Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/h₁nómn̥

On reconstruction

I don't understand why this is listed at h₁nḗh₃mn̥, which is pretty much the one thing it couldn't be. Laryngeals don't color long vowels, so h₁nḗh₃mn̥ would give a "post-laryngeal" nḗmn̥, and no language has an unambiguous reflex of long e in this word. The only forms with a long vowel are Sanskrit nāma, which could be from *nomn̥ with lengthening by Brugmann's law; Latin nōmen from earlier gnōmen, which has been contaminated by gnōscō; and Hittite lāman, where I don't know the reason for the long vowel, but Hittite has a lot of unexpected long vowels (e.g. tēkan < *dheghom). There's also Dutch noemen "call, name" and related forms like Westphalian nömen which seem to go back to PGmc. *nōm-, but one denominative verb in a few late-attested West Germanic languages hardly outweighs the evidence of all the ancient languages. (The long vowels of name, German Name, Dutch naam etc. are secondary.) But Celtic, Albanian, and Balto-Slavic all come from a zero-grade Hn̥m(e)n-, so it's clear the paradigm must have had a zero grade in it somewhere. What seems most likely is nom./acc. *h₃nómn̥, gen. *h₃n̥méns. —Angr 11:00, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Karin Stüber in The Historical Morphology of n-Stems in Celtic (Maynooth 1998) sums up the proposed etymologies for this word. She says the candidates that have been proposed are *nóm-n̥, *Hnóm-n̥, *h₁néh₃mn̥ and *h₃néh₃mn̥, and concludes that *h₁nómn̥ is the most likely proto-form. She makes no mention of a *h₁nḗh₃mn̥. Her arguments are as follows:

• h₁ is more likely than h₃ because of Hittite lāman, which would have been *halāman or something with h₃. Also it's more likely that Proto-Greek *enoma assimilated to onoma (paralleled by *h₁dont- > *edōn assimilating to odōn 'tooth') than that onoma dissimilated to *enoma in the name Enumakartidas, and it's unsurprising that a personal name should keep its original form even after the common noun it's derived from has changed its form. The form nōnumos 'nameless' is then analogical to onuma, replacing earlier *nēnumos < *ne-h₁nom-, just as nōdos 'toothless' is analogical to odōn, replacing earlier *nēdos < *ne-h₁dont--
• short o with no following laryngeal is unproblematic in all languages (the long vowel in Indo-Iranian and Hittite being phonologically regular, and the long vowel in Latin being due to association with *gnō-) except Tocharian where the palatal ñ suggests the following vowel was e or ē, and except for the Dutch and Low German forms that seem to have Germanic ō. Stüber says the palatalization of the n in Tocharian could have arisen in the oblique zero-grade form *h₁n̥mén-, or if the paradigm was acrostatic in an oblique form *h₁némn- (which however would not have survived anywhere else but Tocharian). The Dutch and Low Saxon forms are probably relatively late developments using the inner-Germanic a/ō ablaut found also in the class VI strong verbs.

So, I'm going to move this page to h₁nómn̥, but retain the comment about the uncertainty of reconstruction. —Angr 12:02, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

As a noun formation, *h₁nómn̥ doesn't make much sense. The suffix *-mn̥ is attached to roots, but *h₁nó- is most certainly not a valid root because it doesn't end in a consonant. So the root should end in a laryngeal, and should be in the e-grade in the direct cases, zero grade in the oblique cases, as determined by the suffix. Thus, nominative *h₁néh₃mn̥, genitive *h₁n̥h₃méns. Can the sequence -n̥h₃- account for the Sanskrit long vowel? —CodeCat 12:17, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

This seems to have the suffix *-n̥ added to a root ending in *-m rather than the suffix *-mn̥ added to a root ending in h₃. *-mn̥ usually forms verbal nouns from verb roots, but there doesn't seem to be a verb root h₁neh₃- anyway, and "name" isn't semantically obviously a verbal noun. The o-grade isn't a problem in *h₁nóm-n̥ either as it matches the o-grade in other neuters like *dór-u and *ǵon-u. I think -n̥h₃- could theoretically account for the Sanskrit long vowel, but not for the lack of a laryngeal in Hittite, where we would expect something like *nahman (> *lahman?) rather than *lāman from *h₁néh₃mn̥. —Angr 12:47, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

That really just shifts the problem rather than solving it. Now you're left with a suffix -n that is like no other suffix in PIE and appears only in this word. And don't laryngeals disappear in Hittite after vowels too? We really know this:

• At least some variety of this word must have -n̥h₃- in it because that's the only way to account for the Balto-Slavic and Celtic outcomes, which unambiguously reflect a syllabic n.
• At least some variety must have -ēh₃- or -eh₃- to account for the Sanskrit long vowel.
• At least some variety must have -e- or -ē(H)- to account for the -e- in Tocharian B.

Ringe devotes a whole page to this in his 2006 book about PIE and PG. He reconstructs two paradigms:

• "Narten" type acrostatic, nom. *h₁nḗh₃mn̥, gen. *h₁néh₃mn̥s
• Amphikinetic collective, nom. *h₁néh₃mō, gen. *h₁n̥h₃mn̥és

So the difference in the stems is explained by alternation between singular and plural (collective), which is quite common among IE languages. To explain the Germanic form *nam-, he says that the nominative collective stem *nōm- was levelled into all the other forms, and this vowel was then shortened through Osthoff's law (which shortens long vowels before a resonant followed by another consonant in various IE branches). The long vowel survives in Dutch noemen. The acrostatic genitive stem *h₁néh₃mn̥- also explains the Latin form, the Hittite form as well according to Ringe, so he presumes that -éh₃- > -ō- in Hittite. The Tocharian -e- then comes from -ēh₃-. —CodeCat 13:16, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

A suffix -n̥ is a lot like other neuter nominal suffixes (-i and -u for example, not to mention the -r̥/n̥ of the r/n-stems) and seems to appear in the grease/butter word (OIr. imb, L. unguen, OHG ancho < *h₂óngʷ-n̥) as well. h2 and h3 don't disappear in Hittite after vowels, cf. pahs- 'protect'. The syllabic n in B-S and Celtic doesn't have to come from -n̥h₃-, though; it can just as easily come from -n̥m-, and in Celtic it might have to since I think -n̥h₃- would have given *-nā- rather than *-an-. The Sanskrit long vowel is due to Brugmann's law. Tocharian B e can come from earlier *o as well as from *ē; the real evidence for e/ē in Tocharian is the palatalized ñ, as I mentioned above. Ringe seems to be adapting the data to fit his theory rather than the other way around; h₁nḗh₃mn̥ would give "post-laryngeal" nēmn̥ since laryngeals don't color long vowels, and there's no unambiguous evidence for ē in any language. Tocharian is the only language with evidence for any front-vowel vocalism, and it could just as easily come from short e. I'm really skeptical of the vowel of noemen being old since it occurs only in two languages (nl and nds), both of which are attested late, and only in a derivative form. It seems so unlikely that if Germanic had ō it would have died out absolutely everywhere except this one little corner of West Germanic. —Angr 13:49, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I think that all the changes you're making to entries are VERY premature, and bad form considering this discussion is far from finished. Your view is lacking sources while I have at least two for mine. I don't think our entries should reflect a minority view (so far, just you) as if it were the majority. So I ask you to undo your edits until a consensus is reached.

How else would you explain the -ō-? -ō- is a regular ablaut alternation of -a- in Germanic, and Germanic -ō- is the only source for Dutch -oe- and the -uo- found in the old languages. And since ablaut was not productive for word derivation in Proto-Germanic, that implies that the -ō- is of Pre-Proto-Germanic date; where else could it have come from? You seem to be taking "this word existed in Proto-Germanic" to imply "this word must be attested in many descendants". But that's false and there are several demonstrable cases where the etymology of a term attested in only a single Germanic language can be traced all the way back to PIE. So unlikely doesn't mean impossible. —CodeCat 15:13, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

But Ringe's reconstruction appears to be the least mainstream of them all. Does anyone else reconstruct the original form with *-ēh₃ with a collective plural? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:43, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

M. Philippa's "Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands" gives nominative *h₁néh₃mn̥, genitive *h₁n̥h₃méns. That's the only other source I have. —CodeCat 20:49, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, but I was wondering about the long vowel in the NAV plus uncoloring h₃ and the collective plural (which was in the original paradigm per Ringe). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:57, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

How can Armenian a- reflect both - isn't #h₁C > Armenian e- (secondarily i), and #h₃C > o- (later a- in open syllables)? Greek assimilation theory seems stretched (as well as the example because Greek ὀδούς (odoús) more likely reflects *h₃dont-, per Armenian and old compounds). I'd suggest that we keep Doric names which are usually mentioned as arguments for #h₁- which were removed. Kloekhorst also reconstructs initial #h₃- to account for hierloglyhpic Luwian á-laman and Lycian a-lãman), with the lack of ḫ- in Hittite according to him being regular in preconsonantal position). There is also Phrygian ονομαν which vocalized laryngeals the same way as Greek..

Also, you seem to forget that we're not suppose to do proselytize the "truth" or do OR, but present in a NPOV manner all of the mainstream opinions. I suggest that the comment on the reconstruction be split in three parts: 1) the initial laryngeal 2) the medial vowel (and laryngeal) 3) paradigm. For each part all of the problems and evidence should be listed, as well explanations listed in the literature. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:32, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Martirosyan (2010) derives Armenian անուն (anun) from Proto-Armenian *anuwn, from PIE PD n-stem *h₃néh₃-mn. --Vahag (talk) 21:17, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that the above arguments are my own OR; they're not, they're all from Stüber as cited in the references section. I was under the impression that all three laryngeals vocalize as a- in Armenian, but maybe that impression is mistaken. The "tooth" word also has a- in Armenian, and although our page is at h₃dónts and in spite of the discussion on the talk page, I think a reconstruction of "tooth" with h₃- is highly implausible. The very fact that "a tooth does not 'eat'; it only bites" is an argument against Aeolic edont- being changed from odont- under the influence of ἔδω. I wouldn't put any stock at all in the Phrygian word; we just don't know enough about that language to draw any conclusions from it. For all we know, all three laryngeals vocalized as o- in Phrygian; for all we know, ονομαν is a Greek loanword. Still, I concede the evidence for the quality of the laryngeal is ambiguous and could live with this page being moved to Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/Hnómn̥. As for a laryngeal before the m, it seems not very likely; the main motivation for it is to create a consonant-final root to which -mn̥ has been added, but to make that plausible there would have to be a verbal root h₁neh₃- that "name" is a verbal noun of, but there's no evidence for such a root and anyway "name" is semantically unlikely to be "the act of X-ing" or "the result of X-ing" anyway. And in that case the initial laryngeal would pretty much have to be h₁, because isn't one of the restrictions on root shape that you can't have two of the same laryngeal within a root, just like you can't have two obstruents with the same place of articulation in a root (no roots like **perp- or **klek-, right?)? But an o-grade neuter noun ending in a syllabic resonant is quite plausible; it fits in with ǵónu, dóru, móri, wódr̥, etc., etc. —Angr 18:44, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

But leaving the laryngeal out of the root makes all the long vowels hard to account for. It would imply that the Germanic ō is analogical, which is certainly possible but not really a preferred conclusion. And then there are the long vowels of Sanskrit and Latin. Latin, again, can be ascribed to analogy, but you see how having to resort to this many times weakens the reconstruction? —CodeCat 19:09, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't really make any of the long vowels hard to account for except Germanic, and the Germanic forms are so late—and are only denominal verbs, not the noun itself—that it's hard to put much importance on them. The Sanskrit long vowel is regular by Brugmann's law. The Latin form has to be analogical anyway because the g's in cognomen and ignominia and the like prove that the "name" word got mixed up the with "know" word. So when we know it got a g by analogy anyway, it doesn't cost any extra for it to also get a long vowel by the same analogy. —Angr 20:28, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

But there is this mountain of evidence for #h₃-, and the only evidence for #h₁- are two Doric names, partially reconstructed and which possibly don't even contain the reflex of this PIE noun. Regarding the tooth word: it is a PIE-time derivation of the root which didn't survive directly in Greek, so it's unlikely that Ancient Greek speakers interpreted the tooth word as "biter", and later confusion with "eat" word is surely not surprising.. I prefer formal matches to ad-hoc explanations such as analogies anytime, but anyway, my opinion doesn't matter - what matters is NPOV and authorities and yeah the commonly cited reconstruction with #h₁- should be listed in the headword there as well (it was a mistake to remove it). My whole point was that pointing out the Greek "tooth" word as an argument of a similar of analogy supposedly occurring in the "name" word as well is problematic because possibly/probably no such analogy took place.

I agree with your objection on the root structure - but hey, that's not my opinions but that of Leideners. It should not be up to us to guess what is plausible or not, but what opinion is the most accepted, or the most up to date with modern scholarship. If there is no agreement then we should investigate the literature and present the evidence and arguments. It's no problem at all to have a dozen of possible reconstructions listed in the headword line. The only problem is how should the page be named, and to what should the reconstructions in the mainspace entries etymologies' link to. Hnómn̥ seems neutral with respect to the initial laryngeal, but the medial one not so.. Perhaps HnV(H)mn̥? In the etymologies we could display e.g. "From PIE *Hnómn̥, *Hnéh₃mn̥". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 01:08, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Armenian անուն (anun) in this case points to *h₃-, because PIE *h₁C- would give Arm. ե- (e-); compare երեկ (erek) < PIE *h₁régʷos, but արեւ (arew) < PIE *h₂rew-i-. As Martirosyan points out, the evidence for this rule is meagre, but we do have other examples: իմ (im), ինն (inn) (with secondary e > i before a nasal), possibly also ելանեմ (elanem). I think the page should be moved. --Vahag (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree, to me it seems too much that people defend their pet reconstruction on this page, with often rather flimsy objections. FWIW, Kloekhorst's interpretation is perfectly possible and even likely and straightforward (no analogy needed in Greek, where the alleged "tooth" parallel is highly dubious, and Phrygian would fit in perfectly despite all caveats) in light of your remark, additionally allowing a transparent morphological derivation from known elements, which alone should count for something. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:18, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Something I just noticed: if our reconstruction Proto-Balto-Slavic *inˀmen is correct, it also quite explicitly points towards a medial laryngeal. There does not seem to be any clear evidence against – the *a of Proto-Germanic *namô can perfectly be a vocalised laryngeal as in Proto-Germanic *fadēr. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:45, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

As for the alleged analogy Latin cognōscō (“to know”) : cōgnōmen (“byname”) = nōscō : X ⇒ X = nōmen, it's not even apparent how it is supposed to work. After all, in the first pair, the quantity of the first syllables differs, which makes any analogy anything but straightforward, and the semantic connection isn't clear either. If anything, it's much easier to assume that the long vowel in nōmen is original and this is the trigger of the conflation, as it led to the idea by the speakers of Classical Latin (after gn- had been simplified to n- in the second century BC) that nōmen (as if from **gnōmen) is derived from (the root of) nōscō < gnōscō, leading to g being introduced into derivatives of nōmen. (If this is so, the long *ō in Proto-Germanic *nōmijaną can be original, as Kroonen assumes.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:14, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

There's no analogy. nōmen is a straightforward cognate of γνῶμα (gnôma) and znamę, and it ousted the original (presumably similar-sounding) word. 195.187.108.4 20:45, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

The Tocharian evidence is usually overlooked, ignored or minimised. Surprisingly, Tocharian A ñem, Tocharian B ñom < Proto-Tocharian *ñemä can only go back to a *(H)nē(H)mn̥ (see here, ch. 3.2.3), which points towards Proto-Indo-European *h₃nḗh₃mn̥, per Neri 2005 (compare here), and that's exactly why the page was originally at *h₁nḗh₃mn̥ – it's precisely Neri's reconstruction (I felt free to replace the initial laryngeal above). @Angr: Had you inspected the Tocharian evidence, you'd never stated categorically that this reconstruction is impossible. Now you should understand. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:58, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem with *h₃nḗh₃mn̥ is that *h₃nḗh₃- isn't a possible PIE root with its two h₃s, and the problem with both *h₁nḗh₃mn̥ and *h₃nḗh₃mn̥ is that -mn̥ doesn't get added to lengthened grade stems, and anyway there's no evidence for a verbal root h₁/h₃neh₃- for it to be a verbal noun from (even if it made sense for "name" to a verbal noun of anything). I was wrong to say that no language points to ē, but it is true that Tocharian is the only language that does point to it, at least unambiguously. Hittite strongly suggests there was no medial laryngeal, because postvocalic h₂/h₃ should surface as ḫ, but lāman has no trace of it. I'm starting to think there is no single reconstruction that can account for all the descendants. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:18, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Germanic is also a problem. It has a short a, which can't arise from a laryngeal between two sonorants without later changes. However, there is the derived verb *nōmijaną, which does suggest a laryngeal root in Germanic, but it is also missing the final -n of the noun. —CodeCat 13:26, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, Kloekhorst and Kroonen evidently disagree with this alleged root-structure limitation and reconstruct the verbal root as *h₃neh₃- anyway. Again, you categorically state that there is no evidence for such a verbal root when Kloekhorst cites evidence for exactly such a root. Sheesh. (To be fair, the LIV, which adduces further evidence from Old Irish and Tocharian, reconstructs the root as Proto-Indo-European *h₂neh₃- instead – no idea if that helps.) And your categorical allegation that *-mn̥ doesn't get added to lengthened-grade roots is yet another unsubstantiated claim. This is now becoming a pattern in your contributions to this discussion. You should really stop begging the question all the damn time and go read Kloekhorst's and Neri's arguments. And CodeCat, you're begging the question too. Maybe try stop being so cocksure about everything. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:32, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

It seems to me Kloekhorst and Neri are the ones begging the question. "This term comes from a verbal noun *h₃nḗh₃-mn̥." "But -mn̥ never gets added to lengthened grade stems." "Sure it does; *h₃nḗh₃-mn̥ is an example." "But PIE roots don't begin and end with the same consonant." "Sure they do; *h₃neh₃- is an example." —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:58, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

It is a valid example for a root beginning and ending with the same consonant, yes. The evidence is the Greek verb itself, so there is no circularity. And a single example suffices to disprove such a generalisation. Same for the lengthened grade, since the reconstruction of the Tocharian noun is unambiguous. Inconvenient evidence cannot simply be brushed aside. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:36, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

This sounds like a dispute between scholars that should be mentioned (more clearly) in the entry. "Scholar A reconstructs the term as *h₃nḗh₃-mn̥ and considers it a verbal noun from the root *h₃neh₃-, but Scholar B considers this impossible and notes that -mn̥ is not added to a lengthened grade stem in any other PIE words, and that no other PIE root begins and ends with the same consonant." ... "Latin X may have been altered from an earlier Y by analogy with Z, but the reverse is also possible, Z may have been altered by analogy with X." ... etc. - -sche (discuss) 16:30, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

This would leave the common reader confused about the difference, whereas a proper explanation (according to the length of this very talk page, at least) would like exceed it's usefullness, so it's suboptimal either way. A simple "uncertain" would be honest, however honestly unsatisfying.

As to my own observation: Considered the word developing from use in a set phrase. At that I find the root *ǵenh₁- given at naitre considerable, because of extant noun phrases like Geburtsname, ger. "given name", (as my only example) and gens literally meaning name. The terminal laryngeal could explain an onset of the same in the name word, wouldn't it? But how?

It could also, perhaps, illustrate that -mn was added to a verbal phrase where the root of the name word doesn't have to be the verb functor (ie. "gebürtiger Name", "born name"). Rhyminreason (talk) 13:56, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

There is no evidence at all that there has ever been a *ǵ in this lexeme. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:36, 17 December 2022 (UTC)