User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 23

Proto-Celtic *menman
How in the world, despite its neuter n-stem-derived etymology, did this end up masculine in Old Irish already is baffling. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 06:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Pedersen says it "dürfte Umbildung eines alten Neutrums sein; der Nom. Sing. ist wohl eine Weiterbildung, die die alte neutrale Form verdrängt hat" , but doesn't hazard a guess as to why. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:20, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * is a weird form to construct - I was thinking that a simple consonant stem would also give, but Griffith (2006) thinks that's impossible. Anyhow,  should have given an io-stem, not the n-stem in Old Irish that we all know and love. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 14:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think he means only the nominative singular was replaced, as the other forms are clearly still those of n-stems. It strikes me as highly unlikely too, but then there doesn't seem to be any likely reason why we have a masculine noun menmae instead of a neuter noun menm. And yet here we are. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:09, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The only similar-inflecting term in Old Irish off the top of my head is . The only way I could get could work would be: 1) *menmans, gs. *menmanos led to *menmas, *menmennas in Primitive Irish, with the stem-medial /e/ being leveled into the nominative singular. At least this is how Griffith explains  and other nt-stems not ending in -a in their nominative singulars. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 18:31, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * References

Absolute vs. conjunct etymology
How do you think the absolute vs. conjunct forms in Old Irish came from? One theory (followed by Matasović) has it from primary vs. secondary endings, another (much more popular theory) thinks that the absolute forms came from suffixing some now-conveniently-transphonologized particle either from or, and a third has the conjuncts being innovated from apocopated primary endings. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 22:13, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The second and third theories you mention are the same theory: as I was taught by in the '90s, there was a particle  (possibly from  or, though ultimately its origin is uncertain), which appeared in second position by . Thus the conjunct form  comes from  with early apocope (and X standing for whatever preverb preceded the verb, such as  for  or  for ), while the absolute form  comes from , where the particle protects the final vowel from apocope, causing it to remain long enough to preserve the t (> θ > ðʲ). —Mahāgaja · talk 22:30, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Didn't know you met Jasanoff personally. I guess I'm in serious need of connections. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 23:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, he was my main professor for all things Indo-European and would have been my thesis advisor if I hadn't switched from historical linguistics to (synchronic) phonology. As it was, he was still on my thesis committee. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

cislate
I found a few uses of your userpage protologism, including one close to your proposed meaning: Citations:cislation/Citations:cislate. - -sche (discuss) 02:43, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Awesome! To be fair, though, it is a pretty obvious coinage. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:36, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Extrapolating declensions of and
I took a small while to wonder how would these two consonant-stem adjectives fully decline outside of their attested range. is a k-stem adjective, while is an nt-stem adjective.


 * The problem I have with is trying to conjure a neuter, since obviously k-stems did not admit neuters. No wonder the Milan glosses started moving it to the o-a stem inflection. Given its human semantics, I'm not sure if the k-stem even accepted neuters in the first place.
 * has the nominative plural form and dative plural form  attested. Due to how nt-stems work, the nominative plural would also be the masculine/feminine accusative and dative singular. Once again, the neuter is a headache. GOI believes that  would also be the neuter nominative/accusative singular but he cites no examples and neither could DIL find any. Going from a hypothetical *teɸent leads me to derive *teët, *tét, or something like that (cf. *beront > ). I have a hunch that this would also be the genitive singular < *teɸentos. From the dative plural, I could derive a masculine accusative plural téta or something.

So my deductions led me to this declension:

mellohi! (僕の乖離) 20:48, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think that any form that isn't attested and can't be asserted with extreme certainty should just be marked "unattested". We shouldn't be in the business of inventing Old Irish words just so we can complete inflection tables. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I had no plans to ever insert these invented forms into our actual entry. I just sent you my guesswork for fun and to check if I royally got my diachronics wrong. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 21:39, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, okay. As for the neuter singular, I suppose that >  would give  by pure phonology, but it seems unlikely that it wouldn't have been replaced analogically by  early on. AFAICT all Old Irish adjectives have the exact same form in the nom.sg for all three genders. And I think the m.voc./acc.pl would have been téït as well, since PIE nt-stem adjectives were the same in the m.voc.pl as in the m.nom.pl (-ntes) and the n.acc.pl (-ntm̥s) would have merged with that in Proto-Goidelic. The -a ending is from -ōs in the o-stems, m.acc.pl -ons and f.acc.pl. -ās in the o/ā-stems, but consonant stems are more closely related to i- and u-stems, and i- and u-stem adjectives in Old Irish have the same endings for all genders in the plural. So it's likely té would not have made gender distinctions in the plural either. So my reconstruction is as follows. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:17, 7 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I very much appreciate your input. That reconstruction of yours does feel more adjectivish, for the lack of a better term. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 22:26, 7 August 2020 (UTC)


 * References

Gender of
Last year you were claiming that was a neuter s-stem. I don't see a neuter s-stem, since the Milan glosses and Críth Gablach (which apparently predates the Milan glosses by over 100 years) attest a nominative plural, which has no business being with a supposed neuter s-stem. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 00:00, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't remember why I thought that. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:26, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Mutation of /p/-initial words in Old Irish
I can find barely any lenited p spelled with ph. It's trivial to find many with lenition never being marked, I couldn't find any in Ml. Even when you'd expect lenition, Ml. still spells with it p. Similarly, Trip. has many an instance of do Patraic and the like with no mutation marked. DIL has only one Thesaurus Paleohibernicus citation with a mutated ph being marked. But the very existence of that Thes. citation and seems to be clear evidence that the lenition of /p/ phonologically existed, since what else could explain the latter's clear relation to its verbal noun ? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:23, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's possible that a lot of p words resisted mutation because they were foreign words, just as foreign words resist mutation to this day in Welsh. It's also possible that p words were (at least sometimes) pronounced with lenition but not spelled with it, again because of being foreign words. I mean, if you know that the Latin word is peccatum you might be reluctant to write pheccad even in contexts were you say . —Mahāgaja · talk 17:32, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

lemma problem
Ironically despite Wb. having the verb be deponent, in Sg. only a blatantly non-deponent appears in absolute 3rd-person singular [i.e. lemma] position. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:58, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we can have the deponent lemma to house the attested deponent forms, even if the exact form itself doesn't happen to be attested. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:01, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Is it fair to claim that the verb lost deponent status in Sg., or should it be regarded as just a spelling/grammar mistake by the scribe? I'm leaning towards the latter since the close relative stayed deponent in Sg. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 18:03, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know if deponent forms are found in other manuscripts later than Sg.; if so, we probably shouldn't say "lost" in Sg., merely "attested as active" or something. It's more likely to be a chronolectal or dialectal difference than a mistake. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:08, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Renaming languages
Hi, sorry for pinging you out of nowhere, but I've just tried to make my first edits on Wiktionary and failed to do what I wanted to. Could you please instruct me on how to rename a language? More specifically, I was looking to rename [|Suyá] as Kĩsêdjê (of which Suyá should be an alias) and [|Kayapó] as Mẽbêngôkre (of which Kayapó and Xikrin should be two variants). All reference works on these languages use Kĩsêdjê and Mẽbêngôkre as the only labels since the 2000s and this is what their self-denominations also are. I might also have questions about creating templates and proto-languages which don't have a code yet, but for now I'd like to get at least the names of the languages right before making further edits. Thanks. Degoiabeira (talk) 04:34, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You can link to categories like this: Category:Suyá language. I don't know anything about these languages, but the proposed replacements are very diacritic-heavy, which is less than ideal, but not wholly unexpected if the only time they are discussed in English is in the linguistic literature. In any case, requests to rename languages are usually handled at WT:RFM, but we might be able to avoid creating a new thread if this is a simple case. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:20, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You have to have administrator rights to rename languages. I do think you should start a thread at WT:RFM for these renames; if no one objects after a week or two, let me know and I'll rename them (or another admin will). —Mahāgaja · talk 07:10, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this is helpful. Degoiabeira (talk) 00:45, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

in the passive
I don't really understand how can intransitive verbs like these are even usable in the passive, and yet we see it anyway. The semantics of using it passively just hasn't clicked with me yet. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:05, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The passive in Old Irish is in the process of transitioning from a true passive into the impersonal or autonomous that it is in modern Irish. So the passive of an intransitive verb like "go" means "(some)one goes". That's why outside of the 3rd person and the 1st person plural the passive takes a direct object in Old Irish, because in those instances it's already become an impersonal/autonomous form rather than a true passive. That sort of impersonal use of the passive of intransitive verbs is very common in Indo-European languages, even ones where the passive isn't transitioning into a purely impersonal form, e.g. German Hier wird viel getanzt or Im Flugzeug wird nicht telefoniert. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:12, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No wonder there exists sentences like Etha[e] a n-iarair... (Laws i, page 64) meaning "he went in pursuit of [his stolen cows]" and Tiagar huáin dochum Hi[ru]salem... "let one go from us to Jerusalem..." (Ml. 16c5) — it's being used not passively, but impersonally. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:27, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Apparently, despite its ī-stem inflection, the nominative singular doesn't seem to mutate any following noun or adjective. And on the other hand, causes lenition despite me being unable to recall any other nominative singular leniting n-stems. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 20:01, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, DIL does give a few examples of inis triggering lenition, but you're right that it more often doesn't (,, etc.), which is weird not only because the nominative singular of an ī-stem should have originally ended in a vowel but also because once mutations became triggered grammatically, feminine nouns started triggering lenition even when they originally ended in a consonant (e.g. velar and dental stems). As for cú, it's been vowel-final since PIE so it's not surprising that it triggers lenition. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:35, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Is it me, or is this Old Irish verb much rarer than it ought to be? I have combed through the glosses and multiple texts in my quote source list and I have only found it once in Táin Bó Fraích and all other times in Aislinge Óengusso. Virtually every time you expect to appear, some derivative (often  or ) appears instead. It is far more common in Middle Irish. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 00:13, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I've never looked into it before, but it seems you're right. Do you want to label it sga? Or add a usage note saying "Rare in Old Irish but becoming common in Middle Irish"? —Mahāgaja · talk 09:35, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I've done both suggestions, including an exhaustive list of where I managed to find the verb. I might update the list if I run into the verb elsewhere (such as in the law texts; I didn't check those, but anyhow DIL doesn't cite them in their entry for ). Funnily enough the verbal noun is much easier to find. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:43, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Perfect of
Apparently there are two completely different attested ways of conjugating this verb in the perfect. One of them is suppleting the perfect stem of and sticking  on top of it. DIL attests:
 * "sga"
 * "sga"

- Victor ocus Maxim im[m] Chríst cota·ruicset,


 * In Laws II, page 406 line 21, another suppletive perfect (an obvious scribal misspelling of expected ) appears too.

But there's also a non-suppletive perfect found in Blathmac's poetry,. I was initially thinking that the paradigm was split by sense (as in and ) but I feel like there is not enough data to tell. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 13:13, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, that's interesting. Maybe there should be a usage not. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

U-infection in
Any evidence for you including u-infection in the genitive stem of this word? DIL doesn't immediately produce any. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿)
 * DIL gives the genitive as, and if the nominative ends in a broad consonant, that strongly suggests a u-stem. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:31, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I do not contest u-stem inflection. However, your edit spelled the genitive as léusa, not lésa. Also, I have a hard time finding any genitives in the relevant DIL entry. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 13:28, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I misread "infection" as "inflection". I guess I was led astray by the leusa given at the end of the DIL entry, but that seems to be an EMI spelling of rather than an OIr spelling of . —Mahāgaja · talk 14:43, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

uudu
@Mahagaja: Must admit that the "Many thanks" was really to your answer, since I have to comment on the next administrator's analogy. My response was inadequate and I also was confusing - the Irish Ogham script word for wood is "uudu"; it never said that that was the name for the vowel, "u"; so my due apologies! The site in question is http://hal_macgregor.tripod.com/gregor/IrishPicts.pdf, significant page 9, where it states "uudu" as also Prot-Indo-European, but this sounds very dubious indeed to me. Of course, the dating they give for P.I.E. is grossly exaggerated as has been proved so recently. This, if true, would change the Proto-Celtic to "uudu" also; thereby designating widu as the true Anglo-Saxon form and, wudu being assimulated from the Celtic as borrowed into Old English somewhat later. I need to get this sorted in order to correct a couple of my edits if necessary. Thank you for considering this. Kind Regards. Andrew H. Gray 08:11, 15 September 2020 (UTC) Andrew

Greek internal learned borrowings
Thank you so much for your edit here. You are an important administrator, and you would perhaps consider a discussion for a special etymological Category for modern greek: internal learned borrowings: There are thousands. We distinguish them from external borrowings, because thery are so many and so greek&#8209;specific. Mostly from hellenistic Koine grc&#8209;koi, but also from grc ancient greek. I never do etymologies, unless i have to correct something. But at the moment, all the 'etyl's are converted randomly to 'der' or 'inh'. The Cateogories inherited, inh.from.grc, der.from.grc, bor.from.grc and learned.bor, etc, are in a state of chaos. Not all dictionaries indicate how an ancient term is present in mod.gr. always does. Thank you. &#8209;&#8209;Sarri.greek &#9835; | 19:43, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I generally assume that all modern Greek words with Ancient Greek ancestors are inherited, so I automatically use inh. The only reason I used learned borrowing here is that the text already said "Learnedly, from". I don't really know how to tell the difference between inherited forms and internal borrowings in Greek. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:46, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I understand that etymologists use the term 'inherited' when there is NO gap in the use of the word, whatever its form alterations. DSMG marks
 * < αρχ. = inherited. or λόγ. < αρχ. = internal learned borrowing. Borrowed how? when? It is not clear. From writers, from Katharevousa, from... The idea that every ancient word is inherited from father to son, from mother to daughter, in the mouth of the people, gives the impression that everything is inherited. Some dicitionaries, simply do not comment on the issue, giving this impression. On the other hand, these words are nothing like external borrowings. Because authors have never stopped using them in a learned fashion during all, or almost all phases: mediaeval, late mediaeval etc. Sorry for my amateurish explanations. &#8209;&#8209;Sarri.greek &#9835; | 19:54, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I tried at : {der}, plus Category:Greek learned borrowings from Ancient Greek. So that it will not be in Category:Greek terms borrowed from Ancient Greek. It cannot be both 'borrowing' and 'learned borrowing' in the same time. There are lbors from foreign languages too. Especially scientific terms. It is a pity that Template:lbor does not give language-subcategories. I did this as a trial, and hope it is ok. &#8209;&#8209;Sarri.greek &#9835; | 04:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Why not both borrowing and learned borrowing at the same time? Learned borrowings are a form of borrowing too. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:18, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

For whatever bizarre reason, no deuterotonic forms of this verb seem to exist. DIL doesn't seem to list any, not even in Middle Irish. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 20:56, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * VKG doesn't list any either, but it's not that weird since prototonic forms are generally more common than deuterotonic forms, and this verb isn't very widely used anyway. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:25, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

uudu
@Mahagaja: Yes; I nearly went ballistic when I found the shocking nightmare of mess that followed my edits on your latest archived page and my very due apologies and also for not being able to revert the chaos in time! Kind Regards. Andrew H. Gray 18:02, 19 September 2020 (UTC) Andrew

The analogy that you presented cannot necessarily apply to Old English. Such changes are more recent. In attempting to find a satisfactory etymology for adze, where a post-Middle English form is 'nad', I should like to connect it with Welsh 'naddu' (to whittle, etc.) in the same manner that 'naedre' split to 'an adder'; but that is totally inadmissible and far more off-beam than your analogy, because there is little or no evidence of such changes in Old English - n.'adosa' and v.'adosan' are the oldest recorded forms show that the fabricated P.G. reconstruction is ignorance - by one in whose native language no such form exists. If genuine, the 'wudu' form is a direct derivative from the substrate form 'uudu' cognate with Irish Pictish 'uudu'. If not genuine, then according to the etymology of fiodh the Celtic root is nearly identical with the Germanic which is merely a substrate Celtic form, that was equally applicable in its homeland as so over in Britain. It is no good just taking etymologies at face value without looking for the earliest forms and applying etymological logic. Many thanks. Andrew H. Gray 18:02, 19 September 2020 (UTC) Andrew (talk)

and a usage note
You put a usage note stating that was factual and  was counterfactual. I have found no evidence for this; to the contrary, I have found apparent counterevidence.


 * Factual :
 * "sga"
 * "sga"

- Ní lour in bendachad dia·mmaldachae, ní lour dano in nebmaldachad mani·bendachae.


 * "sga"
 * "sga"

- Dia·cloadar som indí sin do denam dúini isind lúaon, ní fil ní de nach tairmtechd na dénat som isin domnuch.


 * Counterfactual :
 * "sga"
 * "sga"

- mad ed asberad usquequo domine obliuisceris me namma... is ed ro·gigsed


 * "sga"
 * "sga"

- Matis tuicsi, ní rígad.

Even GOI seems to state that no, there isn't any such distinction. "In positive conditional clauses which require the subjunctive, n, which is properly a temporal conjunction, is used exactly like ..." — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 02:21, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Wow, thanks for doing that research. I guess I was assuming that the modern Irish distinction already existed in Old Irish, but apparently it didn't. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:51, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

This verb and its parent verb were apparently actually strong (i.e.  etc.) in Proto-Celtic, not weak. etc. must have gotten the weak flexion from its usual contamination by. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 04:47, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

How these verbs failed to be conflated with is beyond me, if that is true. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 12:19, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Old Irish and B II verb confusion
I am baffled since, traditionally assigned to B II, has a blatant B I 3rd-person absolute plural , (you'd expect *saigit, *·saiget for B II). How do we class this verb then? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:29, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's B II but it's undergone analogy on the basis of the change of e to ai before palatalized consonants in some words, as described in Thurneysen §82a. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:25, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That doesn't answer my main problem (I already knew what Thurneysen said about the sound change and analogy). Does this analogy strip the verb of synchronic B II status (due to taking on the B I pattern of non-palatalization vs. palatalization in the present conjugation, instead of B II's universal palatalization pattern) or is the class's membership determined by etymology? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:35, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've compromised by stating that is a hybrid of both classes,  to B II and  for B I. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:51, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's just B II but the analogy didn't just change the vowel from ai to e, it also depalatalized the g, making the third person plural forms look superficially like B I forms. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll be eating my words for dinner tonight. Retracted and will clean up the mess. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 22:15, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

User creating false Uzbek nouns, noun forms...
Hello, it's me again. This editor, whom I believe to be the same same as that one and the one who created the superlative adjective forms, has created these sorts of nouns and noun forms that are full of mistakes (for example, saying that is the accusative of  when it is .) I don't know about the other languages which they are editing but at least for Uzbek could you tell them to stop doing this? 92.184.106.139 16:42, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Geez, they're creating all sort of entries in all sorts of languages I don't know. It's probably better to take this to the WT:Beer parlor so it can be seen by a wider group of editors and admins. I don't know any Uzbek myself. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:56, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Mealaidh ur naidheachd
I don’t know what happened to the post you tagged me in, but yes, it should be rectified. ThaesOfereode (talk) 20:56, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll move it then.The post I tagged you in is at Talk:meal ur naidheachd. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:04, 29 September 2020 (UTC)