Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/mḗh₁n̥s

朢
Chinese 朢 (wàng < OC *maŋs, maŋ, "full moon") looks like a descendant too. Wyang (talk) 02:31, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is Proto-Indo-European, not Proto-Sino-Tibetan. 03:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I know. Loanwords are also called "descendants" here, eg., , , craticula. Wyang (talk) 03:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, but how do you know it's a loanword and not a false cognate? 03:14, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * That's why I posted this on the talk page and said "it looks like ...". Wyang (talk) 03:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * In Old Chinese, didn't mean "moon", though, unlike, but "to view from a distance"; compare . --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:18, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * (variant of modern ) also meant "full moon" (as a phase of the moon).
 * : "望: the name for a full moon" (望，月滿之名也).
 * : "朢: When the Moon is in its full phase, it 'looks' at the (full) Sun from a distance; this is akin to the official having an audience with and looking at the ruler from afar." (朢，月滿與日相望，以朝君也. )
 * Note: This is attempting to explain the composition of the character - 臣 (official) + 月 (Moon) + 王 (ruler), and why a word meaning "full moon; view from a distance" is written as such.
 * Wyang (talk) 02:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * But as far as I can tell, the meaning "to look at from a distance" is primary, while "full moon" appears to be a secondary development (and was given an extra character without it demonstrably being a phonetically or etymologically separate word) – is also given with only the first, verb meaning in Baxter–Sagart's list. The existence of variants with and without the *-s suffix is also typical of Old Chinese verbs. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:42, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

It's great that you have an interest in this interesting word. :) The relationship between the two senses of "to look at from a distance" and "full moon" is debated in the literature. Both and  can refer to both meanings, with  being the more archaic form (without a phonetic part), which gradually became  when one of its components was replaced by a phonetic part  to make the pronunciation more apparent. In the s, it is used to primarily mean “full moon”, and the sense “to look at from a distance” was rarely attested. van Auken (2002) discussed the etymology of this word in detail in her article The Etymonic Determinatives of wanq (望, 朢); her conclusion was:
 * "Even if the dual role of secondary elements is more widespread than commonly recognized, the case of wanq < *mjang(s) 朢 -望 is nevertheless a curious one, occurring as it did in an unusual junction of polygraphy and polysemy: two graphs were used interchangeably to stand for two etymologically unrelated words, and of the four constituent elements present in these two graphs, three (and perhaps all four, if we accept Boodberg's arguments) bore a semantic and phonetic relationship to one of the words the graph represented."

Wyang (talk) 21:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * So you think the Old Chinese word for "full moon" might be a loanword from Indo-European (Indo-Iranian or Tocharian)? I admit that sounds possible (especially in view of, , and also ); there are other cases like , mì < OC *mit, that have been interpreted as Indo-European loans. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:16, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, potentially. Wyang (talk) 23:35, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Lengthened grade
What evidence is there, exactly, that *mḗh₁n̥s had a lengthened nominative/accusative stem? I can see that happening perhaps in the nominative singular, due to the contraction of the two *s, but based on the descendants presented there appears to be nothing suggesting an original long vowel independent of the following laryngeal. In that case, why not reconstruct it like this?

Nominative singular - *mḗh₁n̥s (<*méh₁n̥ss) Vocative singular - *méh₁n̥s Accusative singular - *méh₁n̥sm̥ Genitive singular - *méh₁n̥sos or perhaps *m̥h₁n̥sés Dghmonwiskos (talk) 20:43, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The strongest evidence is the fact that the descendants only show evidence for a long vowel and no evidence for a divergent stem *m̥h₁n̥s-, which we would expect if the strong stem was not lengthened – there does not seem to be any evidence that nouns could have no difference between strong and weak stem, as your proposal would require in order to save it. The Indo-Iranian evidence in particular is easiest to explain if the strong stem was lengthened and the weak stem a full e-grade. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:01, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Metztli in Nahuatl !
Yes Böri (talk) 08:11, 3 June 2023 (UTC)