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Lvxferre [he/him] @mander.xyz

Genetic evidence points towards the Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian hypotheses

phys.org

Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European linguistic origins

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/1499265

What a Christmas present!

Italo-Celtic is a hypothetical branch of the Indo-European languages. If that branch is real, it means that the Italic and Celtic languages are closer to each other than to other Indo-European languages.

This hypothesis has been raised multiple times in the past, due to a few shared morphological features between Italic and Celtic languages; for example, the -ism̥mo- superlative. But that's on its own weak evidence, so this genomic data makes wonders to reinforce this hypothesis.

And also to bury the competing (IMO rather silly) Italo-Germanic one.

Graeco-Armenian is similar to the above, but between the Hellenic languages and Armenian. There were lots of competing hypotheses "tying" both branches to other "random" Indo-European branches; for example I've seen Indo-Greek, Italo-Greek, Armeno-Germanic, Armeno-Albanian...

6 comments

  • I think that the coolest part of those findings is that we can actually start reconstructing Proto-Italo-Celtic and Proto-Graeco-Armenian with some certainty, without finding too many spurious patterns. That would be specially useful to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European stops; I'll show it with a table, with the stops of the current PIE reconstruction and the typical reflexes into four languages representing those branches:

    PIELatinOld IrishGreekArmenian
    p t ḱ k kʷ/p t k k kʷ//∅ t k k k//p t k k p//h tʰ s kʰ kʰ/
    b d ǵ g gʷ/b d g g gʷ//b d g g b//b d g g b//p t ts k k/
    bʰ dʰ ǵʰ gʰ gʷʰ/f f h h f//b d g g g//pʰ tʰ kʰ kʰ pʰ//b d dz g g/

    The first thing that I notice in this table is that Armenian is satem and Greek is centum. And yet they're more related to each other than to their respective groups? This means that the centum/satem division was never different IE branches, it was simply an areal feature.

    For most part Latin transformed the so-called "breathy voiced" series (third line) into a bunch of fricatives; in some situations they became plain voiced consonants, but I didn't add them to the table. In the meantime the Celtic languages consistently merged that series into the plain voiced ones. The difference in outcomes shows that Proto-Italic-Celtic still somehow kept the distinction; and this makes me suspicious if that series is composed of breathy voiced consonants at all, given the lack of symmetry I'd expect them to be relatively short-lived. Greek vs. Armenian makes it even more puzzling - for Greek that series is the one with the biggest voice onset time, but for Armenian it's the one with the lowest!

    • Very interesting, thank you for the post and the elaboration!

    • for Greek that series is the one with the biggest voice onset time, but for Armenian it’s the one with the lowest

      Asking as a mostly amateur in the field - how relevant is this to historical phonology exactly? Is VOT supposed to be a historically particularly resilient phenomenon?

      • EDIT, TL;DR: if the only contrast between 2+ stop series is VOT, they won't switch places. Either Greek or Armenian did so, so at least one PIE stop series has a secondary articulation for sure.

        However the traditional reconstruction assigns breathy voice to this secondary articulation, creating a highly unstable system for PIE that would almost certainly not survive as late as Proto-Graeco-Armenian.

        Sorry beforehand for the wall of text.

        The currently proposed phonological system for Proto-Indo-European has three series of stop consonants:

        • unaspirated - p t k ḱ kʷ
        • voiced - b d g ǵ gʷ
        • breathy voiced - bʰ dʰ gʰ ǵʰ gʷʰ

        This system is not directly attested in any of the children languages. In fact, it is not attested at all; there's a language from Borneo called Kelabit that uses something similar-ish, but that's it. This lack of attestation happens because because breathy voiced consonants are complex to articulate, and... well, humans are lazy, if we can convey a contrast without a complex articulation, we do.

        And different child languages would have handled the situation in different ways:

        • Celtic - merging breathy voiced stops into the plain voiced ones: t d dʰ → t d d
        • Italic - transforming the breathy voiced stops into fricatives: t d dʰ → t d ð; eventually Latin would transform that ð into θ and then f, Cockney style
        • Greek - transforming the breathy voiced stops into more common aspirated stops: t d dʰ → t d tʰ
        • Germanic and Armenian - unaspirated becomes aspirated, plain voiced becomes unaspirated, breathy voiced becomes plain voiced; t d dʰ → tʰ t d. Then Germanic fricativises the aspirated series, tʰ→θ.
        • Sanskrit - introduce a fourth series of stops (aspirated), so the breathy voiced series get a symmetrical voiceless series, reinforcing its presence in the phonological system. The complexity is still there but it's "justified" by the presence of a similar articulation, for more contrasts.

        So far, so good, right?

        Well. If Greek and Armenian are closer to each other than they are to other IE branches, this means that Proto-Graeco-Armenian existed. And that it inherited that t d dʰ system. That, as I said, is highly unstable and unattested... like, we can give a pass to a weird system surviving just enough so its descendants get rid of it, but having that weird system survive for likely centuries, perhaps millennia? It's likely bullshit.

        Now let's talk about voice onset time, or VOT. VOT can change over time; however, consonant series distinguished only by VOT will never "switch places" - because once the VOT of both series gets similar enough, they'll simply merge. So for example:

        • [t d] → [t t] // OK, both series merged
        • [t d] → [tʰ t] // OK, series are still distinct but both raised VOT
        • [t d] → [d t] // nope, that won't happen

        (Note: I'm using only [tʰ t d] for the examples, but the reasoning is the same for [pʰ p b] or [kʰ k g] etc.)

        The same applies if you have three series of consonants, instead of two; you typically don't see a "merry-go-round" like [tʰ t d]→[t d tʰ], because once that last series increases its VOT, it's bound to merge with the second series.

        ...and yet if you look only at Ancient Greek and Armenian, it's like one of them did the above - because Greek /tʰ/ (highest VOT) corresponds to Armenian /d/ (lowest VOT).

        The only way to switch the places of the series is if their distinction is not just based on VOT, but also something else, at least temporarily. Like... breathy voice.

        Are you noticing the contradiction? It's like we need a bullshit system to survive for a huge period of time, enough for Proto-Graeco-Armenian to be able to inherit it.

6 comments