact? You need a methodology.
To add to that If I find the same correlation in related European languages, then we certainly have a pattern which is deliberate rather then coincidental.No, no, no! Don't use related languages to test for lack of coincidence. Use other languages like Swahili, Japanese and Navajo.
You can read about null hypothesis here. You will see that how you prove it or disprove it is hotly debated.You don't prove anything, ever. You can simply sometimes falsify a given hypothesis by showing that it is inconsistent with data.
This again is self evident to someone who uses their eyes, ears and brain and who understands what language is. Language exists as part of a context describing information pattern or matrix. This is why "poetry" of the language is so important for it's understanding. Words relate to boundary if they are found in the same context with the meaning of boundary.Absurd. That's the best you can do?
Satisfied?Not at all. Your explanations would just be flipped if "edge" contained an N for example.
I know a lot about statistics.Hahaha. Why haven't you used any statistical tests yet then? You've counted a few things, yes.
As I said already, this is what I am trying to establish. Do you want to help?No. I think it's pointless.
You are maybe listening but you have problems understanding.Are you telling me that there are two possibilities:
If you ask me a question, and i answer, and then you ask me the same question again ignoring my answer, then i can at best conclude that you are not listening. But I am beginning to believe that you are incapable of understanding.No problem. I'll stop asking questions. My conclusion: you're wrong. You haven't even come close to convincing me of anything. Good luck!
As i thought, you are not listening, or thinking or reading what i write. Did you see this in one of my posts?No. Your posts a very long and haven't ever had a clearly separate part.
And this just shows how little you understand what language is. It is not arbitrary because it is dependent on context. Do you know how kids learn to speak? Do you know what would happen to kids if you constantly changed the words used in the same context? Do you think they would ever learn how to speak. You can use arbitrary sound to create sound part of the context. But once it becomes part of the context, if you want to have a useful language, it stays stuck inside the context.Silly. That's not what "arbitrary" means at all. Check the dictionary.
Get all the words in English, separate the N words, separate the boundary N words, separate the boundary non N words.How do you accomplish the last part? How do you separate them? Is it reliable? Can anyone other than you do it the same way?
I am doing all this...Actually you're not. Do some calculations.
2. That theory must have a potential weakness, for a certain kind of hypothetical data. (There is more words which don't conform to the above then there are words which conform)So... 55% is enough of a correlation? Why or why not?
3. See if that data actually exists. (I am actively looking for the data that supports my theory. If I find some data that does not i will let you know. And you can let me know if you find some as well.)The dictionary has an N section.
grep "n" wordsEn.txt > n.txtMalFet
Here we go again. I will spell it this time:
The theory: There is a detectable correlation between sounds and meaning
Null hypothesis: All the "N" words that are related to boundary in English are all coincidences and there is no correlation between sound and meaning. The distribution of sounds in boundary related words is random
Null hypothesis proof:
Get all the words in English, separate the N words, separate the boundary related N words.
Get all non N words from English language, separate the boundary related non N words from the other non N words.
Compare percentages.
If percentage of N words related to boundary is less than the threshold percentage (?), we have random distribution and no correlation between sound and meaning.
If percentage of N words related to boundary is significantly more than the threshold percentage (?) go to stage two.
If percentage of non N words related to boundary is close to or bigger than the percentage of N words related to boundary we go to stage three.
Check if there is any other common sound in non N words related to boundary. Repeat the above steps.
You repeat this until you prove that none of the sounds that is found in clusters of words related to boundary has the majority in its group.
If you prove this the null hypothesis is validated and the theory is invalidated. If you can't prove this, if any of the perceived boundary carrying sounds appears to be in more words than you would expect if the distribution was random, then the theory is proven.
Or even simpler, get all the words related to boundary, group them by common sound, get percentage for each group with common sound. Compare with threshold percentage. If distribution is uniform, we have randomness. If we have peaks, it is deliberate. Each peak represents one sound which is strongly related to meaning of boundary.
The threshold percentage calculation:
number of all words related to boundary / number of letters = random distribution
What delta would you consider to be the proof that distribution is not random? If this is not testable what is?
So, in other words, all this is an experiment you'd like to do someday but haven't yet done? That's fine. I think people are confused because you appear to be presenting *findings*, when in reality what you're presenting is a project proposal.
"Clustering" is pretty well documented as a phenomenon. The word-initial gl- node is probably the most widely described in English: glisten, glimmer, glint, gleam, etc.
Jespersen famously studied all this years and years ago. I'm away from my library at the moment, but he's often quoted as saying something along the lines of "Sound symbolism makes some words more likely to survive than others."
Phonesthemes = blend of phone+aesthetic+[-eme]?
orthoaesthetics
orthoaesthetics
Now that's an orthoaesthetically pleasing vowel cluster.
"Clustering" is pretty well documented as a phenomenon. The word-initial gl- node is probably the most widely described in English: glisten, glimmer, glint, gleam, etc.
Jespersen famously studied all this years and years ago. I'm away from my library at the moment, but he's often quoted as saying something along the lines of "Sound symbolism makes some words more likely to survive than others."
The following is a short description of a similar phenomenon in Swedish: Phonesthemes in Swedish (http://www.ling.gu.se/~abelin/phonest.html).
"Phonesthemes" is not a word I'm familiar with, but I would guess it has something to do with thematic distribution of phones or something?
I don't imagine there are many English stories with beautiful maidens named Gruklok either, for that matter.:D
So, in other words, all this is an experiment you'd like to do someday but haven't yet done? That's fine. I think people are confused because you appear to be presenting *findings*, when in reality what you're presenting is a project proposal.
"Shine" is just as good as "glimmer", but "gl" sounds right there, by chance.
Bingo. I've never really understood this to be an issue of aesthetics, per se, so I tend not to use this word much personally, but it's probably the most widely used term in the literature.
Sounds are just part of the context, meaning matrix, which is stored together and invoked together. Sounds without the context are meaningless. This is why we don't "recognize" the sounds we hear for the first time. They are meaningless to us. We could wander what they are, we might come up with contexts containing similar sounds. But once someone points them out, and links them to a proper context, all of a sudden we can "recognize" them, meaning the picture or an idea or a feeling pops up in our mind every time we hear the sound.Do you have any evidence whatsoever? Why would any of that be true?
This association between sound and meaning matrix is eventually hardwired into our bodies through epigenetics, and propagated to our descendants. This epigenetic information hugely affects our ability to hear, think and speak, meaning to reproduce what we heard in right context.
And then many generations later, we have a situation when to us words from our language or closely related languages, doesn't matter if we understand them or not, sound "normal" while for instance sub Saharan African languages or Chinese, or Irish sound "weird". If you ask a Chinese person they would tell you the same in reverse.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever? Why would any of that be true?
Plus, even if so, then what does it mean to "mean" something if it is dependent on context?
So N means boundary sometimes, and other times it doesn't, depending on context?
Thanks for all your suggestions how to find the words that contain N. As you have seen from the entrance exit example, the problem is how to find words that relate to boundary, and how to relate them to the original words from which they derived. I don't believe that there is a program that can do "give me all root words from which all English words that relate to boundary come from". I think this is not as easy as running a query.
MalFetQuoteSo, in other words, all this is an experiment you'd like to do someday but haven't yet done? That's fine. I think people are confused because you appear to be presenting *findings*, when in reality what you're presenting is a project proposal.
I am presenting theory based on my initial findings. This is how things work, right? I looked at experimental data, i found the correlation, i am proposing explanation, and counter explanation. I am continuing with investigation to prove that counter explanation is wrong. You can, if you want try to prove that it isn't.
QuoteSo, in other words, all this is an experiment you'd like to do someday but haven't yet done? That's fine. I think people are confused because you appear to be presenting *findings*, when in reality what you're presenting is a project proposal.
I am presenting theory based on my initial findings. This is how things work, right? I looked at experimental data, i found the correlation, i am proposing explanation, and counter explanation. I am continuing with investigation to prove that counter explanation is wrong. You can, if you want try to prove that it isn't.
"Clustering" is pretty well documented as a phenomenon. The word-initial gl- node is probably the most widely described in English: glisten, glimmer, glint, gleam, etc.
From Old Irish grían, from Proto-Indo-European *ghreinā, from Proto-Indo-European *gher- (“to shine, glow; grey”).
From French groupe (“cluster, group”), from Italian gruppo groppo (“a knot, heap, group, bag (of money)”), itself derived from Vulgar Latin *kruppo, from Proto-Germanic *kruppaz (“lump, round mass, body, crop”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- (“to crumple, bend, crawl”). Cognate with German Kropf (“crop, craw, bunch”), Old English cropp, croppa (“cluster, bunch, sprout, flower, berry, ear of corn, crop”), Dutch krop (“craw”), Old Norse kroppr (“hump, bunch”). More at crop, croup.
But that's the rub. These *aren't* initial findings. You haven't done the analysis necessary to call them initial findings. These are an amalgam of correlations you've noticed that may or may not be statistically significant.
Neo-Darwinism relies on mutation and selection, but selection of what? Epigenetics is confusing the target of selection, raising fears of neo-Lamarckism.
Elizabeth Pennisi in Science Magazine reports that ongoing studies of epigenetic inheritance at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have evolutionists worried. Frank Johannes and his team have apparently shown that methylation marks on the DNA of plants can alter the phenotype in heritable ways that remain stable up to at least eight generations.
For some evolutionary biologists, just hearing the term epigenetics raises hackles. They balk at suggestions that something other than changes in DNAsequences -- such as the chemical addition of methyl groups to DNA or other so-called epigenetic modifications -- has a role in evolution. All of which guaranteesthat a provocative study presented at an evolutionary biology meeting here last month will get close scrutiny. It found that heritable changes in plant flowering time and other traits were the result of epigenetics alone, unaided by any sequence changes. (Emphasis added.)
Her title, "Evolution Heresy? Epigenetics Underlies Heritable Plant Traits," reflects the religious wars these findings threaten to ignite. The concern is that the environment -- not chance mutations -- can cause adaptive epigenetic changes directly. If a plant or animal acquires characteristics during its lifetime that are heritable, the specter of long-dead Lamarckism rises once again to haunt evolutionary biology.
But the experiment doesn't address the most controversial aspect of epigenetics and evolution -- whether an environmental stress can alter an organism's epigenetic markings and lead to a permanent trait change that's acted upon by natural selection -- a notion that, to some, sounds suspiciously like Lamarckism.
So it's not just a matter of displacing natural selection to act on epigenetic marks instead of, or in addition to, genetic mutations. The issue is the possibility of a built-in adaptability that allows organisms to respond to environmental changes. It calls into question whether variation (mutation) is unguided. That's an entrenched paradigm that will be hard to change:
"A lot more hard evidence is necessary before one can claim that epigenetics plays a very important role in evolution," says ecological geneticist Koen Verhoeven at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Wageningen. And, Richards adds, "people are really stubborn about accepting that that's possible."
You'd hope that people who are biologists would not be "stubborn," but rather would seek to follow the evidence where it leads.
What does all this new data mean? It's too early to say. If experiments continue to support epigenetic inheritance, additional research questions will arise. Do the epigenetic marks ever become encoded in the DNA sequence, or are they temporary? Are epigenetic marks subject to natural selection? What directs the methylation activity? It might prove to be a built-in adaptability that provides robustness in a changing world. If so, it would require higher orders of complex specified information than the genetic code, because it suggests foresight to handle contingencies.
However it turns out, the issue about epigenetic inheritance in evolution is sure to be interesting. What's also interesting is watching how the neo-Darwinian old guard, biology's ancien régime, responds to heresy in the ranks.
So when you say i did not do enough analysis, you guys need to understand that i didn't wake up one day with a hangover and decided to come here and start bothering you with my ideas. I have been looking over data for years analyzing it and comparing it. I did tell you where you can find a lot of this data, and i have presented a lot of additional data here as well. I did not use graphs and tables i admit that.
These *aren't* initial findings. You haven't done the analysis necessary to call them initial findings. These are an amalgam of correlations you've noticed that may or may not be statistically significant.
Sun, blazing, shining, summer, sweating, splashing, swimming, sweltering, sultry, scorched, sizzling, snake, grass, flowers, soil, insects, bees, cicadas, crickets, spiders, chirping, buzzing, birds singing, forest, forest fires, leaves, breezy, rustling, shushing, shimmering...Do you truly not see the sampling bias here? You've listed a lot of words that have S and have to do with summer. Great. But what about "hot", "heat", "play", "travel", "beach", "drought", "walk", "warm", and hundreds of other words also associated with summer?
All describing summer, all have s in them. S the first letter of the word for sun. Which brings summer, and all the above things. But s is also related to closeness which is connected with heat.
"hot", "head", "play", "travel", "beach", "drought", "walk", "warm"
What do you think is statistical chance for the close - heat - sun - fire pattern to arise as a random pile up of letters in two distant European languages like Serbian and Irish. I am asking you for your personal opinion?
And how can you explain that deliberate action like trying to convey meaning to someone, will result in random babble of sounds devoid of any premeditated meaning. I think sometimes that i might be talking to wrong people. I was hoping to talk to linguists, and i am talking to statisticians.
How can you statistically explain why this is the symbol for one "|"? Why this is the symbol for two "||"? Why do we use 0 as a symbol for ten ||||||||||?
Or how can you understand and explain this, using statistics?
1 = one
2 = two
12 = twelve
I can understand it using my, from your point of view useless, "looking over data" and comparing the language with how people think and how people live. Can you please explain what statistical or any other method that you regard as scientific, can explain any of the above two linguistics problems.
MalFet
I am pretty good at understanding people, but i fail to understand what exactly do you mean.QuoteThese *aren't* initial findings. You haven't done the analysis necessary to call them initial findings. These are an amalgam of correlations you've noticed that may or may not be statistically significant.
What do you think is statistical chance for the close - heat - sun - fire pattern to arise as a random pile up of letters in two distant European languages like Serbian and Irish. I am asking you for your personal opinion?
And how can you explain that deliberate action like trying to convey meaning to someone, will result in random babble of sounds devoid of any premeditated meaning. I think sometimes that i might be talking to wrong people. I was hoping to talk to linguists, and i am talking to statisticians.
How can you statistically explain why this is the symbol for one "|"? Why this is the symbol for two "||"? Why do we use 0 as a symbol for ten ||||||||||?
Or how can you understand and explain this, using statistics?
1 = one
2 = two
12 = twelve
I can understand it using my, from your point of view useless, "looking over data" and comparing the language with how people think and how people live. Can you please explain what statistical or any other method that you regard as scientific, can explain any of the above two linguistics problems.
From the Enlightenment on, the singular ambition of science has been to develop techniques for producing and evaluating knowledge independent of personal opinion.
If I had the opposite intuition that you do, what would we do? Stand around and shout at each other until one of us got bored?
If you want to make scientific claims, you need to talk statistics. Statistics is the quantification and comparison of measured data. That's what science is. If, on the other hand, you want to just bathe in intuitions, there are plenty of people in fields like literary studies who would be happy to argue with you. Maybe you're more interested in the humanities than the social sciences. That's fine, but linguistics is a social science.
Really? Snake has more to do with summer than heat or travel?
....but i have no idea what all this means.Something to work on. It's a problem that you don't know how to do what jkpate was suggesting and that you don't have an alternative reliable methodology to offer otherwise. Instead you say things like this:
Like does the list contain words like entrance, nip, snap, line nose, snow, no. If it does not then we have software that does not know what words related to boundary are, and any further calculations are based on wrong initial data set.Really? If the data doesn't support your hypothesis then the data and analysis are wrong?
First what we associate with summer was not the same stuff primitive people associated with summer. Even their definition of summer was different from ours. For ancient Europeans, there were two parts of the year, light, worm, alive, summer and dark, cold, dead, winter. Summer lasted from beginning of May to beginning of November..You're just making stuff up now.
...
If you were ever in nature in Europe in summer and actually had your ears opened, you would know what I am talking about.Absurd. I've been in Europe during the summer and never heard "ssssss". You're just making things up.
You also said that there are hundreds of words which define summer. Can you give me any of these hundreds of words which I have missed and which describe the sound of summer day?No, I can't. This is apparently all in your head, so I have no clue!
Word sun, sol, suria, sunce is probably derived from the sound of summer. I am not saying that all people noticed this sound of summer and used it in their summer related words.This is a contradiction: why doesn't the word in Serbian also start with S? You're making no predictions, just telling stories.
Look at Serbian language where summer is leto. It could be related to the flight of birds. Leteti means to fly. Proleteti means to fly over, to fly pass. Proleće - spring - the time when birds fly over head, migrate, arrive from Africa. Leto - summer - the time when birds are flying here, when they land, nest.
This doesn't really seem to be going anywhere
You can do a corpus search to find words that occur near/with "summer" often. That's similar to what jkpate did above.
blind (adj.)
Old English blind "blind," also "dark, enveloped in darkness, obscure; unintelligent, lacking mental perception," probably from West Germanic *blinda- "blind" (cf. Dutch and German blind, Old Norse blindr, Gothic blinds "blind"), perhaps, via notion of "to make cloudy, deceive," from an extended Germanic form of the PIE root *bhel- (1) "to shine, flash, burn" (see bleach (v.)); cf. Lithuanian blendzas "blind," blesti "to become dark." The original sense, not of "sightless," but of "confused," perhaps underlies such phrases as blind alley (Chaucer's lanes blynde), which is older than the sense of "closed at one end" (1610s). In reference to doing something without seeing it first, by 1840. Of aviators flying without instruments or without clear observation, from 1919. Blindman's bluff is from 1580s.
The twilight, or rather the hour between the time when one can no longer see to read and the lighting of the candles, is commonly called blindman's holiday. [Grose, 1796]
Related: Blinded; blinding.
blind (v.)
"deprive of sight," early 13c., from Old English blendan "to blind, deprive of sight; deceive," from Proto-Germanic *blandjan (see blind (adj.)); form influenced in Middle English by the adjective. Related: Blinded; blinding.
blind (n.)
"a blind person; blind persons collectively," late Old Engish, from blind (adj.). Meaning "place of concealment" is from 1640s. Meaning "anything that obstructs sight" is from 1702.
Remember i told you that if we want to have meaningful conversation we need to use the same language algorithm?If we have a meaningful conversation, it will be because you say something reasonable and convincing. You can't blame us for your inability to convince us-- either because you're wrong or because you don't have any way to defend your argument that is convincing.
When i say word is related to boundary, summer...what ever, i mean that it's meaning is related to boundary, summer.... That it carries the meaning associated with boundary, summer...meaning pattern.Collocations reveal quite a bit about the meaning of words. They aren't substitutes for each other, but they are related meanings. That's why they often appear in the same context. For example, we might very often find the words "Chicago" and "pizza" near each other in texts, much more often than, for example, "Texas" and "potato". What we would find is that there is some statistical relationship between the use/meaning of the two words. Does "Chicago" mean "pizza"? No, certainly not. But we would know that they often come up together.
When you say that word is related to boundary summer you mean "found in texts near or related to word boundary, summer".
These are completely different things. The way you understand relationship can be tested with statistics, but answers completely different question, totally unrelated to the question i am asking, which is what is the meaning of the word and how it is expressed through sound and how it was created in the first place.
Assembling this data set can only be done by humans, because machines are not able to understand the deep meaning of words.What makes you think that humans (or machines) could possibly come up with your analysis? Surveys are very often used in linguistic research, so go ahead with that. What kind of question would you ask people to attempt to defend your claims?
I discovered these meaning carrying sound blocks by comparing Serbian and Irish, ...You did not! You observed what you believe to be patterns, yet no one else sees these patterns and the very idea of it goes against most of what historical linguists have come up with for the last 300 years. It's possible you're just way ahead of everyone else, but it's much more likely you're wrong.
Jpate i am almost finished my summary. It will take me maybe one or two more days.Again, remember: 200-500 words. We want to know what you're claiming, that's all. If you actually know what you are claiming, it should not take you too long to write this. But whenever you post it, we'll take a look.
If we have a meaningful conversation, it will be because you say something reasonable and convincing.
Collocations reveal quite a bit about the meaning of words. They aren't substitutes for each other, but they are related meanings. That's why they often appear in the same context. For example, we might very often find the words "Chicago" and "pizza" near each other in texts, much more often than, for example, "Texas" and "potato".
You can't blame us for your inability to convince us
What makes you think that humans (or machines) could possibly come up with your analysis? Surveys are very often used in linguistic research, so go ahead with that. What kind of question would you ask people to attempt to defend your claims?
Old English hond, hand "hand; side; power, control, possession," from Proto-Germanic *khanduz (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch, German hand, Old Norse hönd, Gothic handus). The original Old English plural handa was superseded in Middle English by handen, later hands.
toe (n.)
Old English ta "toe" (plural tan), contraction of *tahe (Mercian tahæ), from Proto-Germanic *taihwo (cf. Old Norse ta, Old Frisian tane, Middle Dutch te, Dutch teen (perhaps originally a plural), Old High German zecha, German Zehe "toe"). Perhaps originally meaning "fingers" as well (many PIE languages still use one word to mean both fingers and toes), and thus from PIE root *deik- "to show" (see diction).
Þo stode hii I-armed fram heued to þe ton. [Robert of Gloucester, "Chronicle," c.1300]
The old plural survived regionally into Middle English as tan, ton. To be on (one's) toes "alert, eager" is recorded from 1921. To step on (someone's) toes in the figurative sense "give offense" is from late 14c. Toe-hold "support for the toe of a boot in climbing" is from 1880.
Old English fot, from Proto-Germanic *fot (cf. Old Saxon fot, Old Norse fotr, Dutch voet, Old High German fuoz, German Fuß, Gothic fotus "foot"), from PIE *ped- (cf. Avestan pad-; Sanskrit pad-, accusative padam "foot;" Greek pos, Attic pous, genitive podos; Latin pes, genitive pedis "foot;" Lithuanian padas "sole," peda "footstep", Serbian put - road). Plural form feet is an instance of i-mutation. Of a bed, grave, etc., first recorded c.1300.
Again, remember: 200-500 words. We want to know what you're claiming, that's all. If you actually know what you are claiming, it should not take you too long to write this. But whenever you post it, we'll take a look.
I actually know what I am claiming. But as it is obvious that you guys don't understand basic terms and concepts like "conversation" and "meaning" in the same way I understand them, I have decided to be as precise as possible, and define all these terms in unambiguous fashion, in order to remove possibility of misunderstanding.As you see, there's no point in continuing this. Your arguments are not scientific or convincing. They only make sense in your head.
I asked for a short abstract. (We all did.) You haven't written it.
Phonosemantics is vacuous if any sound can have any meaning. If you are making a claim that only some sounds have "boundary" as a meaning and not others, then this should be testable. You have not demonstrated a way to objectively test it, just your own intuition.
If even one word isn't about boundaries, then what are you claiming? Why is N sometimes related to boundaries and not always? What kind of theory would be a "sometimes" theory. (Imagine a "sometimes we have gravity" theory!)
[Note: I actually think, if anything, this is the right approach. But it's crucial that you work out the details and significance.]
How do you know? Humans are amazingly good at metaphors, so you just claiming "it's about boundaries" is basically meaningless. As a simple test, give me a word and tell me a concept it is "about". I'll make up a very convincing story. That isn't science or reliable, though. So, again, how can we rely on your analysis when it isn't something objectively testable?
Another way to consider this would be to wonder about exact opposites. The opposite of boundary might be "wide open space".
What about "savannah", "open", "plain", "plane", "nebula", "navigate", etc.? If N can predict openness and boundaries, then what is it actually predicting?
This is the question from the first post after the above post in which i did give you the short summary. Maybe you did not see my post like i didn't see your's...That's not an abstract. That's an outline of a (problematic) methodology.
I have been extremely consistent in my claims from the first post.Possibly consistent, but not clear. I don't know what theories you are rejecting. For example, are you rejecting the theory that Proto-Indo-European existed (somewhere/at some time)?
I have given you summary of my theory and the way to prove it and disprove it here:The problem with that is that the methodology is subjective because you have no objective way to measure meaning/relatedness.
From my post which you did not read, or maybe did not see: "Get all the words related to boundary, group them by common sound, get percentage for each group with common sound. Compare with threshold percentage. If distribution is uniform, we have randomness. If we have peaks, it is deliberate. Each peak represents one sound which is strongly related to meaning of boundary. "That's fine. But:
How do you objectively test meaning?Now we're getting somewhere. This is extremely important.
What word is most related to summer?I have no idea why your methodology would work, given unbiased questions like that.
A) Snake
B) Heat
C) Travel
D) Snow
No it is not. Boundary defines things. It does not necessarily enclose them as i already shown you.That's an absurd thing to say. Would others agree with you? Are you talking just about words as they are in your head? Why do you claim this as a fact?
Savannah comes from an African language.1. Can you rely on existing etymologies for PIE? I thought you were rejecting that theory...
open - Originally the past participle of the verb *eupaną, *ūpaną, related to *ūp (“up”). Root has no n.
plain - From Anglo-Norman pleyn, playn, Middle French plain, plein, from Latin plānus (“flat, even, level, plain”). From Proto-Indo-European *pelh (“flat”), *pelh₂-. Root has no n.
Nebula - From Proto-Indo-European *nébʰos (“cloud”). Cognate with Ancient Greek νέφος (nephos), Sanskrit नभस् (nábhas). The original meaning is sky. Derived from ne b = not material, hard. Boundary of material world.
Navigate - From Middle English navigate, from Latin navigo, from nāvis (“ship”) + agō (“do”), from Proto-Indo-European *nau- (boat), possibly, from Tamil நாவாய் (nāvāi). From nāvis (“ship”) + agō (“I do”). Actually from na + v + i + go = on + water + persist, continue, float + go. navi = na + v + i = on + water + persist, continue, float
jkpate
Thank you very much for attempting to help, but i have no idea what all this means.
Can you give me a list of words which according to the software you use relate to boundary. Let start from there. I don't know how the software calculates all this, and i would like to do some manual checks of it's accurateness.
Like does the list contain words like entrance, nip, snap, line nose, snow, no. If it does not then we have software that does not know what words related to boundary are, and any further calculations are based on wrong initial data set. Again, i am very grateful for your help. It would also help if you could explain how did they originally determine the word relationship when they were populating the database. That is crucial. Then what words did they use. Modern English or old English. We need to discard everything that came into English in last 300 years at least. We want only words of European origin, no Asian or African borrowings. And so on....
QuoteFrom the Enlightenment on, the singular ambition of science has been to develop techniques for producing and evaluating knowledge independent of personal opinion.
The original relationship between words, at the time when the word database was created was someone's personal opinion. Or did they use some magic to determine what is related to what.
Shouldn't we also be able to relate family recipes and language then? Also eye color. Also religions. Also location. Also political views. Certainly all of these things are somewhat correlated-- families and communities are relevant to all of that, sometimes especially language. But none of it is particularly reliable.
Ok! Very important. So: sound-meaning correspondences are entirely arbitrary. Languages vary, so "dog" in English is just coincidentally not like "Hund" in German or "perro" in Spanish.
What you're claiming is that sounds are treated as meaningful units in speech by users of those sounds. That's more reasonable, but also harder to prove, because it's very hard to imagine clear evidence that would falsify it. (You're saying "sometimes" rather than "always", for example.)
So then what is the point of these correspondences? Are you trying to track down individual families that they came from? There's a major time-depth issue in historical linguistics, and I'm certain you'll hit that.
Additionally, what about multiple generations? Are you claiming that following generations of the same family (or speech community) no longer question the form of words? You said families vary in these associations. How are they maintained then? That seems like a fatal flaw in the argument.
Further, why do languages vary at all? If they all (probably) go back to the same original speech community (maybe 100,000 years ago?) then why don't we retain whatever sounds they used? Either it is consistent over time or it is not. So, which?
Yes. They words change so much that any kind of analysis like this seems absurd, even if originally there were correspondences.
What is a "meaning"?
This may be an incredibly important point to discuss.
Semantics: the study of inherent meanings of words or sentences
Pragmatics: the study of the meaning of language in context
"It's cold in here."
Semantic meaning: It's cold.
Pragmatic meaning: Close the window.
Roughly, semantic meaning is inherent while pragmatic meaning is contextual.
Semantic meaning of yellow light: in a short time this will be red.
Potential pragmatic meanings of yellow light: slow down (if you have time); speed up (if you don't have time or are in a hurry); watch out! (if your breaks are failing); the cars will stop soon (if you're a pedestrian trying to cross); take the picture now! (if you're a photographer wanting pictures of yellow lights).
In the case of language, there is a huge difference between N sometimes being related to boundaries (well, of course it is, as in the word itself) and being predictably related to them.
: something (such as a river, a fence, or an imaginary line) that shows where an area ends and another area begins
: a point or limit that indicates where two things become different
boundaries : unofficial rules about what should not be done : limits that define acceptable behavior
Incorrect. See above. There are two different (and equally valid) kinds of analysis.
To say that "N means boundary" you must establish some sort of conventional meaning for N. It's not just about context.
The fact that I don't know something doesn't mean you're right.
Why can't they be coincidences?
How do you determine "is linked"? Do you mean that you can make up something then report it to us as a fact? You need a methodology.
For example, you could do a survey asking 100 people whether certain words are related to boundaries.
No, no, no! Don't use related languages to test for lack of coincidence. Use other languages like Swahili, Japanese and Navajo.
Plus, if it's self-evident, great. Why? Common sense is not acceptable (that's not science), so you surely must mean it is easy to reliable detect. How would you train a computer program to detect words related to boundaries?
I don't know what theories you are rejecting. For example, are you rejecting the theory that Proto-Indo-European existed (somewhere/at some time)?
Treat humans as data processing machines. Under what circumstances would they confirm your hypothesis? What would you ask them to do?
What word is most related to summer?
A) Snake
B) Heat
C) Travel
D) Snow
Can you rely on existing etymologies for PIE? I thought you were rejecting that theory...
One method that may appear counterintuitive but actually works out relatively well is using corpora and looking for words that often appear near each other. That doesn't seem like it would work that well, but it does give you quite a bit of information. A similar approach involves "semantic networks", which use various tools to gather their data (sometimes human surveys, sometimes corpora, etc.).
I am talking about the origin of the language. Time before books, films, easy travel. Time when communities lived pretty isolated from each other. By the way the same situation remained even in some parts of Europe until mid 20th century. For instance some isolated mountain shepherd communities in Carpathian mountains in Serbia did not know that there was a second world war happening around them. In this type of isolation there is direct link between language and genes. Look at R1a people. They lived between giant uncrossable rivers for thousands of years during the last ice age melt down. Do you think their language during that time was influenced by anyone? But once people start mixing, languages and cultures start mixing.People have been mixing for as long as there were separate groups. There has been some recent discussion on here (and on the internet in general) about Neanderthal DNA showing up in modern humans.
How did you get that sound meaning correspondences are entirely arbitrary from the above i really have no idea. I said that languages were developed by families, in particular surrounding at different times. These languages are based on particular logic, which can be traced to back to the original sound (not word) language used by the original family, clan...You are right that this is hard to falsify, but just because it is hard to falsify it does not mean it is not possible to do it. Pick a language, check id the same sound to meaning logic works for the majority of words from that language. Then look at related language. Repeat the same. I would expect that the same logic would work for the words which come from the same family language.Do you understand what the word "arbitrary" means? It means that it follows a convention that in itself is not motivated/predictable. It does NOT mean it is random.
I am trying to discover the old language(s) of Europe. I am fascinated by the ability of cultural and linguistic traits to survive millenniums. The fact that most people dismiss this as even a possibility, led to so many words in our languages which are "of unknown origin".You are NOT the first to try to do this. It's very interesting. There has been quite a bit of research on "Proto-World" even. The problem is that the time depth makes this extremely unreliable.
I believe that we can pretty much reconstruct the language down to last Ice age maximum 10,000 bc.Which language?
What do you mean by questioning the form of words? Do you ever question the form of any of the words you are reading in this sentence?That's exactly what I mean. Sound symbolism only works if speakers actively maintain it over generations. If not, they're just using normal non-phonosemantic language! (Whatever the origins might be...)
Languages don't go back to the same family. There were at least three speaking human sub groups before 100,000 bc: Africans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.That's very controversial. There is evidence to suggest that Neanderthals and possibly others had some form of language, but it's by no means certain.
I don't agree that we can not find the original correspondences. It is hard, we might not find all of them for all the family languages, but if i find most of them for R1a language, i will be happy. For me this is fun. Is linguistics fun for you?It's fun for me. Do what you'd like. I still find it incredibly unlikely. You're directly analyzing the modern pronunciations of words that have gone through numerous major sound changes over about 10,000 years. That's a terrible method...
I believe that in spoken languages sound, and sound blocks, carry meaning. Sound block is a vocalized consonant like ta, go...These sound blocks were used in conjunction with actions to convey messages. The sounds eventually merged together to form words which replaced this audio visual language with audio language. Each one of these words has it's own meaning. This meaning can change through time, because word becomes a symbol with which people can associate new meanings. So to find the original etymological meaning you need to go to the oldest known form of the word. This is all we have to work with. But it is not as bad as you think.So how is this any different than etymology in the first place?
A lot of words go way back and have survived pretty unchanged, maybe not in English but in languages from which they came to English.I don't know what you mean by "a lot of words", but I'd say on average, very much not. A few rare sounds might survive, but whole words? Almost never.
You need to go one level lower than that and look at word cold on it's own. The meaning of the sentence "it is cold" is the sum of meanings of "it" "is" "cold". Without cold having it's own meaning, the sentence would be meaningless. "it is ljhlkjow" means nothing to you or me now. We can agree that ljhlkjow means the same as cold. And we can continue using the word ljhlkjow in our own language. If you try to use it with your mother, she will rightly ask you: "what is wrong with using word cold? we all know it, we all understand it. you sound like a weirdo when you use ljhlkjow insted of cold. do you want to sound like a weirdo?" This is how languages are preserved. Through preservation of the meaning of words. If enough weirdos start using ljhlkjow instead of cold, new dialect will emerge. But you know as well as I do, that most people will just continue using cold. But if instead of cold we decide using caold, or colt, we have more chance of developing our own dialect, as the new words "sound like" the old and preserve more or less, the main meaning contained in sounds.You COMPLETELY missed the point of what I was trying to say. Irrelevantly, yes, you're correct. I was explaining the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. That's what was important there.
Symbol has no meaning outside of the language. Yellow color is just a yellow color with no meaning unless it is assigned meaning in particular language. In traffic light language it means one thing. In language of emotions it means another. In language of bees it means something completely different. In language of sunflowers it means again something else.What's your point? Words have meanings and sometimes they are similar in different languages and other times different? Sure. That's precisely what arbitrary means!!
Look at this: podrig in Irish is Patrick, while in Serbian it means burp. But bud (bod) in both Serbian and Irish mean something hard sticking out like a penis, and are both ancient words for penis.
Podrig sound combination comes from two different languages. Bud (bod) comes from the same language.
All meaning is linked to context. Every sound that you can recognize is linked to a context in which you heard it the most. Take the sound of bees. If you are about to pick a flower, and you hear bsssss you will know that it is a bee. But if you hear uaiuaiuaiuai you will have no idea what to make of it. Even worse would be if you saw a bee flying and heard no sound. You would conclude that you are gone def. Of if you heard bsssssss coming from a dog instead of the sound of barking. Of if you saw a bee flying and heard uaiuaiuaiuai. You would start questioning your sanity.Language doesn't work like that. The original usage may be iconic, but soon after it becomes arbitrary/conventionalized. This is Linguistics 101.
Regardless, once word is formed it becomes a symbol in it's own right which can have new meaning attached to it through different contexts.Yes.
But you can still find the original meaning by analyzing the sound blocks from which the word was made.No.
Because for something to be a coincidence from the statistical point of view it has to have high probability to happen as a random event. ...Yes, I know that. But you must actually set up a statistical test to see whether these could be by chance. You need to determine what that would look like, and you need to use reliable data as input. Again, focus on objectivity and replicability.
No, i use etymological dictionaries, which were written by people who believe in the same things you do and i do, and i find the meaning of the original words. If they are defining something by negation of something else, exclusion from something else, position at the end of something else, surrounded, separated by something else or being the thing that is used to separate, define then the word is relate to boundary. Like words "line", "finger", "one" or "thing"Is there anyone else who finds these same correlations? Replicability makes a crazy theory into an accepted one.
We could. But as I said, we need to look at the original words, with their original meanings. You said open is not related to boundary, because for you boundary and barrier are the same. And they are not. We can have a boundary which is a barrier (fence), boundary which is not a barrier (line), and barrier which is not a boundary (tree).So you say.
So you say that common sense is not acceptable, but you suggest that we use random people for a survey???Yes! Native speakers are by definition experts, and a random sample is statistically desirable.
No I don't. I did say that already. Proto Indo European language is R1a language. Pre Indoeuropean languages are R1a, R1b, E1b, I, J...languages. Mix of R1a language, with all these other languages gave us all Indoeuropean languages which are mix of Pre Indo European languages. This is why we can still find ancient words and sound block patterns.Lots of conjecture. Again, write an abstract and tell us exactly what you mean here. How is the idea that Irish and Serbian and very closely related going to be consistent with Proto-Indo-European?
Can we establish one thing. Do you trust etymological work of all the people who built etymological dictionaries? How did they do their work? By statistics or by eyeballing and data mining? They surely compared and verified each other's findings by more eyeballing and data mining. There are still disagreements on a lot of etymologies. But you do accept their work as valid and scientific? Or you don't. If you do, what is the difference between what they do and what I do to determine meaning of words? If one of you guys wants to determine the etymology of a word for instance "hephaistos" how would you go about doing it? What statistical method could you use to achieve this? I don't think there is one, but please, I am willing to learn.Peer review. Trial and error. On average, these sources are reliable, and the great thing is that you can check the details yourself as needed. Nothing is certain in historical linguistics, but that doesn't mean everything is wrong. On average, there has been a lot of good work.
So once we establish which words have what meaning, we can try sound block hypothesis to see if it works. And we can do probability calculation to see how likely it is that if the hypothesis works n out of m times, that it works by coincidence.You're still missing the huge step of time depth and sound changes.
Example: navis - boat in Latin. na + v + i = na + vo + ide = on + water + persists, continues, goes. Roman navy was built by Dalmatian Illyrians from the Balkans. Word boat probably comes from them, and the roots are still present in Serbian. na - on, voda - water, ide - goes.There's a much simpler explanation:
If this is the question most people will say heat. But if question is which of these things possesses sound of summer, or which of these things is only linked to summer, you will have different answer.Seems like sort of a weird question to me, but ok, sure. Go for it. What do people say?
I never said I reject PIE theory. I reject some of it's conclusions, but as I said before, most of it is spot on. I reject the conclusion that there was only one language from which all indoeuropean languages developed. There were many pre indoeuropean languages, but the main was R1a language, whose most direct, least diluted, descendants are Slavic languages. I reject the conclusion that the pre indoeuropean languages have disappeared. They are still here, as part of indoeuropean languages. I also think that mixing started earlier than the 3rd millennium bc, and that some languages groups, like R1a and I and J could have been mixed in Central Europe even before.So you DO reject PIE as it is. You're contradicting yourself.
Do you see what I mean, when I say that you can not use location based relational statistics to get the meaning of a word?No. You're just rejecting it by suggesting absurd uses. Any tool can be used incorrectly. This is still a reasonable tool, among others.
Do you understand what the word "arbitrary" means? It means that it follows a convention that in itself is not motivated/predictable. It does NOT mean it is random.
arbitrary ˈɑːbɪt(rə)ri/Submit adjective
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
"an arbitrary decision" antonyms: rational, reasoned
For example, consider a stoplight. Red means stop. Green means go. That's consistent and not random. But it is arbitrary. It's perfectly imaginable that in some alternate universe the opposite is true.
This color scheme derives from a system used by the railroad industry since the 1830s. At this time, railroad companies developed a lighted means to let train engineers know when to stop or go, with different lighted colors representing different actions. They chose red as the color for stop, it is thought, because red has for centuries been used to indicate danger. For the other colors, they chose white as the color for go and green as the color for caution.
The choice of a white light for go turned out to cause a lot of problems. For instance, an incident in 1914 where a red lens fell out of its holder leaving the white light behind it exposed. This ended with a train running a “stop” signal and crashing into another train. Thus, the railroad decided to change it so the green light meant go and a caution “yellow” was chosen, primarily because the color is so distinct from the other two colors used.
Therefore, if "dog" in English means "perro" in Spanish, then any sound correspondences must be arbitrary. That doesn't mean "meaningless" or "random", but it means language-specific. This is just like "gl" in English-- it probably doesn't carry the same meaning in Japanese or Zulu.
The origin of the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) began with the domestication of the Grey Wolf (Canis lupus) several tens of thousands of years ago.[1][2][3] Genetic and archaeological evidence shows that humans domesticated wolves on more than one occasion, with the present lineage of C. l. familiaris arising at the latest 15,000 years ago as evidenced by the Bonn-Oberkassel site and possibly as early as 33,000 years ago as evidenced by the mtDNA testing on a paleolithic dog's remains from the Razboinichya Cave (Altai Mountains).
You are NOT the first to try to do this. It's very interesting. There has been quite a bit of research on "Proto-World" even. The problem is that the time depth makes this extremely unreliable. These are very interesting ideas, but there's a reason we don't know anything for certain: a time depth of over 10,000 years is either impossible or just extremely difficult given what information we have available today. There are so many changes and so much borrowing during that time, it is no longer possibly to rely on the comparative method.
I personally believe it's possible to keep pushing back our knowledge just a bit to see farther into the past, but I don't think it's easy or that something as, honestly, superficial as your analysis will do the trick. You need to have a lot of layers of sound changes and borrowings accounted for.
That's exactly what I mean. Sound symbolism only works if speakers actively maintain it over generations. If not, they're just using normal non-phonosemantic language! (Whatever the origins might be...)
Languages don't go back to the same family. There were at least three speaking human sub groups before 100,000 bc: Africans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.
That's very controversial. There is evidence to suggest that Neanderthals and possibly others had some form of language, but it's by no means certain.
When I say "human" I'm referring to the ancestors of modern humans, or as you call them "Africans". (Didn't all of those subgroups come out of Africa at some point though??)
I don't agree that we can not find the original correspondences. It is hard, we might not find all of them for all the family languages, but if i find most of them for R1a language, i will be happy.
I still find it incredibly unlikely. You're directly analyzing the modern pronunciations of words that have gone through numerous major sound changes over about 10,000 years. That's a terrible method...Certainly it MAY be possible to reconstruct earlier languages, but if so you will need a more complex methodology than just looking at spelling in the modern languages
I believe that in spoken languages sound, and sound blocks, carry meaning.
So how is this any different than etymology in the first place?
Sounds reasonable to me, if you just mean that there were originally sounds that then became part of a language and normal morphological processes followed.
navis - boat in Latin. na + v + i = na + vo + ide = on + water + persists, continues, goes. Roman navy was built by Dalmatian Illyrians from the Balkans. Word boat probably comes from them, and the roots are still present in Serbian. na - on, voda - water, ide - goes.
There's a much simpler explanation:
Latin navis "ship," from PIE *nau- "boat"
Obviously the -is ending is just inflectional, like thousands of other nouns in Latin. Note also that "v" in that is pronounced [w], so this is an example of sound change getting in the way of your claims.
Certainly it is more reasonable to take the etymology from PIE than it is to assume it's from Serbian, right? Just based on time depth...
An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument
This does NOT mean that you can look at modern English and separate out each letter as an independent meaning!!
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/03/the-origin-of-the-green-yellow-and-red-color-scheme-for-traffic-lights/Having a lens falling out of a light, turning the one that was red (white light + red filter lens) confusing people is absolutely no counterargument whatsoever to the point that was being made. If the bulb instead of the filter had been red, then that issue would not have happened and there would be no problem. It's still arbitrary.
So nothing random there. It was a premeditated decision, based on thinking and planning, making a mistake, then realizing mistake, correcting the mistake. This is how humans learn and this is how humans invent things. This is what makes humans different from monkeys.
So based on the way science works, my hypothesis of meaning carrying sound blocks works as it is doing the expected. It produces the meaning of words from sound blocks in a consistent way. Does it mean it will work for every word? I don't know. We need to do a lot more research to find that outYou just seem to lack the fundamentals of what scientific analysis requires. You're allowing your original data that gave you the idea to support the conclusion that you drew from that data! That's what even school children are taught is a big no, no. You're completely right that you need to do a lot more research. You don't know it's going to work for every word, but you haven't even tried.
Latest neuroscience research shows that these things are directly linked.I must insist you produce this evidence that supports your claim that:
As you can see you can't use word arbitrary if you don't imply random original choice. And as I have shown you, the probability of randomly choosing the same sound in 100 words with related meaning is close to 0Aha. You think you've shown us something. You think you've actually shown that in 100 words a possibility of 0 can be drawn. You ACTUALLY think you've shown us this? Without any experiment? With carefully cherry-picked data?
They chose red as the color for stop, it is thought, because red has for centuries been used to indicate danger.
they chose white as the color for go and green as the color for caution.
The choice of a white light for go turned out to cause a lot of problems. For instance, an incident in 1914 where a red lens fell out of its holder leaving the white light behind it exposed. This ended with a train running a “stop” signal and crashing into another train. Thus, the railroad decided to change it so the green light meant go and a caution “yellow” was chosen, primarily because the color is so distinct from the other two colors used.
You just seem to lack the fundamentals of what scientific analysis requires. You're allowing your original data that gave you the idea to support the conclusion that you drew from that data! That's what even school children are taught is a big no, no. You're completely right that you need to do a lot more research. You don't know it's going to work for every word, but you haven't even tried.
Here's how you have to think of it. You need to write down a set of instructions, and have an imaginary bucket of words to investigate. You need to be able to give someone the instructions on how to analyse the words, all the hypotheses, and then give them the bucket. If you can draw the conclusions and argue the same case for an unseen set of data (in a replicable way) then you have an argument that will cause people to stop ignoring the babbling and it will actually compel them to allow for the possibility and investigate what you're questioning.
There's no method, there's no abstract. You have some words that have given you a conclusion and you're firing it back to us as if it is evidence of the original claim. That is the definition of a circular argument. Anyone, anyone, who works in science or with the scientific method can see that a mile away.
I could take the well-understood phono-semantic feature of English of word-initial sn- clusters having a high correspondence with things relating to the nose, and then form a conclusion this is the case for every language. Sneeze, snore, sniff, snivel, snigger, snooze, snuffle, sneer, snob, snout would be some good examples, and then to argue my case that this is the truth, I would quote those same things.
Let's go back to sound "N" and related words. I also believe that part of this post will show my friend freknu that some things sound funny because you don't know enough about them.
If you inhale through your nose with your mouth slightly opened you get sound "N".
If you inhale through your nose with your mouth closed and you get sound between "N" and "M" depending on the position of your tong.
Nos - Nos, a boundary point of our face. Also sound produced by sNiffing is "N". So NOS = N + O + S = sound N + hole + with = the hole that makes N sound.
The fact that both "N" and "M" sounds can be made through our noses, led to all "N" and "M" words related to nose and smell:
English, Serbian, Irish
Nos - nos - srón
Nostril - nozdrva - cuinneán, srón-pholl
sNout - njuška - smuit
sNaffle, snavel - kljun - ghob, gop, guilbend, gulba, gulban
sNiff - njušiti, šmrkati - snaois
sNivel - cmizdriti, from smizdriti
sNeeze - kijati - sraoth
sNite - blow your nose - izduvaj nos - srón séideadh
sNooze - dremati - shuan
sNore - hrkati - roncaim
sNuff - onjušiti - snaois
sNoop - cunjati, Njuškati - snaois
sNot - slina - ronn, smuga
sNigger - smeškati se
sNeer - podsmehnuti se
sNort - šmrkati, frktati
Smell - Miris - boladh
smell bad, stink - smrdi - brént, mosach
smacking - mljacanje - blastarnach (something smells nice, soliva starts rushing in our mouth, we smack to collect and swallow it. Sound of that action)
mmmmmmmmmm - sound when something smells, and as our experience tells us also tastes nice
Have a closer look at all these words above. The sound they all have apart from "N" is sound "S". As a matter of fact, most of the English words describing things related with nose start with letter "S" followed with letter "N". Why?
I must insist you produce this evidence that supports your claim that: "Different genetic human groups, with different ability to hear and repeat sounds also have different logical ability."
Aha. You think you've shown us something. You think you've actually shown that in 100 words a possibility of 0 can be drawn. You ACTUALLY think you've shown us this? Without any experiment?
For something to be a coincidence from the statistical point of view it has to have high probability to happen as a random event. If you have 30 sounds in a bag, to your disposal, and you need to create 100 words. What is the chance that you will randomly pick the same sound for all 100 words. For one it is 1/30.
For hundred it is (1/30)*(1/30)*(1/30)*(1/30)*...100 times. Do you see how improbable that is? Now calculate probability of the same two sounds being always picked. But if you deliberately pick the same sound, based on the meaning of the sound, then we have a completely different story. We don't have independent events and probability rises dramatically.
If the event is me being able to construct the meaning of a word from its sound blocks. The probability of that event is 1/2. I either do it or not. If I do it, again and again, on hundreds of random words from multiple languages, what is the probability of that happening randomly?
This is why this discussion isn't going anywhere. We're talking at different levels.
At the end of the day it comes down to the person with the extraordinary claim not understanding how to put together credible data.
Can we establish one thing. Do you trust etymological work of all the people who built etymological dictionaries? How did they do their work? By statistics or by eyeballing and data mining? They surely compared and verified each other's findings by more eyeballing and data mining. There are still disagreements on a lot of etymologies. But you do accept their work as valid and scientific? Or you don't. If you do, what is the difference between what they do and what I do to determine meaning of words? If one of you guys wants to determine the etymology of a word for instance "hephaistos" how would you go about doing it? What statistical method could you use to achieve this? I don't think there is one, but please, I am willing to learn.
Asking for an abstract-style description is really not hard when the idea is well thought out. We've been asking for pages and nothing has arrived.
Actually I have written the summary already, in short and concise way. It easy to do it because the idea is very simple. I could not be bothered to repeat my self again, so here is a link to my post in which I have given my summary. Read it.Done.
Also, since you haven't actually done these tests, why do you expect people to believe you?I'm happy to believe you think you've got the answer. Send your hypotheses to some linguistics journals. Let us know what they say. Failing that, try sending the idea to one credible linguist and promise to quote the honest response he/she gives you.
Done.
Also, since you haven't actually done these tests, why do you expect people to believe you?
I'm happy to believe you think you've got the answer.
Show me, using arguments, where I am wrong. Let others judge you. I gave you plenty of opportunity to take apart any of my arguments by proving that the examples I gave are wrong. Take all words that mean "one" and explain the correlation between the sounds and meaning in all these words in your own way. Show us all how your argument is superior to mine. And don't use "cherry picked data" as an excuse not to do it, because that just shows how week your own hypothesis is, if you have one, when it doesn't work on any of my "cherry picked" examples.
Send your hypotheses to some linguistics journals. Let us know what they say. Failing that, try sending the idea to one credible linguist and promise to quote the honest response he/she gives you.
Are you not credible linguists? I am wasting my time here then? What is the point of having this discussion board at all?We've told you that we don't believe you, that your arguments are not convincing, that your methodology is flawed, and that your theories are almost certainly incorrect. This has not discouraged you.
One way to spend your time here more productively would be to discuss less controversial topics...like if you want to have us inform you of something you don't know.
For example, it might be helpful for you and interesting for us to discuss the etymologies of a few words that interest you.
QuoteWhy can't they be coincidences?
Because for something to be a coincidence from the statistical point of view it has to have high probability to happen as a random event. If you have 30 sounds in a bag, to your disposal, and you need to create 100 words. What is the chance that you will randomly pick the same sound for all 100 words. For one it is 1/30. For hundred it is
(1/30)*(1/30)*(1/30)*(1/30)*...100 times. Do you see how improbable that is? Now calculate probability of the same two sounds being always picked. But if you deliberately pick the same sound, based on the meaning of the sound, then we have a completely different story. We don't have independent events and probability rises dramatically. If the event is me being able to construct the meaning of a word from its sound blocks. The probability of that event is 1/2. I either do it or not. If I do it, again and again, on hundreds of random words from multiple languages, what is the probability of that happening randomly?
We've told you that we don't believe you, that your arguments are not convincing, that your methodology is flawed, and that your theories are almost certainly incorrect.
I'm happy to believe you think you've got the answer. Send your hypotheses to some linguistics journals. Let us know what they say. Failing that, try sending the idea to one credible linguist and promise to quote the honest response he/she gives you.
What lx was trying to say is: can you find even one credible person (here or elsewhere) who agrees with you? Having an unpopular opinion is fine. Having a theory that absolutely no one believes is probably a sign that something is off.
You say you've been relying on your intuitions about language
the probability of never repeating a sound is actually zero
Now, this is assuming that all of the words you know are related to "boundary," but, given your flexibility in saying words are related, a few hundred examples are not at all surprising or convincing that your correspondence between particular sounds and particular meanings is real. Simply looking at more words will not be convincing, because the number of opportunities for coincidences rises as you look for words.
Methodologies do exist for addressing this: you could randomly sample words related to boundary by asking people with a survey, like djr33 has suggested, or use a corpus that is representative of languages, like I did.
Here is an example of what I am talking about: in (inside something), on (on something), no (negation of something), un (opposite of something) are all sound blocks which express boundary meaning. If you find them in any word, that word is a boundary word.
Considering that none of you have distanced yourself from what lx and djr33 have said, I can only conclude that you are all believers and not scientists.No. I'd consider myself a skeptic. I tentatively accept the best theory out there as a working hypothesis, but I question it all the time. Your theory is much less credible and therefore a step in the wrong direction. It's not that I'm closed-minded.
And by the way I will contact few reputable and respectable linguists. And let's see what happen. Maybe djr33 will start believing in me and my gospel one day...Great. Let us know if you convince anyone. And, if you are actually being honest about this, also track how many people don't accept your claims.
jkpate, I have finished the abstract I have promised you. I know it is a week late, but better ever than never. You can see why it took so long to complete it. I have opened separate thread for it:The idea was a clear 300-500 word abstract, as would be found in many publications or as a submission for a conference. What you wrote is MUCH longer than that. At the moment I don't have time to read it; maybe later.
The first set of words start with "g" and are used only for living beings, people and animals.
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These are all characteristics of living beings. This connects sound "g" with meaning "alive".