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May 2020

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/daliþō

Latest comment: 1 year ago6 comments3 people in discussion

If there are no non-North Germanic cognates, this should be moved to an Old Norse entry. @Knyȝt --{{victar|talk}} 23:20, 28 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Why? @victar — Knyȝt 09:10, 29 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Knyȝt: Because it can be formed by dalr +‎ -ð, making it's existence in PG questionable with no other cognates. --{{victar|talk}} 17:19, 29 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

@victar: That would render a **dald, which cannot be the ancestor of the descendants listed. The PG -i- is needed for the umlaut. — Knyȝt 19:42, 29 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Knyȝt: Fair point, so an unattested ON *del, from *daljō + -ð, which actually fits better semantically. --{{victar|talk}} 20:12, 29 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo Could you please create some kind of parent entry for these forms so I can delete this without losing info? Thadh (talk) 15:43, 29 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

April 2020

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/vьśь

Latest comment: 1 year ago17 comments7 people in discussion

Inaccurate reconstruction and meaning. -- Gnosandes (talk) 07:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

What makes you say it is inaccurate? 70.175.192.217 01:12, 26 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Ентусиастъ Is there any reason to doubt this reconstruction and meaning? This, that and the other (talk) 06:20, 23 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@This, that and the other Per me, it should be something more like *vьsъ. I doubt that there is any need of <ś> and there definitely has to be a final /*ъ/ in order for the word to correspond properly to the Lithuanian and the BPSl ending. It's very rare for a Proto-Balto-Slavic *-as to give Proto-Slavic *-ь. An example is Proto-Balto-Slavic *-āˀjas (whence Lithuanian *-ojas, Latvian -ājs) which gave Proto-Slavic *-ajь. There is no need of <ś> in the reconstructed Proto-Balto-Slavic *wiśas too, as this would have given a Lithuanian *višas, but it's Lithuanian visas instead. Both this and the Balto-Slavic reconstructions are wrong in this regard, esp. the former. Ентусиастъ (talk) 09:19, 23 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ентусиастъ: West Slavic data clearly points towards *vьśь (Polish wszystko, wszelki, Czech všechno, Slovak všetok) and I don’t see how they could derive from **vьsъ, OCS вьсь, вьсꙗ / вьсѣ (vĭsĭ, vĭsja / vĭsě) (cf. gorazd), Russian весь (vesʹ) too points at least towards the final soft yer. It comes from older *vix- by progressive palatalization. This unpalatalized *x is actually attested in Old Novgorod forms like вхоу. Derksen in Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon also reconstructs *vьśь and explains the -śь as originally locative plural ending (*-xъ in Slavic, generalized from PBSl *-šu < PIE *-su in ruKi contexts) and Lithuanian lack of š by levelling from forms to which ruKi did not apply:

The origin of this etymon may be a Lpl. *uiṣu. In Lithuanian, the š < *ṣ may have been replaced with s when the variant -su of the Lpl. was generalized (F. Kortlandt, p.c.). Slavic generalized the ending -xъ < *-ṣu in the Lpl., which is why the pronoun has *ś < *x as a result of the progressive palatalization. In North Russian, we still find forms with x (cf. Vermeer 2000: passim).

// Silmeth ^@talk 11:26, 23 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Silmethule I know about the West Slavic analogues. Also cope:-) Ентусиастъ (talk) 20:01, 23 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

To be fair, how does a hard stem explain them? Asking honestly. Vininn126 (talk) 20:11, 23 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Lemma should be renamed to *vьxъ with note (in descendants) about West Slavic *vьšъ and East and South Slavic *vьsь (third palatalization). Sławobóg (talk) 12:32, 20 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Done Sławobóg (talk) 17:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Sławobóg Are you going to move *pěnędzь to *pěnęgь, *kъnędzь to *kъnęgъ, *otьcь to *otьkъ, etc. to make Wiktionary consistent with this change? It makes no sense to keep them if we allow vьxъ without the progressive palatization… I’d rather revert this move. // Silmeth ^@talk 18:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

No, for these we simply just add "from earlier X", like I did with *kъnędzь. Sławobóg (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Then why not add “from earlier *vьxъ” to *vьśь, in order to keep consistency? If your argument is “because it’s not the earliest reconstructible form because Old Novgorodian doesn’t have the palatalization in this word”, then we should also move *xlěbъ and other o-stems, because Old Novgorodian did not have the final yer, its хлѣбе (xlěbe) never had the *-as > -ъ change like the rest of Slavic. So… should we also move *xlěbъ to *xlaibas or something? Current Wiktionary Proto-Slavic reconstructions are not the earliest forms (and perhaps a bit anachronistic), but at least somewhat consistent in the features they show. // Silmeth ^@talk 18:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Because ś didn't exist, it was made up by some linguists, meanwhile most dictionaries reconstruct this word as *vьxъ (care to see references?). vьśь was not helpful in any way. Comparing it to хлѣбе (xlěbe) is false analogy. Sources don't even mention Novgorodian (besides Derksen), it is not final argument (just supporting one), main arguments are sound changes and Baltic cognates. Third palatalization is pretty late. If we don't like -x- for some reason, we need to make separate lemma for East/South and West Slavic, and that is nonsense. Just google "vьxъ" and "vьśь" and see the results. Sławobóg (talk) 19:02, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Care to share the recordings of native late Proto-Slavic speakers proving that “ś didn't exist”? Something like *Ix → *Iç → *Iɕ replace I with ɪ, invalid IPA characters (I→*I→*I) which then in different branches merges either with ʃ (west) or sʲ (south, east) seems like a reasonable model of the palatalization to me (in which *ś /ç ~ ɕ/ would be a real phoneme at some point). Also, we do use the *ś notation for 2nd palatalization too, eg. in inflection of *duxъ (loc. *duśě, nom.pl. *duśi) or *muxa (*muśě) which have different reflexes in west and rest of Slavic too.

References like Boryś, WSJP, Vasmer, or Melnychuk are right to list two forms, earlier *vьxъ and later *vьs/šь as they’re etymological dictionaries of specific modern languages, where the word went through those stages. But Wiktionary isn’t for specific Slavic language/branch, and generally has been treating *ś as a separate phoneme thus far, *vьxъ as the main form is inconsistent with this.

Of course we could change all -śi, -śě, etc. resulting from 2nd regr. palatalization to -xi, -xě, etc. too – but that’d be a bigger change and, I guess, a longer discussion. // Silmeth ^@talk 20:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Then change it back. But before that, can you explain how PBS -as gave PS -ь? Sławobóg (talk) 20:48, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

You have the development in Derksen’s: *wiš- (PBS *š due to ruKi) > *vix- > *vьxъ > *vьśь (prog. palatalization changing the consonant which in turn influences the vowel). Same thing as with *-ingaz > *-ingas > *-in/ęgъ > *-ędzь in *kъnędzь, *pěnędzь.

As I understand it, Lithuanian having s suggests the original form might have been loc. pl. *wišu (not *wišas) and that Baltic replaced *-šu with *-su (variant of the ending outside of ruKi contexts, which was generalized in Baltic, compare Slavic *vьlcěxъ < *-šu with Lithuanian vilkuose – though I don’t know what the story exactly is here, I don’t know much about Baltic) // Silmeth ^@talk 21:15, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Useigor, ZomBear, Rua, Ivan Štambuk: pinging y’all cause you have been more active in Proto-Slavic than I have, maybe you have better input (or maybe I’m arguing under a non-issue and *vьxъ for main Wiktionary lemma is OK). // Silmeth ^@talk 21:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/wirtiz

Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

This is said to be a neuter i-stem, but such nouns have a lemma in *-i, while *-iz is reserved for non-neuters. Either the gender or the inflection is wrong. —Rua (mew) 12:36, 17 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

And none of the alleged Germanic descendants is in Wiktionary! The Finnic loan is present, though. RichardW57 (talk) 13:31, 17 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Kluge reconstructs a z-stem as the ancestor to the OHG and ON. --{{victar|talk}} 22:21, 17 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

I think this can be deleted in favour of more recent reconstructions. Just let me make sure we don't lose and descendants or break any links first. Leasnam (talk) 18:19, 18 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

July 2020

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/bʰeh₂ǵos, Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/bazъ

Latest comment: 23 hours ago23 comments15 people in discussion

“Transformed” Pokorny stuff, ominously sourced by the Leiden school.

The beech isn’t in the range (!) of the Proto-Indo-European homeland.
The Slavic page is properly *bъzъ. The Serbo-Croatian descendant does not count for *bazъ because Proto-Slavic *ъ generally gives a in Serbo-Croatian, the Russian and Ukrainian given are obscure dialectal forms, as well as the Bulgarian, which are unstressed while Bulgarian has suffered vowel reduction and Bulgarian а (a) and ъ (ǎ) are very close; ominously one gives an Old Church Slavonic only for *bъzъ. The current Slovak form which I added, apart from being anomalous as a feminine, can also be from ъ, this can be seen *dъždžь → dážď and the variation for *čexъlъ. Against the evidence from all Slavic languages one cannot posit such a byform, more easily *bazъ is an etymologist’s fabrication to shoehorn all into an Indo-European-etymology. Which does not work anyhow because the Slavic words mean elder, not beech. These plants are not confusable.
- The page is in ESSJa, ’tis true, but apart from the entry’s age as I have noticed often, they do not take a stand for every entry in their Proto-Slavic dictionary, which is but hypothetical. They apparently create some index files, here motivated by Pokorny, and look what they can find to support the form, then they publish all anyway if the result is negative. See the RFD already filed for the adjective *bazovъ in WT:RFDO, Useigor did not understand this and created bare objectionable entries this way.
Proto-Germanic *bōks means “book” but there is yet no proof the Germanic peoples used beechbark writing or anyone else as opposed to birchbark writing. And how can *bōkō (“beech”), different paradigms, be from the same Proto-Indo-European form? There is something unaccounted. The existence of that word also conflicts with *bʰeh₂ǵʰús (“arm”) giving *bōguz, as the consonant outcome differs and because “the slot is filled” i.e. the alleged word for a tree is too similar to a word for the arm for both having existed.
- Also the sound correspondence is not necessariy, I see that PIE eh₂ can give (with and without acute) ō, there is *bʰréh₂tēr → *brōþēr, *wréh₂ds → *wrōts, but it depends on ablaut and more typical is the result ā or a, e.g. *séh₂ls → *saltą, *stéh₂tis → *stadiz. Also considering the actual sound value in PIE [a] given at *bʰréh₂tēr. This additionally decreases the likelihood of PIE origin.
Albanian bung is very tentative and random as always.
Armenian բոխի (boxi) has been thrown out of the equation meticulously after the creation of the PIE, much reasoned at its entry.
Where is the Gaulish word attested? Probably fishy if it is claimed to be only Gaulish but not retained in other Celtic languages. What do the other Celtic languages have? With such things I am accustomed to have the suspicion that it is somehow conjectured from unfathomable placenames.
The Latin word may be an early borrowing from Northwest Greek φᾱγός (phāgós), like even mālum (“apple”); as Italy was Greek-settled and the beech is found in Italy only at some places and not right at Rome, only somewhat outwards. Whereas the beech is very frequent in the Proto-Hellenic area. In Latin likely a foreign word. I say this also from general impressions about substratum origins of Latin plant names, after having dealt with many Latin plant names and their origins.
This is well a loanword after Proto-Indo-European when Germans, Italians/Romans and Greeks took new settlements judging by analogy. Remarkably the Slavic words *bukъ and *buky are Germanic borrowings for some reason, apparently because the Slavs settled right at the Northeast of the distribution of the beech, of course also Hungarian bükk (“beech”) is loaned. So if not even the Slavs before expansion (3rd century CE) had a word for the beech, the Proto-Indo-Europeans hadn’t either; if the Slavs borrowed this word, the Germans and Greeks and Romans did it likewise earlier. The correct etymologies for the German and Greek words are “borrowed from an unknown source common to [Greek|Proto-Germanic]”. Fay Freak (talk) 15:37, 27 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Fay Freak: agreed. This has always been a dubious reconstruction, made worse by shoehorning more descendants to it, and further comical by reconstructing it with *-eh₂-. Also see {{R:ine:HCHIEL|86}} --{{victar|talk}} 18:28, 30 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I have read it. So I have found it is actually a debunked canard since half a century ago, called beech argument. It might have went past the Soviet theorists. In Krogmann, Willy (1954) “Das Buchenargument”, in Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen (in German), volume 72 1./2, →DOI, page 13 it is expounded how the Gaulish name is derived by reconstruction, from placenames. It is to be added that the literature finds it problematic that the Greek word means an oak and not a beech. Fay Freak (talk) 20:44, 31 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. Where else would "book" come from — This unsigned comment was added by 72.76.95.136 (talk) at 19:57, 6 December 2020 (UTC).Reply

It says where it possibly comes from. Often explained as in Germanic from the word for beech, which last is a word borrowed from somewhere. I do not need to have an explanation for or know everything to disprove an etymology. Your argument is none. Otherwise aliens built the pyramids because “how else”. Fay Freak (talk) 23:32, 16 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

Several invalid arguments here.

1) “Transformed” Pokorny stuff, ominously sourced by the Leiden school." -- This is frankly just rude, not reasoned. Kroonen's dictionary is extremely respectable (even if one disagrees with it) and tested by peer-review, unlike this nomination for deletion. The reconstruction is cited by philologists in other "schools" than Leiden. Check out e.g. Ringe (Pennsylvania/Oxford). Wiktionary should be reflecting the general scholarly consensus, not novel, non-peer-reviewed proposals of independent-minded contributors.

2) "beech not in homeland" -- irrelevant, as many words change in meaning over time, and with different environments in different geographical locations

3) "yet no proof the Germanic peoples used beechbark writing". No, but Germanic peoples' first contact with "books" would probably be Roman writing-tablets, which were often made of beech wood. (See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets)

4) "Latin word may be an early borrowing from Northwest Greek φᾱγός" -- Even if that is true, that still leaves Germanic (NW Indo-European) and Greek (S Central Indo-European) as cognates, which is generally regarded as sufficient to support the hypothesis that it is ancestral to both of those branches. But what on earth is "an unknown source common to [Greek|Proto-Germanic]" other than the common ancestor of the European side of PIE?

Signed: an anonymous academic peer-reviewer, who is a tenured Professor in a Philology Faculty (no, not Leiden). But the decision about whether to delete the page or not should be taken on the merits of the arguments alone. 82.132.228.243 11:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

Furthermore, the argument that “the slot is filled” i.e. the alleged word for a tree is too similar to a word for the arm for both having existed" is unreasonable, because homophony and doublets are actually perfectly common phenomena cross-linguistically. 94.196.220.242 14:57, 9 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

You are rude and not reasoned, okay?

Bare editors are stricter about meaning differences than I am, e.g. I presume @Metaknowledge mildly not amused about this lumping beeches and elders and what not. To reconstruct we need to pin down a more or less vague meaning, which these equations do not meet, and formally it is a scarecrow greater than many reconstruction pages we decided to delete, just not on first glance, but after a review of the possibilities (possibilities are hard to assess for the casual observer by magnitude, hence all those antivaxxers; our judgement needs specific training for the assessment of specific possibilities, so even if you are a professor in one area you may stay without insight in a closely related area and ignore its possibilities even though these should influence the decision).

We all have read very odd things that are peer-reviewed, as some academics have built parallel universes to make a living. And the beech argument is one of it, not a respected theory any more (if I understood respect correctly as being more than being constantly repeated out of courtesy and the university habit of citing everything that is available) but a fringe view, certainly not adding, in the traditional meaning of science, to our knowledge, but you are right that the decision about whether to delete the page or not should be taken on the merits of the arguments alone, since you yourself know your colleagues enough to distrust them.

It is symptomatic though that a tenured professor in philology fails to consider the presence of unknown language groups before Indo-European; that’s how one regularly comes up with reconstructions that should never be made: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, if you only know Indo-European, “everything” is from Indo-European. It is partially not your fault, given that the other language groups of Europe are scatteredly or not at all attested, and partially it is your fault in so far as you never deal with language areas where well-documented languages have stood in manifest contact (the usual case with the bulk of scholarship about Greek and Germanic and Germanic languages, you know those who live in a Germanic country and study Germanic do kind of a cheap thing, and if a European classical language is added this only opens the horizon a little).

Different semantic fields of a language have various propensities to contain borrowed terms, plant-names are especially notorious in it. If I was only an Indo-Europeanist I would hardly know but in the Semitic, Turkic, Iranian languages half of them (I exaggerate but little) are certainly loans from each other or other less-known or completely unknown language groups; e.g. another Wiktionary professor saw that خُلَّر (ḵullar) is surely borrowed and likely Hurrian but for the Greek ὄλυρα (ólura) the mainstreamers fail to do anything but speculate Indo-European (native or “pre-Greek”) origins although with the Near East data they should have classified it as wanderwort. However about every second time I open a Greek etymology Beekes claims a Greek word to be pre-Greek: while the intrinsic value of this label is close to zero due to the multifariousness of the frequent Pre-Greek claim, the idea of unknown sources of borrowings has been defended very well and is being concretized while we edit Wiktionary etymologies more and more.

So we pray you, Professor, to register and solve words occasionally, and especially if to disprove people as rude and uneducated as me. The more you learn of this dictionary business the more you realize that there is a thin line between daring comparisons—adding to our knowledge by maverickism—and academic dishonesty. And IPs are evil. After all you already do not rely on the majority of the comparisons on which that PIE “reconstruction” is made, if Germanic and Greek are left: In our experience the farer away a reconstructed historical language the more descendants one needs, and for PIE two are regularly (without very good reasons) not enough, while for Proto-Slavic not rarely one is enough—if a term must have been formed in Proto-Slavic, e.g. *mězgyrь, while for PIE there are too many millennia in between of what could have happened and we do not know that *bʰeh₂ǵos must have been internally derived in PIE (usually between Arabic, Iranian and Turkic and often inside their language groups themselves we know where a term was formed and hence whence borrowed by our understanding the internal morphologies of the languages: all things you do not know for this term).

This is all to say that, in comparison to more certain etymologies, here you know absolutely nothing. But you should somehow be confident about a reconstruction rather than many mismatches and coincidences and alternative scenarios (and I have engaged in shaky reconstructions out of excitement, but this is so shaky that it crumbles apart the more you think about it—if it were better I would come to maintain this PIE term: obviously I come correct in thinking about reconstructions, you will hardly deny this experience in having a consistent and carefully weighed approach about reconstruction entries). Fay Freak (talk) 17:12, 9 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

According to w:ru:Буковый аргумент, the modern range of w:Fagus orientalis falls inside the Proto-Indo-European homeland. And its range several millenia ago might have been broader than today. --Ghirlandajo (talk) 18:38, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
I'm surprised there haven't been any updates to this request for deletion thread since last year. Is anyone willing to contribute journal articles discussing the presence of this constructed word for beech outside of the late Northwest Proto-Indo-European dialect continuum? In the meantime, I will provide citations from the EIEC, Calvert Watkins: "The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots", and Beekes Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Calvert Watkins was not part of the Leiden school as far as I'm aware; nor is Douglas Q. Adams, who was one of the main editors of EIEC.Rigognos Molinarios (talk) 12:23, 11 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

This entire question is a bit of a mess, especially as some of the associated reconstructions are dubious, but I believe that the original posting user has made several critical errors, although the associated page should be updated.

The range of the beech tree not being within the hypothetical homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as mentioned earler, is irrelevant to whether the word occurs in PIE. Since the descendent languages cannot seem to agree to what tree it refers, which is not that unusual for tree or animal words that are not highly general, it could also originally have referred to a tree other than a beech, but seemingly one which is usable as a food source (per the different meanings for hypothesised descendents being 'elder', 'beech', and 'oak').

The Proto-Slavic word being properly *bъzъ does nothing to detract from the reconstruction, as Proto-Slavic *bъ- as a cluster regularly comes from PIE *bʰe-. The real question is whether *bъzъ can result from bʰeh₂ǵ-. *pazъ from *peh₂ǵ- suggests no, however, *bogъ being derived from *bʰeh₂g- suggests that the vowel a derivative of the word *bʰeh₂ǵos would reflect in Proto-Slavic is uncertain (admittedly the following consonant here is velar and not a palato-velar, but point is still relevant), so this is still a possible derivative. If another aspirate-eh₂-palatovelar cluster derivative could be found in Proto-Slavic anywhere, that would be helpful.

The Germanic reconstruction is an absolute ludicrous mess, agreed, and the attempted connection between 'beech' and 'book' is completely silly, plus one would expect a Proto-Germanic *bōkaz to come from *bʰeh₂ǵos and not *bōkō. However, the Proto-Germanic word for beech is apparently more appropriately reconstructible to *bōkijā, or more credibly neuter *bōkiją which is easily derivative of *bʰeh₂ǵos. Also *bʰeh₂- appears to regularly become *bō- in Proto-Germanic from a quick check of Proto-Germanic lemmas, so the additional attempted phonology points from the original poster are also spurious.

Agreed, the Gaulish word is not credible as it is derived purely from onomastics. However the Albanian word is only listed as possibly related, as it may possibly be, and it means 'oak' identically to Greek φᾱγός, so it is fair as a tentative or hypothetical relation given the difficulties inherent in Albanian reconstructions. Dismissing it out-of-hand is childish.

If the Latin word fāgus were an EARLY Greek loan from the more conservative Doric dialects, one would expect pāgus or phāgus in Latin and NOT fāgus as the Greek aspirate did NOT sound like a fricative in Latin even into the reign of Augustus, therefore it is near-impossible that the Latin word is a loan from Greek, and it is more reasonable to conclude genuine common descent. The beech not being immediately in the area of Rome but in the mountains a few dozen miles away is also completely spurious as an argument as this implies Latin speakers never left home, nor had need of a word for things not immediately in their environment but which were plentiful close by. Rome is also not on the sea coast, yet Latin also magically has more than one indigenous word to describe seas and seaborne fish! Plus, the Greek φᾱγός means 'oak', so magically the Latins would also have to inherit a Greek loanword with a completely different meaning to the Greek word for no discernable reason.

So to conclude, a credible word reconstruction in at least Latin and Greek, which is more than enough to posit a PIE origination, and additionally with plausible Germanic and Slavic derivatives, although the Slavic is on shaky ground. I'm inclined towards allowing the page for *bʰeh₂ǵos to stand, but the *bazъ page is spurious and should be deleted, and the Proto-Germanic 'beech' and 'book' derivations need serious attention by someone more capable than me at Proto-Germanic research, as they are in a completely silly state currently. I somewhat doubt any Indo-Iranian derivatives will be found given that beech and oak trees are not exactly plentiful on the Iranian plateau or in northern India, but otherwise at least four major families are covered. Someone could additionally look into Armenian as its word for beech, hačari, seems at face value to be similar-looking, but I am also completely unskilled at Armenian phonology and it would have to involve some manner of special cases as 'h' normally results from PIE *p in Armenian as I understand. This is still less sketchy than the still-existent page for PIE *h₂éyos, which is almost certainly an accidental fabrication, but nonetheless mistaken. Andecombogios (talk) 04:47, 22 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

Mallory and Adams also accept the existence of a proto-indo-european term for beech, in their Encyclopedia of indo-european culture, (its on pages 58-60), so this isn't even limited to leiden school Ioe bidome (talk) 21:02, 7 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I am of two minds. I do not believe in the beechstave etymology and have to doubt the reconstruction. My opinion has not changed since I read this thread a year ago, noting that Fay Freak and Victar make compelling arguments. It is bogus, literally. Nevertheless, usually reliable sources are claimed to support this term.

1. Kroonen is expressly "skipping well-established Proto-Germanic lexems" and is focused on "more rigorous" implementations of sound laws and regional grouping (Guus Kroonen (2013) Alexander Lubotsky, editor, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 11)‎^[6], Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, Preface). This does of course not take away from its value. Note that he discusses *bʰh₂ǵʰ- > *bagmaz (“tree; beam”) on a different page, admittedly controversial, and he notes that /ǵʰ/ and /ǵ g/ do not match when he mentions боз (boz) under *bōk(j)ō- in order to reject "any direct connection". He does not mark his reconstruction is IE but EUR.

2. Ringe 2006 and Ringe & Taylor 2014 do not mention it (though the latter mentions "books" shy of a PIE root).

3. Adams & Mallory 2006 note the North-Western or Central distribution, noting the irregularity of Ru. buz.

More citations in the entry:

4. De Vaan agrees with Kroonen. He notes especially that Albanian bung and Slav. *buzt "elder" are unrelated.

5. Trubachev has pre-laryngealist *bhuǵ-, *bhāǵ-, *bha(u)ǵ-. Kroonen discusses the Germanic evidence of rounding away as internal borrowings after vowel changes.

Remarkably, Derksen does not have it. Other sources follow IEW.

6. Fortson 2004 includes Russian, remarks on the distribution (as does de Vaan in more detail). It is a rare example of a feminine o-stem.

7. Wodtko, Dagmar S., Irslinger, Britta, Schneider, Carolin (2008) Nomina im indogermanischen Lexikon [Nouns in the Indo-European Lexicon] (in German), Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter with *ah₂ (?), without Slavic. Laryngeal and palatal are not secure. *bʰāg- may be lengthened grade of **bʰag-, viz. *bʰeh₂g-? Ha!

8. Kölligan (Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics, page 2236-2237) sets side by sidy *bheh2go-, *bherHg̑-, *perku̯us ‘oak’, *peu̯k̑-. Gaitzsch & Tischler (op.cit., page 86) plainly claim the word meant "beech", that the beech-argument which places the urheimat in the west is disproved (not cited though), and they include the Slavic word and a Kurdish būz "elm" too.

Gaulish is sometimes included based on toponyms but not discussed much. In sum, there is wide agreement in the literature. The only disagreement is about the random weights in the network or the nodes in the date tree, depending on how primitive you want your models to be. DurdyWendy (talk) 19:49, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@DurdyWendy: For Kurdish, you see its more pertinent connections in Chyet s.v. bizî and بُوقِيصَا (būqīṣā) (nobody explained the Arabic barring my guess and Arabic etymological dictionaries don’t exist). Henning’s 1963 paper on The Kurdish Elm also touching the beech-argument is in Henning, W. B. (1977) Selected Papers (Acta Iranica; 15), volume 2, Tehran and Liège: Bibliothèque Pahlavi, page 577.

This is not what agreement is. Again I stress that in this science one cites previous attempts without taking position; if one expands upon it the way you have done, it will conclude with a remark about a “highly uncertain reconstruction” or something in that direction; you see that academics write too polite to speak of bogus, but on the internet there is a higher necessity to reproach people that they have lost the plot. Fay Freak (talk) 21:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Incorrect on the second charge, but not completely wrong. Scholarly debates are full of polemics, tending to be specific and well versed in the language. A notable example of polemics is Pereltsvaig & Lewis, "The Indo-European Controversy", who discuss the Buchenargument: "German philologists in the first half of the nineteenth century were preoccupied with finding the PIE Urheimat through tree names, favoring – unsurprisingly – a more northern homeland." (page 185). I lol'd. They consternate that only five roots which appear in Anatolian can be reconstructed for PIE and only one of them appears in Tocharian (viz. *dóru-, but here as in Slavic the meaning is "wood"), and they conclude, "Consequently, the majority of the reconstructed tree names can only shed light on the homeland of one of the main branches descending from PIE, not of PIE itself." (page 191). They agree that this is inconclusive (page 192), as do Gaitzsch & Tischler in the end. If that's what you mean, I stand corrected. Unfortunately it only proves the point: the sources agree to the extent that we usually concern ourselves with (WT:CFI).

I want to stress that the argument of a Latin loan is a possibility because Doric φᾱγός is less well attested and obviously a better match than φηγός. DurdyWendy (talk) 15:35, 13 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

This case is a rather of the problems of Wiktionary at the moment. You people really have to make up your minds on whether you want this wiki to be based on verifiability and reflection of the current scholarly consensus, like Wikipedia, or whether you want it to be a place where a couple of anonymous editors get to play at being scholars themselves and the whole world is treated to the fruits of their (non-certified) wisdom and competence, filtered only through the principle of 'truth by consensus' (Stephen Colbert's notion of 'wikiality' may not describe current Wikipedia fairly, but it may still turn out to be quite fitting for Wiktionary). It's perfectly clear that multiple mainstream scholarly sources agree with the entry's reconstruction of the PIE term that 'beech' originates from (The Fay Freak's claim that they just mention it is wrong, as obvious for anyone who checks them), it's just that The Fay Freak and Victar don't agree with it, and the real question is whether Wiktionary is supposed to reflect the position of actual scholars or that of The Fay Freak and Victar. (AFAIC, most of the objections of the professor anon to The Fay Freak were compelling, and The Fay Freak's long-winded rant in response was both unacceptably aggressive and poor in actual counterarguments.) Ditto for the 'beechstaves' - this is the standard view, but DurdyWendy doesn't like it for whatever reason (this is actually a completely separate theory that The Fay Freak explicitly didn't dispute, but she apparently sees getting rid of the whole PIE reconstruction as a way to get at the etymology of 'book' that is her own personal bête noire). Again, the question is if Wiktionary is meant to be the place where DurdyWendy tells the world what she feels is true or whether it is the place that informs them about what the current consensus of actual credentialed scholars is. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to overturn the scholarly consensus 'with facts and logic', you should go publish your views in a peer-reviewed article and if you manage to convince actual scholars, then cite it on Wiktionary (not as the only truth, mind you, but just as one position). Instead of satisfying your ambitions to be a scholar here, be a real one. Just the fact that someone has a lot of spare time on their hands that allows them to spend time on Wiktionary doesn't give them the right to used it as a tool to push their pet theories and their version of the truth on the entire world while bypassing the standard 'screening' processes for such a thing. And in case some of the editors here do happen to be actual academics IRL, this doesn't change anything - they may have worked on something, but they clearly either haven't worked on the specific issue discussed or their contributions pertaining to it haven't managed to convince most other scholars and to overturn the prevalent views in the field - otherwise they would have been able to rely on published sources instead of embarking on imitations of scholarly debates here. Being that rare academic who happens to have a lot of time to spend on Wiktionary doesn't make your view on a specific subject more authoritative than that of the majority of your peers - it may still be highly deviant on that specific subject, and the question is what the predominant view among experts on a given issue is.--62.73.69.121 18:58, 14 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

No idea what you are trying to say. See for yourself:

> “Objections to this etymology have been made on several grounds.” -- “book”, in OED Online

⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

> “not of known relation to beech, as is often assumed” -- “book”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.

> “Diese Bedeutung ‛Buchstabe, Zeichen’, aus der sich alle anderen herleiten lassen, kann mit dem Wort Buche (so die übliche Etymologie) aus formalen und sachlichen Gründen nichts zu tun haben” -- Friedrich Kluge (2011) “book”, in Elmar Seebold, editor, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache [Etymological Dictionary of the German Language] (in German), 25th edition, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN

> “Etymologische samenhang met → beuk¹ ‘boom’ is onwaarschijnlijk” -- Philippa, Marlies, Debrabandere, Frans, Quak, Arend, Schoonheim, Tanneke, van der Sijs, Nicoline (2003–2009) “book”, in Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands‎^[7] (in Dutch), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press

> “Determining which etymologies must be rejected, and which are actually correct and must therefore be retained, remains an ongoing task for the historical linguist.” -- Pierce, Marc. “The Book and the Beech Tree Revisited” Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics 119 (2006): 273–82.

Last but not least the Fay the Freak the luminary himself stands unchallenged -- diff.

So much for consence. Anyhow, it hardly even matters for the topic at hand. IncrediblyBendy (talk) 20:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Keep, clearly. Sources and arguments that question its existence may be noted on the entry under reconstruction notes or some such header. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 11:43, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Keep Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/bazъ at least since Lower Sorbian baz can't come from *bъzъ. I'm pretty sure strong ъ never becomes a in Lower Sorbian (though strong ь sometimes does). —Mahāgaja · talk 12:25, 24 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
- It can, arbitrarily—like the leading East-Slavic forms have у (u), which can’t come from *bazъ. You know well that language has arbitrariness as a principle. Reconstructing from the descendants, without prepossessed resolution to gather support for an even more remote reconstruction, this Proto-Slavic reconstruction would not have been created organically. Rather there is room for descendants of one form having some variation. Per Occam’s razor there is little reason to assume an alternative form in Proto-Slavic. Fay Freak (talk) 13:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Until a consensus can be reached within and between all relevant fields (esp. Slavic, Germanic, Latin). Distribution issues have been mentioned. Thanks to the Fagus-Quercus sp.-Sambucus incongruity, an interdisciplinary approach is unlikely to solve the issue unless the linguists can agree on Sambucus as a secondary shift or an independent loan. Even if, as is likely to happen, a more detailed pollen analysis than those of Giesecke et al. 2007^[1] and Magri et al. 2006^[2]^[3] concludes Fagus was not present in the relevant region and time, or an admixture dating analysis is performed that concludes the ssp. orientalis introgression^[4] in ssp. sylvatica that formed Fagus × taurica did not extend even close enough to the time of formation and diversification of PIE, there is still the Quercus sp.>Fagus possibility, not to mention the biogeographical compatibility of Sambucus as the original meaning in PIE (should it be accepted as an inherited cognate). The phonetic and semantic issues associated with my own opinion notwithstanding, the lack of agreement between linguists justifies the entry's continued inclusion for the time being. Иованъ (talk) 15:57, 18 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Relevant for the history of the Germanic cognate is the recent confirmation of a longstanding hypothesis that the spread of Fagus sylvatica to Scandinavia was anthropogenic, with absolutely no presence in Northern Denmark until about 2500 kya, remaining an extreme rarity for several centuries thereafter.^[5] This matches the 3.2-2 kyr cal date range for the proliferation of F. sylvatica in Scandinavia given by Magri et al. 2006, including samples as far as southernmost tip of Sweden just before the beginning of that period; the same study however already detected the species in the macrofossil record of Zealand in the 5.7-4.5 kyr cal period ("predating pollen records by 1000 years"). So at the very least, *bōkō (“beech”) in Germanic can hardly descend from the component that spread with "East Scandinavian Corded Ware",^[6] decreasing the robustness of a semantic argument for "Fagus" being the original PIE meaning as it increases the plausibility of a "southern" origin for the term within Germanic and therefore of it being a loan acquired by a descendant of PIE rather than PIE itself.

And since the current evidence favours there having been no Fagus on the steppe between the Western and Doric attestations at the time PIE spread but there is a closer semantic relationship between the Western and Doric cognates than the contentious Slavic cognate, separate loans from one or more non-IE families ought to be the preferred explanation (or a semantic shift from an otherwise unattested PIE term, but this is less likely where phytonymy is concerned). Иованъ (talk) 15:57, 18 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

RFD kept, no consensus to delete. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 19:50, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

References

^ Giesecke, Thomas et al. (2006 September 13) “Towards an understanding of the Holocene distribution of Fagus sylvatica L.”, in Journal of Biogeography, volume 34, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 118-131
^ Donatella, Magri et al. (2006 May 17) “A new scenario for the Quaternary history of European beech populations: palaeobotanical evidence and genetic consequences”, in New Phytologist‎^[1], volume 171, number 1, →ISSN, pages 199-221
^ Magri, Donatella (2007 November 2) “Patterns of post-glacial spread and the extent of glacial refugia of European beech (Fagus sylvatica)”, in Journal of Biogeography‎^[2], volume 35, numbers 1365-2699, →ISSN, pages 450-463
^ Hrivnák, Matúš et al. (2023 December 5) “Are there hybrid zones in Fagus sylvatica L. sensu lato?”, in European Journal of Forest Research‎^[3], volume 143, →ISSN, pages 451-464
^ Hannon, Gina E. et al. (2024 March 14) “The history of Fagus sylvatica at its northern limit in Vendsyssel, Denmark”, in The Holocene‎^[4], →ISSN
^ Rodríguez-Varela, Ricardo et al. (2023 January 5) “The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present”, in Cell‎^[5], volume 186, number 1, →ISSN, pages 32-46

August 2020

Reconstruction:Proto-Semitic/gamal-

Latest comment: 4 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion

As @Dbachmann wrote in the entry in 2017, this was not really a word in Proto-Semitic, but rather a wanderwort that had spread from Arabia by the dawn of the Common Era. No serious modern lexicon of PS includes this word. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:27, 8 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Delete. How will we avoid the lengthy cognate lists? Fay Freak (talk) 12:49, 8 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure. I imagine that a Proto-Arabic is the ultimate source of the wanderwort. We could therefore conceivably host everything in a separate list at جَمَل (jamal), although this would require a good explanation to make it clear that we're not talking about attested Arabic. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:54, 8 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

But the Old South Arabian cannot be from Proto-Arabic, innit? And the Ethio-Semitic forms will also be earlier borrowings from the times when the Ethio-Semitic speakers settled in Southern Arabia. Similarly Modern South Arabian, a niece-language group of Old South Arabian. Host at Reconstruction:Undetermined 😆? Fay Freak (talk) 19:59, 8 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Fay Freak: You make a very good point. There's also Proto-Berber *a-lɣəm, which is thought to be a very old borrowing from a Semitic source that underwent metathesis, and is apparently the source of Hausa raƙumi and various other words. Now, this is a very unorthodox solution, but what if we created a page like Appendix:Semitic wanderwort gamal (or an alternate title; I'm sure there's a better phrasing) to discuss the problem, stick in a couple references, and host the descendant list? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:29, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, is there a reason the list couldn't just be in the etymology section of one of the words (e.g. Proto-Arabic) with an appropriate qualifier, like "the ultimate origin [of this proto-Arabic word] is a Semitic wanderwort which was also the source of [... ... ...]" ? - -sche (discuss) 06:10, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Keep: Granted, it may not have existed in PSem., but I think that it better to have a central entry and explain its existence in the reconstruction notes or etymology. Should be moved to PWS though. --{{victar|talk}} 22:57, 11 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

I've moved it to Reconstruction:Proto-West Semitic/gamal-, which at least is better than having it at PSem. @Metaknowledge, Fay Freak --{{victar|talk}} 23:34, 11 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm still not sure that it can be safely reconstructed to PWestSem, and I don't see any references for that statement (besides the lazy authors who simply consider it to be PS, which we know is untenable). We know it is a wanderwort; I suppose a defensible lie is better than an indefensible one, but I was hoping for a more honest solution. Note to closer: all the incoming links still have yet to be fixed. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:48, 11 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm not saying it's a solution -- I still stand by my original reasoning to keep -- but since this is only found in WSem. it belongs as a PWS entry, regardless. --{{victar|talk}} 00:22, 12 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

November 2020

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₁óytos

Latest comment: 9 months ago9 comments8 people in discussion

Germanic *aiþaz is often cited at being an early Celtic borrowing. Regardless, given how it's disputed, a PIE entry isn't warranted. @AryamanA --{{victar|talk}} 16:39, 8 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

Delete; I remember that one has argued not without reason that this is a Celtic borrowing, and the likelihood of a Germanic-Celtic isogloss in comparison to a borrowing heavily speaks against this reconstruction. Fay Freak (talk) 01:17, 24 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

Merge to *h₁ey-, which in any case ought to mention at least Celtic *oytos. A loan is a likely possibility, and these details would be better discussed somewhere else such as on the PG and PC pages (and the latter does not even exist yet!). Note though also Greek οἶτος (oîtos) as another suggested cognate. --Tropylium (talk) 18:41, 3 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

In view of Beekes' own preferred etymology from *h₂ey- (“to give”), merging to *h₁ey- (“to go”) seems no less speculative. I suggest that we add the Greek as well as Avestan 𐬀𐬉𐬙𐬀 (aēta, “punishment”), which is another perfect match, and so move the page to *Hóytos, where the two etymologies can be elaborated. In my opinion Beekes is right that the Greek evidence strongly points to *h₂ey- as the root, and the semantics fit better (“*that which is given” > “lot, fate”, “punishment”, “oath”; it is not even clear what a nominal in *-tó- from the semantically intransitive “to go” should mean). Perhaps other authors avoid connecting the Germanic and Celtic with it because this root has not otherwise survived in those branches or is somewhat obscure. — 69.121.86.13 16:11, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Delete. Two words don't warrant a PIE reconstruction. Highly speculative. Ghirlandajo (talk) 21:17, 7 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Delete as probably nonexistent in PIE. Even Kroonen said that "it is unlikely that the formation goes back to Proto-Indo-European, only to surface in two neighboring branches at the far end of the IE-speaking area. It is more probable that the word somehow arose in a shared cultural zone with similar legal traditions." I have just merged whatever salvageable from this page to the root page, so now we can delete this. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 01:36, 19 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
~~Delete~~. I have argued for high likelihood of fictivity below regarding a Proto-Semitic gloss “oath” at *yamīn-. Fay Freak (talk) 20:18, 22 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
- @Fay Freak You already voted above. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:16, 23 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Keep: I do not understand why this request has not been closed after 3 years, 4 unanimous close votes and 1 suggestion to merge with the root. So, I vote contrarian to confirm the status quo. The reconstruction can be cited from reliable sources, who admit alternatives. The question of borrowing is undecidable according to {{R:goh:EWA|eid}} (1998). PIE *oitos, as they put it, is formally acceptable for both; *h₁óytos is laryngealist cosmetics (that the online edition does usually add laryngeal notation when it is secure is not decisive). Adams & Mallory 2006 clearly state *h₁óytos and add Tocharian B aittaṅka (“directed towards”) to the comparison. Sluis/Jørgensen/Kroonen 2023 discuss the Celto-Germanic isoglosses and do not improve on the status quo but confirm that *h₁óy-to- is a possibility, to conclude: "The Bell Beaker maritime network is not the only archaeological context for which the diffusion of linguistic features between these early IE groups can be hypothesized." (The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited 2023: 207). On the other hand, the evidence of Oscan eítuns is highly unreliable^[1] and that is just not good enough to reject Greek αἶνος, ἀναίνομαιor (Peters) and Hittite ḫai- (Puhvel) [apud EWAhd]. Adams and Mallory posit *h₂⸝₃ehₓ-, compare Latin omen, Hittite ḫai- (“believe, take as truth”) and note that "some would also include the Celtic [...] and Germanic [...] words for ‘oath’" (A&M 2006: 323). In sum, the entry is warranted but sufficient hedging will be needed. If you disagree entirely, you should be able to offer a better solution. I am looking at different options but this is not exactly an improvement, and so I cannot disagree. DurdyWendy (talk) 20:53, 8 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Notes

^ "unfortunately we do not know exactly what this word means." [Katherine McDonald], "eituns, as if Lat. *ītōnēs, may be formally explained in various ways" [Carl D. Buck], "[...] still contested. Most likely this is a nominative plural form, perhaps present participle, of the verb *ey- "go"; cf. Untermann 2000, p. 230." [Karin Tikkanen], "eksuk amvíanud eítuns, translated as ‘from this area go to’" [Tanya K. Henderson, cites Buck], ‚Vereidigte‘ > ‚Rekruten‘ [A. L. Prosdocimi apud EWAhd], and de Vaan "eo" does not mention it.

December 2020

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dʰews-

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Schwebeablaut isn't a root "variant", it's an environmental change. --{{victar|talk}} 00:31, 11 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

February 2021

Reconstruction:Latin/consutura

Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Appears to actually be attested, though in New Latin, not Vulgar Latin. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 02:54, 21 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Indeed: [8], [9], [10]. Should we interpret the New Latin use as "inherited" from Vulgar Latin? Otherwise, there are basically two homographic lemmas: a non-attested Vulgar Latin one, reconstructed from its descendants, and a re-invented one in New Latin. --Lambiam 10:13, 22 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Hazarasp, Lambiam The word isn't attested before the 14th century or so (DMLBS). We can't very well say that the Medieval Romance forms derive from New Latin, where the word is in fact reborrowed/calqued from Romance. Therefore these are separate, and the Proto-Romance (Vulgar Latin) entry has to stay. Brutal Russian (talk) 23:57, 3 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, I'm inclined to disagree; I would expect just one entry, which could explain that the word is inferred from Romance terms to have existed in Vulgar Latin but is not attested until later recoined in New Latin. By comparison, AFAIK we don't and shouldn't have separate reconstruction entries for attested terms in other languages (say, English or Ojibwe) where they can be inferred to have existed at some period before their actual attestation; we don't even have separate etymology sections for English words which existed in early modern English (Latvian, etc) and were later independently recoined in modern times. (OTOH, we still have a redundant reconstruction entry on lausa.) What do we do in comparable situations in Chinese or Hebrew? AFAICT we don't have any reconstructed Hebrew or Chinese entries, which suggests we may be handling "late (re)attested" words in those languages in mainspace only, as I would expect. - -sche (discuss) 06:58, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Just noting that this has been moved to Reconstruction:Latin/cosutura (without n) and changed to derive from *cōsō, an unattested variant of cōnsuō. On one hand, this could all be handled in the mainspace by just mentioning the hypothetical n-less forms in etymology sections without spinning off whole entries, and I think such things are handled that way in situations were an n-form is attested earlier than an n-less variant; OTOH, it's now at least less stupid than having both *consutura and consutura... - -sche (discuss) 03:31, 22 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

March 2021

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ǵeh₂r-

Latest comment: 6 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Ditto. --{{victar|talk}} 22:22, 31 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Should be saved, but moved to *ǵar- —caoimhinoc (talk) 19:36, 18 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

No consensus. No further action. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 15:29, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Improper closing of an RDF. -- Sokkjō 00:52, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Why is it an improper closing of an RFD? "A request can be closed once a month has passed after the nomination was posted." It's been years and there's no consensus. Same with Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/Reconstruction#Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/énu. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 10:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

April 2021

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/aganą

Latest comment: 23 hours ago8 comments6 people in discussion

The conjugation table does not agree with the title, however I am unsure what it should be changed to. Pinging @Rua Mårtensås (talk) 15:17, 23 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Since the only direct descendant is Gothic 𐍉𐌲𐌰𐌽 (ōgan), I suspect Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/aganą should be moved to Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/ōganą. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:41, 23 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hello, Mahāgaja, I hope you're doing well! There is nothing wrong with this entry. Remember that Proto-Germanic *ō is the result of a merger of Pre-Germanic. *ō and *ā, both ultimately from PIE *ō, *eh₃, *oH, *eh₂. I just edited the entry explaining:

The full-grade root *ōg- served as the basis for the Gothic infinitive, while the zero grade survived in other petrified forms, compare 𐌰𐌲𐌹𐍃 (agis). Cognate with Old Irish ad·ágadar, Old English eġe, Ancient Greek ἄχος (ákhos, “pain, grief”).

Therefore, I think @Mårtensås, @Burgundaz and @Rua are correct! I hope my explanation helps! I suppose with that we can remove the request for deletion. Lëtzelúcia (talk) 19:34, 4 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

And looking through the page history, I see it was at Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/ōganą until Rua moved it to aganą in January 2019. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:47, 23 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

The Proto-Germanic page title is fine. The only thing wrong with the conjugation is that the present singulars should be *ōg, *ōht and *ōg, respectively. The infinitive, not being inflected for number or person, is properly *aganą which follows the stem of the non-singular present, just like the present participle *agandz does, as we see in the fossilized Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐌰𐌲𐌰𐌽𐌳𐍃 (unagands). The Gothic form of the verb as *ōgan, with *ōg spread throughout the paradigm, including the secondary present participle 𐍉𐌲𐌰𐌽𐌳𐍃 (ōgands), shows high degrees of regularization as is pretty typical for Gothic, which supports the theory that it was a superstratum language with many non-native speakers.

Likewise for aorist-presents, the infinitive stem follows the non-singular present stem of the verb, as seen in *wiganą, although here too the present singulars should be *wīhō, *wīhizi, *wīhidi respectively; this is proved by the fact that otherwise -h- would have been unrecoverable to later Germanic speakers, and Gothic could not have regularized the -h- throughout... Which again in Gothic, we see regularization as the singular stem of the verb *wīh-, is spread to the other present formations: 𐍅𐌴𐌹𐌷𐌰𐌼 (weiham) instead of original *wigam, and again in a derived form of the present participle, the original short vowel is kept, but the velar is regularized to -h- instead of original -g-: 𐌰𐌽𐌳𐍅𐌰𐌹𐌷𐌰𐌽𐌳𐍉 (andwaihandō) instead of *andwigandō. Burgundaz (talk) 22:05, 18 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Seconding that the title agrees perfectly well with the IPA and conjugation table, even if perhaps the vocalisation of the present singulars is incorrect as Burgundaz says. Tristanjlroberts (talk) 23:48, 7 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Keep at current entry title. Burgundaz is correct. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

RFD kept, no consensus to delete. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 19:50, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

May 2021

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/krūci

Latest comment: 3 years ago20 comments6 people in discussion

This entry invents a completely new phoneme, that I have not seen in any sources, in order to reconstruct an entry. I know that Wiktionary gives some leeway for its own research, but a whole phoneme goes too far IMO. This is definitely something that needs to be sourced. —Rua (mew) 10:25, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

The Old Saxon, Old High German, and Old Dutch forms could maybe point *krūtsi, if I'm remembering the relevant historical developments correctly. The Frisian form is apparently a borrowing from Low German; if it was native, we'd expect *crēce. The OE form should maybe be excluded; unlike the other Gmc. forms; the consonantism may point to a loan from a dialect where Latin -c- before front vowels gave /tʃ/, not /ts/. If Old English crūċ is removed and Old Frisian crioce is relegated to borrowing status, a case could be made for the page to be kept as *krūtsi. ~~This would be a sensible adaptation of pre-Old French /ˈkrut͡se/ into the late common WGmc. phonological and morphological framework.~~ Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 11:53, 6 May 2021 (UTC

Could it be that Proto-Germanic and Proto-West Germanic had phonemes only occurring in loanwords? Like the voiced postalveolar fricative occurs in German only in loanwords but in most familiar items like Orange and Garage. No doubt either the Proto-West Germans were able to pronounce [t͡s]. You have not seen it because of restricted use then, and by reason that Indo-Europeanists like to deal with inherited terminology rather than to sully themselves with language contact. Fay Freak (talk) 12:53, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

However, on second thought, the logic I employed further up is somewhat shaky; Dutch/Low German -s- isn't necessarily reconcilable with Low/High German -ts-. Additionally, the pre-OF form would be /ˈkrot͡se/; the note at kryds about the vocalism in /uː/ (> later /yː/) pointing to a late date of borrowing is spot-on. If the borrowing was late, it's not necessary to posit a common WGmc. source; separate borrowings in each WGmc. language could've easily resulted in similar phonological forms. In short, the WGmc. "cross" words seem to be separate, but interlinked borrowings from after the common WGmc. period (though this isn't watertight). However, the idea that some of the Germanic forms are borrowings from others is worth considering (Old High German → Old Saxon?). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 12:59, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

WG would have most certainly come into contact with Latin speakers that began to palatalize velars. The question in my mind isn't *if*, it's *how* we deal with these words. Using *c as a stand-in for an otherwise foreign sound is probably the easiest way to go about it. Compare also *unciju, which which has some interesting Old English variants. To quote what I wrote on the talk page, "1) even if the term entered one branch and quickly spread throughout WG, it's impossible to pinpoint the source, and 2) we're calling Frankish PWG so even if the word was adopted into Frankish and spread from there, that's still PWG yielding the word in every branch." --{{victar|talk}} 16:17, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

That doesn't really address the issues that I raised (I never said anything about the palatalisation of velars being a problem!), which mainly concern the vocalism (which could be seen as indicative of a later loan) and the discrepancy in the consonantism. Positing a PWG *c to cover for the discrepancy left me a bit skeptical with only one example, but now that you've found another, I'm a bit more open to the idea. You'll need to find one or two more to really convince me, though. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis)

By the way, shouldn't *unciju be ōn-stem *uncijā? Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 18:12, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Hazarasp: Here's a fun one: *palancijā. As for the ō-stem, I was going by Köbler. --{{victar|talk}} 01:45, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

OHG and Old Frisian both have ō-stems, but Middle Dutch and OE both have a ōn-stem. This kind of stuff makes me suspicious that they're seperate borrowings. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 02:39, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Meh, that's WG for you. --{{victar|talk}} 05:13, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Little details like these are important if the basis for assuming a common source is tenuous in the first place. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 09:14, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Hazarasp: ō- and ōn-stems were effectively merged by late Old Dutch, so you can't base any conclusions on that. This merger likely affected other dialects in the area, as we can see that modern German has it too. —Rua (mew) 08:30, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Good to know, though I probably should've checked that; I'm not too well-versed in what happened to the Gmc. continental breakfast. That still leaves the OE form difficult to explain, though. Of course, such a problem can be sidestepped if we see them as seperate borrowings (as we probably should; at the very least, the OE form is not easily connected) Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 09:14, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

*strūcijō (“ostrich”). --{{victar|talk}} 05:52, 25 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

In case people missed it, there is a ongoing discussion on the take page: Reconstruction talk:Proto-West Germanic/krūci. --{{victar|talk}} 16:17, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

There is also a related entry *krūcigōn, derived from this noun. Leasnam (talk) 16:22, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Given that, I note that the assumption that the word is “clearly Christian vocabulary” is not without doubt. Primarily this relates to a kind of punishment, applied to slaves, and one damn well imagines that Romans made Germans acquainted with it even in the 1st century CE, so just for hyperbole and indifference argument I point out that it could be Proto-Germanic no less than postdating Proto-West Germanic. The real etymon of this verb is crucifīgere, from crucī (af)fīgere, in Medieval Latin written crucifīcāre (which is also in the TLL from some gloss, together with cruciāre). Formally, the common haplology points to proto-date, as also the parallel with German predigen, Old English predician, Old Saxon predikōn from which the North-Germanic forms like Danish prædike, Swedish predika, Icelandic prédika, Norwegian Nynorsk preika are derived, as obviously the Christians vexed man with preaching from the very beginning, “very far before the religion itself started to become a thing”. Fay Freak (talk) 12:56, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Whatever it's worth, the EWN calls it an "old Germanic borrowing" (so likely before Old Dutch) and the NEW vaguely calls it "a word of the conversion", which could mean a quite early date in relation to the Franks. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:13, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I found this paper https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A2971774/view which deals with describing and dating various sound changes of the Latin dialect that West Germanic speakers would have been in contact with. It uses Germanic borrowings as part of its data as well. This seems very useful for figuring out how old they are, based on what Latin sound changes they have carried over. In 3.23 and 3.24, three changes are discussed that would have produced an affricate /ts/:

From Vulgar Latin /tj/: 2nd century. Reflected also in Gothic, e.g. 𐌺𐌰𐍅𐍄𐍃𐌾𐍉 (kawtsjō).
From Vulgar Latin /kj/: not found in early Germanic loanwords, late enough for the velar to feed into the West Germanic gemination, e.g. Old Saxon wikkia (< vicia). Velars from Germanic feed this in Old French, e.g. Proto-West Germanic *makkjō > maçon.
From Vulgar Latin /k/ before front vowel: not found in early Germanic loanwords either, e.g. Proto-West Germanic *kistu, *kaisar. Again, Germanic loans into Old French feed this, e.g. cion. Attested in inscriptions from the 5th century onwards.

Since PWG is considered to have ended around 400, this places it before the palatalisation and therefore forms like the one being discussed here are an anachronism. It is of course possible for Vulgar Latin /tj/ to end up in PWG as an affricate, but I find it unlikely that speakers would treat this as its own phoneme, since to their ears it would have sounded like a sequence /ts/ (compare how western European speakers nowadays hear Slavic c). So if we do want to denote this sound, I think a sequence *ts should be used and not *c. —Rua (mew) 08:21, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Ending PWG at the 5th century excludes Frankish, and since we merged Frankish into PWG, that date needs to be pushed forward. --{{victar|talk}} 00:43, 8 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I'm not in favour of Wiktionary following a different standard from what is linguistically agreed upon. Wiktionary should be a linguistic source. —Rua (mew) 13:15, 8 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Academics don't even agree that there was a single Proto-West Germanic, let alone on a date when all its descendants diverged. I feel like we keep having the same conversation about finite PWG vs. a WG continuum. If a dialect absorbs a word and it spreads through the dialects, that's still the language absorbing the word. --{{victar|talk}} 19:02, 8 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/ainijaz

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

With an unknown etymology and only Old Norse einir as a descendant, this entry should be deleted. @Rua --{{victar|talk}} 16:05, 9 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Delete. The Latin term is a borrowing, though from another Italic language, so you can’t well reconstruct from it but other things than inheritance become more likely for the other languages as well. The Old Norse may be back-formed from a compound with ber, Icelandic einisber, borrowed from the Latin jūniperus in the form *iēniperus we have as the Vulgar Latin form, which is already suggested by Schiller-Lübben 1875. Fay Freak (talk) 08:41, 2 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Also note that in westrobothnian, all dialects show an initial j- (jên) which is not the expected outcome of *einir (it ought to be êin). For some reason whoever is keeping the westrobothnian wiktionary wrote it with a g but it doesn't change anything. If this word was truly native and occcured natively in old norse or proto germanic, it must have become êin. But no dialect shows this to be true. I am of the belief that it is a loanword aswell, and not even one old enough to have been nativized the same across scandinavia clearly.

Reconstruction:Old English/ynne

Latest comment: 9 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

No reason to assume this term survived into OE outside of the compound ynneleac which is inherited from WG *unnjalauk. --{{victar|talk}} 07:27, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

There is one attestation as yna, the genitive plural of *yne (“onion”). I've added it to *unnijā. It's listed as one of the Alternative forms of *ynne. Perhaps we simply need to move it to a non-reconstructed entry (?) Leasnam (talk) 11:02, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Why is it *unnijā and not *unnjā as it is in *unnjālauk ? I would expect *ūnijā (ancestor of yne, ene) and *unnjā (ancestor of ynne). *unnijā appears un-etymological, as the latin does not have a double n, but double n in GMW-PRO results later from gemination caused by j Leasnam (talk) 11:07, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Works for me. Please move and delete. And thanks for catching my typo. --{{victar|talk}} 17:11, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Leasnam Can you please take care of this? Thanks! -- Sokkjō 03:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/maginōn

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

@DerRudymeister This is just a variant of *maganōn that might not even go back to PWG. The descendants should just both live on there. --{{victar|talk}} 21:33, 24 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Victar I'm not sure why you would want to create one page when both verbs and also the nouns that they derive from, have distinct descendants (either having or lacking the umlaut). I'm also not sure which one of them is the 'original' form, what makes you think that only *maganōn would be a valid reconstruction? If you want to keep *maganōną/*maganōn this creates an inconsistency in the fact that we have a PGM page for the noun *maginą, so we should change this to *maganą and list both variants there also. --DerRudymeister (talk) 17:26, 25 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the above. Descendants of *maginōn are distinct from those of *maganōn, and I prefer to keep such variations separate as well. Leasnam (talk) 07:14, 10 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/bʰruHg-

Latest comment: 8 months ago8 comments7 people in discussion

Iffy semantics, janky root shape. --{{victar|talk}} 05:36, 31 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Keep. I don't see anything wrong the semantics. The root shape is rare, but compare *bʰuH-. De Vaan says "The restriction to Gm. and It., and the pervading zero grade, may cast doubts on a PIE origin; yet there is no decisive argument against it"; we can certainly add a note along those lines too, but I see no reason whatever to delete. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:25, 31 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
All I see here is a Latin verb fruor (“to enjoy”) with several deverbal nouns, and a total left field guess of Germanic *brūkaną (“to make use of”) being related to it. The connection is worthy of mention in an etymology, at best, not a full PIE root. --{{victar|talk}} 01:16, 1 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Victar: Our entry for fruor is lacking, but its meaning is actually quite close to that of uti, utor (“to use, to make use of”). L&S even glosses it this way: "to have the use and enjoyment of a thing, to have the usufruct". 2A02:2788:A4:205:4172:C92D:3A2E:3CF 13:33, 28 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
If Ancient Greek φάρυγξ (phárunx) and Old Armenian երբուծ (erbuc) are from this root, then it is attested in two more families. --Vahag (talk) 09:43, 22 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I added these roots, but I could have done it wrongly. Please check. I'm minded to close this as keep unless @Victar comes back and says something. This, that and the other (talk) 07:14, 25 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
The similiarity of Germanic and Latin words does not constitute a valid PIE lemma. Their connection with Greek and Armenian words is highly fanciful. Delete. --Ghirlandajo (talk) 21:09, 23 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Kölligin 2019 adduces *brūkaną < *pro- + *h₂ewg- (IF 2019: 115-136). He has also argued "From ‘throat’ to ‘self’?" (MSS 2022: 41-59), which is a bit much, but it nicely parallels Ancient Greek αὐτός (autós) < *h₂ew-, Ancient Greek φάρυγξ (phárunx, “throat”) and persona (IMHO). Point being, he does not insist on the prefix per se, discussing fruor, frux separately, cf. "While semantically convincing, the phonological side of the equation is problematic" (IF 2019: 126; emphasis mine). The required sound changes are speculative. How is that "no decisive argument against it" (de Vaan, etc.)? Anyway, I'm saying that Ancient Greek φάρυγξ (phárunx) is probably not too far away. IncrediblyBendy (talk) 14:35, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

June 2021

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/kauli

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The variety of Old English forms shows that it was borrowed after the language no longer had a diphthong -au-, and also after umlaut. Otherwise it would have had the regular -īe-. In the other languages, the occurrence of stem-final -i must also point to a post-PWG borrowing, because a PWG -i would have been lost after a long syllable. This means that it cannot have been borrowed into the common ancestor. —Rua (mew) 08:37, 8 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

I absolutely agree that this is a funky burrowing, but I think it's the result of two things: 1. borrowings from Latin sometimes resulting in diphthong braking, compare *lēō ~ *lewō, so *kāul- ~ *kawul- seems a highly plausible vacillation 2. as with many plant words in WG, *-jā probably played a role in its descendants. --{{victar|talk}} 06:22, 9 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/buterā

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The High German forms also have -t-, whereas from this PWG form *buzzera would be expected, giving modern *Busser. Compare *watar which does have the expected development. This means that the word must have been borrowed after the change t > z was productive in OHG, and therefore cannot be of PWG date. —Rua (mew) 14:47, 20 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

I agree. Besides, Old High German had at least 5 other native words meaning "butter", hinting at the likelihood that butira was fairly new and had not yet ousted out the other terms. Leasnam (talk) 20:26, 30 October 2021 (UTC)Reply

Reconstructed Latin

Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

The following "Reconstructed Latin" entries are not actually reconstructed. Both are attested in Latin.

1) scepticus 2) absedium — This unsigned comment was added by The Nicodene (talk • contribs) at 06:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC).Reply

@The Nicodene: If they're attested, please cite them on their entries. --{{victar|talk}} 08:15, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

google books:"scepticorum", google books:"sceptici" "et", google books:"scepticus" "et" turn up both capitalized and uncapitalized citations from the 16-, 17-, 18-. 19- and 2000s, although many suggest a definition more like "sceptic" (n. or adj.) than the entry's current definition "the sect of skeptics". For absedium, I find only a very few modern examples, some of which call it out as an error, like this and

1916, Archivio per la storia ecclesiastica dell' Umbria, volume 3, page 424:
Parmesius Michus ad absedium (3) Saxarię mansit, / Et magnum bellum a latere dextero dedit, / Et per vim terram Saxariam indixit (4).

PS, we're missing declension information and an inflection table at obsidium. - -sche (discuss) 18:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

This concerns an issue that comes up repeatedly: #1, #2. absedium is Medieval Latin, which is a language that postdates the emergence of Medieval Romance languages. If it also seems to underlie some Romance forms, then the reconstructed entry must stay unless the Romance formes are clearly borrowed from Medieval Latin. The problem is that no Romance descendants are given at *absedium, only two borrowings. The entry might be entirely in error and in that case should be moved and converted into mainspace Medieval Latin. Compare asedio, which leads to asediar which appears to be borrowed from Medieval Latin. In that case absedium would be a Medieval Latin borrowing from Medieval Romance such as that Spanish form. Du Cange has absedium as well as obsedium.

L&S gives Scepticī as an entry, but this is in fact erroneous since the word seems to be attested in the Greek script in the PHI corpus. It wouldn't be in TLL in any case because it's a proper name and these currently go up to the letter D. It doesn't seem to be attested in Medieval Latin either, so it should be moved to mainspace as a New Latin word. Brutal Russian (talk) 22:35, 25 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

"If it also seems to underlie some Romance forms, then the reconstructed entry must stay unless the Romance formes are clearly borrowed from Medieval Latin": I disagree, for reasons I express in the RFD of Reconstruction:Latin/consutura, above. (We don't have separate entries or etymology sections for every time a nonce is re-coined, either, or for early modern English use of foobar as a survival from Middle English vs modern revival / borrowing of it from Middle English, etc.) The one entry can explain when it was attested. For etymology sections to be able to link to the term with an asterisk, one could either use piping (*foobar) or make scepticus a redirect, but I see no reason to duplicate the content. - -sche (discuss) 17:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Anyway, I put citations at Citations:scepticus (and there are plenty more to be found using the searches linked above), so if someone would like to fix the definition (and add the right temporal label), that entry can be moved to mainspace. - -sche (discuss) 17:53, 26 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

I moved Reconstruction:Latin/scepticus to mainspace given that it is amply attested. - -sche (discuss) 22:11, 12 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

August 2021

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/hagastaldaz

Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments5 people in discussion

Duplicate of *hagustaldaz. --{{victar|talk}} 19:36, 24 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

(Notifying Rua, Wikitiki89, Benwing2, Mnemosientje, The Editor's Apprentice, Hazarasp): Thoughts on this? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:54, 26 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Fytcha I personally think hagastaldaz is probably garbage and that any terms that appear to require such a reconstruction are later re-formations of hagustaldaz, but I'm not a Germanic languages expert. Benwing2 (talk) 05:01, 26 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Keep, at least for now, I don't see any reason for deletion. --Astova (talk) 21:32, 10 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Delete, seems clear-cut that *hagustaldaz was the original form. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 14:55, 24 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Semitic/šawmān-

Latest comment: 3 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion

A homegrown reconstruction by Fay Freak, which attempts to tell a story that can unite all the Semitic words for "dove". The unfortunate fact is that they are probably not actually related; an irregular Akkadian reflex, then an intentional misuse of the (not widely accepted) sound law proposed in Al-Jallad (2015), then a strange shift in Arabic from /h/ to /ħ/ because the latter is more "lovely", then an even stranger shift in Northwest Semitic to /j/ because that phoneme is "popular"... Even the maximalists in the Semitic reconstruction game don't let their imagination run away with them as wildly as this. As I have mentioned before, protolanguage reconstructions should be a serious attempt at documenting the common ancestor of attested languages, not a playground for our hypotheses in historical linguistics that no Semitist has endorsed, despite extensive attention to this group of words. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:40, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

And he qualifies of unlikely a reconstruction, *yawn-, which would perfectly work for Northwest Semitic and was posited by Kogan and Militarev in a chapter specifically on animal names. Is there a taboo about doves in Semitic cultures which would account for irregularities from a common etymon? Malku H₂n̥rés (talk) 15:42, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

This is a good question. I, for my part, found the forms more likely related than not, influenced by the acquaintance with taboos about animal names. Otherwise various terms for the dove are atomized without etymology, which is itself doubtful. Fay Freak (talk) 16:01, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

The Akkadian correspondence is not irregular. The most obvious examples for the correspondence are given, but it does not look like you even cared to read.
You should elaborate why the sound law of /ʃ/ to /ʔ/ is misused or not widely accepted. It is absurd to claim that the sound change is not widely accepted—maybe the exact formulation isn’t, but this subtracts nothing of its applicability here. /h/ to /ħ/ occurs in Arabic sometimes, as with examples referenced, this is not “strange”. Compare also *purḡūṯ-, where Arabic بُرْغُوث (burḡūṯ) is “strange”, yet true. I stress that one often has to search for sources of contamination for Semitic etymologies. For the sound change of leading /ʔ/ to /j/ there are not few examples, compare Classical Syriac ܝܗܠܐ (yahlā) from *ʔahl-, or Old Armenian յիմար (yimar) borrowed from a form which began with glottal stop. As /w/ became /j/, the very distinction of the whole group of weak consonants in initial position became less relevant in Northwest Semitic at various stages.
It was good that imagination was running wild a bit. I do my reps wild like an animal too to get a beast body. One has think like a Biblical patriarch a bit, and sometimes one has to sit down and tell a story 🔦. Not everything that can be seen is obvious, and not all that cannot be immediately seen cannot be seen at all. But all I told has analogues, confirmation of regular occurrence! I say, you get flustered by a great array of information too fast. So I do not see any actual argument, only insults for a great work that but combines insights endorsed by Semitists. Where is the “attention” anyway? Do you call Militarev and Kogan’s proto-stage variation Proto-Semitic *yawn-at ~ *wānay- (“dove”) attentive? You see I took great care. An unusual extent of, which was needed. Fay Freak (talk) 16:01, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
When I say "irregular", I mean it as a term of art. Not that it is unpredecented — although these are rare! — but that it does not follow the regular sound correspondences established by the comparative method. As for Al-Jallad's sound law, you need only read the paper to see that it doesn't apply to this word! (I said it's not widely accepted because the thought that it's morphologically conditioned still seems to be the mainstream idea; in that case, your application would still be a misuse, of course.) When you invoke multiple irregular sound changes to unite disparate forms, you are working against Occam's razor and it increasingly appears that you are justifying these sound changes by the fact that the semantics match, rather than because the sound changes are especially plausible. You say above that it's "doubtful" that the terms could be "atomized without etymology" — as I have told you before, our null hypothesis should be that there is no relation between any two given terms, and we should force ourselves to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that there is indeed one. You can work out however you like, and you can post your "great work" on a personal page, but we are trying to present solid reconstructions of Proto-Semitic. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:20, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Pretty solid reconstruction here. You are setting up a false dichotomy of regular and irregular sound changes here, an outdated 19th century view of “sound laws”. “Irregular” and “regular” aren’t terms of the art, but subjective categories. The English and German strong verbs are called irregular, but to those who reconstruct Germanic they are regular categories.

Occam’s razor is also no law in humans, they like to do defy rules and make things complicated. I thought I disentangled it?

Obviously I read Al-Jallad’s and did not “see” (whatever that metaphor means) that it might not be applicable here. Nor do I know what “morphologically conditioned” is—sounds pretty esoteric. It’s just a sound shift that is known to happen bar certain constraints, boom.

I didn’t force anyone. It is still left to the readers to doubt the form. But it is also to their convenience. This is the most orderly attempt of connection of the terms, without which manaman is left confused, cognates here and there with sound changes explained here and there. I would need anyway to mention examples of sound changes and it would be really messy to do that at the individual languages, so at some point the Proto-Semitic unification developed naturally. I chose the most likely form. More likely than a null-relation too. Not biased in the beginning towards a null-relation—methodological anarchism. Fay Freak (talk) 17:49, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Again, you are intentionally missing the crux of the issue here. You say it is "left to the readers to doubt the form", but that's not how the dictionary works! We ask them to trust that all our mainspace entries are correct, rather than ask them to doubt (and though we have mistakes, we aim to eliminate them). A reconstruction is not truth, and we have a warning template to that effect, but we still ask readers to trust that we have presented them with something that is, beyond reasonable doubt, what we say it is. This may be "the most orderly attempt of connection of the terms", but it is still incredibly unparsimonious, and that is probably why, for example, Militarev & Kogan didn't try to unite them. You know full well they weren't ignorant of these terms, but they did not consider them to be related. I find this intriguing enough to merit discussion in an etymology section (probably under an autocollapsed box to save space), but we simply can't go around claiming these tenuous connexions as indisputable Proto-Semitic. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:06, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Militarev & Kogan didn't try to combine them because they did not have the Amorite form, they were ignorant of this form—which comes right between the other Northwest Semitic and the Arabic form, plus this was already sixteen years ago before various treatises on certain sound changes like this š → h → ʔ one. This was what made me think. Then I found Rescher connecting the Akkadian with the Arabic, knowing even less forms. Militarev and Kogan in all seriousness postulate the form as one of some “complex protoforms accounting for both type of reflexes” (SED vol. 2 page L), they did unite them! For all them even less substance was sufficient to see a family. Where was the reasonable doubt? The way people copy starred forms they saw somewhere it makes little a difference whether we just mention a starred form in a collapsible side-note in the individual language or in new page, reason looks bleak anyway. But aesthetics look served better the way it is. Of course I think whether a Proto-Semitic page exists here is merely a detail. (After people voted for Proto-Albanian pages, in which you did not weigh in by your vote … you recognize that you idealized reason a bit?) Fay Freak (talk) 18:32, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
They were indeed ignorant of the Amorite form, but it is a bit dangerous — we can only assume its meaning and its status as a genuine Amorite word, given the cultural mobility of names. It adds another line of support, but not enough to reduce the tenuous nature of the reconstruction as a whole. Militarev in particular is given to motivated reasoning, so my point was that this connexion was too much of a stretch to even make it into the SED — that is a measure of how unparsimonious it is. I didn't vote regarding Proto-Albanian because I don't know anything about it; I do know about Proto-Semitic, and that's why I am careful to ensure a consistent level of security in our reconstructions. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:02, 26 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

April 2022

Reconstruction:Old Galician-Portuguese/africão

Latest comment: 1 year ago10 comments8 people in discussion

Reconstructed entry with no derived terms. - Sarilho1 (talk) 12:29, 5 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

‘no derived terms’— I think you meant descendants. But unfortunately, seeing as the term used in Modern Portuguese is africano, a cultismo, the unattested Old Portuguese word has no descendants. The entry looks legit, tho’ a reference would have been better. Keep for now. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 13:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Question: If aflicão is attested (it has a quotation), why does it claim to be an alternative form of a merely reconstructed word? 70.172.194.25 00:46, 9 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Theoretically, a rarer form of a word assumed to be oftener in another but unattested form can be attested and against direct corpus evidence assumed the alternative form of an unattested form. But the same question has occurred to me and it is still left: the actual attestation situation against this speculation. Fay Freak (talk) 15:17, 9 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

The issue here is that the word is only attested as a glaring hypercorrection. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 23:28, 11 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Inqilābī I do agree that africano is a cultism, but it's not clear to me why *africão is the expected native form. Wouldn't *afrigão be a more obvious reconstruction? - Sarilho1 (talk) 14:10, 19 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Delete, I reformatted aflicão so this entry is no longer needed. This, that and the other (talk) 02:32, 27 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

The intervocalic /k/ is still problematic for an inheritance. Nicodene (talk) 03:55, 27 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

It gets weirder, though. For some reason I haven't understood yet, the source normalizes the word as "afriçãos" with the "r" and a "ç" that has corresponding pronunciation of /t͡s/ (implying a Latin form of *afritianus?). - Sarilho1 (talk) 00:08, 10 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Delete, this entry seems unnecessary if it is not attested in this form. I don't see why it matters that aflicão is a "glaring hypercorrection". And shouldn't /f/ in this context be subject to voicing (compare ábrego), making the actual hypothetical inherited form *avrigão?--Urszag (talk) 04:17, 27 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

May 2022

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/Hrugʰís

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Szemerényi, Oswald (1967) “Славянская этимология на индоевропейском фоне”, in В. А. Меркулова, transl., Вопросы языкознания (in Russian), number 4, page 23 after other references concludes that this has been borrowed separately into the subgroups of Balto-Slavic we reconstruct as *rugís (before Slavic palatalizations obviously) and thence into Proto-Finnic *rugis and Proto-Germanic *rugiz from the Thracian word *wrugya transcribed in Greek as βρίζα (bríza), if not a related word of the Trümmersprachen nearby.
Wikipedia about the cultivation of rye: “Domesticated rye […] is absent from the archaeological record until the Bronze Age of central Europe, c. 1800–1500 BCE.” Fay Freak (talk) 20:57, 8 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/pīpaną

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Proto-Germanic. It is probable that the Germanic word for "pipe" doesn't go back to Proto-Germanic; unlike the page says, Old Norse pípa is in fact attested, but it is late and scarce. This would seem to point to a borrowing from Medieval Latin and/or Middle Low German. (It also may be worth noting that when I created *pīpaną, Proto-West Germanic didn't exist, so the only option I had was to create the gem-pro entry.) Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 05:11, 18 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

The edit history should merged into the PWG entry. --Sokkjo (talk) 15:46, 13 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

June 2022

Reconstruction:Old English/giestranmorgen

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Old English. Like *ofermorgan, this is most likely fictitious; yestermorrow is first attested as late Middle English yestermorow (in Caxton's 1481 The history of Reynard the Fox), and there's no cogent reason to think that it existed any earlier. The adduced German gestern Morgen doesn't prove anything, as it could've easily been independently formed; c.f. modern English yesterday morning). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 09:32, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Delete. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 14:21, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

September 2022

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/židъ, Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/Rimъ

Latest comment: 2 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

It is hard to find any good sources claiming these existed in Proto-Slavic, it is usually believed these were early borrowings in South Slavic and borrowed to other languages durning christianization. Etymologies explained in Żyd, Rzym, krzyż. Sławobóg (talk) 20:01, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Incidentally, there should not be a stage like "Romance *Rọ̄ma", because that is not an reconstructed form at all, and considering the time that the borrowing would have occurred, most likely we are dealing with Late Latin, 'Vulgar Latin', or however one prefers to describe it. Nicodene (talk) 22:22, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Source must have been some Romance language and it had to sound *Rọ̄ma to give Slavic *Rymъ. Sławobóg (talk) 09:48, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

1) That is exactly how the word sounded in Classical Latin. 2) Approximately when do you suppose the borrowing occured? Nicodene (talk) 12:33, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Boryś suggests 6th-7th century. Most sources I saw mention some Romance etymon reconstructed as *something and we should stick to that. Sławobóg (talk) 13:58, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

"*Rọ̄ma" is simply wrong, as it implies that the form is unattested. Needless to say, Roma [ˈroːma] is one of the most thoroughly attested Latin words in history.

For the sixth or seventh century CE, it is far too early to speak of distinct Romance languages. I would suggest mentioning 'borrowed in late antiquity' if that is necessary. Nicodene (talk) 22:06, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

I think the best solution would be saying it came from Latin Rōma "via" Late Latin or Vulgar Latin. I suppose one could add "or an early Eastern Romance language", but that does seem early. My impression is that the transition from Latin to the Romance languages was more like a number of changes running more or less in parallel at different rates and beginning and ending at different times than a single process. That would make it very hard to say exactly when one became the other. It's probably better to be vague and equivocal. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:52, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Several sources say what they say. And this topic is about Proto-Slavic lemmas, not exact etymology of the modern words. My point is these lemmas didn't exist. Possibly all christian should be removed (*krьstъ, *krьstiti, possibly *cьrky but this requires additional discussion). Sławobóg (talk) 10:37, 19 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Reconstructed Latin noun and verb forms

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Nearly all of these are entirely predictable from the lemma form and, in fact, automatically listed there. The only exceptions are *habutus, *boem, and *dire- which can be kept. I would delete the other 180 entries in Category:Latin reconstructed noun forms and Category:Latin reconstructed verb forms. Nicodene (talk) 07:37, 19 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

They're there for etymology reasons. Delete, and substitute (eg. 1st conjugation) every From [[*~āre]], infitive of [[*~ō]] with From [[*~o|*~ō, *~āre]] to avoid the redlinks. On the Latin pages, links to declined forms (including also supine and past perfect) should not link to anything (maybe by making an argument like (eg.) |nolink=1 supported by {{la-verb}}). Catonif (talk) 10:25, 19 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Update: Given that this RFD faced no opposition in 5 months, I've disabled links from the headwords of reconstructed Latin terms. All of the discussed entries are therefore orphans (excluding links from Romance etymologies, which are on their way to be removed). The only thing missing now is just actually deleting all the forms. Catonif (talk) 19:26, 8 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂ewlo-

Latest comment: 2 years ago30 comments4 people in discussion

Strewn together entry of semantically impossible words. @GabeMoore --Sokkjō (talk) 04:45, 30 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo How are these words semantically impossible? Seems like a pretty short semantic leap from a word meaning "tube" or "hollow" to go on, over thousands of years, to mean things like beehive, stomach, passage, flute, etc, not to mention of course that there's academic sources for each of them.

And I wouldn't say they're "strewn together", every word I listed as a descendant either has its own page in the academic works cited for it or is listed as a cognate in others. GabeMoore (talk) 04:54, 30 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

@GabeMoore: You think boat, beehive, hollow tube are solid cognates (**h₂ewlo- is also not a root BTW)? I'm seeing a lot of those really questionable entries you're adding, like Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/pulu- which has descendants which can't possibly be there and no PIE formations to show your work on any. --Sokkjō (talk) 05:04, 30 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo: I do actually, and so do the people who research this type of thing, whose work I'm citing. Very little of what I (or most people, I believe) do on Wiktionary is original research or speculation. Beehives are found in hollow spaces, i.e. tree hollows. Tubes are hollow. Boats are notably hollow to have buoyancy, although I even listed that olyi is only a possible derivative, as its etymology is not entirely clear. Still, Adams (2013) attributes it to *h₂ewlo-. If all these somewhat phonetically-similar words have the common theme of having a "hollow" something, whether they're tubes, beehives, passageways, stomachs, or flutes, it makes sense to reconstruct a common term for them, which is what numerous academics have done.

Also worth noting that alvus means visceral internal organs, the hull/hold of a ship, a hollow or cavity, and beehive, so I'd say that the semantic derivation there is already shown in Latin. Also compare English hole > hold (of a ship). GabeMoore (talk) 05:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

@GabeMoore: The basis of the entry is Pokorny who should always be taken with a *HUGE* grain of salt, and trying to connect words together on an abstract concept like hollow is extremely tenuous, especially without any corresponding verbs. Latin alvus (“belly; womb^[Cicero]; beehive^[Varro+]; hull (of a ship)^[Tac.]”), has also been connected to vulva (“womb”), which itself might be from *gʷelbʰ- (“womb”). Many of these words could be from different roots, if not substrate borrowings. --Sokkjō (talk) 18:51, 30 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo: Okay, but this is still your personal speculation. While Pokorny is pretty outdated nowadays, the fact remains that leading scholars in their respective fields such as Adams and Beekes have connected these words as a direct part of their work, which have become the go-to publication in these fields - whether or not Pokorny connected them first is irrelevant. You're saying that the entry should be deleted because their conclusions don't make sense to you, with no other support. The fact that several authors independently reconstructed this root is more than enough to earn it an entry. GabeMoore (talk) 05:57, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@GabeMoore: Firstly, one really has to pay attention to the publisher. Although Leiden is very highly looked upon, they're also a circle-jerk and you have to keep that in mind. Secondly, we're not beholden to any books or publications. In fact, as a project, we have our own reconstruction styles in PIE and other languages, and can decide if a reconstruction is worth an entry, or simply a mention in an etymology. --Sokkjō (talk) 06:30, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

See Wiktionary:Votes/2013-10/Reconstructions need references. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:19, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Right, doesn't this support what I did? My editing on Wiktionary goes off of the academic work for a subject, Wiktionary "isn't a place for novel ideas", as someone in that discussion said - Wikimedia sites are not primary sources. If academic authors are unanimous in the derivation for a word, one dissenting Wiktionary editor is not grounds to delete a page, that's contrary to the whole idea behind the citation-culture that defines Wiktionary and Wikimedia in general. GabeMoore (talk) 10:34, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo: We aren't "beholden" to any particular publications, but we have to use academic sources to cite our work, which is what I've been doing. Your issue with this is your own speculation, and you haven't provided any actual sources for your stance. (Although I'm fairly sure that the guidelines are that pages should be created even if there's an academic dispute, and this dispute should be marked; irrelevant either way because there isn't any academic dispute here.) The terms I listed are pretty much unanimously attributed - and not just in Leiden - to *h₂ewlo-. GabeMoore (talk) 12:23, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

"I'm fairly sure that the guidelines are that pages should be created even if there's an academic dispute": absolutely not the case. σπλήν (splḗn) comes to mind. --Sokkjō (talk) 02:05, 2 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@GabeMoore: creating IE-proto pages is a very difficult work. You should not do it until you are much more experienced. That said, the relationship of these words as inheritance from a PIE word meaning "hollow tube-like object" is universally accepted and is not just Pokorny and Leiden. Because as Skiulinamo says HeRR is an invalid root shape, people assume *h₂ew-lo- and (for Hittite) *h₂ow-li-. --Vahag (talk) 11:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vahagn Petrosyan: I'm aware that it's quite difficult, and I usually spend nearly an hour on each PIE page, reading sources and finding cognates. I'm not just "stringing together" words I think sound similar - every single term I enter in any of my PIE pages has been attributed to its root by at least one author. This is the first time (at least since when I first started editing Wiktionary in high school) when anyone's raised an issue with my PIE pages; generally I think they've been a good addition to Wiktionary. GabeMoore (talk) 12:15, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

When you're inexperienced, time does not equal quality. I'll sit on a PIE entry for weeks before publishing it sometimes and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable. Your entries make it very clear you don't understand the instructions at WT:AINE. --Sokkjō (talk) 19:01, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

I've done quite a few PIE entries in the past few months and no one else has called me out for not understanding the basic instructions on how to make them. I may have created *h₂ewlo- under the wrong lemma here, and I make errors here and there, but I really don't see anything on that page that I routinely ignore. GabeMoore (talk) 21:09, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

We don't have a team of people to check PIE entries, which is why we can't have inexperienced users creating entries. Reviewing your PIE entries, and I don't intend to be mean, but you clearly don't know what you're doing when you can't distinguish between a lemmatized noun and a root. You should try your hand at reconstructing Proto-Tocharian before embarking on PIE entries. --Sokkjō (talk) 00:25, 2 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Assuming we keep this entry, *h₂éw-l̥ ~ *h₂w-én-s might be a better reconstruction. I'm still very skeptical of the inclusion of Armenian ուղի (ułi, “road; journey; passage”) and especially Hittite 𒀀𒌑𒇷𒅖 (a-ú-li-iš /⁠aulis⁠/, “a body part”), which Kloekhorst only guesses the meaning in an attempt to connect it here, while Puhvel speculates “milt, spleen”. --Sokkjō (talk) 19:01, 1 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

I found another proposed descendant of *h₂ewlós: Old Armenian աւղ-ո- (awł-o-, “ring”). I think we can securely reconstruct *h₂ewlós (“hollow object”). The formation of this word and its relationship to the etymon of Old Armenian ուղի (ułi), Proto-Slavic *ulica and the Hittite should be investigated further. Vahag (talk) 17:51, 2 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Viredaz has connected Old Armenian աւղ (awł, “ring”) with ագ-ուցանեմ (ag-ucʻanem, “to insert into a ring”, transitive), ագ-անիմ (ag-anim, “to put on (clothes, shoes, rings)”, intransitive), and thus with the root *h₂ew- (“to put on (shoes, clothes)”) which others reconstruct as *h₃ew-. I think *h₂ew-los can be explained from that root as "hollow object into which something can be fitted". Vahag (talk) 18:20, 2 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vahagn Petrosyan: "to put on (clothes)" => "hollow object into which something can be fitted" seems rather improbable. Maybe it's related to PIE *weh₂- (“to be empty, hollow”), whence Latin vānus (“hollow, devoid”). Perhaps even a chiming root with *ḱewH- (“to hollow out”), whence Latin cavus (“hollow, excavated”). 🤷 Anyway, I'll try and clean up the entry. --Sokkjō (talk) 07:46, 4 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vahagn Petrosyan: do you think Proto-Slavic *ùlica (“passage, street”) could be borrowed from Old Armenian ուղի (ułi, “road, passage”) or vice-versa? Alternatively, both could be from *h₂éwl-ih₂ ~ *h₂ul-yéh₂-s, if I'm not mistaken. It seems more likely that they share a common root than their meanings being innovated twice. --Sokkjō (talk) 22:49, 7 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo: a borrowing between those two geographically far-apart groups is excluded. The relationship should be explained within the framework of inheritance from PIE. PS. *h₂ul-yéh₂-s would give Old Armenian **ուղջ (**ułǰ) Vahag (talk) 10:14, 8 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vahagn Petrosyan: and what would a leveled *h₂ul-i(e)h₂ render in Old Armenian? --Sokkjō (talk) 21:33, 8 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo: it would give *ուլ (*ul). Vahag (talk) 07:05, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vahagn Petrosyan: մայրի (mayri) seems to support at least some cases of PIE -yeh₂- > Armenian -i. How would you derive ուղի (ułi)? --Sokkjō (talk) 07:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

PIE *y becomes Armenian ǰ when preceded by *l, so մայրի (mayri) is not comparable. The formation of ուղի (ułi) is unexplained. The -ի (-i) is not a problem, it can be an inner-Armenian addition. The ł instead of l is a problem: people assume a formation containing PIE *n, possibly paralleling Ancient Greek αὐλών (aulṓn), but this is uncertain. Vahag (talk) 07:53, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vahagn Petrosyan: Forgive me, as I'm no expert in Armenian, but what I was referring to with my example was a case of, as Martirosyan refers to it, "metathesis or y-epenthesis", i.e. *h₂el-yo- > *aly > ayl ~ ayɫ. --Sokkjō (talk) 04:51, 10 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

OK, I've rescued the entry and moved it to Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂ewlós. --Sokkjō (talk) 23:05, 12 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the great work. By the way, Pokorny's *awlós probably should not be presented as an alternative reconstruction. It is a pre-laryngeal notation of the same thing as *h₂ewlós. Vahag (talk) 07:25, 13 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Vahagn Petrosyan: Hah, thanks. I beat you to *awlós. The school of "*a in PIE doesn't exist" is probably bunk and onomatopoeic roots with *a is probably a thing. --Sokkjō (talk) 07:45, 14 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

October 2022

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/énu

Latest comment: 6 months ago6 comments3 people in discussion

The Tocharian just requires any phoneme between the nasal and dental and the Indo-Iranian could be secondary. Both entries at Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂en-. --Sokkjō (talk) 23:40, 3 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Sidenote: @GabeMoore, it's not recommended to even use {{R:ine:LIPP}} as a source; his work is that problematic. --Sokkjō (talk) 00:28, 4 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Keep. I disagree that LIPP is problematic. I agree though that Tocharian is a poor match, better off at with on, ἀνά (aná), etc. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 17:37, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

No surprise there. Regardless, presuming an entry at RC:Proto-Indo-European/h₂en- is enough supposition. -- Sokkjō 18:50, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

No consensus. No further action. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 15:47, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Improper closing of an RDF. -- Sokkjō 00:53, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/feþlą

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Proto-Germanic. This shows only one descendant fedelgold (“gold-leaf”); however the OHG word has an alternative form which is pfedelgold which would mean the PGmc term would have an intial p- not f-. Leasnam (talk) 06:35, 13 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Latin/werra

Latest comment: 1 year ago18 comments5 people in discussion

Extra note: this should preferably be history-merged to guerra per the discussion below. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:44, 29 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

This has some similarities to Reconstruction:Latin/circa above, which I don't have strong feelings about, but it strikes me that the "Keep" argument is much less tenable in this case. First, guerra/werra is one of the most frequently used novelties in Medieval Latin, attested copiously across a wide area down to the early modern era (the citations in DMLBS go up to 1545) and as a term of art in medieval law, werra ending up as the standard spelling in English Latin, guerra on the Continent. So unfortunately this series of edits by Nicodene labelling it non-standard, sporadic, and early medieval was incorrect. I've largely reverted them (and added some quotations).

But, maybe more importantly, we have the following observation by Laury Sarti, Perceiving War and the Military in Early Christian Gaul (ca. 400–700 AD) [11]: "[The Frankish Germanic idiom's] vocabulary, as far as it can be reconstructed, however does not contain a synonym for the Roman term bellum to refer to warfare. The word that comes closest is werra. This term only gained this specific meaning in the course of the Merovingian Age, at the earliest." (Note that Frankish *werru does not mean "war".)

This means that the term's acquisition of its dominant Latin meaning is virtually coincident with its appearance in the sources (9th century at the latest per Niermeyer). I'm generally more conversant/interested in historical work with Medieval Latin documents than the diachronic linguistics, but it seems to me, at least, to make little sense then to distinguish a reconstructed Vulgar Latin entry from the well-attested Medieval Latin one. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:42, 27 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi Al-Muqanna. I am in favour of removing this 'reconstructed' entry and moving its contents to the attested entry. 'Ninth century at the latest' is certainly early enough for a first attestation.

I'm not convinced that guerra or werra can really be considered standard, since the literary Latin term, the one regarded as most 'correct', remained bellum throughout the Medieval Ages, to the best of my knowledge. That is, it did not stop being used, only to be revived later. But if a citation can be found that does directly support the notion of guerra/werra becoming the standard word for 'war' in literary Latin, at least temporarily, I'd have no further objection. Nicodene (talk) 12:56, 27 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Nicodene. Bellum was in use as well, of course, but of the two sources I've added, one is a monastic chronicle and the other is a formal treaty document. We also have other learned sources like Baldus de Ubaldis, one of the most prominent late medieval jurists, ad Digest 14.2.2 " […] qui tempore guerrae propter defensionem vadunt […] " (cited here, but also just search guerra in that book). That seems fairly standard to me. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:07, 27 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Al-Muqanna I see- that is a higher degree of acceptance than I'd expected. Perhaps we can simply add a note such as 'coexisted during the Middle Ages with the Classical equivalent bellum before being eliminated during the Renaissance'. Nicodene (talk) 15:22, 27 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't mind that usage note, though it might be redundant? Given the humanist reformation of Latin-writing during the Renaissance I don't think there should be any expectation that novel terms from Medieval Latin will be carried over into New Latin; at least I would (and do) treat it as "opt-in" and mark it as "Medieval Latin, New Latin" if it is. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:55, 27 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, true. Nicodene (talk) 23:29, 27 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

If this page is going to be moved to the mainspace, it needs to be moved, not deleted. --Sokkjō (talk) 01:54, 29 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Since a page already exists at the target it cannot be moved (werra, main entry: guerra). Content-wise, thanks to Nicodene's work, everything has already been moved except the PItWRom pronunciation (which is potentially problematic given the timeframe of semantic evolution and the loan to Latin). If the problem is preserving attributions the relevant procedure would be a history merge, though there doesn't seem to be a process for those on WT and a talk page note should also be sufficient. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:20, 29 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

There's no process for history merges, but we certainly do them here. It's been a while since I've done one, but I know how to do them. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:33, 29 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Nice, will add a note to the top about it in that case. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:44, 29 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Nicodene just going ahead and deleting an RFD page without giving people time to comment first is really bad form. Do you also plan on edit-waring me about it? --Sokkjō (talk) 07:27, 30 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo No, I didn't 'delete the page' (?), I moved its now-redundant content and left a link. And no, you can't 'move' the reconstruction page when the mainspace already has the corresponding entry, which you should have seen, considering that I both linked it and referred to it in the RFD comment box.

The 'reconstructed' page is inevitably going to be deleted, considering that the term is extensively attested (and early on), even in that exact spelling. If you want to stubbornly edit-war away my edit to the page, and stalk through my profile, have at it. Nicodene (talk) 12:45, 30 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Nicodene You neglected to read the above. We have the ability to merge revision histories. --Sokkjō (talk) 23:44, 30 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Sokkjō You neglected to re-read your own comment where you demanded that the page be moved. And falsely claimed I deleted it. Nicodene (talk) 23:51, 30 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Conclude this. The Latin word is first attested 858 CE (borrowed from Romance obviously) but the descendants are Italo-Western. So, keep the reconstruction page and add a Medieval Latin descendant. Kwékwlos (talk) 11:13, 7 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Kwékwlos: It's not obvious at all, and all the sources I can find treat its use as continuous, not a re-borrowing: the FEW treats it as a Merovingian borrowing, Strecker's Introduction to Medieval Latin lists werra as a typical example of Medieval Latin originating in Merovingian usage (p. 31), the more recent Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide likewise lists werra as a Latin term borrowed in the Merovingian era. Seems far more likely to me that the Carolingian example from 858 is continuous with earlier Merovingian usage and not a novel re-borrowing. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:51, 7 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

The ninth century is quite early in any case and a written <werra> can be taken simply as the orthographic representation of the popular term, rather than a borrowing from Romance into Latin (which had only just barely begun to be distinguished). Nicodene (talk) 12:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

November 2022

Reconstruction:Proto-Semitic/ʔabay-

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Proto-Semitic. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 19:01, 2 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Fenakhay: This reconstruction is based on non-standard meanings of أَبَى (ʔabā), which are copiously shown in Landsberg and Nöldeke to which I have updated the Arabic entry, however the latter author prefers بَغَى (baḡā) as their origin, and on my first glance the Akkadian is also related rather to this, as also our Assyriologist Profes.I. thinks, and with this alone the Indo-European relations fall away. For obscure أَبَّ (ʔabba, “to prepare etc.”) I point to theories at أُهْبَة (ʔuhba), of which root it can be assimilated. The present Proto-Semitic page should be moved to Proto-West Semitic *ʔabay-. Fay Freak (talk) 21:13, 2 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

What do people think of the proposed PIE etymology? It does have a source, but the meanings in PIE and Proto-Semitic are pretty different, even if you can posit "love" as an intermediate meaning or something. Also, it's one of only two entries in Category:Proto-Semitic terms derived from Proto-Indo-European. 98.170.164.88 22:39, 2 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Chronologically and formally, it would make most sense (I rate the chances higher) to assume Semitic having borrowed later, perhaps from an an unattested Old Iranian descendant of the Proto-Indo European into the oldest West Semitic languages, there being other basic borrowings like 𐡆𐡌𐡍𐡀 (zmnʾ, “time”), maybe dying it out in the Iranian branch of Indo-European unlike the Indian one owing to its vulgarity. In any case it remains that it is better to move the entry to Proto-West Semitic, as I seem to have not explicitly enough suggested, @ZomBear, Fenakhay, as its presence in there is yet somewhat better evidenced for it than for Proto-Semitic, even if we decide that it is not enough either; the entry as Proto-West Semitic seems to be quite bearable for me though now, giving an etymology to various Semitic words including Ethiosemitic ones and a borrowing in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Fay Freak (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/biggō

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Proto-West Germanic *biggō (“piglet”). Old Dutch has figga, fig, and Middle Dutch vigge, vigghe, but forms with b- do not appear till almost Modern times, and may be due to conflation of the aforementioned and Middle Dutch bagge. If this is the case, perhaps the reconstruction can be moved to the Alternative form listed on the entry; but that doesn't explain the Low German and Frisian terms, they may be simply borrowings from the Dutch. 06:36, 29 October 2022 (UTC) Leasnam (talk) 03:51, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

December 2022

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ḱóymos

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

This should be either deleted or moved to *tḱóymos (see *tḱey-). Likely the only term that belongs to this root is Greek κοιμάω (koimáō). @Sausage Link of High Rule, Florian Blaschke. --Sokkjō (talk) 00:08, 3 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

Can you offer some evidence for this, or even the existence of a root *tḱóymos? --Lambiam 18:11, 4 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

For what it's worth, Kroonen and Derksen support the derivation from *ḱey-, and likewise Matasović, while not as explicit, reconstructs an original anlaut *ḱ- rather than *tḱ-, so he doesn't seem to think of *tḱey-, either. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:29, 5 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/in walą fallaną

Latest comment: 6 months ago7 comments4 people in discussion

Proto-Germanic + the 2 presumed descendants (Old English and Old Norse). SoP. Also, very likely calqued between the two languages, or formed on similar model. Leasnam (talk) 18:13, 18 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

Also, the PGmc translates as "fall into the corpse/battlefield" (which doesn't make much sense). The Old Norse is "fall into the dead/slain", the Old English as "fall into the slain", which do make sense Leasnam (talk) 18:25, 18 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

Delete all three. --Sokkjō (talk) 04:08, 19 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Leasnam. ~~Delete~~. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Keep all three. I've changed my view. I don't see why this is necessarily calqued, compare *tō banini werþaną and the like. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 16:01, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Delete the Proto-Germanic, but keep the Old English and Old Norse phrases, as they are idiomatic. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:23, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I think you're right. I was under the impression that valr simply meant battle and val could be dative. Do a-stems always have -i in the dative in Old Norse (unlike Icelandic)? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 17:54, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

January 2023

Reconstruction:Proto-Brythonic/llew

Latest comment: 1 year ago23 comments8 people in discussion

Proto-Brythonic.

A UtherPendrogn creation. @M.Aurelius.Viator has questioned this on the grounds that it is a modern Welsh spelling and that Proto-Brythonic would have been too early for this Roman borrowing to have entered the language at that stage. I don't deal with Celtic languages myself, so I'm bringing it here. Also pinging @Mahagaja. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:44, 13 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Schrijver, given as a citation, has the Brythonic as *lewū [12]. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:47, 13 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

It looks fine to me. Considering the enormous number of Latin loanwords in Proto-Brythonic, I have no idea why anyone would think it was too early. As for the spelling, Schrijver follows different conventions than we do. He shows the final syllables as they were in Proto-Celtic, while we show the latest Proto-Brythonic form after final syllables were lost. We also show the fortition of l and r in initial position, rendering them as ll and rr (see WT:ACEL-BRY). This spelling is entirely in keeping with our conventions for Proto-Brythonic. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:07, 13 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

You (and Wiktionary as a whole) are using the wrong terminology. Proto-Brittonic would be the ancestor of Brittonic - the ancient Celtic language of Britain attested from the 4th century BC through the mid-6th century AD, after which it transitioned into Neo-Brittonic. The time period of Proto-Brittonic would be somewhere between the break-up of Proto-Celtic (in the early Iron Age) and the 4th century BC. This is way before Rome conquered Britain and British speakers borrowed this word for lion, so it makes no sense to speak of "Proto-Brittonic" *lewu:. As the word (along with most other Latin loans) was borrowed during the Roman era in Britain (1st century through early 5th century AD) t would properly be Brittonic, not Proto-Brittonic. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 04:34, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

> We also show the fortition of l and r in initial position, rendering them as ll and rr.

This is completely wrong for Brittonic (no less Proto-Brittonic)! This sound change only occurred in medieval Welsh. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 04:36, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

It was discussed here: Wiktionary_talk:About_Proto-Brythonic#Fortis_l_and_r. Note that the spelling "ll" in the context of Wiktionary's Proto-Brythonic transcriptions isn't supposed to be the sound of modern Welsh <ll> [ɬ]: rather, it's supposed to represent a "fortis" [l͈] as opposed to extra-short [l̆]; likewise, [r͈] and [r̆] are represented as <rr> and <r>. The argument given, which seems sound, is that reconstructing the loss of final vowels to Proto-Brythonic requires the liquids to have already developed some kind of contrast, since mutation is based on the historical presence of final vowels. Unless you argue that Proto-Brythonic did still have final vowels, or that the mutation of these consonants in Welsh is an innovation introduced only by analogy to other consonant alternations, the chronology seems to require this.--Urszag (talk) 04:48, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, it's just wrong and not a single professional Celticist uses such spellings! And, once again, you guys are using completely incorrect terminology! When you say "Proto-Brythonic" you actually mean to say "Neo-Brittonic" - i.e., the new stage of the British Celtic languages that starts around the middle of the 6th century AD, when old Brittonic final syllables were now completely gone via apocope and the internal compound vowel was lost or greatly weakened via syncope. Proto-Brittonic - which is not a term that is typically used by Celticists - would be the immediate ancestor of Brittonic (1st millennium BC through the mid-6th century AD) and daughter language of Proto-Celtic (2nd millennium BC). How could so many of you here get this basic terminology so wrong?? It's so infuriating! M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 17:53, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

"The mutation of these consonants in Welsh is an innovation introduced only by analogy to other consonant alternations" may indeed be the case; David Stifter posits this exact scenario for Old Irish's "un-"lenited l, r, and n. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:21, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

(Proto-Brittonic/Brythonic, like other proto-languages, is the common ancestor of the Brythonic languages, i.e. the phase up to the ~6th century AD; Wiktionary's terminology is perfectly accurate. It does not mean "the ancestor of the Brythonic language", singular, any more than Proto-Indo-European is the ancestor of some other language called Indo-European. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 04:56, 14 January 2023 (UTC))Reply

You don't know what you are talking about - this is not the terminology used by any professional Celticist today! The language tree for the British Celtic languages is as follows:

Proto-Indo-European > Western Indo-European > Italo-Celtic > Proto-Celtic > Common Insular Celtic > Proto-Brittonic (which not a commonly used term!) > Brittonic > Neo-Brittonic (also called Common Archaic Neo-Brittonic) > Old Welsh/Cornish/Breton/Cumbric > Middle Welsh/Cornish/Breton > Modern Welsh/Cornish/Breton. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 18:01, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

It's pretty easy to find in recent literature actually. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:59, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

I have been a student of Celtic historical linguists going on 40 years now - numerous well known scholars in the field have consulted with me on various linguistic problems and cited/thanked me in their papers. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 21:52, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Mahagaja, Urszag are absolutely correct on all points. This entry looks fine to me. --Sokkjō (talk) 20:32, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

No mainstream Indo-Europeanists or Celticists believe in "Western Indo-European" or "Italo-Celtic" as actual nodes in a family tree; they're just polyphyletic regional groupings. There is no point whatsoever in reconstructing "Proto-Brittonic", "Brittonic", and "Neo-Brittonic" as separate protolanguages since they all have the same attested descendants. The latest stage of the language ancestral to the Brythonic languages is just barely attested, which is why we do have a few Proto-Brythonic lemmas that are not reconstructions. Other scholars might prefer to use a different name for an attested language, but we have chosen not to. (Likewise for Proto-Norse, which also has a few attested terms.) —Mahāgaja · talk 20:47, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

I don’t know one example of anyone using the term “Proto-Brythonic”, common terminology should be used as is stated above, Proto-Celtic > Proto-insular-Celtic > Brittonic > Neo-Brittonic. Adopting this approach would be less confusing to people researching the subject and bring Wiktionary closer with other works on the subject. The arguement of not using separate terminology because they have the same attested descendents is complete nonsense, by that logic Old, Middle and Modern Welsh should not have separate terminologies. The sheer number of phonological, morphological and grammatical changes during the time between the 1st and 6th centuries would have rendered the language unrecognisable to speakers at either end and therefore I think its completely justified using separate terminologies for the respective eras.

My opinion on transcribing Neo-Brittonic is to use spelling conventions from earliest attested Medieval Brittonic languages look at the most common shared spellings and the rest decide as a collective which is best to use, we could obviously have an IPA transcription next to the chosen orthography. Silurhys (talk) 18:49, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

What the heck are you talking about? Google Scholar Google Books Back to the subreddit from whence you came! -- Sokkjō (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

The term isn't commonly used - but if you even bothered to read the links you shared (or even understood what they are saying!) you would realize that they are using the term to refer to the ancestor of Brittonic (i.e., a language that pre-dates the earliest attestation of Brittonic in the 4th century BC), not Wiktionary's idiosyncratic (and idiotic) use of the term to refer to the early medieval, immediate ancestor of Welsh/Cornish/Breton - a term that should properly be Neo-Brittonic (or, if you insist on being Welsh-centric), Neo-Brythonic. This is the standard among all Celticists today. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 21:58, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

The only two people here who have a clue what they are talking about is @M.Aurelius.Viator and @Mellohi!, you should certainly take guidance from them. They are clearly knowledgeable in up to date terminology and obviously have a much better understanding of Celtic Historcal Linguistics in general than the rest of you here. At the end of the day, Wiktionary isn’t about your ego, it’s about presenting up to date, academic information in the best way possible. It seems clear to me that there is a major lack of care, ignorance and refusal to learn here. Take the Uindorix entry for example, it has been put under Proto-Celtic when it clearly does not belong there and the answer to trying to fix the issue is essentially “stop being pedantic”. It’s not pedantic, there is nothing wrong with a high level of detail, it increases the quality of the entries and will be much better for other people who come to Wiktionary for information in the subject. It seems to me, Celtic is a complete mess on Wiktionary at the moment. Silurhys (talk) 22:32, 16 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Mahagaja's point was strictly about reconstructing them as proto-languages. A proto-language is a reconstruction based on the comparative method. The stages of Welsh are all attested- we don't need to reconstruct them.

If you only have one set of data, how can you reconstruct multiple stages? It doesn't matter how different they had to have been, you have no way to even guess at how many there were, or their relative chronology. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

We do have attestation from several periods though? We have an abundance of names attested (place, personal, tribal etc.) from different periods, we have inscriptions on gravestones, boundary markers, Christian monuments and the bath defixiones (which granted is possible it’s Gaulish but there is no evidence either way). Of course we have an idea of the scale of sound change and a relative chronology , Jackson (Language and History in Early Britain) particularly has done loads of work on chronology (and sound change) and McCone (A a relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change), Schrijver (Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology) has done massive amounts on sound change, as have countless others. Silurhys (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Once again, the issue is that Wiktionary is using completely wrong terminology. Proto-Brittonic (or Proto-Brythonic, if you insist on using a Cambro-centric term) would be a daughter branch of Proto-Celtic and the immediate ancestor of Brittonic - the ancient Celtic language of Britain which is attested from the 3rd century BC and lasted until the mid-6th century AD, after which Celticists refer to its new form (post-apocope, post-syncope, et al.) as Neo-Brittonic. Wiktionary is using Proto-Brythonic where they should actually be using the term Neo-Brittonic, because all the "Proto-Brythonic" reconstructed forms they are using show apocope - something that didn't occur in Brittonic languages until at least the late Roman era and was not complete until the mid-6th century (using Kenneth Jackson's dating, which is still the standard). As Silurhys states, we have plenty of onomastic evidence and even some limited inscriptional evidence for Brittonic and for Archaic Neo-Brittonic (mid 6th through 8th century AD). The next stage in the British Celtic languages is the break up into separate daughter branches, Old Welsh, Old Cornish, Old Breton, and Cumbric, by the early 9th century AD. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 20:17, 16 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

By the way, I see a lot of vague argument from authority without any details- basically name dropping without the names. The entry in question has references- do you? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Mahāgaja Do you have any background in Celtic historical linguistics?? Because you are saying absolutely ridiculous things! Italo-Celtic is absolutely recognized as a node in a family tree and your insistence that Wiktionary stick to the completely inaccurate term "Proto-Brythonic" for what is properly (Archaic) Neo-Brittonic/Brythonic (the preferred term among all Celticists today for early medieval, immediate ancestor of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton) is just bizarre. I don't even understand the motivation behind it! The term is wrong and is used by no one outside of Wiktionary to refer to Neo-Brittonic. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 22:06, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/pinti

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Seeing as #p is exceedingly rare in Germanic, most likely pointing to borrowing, I added this etymology. @Leasnam doesn't quite agree, so I'm creating an {{rfv}} to get other editor's thoughts. @Mnemosientje? -- Sokkjō (talk) 06:09, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo I fail to see the point of this. Regardless of the etymology, the verification of the entry is based on the descendants, not the etymology. Perhaps you wanted to start a discussion at Etymology Scriptorium instead (?) Leasnam (talk) 14:09, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

The point is to have a conversation instead of an editwar. --Sokkjō (talk) 23:39, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

My point is that this and any conversation we may have needs to be at the Etymology Scriptorium, not here. Leasnam (talk) 03:42, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

RFD kept, old Victar-Leasnam slapfight that did not end in any kind of consensus.

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/pendul

Latest comment: 1 year ago9 comments2 people in discussion

Proto-West Germanic. Request verification of the reconstruction. Multiple issues: phonetically, it doesn't make sense. Alternative forms appear fabricated as adhoc guesswork. The OHG pfendel (“tail”) looks like a derivative of an early borrowing of Latin pendulus (“hanging”). The OE is clearly a diminutive of *pint, a word well attested in other early Germanic languages with the same meaning, "penis" (see *pinti). I will concede the possibility that this group of words (which includes *pinn) may be borrowed from Latin, but it's not certain. However, this doesn't explain other apparently related terms in Germanic showing ablaut (*pundijan, *panni, etc. - granted, these are not sure reconstructions in themselves either). I think "Uncertain" is adequate for all. Leasnam (talk) 18:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Leasnam: {{R:goh:EWA|pfendil*|pages=1396-1397|vol=6}} agrees with it being in formation borrowed from ML. pendulum, however the meaning was influenced by pēniculus. See the current etymology.The existence of OHG pfendil makes OE pintel a cognate. -- Sokkjō (talk) 21:22, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

How does pintel come from *pendul pendulum ? I would expect Old English pendol. Leasnam (talk) 21:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Granted, the -t- is unexpected, but Latin borrowings with -Vl- were almost regularly altered to -il- (compare *skutilā) triggering i-umlaut. That, and Latin often vacillated e ~ i. -- Sokkjō (talk) 23:39, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

It's not unexpected. It's incorrect: pintel does not come from pendulum Leasnam (talk) 01:56, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Leasnam: 1. Unexplained #p pointing to a borrowing, 2. nearly identical Latin term in both form and meaning, 3. OHG cognate backed up by sources. All you're bringing to the table is an unsourced, outdated, and dubious #b PIE root, and you're hinging its superiority on a -t- instead of a -d-? My guy, you're gonna really hate Old English flet ~ fled ~ flett (“dwelling”). --Sokkjō (talk) 03:27, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

The OHG is not a cognate. I would refer you to remember what a cognate is (you should know this). And no, I know about fled, it's already listed at flett. Leasnam (talk) 03:40, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

You've addressed none of my points. --Sokkjō (talk) 03:42, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

I know :) Leasnam (talk) 03:43, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

RFD kept, old Victar-Leasnam slapfight that did not end in any kind of consensus.

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/gʰer-

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Dumping ground of an entry, full of unsourced reconstructions. -- Sokkjō (talk) 07:30, 19 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

what do you mean by "unsourced"? there are sources on the page --Ioe bidome (talk) 22:02, 17 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

Keep. Source or not, most of the etymologies are demonstrable with the comparative method. Saph668 (talk) 16:27, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Balto-Slavic/maréitei, Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/moréyeti

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Forged PBS word and PIE word made up on it. There and no Baltic descendants and PBS word is based on false etymology of PS *moriti. Sławobóg (talk) 13:25, 19 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Keep. Not sure what's wrong with the etymology. Checks out at the PIE and PBS levels, though I'm not too familiar with Slavic sound laws. Claiming that it doesn't exist in Proto-Indo-European is also disregarding the Indo-Iranian descendants. -saph 🍏 13:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Sławobóg LIV does reconstruct the PIE term, although with a question mark (I assume this means it might also be a later formation). Exarchus (talk) 10:07, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/pundijaną

Latest comment: 22 hours ago5 comments4 people in discussion

@DerRudymeister, I'm having trouble seeing the semantic connection between ON pynda (“to torture”) and PWG *pundijan (“to enclose”). Perhaps instead the ON is related to PWG *pīnōn (“to torture”), *pīnā (“torment, pain”), itself borrowed from Latin poena (“punishment”), pūniō (“to punish”) (maybe a vulgar form of poenās dō?) -- Sokkjō (talk) 08:03, 28 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

And @Leasnam, you say ON pynda (“to torture”) is borrowed from OE *pyndan (“to enclose”)? -- Sokkjō (talk) 09:07, 28 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Skiulinamo, to me it seem that the ON verb has a sense of 'forcing' or 'compelling' which it shares with west-germanic, although the modern icelandic exclusively means 'to torture'. I'm okay with removing the proto-germanic entry. But we should state that the west-germanic entry has a possible cognate in Old Norse pynda. --DerRudymeister (talk) 10:57, 28 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Old Norse pynda (“to compel by brute force, extort”) is a loanword from Old English ġepynda (“to impound, lock up”). Leasnam (talk) 17:26, 28 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

RFD deleted. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 19:59, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

[1] Giesecke, Thomas et al. (2006 September 13) “Towards an understanding of the Holocene distribution of Fagus sylvatica L.”, in Journal of Biogeography, volume 34, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 118-131

[2] Donatella, Magri et al. (2006 May 17) “A new scenario for the Quaternary history of European beech populations: palaeobotanical evidence and genetic consequences”, in New Phytologist‎^[1], volume 171, number 1, →ISSN, pages 199-221

[3] Magri, Donatella (2007 November 2) “Patterns of post-glacial spread and the extent of glacial refugia of European beech (Fagus sylvatica)”, in Journal of Biogeography‎^[2], volume 35, numbers 1365-2699, →ISSN, pages 450-463

[4] Hrivnák, Matúš et al. (2023 December 5) “Are there hybrid zones in Fagus sylvatica L. sensu lato?”, in European Journal of Forest Research‎^[3], volume 143, →ISSN, pages 451-464

[5] Hannon, Gina E. et al. (2024 March 14) “The history of Fagus sylvatica at its northern limit in Vendsyssel, Denmark”, in The Holocene‎^[4], →ISSN

[6] Rodríguez-Varela, Ricardo et al. (2023 January 5) “The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present”, in Cell‎^[5], volume 186, number 1, →ISSN, pages 32-46

[7] "unfortunately we do not know exactly what this word means." [Katherine McDonald], "eituns, as if Lat. *ītōnēs, may be formally explained in various ways" [Carl D. Buck], "[...] still contested. Most likely this is a nominative plural form, perhaps present participle, of the verb *ey- "go"; cf. Untermann 2000, p. 230." [Karin Tikkanen], "eksuk amvíanud eítuns, translated as ‘from this area go to’" [Tanya K. Henderson, cites Buck], ‚Vereidigte‘ > ‚Rekruten‘ [A. L. Prosdocimi apud EWAhd], and de Vaan "eo" does not mention it.

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Wiktionary Request pages (edit) see also: discussions
Requests for cleanup add new request \| history \| archives Cleanup requests, questions and discussions.	Requests for verification English add new request \| history CJK add new request \| history Italic add new request \| history Non-English (all other languages) add new request \| history Requests for verification in the form of durably-archived attestations conveying the meaning of the term in question.	Requests for deletion English add new request \| history CJK add new request \| history Italic add new request \| history Reconstruction add new request \| history Non-English (all other languages) add new request \| history Requests for deletion of pages in the main and Reconstruction namespace due to policy violations; also for undeletion requests.	Requests for deletion/Others add new request \| history Requests for deletion and undeletion of pages in other (not the main) namespaces, such as categories, appendices and templates.
Requests for moves, mergers and splits add new request \| history \| archives Moves, mergers and splits; requests listings, questions and discussions.			Language treatment requests add new request \| history Requests for changes to Wiktionary's language treatment practices, including renames, merges and splits.
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Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Reconstruction

May 2020

April 2020

July 2020

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/bʰeh₂ǵos, Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/bazъ

References

August 2020

November 2020

Notes

December 2020

February 2021

March 2021

April 2021

May 2021

June 2021

Reconstructed Latin

August 2021

April 2022

May 2022

June 2022

September 2022

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/židъ, Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/Rimъ

Reconstructed Latin noun and verb forms

October 2022

November 2022

December 2022

January 2023

Reconstruction:Proto-Balto-Slavic/maréitei, Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/moréyeti