Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
Key Takeaways
Figures
Introduction
B-'Body-Related'
Germanic Substrate Hypothesis
Conclusion
References
All Topics
Languages and Linguistics
Historical Linguistics

Phonesthetics and the Etymologies of Blood and Bone

Profile image of Joseph PentangeloJoseph Pentangelo

2020, English Language & Linguistics

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674319000534
visibility

…

description

33 pages

link

1 file

Abstract

The etymologies of English blood and bone are obscure. Although their cognates are well represented in the Germanic family, both lack clear cognates in other Indo-European languages. Various explanations of their origins have been proposed, including that they may be non-Indo-European (e.g. Hawkins 1987). Blood and bone, and their cognates, share an initial /b/ with numerous body-related words (e.g. beard, breast, bosom) throughout Germanic. This initial /b/ constitutes a phonestheme. Phonesthemes-'recurring sound-meaning pairings that are not clearly contrastive morphemes' (Bergen 2004: 290)-are present in many Germanic languages, but their role in lexicogenesis is little understood. I suggest that blood and bone were formed by blending the initial /b/ phonestheme with two preexisting lexemes: Proto-Germanic*flōda-'something that flows' and *staina-'stone.' Phonesthetic blending may be a fruitful avenue for future etymological research.

Key takeaways
sparkles

AI

  1. Phonesthetic blending offers new etymological insights for the words 'blood' and 'bone'.
  2. Both 'blood' and 'bone' lack clear cognates in non-Germanic languages, complicating their etymologies.
  3. The initial /b/ in 'blood' and 'bone' represents a phonestheme associated with body-related terms.
  4. 'Blood' likely blends Proto-Germanic *flōda ('something that flows') with the b- phonestheme.
  5. 'Bone' is proposed to blend Proto-Germanic *staina ('stone') with the b- phonestheme.
Figures (10)
The -g Animal Names
The -g Animal Names
Figure 4. This illustration of the bearded woman of Limerick, from a manuscript containing Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hiberniae (c. 1196-1223), displays numerous body-related b- words, including bare, body, brow, beard, breasts, belly, and buttocks. (British Library MS Royal 13 B VIII, f. 19r. British Library Catalogue of Hluminated Manuscripts https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm. Image is in the public
Figure 4. This illustration of the bearded woman of Limerick, from a manuscript containing Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hiberniae (c. 1196-1223), displays numerous body-related b- words, including bare, body, brow, beard, breasts, belly, and buttocks. (British Library MS Royal 13 B VIII, f. 19r. British Library Catalogue of Hluminated Manuscripts https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm. Image is in the public

Related papers

Touching Language Origins Again: How Worked Bone
Iain Davidson

2018

In 1986 Bill Noble and I began to talk to each other about the origins of language. We articulated the importance of bone tools as the best marker of the imposition of form on artefacts. Some people have said that such an indication of mental representation of form can only follow from the emergence of language. I will review the arguments we produced then and show some of the evidence that strengthened our belief that they were important. I will then put them in the context of the vastly expanded knowledge of the archaeo logy of modern human behaviour over the last 30 years. Some of the arguments have been ignored, others have been overtaken by new fi nds, but the theoretical position also raised questions that have not been adequately answered. I will conclude by emphasising the importance of bone tools for understanding that theory and discussing some of the ways in which the theoretical position has moved on. Insights from studying bone tools opened up understanding of modern hu...

View PDFchevron_right
Davidson , I. (2017). Touching language origins again: how worked bone shaped our understanding. In J. M. Hutson, A. García-Moreno, E. Noack, E. Turner, A. Villaluenga, & S. Gaudzinski-Windheuser (Eds.), The Origins of Bone Tool Technologies. Mainz: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseums.
Iain Davidson

In 1986 Bill Noble and I began to talk to each other about the origins of language. We articulated the im­ portance of bone tools as the best marker of the imposition of form on artefacts. Some people have said that such an indication of mental representation of form can only follow from the emergence of language. I will review the arguments we produced then and show some of the evidence that strengthened our be­ lief that they were important. I will then put them in the context of the vastly expanded knowledge of the archaeo logy of modern human behaviour over the last 30 years. Some of the arguments have been ignored, others have been overtaken by new finds, but the theoretical position also raised questions that have not been adequately answered. I will conclude by emphasising the importance of bone tools for understanding that theory and discussing some of the ways in which the theoretical position has moved on. Insights from studying bone tools opened up understanding of modern human cognition but we need more complex models of cognitive evolution.

View PDFchevron_right
Indo-European Roots Reconsidered 70, 71: 'brother / sister', 'juice / blood / sap' (Draft)
Sean Whalen

2025

70. In apparent *neg^no- > H. nekna-, Lw. *nana-, Lc. nẽni -e- ‘brother’, Kloekhorst said that no IE etymology could be found. However, though there is no fitting root *neK-, consider their resemblance to *g^onH1o- > G. gónos ‘offspring’, which could appear as *g^no- in old compounds (*newo-g^no- ‘newborn’ > G. neognós), with new compounds often turning *g^onH1o- > *+*g^onH1o- by analogy. If related to an older version of *en-g^onH1o- ‘in/of the (same) birth/family’ > G. eggónē ‘granddaughter’ (with similar cp. in ék\apó-gonoi ‘descendants’, pró-gonoi ‘ancestors’, etc.), it is entirely possible that metathesis could create it from *-ngn- in : *en-g^no- > *neg^no- > H. nekna-, Lw. *nana-, Lc. nẽni n., nẽne \ nene p.d.l. ‘brother’ +ašri- > HLw. nanasra/i- ‘sister’ ana.?; H. neka- ‘sister’ It is highly unlikely that H. neka- ‘sister’ is primary, or there would be no reason for *neg^no-sor- > HLw. nanasra/i- ‘sister’ to exist as a clear derivative of *neg^no- ‘brother’. In Proto-Anatolian, *neg^no- vs. *neg^naH2- would be clear, but when Proto-H. *-a- & *-a:- merged, a new way to distinguish ‘brother’ from ‘sister’ was needed. If both words had optional *n-n > *n-0, then it is possible that *neg^no- vs. *neg^naH2- & *neg^o- vs. *neg^aH2- existed in the past. If one type became prominent in each word slightly before *-a- & *-a:- merged, that could have become the new way to tell each apart. If *n-n dsm. was instead late, then it was used to create a new type of distinction afterwards. 71. The IE root *sek- ‘to flow (out/away), dry out (of water)’ supposedly had a nasal-infixed stem *snk- > Li. sunkiù 1s., suñkti inf. ‘press (juice)’, ELi. sunkà ‘juice / sap’, etc. With this meaning, I think it is also the source of *sokwo- \ *swoko- ‘juice / blood / sap’. Though traditionally reconstructed *sokWo-, the moving and disappearing *w here tells a different tale. I think *w > 0 was really *w > *H3 (A), since *H > 0 in most branches. Together : *swoko- > Lt. svakas *sH3oko- > Li. sakai ‘resin’, R. sok ‘juice / sap’, Al. gjak ‘blood’ *sokwo- ? > TB sekwe ‘pus’ *sokH3o- ? > G. opós ‘juice of plants’ Part of the uncertainty comes from whether H3 = xW; if so, later *kxW > *kW is also possible. *kw > TB kw is slightly more likely, since in many words PIE *KWV > TB kV, only some TB kwV (with no known regularity). Greek changed *Kw > *kWkW ? > kk / pp (*H1ek^wos > L. equus, *yikwos > LB i-qo, G. híppos, Ion. íkkos ‘horse’; *laku- L. lacus ‘basin/tank/lake’, *lakw- > G. lákkos ‘pond/cistern/pit’; *pel(e)k^u- > G. pélekus ‘(double-edged) ax’, *pel(e)k^wo- > pélekkon \ pélekkos ‘ax-handle’), so *kxW > *kW is better here. It is also slightly possible that when *kW was created, it was by *kxW > *kWx, since if later *x > *h, a stage *hokWhos > *okWhos could explain *s- > *h- > 0-. *snk- > ELi. sunkà ‘juice / sap’ & the range in *sokwo- ‘juice / blood / sap’ could also lead to the origin of Old Latin sanguen ‘blood’. A neuter *snk-mn would have 3 N’s, so dsm. would not be odd. The stages *snkmn > *sǝnkmǝn > *sǝngmǝn > *sǝngwǝn > sanguen would work (B). The traditional connection with *H1esH2rgW > S. ásr̥k, asnás g., mix > *HsHngW-n- does not seem very promising. Not only is there no ev. that -k came from *-gW, the series of analogies needed to create *HsngW-n- while a “normal” stem for ‘blood’ still existed seems too complicated. I also think it’s likely that *H1esH2r > H. ešhar, but also met. > *H1esrH2 > *éhara > G. íara, *HesrH > *HasrK > S. ásr̥k (Whalen 2025). If so, there would be no way for sanguen to be related. Notes A. *H3 > w is also seen in many other words in IE (Whalen 2025a, Note 1), including : *k^oH3t- > L. cōt- ‘whetstone’, *k^awt- > cautēs ‘rough pointed rock’, *k^H3to- > catus ‘sharp/shrill/clever’ *plew- \ *ploH3- ‘flow’, Gmc. *flōanaN ‘flow’, Go. flōdus m. ‘river’, E. flood *troH3- > G. trṓō \ titrṓskō ‘wound / kill’, *troH3mn \ *trawmn > trôma \ traûma ‘wound / damage’ *sk^oH3to- / *sk^otH3o- / *sk^ot(h)wo- > OI scáth, G. skótos, Gmc. *skadwá- > E. shadow *lowbho- ‘bark’ > Al. labë, R. lub; *loH3bho- > *lo:bho- > Li. luõbas *doH3- \ *dow- ‘give’ *dow-y(eH1) >> OL. duim sj., G. duwánoi op. (with rounding or dialect o / u by P / W, G. stóma, Aeo. stuma) *dow-enH2ai > G. Cyp. inf. dowenai, S. dāváne (with *o > ā in open syllable), maybe Li. dav- *dow-ondo- > CI dundom, gerund of ‘to give’ *dH3-s- ao. > *dRWǝs- > *dwäs- > TB wäs- B. Though most *n > L. en, other It. had *n > an (*dng^hwaH2- > E. tongue, L. dingua, lingua, Umbrian fangva-) and Sihler lists many L. words that might show the same (100.c; maneō, canis, tangō, frangō), indicating some kind of optionality. If sanguen is included, it would be 3 with -ang-. Some say that both maneō & canis are from *o near labials, but I’m not sure.

View PDFchevron_right
Old Norse -yn (Proto-Germanic *-unjō-) and the re-analysis and spread of derivational morphology through semantic association. [ON names of ‘Earth’ Fjǫrgyn & Hlóðyn, Celtic place-name Hercynia (silua), Vedic theonym Pŕ̥śni- ‘mother of the Maruts’, & PIE root *perḱ- ‘colourful, spotted, dark’]
Riccardo Ginevra

Alain Blanc and Isabelle Boehm (eds.). Dérivation nominale et innovations dans les langues indo‑européennes anciennes. Lyon: MOM Éditions., 2021

A comparative analysis of Old Norse (Fjǫrgyn, Hlóðyn), Germanic (*ferhwa-), Iranian (*parću-), Greek (πέρκνος, πράκνον), Vedic (Pŕ̥śni-), and Celtic (Hercynia) onomastics and lexicon supports the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) devī́- origin of the Proto-Germanic (PGmc) suffix *-u-njō- and points to semantic association as one of the causes for its spread within the lexicon. Old Norse (ON) Fjǫrgyn ‘Earth, land’ (PGmc *fergunjō-), currently analysed as a derivative of *perkʷ- ‘oak’, may be rather traced back to the PIE root *perḱ- ‘to be colourful, spotted, dark’, according to two alternative analyses: (a) ON Fjǫrgyn may be the reflex of *perḱu-nih₂-/-ni̯éh₂- ‘she of the Earth’, a derivative of PIE *pérḱ-u- ‘Earth, land’, which originally meant ‘colourful, spotted, dark’. This analysis matches the widespread formulaic collocation [DARK – EARTH] (Hitt. dankui tekan, Gk. γαῖα μέλαινα, OIrish domuin duinn) and is supported by parallels in Germanic (PGmc *ferhwa- ‘world, life, person’ : Gothic fairhwus, ON fjǫr, Old English feorh) and Iranian (PIran. *parću- ‘land [of the Iranians]’ : Pashto Pā̆ṣ̌, cf. the Old Persian derivative Pārsa- ‘Persian’). (b) ON Fjǫrgyn may be the reflex of *pérḱn-ih₂-/perḱn̥-i̯éh₂- ‘she, the Colourful/Spotted/Dark One’, a feminine derivative of *pérḱn-o- ‘Dark One’ (Hom. πέρκνος ‘dark eagle), a substantivation of the PIE adjective *pr̥ḱ-nó- ‘colourful, spotted, dark’ (Greek πράκνον ‘black’ Hsch.). This analysis is supported by the same IE phraseological motif [DARK – EARTH] and by parallels in ON (fjǫrn ‘Earth, land’), Vedic (Pŕ̥śni- ‘the Colourful, Spotted One’), and possibly Celtic (Hercynia). Both (a) and (b) support the current view that the PGmc suffix *-u-njō- reflects PIE *°nih₂-/°ni̯éh₂-, either already (a) re-analysed as an independent suffix or (b) as a complex suffix in devī́- feminines. Finally, ON Hlóðyn ‘Earth’ may be traced back to North-West-Germanic *hlōþ-unju ‘the one of the load’ (: *hlōþ-u- ‘load’) which was formed according to the phraseological motif [EARTH – BEAR – WORLD, ALL BEINGS]) and after the model of North-West-Germanic *ferg-unju (ON Fjǫrgyn), the reflex of PGmc *fergunjō- which had been re-analysed as a derivative of the neut. pl. *ferg-u- ‘world, living beings’ (ON fjǫrg).

View PDFchevron_right
Foreign elements in the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary (MA thesis/Prize paper) 2017. University of Copenhagen
Rasmus G Bjørn

Foreign elements in the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, 2017

A comparative loanword study The present thesis scrutinizes a number of loan etymologies (135 in total) for PIE lexical items with the aim to establish data available for further elucidation of the prehistoric speech community. Extensive methodological considerations are given in the first chapter, including sources, the problems of identifying points of tangency for extinct languages, and the trichotomy between heritage, borrowings, and chance resemblance that constitutes a central distinction in the science. The remainder of the chapter discusses other sources of information that may contribute to the identification of ancient contact situations, in particular derived linguistic approaches, archaeology, and genetics. Chapters two and three are introductions. The second chapter is a general introduction to the language families and isolates, different from Indo-European, that are treated in the paper. These are NW Caucasian, NE Caucasian, Hurro-Urartian, Kartvelian, Uralic (and Yukaghir), Semitic (and Afro-Asiatic), Sumerian, and finally a short note on isolates, extinct languages, and other language families (Altaic and Dravidian). The third chapter has two components. It first sets out to provide an overview of proposed homeland theories and their associated loanword components, treating the Pontic-Caspian Steppes, Central Asia, Anatolia, and Transcaucasia. The second half introduces affinity and adstrate theories connecting PIE with other language families. In addition to the families mentioned in chapter two, a short note on macro-families is added at the end. All of these are included to familiarize the reader with the context in which most loanword etymologies have been proposed. The next two chapters constitute the core of the thesis and discusses previously proposed evidence of borrowings and, occasionally, genetic affinity. Chapter four is a wordlist of 131 individual etymologies (4 are reserved for the treatment of numerals). Each entry provides the standard IE etymology and suggested external comparanda before a discussion attempts to establish the plausibility of external relations. Chapter five is basically an extension of the wordlist, but treats the numerals in sequence to explore their mutual relationship. Chapter six analyses the consequences of the etymologies in the previous chapters. A few correspondences are best categorized as older than PIE and are presented as possible evidence of more profound relations. While emphasis is on borrowings from external sources, a short note is also given on the stratificational implications of loanwords in the opposite direction. Borrowings are then arranged according to the internal stratification of PIE, after which discussions of the source languages follow. The items are finally divided into semantic spheres to analyze the systemic implications of borrowings into PIE. The present study concludes that PIE shows signs of extensive borrowing from neighboring languages, and further that some of these are part of broader developments in the speech community, most saliently the formation of the decimal system, the transition to agriculture and adoption of domesticated animals, and ultimately external marriage alliances. The hope is that the concise treatment of this phenomenon will contribute the increased use of borrowings and their descriptive powers as evidence of features in PIE. Download at www.loanwords.prehistoricmap.com where you’re also invited to add comments. Note that the interactive parts of the page pend further work (blame it on the day job and small children) Loanwords in PIE - a new methodological approach, including 135 proposed borrowings and semantic field analyses. Semitic, Uralic and Caucasian comparanda. MA thesis and prize paper

View PDFchevron_right
Isolated Lexical Items in North Germanic : The Pre-Indo-European Scandinavian Lexicon
Gilles Quentel

Lexicon. -The Germanic Lexicon contains numerous words of unknown or obscure origins which, in all likelihood, seem to reflect the impact of a pre-Indo-European substratum. This paper aims at analyzing the specific case of North Germanic from this perspective, on the basis of a list of probable pre-IE Danish words (most of them common to all the North Germanic languages). Moreover, it exposes some theoretical rules in order to detect substratal words, and criticizes some commonly admitted principles of etymologization in historical linguistics.

View PDFchevron_right
Permeating etymology - remarks on Permic etymology
Niklas Metsäranta

Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 99, 2023

This article discusses five Permic words or groups of words including *ki̮ri̮m 'handful, bunch', *kun 'ash, lye', *li̮a 'sand', *mi̮r- 'to do forcefully; exert effort', and *vi̮ŋ 'strength, might'. The words typically have an existing etymology, which in most cases is a Uralic comparison. This traditional proposition is rejected and a new etymological proposal is made. The Permic languages have only rarely been the starting point or the focus of etymological studies and have often been viewed with a certain "anything goes" approach towards their historical phonology, which is probably partly the result of viewing all historical phonology through the lens of Finnic and "outsourcing" all irregularities to other branches, partly because Permic historical phonology, especially the vowel reconstruction, is fairly complex and somewhat controversial. This article tries to remedy earlier ills by taking the Permic languages as the starting point, by paying closer attention to phonological regularity, and by taking the latest advancements in Uralic historical phonology into consideration. Methodologically, the most noteworthy aspect is the combining of historical phonology with derivational morphology to detect petrified derivatives. Given the eroding nature of the sound changes affecting the Permic languages, this type of combination is not only etymologically fruitful but a methodological necessity.

View PDFchevron_right
Ten New Etymologies Between Old Gaulish and the Indo-European Languages
Jouna Pyysalo

2016

This paper belongs to a series of articles designed to contribute to the solution of one of the central problem of Indo-European linguistics of today, the comparative etymology of Indo-European languages. The ten new Indo-European etymologies for Old Gaulish presented are:1. OGaul. asia- ‘secale’ : Lith. asỹ- ‘Schachtel-, Schafthalm’; 2. OGaul. nemnali- ‘celebrer’ : RV. namna- ‘sich beugen/neigen’; 3. OGaul. mapalia- ‘kindlich’ : TochA. mkalto- ‘jung, klein’; 4. OGaul. mas ‘gl. metallum’ : TochA. msāṣ ‘imo : from beneath’; 5. OGaul. cunobarro- ‘Tete-de-Chien’ : CLu. paraia- ‘hoch’; 6. OGaul. marco- ‘horse’ : TochA. marka- ‘move’; 7. OGaul. slēbino- ‘montanus’ : TochB. ṣale ‘mountain, hill’; 8. OGaul. cobro- ‘love, desire, greed’ : TochB. kakāpo- ‘desire, crave, want’; 9. OGaul. mallo- ‘langsam, trage’ : TochB. mālle ‘dull’; 10. OGaul. bilio- ‘Baum’ : TochB. pilta- ‘leaf, petal’

View PDFchevron_right
The development of the Proto-Indo-European instrumental suffix in Germanic
Guus Kroonen

Indogermanische Forschungen, 2017

It has long been acknowledged that Proto-Germanic *-dl- developed into *-ll- by a process of regular assimilation. Since long stops are regularly simplified in heavy and unstressed syllables in Proto-Germanic, some formations that superficially look like l-stems in this language are in reality to be derived from Proto-Indo-European instrumental nouns in PIE *-tl-and *-dʰl-. In this paper, I adduce a number of new cases focusing on those l-stems that have instrumental semantics, but also including some abstract nouns.

View PDFchevron_right
Labials, Velars and Labiovelars in Germanic
Frederik Kortlandt

NOWELE, 1997

In a recent article (1995), the eminent Indologist F. B. J. Kuiper has emphasized the necessity to distinguish between at least three different layers of pre-Germanic substratum: (AI) 'European' words with α-vocalism and frequent voiced aspirates, e.g. *bhabh-'bean', *bhardh-'beard', *bhar(e)s-'barley', *ghasdh-'rod', perhaps *sam(a)dh-'sand'. (A2) Gennanic words with a-, i-, ω-vocalism, initial clusters kn-, kl-, and prenasalization, which is reflected äs Variation between-b- ,-mb- ,-mp- ,-pp-, e.g. ON klifa 'climb', klif, kleppr, kleif'cliff', OE climban, clif. (A3) Old European 1 words with frequent α-vocalism, few consonants and lots of suffixes, reflected in the European hydronymy. Theo Vennemann has recently presented strong evidence for the view that this substratum language is cognate with Basque (1994). Kuiper goes on to discuss two Proto-Germanic words which may belong to layer AI, viz. *babnö 'bean', which he assumes to have replaced *babö < *bhabhä reflected in Latin faba and Old Prussian babo, 1 and *babmaz, Gothic bagms 'tree', OE beam, OHG boum. He assumes dissimilation of these words to *baunö and *baumaz in West Gennanic and dissimilation of *babmaz to *bagmaz in East and North Gennanic, cf. Old Swedish bagn 'trunk', and concludes that the source language must have had two different root morphemes *bhabh-'bean' and *bhabh-'tree'. The latter conclusion seems highly improbable to me. It is much more plausible that we are dealing with two derivatives of a single root *bhabh-, which may have carried the verbal meaning 'grow'. This leads me to a reconsideration of the possibility that *bhabh-represents the PIE root *bheH2u-in an unknown substratum language which may have branched off at an early stage. 2 1 have long suspected

View PDFchevron_right

References (83)

  1. Abelin, Åsa. 1999. Gothenburg Monographs in Linguistics 17: Studies in Sound Symbolism. Ph.D. dissertation, Göteborg University.
  2. Abelin, Åsa. 2015. Phonaesthemes and sound symbolism in Swedish brand names. Ampersand 2, 19-29.
  3. Alderete, John and Alexei Kochetov. 2017. Integrating sound symbolism with core grammar: The case of expressive palatalization. Language 93(4), 731-766.
  4. Algeo, John. 1977. Blends, a structural and systemic view. American Speech 52(1/2), 47-64.
  5. Arthur, Ross G. 2002. English-Old Norse Dictionary. Cambridge, ON: In Parentheses Publications.
  6. Baldi, Philip and B. Richard Page. 2006. Review of Europa Vasconica-Europa Semitica by Theo Vennemann. Lingua 116, 2183-2220.
  7. Bat-El, Outi. 2013. Blends. In Geoffrey Khan (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, 371-373. Leiden: Brill.
  8. Bauer, Laurie. 2006. Compounds and minor word-formation types. In Bas Aarts & April McMahon (eds.), The Handbook of English Linguistics, 483-506. Hoboken: Blackwell.
  9. Benczes, Réka. 2019. Rhyme over Reason: Phonological Motivation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  10. Bergen, Benjamin K. 2004. The psychological reality of phonaesthemes. Language 80(2), 290-311.
  11. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Henry Holt.
  12. Blust, Robert. 2003. The phonestheme ŋ-in Austronesian languages. Oceanic Linguistics 42(1), 187-212.
  13. Blust, Robert. 2011. The problem of doubleting in Austronesian languages. Oceanic Linguistics 50(2), 399-457.
  14. Bolinger, Dwight. 1940. Word affinities. American Speech 15(1), 62-73.
  15. Bolinger, Dwight. 1953. The life and death of words. The American Scholar 22(3), 323-335.
  16. Bolinger, Dwight. 1965. Forms of English: Accent, Morpheme, Order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  17. Bolinger, Dwight. 1975. Aspects of Language, 2nd edn. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.
  18. Boussidan, Armelle, Eyal Sagi, & Sabine Ploux. 2009. Phonaesthemic and etymological effects on the distribution of senses in statistical models of semantics. Proceedings of the 34 th Cognitive Science Annual Meeting, 36- 40.
  19. Boutkan, D.F.H. 1998. On the form of North European substratum words in Germanic. Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics, 111(1), 102-133.
  20. Boutkan, Dirk & Sjoerd Michiel Siebenga. 2005. Old Frisian Etymological Dictionary. http://dictionaries.brillonline.com/frisian (accessed 18 August 2019). Burridge, Kate & Tonya N. Stebbins. 2015. For the Love of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  21. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos, & Antonette diPaolo Healey (eds.). 2018. Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online. http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/index.html (accessed 18 August 2019).
  22. Carling, Gerd & Niklas Johansson. 2014. Motivated language change: Processes involved in the growth and conventionalization of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 46(2), 199-217.
  23. Cleasby, Richard & Gudbrand Vigfusson. 1874. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  24. Dingemanse, Mark. 2018. Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1), 4.1- 30. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.444
  25. DOE. See Cameron et al. (2018) above.
  26. Elsen, Hilke. 2017. The two meanings of sound symbolism. Open Linguistics 3(1), 491-499. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2017-0024
  27. Feist, Sigmund. 1914. Indogermanen und Germanen: Ein Beitrag zur Europäschen Urgeschichtsforschung. Halle: Niemeyer.
  28. Feist, Sigmund. 1932. The origin of the Germanic languages and the Indo- Europeanising of North Europe. Language 8(4), 245-254.
  29. Fick, August, Hjalmar Falk, & Alf Torp. 1909. Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen: Dritter Teil: Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
  30. Findell, Martin. 2012. Phonological Evidence from the Continental Runic Inscriptions. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
  31. Firth, J.R. 1930. Speech. London: Benn's Sixpenny Library. Reprinted in Peter Strevens (ed.), 1964, The Tongues of Men and Speech, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  32. Firth, J.R. 1957. Papers in Linguistics, 1934-1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  33. Fortson, Benjamin W. 2010. Indo-European Language and Culture. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
  34. Francis, W. Nelson & Henry Kucera. 1982. Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  35. Gąsiorowski, Piotr. 2006. The etymology of Old English *docga. Indogermanische Forschungen 111, 275-284.
  36. Gollancz, Israel (ed.). 1895. The Exeter Book, an Anthology of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. London: Early English Text Society.
  37. Gries, Stefan. 2004. Shouldn't it be breakfunch? A quantitative analysis of blend structure in English. Linguistics 42(3), 639-667.
  38. Hall, J. R. Clark. 1960. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  39. Hawkins, John A. 1987. Germanic languages. In Bernard Comrie (ed.), The World's Major Languages, 69-76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  40. Hogg, Richard M. 1982. Two geminate consonants in Old English? In John A. Anderson (ed.), Language Form and Linguistic Variation: Papers Dedicated to Angus McIntosh, 187-202. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  41. Hough, Carole & Christian Kay (eds). 2017. Thesaurus of Old English (TOE) Online. https://oldenglishteaching.arts.gla.ac.uk/ (accessed 29 October 2019)
  42. Jones, Sir William. 1798. Third anniversary discourse: On the Hindus. Asiatick Researches 1, 415-431.
  43. Joseph, Brian D. 1997. On the linguistics of marginality: The centrality of the periphery. https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/joseph.1/publications/1997 onth.pdf (accessed 18 August 2019).
  44. Kroonen, Guus. 2011. The Proto-Germanic n-stems: A Study in Diachronic Morphology. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
  45. Kroonen, Guus. 2012. Non-Indo-European root nouns in Germanic: Evidence in support of the agricultural substrate hypothesis. In Riho Grünthal & Petri Kallio (eds.), A Linguistic Map of Prehistoric Northern Europe, 239-260. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia.
  46. Kroonen, Guus. 2013. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. http://dictionaries.brillonline.com/proto-germanic (accessed 16 August 2019).
  47. Kwon, Nahyun & Erich R. Round. 2015. Phonaesthemes in morphological theory. Morphology 25, 1-27.
  48. Lawler, John. 2006. The data fetishist's guide to rime coherence, 16 pp. http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/rimecoherence.pdf (accessed 19 August 2019).
  49. Lehmann, Winfred P. 1971. The Development of Germanic Verse Form. New York: Gordian Press.
  50. Liberman, Anatoly. 2008. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  51. Liberman, Anatoly. 2006. Review of Dirk Boutkan and Sjoerd Michiel Siebinga, Old Frisian Etymological Dictionary. Trefwoord, 15pp. https://ivdnt.org/images/stories/onderzoek_en_onderwijs/publicaties/trefw oord/oefd-review.pdf (accessed 18 August 2019).
  52. Lloyd, Albert L. & Otto Springer. 1988. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, vol. 1. Göttingen and Zurich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
  53. Lloyd, Albert L., Rosemarie Lühr & Otto Springer. 1998. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, vol. 2. Göttingen and Zurich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
  54. Magnus, Margaret. 1998. Phonosemantic Dictionary. http://www.trismegistos.com/Dictionary.html (accessed 18 August 2019).
  55. Magnus, Margaret. 2013. A history of sound symbolism. In Keith Allen (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics, 191-208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  56. Messinger, Heinz, Gisela Türck and Helmut Willmann. 1993. Langenscheidt's Standard German Dictionary. New York, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Zurich: Langenscheidt.
  57. OED. See Oxford English Dictionary Online (2018) below.
  58. Orel, Vladimir. 2003. A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Leiden: Brill.
  59. Owen, Francis. 1928. Alliteration in the runic inscriptions. Modern Philology 25(4), 397-408.
  60. Oxford English Dictionary Online. http://www.oed.com/ (accessed 18 August 2019).
  61. Peeters, Christian. 1977. Notes on Germanic etymologies. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 91(1), 166-169.
  62. Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2010. Blending in. Languages of the World. https://www.languagesoftheworld.info/morphology/blending-in.html (accessed 18 August 2019).
  63. Pereltsvaig, Asya & Martin Lewis. 2015. The Indo-European Controversy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  64. Philps, Dennis. 2011. Reconsidering phonaesthemes: Submorphemic invariance in English 'sn-words'. Lingua 121, 1121-1137.
  65. Prokosch, Eduard. 1939. A Comparative Germanic Grammar. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America.
  66. Roberge, Paul. 2010. Contact and the history of Germanic languages. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), The Handbook of Language Contact, 406-431. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
  67. Sadowski, Piotr. 2001. The sound-symbolic quality of word-initial 'gr-cluster' in Middle English alliterative verse. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 102(1), 37-47.
  68. Schuhmann, Roland. 2012. Where is the substrate in the Germanic lexicon?, 28 pp. https://www.academia.edu/1928440/Where_is_the_Substrate_in_the_ Germanic_Lexicon (accessed 18 August 2019).
  69. Seebold, Elmar. 2001. Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wörtbuch der germanischen starken Verben. The Hague: Mouton.
  70. Skeat, Rev. Walter W. 1887. Principles of English Etymology, Vol. I: The Native Element. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  71. Smith, Chris. 2014. The phonesthetics of blends: A lexicographic study of cognitive blends in the OED. Explorations in English Language and Linguistics 2(1), 12-45.
  72. Smith, Chris A. 2016. Tracking semantic change in fl-monomorphemes in the Oxford English Dictionary. Journal of Historical Linguistics 6(2), 165- 200.
  73. Šorgo, Aljoša. 2015. Pre-Germanic: A Tentative Description of the Substratum Language in Proto-Germanic Based on Guus Kroonen's Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Master's thesis, University of Ljubljana.
  74. Szymanek, Bogdan. 2005. The latest trends in English word formation. In Pavol Štekauer & Rochelle Lieber (eds.), Handbook of Word-Formation, 429- 448. Dordrecht: Springer.
  75. Tappenden, Graham. 2009. Teuro. www.allthingsgerman.net/blog/podcasts/teuro/ (accessed 18 August 2019).
  76. Urban, Matthias. 2015. Lexical semantic change and semantic reconstruction. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, 374-392. London: Routledge.
  77. Vennemann, Theo. 2003. Europa Vasconica -Europa Semitica (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 138). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
  78. Vennemann, Theo. 2012. Germania Semitica (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 259). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
  79. Wallis, John. 1653. Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae. Oxford: Leon Lichfield.
  80. Watkins, Calvert. 2011. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 3rd edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
  81. Willett, Michael. 2015. A Study of the Productivity of Twelve English Onset Phonaesthemes. Ph.D. dissertation, Cardiff University.
  82. Williams, Graham. 2013. Glossing over the lamb: Phonaesthetic gl-in Middle English and aural scepticism in Pearl. The Review of English Studies 65(271), 596-618.
  83. Wright, David. 2012. Scrunch, growze, or chobble?: Investigating regional variation in sound symbolism in the Survey of English Dialects. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 17.

Related papers

Indo-European Roots Reconsidered 14: 'blood'
Sean Whalen

2025

Traditional *H1esH2r(K) ‘blood’ does not explain all data. Since many cognates begin with a-, the very least needed would be met. in *H1esH2r(K) \ *H2asH1r(K), but this is not enough met., since *-rH2 > G. -ara, S. -rk is the only way for a vowel & velar to come from one ending. S. asnás, not **asinás, also shows that *H moved, and this is very common in IE (Whalen 2025a). Putting them in categories : *H1esH2r > H. ešhar nu., ešhanāš \ išhanāš g., *eh(h)ar > G. éar \ êar ‘blood’, [ana. > nu. -os-?] Ma. esos, U. erus *H1esrH2 > *éhara > poetic G. íara, *H1esrg > S. ásr̥ k, asnás g. *H2asH1r > L. aser \ assyr, T. *yä́sar > TA ysār, TB yasar, Ar. *ahar-yo-n- > ariwn, arean g/d. *H2asnH1- > *H2asin(g)- > Lt. asins, asinis p., Kursenieki dia. asing -> H. ešhaškant- \ ešhanuwant- ‘bloody’, L. assarātum \ assirātum ‘drink made with blood and wine’ B. explanation Based on šh \ šk in H. hamešhant- \ hameškant- ‘spring’, ešhaškant- is likely < *ešhašhant- < red. *ešhan-ešhan-ant-. Ar. *ehar- is also possible if some *VV > V when unstressed (Martirosyan). Since *-or > -är in T. (Adams), it is possible that *-r > *-är > -ār first (or -ā- was caused by *H2). Note that *-rH2 > G. -ara when unstressed supports optionality in the outcomes of *RH (against Höfler), when most counterex. are usually called analogy by proponents of any particular type. Note that several G. words with *H1e- > (h)i- might be from *x^e- > *(y)i- (Whalen 2025d). Against proposed *H1- > (h)i-, syllabic *H1- is not seen in any other IE cognate that would require *H1sH1r, etc. Old *-sH- > -ss- in L. might be regular, or part of opt. H / s (Whalen 2024a). In the opposite way, *-sH- > *-hh- in G., clearly opt. due to *ehar > éar, *ehhar > êar. G. retained *H as h in several words, whatever the intermediate stages

View PDFchevron_right
Multilingual lexicon of Bone Industries- version 2. A. Averbouh dir.
Aline Averbouh, Marina Évora, Petar Zidarov, Adrian Balasescu, Nejma GOUTAS, José-Miguel Tejero
View PDFchevron_right
There will be 'blood'. The etymology of Greek ὀπώρα and Proto-Germanic *asani- and the function of the o-grade in Proto-Indo-European
Roland Pooth

This is a comment on the etymology of Greek ὀπώρα and its cognates that can help to understand the functional relation of PIE o-graded nouns to their underlying bases. This article further offers a preliminary list of the evidence for PIE o-derivatives.

View PDFchevron_right
The Germanic word for ‘sword’ and delocatival derivation in Proto-Indo-European
Alexander Nikolaev

Journal of Indo-European Studies 37 (2009) 461–488.

There is no compelling etymology for the Germanic word for sword (OHG swert, OE sweord). This paper argues that this word is related to Cuneiform Luvian ši(ḫ)u̯al ‘dagger’: both words are derived from a stem *seh₂u- ‘sharp’ (cf. Cuneiform Luvian šiḫwa- 'sour' < *sēh₂u̯o- 'sharp (on the tongue)', Old Irish serb, Welsh chwerw 'bitter' < *s(h₂)u̯er-u̯o- 'id.'). Gmc. *su̯erða-n goes back to a substantivized adjective *sh₂u̯er-tó- ‘sharp’ (with a loss of the laryngeal already in the protolanguage), derived from a locative *sh2u̯er (compare *ĝʰei̯m-ento- ‘wintry’ from *ĝʰei̯m-en ‘in winter’).

View PDFchevron_right
Proto-Indo-European Nom.-Acc. Dual and the Germanic Dual of nouns // Journal of Language Relationship, 2023 21/3–4, pp. 178–183
Alexander Mankov

In this article, I present a brief outline of Proto-Indo-European endings of nouns in the nom.acc. dual and discuss the Germanic noun for "breast", which supposedly had dual forms in Proto-Germanic. OIcel. brjóst n. and OE brēost n. may reflect the dual *breust-ō (< PIE *-ō, the dual of thematic nouns). Because of the homonymy with the neuter nom.-acc. plural in-ō (< PIE *-ā), this form was reanalysed as n. pl. and became a thematic neuter (like Goth. daur 'door'). Goth. brusts directly reflects PGerm. *brust-iz, the athematic plural (like OIcel. dyrr). OSw. bryst n. is ambiguous because it can reflect PGerm. *breust-ō (dual and pl.), *brust-ī (dual), *brust-iz (pl.). The Proto-Germanic "breast" could originally be a proterokinetic noun with an ablauting root, *breust-/*brust-. As the inflexional expression of duality is extinct, nouns which denote paired organs can develop alternative ways to express it. The article describes such nouns in Swedish dialects of Estonia.

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Philology
  • Historical Linguistics
  • Phonology
  • Old Germanic Languages
  • Germanic Philology
  • Sound symbolism
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved