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> 1a. Are there satem languages that didn't lose the /n/ in their word for 100? the /n/ in the word for "hundred" in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was a vocalic na

by danans 4y ago

> 1a. Are there satem languages that didn't lose the /n/ in their word for 100? the /n/ in the word for "hundred" in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was a vocalic nasal /m̥/, and is reconstructed as *ḱm̥tóm. PIE Sanskrit Old Persian Latin English --- -------- ----------- ----- ------- \*ḱm̥tóm śatám satem centum "hundred" In Indo-European vowel gradation, this is known as the zero-grade form [1], and its phonetic realization evolved differently in daughter languages. /m̥/ became the -en' in Latin "centum" (the /n/ is due to assimilation with the following /t/, and "a" (schwa) in Sanskrit "śatám" (Old Persian "satem") Furthermore, this transformation occurred in all instances of the zero-grade vocalic nasal, regardless of whether it is adjacent to a PIE *ḱ. For another example, PIE *gʷmsḱeti ("goes/goeth") becomes Sanskrit "gacchati". Notice that in this case, the /m̥/ transforms to "a", just like in *ḱm̥tóm -> śatám, but here after *gʷ. This demonstrates that the transformation is independent of whether the preceding velar sound is palatalized or labialized. The original nasal /m/ is however retained in other forms of this Sanskrit verb, like its root form "gam-" (PIE: *gʷem-) which is in the lengthened grade [2]. > 1b. Are there centum languages that merged k into ḱ rather than the other way around? None that I'm aware of, but happy to learn of an example. > Why does the geography of Tocharian matter to the hypothesis that centum / satem reflects an early split between "proto-centum" and "proto-satem"? People move; You're right that geography isn't deterministic, especially as it pertains to language, and Indo European has been a very mobile language family. That said, most of the centum languages to this day are western languages and most of the satem are eastern. The big exceptions are Slavic (satem), Mittani (satem), and Tocharian (centum). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_ablaut#Zero_grade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_ablaut#Zero_grad... 2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%9B%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BF https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%8D%E...

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> This demonstrates that the transformation is independent of whether the preceding velar sound is palatalized or labialized. But that's not really what I was asking for. The claim was that (0) we used to think the centum/satem split reflected a single division in some ancestral language, but (1) now we have evidence that it actually reflects several similar independent innovations. So I was trying to ask whether (for example) the loss of the first nasal in a satem-side word for 100 is independent of whether the same sound is lost in other satem languages, not whether it's lost independent of a particular phonetic context within the same language. The idea would be that if all the satem languages feature the same set of changes, that's probably just one split. We can provide an example from the centum side; Latin (and English) preserve the nasal (ceNtum / huNdred) but Greek does not (heka_ton). But that's not enough to say that Hellenic centumized independently of Italic and Germanic; perhaps they all centumized together and then Greek's N was independently lost. I still don't understand why Tocharian being centum in the east would be considered to contradict the theory that the centum/satem split was one ancestral innovation as opposed to many independent innovations. bradrn explicitly links these two concepts, and so does wikipedia: > It is no longer thought that the Proto-Indo-European language split first into centum and satem branches from which all the centum and all the satem languages, respectively, would have derived. Such a division is made particularly unlikely by the discovery that while the satem group lies generally to the east and the centum group to the west, the most eastward of the known IE language branches, Tocharian, is centum. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum_and_satem_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum_and_satem_languages ) But what's the connection? That looks like an unrelated fact to me.
- danans 4y ago
  > I still don't understand why Tocharian being centum in the east would be considered to contradict the theory that the centum/satem split was one ancestral innovation as opposed to many independent innovations. The way I understand it is that Tocharian was an early branch from PIE (reflected partly in its grammatical divergence from it's relatives) that preserved the original centum pronunciation, and that the centum/satem split we refer to today came later. I'm not sure if the other commenter meant it in that way, though.
- danans 4y ago
  I found this Quora post on the topic of the centum/satem split interesting, and it goes far further than I had considered, and is perhaps what the other commenter was referring to: https://www.quora.com/What-are-satem-and-centum-languages https://www.quora.com/What-are-satem-and-centum-languages One thing it suggests is that the simple branching + isolation model of language evolution is incomplete and that areal changes can be shared among co-located languages. It proposes the idea (sort of like my understanding) that "centum" or a form thereof was the initial state, and that satemization might be a later innovation in a particular area that spread over a subset of the languages before they spread.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > One thing it suggests is that the simple branching + isolation model of language evolution is incomplete and that areal changes can be shared among co-located languages. Yes, this is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_model . That was a very interesting post, and it does mention Tocharian as a problem for the theory of a centum/satem split, but it doesn't really discuss why it would be a problem other than to say that it could be easily resolved. The argument really seems to revolve around Hittite.

by danans 4y ago

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> This demonstrates that the transformation is independent of whether the preceding velar sound is palatalized or labialized. But that's not really what I was asking for. The claim was that (0) we used to think the centum/satem split reflected a single division in some ancestral language, but (1) now we have evidence that it actually reflects several similar independent innovations. So I was trying to ask whether (for example) the loss of the first nasal in a satem-side word for 100 is independent of whether the same sound is lost in other satem languages, not whether it's lost independent of a particular phonetic context within the same language. The idea would be that if all the satem languages feature the same set of changes, that's probably just one split. We can provide an example from the centum side; Latin (and English) preserve the nasal (ceNtum / huNdred) but Greek does not (heka_ton). But that's not enough to say that Hellenic centumized independently of Italic and Germanic; perhaps they all centumized together and then Greek's N was independently lost. I still don't understand why Tocharian being centum in the east would be considered to contradict the theory that the centum/satem split was one ancestral innovation as opposed to many independent innovations. bradrn explicitly links these two concepts, and so does wikipedia: > It is no longer thought that the Proto-Indo-European language split first into centum and satem branches from which all the centum and all the satem languages, respectively, would have derived. Such a division is made particularly unlikely by the discovery that while the satem group lies generally to the east and the centum group to the west, the most eastward of the known IE language branches, Tocharian, is centum. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum_and_satem_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum_and_satem_languages ) But what's the connection? That looks like an unrelated fact to me.

danans 4y ago
> I still don't understand why Tocharian being centum in the east would be considered to contradict the theory that the centum/satem split was one ancestral innovation as opposed to many independent innovations. The way I understand it is that Tocharian was an early branch from PIE (reflected partly in its grammatical divergence from it's relatives) that preserved the original centum pronunciation, and that the centum/satem split we refer to today came later. I'm not sure if the other commenter meant it in that way, though.
danans 4y ago
I found this Quora post on the topic of the centum/satem split interesting, and it goes far further than I had considered, and is perhaps what the other commenter was referring to: https://www.quora.com/What-are-satem-and-centum-languages https://www.quora.com/What-are-satem-and-centum-languages One thing it suggests is that the simple branching + isolation model of language evolution is incomplete and that areal changes can be shared among co-located languages. It proposes the idea (sort of like my understanding) that "centum" or a form thereof was the initial state, and that satemization might be a later innovation in a particular area that spread over a subset of the languages before they spread.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > One thing it suggests is that the simple branching + isolation model of language evolution is incomplete and that areal changes can be shared among co-located languages. Yes, this is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_model . That was a very interesting post, and it does mention Tocharian as a problem for the theory of a centum/satem split, but it doesn't really discuss why it would be a problem other than to say that it could be easily resolved. The argument really seems to revolve around Hittite.