Talk:List of Proto-Indo-European roots/Archive 1

Archive 1

This very imperfect listing was compiled long ago exclusively from Pokorny and Vasmer. If you have questions, please consult the online versions of their venerable dictionaries. Corrections are more than welcome, but please don't flood the list with repetitions found in sister languages and unverified entries!!!!! --Ghirlandajo 19:02, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The page has evolved into a different direction than Ghirlandajo's first approach, so repetitions are now welcome, but please try to follow the standards set by earlier contributors, regarding ortography, and try to have some certainty of the words you're adding, preferably check with some etymological authority beforehand, and look out for loanwords and false cognates. Although more cognates could be added, please try to stick to the languages already chosen, unless there is one root solely found in another language, not included in the particular language group. Note that this is a list of cognates derived from the same root, not translations of words' current meanings which could have diverged hugely due to semantic drift, i.e. for the root *preu (jump), Germanic words for "frog" are included, not words meaning jump derived from Germanic *springan, which originally meant the same thing. 惑乱 分からん 11:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the examples given are good, but difficult to follow, I'd prefer a table with the columns giving the different IE subgroups (*Reconstructed PIE, Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek/Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Armenian, Tocharian, Balto-Slavic (Slavic, Baltic), Albanian) instead.

Language codes

Someone might want to go through this and make the language codes a bit more user-friendly.

Two reasons:

• It's irritating to have to always scroll up to the top to look up some of the less intuitive codes (I = Avestan, B = Lithuanian, W = Gothic)

• Some of these may have confused the compiler(s). Notably, B = Lithuanian and L = Latin. Not knowing a whit of Lithuanian I cannot say for sure, but "sienas" looks to me more like Lithuanian than Latin. I know it's not Latin. It would be easier if Lithuanian were "Lith" and Latin were "Lat." --Carolus 19:17, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Looks like you're right. I looked up the root, and šiẽnas is Lithuanian. Doesn't look like there's a Latin equivelant. - Dysfunktion 10:18, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that B stands for baltic not for lithuania and it also seems to me that I`m not only one who has noticed that and some latvian words are marked with B ( I might be wrong since I don`t know lituanian) so maybe it would be better to keep using B for abbreviation but ad (lv) or (lt) next to B. Xil 20:16, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Clear-up?

I think many of these words are disputed, but it's hard to tell as it is, now, when it seems that all the words mean exactly the same thing in all languages, when that is rarely the case...

I just came to think of that when *sem-gheslo was removed, while I think that there are many remaining roots just as debatable. Also, some explanations such as akwa- (river), wedor (water), paewr- (bonfire), egni- (fire), while I read that "akwa" was "animate," referring to water as a living force and "wedor" as an inanimate substance. Likewise for "egni"(animate) and paewr(inanimate). (This makes sense, since it would be very important for a nomadic people to differ between controllable and uncontrollable water/fire, I think. Being in control of nature is very useful, not being in control is possibly dangerous...)

Focus?

This article will eventually morph into a PIE Lexicon, along the lines of IEW. That should go on wikibooks, I don't see how this can be a valid encyclopedia article. dab (ᛏ) 11:51, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Suggested additions

• I wanted to suggest this addition that I have noticed over the years. Can somebody who knows this stuff please examine this and see if/how it should be added?: sammeln (German), assemble, sum (English), sammelan (Hindi) thanks -- Deego

"sammeln" goes back to *samo(same), Cf Greek homo(same, unrelatd to Latin Homo, human) and Latin Similis related to *sem(one), alternative word to *oinos, assemble comes from Latin ad(towards, related to En at, from PIE *ad), and simul, so it seems indirectly related, anyway, there are many etymological dictionaries which you could check out, I'd believe "sammelan" could be from the same root, as I know that the Sanskrit words "sanskrit" and "samband" (connection) are. Sum is from a completely different root *(s)up(er)-mos, related to En "over". Anyway, many of these words seem to share a common root, but they are independent creation, so they would not fit this list.

Although this list doesn't mention that root, in spite of it being very common, maybe it could be placed with "numbers", "adjectives" or "wholeness".

http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE451.html

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=same&searchmode=none

What does "sammelan" mean? I looked it up, and it seams it would mean a conference or gathering? (As one, together, the same(?)) I'd say it clearly looks like it's indirectly related, but I don't know much about Indo-Iranian etymology. Sorry that I mixed up the Sanskrit word earlier, it's "sambandha" (http://srath.com/lectures/sambandha.htm Sambandha defined: The word sambandha in Sanskrit means binding or joining, a close connection or union or association, conjunction, inherence, connection with or relation to. It connotes personal connection like a relationship, fellowship, friendship and even intimacy. The word ‘sambandhi’ (or as used ‘samdhi’ refers to a kinsman, a relationship brought about by a marriage or family by birth.), people often give this example of Sanskrit when they talk in Swedish about the relations of all Indo-European languages, so I gave the Swedish word (connection, conjunction etc.), by mistake.

Check out etymology before adding.

One user added several false examples, mistaking the German prefix ge- for part of the root stem. Since close appearances could deceive, I advice you to be careful to post words that you are sure are correct next time. If the article turns out any good, maybe it should be copyedited, since I believe it is likely that it will often turn worse by edits of people unfamiliar with the comparative method and basic etymology.

Is similarity and meaning important ?

Browsing trough those words I noticed that some words in IE are close to latvian, but means another thing althought those meanings are connected i.e. IE k`ak 'branch' seems to be close to latvian koks 'tree' so I think that another person maybe would ad 'koks' next to 'k`ak' and everyone would think that it means branch and I think that some people has done so in other languages i.e preu- (to jump): R prygat', S pravate, OHG frowen, G Freude, E frog does 'frog' realy means 'to jump' ? I thought that it is an animal. I also noticet that some IE werbs would be almost identical to latvian if latvian word would be writen in present singular second person - now you would write like in sentece "you are going to do something" but you would get most similar form if you were writing "you do" i.e. "you is going to laugh/go" would be "tu taisies smiet/iet" in latvian, but if you would write "you laugh/go" which is "tu smej/ej" in latvian it would be almost identical to IE 'smei' (to laugh)and 'ei' (to go) So what I want to sugest is that if one is writing word similar to IE, but with another meaning he should ad meaning next to this word and that the most similar form of word should be writen Xil 20:53, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I have a feeling that the semantic shift in the examples included could be quite far from the original meaning, and that many of these examples actually are quite disputable, for instance ei-s- for (ice): I isu, Oss ix, E ice, D eis >< *ei-n-: R iney, B ynis. (Meanings change from ice to frost to rime, although I guess that's semantically reasonable). Btw, the German word means "joy, happiness", so it is also far from the original meaning. (Cf. "Schadenfreude") Frog could have come from an original word like *frug-isks (Jump/Hop-ish/er). Semantic change is common, though, so it doesn't discredit the roots, per se. For instance the English word "see", is likely related to a root meaning "follow" in many other IE languages. Basically, close similarities between words' appearance and meaning in different languages are more common than what one might imagine, so genetic relationship is judged on exact sound correspondences for words with similar meaning. I think words with different meanings would be interesting, but actually they are probably so common, that it would make the list a lot harder to read. About your second point, the article mentions in the start that "all the words are shown in their most representative declinations", which basically means that "the most similar form" is used. If it's not declined already, I guess it could be changed. I have trouble understanding completely which grammatical tense in Latvian you are talking about.

Article needs some cleaning

There needs to be some order in the language cognates. The palatals needs to be marked in the PIE roots. Long vowels and other accent marks should be included for the various languages. Imperial78

As for your question whether Armenian "ov" is a *kwo cognate or not, yes it is. In Old Armenian, this was "kov"... Eiríkr Rauði 16:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd gladly see SOME marking of the modern meaning of the words referred to. Also, maybe there should be some clean-up of some of the more widely disputed cognates... Also, some of the "original meanings" seem to be quite questionable, the root for bottom is placed among organs, though the root likely is referreing to the ground, and not the hindpart. Several things like that...

Table

I've created a program to generate a table from the existing code in the page. It's a little buggy, and there are a few typos in the code that screw up the table, but it does the trick: User:Dysfunktion/List_of_common_Indo_European_roots - Dysfunktion 22:03, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I like the table much better. Use the latest version though since it has a lot of corrections and additions. Imperial78

Yeah, nice work! It would probably be simpler if it was arranged according to language groups, and not individual languages, (and maybe include spacing on a new line for several languages in the same group) but it's a nice start! 81.232.72.148 17:19, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, I don't think the page should include one large table, as it does now, but rather several small tables for each category. Would facilitate editing. 81.232.72.148 17:33, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Alright, I tried breaking it up into separate tables and grouping the languages by family. - Dysfunktion 07:50, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Right, this looks better. Some things, I don't know if it's necessary to show the Greek derivations "arktos-arctic" and "mus-muscle", I wonder how *sweid is related to *glag, I think that the "See also:Indo-European copula" should be moved to somewhere else, and I think that maybe all sub-languages should be merged into their own group, abbreviated in paranthesis (It will make the tables shorter, and should still be easier to interpret than the original). But don't change anything else, until we hear what others are thinking. 85.226.122.194 12:34, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree the derivations are not necessary and just confuse the table. Imperial78

I am now fixing the Armenian so it conforms to standard Eastern Armenian. Also fixing the problems with the Greek. I assume you will be making the table to the newest version of this page? The older table is riddled with errors and is not as complete. Imperial78

Yeah, I've been updating the table every now and then. Why did you change "ON meðal" to "OHG meðal", by the way? Dysfunktion 14:49, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I didn't do that ON change, at least if I did it was on accident. Imperial78

Nice table so far, Ossetian is an Iranian language though, not Slavic. Also, the language in the table is Ancient Macedonian (not the modern Slavic Macedonian language) which should be in the other languages. Imperial78

Ah, the Cyrillic threw me off. Done. Dysfunktion 01:13, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Here's the source code, if anyone's interested. I tried to comment it pretty well. http:// xthost.info/z500/programming/tablegen.ex - Dysfunktion 21:36, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Lithuanian is misspelled, Old Irish should not be a column. I think Persian would be better to use than Farsi, since Old Persian is also in the table column with Persian and Wikipedia has the article as Persian. Also the order should go for Indo-Iranian: Sanskrit, Kashmiri (Dardic), Kamviri (Nuristani), Avestan, Ossetian, Persian. Imperial78

Pel and pelt

Would pelt be a better example of an English word based on the root pel- than film? I wanted to check before I made any changes because I don't know whether this article is perhaps at a consensus point or if it would be considered bad to even have more than one example from a single language for a root. Theshibboleth 01:25, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Pelt is a a borrowing from a Romance language. I'd prefer "film" or "fell"(from Bear fell), since they're native words. Fell is more common as a native word in G outside English, though. Sure, "film" as in "movie" is widespread, but that's a modern English borrowing.

I have some issues with the idea that some parts of English are borrowed and others not, but alright, I won't change the article. Theshibboleth 06:21, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean "issues with the idea that some parts of English are borrowed and others not"? I'd prefer "native" words as far as possible... 81.232.72.148 17:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Let's all do our part to put the languages in order

What kind of order would be best? I think alphabetical according to subfamily with the Old languages going before the modern ones and keeping languages of the same subfamily together. For example: Al, A, B, OCS, R, W, E, I, S, L, K Are we going to have Balto-Slavic as a unit or not? I think if everyone here works on a section, we can get the order finished quicker. Imperial78

I'd think it might be good if language groups that are more closely related (such as baltic-slavic, italic-celtic etc) would be place closer to each other, or having the language groups in chronological order, from the groups attested earliest, to the groups attested latest.

Although there is some consensus on Balto-Slavic, there isn't one on a close relationship between Celtic and Italic, so they are not needed to be placed close. Imperial78

Is there a consensus on Baltic-Slavic? ISn't that believed to be a sprachbund? 85.226.122.202 22:13, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

More linguists agree on a Balto-Slavic subgroup than an Italo-Celtic one, but I wouldn't object to Baltic and Slavic not listed together. Imperial78

Transliteration for non Latin script languages

Here is a scholary standard which we should use so there are not so many different systems: Greek Alphabet: a, b, g, d, e, z, ē, th, i, k, l, m, n, ks, o, p, rh/r, s, t, u, ph, kh, ps, ō Russian Alphabet: a, b, v, g, d, e, ë, ž, z, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, f, x, c, č, š, šč, ", y, ', è, ju, ja Imperial78

Languages

I was thinking of a good list of languagess to use for the list. Albanian; Anatolian: Hittite, Lycian; Armenian; Baltic: Old Prussian, Lithuanian; Celtic: Gaulish, Irish (including Old Irish), Welsh; Germanic: Gothic, Old English, English; Greek (including Old Greek); Indo-Iranian: Mitanni Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit, Avestan, Kamviri; Italic: Latin, Slavic: Old Church Slavonic, Russian; Tocharian B; Extinct language: Ancient Macedonian, Dacian, Illyrian Thracian, Phrygian, etc. Also, other languages when a cognate is not found in any of the languages listed above. Imperial78

I added a lot of Kamviri cognates, pulled from the Richard Strand website on Nuristani languages. Imperial78

We could include certain languages, like Old Norse, when there is no known cognate in related languages, (like ON "var" for "spring"). Why only Tocharian B, and not A?81.232.72.148 18:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, we should include A and B. I guess we can label them KA and KB? I added the numerals. More to come. Imperial78

Other Languages and Irish/Old Irish

I think we should find modern Irish Gaelic terms and Old Irish. Old Irish and Irish are very close though in many terms. Also, what do you guys think about adding Latvian for Baltic, and Farsi for Indo-Iranian? Imperial78

Another Idea for the languages in the table

Perhaps some languages/dialects should share a column and be divided by a slash to save room on the table? Here is an idea: Albanian: Tosk/Gheg; Armenian: Eastern/Western; Tocharian: A/B; Baltic: Lithuanian/Latvian, Old Prussian; Slavic: Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Polish; Germanic: Old Norse, Old High German/German, Old English/English, Anatolian: Hittite, Lycian; Greek: Ancient Greek/Greek, Celtic: Old Irish/Irish, Welsh, Gaulish; Indo-Iranian: Sanskrit, Kashmiri, Kamviri, Avestan, Old Persian/Farsi, Ossetian Iron/Ossetian Digor; Italic: Latin, Oscan, Umbrian; Ancient Macedonian, Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian, etc. Imperial78

I proposed something similar earlier, grouping all languages of the same group in the same column. I think it'd make sense. I'd figure the last column would be "Other(s):" (Maybe many of these langs should have their own column, in that case, since they're not shown to be closely related.) 81.232.72.148 13:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

By the way, is Lycian a better choice than any other of the Anatolian languages? 85.226.122.222 06:38, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

phantom languages

OK, so I added some code to the table generator to pick out unknown language codes, and I got a whole bunch of them, aside from the unconverted Ks:

CC (might be a typo of C, but I don't know anything about Celtic langs), Sk, OG, Lt (Lithuanian?), OL, Osk, Thr, P, Nw, OS, Uk, ONG, Sw, OI, OS, Af, NI, OSw, Umb (Umbrian?), OG, Md, GM, Gl, OR, Sl, Sc, Krd, Blg (Bulgarian?), Prs, Sg - Dysfunktion 20:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Sw=Swedish, OSw=Old Swedish, Prs=probably Persian/Farsi 81.232.72.148 21:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow, there are quite a few phantom languages. I am going to now change all of the Tocharian to just T (not K, not KA, not KB). I think we should just delete all of the phantom languages. Also if a cognate does not exist or cannot be found I think we should mark it as "--" Imperial78

I don't know, I think that there should still be separate entries for Tocharian A and B. Dysfunktion 01:22, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the table is getting too big and the ones on the actual page are getting rather cluttered. Each sub-branch should get its own column (prominence and relevance to what the table is showing), not an older form or a closely related language. Tocharian A and B are closer to each other than say Indic and Iranian. So I think one column would suffice. I think one column would be sufficient for Old English/English, one column for Old High German/German, and one column for Old Irish/Irish, etc. Since we have Avestan, I am not sure we need to include Ossetian, but perhaps Ossetian has cognates other Iranian languages do not have? Imperial78

Persian versus Farsi

Wikipedia's main article is called Persian, so we may as well use Persian in place of Farsi. Also, the Old Persian/Persian data isn't on the table yet.

Semantic Shift

As was discussed earlier, I think the semantic shift for several of the examples could be quite huge. Do you think we should include a translation of the meaning of the cognates, when it differs considerably from the alleged original reconstructed meaning? 85.226.122.165 14:52, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I think listing every meaning would spam the table. There are many words where the meaning has changed slightly or a lot. If people want to know the meaning of the word, they can do their own research I think. Although it would be useful. For example PIE mei- (small yields meiu- "four" in Hittite! Imperial78

Not every word, but those where the meanings have diverged significantly... I don't know how large spaceit would take... It could be interesting... 81.232.72.148 01:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

English Egg is an Old Norse loan

The anon. user needs to read on his cognates before he makes changes. English egg is an Old Norse loan. The -ey in Cockney is the true cognate. Cockn (blend of cock and chicken) + ey (egg). This is in the IE roots section of Calvert Walkins in the AHC dictionary. So please do not include loans, so look up before you add or change. Imperial78

OK, I knew that egg was a borrowing from Old Norse, but I misunderstood the information... I thought that ææg was a word in the Cockney dialect, with a dialectal spelling (...) Sorry for that.. (At least the Norse word also comes from the same root, originally, I Wonder if German Ei would be a better word...) Alright, it's better now... 81.232.72.148 01:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Body parts

Body parts section lists fuinneog as an Irish word for eye. As far as I know (and I admit I do not know a lot), fuinneog is Irish for window, not eye. The correct word is súil.--Ag Foghlaim 22:49, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

The word súil is not the cognate for PIE *okw-. The -og in fuinneog is a cognate. The table is of cognates, not just words for "eye" in the IE languages. Imperial78

Well, OK, I see the point, but isn't it misleading to have the word window listed as a body part? There is no indication telling the reader that only the "-og" part refers to the root, and not the whole word.--Ag Foghlaim 05:28, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, that is the fun with semantic shifts, the original meaning of the root and the outcome many times diverges, sometimes greatly. So the destiny of a word in any given language is unknown. The division of the roots is just their PIE meanings. For example, English only keeps the root *dhg'hem in the word "bridegroom". So from the meaning "Earth" to "man getting married at the wedding ceremony" is quite a semantic shift. dhg'hem(PIE earth)/dhg'hm.-on-(PIE earthing) -> gumo:n (PGermanic man) -> guma (OE man) -> bridegroom (modern English). So we the authors are still working on the best way to combat the semantic shifts and the additions to the roots. I guess we could do () as in (fuinne)og. Although this can get messy, for example. Do we type Albanian nëntë as nën(të)? What would be better would to have each language have its own page about the the shift of the PIE roots in meaning and form. The table of roots just needs to be a table with roots listed with less spam junking it up. Imperial78

Btw, the ow in window does also come from the root for eye, and (bride)groom is cognate to Latin homo. 81.232.72.148 23:51, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, window is an Old Norse loan, so it isn't a cognate but the -ow does mean eye, yes. Imperial78

Maybe not a true cognate, but at least from the same root. 81.232.72.148 15:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Irish fuinneog, incidentally, is also an Old Norse loan, from the same word as window was borrowed from. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 21:23, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction! I have found Old Irish enech/Modern Irish oineach and Welsh enep for *okw Imperial78

Well, if fuinneog is a loan-translation, then these words would probably be better choices than that word... 85.226.122.233 15:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Important to have a language from each sub-branch

For some reason Ghirlandajo wants to delete the Polish data which is important for the table. Can you please stop it. Imperial78

Do we need Po, while we have OCS and Ru? Just wondering... 85.226.122.222 13:49, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes we do, Slavic is divided into three sub-branches, East (Russian), South (OCS), and West (Polish). For purposes of comparison we need one from each branch just as we have in Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Baltic, etc. Imperial78

Obscure languages

I found a list containing some small dictionaries of many lesser known old IE languages. If someone's got the time, it would be nice if s/he could look through the lists to add cognates... http://www.wordgumbo.com/ie/cmp/index.htm 85.226.122.222 13:21, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

There's another good page at http://www.donbelid.com/MATN%20HATML%202/root.htm. The original seems gone, but it could be found at www.archive.org. 81.232.72.148 00:58, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Mix-up of two different roots?

There seems to have been a mix-up of two different roots, and I'm not sure of which words belong to where...

• dhe- (to set/put):
• do- (to give):

S dadhati, I dadaiti, L facere, H dai-, P ada/, G tithenai/, B deti, P dziac', R delat', E do, W gadeths, ON dalidun, F edaes probably belongs to dhe- while R dat', Po dać, F dadón, G dōron, L dare probably belongs to do- I'm not sure about: A tal/dal, B duoti, Al dhashë, K dī... Help please! 85.226.122.222 14:22, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think I have fixed it... 81.232.72.148 01:49, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Another weird cognate

The example "D sarf/" from *kerp looks suspicious, since *k to *s is a very unlikely sound shift to German, I only know of one possible other example, which is "schliessen". I thought about removing it, but it allegedly is Old German, and I have no idea what it should mean, and where to look up the etymology...

PIE gWher

PIE gWher- yields burn in English, as gWhen- yields bane. Some sources say it yields warm. Calvert Watkins has burn, so I am going with this qualified authority.

Hmmm, if *gWh would yield b* in Germanic, it seems strange that it would have yielded "gunnr", since "bani" also existed in Old Norse (as well as "brenna" and "varmr"). 81.232.72.148 13:41, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Well Watkins has the roots *gwhen- (Pokorny 2. gwhen- 491, bhen- 126) and *gwher- (Pokorny gwher- 493 bh(e)reu- 142), so perhaps the the gwh- root and the bh- root are from *gwh-.

What are you talking about? Two parallel roots? 81.232.72.148 13:41, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

There is only one root. Perhaps Pokorny thought they were two, I am not sure. Someone have Pokorny? If you look at Watkins, you will only see he has them listed with the *gWh- in the index.

So, which goes back to my original comment, it seems strange that "gunnr" would have come from *gWh, when Germanic *g regularly is believed to have come from *gh. 81.232.72.148 14:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

True, although gunnr is in the index of Watkins. Also, for *ghwer-, he has Old Norse brenna...so I am not sure what to make of all of this.

Well, it just looks strange. I'd see if someone could come up with a reasonable explanation. 81.232.72.148 19:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

*Bhel

American Heritage says that ball comes from a homonymous root meaning "swell", not white etc, there seems to be many words from that root (white) in English, though, including blue, black, blind, bleach (Maybe words based on bleach would look best, common Germanic cognate, afaik). 81.232.72.148 00:24, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks I fixed it.

Link removed

Removed the link http://www.espindle.org/roots.html, since it mostly was a list of Greek or Latin roots in English words, without any connection to PIE.

Albanian dhelpër not gjelbër is from PIE *g'hel

Please do not make changes if you do not know the material. Imperial78

Sum/Some

"Sum" is Old English for "Some", unrelated to modern English "sum". 81.232.72.53 22:41, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, sorry you are right! It is getting late. I am forgetting. lol Lately some people had been adding bad loans. And I am the one who had added sum! lol Imperial78

How would everyone feel about these additions

Most of the IE branches have an "old" and modern counterpart. How would you guys feel about a Sanskrit/Hindi...Latin/Italian...or is this just getting too many languages for the table? Also, if no cognate is found perhaps a cognate from a close language can be included with that language in () for example using the Kurish word from PIE elm in the Iranian category. Imperial78

I don't think so, the page and table is quite unwieldy already at the meantime, and I don't think it would be NPOV or practical to choose only one language from a mother language that has given birth to several daughter languages (Latin, Sanskrit, Old Norse etc). If Proto-Germanic, -Celtic, -Slavic etc. was attested, I would prefer these languages to all of these different sub-branches we have now. So, for attested mother languages with a huge lexicon, I don't think there should be daughter languages save if you're writing your own article in that language (as has been done in Spanish etc). 85.226.122.205 15:46, 13 January 2006 , (UTC)

Btw, what do you mean with PIE elm? Yhe root wygh for "elm tree", or the root "elwn" for "cedar tree"? 85.226.122.205 16:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I guess the idea of words from "closely related languages" is possible, though. I implemented it in my table proposal, anyway. 惑乱 分からん 19:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Parts of trees

Some things: Don't W triu, ON trē, OPr drawine belong to deru- rather than *g'hazdho-? Aren't *g'hasto- (stick) and *g'hazdho- (stick) most likely two variants on the same roots (similar to English arse and ass, etc. too lazy to come up with a more "wholesome" example.) Wouldn't it be better to choose the oldest version or separate them with a slash or something? What do you mean with "G helen (M.L. German)", that Helen is a word found only in Middle Low German? First, it should be sorted under D, in that case, second, I think it would be too unwieldy and cluttered if we began to include so many "minor" languages/dialects in the tree, and it could probably cause some troubles in Dysfunktion's table, as well. 81.232.72.53 13:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the W, ON, and OPr roots belong in deru-. Did I accidently put them in g'hazdo? Also, yes I would say that g'hazdho and g'hasto are probably variants, but I am not sure which is the original and which is the variant. I may just slash them. Since Standard German nd OHG do not have this root, I found the closest language which does. Middle Dutch and Low German are the only Germanic languages with this root according to a website with IE roots. Imperial78

Alright, I just think it would be more complicated to read the table in that case, btw, which website are you using? 85.226.122.155 15:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This is the website: http://ehl.santafe.edu/cgi-bin/main.cgi?root=config Most of the data is from Pokorny. Imperial78

OK, thanks. Btw, I have gotten a login now, which I should start use more. 惑乱 分からん 14:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

One root in two places

g'hel is listed twice. There is only one root, although both English gold and yellow come from this root. Imperial78

Well, if a secondary meaning got so widespread, it is still interesting, although we could add yellow->gold for clarity. 惑乱 分からん 16:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if that necessary is a problem, per se. For instance, we now have k'er-(head), k'er(horned animal) and k'ern(horn), all going back to the same root with an original notion of something like "top of head". Possibly we could explain such things better when the page gets more complete. 惑乱 分からん 16:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Old/Modern languages

For languages where the same word has been retained from the older language into the modern, I think the same word should be separated with a slash, that would make it clearer that it's complete. 惑乱 分からん 13:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Mush

Sure Mush is wrong? I found it at Etymonline, of course, he could have misunderstood something... 惑乱 分からん 01:10, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

muš is modern Persian for mouse. I do not think the Old Persian word is attested although I see it listed there as you say... reconstructed it probably would be muš anyway. It would not be m-u-s-h in any event, muš Imperial78

Yeah, probably some misunderstanding or using incorrect ortography. Alright. 惑乱 分からん 15:08, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

your incorrect òrthografy -lysdexia 01:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Strange Language Codes

Alright, I have marked the strange language codes with question marks, these abbreviations are hard to interpret, but I didn't really want to delete them.

kenk- (kneecup): Lt cinksla(??) (Lithuanian? Latvian?)
gues- (forest): D questa/, Nw kvas(??)
(Possibly Norwegian "kvast", meaning broom or bouquet, related to "kvist" (Twig),
The modern German word is probably Quaste (tuft), btw.)
An Old Norse cognate shoulnd't be hard to find, in that case.
reug- (to belch): E rēocan/reek, NI arog(???), D /reiern  
(Beats me, Kamviri?)
The German word is spelled wrong, the correct word is reihern and means puke/barf, 
although I have no idea whether it is related, 
there are other German words that are related to reek, though, such as rauchen and riechen.
ok'us (quick): OI di-oc(???) Old Irish??
dre(m)- (to sleep): G drathano, OG A tartam, ??? 
I am not sure if OG refers to the Greek in front, and Tartam is Armenian, 
or if "a tartam" is a phrase.

Also G thenken/denken should of course be changed to D and there are quite a lot of OIr instances, btw... 惑乱 分からん 15:53, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, Imperial78, you didn't like reug - reek. I found it in American Heritage, and an advantage is that the word has survived into modern English and German (as well as ON reykja). 惑乱 分からん 14:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Meanings of roots

Another strange meaning

maghos (young animal): W magus, C Magu-rix, Ir maug/, I maghava, Al makth, B mac, D magad/Magd, E mægð/maid, We meudwy

Why "young animal"?, most cognates, afaik, refer to young people. Maybe it should be moved to kinship or something. 惑乱 分からん 16:04, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

In Suebian (maybe Allemanian influence?) dialect a young cow is often called a "Mäggele". This sounds like a typical Suebian diminuative form. While I grew up in that area (Unterallgäu/Bayrisch Schwaben), I am no "native" Suebian speaker. Therefore I don't know whether a non-diminuative form exists. But I do know that many old German words that got extinct in modern German still exist in our dialect. So there might be a word for it in Old German.
--58.187.36.60 14:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, well, not much to go by, so far, I should see if I could find up something in the Wörterbuch, although I think that old-fashioned German quite hard to read. Also, I don't think that an Old German word alone could prove that it was an original PIE meaning. American Heritage gives "Young person of either sex" which, to me, seems a more plausible meaning. I don't know where the meanings of all these roots come from. Several seems to be based on only one language group or something. 惑乱 分からん 15:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Table idea

Hey, the page has turned out quite good, and it's only getting better. Hmmm, I have thought about the table, mostly being bothered by all the space the scarcely attested unclassified languages are taking up, (The reason these languages are unclassified is precisely because there is so little vocabulary.) so I thought that we could make a restructure/reprogramming of the table. This is a rough draft of the idea. Instead of separate language codes for all unclassified languages we could have UNCL, instead of the Lycian code we have ANO (Anatolian, other), and instead of Oscan and Umbrian ITO (Italic, other). Instead of a separate sub-grouping for each language, the language is written out before or after the word, somehow, like instead of "MN abroutes", we write "UNCL abroutes (Old Macedonian)" or "UNCL Old Macedonian Abroutes". I think this would make the table more compact, and give the possibility to add smaller languages, in case that the "main" languages from each grouping lack cognates that others have, (such as that Low German example I deleted earlier. =S) This could be useful for the Anatolian languages, where there are many small languages with different cognates in each. Maybe this is similar to ideas proposed before, but I think it could work. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, if we decide to do it, I guess we could write-protect the page for one day, while we adjust all language codes, or something. What do you think? 惑乱 分からん 18:43, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I say just keep them apart for now. Just because the table does not have a lot of roots for them yet, it doesn't meant they do not exist. There are still quite a few roots to add and the various Balkan extinct IE languages do not form any group anyway. For now, I am trying to fix Batlic and Gaulish. There are numerous errors by the person who put in the data. How do you guys feel about reconstructed roots? Imperial78

From personal names and such? I am not sure, yet. Should think it over. (Hmmm, there seems to be only you and me doing some serious work on the page now, however, mostly you, I'd guess. Do you know any good online pages in languages I know?) 惑乱 分からん 18:57, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I never claimed they were related, but that's no reason that they couldn't all be sorted under the same "unclassified" heading, anyway, you're right in that it's a later problem.惑乱 分からん 00:05, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Words in Dialects?

In Suebian (Schwäbisch), there exist some words that are extinct in modern German, e.g.:
Grend for head (maybe from IE k'er- (head)?
Boiz for pub (maybe from IE poi- (to drink)?
They might be left-overs from old German. Where can one find out, and possibly add to the list?
-- stefanhanoi 15:21, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Check out the Deutsches Wörterbuch for a start, but these words doesn't seem plausible to me. IE *k usually turns to Germanic h, not g, and Hirn is already a plausible derivation, *p would usually yield Germanic f, but there doesn't seem to be any trace of that word in Germanic, being replaced by the etymologically mysterious *drinkan, instead. Still, I appreciate that you take it up for discussion here, instead of just adding them to the table. 惑乱 分からん 15:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, Deutsches Wörterbuch had at least a plausible entry for "Grind" in the sense of head. This is what I could make out, the original meaning is sand, which evolved to mean skin rash or scurf, due to likeness in appearance, after that, the meaning evolved from "Head rash" to "head", in general. http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb/wbgui?lemid=GG25394 The word is likely from the root *ghrendh (Cf. Latin frendere:grind). Check out I had trouble finding the etymology for "Boiz". Which High German vowels does Schwäbish oi usually correspond to? 惑乱 分からん 16:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Several meanings for one root

Some roots like g'hel have many meanings in its sister languages ranging from gold, yellow, even fox! English gold and yellow both come from this root. Does anyone have an efficient and effective way of showing one root with several outcomes without it looking cumbersome and making it obvious it is the same root? The main constraint is the table. Imperial78

If a secondary meaning is widespread, such as "gold" or "gall", I find it interesting in its own right. So far, the only idea I can come up with is to have a separate "Original meaning->Derived meaning" description for each entry. I think the table and current sorting is a quite handy way to quickly look up different areas, so I certainly would like to keep it. 惑乱 分からん 17:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course, it would probably be more user-friendly and modifiable in a clickable Flash interface database or something, but we have to settle with something more basic on Wikipedia. 惑乱 分からん 17:04, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I am still struggling on what to do with g'hel. Yellow, green, gold, even fox (from an extension of yellow) are possible outcomes. Should I try this:

• g'hel- (to shine->yellow)
• g'hel- (to shine->green)
• g'hel- (to shine->gold)
• g'hel- (to shine->bile)

Imperial78

I think that's a reasonable idea, at the meantime. Just one point, I don't think it's necessary to have separate categories for yellow and green, since most likely they were perceived as the same colors with different hues by the speakers of that time. More appropriate shine->yellow/green, (although I guess it's arguable whether the yellow/green or shine meaning is the oldest). I don't know if there are any language groups that have words both for yellow and green from this root, although I believe that is possible. Probably in the minority in that case. PIE speakers was just relatively primitive in the way they named colors. Color name http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/research/colour_words.html http://amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0998dgh/color/Color_Words.pdf 惑乱 分からん 18:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Another issue is that the Baltic languages both derive green and yellow from the same root, Lithuanian: žalias (green) and geltona (yellow). I wonder how the g- is explained in geltona! Imperial78

Chaque mot a son histoire? Maybe like the b in bibere... =S 惑乱 分からん 21:12, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I should elaborate some more of what I'm thinking. I don't think we should have separate entries for concepts that likely were foreign to PIE speakers. They lacked a concept of Green vs yellow, but had a concept of a green-lime-yellowish color spectre ("grellow"), and I think it would give false conclusions if we based these keywords on the concepts in modern English. I hope you understand how I'm thinking. Also, I guess the ż vs g point could be due to the evolution of two different, though similar concepts, and a need to separate them would change the pronunciation of one to differ from the original. I think it's similar to how Tocharian A evolved "śanwem" for "jaws" and "kanwem" for "knees" from two homonymous PIE-roots. 惑乱 分からん 15:39, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Fixing Accent Marks

With the aid of some Unicode, I will be fixing the accent marks so they are correct. Imperial78

Great work! Good done! 惑乱 分からん 07:58, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Lithuanian orthography

OK, some dictionaries list ę and others just combine it with ė. I need a good dictionary to resolve this mess. lol Imperial78

OK, it seems to be a difference in case which vowel is used. lol Imperial78

Why do you write "lol" so much? It looks rude... 惑乱 分からん 10:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Verb: можь addition? to magh- (to be able)

I expected to see можь to follow "magh- (to be able): I magus, B magus, E meaht/might, OCS mogti, D /vermögen, Po mogę, ON mega" and note the Po, for instance. is the omission of the R deliberate? (this is my question) thank you, stir greer.

I haven't fixed the verbs yet. There are many, many errors yet to fix. The word is moč' though which I added. Imperial78

I don't think we have done particularly much work on the Slavic languages, yet. If anyone would know any Slavic cognates they are sure of, please add them. 惑乱 分からん 10:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Persian Orthography

Do not use English conventions such as "oo" for "u" or any Ch- digraphs. Please use the standard which is already used on the page. Also, if you want to add vowel length markers for vowels other than ā, that is OK and preferred actually. Imperial78

Reverted Changes

A user made ridiculous changes, basically vandalism. I had to revert it back. Imperial78

Nice Improvements Silence

Your changes are most welcome. They are very nice and make more sense than what was there before. Imperial78

Thank you very much. Your changes over the month to this article are remarkable; although a big, sweeping format change like mine may look more impressive at a glance, changes like your meticulous, bit-by-bit expansions and factchecking are much more valuable and remarkable. I hope we can do some good work together to make the page both highly accurate and comprehensive and easily-accessible to linguistic novices and laypeople.

I have a few books on PIE roots, including the American Heritage Dictionary; what's the current stance on what aspects of the AHD's Indo-European-roots we should utilize and include on Wikipedia? I've noticed some roots, like *al-, are missing from this page; is there a reason for this, or is there just too much information to yet have it all up? -Silence 00:56, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably too much information, I guess the idea is that the most common/interesting roots should be up, but there's no clear stance at the meantime. And yeah, Imperial78's work is impressive, deserves some praise. 惑乱 分からん 01:42, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Silence for the compliments. Many roots which are missing are probably due to me just not finding them. There are a lot of roots. I will be looking into *al- now. Imperial78

Rework

Who is Silence? That guy who did some work on Baltic? Btw, your rework of the page looks nice, but how does it work together with Dysfunktion's table? 惑乱 分からん 00:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I haven't done any work on Baltic articles, or on this article in the past. I'm new here; I just felt that a simple table would do a world of good for readability, thus making this page more useful to readers. There are still a lot of changes I have planned for the page and topic, though I haven't figured out yet how to implement a lot of them... As for Dysfunktion's table, if it's the elaborate, very large (horizontally) one, I don't understand what happened to that one or what the plans are with it. -Silence 00:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't understand that you had the username Silence, and thought of another anonymous guy... *-_-*;; The table was planned to be easier to read and interpret, but maybe it wasn't. Anyway, I guess it could still work with some reprogramming. This page looks very good, anyway. 惑乱 分からん 01:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Strange Baltic roots

Some of these Baltic roots look strange, appears to be translations rather than cognates:

*patər: Eastern Baltic tėvas/
*k'er: Eastern Baltic galva/ (Looks like Russian golova)
*(k)ost: Eastern Baltic kaulas/
*taron: Eastern Baltic perkūnas/ 
(Actually, I think we might have mixed up two different roots here, 
from thunder/tonare and tar, to begin with)
*uksin: Eastern Baltic bulius/
*melit: Eastern Baltic medus/

There was some anonymous editor here, quite recently who added a lot of Baltic roots. I don't know Baltic languages as good as Imperial78 seems to do, so I leave it up to him to look it through. 惑乱 分からん 02:00, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, most of these were added by 195.22.190.100, who seems to know Lithuanian well, but not being too thorough in his etymology. Imperial78, it'd be nice if you look through his edits for errors. 惑乱 分からん 02:17, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I fixed the Baltic roots by removing them. lol They were all not cognates. We just have to keep a careful eye. Imperial78

Kamviri

Could someone with basic knowledge of the Kamviri language get together a stub. It looks bad with a red link. (Btw, why have we chosen Kamviri as our sole Nuristani language, and not one of the other?) 惑乱 分からん 12:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I chose Kamviri because it has the most published on it online (Richard Strand's site). Kamviri has the second largest number of speakers after Kati of all of the Nuristani languages. I created a stub for Kamviri.Imperial78

Goodie, I thought that language sources could possibly be an issue. 惑乱 分からん 00:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Language Order

Silence, is there an easy way to put the languages in some kind of order, perhaps alphabetical by family, so Albanian first, then the Anatolian languages, then Armenian etc? Imperial78

Either alphabetically by family, or alphabetically by the individual languages' names, would probably make the most sense. But I'm not sure it would be worth the effort at this point: I can't think of any way to automatically alphabetize all those languages without hours of manual work. -Silence 05:48, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer alphabetical by family, myself, since I think it's interesting to see how closely related langauages are similar. 惑乱 分からん 21:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Indo-Iranian subfamily is split :-(

I'd put languages from a subfamily next to each other. E.g., what annoys me rather much in the current order is that Persian is located far from Sanskrit (both being Indo-Iranian).--Imz 00:33, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Basically, there's no order at all, now, not for any language group. Although there has been a few attempts at any sorting, most occurences of related languages sorted in order is probably just due to chance. 惑乱 分からん 01:32, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Vennus

What does "Vennus" mean? I have trouble finding it in any Online Latin dictionaries... 惑乱 分からん 21:15, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I found the actual root. It is vannus. It took a few trials and errors, but I finally found it. lol Imperial78

Nice work, what does it mean? Btw, "vetus" means "old", right? 惑乱 分からん 22:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Woah, good call. Vennus apparently means fan. I looked up vennus in my dictionary and didn’t see an entry, so I assumed it was a typo. My apologies. - Christopher 22:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Vannus means fan in Latin. It is in the American Heritage Dictionary for the van entry. What confused me was that we- and wet- are the same in meaning but different roots. Imperial78

Aren't they likely "related roots", that is, words that was derived from the same root with slightly different meanings already in the proto-language? 惑乱 分からん 22:55, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Pokorney and Watkins have them as separate roots. Imperial78

What I meant was, far, far back, there was one word in Proto-PIE, which turned into two words with different meanings long before the language split up into the main groupings we know today, (as *swesor- possibly originally was a compound word for "one's own woman", and *swek'rū similarly "one's own man", this is also possible for the word pair (s)uper and (s)upo, etc.)Regardless, it's all speculation, anyway. 惑乱 分からん 01:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I am thinking that the reconstructed roots should be the ones with the laryngeals. I will have to do more research before I tackle that though. :) Imperial78

Baltic Roots

Someone added a bunch of Baltic words which are not cognates. I have removed most of them. There are more I am sure. People who want to contribute need to know the material. Imperial78

Yeah, I added a link to all his edits above. He did some changes of the ortography, and replaced some words as well, I think. If you haven't done so, already, I think you should better go through his edits systematically to look for errors he might have made. 惑乱 分からん 01:09, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I just recently stumbled on this article and I have a few Baltic cognates to add and some to correct. Also, some changes in spelling are necessary, especially in Latvian. I can't go through the list at once, it will take quite a lot of work, and I would like to discuss changes first. There are quite a lot of pie. roots that are missing IMHO, and some would need revision (i.e. *dákru-, why not *akru-?). With the help of the "Latviešu etimoloģijas vārdnīca" (Etymological Dictionary of Latvian) by Konstantīns Karulis (Rīga: Avots 1992) I would like to check the existing cognates. There are a few congnates mentioned here that are not listed in the dictionary mentioned above and that sound quite suspicious to me as I have never heard these words being a native Latvian speaker myself. I don't touch these, however. Here are the first few examples that are obviously wrong:

• bher (in the meaning: to bear). The Lith. & Ltv. cognates that are mentioned here go back to the meaning of *bher as in "to cut, to rub, to split, to beat". Better examples in Latvian would be "bērns" (child), or "bērt" (to pour, to strew) and, in Lithuanian, "bernas" (young man, unmarried man, child etc.) or "berti" which both ACTUALLY go back to "to bear".

• dra - both in Latvian and Lithuanian "drebēt" resp. "drebėti" go back to *der- (to tear, to pull, to split), not *dra-.

• dheH₁(i)- the Lithuanian congnate ir correct, the Latvian cognate is only used dialectally in the meaning "to suck". It can be confused with "dēt" in the standard language in the meaning "to lay (an egg)" which goes back to *dheH. Furthermore, both cognates are listed under *dheH₁(i)- and *dheH₁-, but we want to keep them apart, don't we? Therefor I suggest the cognates "dēls" (son) or "dēle" (leech, sanguisuga) for *dheH₁(i)-.

• dheub- - I agree with the Lithuanian cognate, "dibens" for Latvian is correct, but it has a late vowel shift dubens > dibens. So I suggest "dubt" instead, which corresponds with the Lituanian example. "dubļi" is another good example, but it means "mud" today instead of the more ancient "(animal) bowels, intestines".

• dhreugh- According to Karulis, the primary meaning is "to be someone else", *dhrougho-s "another, another person", hence the opposite semantic changes to "friend" and "enemy". Good example for the same process is Latin "hostis" vs. German "Gast". If we can agree on this, we can add Ltv. "draugs" and Lith. "draugas" as cognates.

• dhĝhu- Seems very suspicious to me in general. Greek should be "ikhthys" no "ikhthus", I see arm. "jukn" in Karulis' dictionary, and Yotvingian "żuvo" as an other Baltic cognate. He goes back to pie. *ĝhđū-, not *dhĝhu-.

• ĝebh- I suggest the cognates "zebiekste" (weasel) for Latvian and "žebenkštė, žebenkštis" (the same) for Lithuanian

• ĝenu- Why not Latin gena (<*genus)?

• ĝhasto- According to Karulis, Latv. and Lith. "lazda" go back to *lēĝh "to collect, to gather".

• ĝhelun-eH₂- What in the hell does Lith. "pušis" have to do with this????

• ĝher- Should include Latvian "zārds" (rickstand, rack) and Latin "hortus" (garden).

• ĝheu- If you consider dh : ģh to be one root as a result of the accomodation process (because if you dont, the "Skr. juhoti" is a false cognate), I can suggest the Latvian cognate "žaut", Lith. "džiauti" and "džiūti", Gm. "tou/Tau", Eng. "dew" etc. The reflex of both roots is identical in the Baltic.

More to come - Janis

Luwian

Is Mawa rally a correct cognate to mei-? It seems to mean "four", which sounds rather strange for a cognate. 惑乱 分からん 01:22, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, read the newest version of the American Heritage Dictionary which is online. Imperial78

Key to orthographic conventions

This page could do with an explanation (or link to an explanation) for things like the dashes and slashes at the end of words, and the transcription conventions for superscript 'w', long/short vowels, etc. I'm a humble uneducated reader :) ntennis 06:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

The slashes are explained on the top of the page, they separate closely related (as in Tocharian) or old and modern (As in English, German, Persian etc) languages, given the same or a close counterpart word for comparision. Long and short vowels are shown with a macron on top, I think (also, of course all the modern languages are using their own ortography...) Anyway, thanks for your suggestions. 惑乱 分からん 19:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Questions on roots

• Pronouns

"*eg-" is "*eg" (a full word, not a root) in the AHD. Which is correct?

"*wei-" is simply "*we-" in the AHD. Where'd the extra i come from?

"*al-" is "beyond", not "other", in the AHD. Isn't this an adjective that only became a pronoun in certain languages, like Latin?

"*ne-" is not a pronoun. Why is it listed as one? (Also, AHE simply lists it as a full word, "*ne", not as a root.)

• Numerals

"*swek's-" is "*s(w)eks" (a full word, not a root, and spelled differently) in the AHD. Which is correct?

"*septm̥-" is also a full word

"*ok'tō(u)-" is also a full word (and without the ')

"*newn̥-" is also a full word

"*dek'm̥(t)-" is listed as simply "*dekm̥" (no ' or (t), and a full word, not a root)

"*wīk'm̥tī" is listed as a root ("*wīk'm̥tī-", not a full word—backwards land!

• Verbs

Why is "*ters-" listed as a noun (under "human feelings and qualities")? *ters- is a verb meaning "to dry", not "a dry".

What is the source for "*saus-" ("to dry")? It is lacking from the AHD.

That's just for starters, countless entries seems to have inconsistents with AHD. Should I assume that AHD is accurate in most or all cases where it differs from this page, or should I continue to list the differences so they can be discussed individually (and either the best can be chosen or both can be listed as valid versions)? What to do? I'd expect in almost all cases that a Wikipedia article would be much less reliable and consistent than a printed resource (especially one that's had hundreds, rather than a handful, of contributors), but I'm tentative to make content changes in this case purely because I'm not sure if there's some other major resource being used for this article that would have good reason to differ from the AHD on these sorts of issues. -Silence 06:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Not every root is found in the AHD, much is from an older publication by Pokorny. The AHD only included roots which are found in English words. Pokorny has it as eg'-... 5-10 are not declinable so that is why they are whole words. The AHD for some odd reason does not include the palatals which are found in Pokorny. So any root with the ' after a k or g, do not change those. In fact, other theories have the palatals as velars and the velars as uvulars due the fact that the palatals are so common. I am still doing more research into the laryngeals which should be included. Imperial78

But Pokorny is often considered outdated nowadays, ignoring laryngeals and much material from Anatolian and Tocharian languages, so I'm not sure if he should be considered as such a fool-proof source. 惑乱 分からん 13:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the original article was extremely simplified in the pronouns section, so I took some of the pronouns from the Proto-Indo-European language article (although simplifying the ortography and grammar in the process), which has wei, also AHD gives "variant form" wey-, so it's not completely contradictory in this matter, anyway (disregarding that language reconstruction is a very uncertain process in itself). 惑乱 分からん 14:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"5-10 are not declinable so that is why they are whole words." - Then shouldn't we treat them as whole words too, and remove the "-"?

"The AHD only included roots which are found in English words." - I'd considered that as a possible reason for why there are forms on the list that aren't from AHD, but in this case that example simply can't be true: "saus-" does have an English derivative, if this very list is to be believed, in the form of the word "sear". That's part of the reason the entry set off alarm bells for me (aside from the fact that its form is irregular for a PIE verb): the American Heritage Dictionary doesn't list any Proto-Indo-European root for "sear"—it only goes back as far as Middle English! So either (1) the AHD is out-of-date on this matter (which seems a little dubious, since it's updated pretty frequently), (2) "sear" is a possible derivative of "saus-", but a matter of controversy for linguists (in which case we should cite both the AHD for not listing it, and some other reputable source for listing it), or (3) no reputable sources link "sear" and "saus-", and the connection is purely the invention of some Wikipedia editor connecting the dots with no etymological basis, or the repetition of an error or out-of-date connection (in which case we should certainly remove the English derivative, if not the form "saus-" altogether). I have no idea which of these 3 is the case, and I'd like to know, or at least know a way that I can find out. Obviously linguistic reconstruction is a very inexact and speculative science, but that makes it all the more important for us to be 100% consistent and exacting in how we deal with the forms. -Silence 18:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"So any root with the ' after a k or g, do not change those." - Certainly. Thanks for the explanation!

"also AHD gives "variant form" wey-, so it's not completely contradictory in this matter" - But "wey-" is not "wei-"!! And "variant form" (what they have for "wey-") is not "only form" (what we have for "wei-")! Wikipedia articles are, obviously, unreliable sources compared to print sources, so if the only source you have for the "wei-" form is another article, we should certainly change "wei-" to "we-" immediately. If you do have some other noteworthy source for "wei-" then I think what we should do is include both forms, and cite the reference for the two different versions (i.e. AHD for "we-" and perhaps "wey-", the other source for "wei-"). That's how we should handle all disagreements between linguists on Proto-Indo-European reconstructions: not by weighing in on the matter ourselves by picking our favorite form (unless it's relatively clear which linguist is correct, and even then the controversy may be noteworthy enough to be worth mentioning), but by including all the widely-accepted versions and providing references for each different one. References are much less necessary when there are no contradictions or controversy regarding a form, but I think they're vital for issues where there's a noteworthy disagreement over the form (or its derivatives). However, it hasn't yet been shown that there is a disagreement over the "we-" form: right now, it looks more likely that Wikipedia is simply in error and is repeating that error by copying it from one article to the other, so until we find the origin of the "wei-" version (which for all we know is a relic of a variant form of phoneticizing the sounds, or an archaic form from an out-of-date source on PIE roots), I think we should probably replace it (and most of the other differences that lack a reference outside of Wikipedia) with American Heritage Dictionary formations. -Silence 18:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

AHD is not the only source available, it's just got the advantage that's online. In that case, we should be checking out several sources, to see what they agree on, and what to go with. The variant forms are generally common in different subgroupings in the IE languages, that is, Slavic languages might have evolved from some variant form, Germanic from some other, etc. The form wei- is allegedly from Robert S. P. Beekes, which is an authority on the PIE language, just as much as Calvert Watkins. 惑乱 分からん 19:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Page split?

This page has become unmanageably long. What do you all think of splitting this page into a few articles, based either on word type (verbs v. nouns?) or on meaning? (I'd recommend an alphabetical division akin to List of Latin phrases if this page was alphabetical, but it's not, which I think is in some ways a good thing, and in other ways a very, very bad thing. But nevermind that for now.) I think it would be significantly easier to edit and navigate this page if we split it up. A text-only article that's over 250k long is way too big for easy access by users. -Silence 06:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

No reason to split the page, but I wouldn't mind the adjectives being broken down. Imperial78

... "No reason to split the page"? Are you copulatingly mentally handicapped? o.o; Joking, but, remember a large percantage of Wikipedia's readers don't even have the technical capacity to handle a page that's over 250k long, much less the personal capacity! Hell, even pages that are only 100k long are far longer than most editors are comfortable with! For that matter, there are a lot of Wikipedia editors who don't think any article should be allowed to exceed 30k in size because of the complications that can arise with larger pages!! Yet you say a page split isn't merited?! MADNESS, I say. (i.e. "I disagree with you, so could you please explain why you feel that the page shouldn't be split? Perhaps I'll change my mind if you give me your reasoning, rather than just saying 'No reason to split it'.") -Silence 18:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, review List of Latin phrases, a similarly lengthy (but much, much more consistent, intelligible, user-accessible, and editor-accessible) list which has the fantastic idea of both splitting up the page so they're more navigable and providing a separate page (kept 100% consistent using templates) combining all the smaller pages into one, just for the sake of people who prefer to search through the whole page at once, or are just masochists who love wading through absurdly long articles. (And the fact is, "List of common Indo-European roots" can only stand to get longer. It's currently missing many, many dozens of important roots, and I have plans to expand on every section of the article in the future, to reorganize and alphabetize a lot of the entries and make the translations and derivatives more meaningful and informative. -Silence 18:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I think the sorting is OK, although it could need some fine-tuning, I prefer a thematical sorting to an alphabetical one, myself. Maybe there should be some limit to which roots should be accepted, though, some cognates are only found in two groups, or with far-fetched connections. Pokorny kind of created the standard on which PIE reconstruction is based (I guess) but many of his examples are considered outdated and lax, today. 惑乱 分からん 19:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

As a side-note, I'm also considering the creation of a completely un-sectioned, raw alphabetical listing (perhaps through some fancy coding tricks to minimize effort), since the current list is almost impossible to navigate without the 'Find:' function even if one already knows the name of the root, due to its disorganized state and many, many counter-intuitive placements of entries. Additionally, some pages listing all the derivatives in various languages, not just a single one from each, would probably be enormously useful, and I'm thinking that the most practical and efficient way to handle that would be to create a separate page for each major language family (i.e. we'd list all the English roots on a page with other Germanic ones), so it maintains a balance between being unmantainably long (if we had all the languages on one page) or overly chopped-up into dozens of pages (if we had a different page for every single Indo-European language). And that's just for starters. -Silence 18:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, I think it's interesting to see how a root has evolved through different language families and languages over the centuries, but it would be interesting to include meanings of words and examples of the sound shifts and sematic evolution involved, then, which unfortunately is a little too complex for a Wikipedia article of this magnitude. 惑乱 分からん 19:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

But first, we need to make this page organized and user-accessible. The table was the first step in reaching that goal, but many more steps remain. Next step: the article's too long. So, if we do cut it up, how should it be cut up? -Silence 18:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem opening the page at all. Perhaps for people on phone lines, they are having a problem? The only way to create separate pages is by verbs, nouns, etc. The page should be called List of Indo-European roots though, not sure why the common is in there. As well, most of the roots are pretty good. I have not included ones with loanwords or ones with just one or two language families. The biggest problem is that the roots need to be alphabetical (except the numerals and pronouns) order and the languages in their family order by alphabetical order since there is no consensus on how the various branches are related. Imperial78

I tried to sort the body parts in range from top to bottom, starting with major body parts (i.e. head before eye and nose, etc), I think it works okay, but if you prefer turning it into alphabetical order, that's okay with me. 惑乱 分からん 22:10, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Some of these roots, particularly ones with "alternative roots" (i.e. 2-5 roots meaning roughly the same thing) only contain languages from two different families, I don't know if there could be more cognates that hasn't been added yet, though. 惑乱 分からん 11:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Repetitions

I thought that Ghirlandajo's statements on the top of the page has been outdated by now, so I tried to change them, adding a clarification on my own. I guess that depends on how to define the word "repetitions", adding, for instance, a Polish cognate to a Russian word or similar would mostly be welcome. 惑乱 分からん 13:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, this is what I wanted to add to the intro section on top

The page has evolved into a different direction than Ghirlandajo's first approach, so repetitions are now welcome, but please try to follow the standards set by earlier contributors, regarding ortography, and try to have some certainty of the words you're adding, preferably check with some etymological authority beforehand, and look out for loanwords and false cognates.

And also I slashed over "repetitions found in sister languages". Not sure why it was removed, although I have some ideas of what could bethe reasoning behind it, I'd like an explanation. Should we edit the intro on top or not?, depends on how to interpret "repetitions", as I said. 惑乱 分からん 20:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Split or Not to Split

Since we are fixing the order and dividing the sections into smaller ones, there really isn't a reason to put the various roots on different pages since this is just a list of roots. If someone wants to create a page with say the adjectives and descriptions of each root and how they developed (semantic shifts, etc.), they can do that. This is just a quick reference, a list of roots for someone to quickly look through them and see the various cognates in IE languages. This is for sure not the largest page in Wikipedia. It doesn't take much time to load for me or most people I imagine. Imperial87

I don't know if the alphabetical collation really facilitates much, though, since most of these roots would look like a mystery to an average reader, anyway. I don't think many people would look up omesos or ghouros alphabetically because they're familiar with the words from before. But it doesn't hurt, either. Anyway, another question, if we are to have all these roots alphabetized, what collation order should we follow, I think PIE has about 3 different laryngeal sounds, as well as several sounds with gh etc, so there should be some kind of standard to follow. 惑乱 分からん 01:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

They are alphabetical in the table at the end of the AHD. We already have the list divided by semantic category and then subcategories. The rest being alphabetical will be fine. Imperial78

And the collation order (concerning palatals, velars, laryngeals etc.)? 惑乱 分からん 23:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I would not object to that order. I think linguistically it is better. If you want to put in the order of: vowel-laryngeal-bilabial-palatal-velar-fricative-etc... Imperial78

Laryngeals

I am adding the laryngeals from various sources (some in wikipedia). Alas, I cannot find the exact laryngeal for some roots due to there being no Greek or Anatolian cognate (for *ū and *ī). I will just write them as H. I will also readjust the order when I am finished. Imperial78

I mostly finished adding them. Please add any corrections for errors I may have made. Here are some interesting theories about PIE phonology: h1 may be two phonemes /h/ or /x/ and /?/, h2 may be /x/ or /X/, and h3 may be /ġ/ or /G/. PIE palatals may have been velars while the velars may have been uvulars. This would seem to make sense due to the high frequency of the palatals in PIE. Imperial78

The list is missing the word for king

What's the deal with all the Germanic languages using a non Indo-European word for king? - Christopher 10:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The Germanic words for king are from the root *genH- which I have added them there. So, the root for king is IE. Imperial78

Why do the words for "King" and "to give birth" both come from the same cognate? Those are totally different concepts. - Christopher 00:49, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

That root has derivatives relating to the family and tribe. "king" is closely related to the word "kin". So perhaps the meaning goes from "to give birth"->"family"->"tribe"->"head of the tribe"->"king"... Imperial78

I don't understand why an user would single out "king" among hundreds of different root words, but if you ask... 惑乱 分からん 12:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

What do you think of this order?

p, b, bh, t, d, dh, k', g', g'h, k, g, gh, kw, gw, gwh, s, h1, h2, h3, m, n, r, l, y, w, a, e, i, o, u, m., n., r., l. Imperial78

I'm OK with it, although it's sort of a "Sure, why not" approval. Possibly, there could be a merger of this and the alphabetical approach (or otherwise, explain the alphabetical order on top). Btw, why not the order m, m., n, n., r, r., l, l. ?惑乱 分からん 14:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Taking your suggestion Wakuran: p, b, bh, t, d, dh, k', g', g'h, k, g, gh, kw, gw, gwh, s, h1, h2, h3, m, n, r, l, m., n., r. l., y, w, a, e, i, o, u Imperial78

I guess it's alright, but in that case, the collating order should be explained on top of the page. 惑乱 分からん 20:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

ghreh₁-

What is the reason for adding this root, without including any non-Germanic cognates? 惑乱 分からん 21:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Because, this root is found in Pokorny and the AHD. Also, this page does stress English roots a bit more since this is the English language page. Imperial78

But shouldn't this page focus more on roots found in many different language groups? There are many hundred roots, anyway, and if a root only is found in one group, what is the evidence that there is a PIE root, to begin with? 惑乱 分からん 00:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, first since the AHD, and Pokorny list it, they are the authority. The root may also exists in Slavic, but Pokorny has it as questionable. Also, due to the roots several variations: grow is from the o-grade and, green from a suffixed o-grade and grass from zero grade, this hints to a Proto-Indo-European root. Everything that is in AHD and Pokorny will be eventually put on this page. Since this page is the English language page, English roots which can be traced to PIE will be included. The page also demonstrates the various branches of Indo-European. From the three Slavic languages included, one can see why they are in the same language group. Also with English, by including German, one can see that yes German and English are the most closely related as compared to English and Gothic or English and Latvian. Imperial78

Alright, then. I understand the point that it is plausibly PIE. Notwithstanding that, I wonder whether this page really needs to include all possible PIE roots. I think maybe thers should be a minimum of three different branches, excluding likely loanwords etc. (Many of the larger branches seem to have been borrowing quite frequently from each other.) Just my opinion, although I don't want to remove all the work you have done... 惑乱 分からん 20:33, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Every root which is not questionable should be added. I am trying to figure out if the word "common" can be removed from the title, because it begs the question what does "common" mean? lol Imperial78

So, our opinions differ...

I think it shouldn't be too hard to remove the common from the title, making a "common" redirect, it would just require some copy and paste and take some time for tidying up all the "what links here" links... 惑乱 分からん 20:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Cool I have redirected the page to List of Indo-European roots Imperial78

---

This is the new page for Indo-European roots. The old version List of Common Indo-European roots had in its page title an "common" which was unneeded. Imperial78

You should have copied the contents of the talk page, along with the article. Anyway, I am doing that, now. 惑乱 分からん 11:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted discussion

This bit of discussion got deleted, I think, when the page was cut-and-pasted:

Hasn't this page been in progress for a very long time. Also, shouldn't there be examples given for major (old) IE languages, such as Greek, Latin, Gothic/Old Germanic, Old Church Slavonic, Sanskrit etc...

Why is this page using reconstructions with schwa? Szemerenyi's dead, and pretty much every reputable Indo-Europeist now accepts laryngeal theory. Crculver 00:55, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the point of this article. There are many thousands of these roots. Is the aim to be comprehensive? If not, what is the basis and purpose of selection? This reminds me of the article "English words of European origin" which was, quite rightly, deleted recently. --Doric Loon 1 July 2005 12:18 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Indo-European_roots"

Strange, I don't see how that could happen.

Anyway:

1. This issue is fixed now, anyway, so that suggestion could be ignored.

2. Likewise. Imperial78 has changed all schwas into laryngeals, afaik.

3. I agree. Imperial78 wants to be comprehensive, but I don't really think that there is a point to that. I think it is interesting to follow the roots from their original semantic meaning, but I don't think that all "minor" or incertain roots should be included.

惑乱 分からん 14:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Project proposal

The above discussion shows a lot of the problems we have here. Firstly, this page IS too long, and it is not clear how spliting it will be user-friendly. Secondly, the format is NOT user-friendly, since the problem of elucidating semantic shifts has not been solved. Thirdly, the page is far too selective, with an almost random selection of roots and obviously some people would like more languages; and even within one language, what do you select if you are only allowed one example? And there is often a need for other information in order to make things understandable, but no room here to include them. And then the loan-word problem. If we only have space for one English lemma, it ought to be one of Germanic origin, but the people who wanted to show patterns of borrowing also have a point.
I think it is time we talked about the idea of a PIE Wiktionary. That would give space for one page per root. We would have to be careful not just to copy out Pokorny or Watkins, which would be copyright violation, and also a waste of time since they are available in electronic form anyway. But that would allow space actually to describe and explain semantic and phonological changes. We'd have to think carefully about quality control, though. I floated this once before, away back, and didn't meet with any enthusiasm, but maybe some of those active here see potential in the idea? --Doric Loon 14:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that it is a reasonable solution. I'd like to see a plausible English-PIE dictionary, myself. Also, the Wiktionary could include things like explanations on grammar, substrate roots, the ability to search through PIE words for their meaning, routes of loanwords and borrowings, explanation of roots that are possible but not certain etc. You could discuss the idea with dab and Angr (etc), who seem to know their PIE stuff pretty well. 惑乱 分からん 14:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

A longterm project would be nice. This page could aid in such an endeavor. I wouldn't say the roots are random. Certain roots such as numerals, pronouns, kinship terms, and a large number of basic nouns, verbs, and adjectives are included. Since Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, this root page is very much like the one found in the Encyclopædia Britannica, only longer. Much of the recent edits by me in the past few months was to correct the horrid errors made by previous users. Also, as the page is titled, it is a "List" of Indo-European roots. There are several IE related pages, one of sound laws, one with grammar, etc. All of these pages together give readers a fuller picture of IE. If you check other pages of Lists, there is not much further detail except a list of items. The user can look through the list and do his own research on semantic shifts or loanwords etc. Pokorny isn't perfect and needs corrections while the AHD does not include every root (just those found in English). Those two sources are aids, but there would be a lot more to add to a PIE Wiktionary. Imperial78

O sure, this page is much better than it was when I first criticised it a year ago. But you get my point. A PIE wictionary would allow a discussion óf each root, rather than just a listing, so actually much more than any of the dictionaries do. It could explain developments so lay-people can understand them and elucidate controversies, of which there are very many. I think it would provide something not available anywhere else. So, how do you start something like that? --Doric Loon 21:00, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Good question, how do we start it? :) It would be great because if each root had its own page, we could actually list every cognate in every Indo-European language instead of limiting ourselves to just one language from each branch/sub-branch. I am open to ideas. Imperial78

Well, first we'd need some HD space, and some people who are willing to offer their time and knowledge for their project. 惑乱 分からん 23:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I probably wouldn't get involved myself, but I think either a separate Wiki ("WikiPIEdia"?) or a user-built PIE dictionary at Wikibooks would be a good idea. I don't know how to go about starting one's own Wiki, though, or even who to ask about it. Angr (talk • contribs) 05:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

BTW, the article at Reich has what might be thought of as a basic structure. This article had an etymological section which I started to develop for fun and I soon got carried away with myself. It is actually out of place in that article, but could be a basic framework for the piece in the new project. Except that I would want to see explanations as well as lists. --Doric Loon 05:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be interesting if we could add links to other roots, related either in meaning (like *yeHr and *wet) or in origin, like (probably) *super and *supo, etc. 惑乱 分からん 12:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

the project is certainly honourable, and it would be very useful to have such a dictionary around. However, the only realistic systematic approach to this would be to start reproducing Pokorny. Sure, you could expand the prose for each of Pokorny's lemmas to make them more accessible for "lay people", but the base of your dictionary would be identical to the IEW. Any recent literature would be added to the base of Pokorny's lemma. Any other approach would cost you about ten man-years. Now, the IEW is online at Leiden, and you could just copy it. But, it was published in 1959, and copying the entire thing is never "fair use", as required for Wikipedia, never mind "free", as required for Wikisource. So there, in my opinion your project is fine, but it is hampered by legal issues. dab (ᛏ) 06:15, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Not sure about that. The same would be true of Calvert Watkins' American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, but nobody sees a copyright problem there. Watkins takes over the lemmata from Pokorny, actually cites Pokorny's page numbers in most of his entries, but structures the articles differently, draws in data from the modern languages, draws on more recent scholarship (Pokorny IS out of date), does a different job for a different readership, and is in my mind anything but plagiarism.

Of course you are right, though, that we would be wanting to do the thing from scratch, and that that is a VERY long job. I think we would start with a couple of roots, try to do them properly, and not worry too much if it takes years before a large number of roots were covered. That would be preferable to trying to put in all Pokorny's lemmata as stubs and then letting them grow, which would give the illusion of doing something without actually achieving anything new. --Doric Loon 07:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's a very good idea. Many of Pokorny's interpretations are either outdated or don't keep up with the latest research. His dictionary is Germanocentric. Use Watkins instead. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 07:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It's never plagiarism if you attribute it, but it may still be copyvio. My point is: If we engage in a project of writing our own PIE dictionary, the first step will be to lay out the entire IEW. We will then work on the individual articles, maybe merge and split a little bit, and add more recent references. The outcome will likely be an original work based on (with attribution) JP's IEW. But the raw, under construction, version will be identical to the IEW, and I see copyright problems with that. Now that shouldn't stop you from going ahead. I will certainly not bring the copyright police upon your heads; if you upload all Pokorny lemmas to wiktionary and nobody stops you, that's fine. I would say, create an entry on wiktionary for each of the 2,222 lemmas, do categorization and an index page. Incidentially, I did such an index here, you can just copy that and turn the links into wikilinks, and write a bot that copies the lemmas to the wikilinked articles, then start working manually. dab (ᛏ) 08:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, of course that's precisely why I'm suggesting that should NOT be the first step; the "raw" version would indeed be a copyvio if we did that. I would take it lemma by lemma, only start an article when we have the time to do it properly, and thus never even temporarily have an article which is only (or even substantially) Pokorny. I'm no lawyer, but I think that bypasses the problem. It also solves another problem: the fear of the big project. Looking at 2000 stubs and wondering where you can contribute a scrap of info would be daunting. Working as a team on just two or three articles at a time and researching them properly could really be fun. --Doric Loon 09:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

but then you're doing a pitiful amount of work, just to avoid copyvio, but ending up at exactly the same result. I can do a bot that would quickly create the 2,000 stub articles with Pokorny's material, we would then have a full dictionary to work on. Just thinking of creating these 2,000 articles by hand instead makes me weep. Nobody is keeping the Leiden people from hosting the dictionary, so I presume it falls under fair use, or else there is no party interested in the copyright (since as you say the book is outdated anyway). dab (ᛏ) 17:12, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Question: is there any reason why we can't do this right here in the main English Wikipedia? Supposing we just start a new article PIE root *reg-, write it up, and move on to the next one? The idea here is discussion of theories and presentation of connections, not the providing of dictionary definitions, so arguably it belongs in Wikipedia rather than Wiktionary. --Doric Loon 10:47, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

When it was tried before, it was decided a sole root didn't have any encyclopedical value... 惑乱 分からん 12:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a reference for that discussion? I expect it depends how discursive the articles are. --Doric Loon 12:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for replying so late, but here goes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Indo-European_root_word_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proto-Indo-European_language#Articles_on_PIE_vocabulary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proto-Indo-European_language#.22root.22_articles (Ehhh, but you might know about that by now, since you added that last post...) 惑乱 分からん 07:51, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I would be interested in giving this a go. I have set up a project page in my own userspace at User:Doric Loon/PIE Roots project page. It contains a first draft of a plan, which I hope you will want to edit, critique and develop. If you want to be involved, please put your name there, since we can't go on without a core group committed. Perhaps this discussion can be continued on the talk page of that project page. Linked to that I have also set up two sample articles, which however I have not really started writing. If you are interested, go over there and play with these. If we find it developing in interesting directions, we can move it out of the userspace. If nobody is really interested, on the other hand, I will quietly drop it. --Doric Loon 16:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

wikification / format / sources

• the list is certainly looking much better than it did; however, there must be about 3,000 language links on the page; this seems rather over the top. Why not introduce a list of abbreviations, with wikilinks, at the top, and just use the abbreviations in the table? dab (ᛏ) 06:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

  When I started this list, I chose to use abbreviations for precisely the same reason. I really don't see any particular reason for listing multiple entries from sister languages, as they only overclutter the page without serving any useful purpose. For example, the Slavic languages were one about 1500 years ago; many of them are still mutually intelligible; so I don't see a purpose in listing Russian "grad" at the start of the listing, then Lith., Latin, Arm. entries, and then again Polish "grad", as if these were totally different. If we are to add entries from all the IE languages, this list will be endless, really. We shouldn't forget than an encyclopedic list is not a full-fledged dictionary like Pokorny's and shouldn't be one. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 06:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• It would also be better to use a single template, {{PIE|h₁eǵ}} rather than {{unicode}} sorrounding single letters (like {{unicode|h₁}}e{{unicode|ǵ}}).
• Ideally, sources should be cited for each entry: who reconstructed this form. This will basically be a Pokorny page for most entries.

dab (ᛏ) 07:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

With regards to this page, it seems to always be improving. The abbreviations were very confusing, but yes the clutter of linked languages names is not much better. Can anyone create a table with the language names down the vertical and the roots across the horizontal? If we do the language names on the vertical, we do not have to worry about the table getting too wide. I disagree with Ghir about what should be included, I want to see sister languages, because I want to see what makes a language Slavic or Germanic. Imperial78

Yeah, sister languages is interesting, and could be useful for including different cognates. We don't need daughter languages for well attested mother languages, though. 惑乱 分からん 12:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Putting forward my own ideas again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Indo-European_roots#Another_Idea_for_the_languages_in_the_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Indo-European_roots#Table_idea 惑乱 分からん 12:32, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

good idea, do a column for each daughter branch (that's ten columns, Anat, I-Ir, Greek, Germ, Celt, Ital, B-Slav, Toch, Armen, Alb, maybe combine Toch, Armen, Alb into "other" (including other fragmentary like Phrygian), since each of these will have rather few entries.). Be sure not to do this by hand! someone should write a short perl script for this. dab (ᛏ) 17:01, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The original table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Indo-European_roots#Table
Btw, are Armenian and Albanian really fragmentary? I would guess otherwise, since as still living languages, they should be reasonably well studied by linguists(?) 惑乱 分からん 17:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, the "other" category only makes sense for fragmentary languages like Dacian, Phyrgian, Thracian, Ancient Macedonian, etc (those which are not Anatolian). We do not need to combine Albanian and Armenian into any other grouping. Especially since many Old Armenian and modern Armenian forms differ as well Albanian has Tosk and Gheg which have some interesting variations. Many Gheg forms show some archaic features. We should experiment with several formats with regards to colums, spaces, etc. So we don't have to decide later oh this is not working and change it. I agree with Wakuran, if a mother language is well attested like Latin is for the Romance languages, we do not need to include French, Spanish, etc. Imperial78

Page split again

User:4836.03 decided to split the page after reading the discussion page. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, but maybe it should have been discussed more thorough here before making the split. 惑乱 分からん 04:56, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree anom users should not be making drastic cuts or moves and especially without discussion. Imperial78

(S)He's not "anon". 4836.03 is not an IP nummber, it's a username. 惑乱 分からん 07:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Still, prior discussion is necessary. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 09:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Eastern Baltic

There are still several words referred to as "Eastern Baltic". It would be nice if someone with knowledge of the material could look through the words and see if they're Lithuanian or Latvian, as well as if they're true cognates. 惑乱 分からん 05:08, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I fixed them. Imperial78

Representing laryngeals and voiced aspirates

What, would you say, are the advantages and disadvantages of each of the following phonetic options, in terms of (1) officialness and widespread usage, (2) accuracy and consistency, (3) readability and accessibility to non-linguists, and (4) simplicity and typability (the last is important mainly because I'm planning to work on some individual pages for PIE roots on Wiktionary, and I'd prefer to pick a system that's as simple and easy to type as possible (i.e. minimal accent and archaic symbols in the page title itself; the contents can address that stuff), though obviously the other three factors are very important too):

Laryngeals

• Representing specific laryngeals with h₁/h₂/h₃ (e.g. ph₂ter, phter) vs. H₁/H₂/H₃ (e.g. pH₂ter, pHter) vs. ə₁/ə₂/ə₃ (e.g. pə₂ter, pəter).
• Using the specific laryngeals in pages' titles, as opposed to reserving that level of detail for the contents (e.g. *gerə₂- rather than *gerə- for "to cry hoarsely; crane").
• Using the older, initial-laryngeal-possessing forms of words in pages' titles, as opposed to the more familiar, laryngeal-colored-vowels forms (e.g. *seH₂wel- rather than *sāwel- for "sun", *h₂ed- rather than *ad- for "to, by, at") (note: obviously both will be discussed within the page either way).

Voiced aspirates

• Representing voiced aspirates as bh, dh, gh, etc. rather than bʰ, dʰ, gʰ, etc. (keep in mind, if you support one of the "h" laryngeal systems rather than the schwa one, the possibility of confusion between the two sounds in PIE commonly represented by "h", laryngeals and voiced aspirates; e.g., think about the most clear, effective, and consistent way to represent words like *dhugəter- / *dʰughter- / *dhugH₂ter- (to list only a few of the possibilities for "daughter")).
• (Note that, though numerous modern PIE authorities use "bh" etc. rather than "bʰ" etc., with Wikipedia's own PIE page being one of the exceptions, I've yet to see a source that doesn't use superscript "w" to distinguish normal w's from labiovelars, such as in *wl̥k^wo- ("wolf")—and, again, Wikipedia is one of the rare exceptions, using "*wl̥kwo-" in this case despite the inaccuracy. Thus, I'll probably be using ^w, unless someone comes up with some pressing reason not to, since unlike "bh" etc., there's a possibility of ambiguity between two different sounds—unless we use "h" for laryngeals, in which case "bh" etc. could also be ambiguous.) -Silence 01:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I would be in favor of representing the voiced aspirates as: bʰ, dʰ, gʰ. Of course ^w should be used. Imperial78

Alright. I suppose ʰ is simplest, and makes it clearer that it's a quality of the preceding consonant, not a consonant in its own right. Incidentally, if we're going to use the character ʰ instead of the sup-tagged ^h, we can certainly do the same for ^w and just paste ʷ in.

As for the trickier problem of how to represent aspirates, I originally was in favor of using a schwa (ə) because it's an ambiguous, neutral symbol that won't make casual readers jump to the assumption that it's any particular known sound (like "h" could), but after rethinking the matter, I've decided that although ə is the older style, and the one preferred by the American Heritage Dictionary and others, it's not good enough: ə looks too much like "a" and "e", especially in smaller font sizes, to make it immediately recognizable, and it's small enough that it will get lost when a number appeares immediately after it, making it unobvious that the number applies to the ə. Additionally, laryngeals were relatively similar to the sound "h". However, if we just put "h" in, some people will mistakenly think that it's simply the letter "h"—so to avoid that possibility, I've decided that of the three systems, I most prefer H₁/H₂/H₃. Being capitalized, it immediately jumps out as not just being another letter, even when it appears on its own (H) rather than with a number specifying which laryngeal it is. Additionally, it makes the distinction between ʰ and H even more obvious, as well as the distinction between those symbols and ordinary letters.

Anyway, while I was thinking about this, I also tried comparing my expanded American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (second edition) to the current List of Indo-European roots page. I only got through the A's and started on the B's, but I found some interesting discrepencies already. The comparison list's available on User:Silence/PIEcompare. After working on this comparison for a while, I got antsy and started working on a list of PIE roots for Wiktionary, which is still very much in the working but looks like this so far. -Silence 07:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, looks interesting. How's the support for a pie.wiktionary.org sofar? 惑乱 分からん 12:16, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Never going to happen, thank god. Possibly the worst idea I've ever head. en.wiktionary.org is in English, but it's about every word in every language. Having a dictionary in PIE would be useless and impossible; the vocabulary's too limited and disputed. And even having a separate dictionary-in-English just for PIE roots would be useless and a ridiculous waste of time, when simply including it on en. is much more useful because it allows linking to and from thousands of Indo-European words that already have pages! -Silence 22:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Alright, sorry for my clumsy word of choice. Otherwise, I'm not sure a dictionary would be the most suitable medium for the PIE language. I would like to see some kind of "info-center" with many different kinds of articles about how the roots is reconstructed, how the grammar likely would have worked, etc. 惑乱 分からん 13:29, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia itself is probably the best place for that, though we can certainly also include grammatical guides in Wiktionary Appendices. -Silence 16:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Have the laryngeal form as the clickable base form. Linguistically, "more familiar form" does not make any sense. Each page should show how the root changed in each daughter language from the laryngeal form. Imperial78

OK, but one problem with the laryngeal forms is that they're often much more disputable than the post-laryngeal form, since more reconstructive steps are required; in many cases there are two different possible laryngeals that could apply. (And, as you can see from the list I made, many of the forms don't even have laryngeal-era forms that I've been able to find, and many have ones that are probably inaccurate, especially where I took them from this list.) Also, as I've said, even if the page names don't use the older forms, there are plenty of places within the contents of the page to do so. Also, I have five or six books, and dozens of websites, with great lists of PIE roots, but not a single one consistently uses the laryngeal forms, so I couldn't create such a list even if I wanted to; do you have a website or book I could get ahold of to do so? (Preferably an up-to-date one, of course, not something from 50 years ago.)

Also, if we do use the full laryngeal forms for the page names, do you recommend that I switch columns 1 and 2 on this list, even though it will make it more difficult for most users to find the root they're looking for since the roots with initial vowels will be well-disguised by one of the three laryngeals? I just don't like the idea and don't think it's necessary, or an especially common practice in PIE resources, or nearly as useful for the purposes of comparing and looking up forms. It seems more like something that would be valuable to people who are already PIE enthusiasts, not to the general public who are just looking for the proto-forms of certain Indo-European words and their various cognates. -Silence 22:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I understand your concerns and as you say sources are not numerous with fully reconstructed roots having the laryngeals. Also, some sources seem to conflict a bit in some of the details at times. Would an H (without any numeral subscript) be a handy symbol for an unknown laryngeal when a Greek and Anatolian cognate is not known. I would prefer columns 1 and 2 switched because the oldest reconstruction has the laryngeals. The project is a work in progress so there will always be improvements and changes when more sources are found. I will quote Calvert Watkins: "No systematic notice has been taken in this Appendix of word-initial larynegals before vowels (amply attested in Hittite), since the root forms with initial vowel are readily convertible by the reader."...LOL Imperial78

• "Would an H (without any numeral subscript) be a handy symbol for an unknown laryngeal when a Greek and Anatolian cognate is not known." - Yes, a numberless H works perfectly well when the specific laryngeal is unknown or heavily disputed. I've already used this format, in fact, for several entries where I couldn't find information on which laryngeal was there.
• "I would prefer columns 1 and 2 switched because the oldest reconstruction has the laryngeals." - Alright. But when they're switched, do you still think we should bother listing column 2 at all? The main initial purpose of column 2 was to make it easier to find roots based on the initial letter their derivatives often had; if the list is to be alphabetized based on the laryngeal forms, that's no longer helpful. So do you still feel the later "base" form is useful enough to list on the general table, or not?
• "The project is a work in progress so there will always be improvements and changes when more sources are found." - Of course. That goes without saying. That's why citing sources for every root is so vital for presenting users with PIE-related information, so Wikipedia and Wiktionary can report on the major findings and avoid using original research to create new ones. And that's why it's so important to have specific pages on the roots eventually: there's no possible way to satisfactorily provide efficient references for all the forms provided on a single page, as there's too much complexity at work behind some of the roots. PIE is not monolithic enough to be best-served by a singular, massive table; this is not to say that a table isn't useful, just that a table alone is not sufficient. -Silence 23:09, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• • Silence, you always bring up such great points. Ordering has always been an issue. Should it be alphabetic or based on manner/place of articulation, etc? Which do you prefer? I wouldn't object to the older non-laryngeal forms included in a second column, just because they are a bit more familiar. Of course, I think we are setting a nice new standard on the web for Indo-European roots, a truely up to date and all inclusive database. I assume it will be one root per page, so how many languages will be included? Will it be expanded to include every Indo-European language? With all of the Indic languages, the numbers will be quite high. Imperial78

• • • "Should it be alphabetic or based on manner/place of articulation, etc?" - Well, I can understand why it's tempting to list the words based on the inherent phonetic qualities they start with, considering that PIE didn't have an alphabet, and we are only using these specific letters because they're a convenient way to represent a variety of sounds, and only putting them in this specific order as a matter of pure convention (albeit one stretching back thousands of years). However, remember that articles like these are written for the general public, not for expert linguists; above all, what's important is accessibility and a simple, useful, easily-navigable system. As such, we should at least try to be as close to the real order of the alphabet as possible, even if we make small changes.
    • "I wouldn't object to the older non-laryngeal forms included in a second column, just because they are a bit more familiar." - OK.. Though I'd be more comfortable if there was support, not just 'no objection'. :) I don't want to waste a column with something that may not be useful enough later. I'll still need to find some reliable listing of laryngeal-bearing forms first, though; as soon as I have one, I'll gladly make the change (and then continue working on the full list).
    • "I assume it will be one root per page, so how many languages will be included?" - Per Wiktionary standards, it will be one spelling per page, so as to avoid assigning arbitrary in-title number values to distinguish different PIE roots that are spelled the same (like *od-, "to smell", and *od-, "to hate"), with different sections of that page for the different roots. It's also still under discussion (at the "Beer parlour") whether these pages will be in the Wiktionary Appendix namespace because they're not directly attested, or whether just starting the page names with "*" will suffice. I prefer the latter simply because it's simpler and easier to type than "Wiktionary Appendix: Proto-Indo-European root *", but I understand the reasoning behind the former and am not too strongly opposed to it. This will also determine what we do with other reconstructed forms on Wiktionary, like Proto-Germanic.
    • "so how many languages will be included?" - I'm not sure what you mean. How many languages of what, and where? The English Wiktionary deals with all noteworthy human languages.
    • "Will it be expanded to include every Indo-European language? With all of the Indic languages, the numbers will be quite high." - ? The numbers of what? What are we talking about "extending"? -Silence 05:57, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeh, one page one root is definitely the way to go. Yes, source citing for every reference is an excellent disciplin which will greatly increase the value of the project; citing sample sentences, especially from ancient languages would also be good. And yes, potentially every IE language can be mentioned, though there is no need to aim for comprehensiveness right away; let it grow! The wonderful thing is that there is all the space we need!

There haven't been many more comments on the project page I tried to set up in my user space. That's what happens when you rush ahead on a sudden surge of enthusiasm, but no matter. We would still need to answer the questions about order, structure, and especially loan words, which were raised there. But I think there is no reason not to go ahead. I think Wiktionary is the place to do it. When there is a consensus about this, DBachmann is prepared to create all 2000 pages using a bot. I expect if we have anything (e.g. standard introductory sentence, category, etc.) which we want on every page, the bot will do that too, so it should be agreed before he does the job. Afterwards, I expect such things would need to be added by hand. --Doric Loon 05:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

"Yeh, one page one root is definitely the way to go." - Well, one page per spelling, in keeping with Wiktionary layout conventions. But, basically, correct.

"citing sample sentences, especially from ancient languages would also be good." - Also correct. Though, as always, we should be careful about original research; citing an ancient-language source is better if it's one that's already been cited by a noteworthy modern source, especially if we're using it to draw or explain a conclusion.

"And yes, potentially every IE language can be mentioned, though there is no need to aim for comprehensiveness right away; let it grow!" - I agree with this; there's no rush. I don't quite understand the "potentially every IE language can be mentioned", though; most IE languages already exist on Wiktionary, don't they? It's mostly just a matter of which ones have been gotten around to yet.

"When there is a consensus about this, DBachmann is prepared to create all 2000 pages using a bot." - Um. That might not be the best idea, and definitely let me see the format for those pages before you initiate such a bot, as there are probably a few layout issues I'd want to discuss. Maybe someday, when we have completely established that individual pages for PIE roots are needed on Wiktionary, and have worked out all the issues regarding format and style and phonetics. Tempting, though.

"I expect if we have anything (e.g. standard introductory sentence, category, etc.)" - Speaking of which, you may want to check out wikt:*gerə- and wikt:*od-, two prototype pages I made to test Wiktionary's capacity to deal with reconstructed roots. -Silence 05:57, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Not sure if you guys know this, but there are around 460+ Indo-European languages. Are we going to include 460 outcomes of the PIE root on each page or just a select few languages? Imperial78

• Well, first off, surely you're aware that not a single one of the PIE roots has a derivative in every known Indo-European language (in part because some of those languages are only attested fragmentarily), and many of those roots only have derivatives in a handful, so we would never really have to deal with 460 languages. For when there are numerous derivatives, we will either include all derivatives on the individual PIE pages (which wouldn't really be that difficult beyond the legwork of acquiring all those forms; Wikipedia is not paper, so there's plenty of room to include any number of derivatives on a certain page, as long as they're relevant) or avoid redundancy by using a more hierarchial, step-by-step approach (i.e. list the earliest known derivatives of PIE roots, including reconstructions, and have people follow links to go to those pages to see the further-on derivatives). Depends on which is more convenient. But I see no reason to withhold any verifiable, referenced information; the more derivatives, the better. Where I could see us drawing the line is if there's a large number of derivatives from a specific derivatives (i.e., we might shorten the list of derivatives of *ad- by only listing a few of the hundreds of derivatives of the Latin word "ad"), since that approaches redundancy or too much detail for a PIE page. But for distinct derivatives in the many Indo-European languages where there's attested, sure. Why not? -Silence 07:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

• By the way, after putting an hour of painstaking work into trying to find the laryngeal forms of many of the first words on the list (like *ab(e)l- and *ad- and *agw(e)sī-, which I've been able to find no evidence of whatsoever beyond this very list), I'm about ready to give up on finding anything supporting the laryngeal forms of a large portion of the PIE roots in existence. Lacking any source to confirm these formations (many of them unusual and out-of-date, like *H₂egos-), I'm starting to come to the conclusion that many of these laryngeal forms are bordering on original research, based on the editors' assumption that every word beginning with a vowel originally had a laryngeal, even when Hittite and other languages do not necessarily suggest it and thus most Indo-Europeanists are at the very least cautious to assume that level of absolute regularity. That, combined with the difficulty provided to readers when they have to wade through so many Hs, and the even more speculative nature of many specific laryngeal forms (even more speculative than the basic PIE roots themseleves, that is), has made me flip-flop again: I realllly don't like the idea of trying to propagate and push for laryngeal-using forms when so much of the literature, especially introductory literature (but also more in-depth and advanced texts like Sihler's New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin), uses the more useful and verifiable post-initial-laryngeal forms. For example, every single one of the references I've been able to find lists the PIE number for "one" as *oi- or *oi-no, not as "*h₃eino-" like this one does. In lieu of references for every single one of the laryngeals claimed by this list (or, indeed, for any of them thus far), or of any other method to verify such forms, I'm forced to remove them from any list I'm working on for now. Plenty of laryngeal-bearing forms, like *H₁aǵro- and *bʰleH₂g- and *deH₃-, are attested in the resources I have, but dozens of the ones on List of Indo-European roots are not. -Silence 07:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

On laryngeals, why not ask Angr for advice. He added these to a number of roots which I gave on other pages (eg. (Indo-European copula). I had taken the form from Calvert Watkins, but he had apparently fuller information. --Doric Loon 09:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

As for the representation of laryngeals, the system I'm most familiar with is lower-case h (*gerh₂-, *dʰugh₂ter-, etc.), but it really doesn't matter whether you use h, H, or ə so long as you're consistent. As for whether the headwords should be listed with or without laryngeals, I'd say with, because popular publications like Watkins notwithstanding, Indo-Europeanists always use the forms with laryngeals. I think the list should be more accurate and up-to-date than Watkins and Pokorny, not only as up-to-date as they are. As for the question of discovering which words had which laryngeals where, that's really difficult. Pokorny doesn't include them at all, and Watkins doesn't list every known IE root, but only those that have descendants in English listed in the AHD. The laryngeals I added to Indo-European copula were also mostly from Watkins, but they're from the second edition, where he provides the "oldest form" of each root with laryngeals numbered 1, 2, 3. Angr (talk • contribs) 07:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

"The laryngeals I added to Indo-European copula were also mostly from Watkins, but they're from the second edition, where he provides the "oldest form" of each root with laryngeals" - I actually have been using the second edition of Watkins as my primary source for laryngeals, and that's exactly where the source of my distrust for the current forms listed on List of Indo-European roots came: because hundreds more laryngeal forms are included than I've been able to find in any resource, many of them inconsistent or out-of-date, I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that a large portion of the forms on List of Indo-European roots is essentially original research, possibly from someone who decided to just add various laryngeals willy-nilly to every word starting with a vowel, regardless of whether authorities agree or whether there's evidence of such in Hittite, Greek, etc. I may very well be mistaken, if there's some valuable source for Indo-European roots with laryngeals that I'm unfamiliar with (and I'm sure there are a few, which is why I've been asking), but if I'm not, we need to replace all the unsupported forms on List of Indo-European roots with forms that can be substantiated by references, like Watkins, even when that means choosing a non-laryngeal form over a laryngeal form. To do otherwise is to sacrifice one of Wikipedia's core policies, "no original research", just for the sake of arbitrary consistency. I'm willing to go along with choosing the oldest form possible wherever it can be deduced, but I'm not willing to fabricate forms that do not appear in any prominent reference work on the Proto-Indo-European language. So, in lieu of any forthcoming would anyone object to my bringing all the forms on List of Indo-European roots in line with Watkins' "oldest forms" listings (and other reliable sources that use laryngeals, like Sihler), at least until we find some valid references for the numerous problematic forms, like "*H₂egos-", here. We can then, in a sense, "start from scratch", gradually adding references to the list over time and expanding it further, this time with specific citations to each reference work that attests this derivative or that meaning or what-have-you, so there's no future danger of things becoming the cluttered, unverifiable mess they are now. If you do allow me to take such a step, of course, we can easily keep a tab on the last edit from before I made this change, so that if someone ever does come forward with references to all those forms in the future, I can very easily re-add them. But in the meantime, if noone here knows where we've gotten all these PIE words, I think we should play it safe and ditch 'em... -Silence 07:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Silence, many IEists follow Benveniste's assertion that the PIE root had a CVC structure and, therefore, if there's no attested laryngeal then one must add one to meet this requirement. H1 if there's no colouring, H2 or H3 if there is. It's hardly original research to follow a custom that has now been used in the academy for sixty years or so. And, in fact, Sihler widely applies this in his New Comparative Grammar. CRCulver 08:43, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

It is original research if it is not directly attested in any work that has been provided so that verification is possible. I'm fully aware of the theorized CVC structure, and personally support the idea myself, though there were likely plenty of exceptions in the actual PIE language (but exceptions are always harder to reconstruct than rules and patterns, since languages tend to become more consistent over time by method of analogy, converting irregular forms into regular ones). Applying a certain linguistic theory to words to produce forms that do not appear in any work that has yet been provided not only produces lots of inaccurate and contradictory results (as is shown by the many dubious laryngeal forms on List of Indo-European roots), but also still constitutes original research, because no matter how widely-accepted a theory is, applying that theory is the job of Indo-European scholars, not of Wikipedia. Wikipedia reports on research that already exists; it does not make new, original research, even for seemingly straightforward matters like. Reliable references that provide a list of PIE laryngeal forms as thorough and lengthy as List of Indo-European roots does should be incredibly easy to find, if your theory about how widespread all of these forms are is correct; provide even one and the matter will be done and done. But mere repeated claims that "everyone does it", without specific examples of such, are without substance; until sources are provided to demonstrate this for specific roots that a user has fairly asked for references for (and I've done so and been provided with not a one), Wikipedia cannot and ought not make the claim that "X is the correct PIE root and Y is not" (by including the X form and not the Y), particularly when I can provide 6 or 7 sources for Y and we don't even have one source for X. So, as I said, as a temporary measure, if only to help provide an impetus to people to fill the page up with more references so as to conform with Wikipedia:Verifiability, we need to replace entries using forms unsupported by any of the literature we currently have access to with forms that are so supported. Otherwise, the page will never be able to conform to Wikipedia policy, as users will just keep adding more and more unverifiable and dubious information without any way for anyone to track down where and how they got it. The first step in making this a truly Wikified, valuable list is to bring it in line with Wikipedia's referencing requirements, and to do that, it's clear by the fact that noone's been able to provide references to defend any of the specific forms currently used on List of Indo-European roots in the time since this discussion began, that we will need to start using referenced forms over uneferenced forms even when we personally find them distasteful. It's either that, or remove the unreferenced entries altogether, which surely is much more harmful and drastic than simply respelling some of them with forms that exist in available reference books until such a time as a reliable and comprehensive source for earlier forms can be provided. Surely that isn't too much to ask. -Silence 09:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Silence's Wiktionary trials

Silence, well done with these: wikt:*gerə- and wikt:*od-. I wonder if it would not be better to state in each case what language a word is: of course people can find out by following the links, but that adds a lot of work for the reader. --Doric Loon 09:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

If you're referring to the languages of the derivatives, then actually, that's one of the top things on my priority list to add to both of those pages (that, along with adding a table for the basic PIE conjugated verb forms for these roots). If you check out the Indo-European roots category, you can see some other user's attempts at making pages for roots, which ended up with more of a focus on the verb and noun conjugating and declining, gave names to all the derived languages, and used laryngeal forms more often than not. (Interesting differences often arise when different groups of people work on the same thing without contact with each other. Of course, the best end result is gained when the best aspects of the versions provided by both groups are combined.) -Silence 15:02, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Mmmm, it seems that the roots are primarily only from Latin, Greek and English, based on words that have found their way into englishgiving quite a limited view of how PIE is reconstructed. This is my attempt of what a good draft for a root page should look like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Doric_Loon/PIE_Root_%2Areg- (Of course, then we'd still need to figure out how to include all suffixed and variant forms in an user-friendly way.) 惑乱 分からん 00:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's a very useful start. But see also the discussion there: the question of multiple parallel derivatives with subsequent histories is problematic, as is the question of loan words. How does one build them into such a structure in a manner which is easy to follow? --Doric Loon 16:44, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I updated the entry now. Most of my additions were copied from http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/phonetics/word7.html or www.etymonline.com, so it could probably need some re-editing, as well as added information on which form of the PIE root that gave birth to attested words in the daughter languages. Still very rough. 惑乱 分からん 14:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

• What of the basic layout of wikt:*gerə-, now that I've added language names? (Though it's still just a rough draft.) I think a simple tree format could work quite well, and it'd avoid the redundant blank spaces and artificial separation of having a separate section for every language. If the tree got too large, we could simply move the details of the branches into the pages for the derived words of that branch. -Silence 09:14, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

• wikt:*gerə- is starting to look good now. We should update the other articles, accordingly. 惑乱 分からん 12:08, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Both of you are making good progress on these trial articles. Silence, I think it would be important to say what words like German Kranich actually mean. Wakuran, I'm still not convinced that the problem of parallel groups of derivations has been sorted out structurally; but maybe there is no good solution. But we are well on our way to having a concept from which we can start on a larger scale. Well done.--Doric Loon 19:39, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I basically copied the whole scheme from The Indo-European Database Proto-Indo-European Roots page, and decided to sort the roots more after derivations in the modern languages, than after how common "forms" of the roots have developed. Of course, all "forms" of the root should be included, anyway. It is just a draft and an idea for a basic scheme. Silence's scheme also works, but we'd need to show more cognates from different language groups, once we're sure of the derivation. 惑乱 分からん 20:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

German Kranich means "crane", as expected. I think that maybe we should omit the meaning of the words unless there are cognates that have diverged in meaning. 惑乱 分からん 20:17, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I speak German. I'm always wary of assuming too much. The reason I wasn't sure this was obvious was that other derivatives with different meanings appeared above it. But OK. --Doric Loon 09:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Helen

To Imperial78:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Indo-European_roots#Parts_of_trees

I have forgotten what the root "helen" meant, by now, but if you remember it, feel free to add it again. 惑乱 分からん 23:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

References

Since there's currently no system in place in this article to cite individual sources for specific entries, until one that works well is put in place, I'll be creating a new table at User:Silence/PIEcompare listing all the forms here and then the forms used in various reliable references. This way, we can both tell which forms are corroborated by references and which are as-yet unsourced. Anyone is welcome to add references either confirming or further contradicting any of the entries' forms, though so far I only have the first few sections (through "numerals") up. If these forms aren't original research, it should be exceedingly easy to give sources for them all. If they are, the page can be used to easily determine their sourced versions, and replace them with those. -Silence 18:02, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, we'd probably need more sources than just Pokorny and Watkins. Max Vasmer's work is online, but it is in russian, and probably a bit outdated, as well. Category:Indo-Europeanists has a few other blokes, but they're mostly quite old, and I don't know how much of their work is to be found online, anyway. 惑乱 分からん 22:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we need many more references than Pokorny and Watkins—that's the main reason I started the list, in fact, so we can pool our efforts to get a variety of noteworthy references and thus get an idea of what the general consensus is regarding forms. I tried to add Sihler earlier today too, but he doesn't usually mention the raw root forms (for example, he only uses *eǵō and *eǵoH, never *eǵ-, though clearly he favors that over the laryngeal form used on the Wikipedia list) and the complete lack of lists of them in the book, or even an index of them, makes it difficult to track them down). This is just someplace to start from. And as I said above, I feel that until we do find good references for the forms used on List of Indo-European roots, we should replace them with referenced formations. This will not only remove any danger of Original Research and provide an impetus to editors to get more reliable references, but will also provide a more workable starting point from which to branch out into other forms, since we'll begin with purely referenced forms and then have a much easier time checking to see if any future changes have citational support. As-is, it's an understatement to call the forms used on List of Indo-European roots "pure chaos"; I'll gladly work on remedying that if given a chance. -Silence 00:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I've now added numerous more references to that page from three distinct, reputable, up-to-date (they date from 1995, 2000 and 2004) sources for Proto-Indo-European roots. Is that sufficient to replace completely unreferenced forms on List of Indo-European roots with ones that often have 3 or 4 sources on User:Silence/PIEcompare? The ones that will be removed can always be re-added if a source is provided for them in the future, but until then I think we should clearly establish the habit of requiring references in order to display a root or formation, as soon and as thoroughly as possible. -Silence 05:15, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

By the way, when I say "unreferenced form" I am referring to a spelling that there are no references for (whereas there are several references for an alternative spelling), not to a root that is unreferenced. I have little interest in removing any PIE roots from the page, at least at this point; I find it much, much more likely that there will be original-research in the realm of how roots are spelled (and, to a lesser extent, what they mean) than in the realm of forming the roots themselves. All I want to do is replace uncited (and thus unverifiable) spellings (and meanings) with cited ones, so we have a firm, well-referenced ground to stand on when it comes to tricky and contentious issues like laryngealization. -Silence 05:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, nice work, this is starting to look like something. I'm not against changing the roots per se. Btw, what do you mean with "No references"? That you cannot find the root in any form, or that particular reconstruction spelling? (For Watkins, at least, that is not strange since his scope is limited to words currently used in English.) For "*teus-ḱm̥ti", at least Beekes allegedly has *tusdḱomti. 惑乱 分からん 07:44, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if I understand what you mean with "no references", but at least I can find all these roots in Pokorny. 惑乱 分からん 08:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

• "No references" just means I haven't yet found the root (in any form) outside of Wikipedia, which is perfectly understandable since there are lots and lots of roots out there and I've only gone through a few books and been working on the references for a day. For example, I haven't bothered to go through Pokorny because so much of that text is out-of-date; I've only listed Pokorny forms where one happened to be mentioned in another book (usually on the AHD list). I will be operating under the assumption that every root on the list is a genuine one from somewhere, so "no references" is not a big deal in the short run. An assumption I won't be running on, however, is that forms will tend to be attested in major references in the same spelling and construction that's used on Wikipedia currently. So more significant than "no references", for our current purposes, is where and how the referenced forms differ significantly from the Wikipedia form. -Silence 09:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary

I've started a new page on Wiktionary to centralize discussion of the reconstructed-roots issue, since there's not yet any policy or guideline there directly dealing with such words. After the debate there has reached some sort of consensus, we should be able to use this page to formulate a Wiktionary guideline and format for creating pages for Proto-Indo-European roots, which will greatly aid the Wikipedia List of Indo-European roots too in that it will allow us to interwiki-link the individual roots to detailed pages for anyone who's interested in more in-depth information, references, etc.: Wiktionary:Reconstructed terms. -Silence 06:12, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Great! --Doric Loon 09:39, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it looks good, but maybe we shouldn't include a big deal of new roots, before the discussion has reached a concensus, it seems... 惑乱 分からん 10:52, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Um, that's exactly why I made the page, and why I've only created 2 roots (plus reorganized a bunch of messed-up existing pages into one new, consistent one) in the many weeks since I decided I wanted to give reconstructed roots a shot on Wiktionary. I have no interest in wasting too much time on roots if it's going to end up being the case that they don't belong on Wiktionary, plus I'd rather get an idea of an ideal consistent style to utilize on these pages before creating them. You seem to have missed most of my comments on Wiktionary on the matter; I've been taking all these steps because I really, really want to clarify consensus and policy on this issue, not because I want to hastily rush to creating dozens of PIE pages. -Silence 14:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, let's just improve on the entries we've got so far, for now. 惑乱 分からん 16:16, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Preverbs

Whooah, a lot of edits lately. Don't know how common these roots are, it seems rather puny having only a few examples in the derivatives section. Seem to be valid roots, though. Also, I don't understand the change to "preverbs", although my choice "directions" probably not is the best choice, I don't think "preverbs" are particularly much better, and I even doubt that all of these words really are preverbs, mainly, to begin with. 惑乱 分からん 00:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

How about "directional adpositions?" --Tony(blah blah blah)(look what I can do!) 19:58, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I think I choose "directional words", since I have no idea if these words were used as adjectives, adverbs, affixes, adpositions etc. in PIE. I suspect they could have been used quite broadly, but I leave that up to someone else to check out. 惑乱 分からん 11:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Advice needed

Hello, guys. I'd like to draw your attention to Narew, where User:Halibutt keeps asserting that the PIE lemma for "water" was some enigmatic *nr-. I believe he confuses Indo-European with Finno-Ugric. Can you check you references for "water"? Thanks, Ghirla ^-трёп- 11:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Just in case Ghirlandajo wondered, *nr is not the only root associated with water. Others include *ap (pre-Slavic apno, cf. Apnarica), *drw (later *drowos; cf. Drava, Drina, Dreta), *reg (flow, flowing water; cf. Rižana, but also possibly Rijeka), not to mention *Hegʷ-eH-, *wód-r and other roots mentioned in this list. Oh, and there is of course *nere (to sink; cf. [1] modern Russian nora) - and *ner (under [2]), *nebh/*mbh (water or wet; cf. [3] Spanish nubes, Latin Neptunus), *neigw (to wash; [4]), *nd (to flow, cf. Nida, [5])... //Halibutt 11:53, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

As to *nr- itself, the earliest mention of its' presence in the dictionaries I could find in Aleksander Brückner's Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego. In the article on nor he mentions that all of the derivates are taken from an ancient word; the root ner is non-existent in modern Polish; Among the examples cited there are: OCS wŭnrĕti and iznrĕti (*nerti, to emerge from the water), Ukrainian нерти ([nerti]), Serbian zanere and iznere, Lithuanian nerti and apnirti (to submerse), Prussian *nierzei (a narrow peninsula), Swedish nōr and German naro (English narrow). //Halibutt 06:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad that you acknowledged that this lemma does not stand for "water" at all. Let's make necessary changes in the articles so as not to mislead our readers any more. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 08:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It does not stand for anything as we don't have a Indo-European dictionary. What we have are roots extracted from modern languages we know, a pure reconstruction. Hence the varieties of spellings and glitches in meaning. *me does not stand for English me either, it's simply a root that is commonly found in modern words relating to what is called me in English. So yes, I acknowledge that this root does not stand for anything as I never stated that. In fact I have yet to hear what is your problem with that statement. //Halibutt 14:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The point is, ner- isn't found in words meaning "water". Angr (talk • contribs) 14:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 15:44, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Appears that it might have come from a root meaning something like "constrict, tighten, lace" possibly. 惑乱 分からん 11:58, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Mańczak states clearly that the root is associated with water, not meaning water. However, it's probable that he meant that the root is associated with "words that are associated with water" rather than "water" as such. Hence emerge from the water, submerse, narrow strip of land between two lakes, and so on. Anyway, for me the matter is pretty simple, as all the toponyms mentioned are clearly associated with bodies of water anyway. In fact most of similar toponyms are names of rivers or lakes (Nur, Ner, Narva River, Nara River, Neretva, Nurzec, Narasa, Narutis lake, and so on), which at times gave names to towns located in their vicinity. //Halibutt 12:49, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, apart from the

Apart from what? 惑乱 分からん 14:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Toponyms are extremely poor sources for etymology, because they can mean anything or nothing and because they are highly prone to being borrowed. The fact that you can find a bunch of bodies of water with names starting with nVr (where V=any vowel) proves exactly nothing. Angr (talk • contribs) 14:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

But the fact that I can find such interpretation in books proves that it's established. //Halibutt 14:31, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

You've cited one book, which was published in 1927. That hardly makes it established. Indo-European linguistics has come a long way in the last eighty years. Angr (talk • contribs) 15:21, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I meant the book I cited in the article in question, which was published in 1999. //Halibutt 23:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Phonology

It would be helpful if there were some explanatory material at the beginning of this article that explained PEI phonology and morphology...particularly what the symbols stand for and how they are (were) used. For example, what is H and how does it differ from H2???

go to PIE, this is supposed to be a list of roots. dab (ᛏ) 11:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

rewrite!

A lot of work apparently went into this, but it needs a complete rewrite. The page is 289k long: this is not acceptable. The organization by topic is deeply flawed: The title promises a list of IE roots. The same root may appear in terms with a wide range of meanings. Just give us a list of roots, in alphabetical order. Also don't link to Sanskrit 500 times in the same article: most of the 289k of this page is useless bloat (linking to the same languages again and again and again), use abbreviations. dab (ᛏ) 11:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I've tried making some of these points in the past (particularly the necessity of a page-split), and made some major reorganizations to the page to try to make it more accessible in the past, but it's still a pretty poor introduction to Indo-European roots, both in terms of accuracy and consistency and in terms of accessibility. (The former is caused by the lack of inline referencing, and the lack of factchecking for forms and meanings, and the latter by the excess of relatively trivial information and the comparative lack of more important information—like cultural significance, linguistic significance, relationship to other PIE roots, etc.) I think this page could do with a complete makeover: we should certainly change the way the page is organized and the entries are ordered, and we may even want to consider changing the entry presentation to be a two-line, rather than one-line, deal, since the list of cognates in various Indo-European languages takes up so much space already that it limits the amount of other important information we can provide. An example below: -Silence 17:22, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Base root	Laryngeal root	Meaning	Notes
*ad-	*H₂ed- (possibly)	to, by, at
	Gothic at, English æt/at, Old Norse at, German az/--, Latin ad, Oscan adpúd, Umbrian ař, Irish ad/ad, Welsh add, Gaulish ad, Phrygian addaket, Ancient Macedonian addai
*anH₂t-	*H₂enH₂t-	duck
	Lithuanian antis, Latin anas, Sanskrit ātis, Russian utie, German anut/Ente, English ened/--, Old Norse ǫnd, Old Prussian antis, Greek nēssa/
*dent-	*H₁d-ent-	tooth	Originally "biting", derived from present participle of *H₁ed- ("to eat").
	Latin dentis, Greek odous/donti, Welsh dant, Lithuanian dantis, Sanskrit dantam, English tōþ/tooth, German zand/Zahn, Gothic tunþus, Russian desna, Welsh dant, Kamviri dut, Persian /dandān, Kashmiri dãd, Polish ząb, Irish dét/déad, Old Norse tǫnn, Ossetian dændag
*gerH₂-	*gerH₂-	to cry hoarsely; crane	The crane lives all over Eurasia, but the root is absent from Indo-Iranian, where animal names were often borrowed from aboriginal Asian languages.
	Greek geranos, Latin grūs, Armenian krunk/grung, German krano/Kranich, English cran/crane, Lithuanian garnis, Latvian dzerwe, Old Prussian gerwe, Russian žuravl', Welsh garan, Old Norse trana

cleanup

I reformatted the list. It still needs to be alphabetized properly, and it is still an odd mixture of roots and stems. The list has some value, but cleaning it up is almost as much bother as generating it afresh from Pokorny. I'll leave it in the present shape for now. Note that PIE grammar is not to be discussed here. Do that, if not on PIE, in dedicated articles like PIE pronoun, PIE verb, PIE noun, PIE particles, PIE suffixes. This page is properly for listing roots only. dab (ᛏ) 12:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I wonder whether an alphabetical list really is more practical than one sorted after word type. Personally, I think the former system probably was more practical. 惑乱 分からん 13:41, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you didn't 'listen' to me: if this is supposed to be a list of roots (as opposed to lexemes), there can hardly be an organization by semantic topic, because various derivatives of the same root may result in words with very different meanings. And even if we decide not to list roots but randomly selected stems, categorization into semantic classes will be extremely arbitrary, since the meanings of the terms will always be reconstructed, and attested meanings may vary widely across various languages. This is of course not the case in simple cases like "horse", but if this list is to feature more than the ten to twelve PIE evergreens, these problems will be insurmountable. dab (ᛏ) 07:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

And, by extension, the original meaning of the roots is mostly hard to know exactly? Fair point.惑乱 分からん 10:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Latin

There seems to be a lot of Latin words that were lost in the reformatting process. I guess this needs to be looked over some more, again. Might have been more words that were lost, not sure. 惑乱 分からん 11:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

that's why left the cleanup tag in place: the entire list needs to be looked over, and for each entry, it should be cited who reconstructs the root as given (LIV or IEW in most cases I suppose, but if we start mixing LIV and IEW reconstructions, the result will be awkward). That's why I said it would be easier to re-generate the list from IEW directly. Also, what shall we do with List of Indo-European roots/Nouns? It appears to be a forgotten copy, dumped on 31 March. dab (ᛏ) 17:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Aren't there different opinions on which modern words that are derived from which roots, in that case? (I mean, the Latin words do only indirectly belong to the reconstructed form, or more exactly, they're one of the sources for the reconstructed form. Which words that are decided to have been derived from which root, could affect the reconstruction, I guess, but I'm uncertain on cases where that is appled. Hope that didn't come out too dumb...) Btw, is "Lexikon der Indogermanischen Verben" available online, somewhere, like the IEW is? 惑乱 分からん 00:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Or, what I mean is, if there are general agreement on which words that are derived from which root, the reconstructed form is of secondary importance, so we could at least look through the editing history to readd all derivations that were lost in the process... 惑乱 分からん 11:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

well, this is supposed to be a list of PIE roots. At least that's what's in the title. There can well be other articles, such as Proto-Indo-European pronouns, Proto-Indo-European numerals, Proto-Indo-European semasiology and what not. Therefore the attested forms only serve to illustrate the reconstruction of a PIE root. I can generate a full index of IEW, or of LIV, or I can merge IEW and LIV, the problem is copyright issues: is it fair to reproduce the entire index of these books? I presume it is, since the scholarly value is lost without the notes and explanations. If we reproduce Pokorny here, we could say that unless noted otherwise all reconstructions on this page are Pokorny's, and make explicit mention when we quote a LIV for or something else. The problem with this is that Pokorny is somewhat outdated (he doesn't have laryngeals for one thing). Otoh, if we base this on LIV, we'll have only the verbal roots, and will have to supply root nouns from IEW. dab (ᛏ) 13:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

this is proto-indo-european roots?

Or still indo-european?

What? Angr (talk) 19:18, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-European is the unattested mother language to all indo-european daughter languages, and has only been reconstructed. 惑乱 分からん 00:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Read this before editing

If you'd add new words, please try to follow the standards set by earlier contributors, regarding ortography, and try to have some certainty of the words you're adding, preferably check with some etymological authority beforehand, and look out for loanwords and false cognates. Don't assume you know a language's etymology, just because you speak it fluently! Although more cognates could be added, please try to stick to the languages already chosen, unless there is one root solely found in another language, not included in the particular language group. Note that this is a list of cognates derived from the same root, not translations of words' current meanings which could have diverged hugely due to semantic drift, i.e. for the root *preu (jump), Germanic words for "frog" are included, not words meaning jump derived from Germanic *springan, which originally meant the same thing. 惑乱 分からん 11:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Koro is the root for war?

How can the English word harbor derive from this? They're totally unrelated concepts. - Christopher 07:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, words change their meaning over time. Within the history of English, the primary meanings of "harbor" and "haven" have basically switched places. The primary meaning of "harbor" is a sheltered bay or the like where ships can safely anchor, while the primary meaning of "haven" is more generally "refuge". 800 years ago, the ancestors of these words had each other's meanings: Middle English herberge meant "refuge" and haven meant "harbor (for ships)". Herberge "refuge" goes back to an Old English compound herebeorg meaning "military headquarters". The here- part of the compound meant "army" and goes back to the PIE root koro- for "war". User:Angr 08:45, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes indeed, it should be noted that Heer is still a German word for "army". The second part may be related to German "bergen" (to hide). The Slavic cognates "kara" mean "punishment" today.User:Cpom 27 Oct 2006

Re-inserting old roots

Jesus, I think I've finally re-inserted all the old cognates that were lost during the alphabetical sorting of the roots. Took some time... Watch out for errors that might have slipped in through the process... Anyway, now when that's finished, maybe we should come up with ideas for improving the article, like how languages should be sorted within the table, if the article should somehow be split in sub-articles etc. 惑乱 分からん 21:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Pleated related to *plek-: to plait/braid?

I was just wondering whether the word "pleated" is related to the Old English "fleohtan", since as of now, there's no modern English equivalent in the chart. - Christopher 07:17, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Pleat, plait and ply all (sometimes via French) derive originally from Latin plicāre, and are thus loanwords in English. English etymology is easy to find at, for instance, www.dictionary.com or www.etymonline.com etc. 惑乱 分からん 11:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Baltic Roots

Would someone please look at the Baltic roots that I posted in the discussion thread last month? Thanks in advance, Janis

Reposting query. I think the list still needs some work, and is still based heavily on the works of Julius Pokorny and Max Vasmer. 惑乱 分からん 08:30, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I just recently stumbled on this article and I have a few Baltic cognates to add and some to correct. Also, some changes in spelling are necessary, especially in Latvian. I can't go through the list at once, it will take quite a lot of work, and I would like to discuss changes first. There are quite a lot of pie. roots that are missing IMHO, and some would need revision (i.e. *dákru-, why not *akru-?). With the help of the "Latviešu etimoloģijas vārdnīca" (Etymological Dictionary of Latvian) by Konstantīns Karulis (Rīga: Avots 1992) I would like to check the existing cognates. There are a few congnates mentioned here that are not listed in the dictionary mentioned above and that sound quite suspicious to me as I have never heard these words being a native Latvian speaker myself. I don't touch these, however. Here are the first few examples that are obviously wrong:

• bher (in the meaning: to bear). The Lith. & Ltv. cognates that are mentioned here go back to the meaning of *bher as in "to cut, to rub, to split, to beat". Better examples in Latvian would be "bērns" (child), or "bērt" (to pour, to strew) and, in Lithuanian, "bernas" (young man, unmarried man, child etc.) or "berti" which both ACTUALLY go back to "to bear".

• dra - both in Latvian and Lithuanian "drebēt" resp. "drebėti" go back to *der- (to tear, to pull, to split), not *dra-.

• dheH₁(i)- the Lithuanian congnate ir correct, the Latvian cognate is only used dialectally in the meaning "to suck". It can be confused with "dēt" in the standard language in the meaning "to lay (an egg)" which goes back to *dheH. Furthermore, both cognates are listed under *dheH₁(i)- and *dheH₁-, but we want to keep them apart, don't we? Therefor I suggest the cognates "dēls" (son) or "dēle" (leech, sanguisuga) for *dheH₁(i)-.

• dheub- - I agree with the Lithuanian cognate, "dibens" for Latvian is correct, but it has a late vowel shift dubens > dibens. So I suggest "dubt" instead, which corresponds with the Lituanian example. "dubļi" is another good example, but it means "mud" today instead of the more ancient "(animal) bowels, intestines".

• dhreugh- According to Karulis, the primary meaning is "to be someone else", *dhrougho-s "another, another person", hence the opposite semantic changes to "friend" and "enemy". Good example for the same process is Latin "hostis" vs. German "Gast". If we can agree on this, we can add Ltv. "draugs" and Lith. "draugas" as cognates.

• dhĝhu- Seems very suspicious to me in general. Greek should be "ikhthys" no "ikhthus", I see arm. "jukn" in Karulis' dictionary, and Yotvingian "żuvo" as an other Baltic cognate. He goes back to pie. *ĝhđū-, not *dhĝhu-.

• ĝebh- I suggest the cognates "zebiekste" (weasel) for Latvian and "žebenkštė, žebenkštis" (the same) for Lithuanian

• ĝenu- Why not Latin gena (<*genus)?

• ĝhasto- According to Karulis, Latv. and Lith. "lazda" go back to *lēĝh "to collect, to gather".

• ĝhelun-eH₂- What in the hell does Lith. "pušis" have to do with this????

• ĝher- Should include Latvian "zārds" (rickstand, rack) and Latin "hortus" (garden).

• ĝheu- If you consider dh : ģh to be one root as a result of the accomodation process (because if you dont, the "Skr. juhoti" is a false cognate), I can suggest the Latvian cognate "žaut", Lith. "džiauti" and "džiūti", Gm. "tou/Tau", Eng. "dew" etc. The reflex of both roots is identical in the Baltic.

More to come - Janis

The transcription for Greek in the article uses u, not y. Additions in "lesser known" languages by people who know their stuff is very welcome. 惑乱 分からん 08:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Declination - lack of consequence

The best way to provide the proper form of word (i.e. containing the clean root) in Slavic languages, is to give its gen. sq. (in some cases gen. pl.) For instance:

n. sg. - gen. sg.
дочь - дочери [doč'er-i]
gołąb - gołębia [gouẽmb'-a]
dziecię - dziecięcia [ʒ'ećẽ(ũ)ć-a]
n. sq. - gen. pl.
niebo - niebios [ńeb'os-Ø]
telo - telesa [teles-a]

In the case of coniugation the most important rule is to avoid infinitive forms, which often alter the root's ending.

infinitive - 1st sq. - (so called "-l" form)
móc - mogę - mógł
мочь - могу - мог
kłaść - kładę - kładł
ići - idem - išao

This clearly indicates that the easiest way to extract the root is to give the form of 1st person singular (except "biti, byt', być, быть..." verb, which declines using *esmi, esti paradigm).

It makes some sense, what do others think? 惑乱 分からん 14:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Would someone explain the pronunciation rules?

How are the letters in the table of contents pronounced? Whats's the difference between h₁, h₂, and h₃, or the accent marks on the letters like ǵ vs. ǵʰ? Is there a site with sound samples I could hear? That would help a lot. Thanks. - Christopher 23:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

See Proto-Indo-European language. Not all of the pronunciations for the phonemes in question are precisely known; although there is broad consensus for some sounds, others, especially the laryngeals (i.e., h₁, h₂, and h₃) are quite controversial. ḱ, ǵ and ǵʰ are palatovelars: velar consonants which undergo palatilization. Velars are pronounced with the back part of the tongue against the back part of the roof of the mouth; palatovelars are pronouned with the back part of the tongue against the front part of the roof of the mouth. Basically, the difference between k and ḱ is comparable to that of the initial consonant of "cop" and the initial consonant of "keen". For the laryngeal pronunciations, see laryngeal theory. -Silence 00:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, Silence, thanks for your time. - Christopher 00:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Dutch

Ad *mor-: is this a mulberry rather than a backberry (both mûre in French..)? Dutch has moerbei for that.

Ad ar-no eagle; Dutch has arend for eagle.

Ad *dʰreugʰ- to deceive Dutch has bedriegen - bedroog - bedrogen; fallacy = drogreden (Gm Betrug)

Ad *gʰers- horror Dutch has griezel (weirdo) griezelen (to be horrified)

Ad *kʷr̥-mi- grub Is this worm in both Engl and Dutch?

Ad *bʰred- wade Is this ford in Engl. and voorde in Dutch (a place where one can wade through a river?) nl:Gebruiker:Sokpopje

• 1. Check out an etymological dictionary before making guesses. Some might be correct, although I think "worm" isn't.
• 2. I don't think Dutch is necessary, we already have English and German cognates, so adding a 3rd West Germanic language would only cause clutter.

惑乱 分からん 13:46, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

English ford comes from PIE *pert- (Grimm's law p>f) and is cognate with Latin portus, whence English port. There is no connection with *bʰred- or wading, though there is a deeper connection with fare, Dutch varen, from PIE *per-. Don't just guess etymologies. There is an excellent new five-volume dictionary of Dutch etymology currently appearing (two volumes are already out) if you want to do this properly. --Doric Loon 09:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

But anyway, do you think Dutch cognates are necessary? The way it looks now, I think it will seem cluttered. 惑乱 分からん 16:06, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

wiktionarify

the list should go to wiktionary, Proto-Indo-European roots should remain as an article discussing PIE root structure. dab (ᛏ) 08:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

There are some other lists, as well. Should all lists be moved? 惑乱 分からん 16:04, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

no, just the lexical lists. the point isn't that this is a list, but that it is a list of dictionary entries. dab (ᛏ) 07:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I tend to disagree. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 07:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that a list makes some sense... 惑乱 分からん 11:06, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I would very much vote for keeping the list. I don't see how it could be transferred to wiktionary as an entity. It is the list as a whole that is interesting, not so much the single words by themselves. However, the list does not need to list each and every root. The main purpose would be to serve as an extensive illustration for the PIE roots without an attempt of being complete. --84.159.152.185 20:42, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• Well, there are some lexical links that do belong on Wikipedia, and some that don't. The main distinction is how valuable they are as part of the encyclopedia, as opposed to part of the dictionary. For example, a list of expressions from a certain language, with associated historical and literary significance, would probably be valuable in the encyclopedia, since we have many articles for phrases and expressions and many non-verbal pages to link to, whereas a list of synonyms or rhyming words would be more suited to the dictionary, since it will almost exclusively be linking to articles for specific words. Consequently, the main reason to move this particular list to Wiktionary is that it provides very few pages to link to in the encyclopedia, and thousands and thousands of pages to link to in the dictionary: indeed, we can have individual dictionary articles for every single PIE root and every word derived from it, an exceedingly valuable resource. A more encyclopedic listing would focus less on having a comprehensive, expansive wordlist and more on providing historical and linguistic information (in a "notes" column, perhaps) and detailed references for the article. -Silence 12:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

If it's retained in list form, I guess moving makes some sense. But how should the discussion best be preserved? 惑乱 分からん 12:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Who says we need to delete this page? We can simply transfer its current contents to Wiktionary, and replace them here with more encyclopedic contents that explain the linguistic and historical significance of each root more and are better-referenced. A "List of Indo-European roots" isn't inherently unencyclopedic, it's just that this specific list is more valuable on Wiktionary than Wikipedia because it exclusively deals with listing words, whereas a list that took a more in-depth look at each root might be better-suited to Wikipedia because of the potential to link to related explanatory articles. -Silence 12:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If there was to be an article, the words should probably be listed thematically, rather than alphabetical... 惑乱 分からん 13:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Root of 'Bid', 'Bitten' etc

Isn't the root of English 'Bid', German 'Bitten' etc Proto Indo-European *bhidh-? In which case, the Latin cognate would be 'Fidere' not 'Manifestus'.

Not according to American Heritage... 惑乱 分からん 11:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is what we have in the Etymological dictionary (available on line) for bite: O.E. bitan (class I strong verb; past tense bat, pp. biten), from P.Gmc. *bitan (O.Fris. bita, M.Du. biten, Ger. beissen, Goth. beitan), from PIE base *bheid- "to split, crack".

That wasn't what was asked about... 惑乱 分からん 20:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Russian edits

The edits by Extern looks suspicious and might be Original Research. Could someone knowledgeable in Russian etymology look them through, and weed out loanwords and false cognates?... 惑乱 分からん 11:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

They indeed qualify as original research. The main problem with this list is that every passerby adds something which sounds to him familiar to other words from the list. For instance, many Polish words ("gust") seem to be loans from German. I don't see any merit in enumerating them in the list. Here's a survey of Extern's additions:199.202.95.16 09:29, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Completely worthless

• varit' - completely different root, cognate to Eng. warm
• pod - cognate to L рēs, pedis ("feet")
• byk - derived from the Slavic word for "bellow, moo"
• derźat' - cognate to SK dražaitē
• odomašit' - a verb derived from "dom" (house), cf. Eng. dome
• taš'it' - a dark word, no cognates known.
• liznut' - the same root as L lingere, Eng. lick, etc.
• dremat - related to L dormio, which is a different root.
• čuvstvo - derived from the verb "chuyu", related to Sk kavíṣ, Gk κοέω, L caveo
• žor, žrat' - related to another lemma, see Sk giráti
• žostkij - usually compared to MHG kes, ON kǫs, OIr gall
• golosit' - a verb derived from "golos" (=voice), usually connected ON "kalla", Irl "gall", Cymr. "galw", etc.
• vzyat' - a false friend
• gore - derived from the Russian word for "burn"; a different PIE root
• grečiha - "buckwheat" means "the Greek one" in Russian: it was imported from Greece.
• ževat' - the same lemma as in Eng. "chew", Arm "kiv"
• zat' - related to Gk γέμω
• goroh - no connection to Gk orobos and L ervum
• uvažat - a pan-Slavic loan from OHG wa^ga
• kon' - an abbreviation from Old Russian komon'

Perhaps there is some connection, but it is not generally accepted:

• udirat - derived from "deru", which could be related to other words, or could be derived from another lemma, cf. L dìrti, Sk dr̥ṇā́ti, Gk δέρω, OHG zëran.
• d'ogot - valid connection, although Vasmer denies it; sžigat' is one of numerous derivations, should be eliminated for brevity.
• dočer - this genetive word was featured in my original list; was deleted for no apparent reason.
• ženit - derived from žena and connected to others though the PIE lemma for woman; I suppose this lemma should be eliminated from the list as derivative.
• izvilina - derivation from the verb "vilyat", which should be compared to OE wil, wile and Lt vylùs
• gryzt' - the connection seems to be valid, cf. Lt gráužti (=gnaw), Arm krcem (=gnaw), and Gr βρῡχω
• koza - a difficult word: Vasmer connects it with Old English "hacele"; Korsh postulated a loan from Turkic; Meillet seems to be correct when comparing it to Sk. ajás
• groza - a valid comparison, although both Vasmer and Shakhmatov oppose it
• pytat - probably correct, though Vasmer prefers to connect it to L puto. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 14:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Good, could you remove the "worthless" edits? 惑乱 分からん 13:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Sanskrit: Dakshina

I'm no expert on PIE or Sanskrit, but I was always under the impression that "Dakshina" meant "South". That is the meaning of the word in modern day Sanskrit, and at least Malayalam and Tamil, which are to a large extent derived from Sanskrit. Not suggesting a change to the article here, just want some personal clarification. Did the word Dakshina in its current form evolve from the sanskrit word for "right"? If that's the case, perhaps there was a cultural connection between "South" and the direction "Right" which may be interesting to explore. Can anyone clarify? Cheers.

Vineetmenon 23:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)vineetmenon

Sanskrit - form of verb derivatives

I wonder why Sanskrit examples of verbs derived from roots are given in a conjugated form, instead of its root (for example, bharati instead of bhṛ - which, in my opinion, highlights the relationship a bit better). As far as I'm aware, other roots are given in their dictionary form, as well. If I missed something as to the why, please enlighten me. ETA: Or, if we give a conjugated version, it should be standard for all. Baranxtu 23:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion page

Would someone bother to copy this discussion page to Wiktionary as an archive? 惑乱 分からん 15:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)